The Year of Living Safely.

Either Jack Black is being reined in with a poor script, squelched by a conventional director, or he’s just plain gettin’ too old for this shit.

Maybe a combo-wombo of all three? YEAR ONE is a missed comedic opportunity, crying in the wilderness like Charlton Heston as Moses; a biblical comedy of pamphlet proportions.

Black is Zed, an inept caveman hunter; his best friend is Oh (Michael Cera), a willowy gatherer from the same small tribe. To score a tribeswoman, Maya (June Diane Raphael, almost more luminous than Maggie Gyllenhaal in DONNIE DARKO), Zed eats of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (what are the odds it’s right near their village?). Zed and Oh are subsequently banished from the village – not by God but by their tribe – and what started as a promising premise (a comedy featuring cavemen with modern day sensibilities) loses itself by expanding way past its time period; past its Use By date, if you will.

Every time Zed and Oh meet new characters on their banishment trek, the characters are in a further evolutionary epoch – for example, the first people they encounter are Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd), with writer-director Harold Ramis himself cameoing as Adam. One funny night in Genesis, and the next day, Zed and Oh encounter Greek soldiers, circa 3,000 BC, led by Vinnie Jones (they look like Romans, but Ramis tells us the costumes were researched as Greek). Then we’re back to biblical times when Zed and Oh meet Abraham (Hank Azaria) and trek to Sodom.

Poffraham The Cukumciser

Azaria bludgeons us unrepentantly as Abraham, cutting his words like a machete (channeling George C. Scott’s Abraham from THE BIBLE: IN THE BEGINNING, 1966), as he would start cutting foreskins on a whim for the sake of honoring his god. Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin) is Isaac, the son who was saved from being a human sacrifice by “an angel” in the bible, but here, by Zed and Oh. (Like McLovin, Isaac tries to scam liquor cos he’s too young.)

Oliver Platt goes fey-tilt as the high priest of Sodom, falling hopelessly in perverse love with Oh, who becomes his golden-painted bitch, forced to rub body-oil into the High Priest’s matted jungle of chest hair that makes Paul Stanley’s chest look like Hugh Grant’s.

Olivia Wilde is the princess of Sodom (chosen as Maxim’s Hottest Female of 2009 – guess there’s no accounting for taste – if a woman is that flat, is appearing topless any kind of coup?), who really has nothing to do except pretend to be hotter than June Diane Raphael.

Look for Kyle Gass (Tenacious D’s rage kage) as the Eunuch.

These are A-list comedians populating this sprawling tale, so each vignette is hilarious unto itself (David Cross’s constant underhandedness, Azaria’s obsession with circumcision, Platt’s obsession with body oil, etc.), but none of them stitch together into a cohesive whole. Besides a watery questioning of organized religion, YEAR ONE takes no risks, and resolves with little fanfare and nothing interesting to say. I had higher hopes, considering Judd Apatow is one of the producers.

An Alternate Ending on the DVD shows the destruction of Sodom. That might have worked better than the lame theatrical release. If you’ve got nothing to say, at least say it loud with fireballs.

END

Movie: Chop Socky. Message: Kung Fooey.

With astounding cinematography, well-written characters, directorial creativity, incredible technical prowess and stunning animation, KUNG FU PANDA only lacks in one department – its message that Prophecy Is Better Than Practice.

Directed with kinetic frenzy by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson like Michael Bay meets John Woo, the awesomeness of the Panda is diluted with the insidiousness of the Pander.

Jack Black voices fat panda Po, who lives in a China where animals populate the land (mainly ducks and bunnies as the proletariat classes). Obsessed with kung fu, he watches from afar as the famous Furious Five (Monkey, Crane, Tigress, Mantis and Snake) show off their martial arts skills in the imperial palace. Through a series of mishaps, Po is accidentally chosen as the Dragon Warrior, a prophesied protector of the kingdom. The indomitable evil force he must combat is an exceptionally trained, villainous snow leopard called Tai Lung (Ian McShane, eating scenery like candy). The leopard’s prison escape is a chest-beating showcase of his thunderous kung fu talents that will have you howling for red meat.

