Dory uses her camouflage of species to surreptitiously touch Marlin’s bottom.

FINDING DORY is lost at sea.

She worked so well as a supporting character in FINDING NEMO (2003) that Pixar spins off Dory’s origin story in FINDING DORY – and only ends up highlighting what a horrifying brain disease she suffers from.

Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), a blue tang fish with short term memory loss, first appeared in the animated road tale NEMO as comedy relief to Nemo’s father, Marlin. Her memory loss was the driver of many jokes in Marlin’s quest to cross an ocean to find his son. Now, in her own feature, she just comes across as retarded. And not in that inspirational way, where she conquers her disability and triumphs in an orchestra swell. No, the message in the movie is actually: act retarded like Dory and you’ll achieve your goals.

Disney, Pixar’s mother company, is renowned for mixed messages, conflicting messages and downright stupid messages, but even I can’t believe how low Disney/Pixar have, uh, sunk. You think I’m exaggerating? When our fish heroes find themselves in jams in the final act, more than once they ask themselves, “What Would Dory Do?” – and find that being impetuous, ignorant and unmindful of consequences actually saves their skins. You’re welcome, Parents.

In the movie’s opening scene, while watching Dory’s parents futilely trying to teach baby Dory how to stay away from the undertow, we get the distinct impression that Dory is short a few scales. Since fish psychology hasn’t been invented, these poor fish parents have to live with the fact that Dory is in need of round-the-clock supervision and any dreams they had of travel, relaxation or independence are dashed in being Dory’s constant caregivers.

We cut to the inevitable – Dory lost, looking for her parents. She grows up in a montage of asking other sea creatures if they can help her find what she’s looking for, until it becomes apparent that even she has forgotten what she is looking for; her prime directive becomes simply continuing a generic search…

“You doin’ okay, fish? Don’t worry, I don’t need to breathe or anything.”

In a tie-in to NEMO, Dory runs across Marlin (voice of Albert Brooks) looking for Nemo (Hayden Rolence). Then their paths separate. Later, Marlin and Nemo would join Dory closer to her goal, hitching a ride with Crush the Turtle again (voice of Andrew Stanton) to the Marine Life Institute in California, where Sigourney Weaver voices the marine park’s announcements as herself.

Ty Burrell is Bailey the Beluga Whale, who uses his echo-location by putting his pectoral fins to his head like a psychic and going, “Ooooooo!”; Ed O’Neill is Hank the escapist octopus, camouflaging into his surroundings to avoid capture; Bob Peterson is flat-faced Mr. Ray the schoolteacher; Kaitlyn Olson is the shortsighted whale shark Destiny (a brazenly funny chick, but vexing as this character); Idris Elba and Dominic West are seals; there are also cameos by all the fish from the dentist’s office in NEMO, led by Willem Dafoe, still floating around the ocean in plastic bags. (Hasn’t the oxygen in their bags run out yet?)

As the journey progresses, the plot jumps the shark with incalculable lunacy, ending up with the octopus actually stealing and driving a truck into the ocean, freeing all the fish within. Don’t even ask.

We have to entertain the possibility that the title might refer to more than just the journey of Dory. (In essence, she is not really lost from the audience’s point of view, as we are physically with her all the way.) Is it about Dory “finding herself”? Is it referring to Dory’s parents losing her and trying to find her? (No, because that would’ve been told from the parents’ point of view.) Is it about Dory finding a way to live without them and still be happy? (No. Because she finds them anyway.) Is it about Dory finding a path through her cluttered lost memories to one that makes sense and redeems her? (No, her memory comes and goes as required to move the plot.) OK then… I don’t get it! I don’t get why you would put this hapless fish through this brain-wracking misery in front of craven audiences just looking for a laugh with some animated sea life.

And in the end, when everyone is happy and joyous living on the reef again (with Dory’s parents as well!), what ensures that Dory will retain enough brain power not to wander off again and cause another panic-stricken sequel?

You might have found Dory, but you lost me at octopus driving a truck.

END

“Wait, I saw something like this in a Sigourney Weaver movie,
and it didn’t end well…”

Thought for Food.

Stanley Tucci outdoes himself with his directorial debut BIG NIGHT, the poignant, funny story of two Italian brothers risking it all on one feast that might save their failing Italian restaurant.

