Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Those of you with good memories will recall that this is not the first attempt to bring the Street Fighter video games to the big screen. There was another film in 1994 with Jean-Claude Van Damme and the late Raul Julia in his final role. That wasn't a very good movie, either. It was noisy, campy, and cheesy as all get-out. But at least it seemed to be trying and had a vision, misguided as it was. This movie in comparison is drab, grimy, murky, and not very fun at all. It's almost as if director Andrzej Bartkowiak was under strict orders from the studio to remove anything that could be remotely fun or exciting. Mr. Bartkowiak is no stranger to butchered video game to film adaptations, having brought us 2005's cinematic take on Doom. With a title like Street Fighter, we at least expect some fast-paced action. And with Chun-Li as its central focus, we at least expect some sexy fun. (In the video game world, she ranks right up there with Ms. Pac-Man and Lara Croft amongst the "first ladies" of gaming.) But the fighting (on the streets or otherwise) is unimpressive, with many battles ending mere seconds after they start. As for the title heroine, she's been turned from a sexy and fun martial artist, into a brooding Batman-like vigilante who spends more time talking to us in a droning and endless off-camera narration than she does kicking butts.
Through her narration, we learn that she was a child born into wealth. Her loving parents hoped she would become a concert pianist. Then, one night, the villain Bison (Neal McDonough) and his men broke into her family's home and kidnapped her father. Bison, we learn, is a crime lord who is so evil, he doesn't have anything good left remaining within him. He somehow transferred everything good within him into the body of his at-the-time unborn daughter through an ancient ceremony. He then proceeded to kill his wife and rip his child right out of her stomach. For reasons that are unexplained by the movie, the daughter somehow went missing, and he's now searching for her. He also plans to use his wealth as a businessman to buy up all his rivals, take control of a slum area in Thailand, and destroy it so that he can build a new community. Bison was apparently born and raised on the streets of Thailand, which makes his weak Irish accent that comes and goes throughout his dialogue all the more mysterious.
Chun-Li, meanwhile, has grown up to be a young woman played by Kristin Kreuk from TV's Smallville. In the early moments, she seems content to live out her childhood dreams of being a pianist, but then an ancient scroll is delivered to her, and she has a feeling "it means something". Her mother conveniently dies of Cancer shortly thereafter, so the young girl has the opportunity to leave her world behind and live as a homeless person on the streets of Thailand, seeking the aid of a mysterious martial arts master named Gen (Robin Shou). While on the streets, she sees the suffering of the poor people, and it gives her another reason to fight against Bison. She decides to become a Robin Hood-like figure, robbing from Bison to give to the poor. Also after Bison are a pair of police detectives, played by a terribly miscast Chris Klein and Moon Bloodgood. Klein manages to mangle every line of dialogue the hacked-out screenplay gives him, while Bloodgood exists simply to break the record for the most amount of leather clothing worn by a single woman in a film.
The performances as a whole all but guarantee this movie could sweep the acting nominations when it comes to next year's Razzie Awards. They would be merely bad individually, but the fact that no one in this movie seems to be working on the same page makes them excruciating. As the heroine, Kreuk seems to think she's in a bad rip off of Kill Bill. McDonough's turn as the head villain comes across as the most boring Bond villain ever put to film. Meanwhile, Michael Clarke Duncan (as Bison's right-hand man, Balrog) reads his dialogue as if he's under the impression his character is supposed to be mentally slow. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li fails by just about every lowered expectation you may have. It's not exciting, it takes itself way too seriously, and the plot often doesn't make a lick of sense. In one scene, we're introduced to one of Bison's followers - a woman negotiating a business deal for her boss. The next time we see her, she's at a nightclub, and Chun Li decides to lure her in by pretending to hit on her on the dance floor. How did she know the woman was a lesbian? The only other scene we saw her in didn't provide us any clues, and our heroine has spent no time around her. Maybe it was a lucky guess?
There's a lot of things this movie doesn't explain. We know that this wise old martial arts master training Chun-Li used to be a criminal who worked for Bison, but why does he have magic powers? (When she takes a bullet protecting a kid, he heals her and causes her wound to magically mend itself in seconds.) For that matter, how did he survive being stuck in his house when it's blown up with a rocket launcher? Why are Bison's soldiers so heavily armed with machine guns if they hardly ever use them? Their strategy mainly seems to stand around and wait for Chun-Li to show up and kick them, which makes me wonder how they managed to become such a feared army in the first place. Why is it after spending weeks on the streets and sleeping in trash-strewn alleys and gutters that Chun-Li's clothes are just tattered slightly, but her hair and skin are flawless? Why does the movie even try to build up our expectations by introducing a villain named Vega (played by Taboo, from the music group Black Eyed Peas), only to have him exit the movie in the very next scene in a fight that lasts all of 15 seconds?
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I imagine the reason why his fanbase enjoys his plays and films so much is that they're like fast food for the mind. You always know what you're getting when you walk in, and your brain gets filled with empty calories as the story plays out. People line up in droves for the same thing over and over. And boy, do they ever line up. As I'm writing this, the movie's just enjoyed a $41 million opening weekend. This will ensure many more Madea movies as long as Perry keeps on wanting to make them. Madea, if you remember, is a feisty old battle ax of a grandma who talks like a street gangster, and is not afraid to pull a gun on anyone who rubs her the wrong way. She's played by Perry himself in drag and a fat suit, which always makes it awkward to see this character in real world situations. Everyone else in the movie looks normal, while Madea looks like she stepped out of a bad Mad TV sketch. Despite having her name in the title, Madea has very little to do with the actual film itself. She's mainly here for comic relief, and never really plays any central part in the plot. Heck, she doesn't even arrive at the title destination until the third act of the movie, with only 20 minutes left to go. Talk about your false advertising.