Though this impossible matchup should end in Po’s grisly death, he triumphs. No surprise. Kid demographic. But it’s how he does it that sends chills up my spine with its insensate message – every few minutes, the promotion of laziness over dedication. Despite the film being beautiful to look at, despite kung fu as realistic and energetic as any live action thriller, despite A-level talent voicing these pixels (Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Michael Clarke Duncan), the laziness message is simply stupefying. To make it more stupefying, though a message like this should destroy the film’s credibility, instead it is regarded as laudable!

Which shouldn’t be a surprise in a society that has come to regard mediocrity as a favorable trait over virtuousity – America. What arrogance and hubris that bum-lazy Americans should set this tale in China, a land renowned for its rigorous discipline.

Silly mystical prophecy is no substitute for experience and hard work, yet that is how Po is chosen, over five warriors specifically trained for the combat of Tai Lung. Throughout the tale, the Furious Five warriors continually whine over how to defeat Tai Lung if an inexperienced pudge like Po combats him. Simple! When Tai Lung arrives, everyone fight him! Apparently, just because “the prophecy said” only Dragon Warrior Po can combat Tai Lung, no one else is allowed to step in and save the land. And this stupidity is borne out when the Five fight Tai Lung and fail.

The very discipline this movie exalts is simultaneously disparaged when Po goes Tom Cruise in THE LAST SAMURAI and attains proficiency within weeks by training with the little Common Panda kung fu master (Dustin Hoffman); proficiency which his peers took decades of dedication to attain. Relating to Everyman characters is fine, but there is another class of character we cannot relate to, that we aspire to (like the Furious Five, like Superman); higher characters that drive us to be more than just Everyman. But that’s too much to ask bum-lazies these days.

This message in KUNG FU PANDA is the same “Believe in Yourself” guff that allows Guitar Hero wankers and Air Guitar douchebags and Karaoke dipsticks to think they’re actually “talented.” The damnable, insufferable, noodle-eating message that youngsters glean from this otherwise-enjoyable movie is that proficiency is instantaneous if you would only “believe in yourself.”

No. It is not. “Believing” gives you the impetus to start training in your chosen art/profession. But it will take years to become proficient.

Why do I rail so hotly against this silly story element in this kid’s movie? Because I have tangible evidence that this wrongful message is being heeded unconsciously: in the form of piano students. Kids who have been playing for less than one or two years thinking they can perform rock songs authentically by learning them by rote, parrot-fashion; rushing blindly into the playing, no control, no technique, no knowledge, no feel, no practice, just glazed-eyed for the quick fix instant gratification. This primal behavior is directly linked to media of this ilk.

Murder and sex on film always get the bum rap for influencing children adversely, but “family films” – as I’ve always maintained – are far more dangerous and cause far more breakdown of respect for elders and institutions than a few bleeding bollocks or horsewhipped whores.

Everything about KUNG FU PANDA is excellent. Only the message is kung fooey.

END

ETERNAL shines, then dims.

Darkness piled upon darkness, steeped in disturbing dissonance; a glutting, suffocating despair; a stultifying of the spirit and a crippling of the ego. No way out, no way out… no, not the movie – my last relationship.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND opens with a disoriented Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) wondering how he sustained a giant gash along the side of his car. From there, through flashbacks and flash-forwards, we gradually unveil the depressing reality that is his life – and how his last relationship was a promise of respite from despair, but ended up merely presaging a different species of despair.

Eternal Sunshine of the Poffyless Mind

After his relationship has acrimoniously soured with his girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet, even more irritating than she was in TITANIC – if that’s possible), Joel discovers, through mutual friends, that she has had a scientific procedure performed that erases selective memories; while some may contend that Kate Winslet has always been walking around with a blank brain, in this case, she has just erased memories of her relationship with Joel. In a fit of righteous wrath, Joel enlists Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson – whose description of this implausible procedure sounds oddly feasible) to do the same for him: erase Clementine from his mind.