Tucci is everything to BIG NIGHT. He is co-writer (with his cousin Joseph Tropiano), co-director (with Campbell Scott), and star. Even his character, Secondo, has many roles – manager, cook and frontman for his authentic Italian restaurant on the Jersey shore. As a recent American immigrant, Secondo is trying to make the restaurant work by offering only bona fide Italian cuisine, but customers would rather flock to the generic Americanized Italian restaurant across the way, Pascal’s.

Tony Shalhoub immerses himself in the role of Secondo’s older brother Primo, head cook and gourmand, impatient to the point of murder towards the “Philistines” and “criminals” with no culinary appreciation who patronize their restaurant. He serves Italian dishes not as customers imagine them to be, but in the traditional old-school manner, which causes confusion and dissatisfaction. Though Secondo doesn’t mind bending to the wishes of his boorish customers’ palates, Primo has aneurysms: when a customer requests a side of spaghetti with their risotto, he fumes, “They both are starch! Maybe, I should-a make a-mashed potato for on the other side?”

Read my lips.

Ian Holm is Pascal, a boisterous gangster who owns the successful restaurant in direct competition with Secondo’s, even though their food – according to Primo – is “RAPE! The rape of cuisine!” Pascal starts as a lovable, funny character (“You must bite your teeth into the ass of life!” – replete with his jaws on Stanley Tucci’s bottom), representing himself as a businessman friend to Secondo, but something dark lurks beneath his benevolent exterior.

Minnie Driver is Secondo’s girlfriend, whom he refuses to sleep with, to remain pure until they marry. Yet he has no problem having an affair with Pascal’s wife (Isabella Rossellini). Even this subplot is an indication of how “old-country” Secondo is.

When Secondo cannot secure another bank loan to keep his restaurant afloat, it is Pascal who comes to Secondo’s aid, not with money, but with a life-changing promise. Always touting himself as someone who hobnobs with high society, Pascal promises to coax a well-known jazz musician into Secondo’s restaurant, a promotional visit that would put the small restaurant on the mealtime map. A promise with seeming heft behind it, as the frames on Pascal’s office wall attest, showing him carousing with Hollywood bigshots. It’s the last shot for Secondo and Primo, their Hamburger Hill, their Big Night…

BIG NIGHT comes out of left field and startles with its brilliance. Such controlled, beautiful filmmaking! In the opening scenes, we meet the brothers in the kitchen, cooking (along with Marc Anthony in a subdued role as their assistant; we’d never pick him as the entertainer who would marry that fly-girl made good). Then Tucci does a walk-through of the restaurant, a small affair that we can see elicits his utmost pride; his placement of ashtrays, picking lint off tablecloths, etc. Magnificent underplaying. Tucci has spent as much care and pride in crafting this film as his character has in crafting his restaurant.

The Old World music sets the tone, the vibrant characters carry the plight, and the cooking seals the deal. The cooking! Making pasta from scratch – from beating the eggs and flour to the flattening and cutting of the dough into strips! Aromas leap off the screen; olive oils and basil and sweet peppers, fresh breads and cheeses; Secondo describing the dishes in delicate, mouth-watering detail…

Every detail of the film conspires to keep it entertaining and fresh: Campbell Scott’s insouciant car salesman, Secondo waving a quick goodbye behind his back, Pascal referring to Secondo as “This fuc-king guy!,” Primo’s ham-fisted attempts at asking out the Flower Lady (Allison Janney); the subtle 1950’s élan, even eccentric details like Secondo meeting with Pascal, deferentially asking for a loan, and Pascal openly creating discomfort, by making Secondo sit in a much lower couch with a desk lamp obscuring their sightline to each other. (This is a remarkably brave comedic shot, as both POV shots – Tucci’s and Holm’s – show the desk lamp obscuring each of their faces!)

A story that will arc us high and take us very low indeed, as our hearts beat in simpatico with Secondo’s agitation over the course of the Big Night that would make or break him.

BIG NIGHT is ultimately a tragedy, a tale of devious agenda and trust betrayed, yet in its final scene, a reconciliation that will steal our breath away with its impact: another brave cinematic rarity – a long, unbroken take (with Tucci actually cooking an omelet in real time, and serving it to himself, Anthony and Shalhoub!), with no dialogue, that builds to uniting the two brothers in one beautiful human gesture. As it opened, the movie’s closing is a bookend, the two brothers in the kitchen, united. If the movie was brilliant up to that point, now it is immortal.

