Made of Honor
This is the kind of movie that has a plot where you know everything that's going to happen before you even set foot in the theater. Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) have been best friends since they met in college 10 years ago. Never mind the fact that Dempsey was already well into his 30s in real life 10 years ago, and the attempt to make him look like a college student in the opening scenes don't quite come off right. We know they're right for each other, but by the standard law of the Idiot Plot, they have to be completely oblivious to the obvious. Tom's a ladies' man who finds himself with a different woman every night, and Hannah just accepts the fact that they'll always be friends. Tom, on the other hand, never quite realizes how important her friendship is until she has to leave for Scotland for six weeks on business. All of a sudden, nothing else matters, and he just wants to be with Hannah and tell her how he feels about her. When the two finally get back together, Tom is shocked to see she has a man on her arm - a dashing Scottish hunk named Colin (Kevin McKidd) who Hannah met during her trip overseas. They had a whirlwind romance during her short time there, and now they're getting married in just a few weeks.
The title comes from the fact that Hannah asks Tom to be her maid of honor at the wedding. The movie frequently portrays Hannah as a woman who doesn't exactly seem to think things through. Not only does she agree to marry this Colin guy seemingly mere days after meeting him, but she frequently puts her best friend Tom into humiliating situations that no one in their right mind would force someone to do. She forces Tom to work alongside a vindictive and spiteful ex-girlfriend of his (Busy Philipps) to help plan the wedding, completely ignoring the fact that this other woman is trying to sabotage Tom's attempts to plan the wedding. She also never once asks him what he thinks about this sudden change. The film's opening moments depict how close these two have been over the years, and then she suddenly expects him to accept the fact that she's jetting off to Scotland to live with a guy she's only known for less than a month. The fact that she never stops and asks Tom how he really feels makes her come across as more heartless and cynical than I think the filmmakers intended. So, Tom's a womanizer who essentially sees women as trophies, and Hannah's willing to throw her entire life away and leave everyone she loves behind for a cute guy she doesn't even know. And we're supposed to want to see these two people get together because?...
The filmmakers obviously never asked themselves that question, because the majority of Made of Honor is built around Tom trying to prove to Hannah that they're right for each other, and that she should marry him instead. Of course, the movie has to throw every contrived circumstance in the book to keep the characters from saying what needs to be said, or doing what needs to be done. Any semi-intelligent person could have these characters' problems solved in about ten minutes, but the film has to drag it out to feature length by having some situation or some person walk in at just the right moment to prevent them from saying those little words that would cause the end to come a lot sooner. It's a practice that makes me grow restless in my seat, especially when the characters are as uninteresting as depicted here. Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan are attractive leads, there's no denying that. But there's nothing for them to inhabit in the people they're playing. They have jobs, but never seem to actually do any work, giving Tom plenty of time to play basketball with his wacky one-liner spewing guy friends, and Hannah plenty of time to think of more ways to put Tom in awkward situations that are supposed to make us laugh, but only made me even more angry with each contrived and idiotic moment.
Tom and Hannah are not people, when you come right down to it. They do what's expected of them, and never seem to have a single thought in their heads except for what the plot requires them to think. It doesn't even matter if the thoughts they're having make any sense, as long as its convenient to the plot. I could look over this fact if the screenplay had some genuine wit to it, but it falls back on such moldy techniques as funny old ladies (an elderly woman at the wedding wears glow in the dark sex toys as jewelry, not knowing what they're supposed to be), and scenes where Tom constantly runs into people for no seemingly no reason at all, other than the writers were under the assumption he needed to fall down for an easy laugh. It can't even think of a reason for him to run into the other person, it just suddenly decides to make him a clutz at its own convenience. Everything's so manipulated and controlled in this movie that I didn't believe what I was seeing for a single second.
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Billionaire weapons manufacturer and playboy, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), is trapped behind enemy lines. He's been captured by an Afghan terrorist rebel army, and is being forced to build his latest missile weapon for their leader, Raza (Faran Tahir). While in captivity, Tony has an eye-opening experience when he realizes that the terrorists are using his own weapons and technology to fight against American soldiers. The realization and the guilt he feels is too much for him to bear, and he knows he has to do something. Tucked away in a secluded cave, under the watchful eye of Raza's soldiers, Stark begins to build an invention that will not only ultimately help him escape his captors, but may just help the people he has put in harm's way for so long. He constructs a crude yet powerful full-body robotic suit that turns Stark into a walking weapon. From the moment he puts the suit on, and begins fending off the soldiers who have come to investigate the strange occurrences in his cell, we know that we are watching something special.