The movie is really about an assistant D.A. named Josh (Derek Luke). He's worked his way up from the streets, and now seems to have it all, including a beautiful young fiance named Linda (Ion Overman). Everything comes to a halt when he has a chance courtroom encounter with Candy (former child star and Cosby Kid, Keisha Knight Pulliam), a former friend of his who is now working the streets as a prostitute. Josh has a "big secret" that somehow ties into Candy winding up where she is, and feels guilty about it. He offers to help, which Linda is completely opposed to. You see, the world of Tyler Perry is composed of extreme blacks and whites. People are either completely good or completely evil. Linda is the villain, because she's rich, spoiled, and doesn't like the idea of her future husband helping out one of "those people", even if he has a past with her. The movie keeps on giving us hints that Candy is a good person at heart. She may be a prostitute and a drug addict, but she's smart, because she reads books a lot, so that makes her a good person. Josh tries to get his childhood friend the help she needs, while Linda plots and schemes to keep them apart any way possible.
Madea, meanwhile, exists in a completely different story (and seemingly a completely different movie). She escapes from a road rage charge due to a technicality early on, but the Judge orders her to go to anger management, leading to a pointless cameo from Dr. Phil, who tries and fails to control her violent and extreme behavior. Madea continues to wreak havoc, leading up to an incident in a K-Mart parking lot where she steals a construction vehicle and destroys a car that belongs to a woman who stole her parking place. This time, the Judge throws the book at her, and she's sent to prison. This is when the two storylines are supposed to come together, since Candy is sent to prison at the same time on a trumped-up charge created by evil Linda, but the movie never quite gels. The movie tries for two completely conflicting tones. The Josh/Linda/Candy plot is heavy-handed melodrama, while the Madea story is broad, over the top comedy with machine gun-packing drag grannies and pot-smoking grandpas. Even though the characters eventually arrive at the same destination, they still seem to exist in two completely different realities.
Like all of his films, Tyler Perry obviously has good intentions, and just wants us to walk out of his movies feeling good. But that does not excuse the sloppy storytelling and uneven performances on display. I'm still trying to figure out why Madea becomes the focus of protestors outside of the prison, when she is actually guilty of the crimes she committed. Candy is the innocent one, yet the entire last half of the movie deals with people coming together to get Madea out. Also unexplained is Josh's eventual romantic feelings for Candy, since they never have any scenes that seem to build to this. It's almost as if Perry is in a rush to get the feel-good stuff. As is usual with his past few films, there is one good performance that rises above the material. This time, it comes from Viola Davis from Doubt, who plays a local social worker. Whenever she's on screen, you get the feeling she's giving the material more respect than it deserves. Everyone else is either over the top, or seems to be phoning it in.
What does all of this have to do with Fired Up? A quick search on the Internet reveals that this movie was originally intended to be Maxim magazine's big break into feature films, but their name has been removed from all advertising and press material. They had the good sense to hide their involvement. If the cast and crew were smart, they would have thought of fake names to try to distance themselves from this lame teen sex comedy that has very little sex and even less comedy. Thanks to the magic of the PG-13 rating, we can have a movie that merely hints at non-stop sex, female nudity, and dated gay and lesbian humor. Even if the film has been "cleaned up" (this was obviously intended to be an R), there's still a scuzzy and uncomfortably sleazy feeling that flows throughout the movie that leaves the viewer squirming instead of laughing. Am I saying the movie automatically would have been good if it had been free to show its true adult colors? Not really. But at least then it would have been trying.
Watching this thing, I kept on thinking back on another movie I saw a few months ago called Sex Drive. Very few people saw that movie in the theater, but it was a wonderful little film that embraced its raunchy teen roots, while also showing an inspired absurdist humor and characters we could actually care about. Fired Up is the complete opposite, as there's nothing here I could possibly care about. This film creaks and moans through its tired humor and leaden plot about two high school football players who consider themselves ladies men, and decide to skip football camp for cheerleader camp so that they can be surrounded by beautiful girls for three weeks. How do they pull this scam off? I'll get back to that. I want to talk about the fact that our two heroes are played by Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen. The fact that the movie tries to pass these men who are pushing 30 (D'Agosto is 28 and Olsen is 31.) as high school students is funnier than anything in the movie itself. It also adds a touch of awkwardness to the subplot where Olsen's character falls for an "older woman", who happens to be 30. D'Agosto at least has some awkwardness and timidness on display sometimes, but Olsen seems to think he's the next Jim Carrey in his performance. Just because you took over for Carrey in a prequel to Dumb and Dumber that nobody saw doesn't make it so.
So, the two guys pass themselves off as male cheerleaders so they can get into the camp. One of the girls on their school's squad (Sarah Roemer from Disturbia) doesn't buy their forced enthusiasm at first, but soon begins to fall for D'Agosto's character. Of course, she's already hooked up with a guy who's a total jerk (David Walton). Also as to be expected, their school cheerleading team stinks, and are always being mocked by the more popular rival team from another school. I guess we're supposed to care about these two guys learning a new appreciation for women and for cheerleading in general, but the movie's dead in the water. Every gag and line of dialogue falls with a deafening thud. Even the choreography for the cheer routines is uninspired, as the girls seem to be doing the same tricks over and over. We keep on waiting for some spark of wit in the screenplay, but the closest thing we get is the high school football coach (played by veteran actor Philip Baker Hall) says the word "shit" a lot. Apparently, it only takes a couple "F-bombs" to earn an R, but you can say shit as much as you want, and still get by with a PG-13. I'm sure the kids who made up a majority of my screening (who looked no older than 11) went home with a new appreciation for the word.
The whole thing only runs just short of 90 minutes, but feels a lot longer than that. That's because the movie feels needlessly padded. It's almost as if first-time director Will Gluck and first-time screenwriter Freedom Jones didn't know how to fill out their thin premise, so they keep on falling back on the same jokes. Remember, if you're desperate for a laugh, have the girls triumphantly yell out "F.U.", because the name of the cheerleading camp is Fired Up University. (Wouldn't that make it "F.U.U.?") And what could be funnier than having the guys being forced to bunk with not one, but two, gay stereotypes who don't even exist as actual characters in the screenplay? The movie aims for easy targets, and still misses the point, by not even doing anything with these characters in the first place.