Unfortunately, Stanley Tucci must fund his directorial efforts with his acting gigs (in crafted B-roles like JUNO and SPOTLIGHT, and silly dalliances like HUNGER GAMES and TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION). To date, BIG NIGHT is still Tucci’s best helmed film.

A masterfeast!

END

“You promise to spank me with a rolled up newspaper
if I hit the button again, Mr. Peabody?”

A Dogsbody and his Peaboy.

Penance for RAW!

Nine-hundred and ninety words too long.

A THOUSAND WORDS just needs four words to describe it: Writing: good. Movie: average.

Eddie Murphy stars as big mouth literary agent Jack McCall, whose encounter with guru Dr. Sinja (Cliff Curtis) leads to a Bodhi tree magically springing up in his backyard, which loses a leaf for every word that Jack speaks. He deduces that when the tree runs out of leaves, he dies. (Movie closes off the loophole of Jack simply writing his conversations by having a leaf fall for every written word as well.)

Accepting this premise is the hardest leap in A THOUSAND WORDS, and once we’re there, movie continues to belabor the stakes – okay, we get it. Leaves fall, Jack dies.

Steve Koren (JACK AND JILL – doesn’t all the dumb writing fall into context now?) actually kicks into a smart writing mode now, as he develops comedic situations from a person not allowed to speak, in a profession that requires verbal communication, negotiating, cajoling, seducing, lying…

Eddie Murphy has long since gone the way of Steve Martin in that he’s lost his comedic edge; that hunger and fire that shot him into the showbiz stratosphere like a fireball. Like Martin, Murphy’s still got the moves, set on autopilot, and sometimes they wring a nostalgic titter from us, but for the most part, we’re mildly paying attention to the GILLIGAN’S ISLAND plotline and only marginally paying attention to Eddie at all.

This isn’t the first time Murphy has worked with director Brian Robbins – NORBIT (2007) and MEET DAVE (2008); also two unfunny comedies. And I tend to agree with a comment made at imdb – that Robbins fuels Eddie’s ego, so that despite the lame box office and low critical acclaim of all these duds, Murphy continues to work with Robbins rather than accept a pay cut to work with other directors.

Surrounding characters are merely plot devices: Curtis is plain and simple as the guru, Kerry Washington is annoying as the wife, Allison Janney is stoic as the publisher, and Jack McBrayer as the Starbucks guy seems to be turning into the Andy Richter of bit parts. Only person who really grabs and shakes his role is Clark Duke, as Jack’s over-eager assistant, who surprisingly provides the most laughs.

Must admit that the payoff – the final few words Jack must achingly vocalize as he knows his end nears – is tear-jerking. Jack must choose wisely how to verbally reconcile with his wife, Alzheimered mother and dead father. Here is where the premise at last commands some weight. But then – they spring SUPERMAN II on us! (Didn’t someone tell Kal-El that if he gave up his powers he could NEVER GET THEM BACK? Then he gets them back.) Wasn’t the final leaf fall meant to cause Jack’s death? Isn’t this what makes his choice to say his last few words all the more powerful? But after Jack falls over dead – he wakes up again (presumably because his character arced to reconciliation). Gee, thanks for reneging on your own rules, movie!

Sentence: Kneel before Zod!

END

Verging on Virgin-on-Virgin.

I know that JUNO was a big hit with the pedophiles and sweaty-mouthed goons trying to catch a glimpse of sugartit, but I just have to get this off my flat green chest: Sorry Jason Reitman (director) and Diablo Cody (writer), but this movie doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Are you trying to purvey the underage pregnant chick in your movie as a role model, an independent woman, a strong character, or a slut? And when young girls eschew the Pill to follow in the footsteps of their role model Ellen Page (starring as pregnant, underage Juno), who are they gonna blame?

Just one question: How many GUYS are buying this crap? Oh, we know that 16-year-old girls across America are swooning in wide-thighed empowerment. But how many men over 20 hear Juno’s lament, “I need to know that it’s possible that two people can stay happy together forever,” and clasp their breasts in romantic abandon?

Answer: None more virgins.

The splash-reviews squeal, “outrageously offbeat comedy hit” – the only outrage is the hypocrisy of the American public that would scream statutory rape when 16-year-olds are impregnated in real life and then embrace this movie as “outrageously offbeat.”

“Delivers huge laughs and feel-good fun” – after dealing with the reality of ostracism at school, sociological intolerance, stretch-marks and ugly baby belly that never quits, psychological implications of abandoning a child for adoption, morning sickness, mood swings, tender nipples, birth screams, deformed child, premature birthing, unending anxiety – when exactly does the “feel good” kick in?