It's an exhilarating moment seeing Iron Man in action for the first time. Though the sequence has been highly publicized in the film's trailers for about a year now, it still manages to impress, because the scene carries with it such a feeling of freedom and liberation. Raza and his army are not even the main villains in the film, but seeing their comeuppance by this everyday man who fights back in such an extaordinary fashion is a giant rush, and not just for the fanboys who have been following the comics for years. Iron Man does a great job of building up to this moment. We are brought into Tony Stark's world, we see the realization dawn on him of just what his technology has been used for, and we feel for him. We want to see him escape, and we want to see the suit in action. Director Jon Favreau (Elf, Zathura) does not disappoint in either aspect.
Tony Stark does eventually make it back home to the US, and is greeted by his faithful and loyal personal assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), best friend Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard), and business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Tony has been forever changed by the experience of being held captive, that much is expected. What's not expected is that he does not become a brooding or deeply troubled hero who fights in order to calm his own personal demons. Yes, there is a personal connection. He doesn't want to see his name, or his company's name, used for terror ever again. But, we also get the feeling that Stark is sharing the same exhilaration we are whenever he dons the suit that allows him to become the superpowered Iron Man. So many recent comic book movies seem determined to focus almost solely on the negative or the heavy aspects of being a superhero. Spider-Man can swing across the sky and climb buildings, but he's constantly haunted by family grief, and the last words of his dead Uncle. Batman has all those wonderful toys and wealth, but let's face it, you wouldn't really want to party with the guy. Iron Man knows that there is a big responsibility in keeping law and order in the world, but also doesn't let it completely overshadow the fun it would be to wear a robotic outfit like Stark's, and just go flying. Some critics I've read have complained about the lack of action sequences in the film. Save it for the sequel, I say. This is a movie about Tony Stark learning about what it's like to be Iron Man, and that's the way it should be.
Iron Man is the rare film that is almost certain to delight the faithful of its source material (aside from updating the early scenes from Vietnam to Afghanistan, very little has been sacrificed), and those who know very little about the character and his world. There is a certain low key feel to everything in the movie. The special effects and the CG used to bring the character to life are dazzling, but never overbearing. It knows just the right amount of wonder to use. But let's be honest here, a superhero is only as good as the guy behind the mask. Robert Downey, Jr completely owns the role of Tony Stark in this regard. He is capable of not only making Stark a genuine human being outside of the costume, but he brings so much personality, charm, and wit to the film that we get the sense that the movie almost wouldn't be the same without him. Downey has proven his talent many times in the past 20 years or so, but this is the first time he's been expected to carry a potential blockbuster and franchise almost all by himself. Just like Johnny Depp with the original Pirates of the Carribean film, I have a feeling that this will cause audiences and studio heads to look at him in a different way. He's charismatic, he has a wonderful screen presence here that makes him almost mesmerizing to watch, and he's consistently believable, even when he's stomping around in that outfit.
While his supporting cast may not grab our attention like he does, they are all notable, and each of them give surprisingly honest and heartfelt performances. Gwyneth Paltrow makes a great "Girl Friday" for Downey's character, who is with him every step of the way, but never seems quite sure what to make of her complex relationship with her employer. I'm interested to see her character and her role in the story grow in the inevitable future installments. Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard get slightly less to do for most of the movie, but they are still memorable, because of the way they approach their roles. Everyone treats the material as if this is actually happening. The performances are down to Earth, not broad in any way. When they use humor, it is appropriate for the situation, and not a case of the screenwriters trying to inject camp into the script for easy laughs. They're written as intelligent adults, and the fact that the story is set in a semi-realistic world only allows us to get more involved in the story. It's rare to see a talented cast come together so well, especially in a popcorn-fueled summer blockbuster.
Career-driven Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) has been too busy climbing the corporate ladder at the organic food corporation she works for to start a family. Now that she's 37, her maternal clock is starting to go off, and she's become obsessed with having a baby. (Cue the sight gag where she walks into a business meeting, and she sees everyone as a baby.) Unfortunately, she discovers the chances of her naturally conceiving a child are slim, and the adoption approval process takes too long. She decides to try a surrogate mother program, and the woman in charge of the program (Sigourney Weaver) assures her that their clients are of the highest quality. To the surprise of no one in the audience, Kate is teamed up with a goofy white trash floozy named Angie (Amy Poehler). The original plan is that Angie will carry and give birth to Kate's baby, but when Angie has a fight with her sleazy live-in boyfriend, Carl (Dax Shepard), she ends up moving in with Kate, and their high class/low class lifestyles immediately begin to clash when they're forced to live in the same apartment.