The opening credits actually filled me with hope. The star of the film is Isla Fisher, a rising comic actress who has been very good in films like Wedding Crashers and Definitely, Maybe. My hope continued to build when I read some of her co-stars...Joan Cusack, John Goodman, John Lithgow, and Kristin Scott Thomas. Even the director, P.J. Hogan, has made many films I admired including Muriel's Wedding, My Best Friend's Wedding, and 2003's live action Peter Pan. Somehow, all of this talent has come together to make a film of stunning banality and bad taste. The bad taste part is not entirely the fault of the filmmakers. After all, they didn't know what the state of the U.S. economy would be when they were shooting the thing. But the folks at Touchstone/Disney should have known better to release a movie were a bubble-headed heroine praises the values of impulse spending throughout, and solves all of her money problems by being her adorable and ditzy self. It sends the wrong message to its audience, and is probably not the kind of thing most people want to watch right now.
The movie is garish and annoying, kind of like it's lead character, Rebecca Bloomwood. Isla Fisher plays her kind of like Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, only without the good intentions and the hidden smarts. As the film opens, she works as a journalist for a gardening magazine, but the job is mainly so she can keep herself stocked with the latest fashion accessories. This passion has led to a massive amount of backed up debt and maxed-out credit cards, but it's okay! She's got a supportive best friend who she lives with named Suze (Krysten Ritter). That's the first problem with this movie - Rebecca never seems to be in any danger of losing anything. She lives off her friend and her friend's fiance, and she's constantly able to ignore the increasing amount of calls and visits from the debt collector with cute and implausible excuses. ("My aunt died in a sky-diving accident!") In this movie's world, being swallowed by financial debt isn't such a bad thing. It's a light-hearted and fun romp where you just might find love! And don't forget, being pursued by debt collectors can lead to an endless string of delightful slapstick moments.
To fix her problem, Rebecca plans to get a job at a fashion magazine. Due to circumstances too convoluted to recap here, she instead ends up getting hired as a writer for a savings magazine. She blows the initial interview, but the magazine's head editor, Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy, who comes across here as a wannabe Hugh Grant without the personality and screen presence), is just so charmed with Rebecca's off the wall behavior (She uses a noisy pencil sharpener in the middle of a business meeting! She dives and crawls across a long executive table to answer the phone!), that he not only gives her a job, but he starts to fall for her. Darn if we can figure out why. The two have nothing in common, and their scenes together that are supposed to be romantic have all the passion and joy of a prostate exam. Of course, now that she has money again, she has to force herself to control her spending habits. She starts going to self-help meetings (hence the title), but never seems to take them truly seriously.
Like I said, Confessions of a Shopaholic could have worked if the movie treated its subject matter with some wit, or maybe if it had something to say about compulsive spending. Instead, the movie parades some of the worst romantic comedy cliches imaginable, and stale slapstick gags. Poor Rebecca seems to be a magnet for walls, people, and anything else conceivably possible to crash into. She also never comes across as someone to root for. Besides her obsession with spending beyond her means, she never shows a true work ethic (she misses deadlines and interviews to do more shopping, without even being punished), and she also lies incessantly. Her editor/romantic interest is supposed to come across as someone who is patient and willing to see the best in her, but he instead comes across as the most gullible man to walk the face of the Earth. It's almost alarming how artificial this movie comes across, and how detached from reality it seems to be.
But, it's just supposed to be mindless escapism, right? You're not supposed to read anything too serious into it, right? Hey, I was ready for a good time walking into the movie, and like I said, the names displayed in the opening credits filled me with hope. All that talent is used to no effect, however. Outside of Fisher, the rest of the names I mentioned are neglected in forgettable cameos and supporting roles. Isla Fisher does at least appear to be trying, but her performance is too far over the top. She's constantly shrieking, playing up the goofiness of the character, and really just seems to be trying too hard. After seeing her in this, I'd love to see her in a more low key comic role, where she doesn't seem to be pleading for the approval of an invisible audience in every scene. Her performance never once finds the right tone, nor does it ever strike the right note.
Now that I have seen the new Friday the 13th, I think I made the right choice recommending that film, because Valentine is the better film of the two. Yes, its plot was just an excuse to throw globs of gore on the screen (and if you saw it in 3D, off the screen as well), but hey, at least it attempted to have a plot. Despite being billed as a re-imagining of the franchise, Friday the 13th is really the same old song and dance that teens have been screaming at since 1980. Sure, the bigger budget makes for a better looking movie than the original (as if that wouldn't be a given), but when you get right down to it, things haven't changed much. Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears) is still prowling the woods around abandoned Camp Crystal Lake, taking out anyone who should dare enter, or try to have sex or maybe smoke a little weed. The cast in this movie isn't made up of any real discernable characters. They're simply sheep being led by screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason) to be slaughtered by the masked psycho.
Our group of victims this time around are led by the stuck up rich kid, Trent (Travis Van Winkle), who's brought his girlfriend Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) and his friends to his parents' cottage mansion home for a weekend of drugs, sex, and alcohol. The group includes sexy bimbos Bree (Julianna Guill) and Chelsea (Willa Ford), Chelsea's boyfriend Nolan (Ryan Hansen), black guy Lawrence (Arlen Escarpeta), and Asian guy Chewie (Aaron Yoo). These characters are literally only distinguishable by skin and hair color, except for Chewie, who at least gets to spout off a couple one liners during the scenes he's alive. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying all of these characters are doomed, since they're here to party and have wild, unhinged sex. As everyone knows, that's pretty much an invitation to the grave in one of these movies. Jenna's the "nice girl" of the group, so she's safe. Instead of partying with the others, she decides to help a guy named Clay (Jared Padalecki), who is searching for his sister (Amanda Righetti) after she went missing while partying with her own group of sex and drug-obsessed friends in these same woods. We witness the sister's encounter with Jason before the film's main titles, and eventually learn that she's being held captive in a series of underground caverns below an abandoned cabin where Jason calls home.
It would be futile to criticize Friday the 13th for its lack of characterization and plotting. After 10+ movies, I think the formula's pretty much been set in stone, and it's not concerned with deep characters or dialogue. That right there is the biggest problem. The movie stays so close to tradition, we feel like we've seen it all before. While it doesn't take away anything the fans expect, it also doesn't add anything. Jason still has the ability to pop up seemingly out of nowhere to stab his victims, he's still a master of teleportation - able to kill a cop at the front door, then be up on the second story roof seemingly three seconds later, and he still has a passion for knives when it comes to killing his victims. I was actually surprised when he used an arrow in one scene, and thought maybe he'd be spicing up his act a little with a few more creative kills. It's not to be, sadly. Jason's main method of attack is to rush and stab, or maybe pop up out of nowhere and stab. The added intensity of the gore this movie has over the earlier films doesn't hide the fact that we're watching the same method of killing over and over.