Page plays Juno with the verve and vivacity that the part requires, and her performance sells the movie; problem is, she’s playing it like a woman twice the age of her character. She knows too much. It’s not that she’s “mature for her age” – her cultural references are from another generation, all delivered with an irritating cynicism and insouciance that makes her sound like Jim Henson’s Tarantino Babies. How many instances of Iggy & The Stooges, Soupy Sales and Dario Argento can she possibly pull out of thin air and remain credible?

Reitman (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING) directs, with his balls in a vice; John Malkovich (yeah, the crazy one) co-produces.

J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney are Juno’s credible, likeable parents, and Michael Cera is the guilty willowy boyfriend, Bleeker (if anyone can imagine his sperm possessing the swimming power to actually impregnate someone), with all the screen presence of an apology.

Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner are Mark and Vanessa Loring, the cutesy couple who wish to adopt Juno’s baby, whom we discover have problems living up to their glossy-magazine aspirations. Bateman, though reined in, gets a few good Bateman-isms in here, and Garner, as always, looks and acts like her high cheekbones haven’t healed yet.

I’ve got nothing against teen pregnancy. I’m against the hypocrisy of pretending like it’s something wrong. If an organism CAN procreate, there is nothing morally, ethically or psychologically wrong with reproducing. JUNO’s makers think they’re doing something new, forgetting that the earliest hominids (and many tribal societies today) mated and reproduced when they were slightly younger than Juno MacGuff – without all the egregious societal hypocrisy.

After pretending to be “outrageously offbeat” JUNO safely falls back on that demonstrably stupid message that someone “meant for you” might have been under your nose all along. This sixteen-year-old with warring hormones and no idea on how to be a woman tells Bleeker, “I love you” – and we’re meant to buy that as sincere. When just yesterday…

… under some cloud of hormonal maladjustment she had tearfully jumped in her car, smooshed on lipstick deliberately, and drove out to actively seduce Mark Loring, then couldn’t understand why she was doing it. And when Mark told her he was leaving his wife, did any inference seep into her small mind that he was inviting her to be a casual squeeze without strings or guilt? All proving that Juno doesn’t know the first thing about relationships, love or sex. So we’re supposed to believe her supposed epiphany when she declares her puppy love for Apology?

Message To Girlies: That wasn’t an epiphany – that’s weighing her options and deciding on Apology. After his smitten blue-balled confession that he thinks she’s “beautiful all the time,” she figures this dorknozzle has his uses as a provider. Wait until they’re both 24, after she’s squeezed out a couple more kids (who aren’t his), and he’s between gas-pumping jobs and they can’t make payments on the trailer….

Movie is made well enough, in that prosaic manner of all American teen comedies, but it is not “original” or “delightful.” Juno spells it out just in case anyone missed the sledgehammer message of why this movie was “different”: “You’re meant to procreate AFTER you fall in love, but with us we procreated first.”

That’s nice, slut.

END

Die Hard With A Woodland Critter Vengeance.

It is a pity that the quality of the storyline of these modern 3D animation features does not always match the level of talent that goes into their animation.

Over the vegetable patch

OVER THE HEDGE uses the most modern computer technology to animate the most ancient of storylines: lone racketeer cons group of patsies into doing his dirty work, then repents when he finds, over the course of his con, that the patsies provided him with the “family” that was missing from his life. Seems appropriate this tale is set in provincial suburbia, as its attitudes reek suburban provincialism.Not to say it isn’t enjoyable. But does our enjoyment stem from the tale and its telling, or from the megastar backbone that props up all these modern 3D animation films? I cannot recall a 3D animation film or cartoon from recent history (all the way back to TOY STORY in 1995), that does not utilize A-Listers: Tom Hanks (TOY STORY, POLAR EXPRESS), Mel Gibson (POCAHONTAS, CHICKEN RUN), Val Kilmer (PRINCE OF EGYPT), Ellen DeGeneres (FINDING NEMO), Kevin Spacey (A BUG’S LIFE), Samuel L. Jackson (THE INCREDIBLES), Ben Stiller (MADAGASCAR) – the list is endless.