It's an idea that has worked in countless movies and TV sitcoms, and given the talent on display, it could have worked here. But Baby Mama is as toothless as many of the infants that Kate is obsessed with during the film's early scenes. I have nothing wrong with conventional plotting or structure, but there has to be some sign that the movie knows it's playing by the book, and give us something else to enjoy. Last weekend's Forgetting Sarah Marshall was just as predictable, but easily won me over with its smart sense of humor, extremely likable characters, and a genuine sense of heart and energy. I got the sense here that writer-director McCullers (a long-time writer of Saturday Night Live, who has also contributed to the Austin Powers films) wanted to play it so safe for his first filmmaking gig that he didn't really trust his own material. He never once steps out of line, and the film suffers. We immediately know what's going to happen when Kate meets a cute single guy (Greg Kinnear) who works at the local fruit smoothee shop. We immediately know that Kate and Angie will be able to put aside their differences and eventually become friends. We know they're going to have a falling out. We know that the scuzzy Carl is going to try to bring up some painful secret that Angie doesn't want anyone to know about in order to embarrass her in front of everyone in some sort of public function. The movie foolishly acts like this is all new to us, and that we're supposed to be delighted by such developments.
Fey and Poehler are at least good sports, and give the best they can in their performances, even if they do lack the inspired comic spark of their best work. The thing is, they're too smart for this material, and are never allowed to rise above it. The time they get to spend together on screen is surprisingly muted, and aside from a cute scene where they play a karaoke video game together, they seem reigned in and one-note most of the time. Fey is forever the straight-arrow, and Poehler is always the slightly ditzy and childish one. Surprisingly, the biggest laughs belong not to them, but to the supporting cast. Sigourney Weaver gets some laughs in her introduction scene, and I especially liked her deadpan delivery as to why it costs more to give birth to a baby than it does to kill someone. Steve Martin also seems to be having a lot of fun as Fey's loopy, aging hippie boss, who is obsessed with new-age business practices. Even Romany Malco, as Fey's smart-mouthed doorman, gets a couple moments to stand out. Everyone manages to get some laughs in, but they are never big enough to make us forget that we've seen everything before, and done much better than it is here.
Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor) is a meek and withdrawn accountant working late one night, when he gets a visit from the charismatic and charming attorney, Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman). The two hit it off immediately, but Wyatt can immediately tell that Jonathan is a man who has not exactly lived life. Jonathan's life gets a lot more interesting when the two accidentally grab each other's cell phones right before Wyatt is about to set off for a business trip in London. With Wyatt's cell phone in his possession, Jonathan is almost immediately drawn into an underground and private sex club where powerful business people have anonymous sex with one another after they call you on your phone, and arrange a meeting at a fancy hotel. There are no relationships, and no one is supposed to know the other's name. But when Jonathan has a sexual encounter with a woman he's long admired on the subway, he breaks the rule of the club, and has to know who she is. The woman, known only as "S" (Michelle Williams), eventually starts feeling close to Jonathan, and before long, they're meeting each other outside of the club. Things take a turn for the worse when the two are staying at a hotel in Chinatown, and Jonathan is viciously attacked by a mysterious assailant. When he comes to, S has gone missing, and no evidence has been left behind. As Jonathan races about the city, looking for answers, he quickly begins to realize that nothing is what it seems, and he is pulled into a world of blackmail and fraud.
Deception begins as a story about a sheltered and lonely man who is given an opportunity to live by leading another man's life, via that man's cell phone. Despite some awkwardly inserted hints that clue us in on to where things are going, the screenplay by Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard) keeps things pretty laid back here. Maybe a bit too much so, as the movie spends too much time with Jonathan having sex with one random woman after another, making us wonder where exactly the film is going sometimes. It certainly doesn't seem to be in any rush, but when Jonathan meets the lovely and mysterious S, the movie does begin to develop a nervous, but still somewhat passionate, attraction between the two. Both of them know that what they're doing violates the key rule of the club, but they cannot deny the attraction they hold for one another. This takes us almost an hour into the film, and since we know we're watching a thriller, something has to start happening soon. I almost wish it didn't have to, because as soon as S goes missing from the hotel room, things take a turn for the convoluted and the ridiculous. While it never gets quite as laughably bad as last week's thriller, 88 Minutes, the movie definitely drops the ball when it turns into a third rate thriller filled with predictable double crosses and even more predictable, if not ludicrous, plot developments.