With Mierzwiak’s aides, Stan (Mark Ruffalo, sporting the Einstein “bed-head” ‘do) and the slimy Patrick (Elijah Wood, with a panty-stealing penchant and a lunatic giggle, seemingly intent on wiping the audience’s memories of his cutesy hobbit mien), Joel undergoes the erasure procedure, but as his memories regress (with his body unconscious, but his dream self somehow aware and participating in the regression), his Clementine memories become less antagonistic, veering towards enjoyable and then, he realizes too late, downright “precious.” His dream self fights against the erasure, trying to hold onto the pleasant memories, realizing that if every trace of Clementine were wiped, somehow a piece of himself would disappear also.

Director Michael Gondry has captured on film one of the most ineffable human experiences – the dream state: the feeling that everything you are experiencing is somehow sensible, yet not making sense; that you are running mightily yet making no headway; that feeling of underlying cohesion and overarching dread. Using nothing but hand-held cameras and stark lighting in some sequences (in others, utilizing disappearing sets and suddenly-changing landscapes), Gondry evokes that desperate, visceral fear that irrationally gluts our dreams. Add screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and the disturbing irrationality only escalates.

The film’s title is excerpted from a poem by Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard,” the same poem that puppeteer John Cusack enacts in another of Charlie Kaufman’s screenplays, the beatifically bizarre, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.

One cannot overstate Carrey’s brilliance in this role. Watching his unshaven, haggard, insecure paragon of introversion, Joel, it is impossible to imagine an Ace Ventura careening across the screen monopolizing every oxygen atom within reach.

Carrey’s tastefully subdued performance is contrasted with that of Winslet’s gregarious Clementine, a talkative, intrusive young woman who at first impression seems to have dropped too much acid in the nineties. When Clementine insidiously, yet forcefully seduces Joel on a train, we realize we have seen this character in cinema before: the pushy young wench who unlocks the heart of gold beneath the shy guy. But why do screenwriters believe that a talkative and obtrusive woman is somehow “attractive” or “spunky”? There’s another term for insecure, attention-seeking, irritatingly extroverted women who suck all the energy out of a room with their rattling bicuspids – high maintenance.

Having sex in public while people watch: cool.
Spending the whole NIGHT in public: well, people just get bored and wander away.

Joel wants to retain the happy memories – but he’s got it all backwards. It is these memories that wrench you with unquenchable longing, making you apt to do something stupid – like getting back with her. It is the bad memories – those weak-chested churnings of impotence and disrespect – that will keep you sensible enough to never call the crazy bitch again. But who wants to shoulder that unsavory burden? Just erase the lot, and you’ll never have to forget regret.

Before their brain-wipe, each person is required to make a cassette recording of all the aspects about their wipee they cannot stand. Due to a subplot involving Mierzwiak’s infatuated, spurned secretary (Kirsten Dunst), both Joel and Clementine unethically receive their partner’s recordings to listen to, and we realize that the present-time storyline is Joel’s and Clementine’s second meeting, independent of – and unaware of – their previous relationship.

And what we thought was a unique exploration of despair, coupled with repression and regression ramifications; a film which alluded to god-complexes (the doctor’s command of Joel’s brainwaves) and self-persecution paradoxes (Joel is a self-persecuting personality, which is why he gravitates towards women like Clementine) topples from its lofty aspirations, to instead explore the girly-man question of whether you would re-commit to someone whom you have already found out you cannot stand.

For the sake of sating the expectations of young girls, Joel and Clementine poignantly re-vow their love for one another, despite the evidence of their damning testimonies on tape. Couples Being Paired is the grand device that engines 95-percent of cinema in America. From STAR WARS to GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, from CROCODILE DUNDEE to ROCK STAR, no matter the ostensible theme or subject matter of the movie, it will always boil down to the point of view of the paired couple, against all adversity. In this film, the adversity is the couple itself.

Does this say something about the fact that true love will triumph even over mismatched personalities – or that people will do anything to get into each other’s pants?