Of course – as they say in THE GODFATHER – it’s just business. An unknown voice talent – no matter how much more talented than these recognizable marquee toppers – will simply not sell as many tickets as a star who needs no special talent but to simply lay down his voice to evoke all the characterization his past roles have wrought. These 3Ds have now reached such an impasse with “perception” of largeness that they cannot back down to under-the-counter names. Projections for advertising, computer-rendering time, star salaries and box office unequivocally force the hands of movie-makers into a vicious capitalistic circle that feeds off itself; bigger stars means bigger budget means wider release means more income means larger future projections means even bigger stars means even bigger funding means even bigger advertising means even bigger – homogeneity.

As with any commercial venture that sweeps across demographics and cultures, pap will replace zap in an attempt to flense all prospective offensiveness from the product; all originality must necessarily be replaced with something familiar, something tried-and-true – something bankable.

Hence, DreamWorks Animation gives us OVER THE HEDGE.

Familiarity? Here is a set of cartoon characters so typecast by the real-life actors who voice them that characterization can be completely dispensed with. There is RJ, the racketeer raccoon, voiced by Bruce Willis. Like all Willis’s action heroes, he is tough, resourceful and smart-mouthed. So too, Garry Shandling‘s tortoise, Verne, is exactly as neurotic as Garry Shandling. All one has to do is read the star names and their voiced animal is immediately slotted into a familiar “type” in the moviegoer’s character catalog. Example: William Shatner – if you filed him under “overactor,” you’d be right; he plays a possum with a penchant for melodramatic death scenes. Mention Nick Nolte and you envision a grizzled, bearish character – again, you’d be right: Nolte voices Vincent, a bear whom RJ owes a season’s supply of food. Wanda Sykes, spunky black woman, plays Stella, a black skunk with spunk. Even pop singer Avril Lavigne makes her feature film debut as a teenage possum, who seems to be wearing just that same amount of extra unnecessary mascara that gives Lavigne that barely-legal prostitute look which has enabled her to sell way too many albums.

“Over The Hedge” debuted in June 1995.

From T. Lewis‘s and Michael Fry‘s intelligent and extremely cute cartoon strip, OVER THE HEDGE tells the story of a clutch of woodland animals who come upon the titular hedge (an artificial barrier erected to separate forest wildlife from a planned suburban community) and who are encouraged to explore its other side by John McClane – I mean, RJ the Raccoon – to gather food for next winter in hedonistic amounts. What Korben Dallas – I mean, RJ – doesn’t tell these trusting critters is that he intends to steal all their gatherings to pay back Nolte’s bear.

As anyone who has studied a screenwriting course will tell you, RJ feels remorse over his duplicity at exactly the moment that his friends need him most – when they are captured and slated to die at the hands of the Exterminator (I believe the ex-Terminator is the Governor of California now).

When Vincent the Bear threatens RJ, he doesn’t use euphemisms; instead of “You’ll wish you were never born,” or “I will bring you down to Chinatown” – he very simply says, “If my food is not replaced by next week, I’m going to find you and kill you!” Surprisingly direct for a PG-13 comedy – one of those lines you would expect to be leached.

Screenstoried by Len Blum, Lorne Cameron, David Hoselton, and Karey Kirkpatrick, and directed by Kirkpatrick and Tim Johnson, the bulk of the movie is concerned with how these animals go about stealing their food from the humans who, as RJ puts it, “live to eat,” rather than eat to live. This justification is inserted, of course, to palliate the crime of stealing, by implying the humans have such a surplus that it is okay to skim the overflow. Whereas the comic strip had the luxury over many years to explore the more amusing foibles of human nature, the film can only concentrate on this one theme, often resorting to nakedness jokes (concerning Verne’s oft-removed shell) and fart jokes (pertaining to the skunk). Paying homage to Warner Brothers’ Pepé Le Pew, one gag involves disguising the skunk to distract a cat.

Rupert Gregson-Williams composes the score, and talented musician Ben Folds is misused as original songwriter, shoehorned into an insufferable Randy Newman clone.

There are many gems to be found in the animation – more than one viewing is required to appreciate all the subsidiary action, facial expressions and lightning-quick one-liners sprinkled liberally (especially from Steve Carell‘s Attention Deficit squirrel); icing on a cake which the animators put much love into baking. Their work is not wasted; each secondary character, each texturized surface, each shadowed furball is much appreciated.

Now if only the studio could have loosened its white-knuckled hold on story cliché, the filmmakers might have achieved what the Unbreakable RJ does for his innocent charges – taken OVER THE HEDGE over the edge.

END

A Muddle-Headed Miracle.