It's at this point that the characters inhabiting the film stop being genuine people, and start coming across as puppets being manipulated by the overstuffed screenplay that thinks it's more clever than it really is. Deception seems to delight in pulling the rug out from under us in just about every scene once the "thriller" aspect of the plot kick in, but it doesn't seem to realize that we're one step ahead of it constantly. The title, and the many hints the film drops, already have let us know that certain characters (I'm trying my best to be vague here, though it's probably a lost cause) are not to be trusted, so we're left just waiting for the movie to catch up with us, and give us what we know is coming. It also completely drops the idea of the private sex club at this point of the story, and instead turns into a story of embezzlement fraud. This is an odd choice, as I can't think of many people who would find the second idea more intriguing than the first. The movie seems to want to thrill us, but everything is so predictable and mediocre, it's hard to get excited about anything.
Escape from Guantanamo Bay is obviously the sequel to 2004's Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. That film bombed at the box office, but found a loyal cult following on DVD, which convinced the studio to go ahead with this continuation. John Cho and Kal Penn return as the pot-smoking title characters who, having satisfied their munchies in the last film, are now off to greater things. They board a plane to Amsterdam so that Cho's Harold can chase after the girl of his dreams from the last film, Maria (Paula Garces). During the flight, Kumar reveals that he's snuck on board a high tech bong that looks suspiciously like an explosive. The device is mistaken for a bomb, and before the duo know it, they've been shackled and placed under the paranoid and narrow-minded eye of the head of Homeland Security, Ron Fox (Rob Corddry). After a brief stint in Guantanamo Boy, the two friends escape, and find themselves on the run as they try to make it to Texas, where a former friend with political connections named Colton (Eric Winter) may be able to clear their names. The fact that the smarmy Colton is set to marry Kumar's old flame, Vanessa (Danneel Harris), makes it all the more urgent, as he still has feelings for her. As the friends try to stay ahead of the pursuing government officials, they have various misadventures with the KKK, a married hick couple who keep an inbred mutant child locked in their basement, an encounter with President Bush (James Adomian), and another bizarre run in with former child star, Neil Patrick Harris, who plays a caricature of himself as a sex-obsessed freak with a passion for prostitutes, 'shrooms, and unicorns.
Despite a more plot-heavy premise than before, the sequel keeps the tradition of the original film, in that it often comes across as a series of skits and short comic films as the two friends wander into one bizarre situation after another while trying to reach their destination. The main difference here is that the film is taking a much more pointed and satirical look at post 9/11 America. Writers and directors, Hurwitz and Scholossberg, seem to revel in the new-found opportunities the film's premise provides them, and give us some very funny looks at airport security, racial profiling, and genuine fear and mistrust amongst people of different races and cultures. Most of this is represented by the film's villain, Ron Fox, who refuses to listen to reason most of the time, or to his more level-headed partner, Dr. Beecher (Roger Bart). I liked the way the movie tries to play against the characters', and even the audience's, racial expectations. When Harold and Kumar drive into a ghetto neighborhood, and call attention to some angry looking black people brandishing crowbars and other tools, they speed away in their car, fearing for their lives, not realizing that the men were only approaching them because they wanted to help fix their vehicle, which had just hit a hydrant. I also enjoyed the scene where the Homeland Security Agents are grilling Harold and Kumar's parents for information on where their sons are, and refuse to accept the fact that the parents of Korean and Indian descent are speaking perfect English to them. The politically charged humor had a sharp edge that I enjoyed, and made the movie come across as being much smarter than your average stoner comedy.