It's a shame the movie runs out of steam so quickly, because the opening 15 minutes or so are surprisingly tense and successful. These are the scenes concerning Clay's sister and her friends. (There's also a brief prologue before that concerning Jason's equally psychotic mother.) It's during these moments that the movie is fast paced and really pretty fun. Then the main cast takes center stage, and all the energy seems to exit from the movie. Sure, the cast is game, but they seem to know they're here to be killed off, and so most of them stand around waiting for Jason to come along. There's so little creativity on display here. Director Marcus Nispel (2003's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) tries to distract us with some stylish and atmospheric shots (the abandoned cabin where Jason lives is actually pretty creepy), but it never builds to anything. There's next to no tension, and very little suspense, since identifying who's going to live to see the final scene is so easy, everyone might as well have been wearing a name tag reading "Victim #1, Victim #2, etc..."
The lead roles are filled in by Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. They're charismatic actors, and they do what they can with their thin roles. Owen is Louis Salinger, a tough-talking Interpol agent who's most definable trait is his steely stare and three day facial stubble. Watts is his sidekick, Eleanor Whitman, who basically exists to explain Louis' maverick actions to their superiors. She doesn't have a lot to do in this movie, but at least she's able to sell the few scenes she gets to spend with Owen, and is not just standing in the background. The plot concerns them investigating the International Bank for Business and Credit, which they believe is dealing in illegal arms deals so that they can control debts in the countries where civil and border wars are brewing. The higher ups at the bank are very good at covering their dirty tracks. Anyone who gets too close, or tries to leak information to an outside source usually winds up dead.
Given the current economic situation, it's easy for audiences to accept bankers as villains. Heck, things continue the way they are now, and they may just replace Nazis as Hollywood's go-to bad guys. The movie is complex, with plenty of smart-sounding dialogue, but doesn't really make a lot of sense when you apply logical thought to it. There's always a mob of hitmen employed by the bank who pop up when needed, and the police are never around, so the characters can run about streets the world over, guns in plain sight, without a single person batting an eye. And yet, I didn't care while I was watching The International. The movie is quickly paced, has been shot well, and contains a number of action sequences that demand our attention. The director, Tom Twyker (Run, Lola, Run) doesn't give us enough time to slow down and concentrate on how ludicrous the whole thing is. We get wrapped up in the various plot developments and twists, and even though we may chuckle and shake our heads from time to time, we don't care.
One thing that I liked is that the movie seems to be trying to capture the feeling of classic paranoia thrillers like Three Days of the Condor, and for the most part, it succeeds. The influence of the villains seems to be everywhere - Tapping phones, spies and snipers watching the every move of our heroes, and even delivering death by poison just by brushing up against a person, such as in the opening scene. If they can kill people so silently, why do they need the hitmen in the first place, you may ask? I did, too. But then, I realized that the movie just wanted me to go with it. That was easy enough, given the skill with which the movie has been made. This is one time that the style over substance actually works. And yet, there is some substance. I was intrigued, and I wanted to know what was going to happen. Half out of morbid curiosity, and half out of general interest. With so many mediocre and unmemorable movies out there, even a movie that can arouse my morbid curiosity can be considered somewhat of a triumph.
The movie is better than I'm probably making it sound. Like I said, you don't have time to trouble yourself too much with the plot while you're watching it. One thing that did trouble me, however, is how distant I felt to the characters. The actors fill the roles well enough so that we're not bored, but The International never quite brings them to the level of complexity that we expect or are waiting for. The characters played by Clive Owen and Naomi Watts seem to be growing closer together during the course of the film, so much so that she is willing to put her career on the line for him. And yet, we never get a clear picture of what they mean to each other. The one character who does seem to possess a genuine personality is the one played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, who plays a man who gathers intelligence for the evil bankers. Just watch his big scene with Owen late in the film, and how conflicted he seems to be. He's one of the few in this movie who is able to create a genuine character, and not just someone designed to feed the complex plot to us.
You get all that? Good, because that's all you're getting. Push is a messy and jumbled attempt to cash in on the recent super hero boom, and also shares more than a few similarities with the TV series Heroes. Once we get that brief explanation, the movie throws us into a convoluted and increasingly confusing chase that sends our characters running across Hong Kong for a briefcase that holds a drug. The drug in question is supposed to enhance the superhuman abilities of these people, but usually it winds up killing them. There's one girl who's managed to survive, and The Division wants her. They also want the drug she managed to escape with. The girl everyone wants is Kira (Camilla Belle). She's a Pusher, and she's on the run from another Pusher who works for The Division named Carver (Djimon Hounsou, who is quickly building a career out of being the guy you get to cast in your movie if you can't get Samuel L. Jackson). Kira has a past with a Mover named Nick (Chris Evans), which is why he gets involved when a young Watcher named Cassie (Dakota Fanning) shows up on his doorstep one day, saying she needs his help in tracking down the briefcase.
There's a problem - Cassie's visions and the pictures she draws usually end with the two of them dying. If they want to see the end of this, they'll have to figure out a way to change the future. In order to do this, they'll have to stay one step ahead of not only The Division, but also some Chinese gangsters with paranormal powers who want the briefcase for their own means. Kira doesn't remember where the briefcase is. After she hid it somewhere, she had someone with mind-erasing powers wipe her mind a clean slate. So, what we get is a lot of actors running around, using their powers on each other, looking for this briefcase. It's an endless chase filled with characters we don't care much about. Not that the movie gives us much to go on to begin with. After a brief set up, the movie goes full tilt and never slows down enough to clue us in on what's going on, or why we should give a flip about what's going on in the first place. It's style over substance, and the style isn't enough to distract us.