WARNING TO DIABETICS: The syrup content of MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET is so high that the surgeon general advises not to watch it, for danger of inducing diabetic neuropathy and gastroparesis.

Les Mayfield (ENCINO MAN) directs this remake of the 1947 “classic,” about a Coles store Santa who claims to be “Kris Kringle” (Richard Attenborough), and is taken to court charged with assault (the “Santa” impersonator whom Kris replaced at Coles provoked Kris into assaulting him), whereby the assault charge is forgotten and the case instead turns to “whether Santa Claus is real.” And we wonder why there are so many innocent people in jail…

Elf Poffy, child slave to Klaus Kringlehoffen.

Dorey Walker (Elizabeth Perkins) is responsible for hiring Kris at Coles, with a cynic daughter, Susan (Mara Wilson), who ironically doesn’t believe in Santa. Not until all her outlandish wishes are granted, at least. Bryan Bedford (Dylan McDermott) is the hunk next door who helps Kris win in court and helps himself to finding Dorey.

Like a straightjacketed epileptic, this film bashes itself against hundreds of paradoxes, in frothing attempts at taking one step forward (in its high-end production value and A-list acting) and then three or four steps backwards into the mouth of Hell (with its thigh-numbing sentiments of goodness and niceness and the utility of believing in figments as reality). MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET is one of those well-intentioned, “dangerous” movies – the type over-popularized in the last two decades by brain-damaging fare like the HOME ALONE’s and the CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN’s, which purport to wholesome family entertainment, whilst insidiously intimating that intelligence and reason are only for fools.

The greatest paradox faced by any Santa-Is-Real film is that in the film’s world, it is always taken for granted that Santa DOES exist and that parents do not believe in him. But if he actually exists, it is not a question of “belief” – it is a case of “evidence.” All it takes is one christmas morning and a cluster of unidentified presents under the christian-killed tree and – question of veracity solved! Therefore, in these movies, if the parents are, in fact, buying all the presents, there are two possibilities: either Santa does exist and is not visiting anyone, or Santa doesn’t exist, which is why you parents had to buy all the crap under the tree. Occam’s Razor tells us to go with the simpler of the two possibilities.

Yet through the course of this film, all the humbugs and doubting parents in Kris’s jolly wake gradually get overtaken by some kind of delusion (sometimes called “the christmas spirit” in pagan texts), and are cajoled into “believing” in Santa, for the sake of, we are told, “a lie that draws a smile, rather than a truth that draws a tear.” Yes, turn away from Truth. Truth is bad. Better to delude yourself that Mercury in retrograde is the cause of your lost wealth, rather than betting it all on a card game. Better to believe in astrology, rather than facing the truth that you are a DIMWITTED MORON STEERING YOUR SPECIES INTO EVOLUTIONARY OBLIVION.

Sir Attenborough makes for a perfect visual representation of the mythical, peeping-tom, child-watcher Klaus (render as much Nazi inflection as you see fit), ably supported by intentionally-retarded performances by Perkins, McDermott, James Remar as an attorney, Robert Prosky as a judge and young Mara Wilson, playing her usual seven-going-on-forty, precocious, mouthy brat. (Why “intentionally-retarded”? Well, the longest anyone would ever have to wait to establish whether Santa existed or not is 364 days. In MIRACLE, the wait is only a few days, yet the filmmakers conveniently avoid the issue by neglecting to tell viewers whether any presents mysteriously appeared under trees.)

The fact that this movie astoundingly retains as its central theme the conundrum that any semi-intelligent dolphin could decipher as unutterably imbecilic, illustrates perfectly the reason why mercy killings exist. This movie almost cries out for humanity to beat it over the head to put it out of its misery.

Before his arrest, Kris – in his naïve goodheartedness – was advising Coles patrons of better bargains at other stores. Immediately, Coles management jumps on the marketing ploy: “If we don’t have it, we’ll find it for you.” Now, as altruistic as this may sound, the corporate heads realize the reverse-psychology is garnering more business! With the public embracing Coles as helpful, their rival department store seethes with lost-business fury! Conveniently located across the street, the rival store is managed by a game Joss Ackland (playing the same evil overlord he perfected in LETHAL WEAPON 2 and BILL AND TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY), who goes after the person responsible for the campaign to discredit him. No, not someone in the Coles marketing department, nosiree; in his tactical wisdom, he goes after the bottom rung employee, the Coles Santa Claus.