Not quite as smart are the film's numerous gross-out gags, which are unfortunately almost as frequent as the humor that works. The film's opening scene displays in graphic detail just what a massive binge of fast food hamburgers can do to a person's bowels. There's a lot of full-frontal nudity, which makes last weekend's Forgetting Sarah Marshall seem downright tame in comparison, as well as plenty of bodily fluids, and hairy "bush" shots. Far more successful are the film's brief forays into bizarre, random humor, such as the entire time they spend with Neil Patrick Harris. It was a smart move on the part of the filmmakers to bring Harris back, as his cameo in the last film was one of the most memorable moments. It's too bad they couldn't have given him a more sizable role this time around. As I'm sure you can tell, the humor is largely hit and miss. Those that hit certainly do hit big, but there are plenty of long stretches of misses, or jokes that just don't go anywhere. The fact that the film runs for an unnecessarily long 105 minutes makes the film seem quite padded at times. With some of the long stretches of failed humor and gross out gags trimmed, this could have been a much tighter and more satisfying film.
Even when the film's energy or quality dips, the charm and the chemistry of the lead stars always holds our attention. Both John Cho and Kal Penn slip back into their characters so effortlessly, it's easy to buy the fact that this movie picks up exactly when the last one left off, even though four years have passed between the two films. The characters have a wonderful "odd couple" vibe, with Harold being the more rational of the two, and Kumar being the reckless one who uses his heart instead of his head most of the time. Cho and Penn bring out the best in the characters, and make them surprisingly well-rounded characters. They really are the heart of the franchise, as the rest of the cast are restricted to mainly being over the top oddballs. Everyone plays their part, and they know not to upstage each other, which gives the movie a feeling of controlled chaos. Even if the material is uneven, the entire cast attacks it with the same level of enthusiasm and energy. It's a nice change of pace from some other comedies I've seen this year, where the actors seem to know they're in a stinker, and act like they're filling a prison sentence rather than filming a comedy. (Over Her Dead Body immediately springs to mind.)
Michael Angarano (from Sky High) plays the kid who the film mainly focuses on. We never learn much about his character, named Jason Tripitikas, except that he's addicted to bootleg kung fu movies, likes to shop at a rundown Chinatown store run by an elderly man named Old Hop (played by Jackie Chan, unrecognizable under layers of make up), and that he's a frequent target for violent thug bullies. Oh, and don't worry, we later learn from dialogue that he comes from a single parent home, so the movie complies with the unwritten rule of Hollywood that young protagonists must have only one parent. Jason is pressured by the bullies to help them break into Old Hop's store one night, where they proceed to shoot the kindly old man and loot the place. As the old man lays wounded, he begs Jason that he protect a mystical staff that he keeps in a back room. Jason grabs the staff, and while he's trying to escape from the bullies, he somehow finds himself transported back in time by the power of the staff, and winds up in ancient China.
Here's where the film's real plot begins, and the audience's interest starts to grow. Not long after arriving in China, Jason meets an immortal drunken master fighter named Lu Yan (Jackie Chan again), who informs him that the staff he carries once belonged to a mischievous mystical fighter called the Monkey King (Jet Li). The Monkey King was turned into stone by the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou), and can only be returned to normal if the staff is returned to him. Of course, the Jade Warlord immediately hears that the staff has returned, and sends his soldiers out to cover the land searching for it. Jason and Lu Yan set out to find the Monkey King, and are later joined up with a beautiful young fighter named Golden Sparrow (the lovely Yifei Liu), who has reasons of her own for fighting the Jade Warlord, and a silent and noble monk (Jet Li again) who has been on a quest for the staff for years. It seems that returning the staff to the Monkey King is the only way that Jason can return home, and in a later scene when he asks a mystical being that he just wants to go home, it takes a superhuman effort not to think of clicking your heels three times, and saying "there's no place like home".
That's because The Forbidden Kingdom really does boil down to a sort of chop-socky take on The Wizard of Oz. Replace the Witch with the Jade Warlord, and the flying monkeys with some nameless soldiers and a woman who can stretch her hair out and use it as a weapon (Li Bingbing), and you get the idea. Despite a running time that nearly hits two hours, the movie is fast paced and never really slows down long enough to take it all in. That's too bad, because there is some lovely China scenery throughout (the film is a joint effort between Hollywood and China, so they were able to shoot on location in a lot of scenes). Jason barely has time to take in the fact that he's traveled back in time before he's teaming up with Lu Yan, and escaping on horseback from the Jade Warlord's soldiers. At least the movie gives us some impressive fight sequences to enjoy, many of which are long enough for the audience to savor. Director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, the Stuart Little films) knows what we're here for, and gives us an extremely satisfying and lengthy sequence where Chan's Lu Yan does battle with Li's Silent Monk when they first meet each other. Seeing these two masters go up against each other allows us to forget about the movie's plotting problems, and just revel in true fanboy glee. It's too bad there's never quite a sequence quite as satisfying as this one afterward.