Push seems to get murkier as it goes along. The character motivations in looking for this drug eventually becomes so clouded over in the screenplay by David Bourla that they become non-existent. They simply want the drug because they're there up on the screen. This wouldn't be so bad if the movie didn't add more and more characters to the mix, who usually exist to show off their powers and then move on. It piles on the characters, but the shaky storytelling doesn't have enough support to hold them all, so we're forced to watch it collapse in a pile of overblown battles and soulless special effects. The actors don't seem to be too concerned about breathing life into their characters, although Dakota Fanning at least attempts to add some emotion into her role. You get the sense she's here because she got a free trip to Hong Kong, rather than anything in the character she plays. As for Chris Evans, he's about as bland of an action hero you could want, doing as little as possible to stand out or even grab our attention.
After the disastrous live action-animated fantasy, Monkeybone, from a few years ago, director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) returns to what he does best here. He creates a seemingly living, breathing world out of model figures and sets. The film is done in stop motion animation, one of the most time consuming processes out there. It consists of moving and shooting the model figures one frame at a time to create the illusion of animation. The end result is something that doesn't quite have the perfect polish of CG animation, but is impressive none the less. That's not to say it' isn't fluid or believable, it simply doesn't look like the kind of animated film we're used to. In a way, the somewhat strange and unnatural look of the film is the perfect fit for the dark and somewhat gothic story Coraline tells. The story originated in a children's novel by acclaimed author, Neil Gaiman, and in adapting the story, Selick (who also wrote the screenplay) manages to capture everything that made the tale compelling to adult readers as well. He's made a few changes, the most notable being a young boy whom the title character has a like-hate relationship with has been added, but fans of the novel should be happy with this cinematic take on the story.
As the film opens, 11-year-old Coraline Jones (voice by Dakota Fanning) has just been forced to leave her friends behind, and move to a new home with her parents. They move her to a three storey duplex building called the Pink Palace, and despite the presence of some bizarre and eccentric new neighbors who live in the same building, Coraline quickly becomes bored, since it's raining all the time in their new home and she can't go outside. With her mother (Teri Hatcher) and father (John Hodgman) too busy concentrating on their work to pay her much mind, Coraline decides to explore the house. It's during these searches that she discovers a small door in the wall that is blocked off with a brick wall behind it during the day. But at night, Coraline is awakened by mice scurrying through the house who lead her to the door, only to discover it now leads to a tunnel instead of the wall as before. At the end of the tunnel lies another world, one that looks exactly like the one she knows, but everything is more fun and magical. In this parallel world, she has parents who call themselves her "Other Mother and Father". They look and sound exactly like the ones she knows, only they mysteriously have buttons for eyes, and are much more appreciative and accepting of their daughter.
This new world Coraline discovers seems like a dream come true, as it seems to be designed especially for her. Her Other parents cook all her favorite foods any time of the day, there's a magical garden out back filled with talking birds and living flowers, and the neighbors who live in the building now put on grand and entertaining shows to delight young Coraline. However, as a talking stray black cat (Keith David) tries to warn her, things are not what they seem. Her Other Mother has malicious plans for Coraline, starting with making the girl her permanent daughter by stitching buttons over her own eyes so that she'll look like them. As Coraline tries to escape from this alternate world, she discovers a terrible truth - Her Other Mother is actually a demon that steals the souls of children and eats them. Even worse, her Other Mother has somehow gotten a hold of her real parents, and is holding them captive along with the souls of children who have been her past victims. Coraline will have to be resourceful if she wants to see the real world ever again.
Outside of the wonderful and strange visuals Henry Selick and his team of animators have created, the strongest trait of Coraline is in its storytelling and the characters. The title character is not your usual animated heroine. She's a bit moody, maybe a little selfish, and sometimes rude to others, such as the young neighbor boy Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr) who tries to befriend her in the real world. The fact that Coraline is initially happy that Wybie has been rendered mute in the Other World shows that she's not exactly your typical "sugar and spice" young heroine. It's not until she begins to learn the truth about this alternate world, and how the inhabitants are the unwilling pawns of the cruel Other Mother, that Coraline begins to learn the error of her ways. It's a redemptive story and it works, because the movie makes her into a believable and three dimensional character. The movie teaches a valuable lesson to children of being happy with what you have, and the character of Coraline is one that kids should be able to relate to. The vocal performance by Dakota Fanning only adds to the character's likeability, and continues to cement her status as the top child actor working in the movies today.
What surprised me the most is that the story of Coraline seems to be pitched to adults as much as children. They'll enjoy the horror undertones, as well as the way the filmmakers have approached the story. The screenplay does not read as a "children's movie", but rather as an effective drama. As the illusion of the perfect Other World begins to slip away, and the true nightmare begins to reveal itself, I was impressed that the movie actually managed to come across as being genuinely intense and even a little bit terrifying. It certainly does not try to hide or sugarcoat the danger the character finds herself in. And yet, I think children (of a certain age) will enjoy this aspect as well. Kids are fascinated by the unknown, and this movie will spark their imaginations in a way that few animated films can. It would also be a crime not to mention Teri Hatcher's voice work, as her dual performance as Coraline's mother and Other Mother plays a big part in what makes the film so effective. She tackles her characters with precision, and is especially impressive covering the multiple personalities of the Other Mother. She brings out the sweetness and malice in the character, and makes it truly believable.
Mickey Rourke plays Randy, and it's been stated that he almost passed up the role, as he initially felt it hit a little too close to home. We should be thankful he overcame whatever personal demons initially caused him to draw back, because he gives not only the best male performance of the year, but also the best of his entire career. Many have hailed it a comeback, and while it remains to be seen how long Hollywood's renewed love affair with Rourke as an actor will last, this will always be seen as one of the highlights of his career. It is both a wonderful emotional and physical performance. He makes us believe the pain he feels in the ring, and also in his private life. One of the joys of The Wrestler is how honest it is about the business. Yes, professional wrestling is scripted, but the pain is very real, and it can have a lasting effect. There's a scene where Randy is signing autographs at a table, and when there's a short lull, he looks at some of his fellow wrestlers, who are in wheelchairs or have permanent physical damage from their years in the ring. Randy fears the future, choosing instead to wax nostalgic about his glory days any way he can.