Idiocy soars.

As evidenced when Perkins, recanting on her brain, poses the question to the Coles board of directors when they are considering ceasing Kris’s “ploy” of recommending other stores, “What do we care about? Profit?” Well – YES, you jackass! Why are you working here? Charity? And the only reason she convinces them to retain Kris is because of the PROFITS they are seeing!

Kris tells Dorey, “If you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.” Yes, but Kris, if you use the scientific method of observation, skepticism, theory, experiment, amassing evidence, replacing outmoded knowledge with updated facts, a cohesive picture of what you doubted will come into focus. And we wonder why America, in the 2000s bows down to a megalomaniac who cannot separate church from state (at a base level, this means he cannot separate fact from fiction – exactly this movie’s problem!); we wonder why science is taking a backseat to pseudoscience; we wonder why it is so easy to sell people an ab-roller that “takes pounds off” their fugly gunts without any effort expended on their part, yet who cannot be convinced that proteins, carbohydrates, fats and sugars in correct amounts can winnow away that same fat.

The miracle is that, for all its vaunted intelligence, the human race has degenerated to this credulous, gullible, mongoloid state.

Treat others with respect. Be humane. Be courteous. Love. Sex (as in verb). Let live. These are universal truths, built into our genetic framework, in order to perpetuate procreation of our species. There are those who maintain the movie’s aspirations to goodheartedness and the “spirit of christmas” should not be belittled. They are right – the SENTIMENTS should be upheld. But why couch these truths in the filth of mysticism and hypocrisy, in the framework of paradoxical fictions that insult the truly inspiring, knowledge-seeking mind?

Claus affirms, “I’m a symbol to suppress the hateful tendencies that rule a major part of our lives.” Firstly, if “hateful tendencies,” as you so pessimistically put it, Klaus, “ruled our lives,” homo sapiens would have been excised from the pathway of evolution eons ago. Our adherence to social structure and reciprocal altruism is what has kept us alive. That being said, if modern day humans are so braindead that they require an effigy to represent faux-spirituality and faux-goodness (whether it be Santa, Jesus, Thor, Buddha, or Tom Cruise), we’ve put ourselves on the pathway out of evolutionary selection. Give it fifty-thousand years. The roaches would thank us – if we were not already below their contempt.

The grandest malarkey of all is that the case for or against Kris Kringle – a phantasm to begin with – is decided on the grounds of another phantasm. Bryan, Kris’s attorney, highlights the fact that American money is inscribed with the words, “In God We Trust.” On the strength of this vague indeterminacy, the judge rationalizes that one fiction is as good as another and rules that Santa Claus does, in fact, exist.

Piling insult upon insult on the viewer, Klaus then tells the prosecuting attorney (J.T. Walsh), “I hope you removed that antenna because I tore my pants on it last year.” This must mean that Klaus left anonymous presents at the attorney’s house. Evidence! So the only reason Walsh refutes Santa’s existence must be either short term memory loss or retardation. Choose one, movie.

As we gag in disbelief at the level of insanity attained in the movie’s last ten minutes, we remember Sarah’s Christmas wish – “a house, a brother, a dad” – anything else, like 40 acres and a mule, you little snot? And just to make our heads explode: Bryan and Dorey suddenly wed at movie’s end, both advised of work bonuses (which accounts for Dorey’s chunky wedding ring), and then take possession of a mansion mysteriously bequeathed to them. And if the movie is to comply to all the wishes of the whining spoiled bitch at its heart, I suppose Dorey has a bun up the duff as well.

This makes Susan very happy, because that’s what happiness is all about – having lots of money and a house that is fully paid for, living in a family with great-looking people with great hair, because those are the most loving and sincere of all humans. And if you believe in a fiction hard enough, you will win your court case.

I wish for some insulin.

END

The Genuine Article.

After his magnificent, offbeat BIG NIGHT, writer-director Stanley Tucci reunites that movie’s cast (including Tony Shalhoub, Isabella Rossellini, Allison Janney, Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, to name a few) in another offbeat triumph.

Intentionally played as an hommage to slapstick and farce, THE IMPOSTORS finds two over-zealous, out-of-work actors, Arthur and Maurice (Tucci and Platt) offending an overrated thespian, Sir Jeremy Burtom (Alfred Molina), fleeing from his wrath and ending up on the very ship that he is taking a vacation cruise on.