Sadly, the screenplay by John Fusco (Hidalgo) concentrates too much on the modern day Jason, and dopey dialogue that is usually delivered by actors who speak English as a second language, which makes it sound even worse. (Sample dialogue exchange: "I will kill you". "Not if I kill you first".) Despite the majority of the ad campaign concentrating solely on Jackie Chan and Jet Li, the first trailer I saw got it right. This is Michael Angarano's movie, Chan and Li are just along for the ride in minor supporting roles. The movie makes a big miscalculation by centering a vast majority of the action and the fighting around Angarano's Jason character. He's just not as much fun to watch. That's not to say that Chan and Li's characters don't get to see any action, they just never get their own fight scene devoted only to them after they first meet. Any other fight they have is interrupted by having the movie cutting away back to Jason and his fight. At least Chan and Li seem to be having fun with the film, and are full of energy in their fighting. Jet Li, in particular, seems to be having a ball during his scenes playing the Monkey King, despite how ridiculous he looks in that half man-half primate get up. Both of these men are the key to the film's limited success, as it only works whenever they are allowed to do their thing. When they're not fighting, they're usually reduced to arguing, or playing gross-out gags on each other. A scene where Jet Li's Monk gives Chan's Lu Yan a "golden shower" made me think that the monk studied under MTV's Jackass as well as the great martial arts masters.
88 Minutes is a pretty simple thriller in theory, so it decides to overcomplicate manners by trying to throw us off course every chance it gets. Watching the film, I was reminded of Perfect Stranger, another recent failed thriller that tried to keep us guessing by making its three lead characters look suspicious whenever the screenplay deemed it necessary. The script for this movie credited to Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast and the Furious) goes one step beyond. It doesn't just make the main characters suspicious, it casts literally everyone who steps into the same frame as Pacino in a suspicious light at one point! Even the guy who runs the front desk at the main character's apartment building can't seem to be trusted. (Check out the shady look he gives as Pacino climbs aboard the elevator. He must know something!) Those who are well-versed in the ways of the hack mystery writer will not have a hard time stripping away the numerous characters and fingering the real culprit, however. All you have to do is look for the character who seemingly doesn't have anything to do with anything that's happened in the movie, and has disappeared for a good part of the story. The fact that this character is played by a somewhat well-known actor makes it all the more suspicious when you figure there's no other reason why he or she would take such a seemingly worthless role.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Pacino plays Jack Gramm, a criminal psychiatrist and college professor who nine years ago helped put away a serial killer named Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) after Jon supposedly broke into an apartment, and hung the two women living there upside down from the ceiling, torturing them and killing one of them. Jon was put on Death Row, but there's a lot of people who seem to think he's innocent, as Jack's testimony against Jon is believed by these people to be based on speculation and circumstantial evidence. As Jon's execution date draws near, a series of copycat crimes done in the same style of the murder nine years ago start popping up in an attempt to discredit Jack's testimony. On the same day this happens, Jack starts getting threatening calls on his cell phone by a mysterious voice that sounds kind of like the phone killer from the Scream movies if he was talking through one of those toy microphones that make your voice sound like Darth Vader when you talk into them. The voice unfortunately does not ask Jack what his favorite scary movie is. It instead tells him that he only has 88 minutes left to live.
Why 88 minutes? We eventually learn that this is tied into a painful memory in Jack's past, which we witness in vague flashbacks that feature a sunny little girl running in slow motion while she flies a kite. The sorrowful piano music that plays during these scenes pretty much tells us right off the bat that things don't turn out well for this girl, but it takes a while until we finally learn what happened to her. Despite getting the treatening call, Jack tries to lead a normal life, but that darn killer is everywhere! The killer leaves numerous messages on his phone, then starts leaving behind messages in his classroom, and even on his car when Jack discovers his vehicle has been broken into with the words "76 minutes" scratched into the body of the car. Now, let's stop and think about this for a minute. Jack learns he has 88 minutes left to live while he's walking across the campus to where his class is. He goes to his class, where the killer keeps on interrupting his lecture by calling him. After this, Jack talks to a few people, then walks down to the parking garage, only to find the message left on his car. Ask yourself here, how could the killer have predicted exactly what time Jack would be arriving at his car to know how many minutes would be remaining? Unless the killer took into consideration every possible interruption (What if he dropped something or stopped to tie his shoes?), it's virtually impossible. Of course, we're not supposed to ask that, because we're supposed to be wrapped up in the plot.