The first half hour or so of the film acts almost like a behind the scenes documentary of the world of wrestling. We see them planning out the fight to come, what moves they will do to each other, and the close camaraderie the performers share backstage. We also get to see such things as one of the wrestlers acting as a personal pharmacy with a full supply of pain medications and other drugs for sale, and how having someone removing nails from your skin (a nail gun was used in a fight) may not be out of the question. Backstage is where Randy is most comfortable. He's surrounded by people who understand him, knows what he goes through, and respect him. After a particularly grueling fight, Randy suddenly finds it difficult to breathe and collapses. He's had a heart attack, and when he comes to, the doctor tells him he can no longer perform, as his body just can't take it anymore. This is a crushing defeat for him, more than anything he's ever faced on his job. For the first time, Randy has to find something to fill the void in his life.
There's a stripper at a local club that Randy visits named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), who is the closest thing Randy has to a confidant in his life. She sympathizes with him, listens to him, and even meets him sometimes outside of work. More than anything, Randy would like to build the rest of his life with her. But, despite their obvious connection, she views him as a "customer". Outside of the club, she's a single mother who doesn't seem to know how to trust anyone. Maybe she sees too much of herself in Randy. They are both performers, acting for the crowd and giving them what they want. When she leaves the club, she's no longer Cassidy, she's Pam (her real name). She leads a double life, and in a way, so does Randy. When the lights go down and the audiences leave, Cassidy/Pam is able to slip silently back into reality. Randy, on the other hand, needs someone in his life. He realizes this when he can no longer do his job. This is why he tries to reconcile with his adult daughter.
His daughter is Stephanie (Rachel Evan Wood). She doesn't much care for him, and he knows it. He was never there for her, but now that he's alone, he wants her in his life. His attempts to win back her favor are heartbreaking, and nothing comes easy for either of the characters. Even when they seem to be warming up to each other, we can feel the distance between them. I was very impressed with how their relationship was handled. It doesn't seem melodramatic or scripted. The Wrestler is an intimate film. We are drawn into Randy's world, and we feel what he feels when he's forced to take a job at the deli counter of a grocery store. We're there every step of the way, and the movie never once takes a wrong step. The screenplay by Robert D. Siegel is brutal and realistic. It's not only painfully honest about our desire to have someone with us in our lives, but it also shows an amazing amount of realism in its subject matter. It understands the world of wrestling, but most importantly, it understands its central character. Randy "The Ram" Robinson is as real as any other character I've come across in a movie the past year. The women in his life are real as well, in the way they recognize and react to his personal strengths and weaknesses. If Rourke's performance is a comeback, than Tomei and Wood's are wonderful additions to their continuing careers.
The Pink Panther 2 created no such feelings of hatred. This is a better movie, in that it is merely mediocre with a few scattered laughs instead of being unwatchable. Maybe it's the new director, Harald Zwart (filling in for Shawn Levy), who seems to get a little more energy out of his cast. Maybe it was the new writers at the screenplay level, who throw in some silly but clever moments of dialogue that caught me off guard. A big part, though, has to do with some recasting. In the last film, Kevin Kline played the suffering Chief Inspector Dreyfus. Kline is a fine comedic actor, but he did not seem right or very comfortable in the role. This time, John Cleese plays the character, and he's a much better fit. Cleese is the master of slow burn humor. Just seeing him trying to act proper and controlled, while resisting his urges to strangle Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin), are enough to make me smile. He understands the character and the material better than Kline did, and he's a welcome addition to the cast.
As mentioned, Martin returns as the bungling Clouseau, and once again something about his performance seems off. He's obviously a great comic, but he's not right to fill the shoes of the character created by Peter Sellers in the original films. He plays Clouseau almost like a man-child, who just happens to have amazing powers of deduction. Equally distracting are the numerous times we can tell we're watching a stand-in for Martin during the many stunts and pratfalls he's forced to perform. Instead of concentrating on the slapstick gag, we're focusing on when we're looking at Martin and when we're looking at a stunt double in a white wig. It's obvious he's more comfortable in the scenes where he has to rely on dialogue-based humor, such as the scenes where Clouseau must attend some private lessons to learn politically correct behavior from a woman named Mrs. Berenger (Lily Tomlin). There's some great word play (and some surprisingly funny off-color humor) between the two actors, and you can tell that he is in his environment here. I sensed a lot of improvisation during these scenes, and this is one of the few times I wouldn't mind seeing alternate takes on the scene, since I'm sure there were plenty of jokes between the two actors that wound up on the cutting room floor.
These moments made me laugh, but there is a lot of dead space where not much of interest happens. Unfortunately, a lot of this dead space has to do with the plot, which concerns Clouseau being assigned to be part of a "Dream Team" of detectives. A famous criminal known as The Tornado has come out of retirement, and is starting to steal priceless artifacts from all over the world, including the famous Pink Panther diamond. The detectives hail from different parts of the globe, and include Vicenzo (Andy Garcia) from Italy, Pepperidge (Alfred Molina) from England, Kenji (Yuki Matsuzaki) from Japan, and Sonia (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) from India. Unfortunately, aside from a hinted love triangle between Clouseau, Vicenzo, and Clouseau's girlfriend from the last movie, Nicole (Emily Mortimer), very little is done with these new cast members. Mainly, they're required to stand in the background, only popping up to remind us they're in the movie also. Molina's character gets a funny introductory scene, where he matches his power of deduction with Clouseau's, but then nothing is done with him. He spends the rest of the movie telling the cast "if Clouseau winds up solving this case, I'll wear a pink tutu". I hate to give away the end, but you can probably guess what he's wearing in the film's final scene.
Once the promising characters and the plot are introduced, The Pink Panther 2 pretty much goes on auto pilot. The slapstick gags are predictable, and many don't even have a pay off. There's a scene where Clouseau is dressed as the Pope, and falls from the balcony in front of a crowd. The movie can't think of anything else to do but to have him fall, and have the audience scream. A better screenplay would have built upon it, or maybe have Clouseau try to make the best out of a bad situation, only to make it worse. While this is a better movie than the last one, it still seems far too uncertain of itself. A comedy like this needs to go for broke, not go for the timid or easy gag. Some of the jokes are also allowed to go on too long, such as when Clouseau has to pose as a Spanish dancer at a restaurant to spy on a suspect. The gag never goes anywhere to begin with, and seems padded. By the way, said suspect is played by Jeremy Irons, of all people. I initially asked what he was doing in this movie, but a better question would be why didn't the movie use him for more than just a forgettable 10 minute cameo?