From its opening hommage to the silent movie, THE IMPOSTORS shows Tucci’s willingness to take chances: Arthur and Maurice engage in staged battle at an unsuspecting streetside café, Maurice opting to be “killed” by Arthur, even though – we learn in the next scene – that it was, in fact, Arthur’s “turn to die.” One twitch on the side of non-conviction and the delicate humor of this tableau would have fallen flat. Tucci pulls it off directorially and comedically.

Ultimately, “chance-taking” is a double-edged sword, and teetering on that blade will get you either lauded as a genius or slice your bollocks off.

Pofflet, Prince of Denmark

The Damoclean blade grimly alerts us to its presence many times, but is ultimately stayed by Tucci’s deft comedic hand. For instance, editing seems strained in a sequence which sees Arthur and Maurice seeking a room on the ocean liner to conceal themselves; through this device, new characters are introduced to the mélange, some colorfully realized whilst others float wraith-like through the plot – until Tucci’s clever storytelling unites all these disparate strands at the Captain’s Ball, when a character bellows “Impostor!” and we see how each of the players may be guilty of that accusation, all of whom flee at the indictment, which is, of course, not even remotely aimed at them.

Alfred Molina, scenery-chewing like Tim Roth on crank, is that bellowing character, his dexterity at mutton-headed slapstick a revelation; Steve Buscemi as the suicidal jazz singer; Billy Connolly shines as the aggressively-gay tennis pro; Tony Shalhoub is overboard as the ambiguously-foreign terrorist First Mate – but no one can upstage the singularly uproarious performance by Campbell Scott, opting to veer off the grid completely in his rendition of Nazi purser, Meistrich. And there is even a sensational Woody Allen cameo that captures the essence of Allen – love and hate. But below the love, hate. But below that hate, love. Love-hate. Hate-love. Below, love. Above – hate. Below that, love. Above that–

Though Tucci’s script stoops to Stooge-like pratfalls at times, he stays ahead of the Great Unwashed’s pedestrian sensibilities by embellishing it with brilliant minutiae, sprinkled liberally: the bedraggled shot of Molina during an intermission of his HAMLET and his melodramatic apology to the theater audience, replete with crooked wig and burp; Platt’s mindless, drunken soliloquy, including dialogue which seems way off-script (“Boozy boozy boooy – sucky farty boooy – I poke you I poke you I poke you!”); and then there’s Campbell Scott, who arguably steals the movie, whether entering the frame and making the soundtrack needle-scratch, or propositioning the Social Director (a beautifully “Brick House” Lili Taylor), or impassively telling the ship’s discomfited detective, Marco (played with witless Euro abandon by Matt McGrath), that learning how to kill people, “is not that hard”; Shalhoub’s passionate radio call to his lover, including more seemingly off-script entreaties (“Touch me pure! Touch me good! Touch me hard!”); Connolly’s man-wooing of Platt with seductive scenarios of wrestling naked on the steps of the Acropolis, “That’s where we’ll wrestle, my semi-Grecian lad – that’s where I’ll make a man of ye!”

And the joie de vivre of the last dance sequence is an utterly contagious masterpiece of the director’s self-awareness, where the full cast, to the strains of Louis Armstrong’s cover of Skokiaan, synchronize a dance routine through the ship set, off the set and into the surrounding studio (where we see the crew, camera tracks, light rigging, false walls), and then out of the studio itself! Almost a sly wink that this movie itself is an “impostor.” Not real life – just entertainment: see? All these characters who were adversaries are now hamming it up together! Another delicate touch which could have easily gone awry. These are not “unknowns” peopling this film – any one of these well-respected actors could have mutinied Stanley Tucci’s decision to unify them in this last, ridiculously-genius dance number. Instead, they joyously partake of the bunny-hopping and arm-waving like a coterie of first-year acting students with nothing to lose, in so doing, beautifully rounding off the film. Tucci’s knowing nudge to movie viewers on many levels, sealing his brilliance as a director willing to take those offbeat chances. One of those rare “Gee-I-wish-I’d-thought-of-that” moments in film. Here too, we are indulged with the prominent soundtrack, which lent itself perfectly to complementing the film’s action with its noticeably-distinct, recurring themes to signify melodrama, suspense, romance and slapstick.

Is it just me, or is it obvious that Tucci and Platt’s real life first names echo those of a past generation’s legendary comedy team? Stanley tips his glass at Oliver to utter the film’s last lines: “To life, and its many deaths.”

END