But we're not wrapped up, because 88 Minutes boils down to a wild goose chase as Jack races all over the local area trying to find out who is leaving the messages and why. And since we've figured out the identity of the guilty party long before the lead character has, the only thing keeping us in our seats is the scene where we finally get an explanation as to why this seemingly-unimportant character who has gone all-but ignored for the length of the film is doing all of this. The big reveal scene ends up being particularly amusing, as the previously sensible character suddenly goes into forced and unconvincing evil. It eventually turns into a contest between the killer and Pacino to see who can chew the most scenery. Of course, the killer is fighting a losing battle, as Pacino leaves no scene unchewed in his performance here. For a good example, just look at the scene where Jack calls in to a live show where Jon Forster is being interviewed, trying to convince the public of his innocence. Pacino bellows, roars, and hams it up as only he can. The rest of the cast are mainly required to step back and let him do his thing, except when they're supposed to look suspicious at the convenience of a screenplay that thinks it's more clever than it really is.
Famed director Alfred Hitchcock was quoted as saying that he liked to play his audience like a piano. The director of 88 Minutes is Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes), and he likes to play his audience like a piano, too. Unfortunately, he's not playing music here, he's just banging on the keys incessantly. He tries to keep the tension up with non-stop running, car chases, gunfire, explosions, and shocking murder scenes, but we're left feeling cold, because we don't feel anything. The movie never slows down long enough for us to care about anything going on up on the screen. It just keeps on running and running, but not really getting anywhere, like a hamster in a wheel. I suppose the breathless pace is supposed to put us on the edge of our seats, but because of the distance between the audience and the action up on the screen, it never achieves the emotions it wants.
Expelled mainly goes for the Michael Moore style of filmmaking, combining sound bytes with both campy and archival film clips, dry humor, popular music tied into the current topic, and even a brief animated segment to make its point. Just like a lot of Moore's work, the film does seem very one-sided at times. The first half of the film follows Stein as he tracks down various professors, journalists, and scientists who found themselves out of work or ridiculed simply because they either questioned the theory of Darwinism, or because they dared to write an article that looked at both sides of the Darwin/Intelligent Design argument, and were run out for simply mentioning the alternative theory. "Freedom is under attack", Stein proclaims early on, and he wants to bring what he feels is a great injustice to the attention of the people. It certainly is shocking to see and hear the stories of different people who found themselves persecuted for their beliefs, and even more so with those who simply just mentioned Intelligent Design, not saying anything for or against it, and found themselves fired. Stein certainly makes a good case, but the movie makes its first big mistake by making these people come across as victims, rather than giving them a forum to talk about what they have to say.
I walked into the film with an open mind, hoping to hear both sides of the argument. What the film mainly gives us for a long time are sob stories that may get us behind these teachers, writers, and scientists who found themselves in an unfair situation, but doesn't really dig deep enough into what they personally believe. We get a couple talking head quotes about how there's a wall in the scientific community (cue archival footage of the Berlin Wall), and if you're not on the right side of the wall, you're going to be persecuted. The movie does manage to find some level-headed speakers to support Intelligent Design, but those depicted supporting Darwinism are either portrayed as small-minded and arrogant, or displayed in such brief sound bytes that we feel like we're only getting part of their opinion. The Darwinist who gets the most screen time is Richard Dawkins, best known for writing the controversial book, The God Delusion. His extreme atheist views are often put side-by-side with the more sensible people in the film speaking for Intelligent Design. It gives the film a somewhat unbalanced feel, portraying most of the people speaking for one side as bullies, and those speaking on the others as victims.
The movie eventually takes an even more heavy-handed and exploitive approach when the subject of Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust is drawn in, and compared to the theory of Darwinism. This is when Expelled goes all out in the forced emotions approach, when Stein takes a personal tour of concentration camps and experimentation labs, while solemn music drones on the soundtrack and footage of Nazi war crimes are flashed on the screen. The way the material is handled is so manipulative and drags on for so long, it completely kills whatever momentum the film may have had up to that point. As mentioned earlier, the film also makes great use out of its Berlin Wall comparison, which also seems a bit contrived at times, especially near the end when the movie keeps on cutting back and forth between Ben Stein giving a lecture to some students, and Ronald Reagan giving a stirring speech about freedom before a cheering crowd. The attention is drawn to Stein, not the issue at hand, at this point. The movie keeps on trying to draw out attention with film clips and other attention grabbing methods that first-time filmmaker, Nathan Frankowski, sometimes loses the point.