The inspiration for the story comes from an unlikely source - in this case, a self help book on men and women. I have not read the book in question, but I can see the inspiration. There are moments of the dialogue that do sound like the kind of advice you'd find in the source material. Most of this information comes from Alex (Justin Long), a bartender who befriends and begins to give dating advice to a woman unlucky in love named Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin). Gigi is the closest thing the movie has to a central character. When we first meet her, she's coming off a blind date with a real estate agent named Connor (Kevin Conolly), and is waiting desperately for him to call her. Alex listens to her story and assures her he never will call back, because of some simple basic rules he's learned about relationships over the years. The two begin a relationship, with Alex initially acting as a mentor to Gigi, and then they start to become friends. No prizes for guessing where their storyline goes from there, as Gigi starts to see Alex as something more.
The other storylines in the film center around people who are either close to Gigi or Alex in some way. Gigi's co-worker, Beth (Jennifer Aniston), has been living with her boyfriend Neil (Ben Affleck) for seven years, and has up till now respected his decision that they should not be married, as Neil only thinks it will complicate things. When Beth starts to apply just a little pressure to maybe change his mind about marriage, it threatens to tear them apart. The previously mentioned Connor has his eyes on a yoga instructor and aspiring singer named Anna (Scarlet Johansson), but she's interested in Ben (Bradley Cooper), a married man whom she meets at the supermarket, and who may be able to help her get her singing career off the ground. Ben is equally attracted to Anna, and finds himself torn between her and his wife, Janine (Jennifer Connelly), who is also Gigi's best friend. The two married after college, and although they are happy and have just bought a house, their relationship seems to be at a standstill.
This alone would be enough, but the movie still has room for one more undernourished plot that doesn't go anywhere, and should have been written out of the script entirely. This one belongs to one of Anna's friends, Mary (Drew Barrymore), and her problems with technology-based dating. You get the sense that the only reason her character is in the movie is because Barrymore is credited as one of the producers of the film. He's Just Not That Into You is a stuffed movie to be sure, but it's not overstuffed to the point that we lose interest. While the storylines and problems that the characters deal with are probably as old as the romantic comedy genre itself, the likable cast give the characters as much of their charm and screen presence as they can. Some of the characters (such as Ben Affleck's Neil, who disappears for a majority of the movie without any consequence) could have definitely been strengthened, but the characters it does choose to focus on have a ring of truth that a movie of this type needs. The love triangle between Anna, Ben, and Janine comes across as the most honest, both in the way it is told and its outcome.
Director Ken Kwapis (License to Wed) manages to hold our interest throughout, but he sometimes seems to struggle. There's a subplot concerning Beth having to care for her father (Kris Kristofferson) after he has a heart attack that should have definitely been fleshed out more, especially since the few scenes they have together are so good. Likewise, the movie can't help but sometimes feel like a sitcom, especially with how neatly and orderly most of the plots are wrapped up in the end. And yet, there's a lot to admire as well. While the relationship between Gigi and Alex may seem a bit contrived, there's no denying the warmth that both Goodwin and Long share in their scenes. Likewise, Aniston's Beth comes across as a character that should have gotten more screen time, both with her relationship with Neil and her father. However, the movie's biggest asset is that even if its mind seems scattered with all these plots, its heart is constantly in the right place, and the performances make it more than watchable.
Now that I have seen the film adaptation of the play (where Langella is once again re-teamed with his Broadway co-star, Michael Sheen, in the role of David Frost), I admire his performance even more. While I tend to find live theater to be a more intimate connection between the actors and the audience, we can technically get closer to the actors on the big screen. We can study their face, and watch their performance up close. That's just what I did watching Langella's portrayal of Nixon, and he absolutely stunned me. In Peter Morgan's screenplay (he also wrote the play), Nixon is not portrayed as a villain, or even as a sympathetic character that we are to pity. We see him as...well, being human. A man who fell from grace, and is struggling to pick himself back up. Yes, he is reluctant to admit his own guilt in the matter that caused his downfall in the first place. That happens sometimes when you're human. Langella is able to embody all of this just in his performance alone. His tight face, his pressed lips, the way he is always trying to spin what he says...We get the sense that if there was anyone who bought into the legacy and promise of Nixon, only to be let down by his actions in Watergate, it is Nixon himself.
It's a great performance, one that I loved even more being able to see up close. Fortunately, Frost/Nixon is a great movie to go along with it. Sometimes when the original stage talent tries to recreate their roles on the big screen, the thing that made the performance special on the stage is not there. (I am reminded of 2005's The Producers musical movie, which while enjoyable, lacked the energy that I saw on Broadway.) Director Ron Howard has managed to make the transition to the screen here work. He manages to stay faithful to the original ideas of the production, while not making it seem like a direct copy of the stage play. He does this by filming the story as a pseudo documentary, occasionally cutting away from the story for one on one "interviews" with the actors in character discussing their personal thoughts. He has taken a number of dramatic liberties here with what really happened, but doesn't veer so off course from history that it starts to become a distraction. I also greatly admired the gritty and realistic look of the movie. It does not look like a glossy Hollywood production. The lighting is intentionally dark, but never murky or hard to see. Adding to the sense of realism is the subtle music score by Hans Zimmer, which is barely noticeable in most scenes. A more rousing and attention grabbing score would have come across as manipulative, or felt like it was telling us how to feel during a scene. Howard and Zimmer let the actors and the dialogue itself do the talking.
The film, just like the play, is a David and Goliath story as the two title characters struggle for control during a series of interviews. As it opens, Nixon has gone into exile in California after being pardoned by his successor in office, Gerald Ford. When British talk show host, David Frost, approaches him with the idea for the interviews, it seems like an immediate long shot. Frost is depicted here as a playboy, best known for his fluff pieces dealing with celebrities. That's why one of Nixon's main supporters and followers, Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon), was so willing to talk the disgraced President into doing the interviews. Frost would most likely be throwing softball questions, and it'd be a chance for Nixon to tell his side of the story to the American public. The first half of the film deals with Frost's struggles to gather the $600,000 he agreed to pay for the interview, his problems finding a sponsor (the networks weren't crazy about the idea of a British talk show host who was popular overseas, but largely unheard of in the U.S., interviewing an American President), and assembling his investigative team to prepare for the interview, which includes John Burt (Matthew McFadyen), Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt), and James Reston Jr (Sam Rockwell). Some, like John Burt, assisted Frost out of loyalty, while others like Reston saw it as a chance to give Nixon the trial he never had.
The second half deals with the interviews themselves, which covered a span of four days and numerous hours. The movie picks and chooses carefully here, selecting key moments from the famous interviews to best aid the drama. Obviously, a great deal has been cut, but the screenplay chooses which moments to focus on well. (Besides, purists can buy the actual interviews on DVD if they want the whole thing.) This is when we truly get to see the mastery of not just Langella's portrayal of Nixon, but also Michael Sheen's turn as Frost. Langella's turn is obviously the more dramatic and attention grabbing, but Sheen does a fantastic job of portraying with his face what Frost had to have been thinking as he was sitting across from Nixon. During the early interviews, Nixon tries to bend the proceedings to his favor. Whenever Frost asks a tough question, he replies with a drawn out answer as he rambles and reminisces about his memories in the Oval Office. We can see in Sheen's face during these moments the feeling that he is in over his head. He knows what Nixon is doing, but did not prepare himself for this. He comes across as being nervous, while Nixon comes across as the comfortable and collected one.
When the tide of the interviews begins to change, and Frost becomes more willing to press Nixon during the interviews, we get to truly appreciate both of their performances. Sheen becomes more confident, while we see Langella struggling to hold onto the control he once had, and when he realizes he doesn't have it anymore, he seems to keep on trying to convince himself that he does. The close ups and tight camera angles bring us up close to the actors, and they both give performances that would have stated the same thing even if they didn't have any dialogue. While Langella gets the most praise and an Oscar nomination for his performance (a well-earned one, I might add), it was Sheen that particularly grabbed me, because having seen him in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans the weekend before, I couldn't believe I was looking at the same person. While both that film and this are of widely differing levels of quality, they both showcase his ability to completely disappear into a role. And while it's hard to compete with such powerful performances at the center, this is a wonderful ensemble cast, with Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon being particular stand outs.
Usually, it takes a while for the realization to dawn on me that I'm watching a stinker. And sometimes, I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach from the very opening scene. That's what happened here. The movie opens with a group of Minnesota women sitting around a kitchen table, gossiping with one another. As soon as I heard their cutesy and chirpy Midwest accents, which made the actors sound like they were rejects from a low-rent community theater production of Fargo, I started to dread what was to come. Imagine someone doing a really bad imitation of Tina Fey's imitation of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, and you'll get the idea of how almost everyone talks in this movie. I have no doubt that there are people who talk this way, but I seriously doubt they're as cloyingly cute as this movie makes them out to be. The topic of discussion is the local factory and how it's been bought out by a big corporation, and how that corporation is coming to town to oversee their operations. Oh, and they're also talking about tapioca pudding, which will surprisingly become a major plot point later on in the story.
But before the pudding grabs our attention, the movie wants us to focus on a hard-nosed career woman named Lucy Hill. She's played by Renee Zellweger, and the movie tells us she's a serious, opportunity-minded woman with an edge who's not afraid to step on the little people to get what she wants. Of course, we don't buy it for a second, because she's played by Renee Zellweger. Seriously, have you ever seen a hard-nosed or edgy performance from her? Even in Chicago, where she played a woman guilty of murder, she was likable if only in a manipulative way. But, the movie goes on pretending we're convinced that she's a real power-driven bitch. She arrives in the tiny Minnesota town to make plans to automate the factory and lay off a majority of the workers. At this point, the movie wants to be a fish out of water comedy. You see, Lucy lives in Miami, so she's naturally not prepared for the Minnesota winter. (You'd think her bosses over in Florida would have told her to dress appropriately.) She's also not prepared for the folksy, down-home individuals that make up the entire population of the town. Some of the locals don't like her, like the factory foreman (J.K. Simmons), who suspects Lucy is here to lay them off.
But there are plenty of locals who open their hearts and welcome her. The main one is Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan). She's Lucy's secretary while she's here, and she's also the tapioca woman from the opening scene. She's the kind of woman who greets you with a hug and a handshake, then asks if you have found Jesus. ("I didn't know he was missing", Lucy replies.) Blanche can tell right off the bat that Lucy is lonely, so she invites her to her house for dinner and to meet the town's most eligible bachelor, Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick Jr). Ted's the local union representative, and doesn't get off on the right foot with Lucy, because she insults country music. But before long, they start to warm up to each other, even though I saw no reason for attraction. They fall in love because their names come first in the cast, and they're required to. Their relationship starts with them constantly bickering with each other about everything. I suppose it's supposed to come across as foreplay, but their banter is not convincing in the least. Their relationship didn't even make a lot of sense to me. At one point, she accidentally shoots him in the butt when he takes her crow hunting, and the next scene they're together it's not even brought up.
In its single-minded goal for a happy ending, New in Town leaves nothing to chance. We get Lucy's transformation from supposed power-obsessed woman, to someone who learns to appreciate small town life. We get Lucy and Ted awkwardly getting closer together, even though it seems like half of their romantic subplot was left on the cutting room floor. We get Lucy and the town rallying together to save the factory and their jobs with the help of tapioca pudding. We also get a climax that hinges on the suspense as to wether Lucy will return to Florida, or stay with those nice Minnesota folks who have managed to win her over during the course of the film. I have no doubt that material like this could be charming and uplifting, but it would have to be a lot less banal than it comes across here. It doesn't help that the characters are completely one dimensional and impossible to care about. This is a movie that piles on the syrupy sweetness, and expects that alone is enough for us to walk out of the theater with a song in our hearts.