The film was written by and stars a rising actor named Jason Segel who, after years of roles on television and supporting characters, gives himself his first starring vehicle. I have not really noticed him before, but I think we could be looking at a star-making turn here, just as the previously mentioned 40-Year-Old Virgin launched Steve Carell into leading man status. He plays Peter Bretter, a struggling musician who is currently writing music for a crime show (a job he hates), but dreams of bigger things - namely a rock opera musical about Dracula performed entirely by puppets. Peter's been very much in love with a rising actress named Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) the past five years. She stars on the show he writes the music for, and despite the fact that she's the one who gets all the attention and admiration from the public, Peter seems content in his current place. That's when she decides to drop a bombshell on him - She's leaving him, and he eventually learns that she's hooked up with a flamboyant British pop star named Aldous Snow (Russell Brand).
The screenplay by Segel shows its intelligence early on by making both Peter and Sarah into realistic people. Peter does have some tendencies that may make him come across as an oddball, but the movie is smart not to play up these aspects, and to make him into a sympathetic character we can get behind. The movie doesn't go overboard into playing up his misery entirely for laughs. Yes, there are moments where he gets hysterical, but for the most part, we can sense genuine love loss with Peter. I was also pleased to see the way that Sarah was handled. She is not heartless or annoying, which are methods a lazy screenplay would fall back on in order to bring its audience into Peter's corner. She wants to move on, but at the same time, we sense early on that she still has feelings for him, and is not doing this just to spite him for anything he's done wrong. Sarah still loves him in a small way, she just feels they've drifted apart, which they have. If I'm making the movie sound a bit too downbeat and somber here, I apologize. There are a lot of big laughs almost right from the start, and the pace keeps up when the action switches to Hawaii.
Peter goes to Hawaii at the advice of his brother Brian (Bill Hader), since he thinks a vacation is just the thing the guy needs to take his mind off of his problems. He arrives at a fancy resort, only to learn that Sarah and her new boyfriend are vacationing there too. Peter is a wreck at first, but he quickly makes friends with a lot of the employees at the resort, especially a front desk clerk named Rachel (Mila Kunis from TV's That 70s Show and Family Guy) who sympathizes with him, as she also has an experience with a relationship that went wrong. They start out as friends, then as expected, start to become more. What we don't expect once again is the honesty with which the movie treats the characters. Rachel is an intelligent and beautiful young woman, and we can see why Peter is attracted to her, as the screenplay gives them plenty of things to talk about. This is the rare romantic comedy that has an ear for dialogue, and gives its characters genuine feeling. When Peter describes his plans for his dream Dracula musical to her, we can tell that Rachel is not sure what to think, but at the same time is fascinated by this man and his mind. It's a nice change of pace to see a relationship grow not through music montages (of which there are miraculously none, if memory serves me correctly), but through a mutual understanding between two likable people that we want to see get together.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall does follow a pretty expected and rigid plot structure. There's going to be a crisis, there's going to be some misunderstandings, and there's going to be moments where Peter will be weak. What sets the movie apart is that while the plotting may be conventional, it never stoops to the level where it is insulting to the audience's intelligence. These things happen, but they don't happen in quite the way we expect them too. Yes, Sarah does become a little bit jealous when she sees Peter hanging out with Rachel, but she does not suddenly become a villain hell-bent on breaking them up. And yes Peter does make a big mistake during his relationship with Rachel, but he doesn't try to hide it from her or make excuses. He walks right up and tells her. More than the film's big laughs, I was more impressed with how it treats the characters as sensible adults. More than the dialogue, it is the performances that endear the characters to us. I already mentioned that I can see Jason Segel having a strong leading man career with this film, and I truly hope this leads to even better things. He has a good "everyman" look, but also has undeniable screen presence that draws our attention every time he's on screen. Also impressive is Mila Kunis, who has also mainly worked in televison despite working since she was a child. She makes for a lovely leading lady, but she also has a very down to earth personality that makes her come across in this film as someone you would want to know in real life.