So after scaring us with faceless dream-people and nightmare corridors and potential brain damage and – the most horrible ugliness of all – girlfriends who won’t stop talking, ETERNAL SUNSHINE ends up as just another quirky romance clothed in a Real Movie’s drama suit.

END

If God watches over George Bush and Satan watches over Tenacious D
– Satan’s winning…

Once every hundred-thousand years or so, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow…

Not exactly Spinal Tap. Not exactly Martin & Lewis. Not exactly normal.

Once in a great while, an act appears that shimmers with such kineticism, such verve and lust, that audiences are scorched into submission – such an act is The Darkness – oh, and Tenacious D “The Greatest Band On Earth.”

No small coincidence that I mention The Darkness above; an anachronism that treads the same razor’s edge as The D, but on the “serious” side of the music biz. But what denotes “serious”? If financial success is the measure of sobriety, then Tenacious D is every bit as serious as those “real” rockstars. Which makes Tenacious D, as unlikely as it may be, real rockstars.

Poffodeus, Demon of Salad

Jack Black and Kyle Gass have achieved a unique quasi-stardom; satirized themselves into the “serious” rock world and into ostentatious success that they obviously could never grasp via conventional methods. We know that these guys are veterans of the rock scene – how else could they act so clueless so convincingly? – who never did “make it” with whichever garage bands they wore five-inch heels in, due to the provincialism of the music business; for the simple reason that their niche of pomp-rock has come to be purveyed by the likes of (and the looks of) the David Coverdales and the Jon Bon Jovis. And if you didn’t fit the mold, you were out in the cold. But Tenacious D have become their own self-fulfilling prophecy: in satirically proclaiming they would “change the face of rock” – they have!

Black’s hi-octane physicality and power-tenor vocal delivery is comparable to any of the arena frontmen whom he is hot on the heels of, and Gass’s guitar expertise rivals, if not surpasses, most of the toyboy hair-shredders of the 80’s who were bequeathed recording contracts on the strength of their Aquanet.

But Tenacious D’s angle of attack has widened their scope. Unlike “serious” musicians who boast powerful talent, yet are stultified by the “demographic” that they are marketed to, The D can shamelessly perform feats which would cause “serious” rock stars unwarranted PR problems or lose them their followings: criticize other musicians without press repercussion; display their out-of-shape bodies without loss of libido; wear idiotic stage attire whilst fearing no fashion police; claim to devil-worship without evangelical dissent; egotistically aggrandize their own product without humility; all due to the initial establishment that this project is unequivocally tongue-in-cheek!

But how far can tongue-in-cheek stretch? Ultimately, when international tours come into play, the business of propagating fun has to be taken seriously somewhere along the way – or money gets squandered and corporate wangling gets ugly.

The bittersweet irony is that in winning widespread public acceptance – in other words, in attaining “commercialism” (a word that would make rockers and hard-core fans cringe) – Tenacious D have paradoxically lost the vital element that won them that commercialism: their naiveté – for where is the parody in terming yourself “The Greatest Band on Earth” if everyone in your audience agrees with you?

The hook for the HBO series which launched Tenacious D onto an unsuspecting public was that it was obvious that these two rock-and-retch burnouts would never even have the finances to pay for a ticket to see – let alone be – “The Greatest Band On Earth,” as they exalted themselves from a dank stage where audiences almost didn’t even acknowledge their existence. (That being said, HBO must be kicking themselves that they didn’t contract Tenacious D for more than 3 half-hour episodes – Who knew that those benign television morsels, all of which are included in the Master Works DVD, would attain such cult legend?)

And now, Tenacious D, having brushed so close to actually being considered The Greatest Band On Earth (through acclaim by a multitude of fans), have necessarily modified their focus. This is not a bad thing, as every artist must sway to their public’s demand, but their éclat has shifted, from “vainly trying to make people notice them,” to “raving in the spotlight.” The overwrought, Spike Jones-directed Wonderboy music video is a prime example of their largesse threatening to outrun their self-possession. Though they parody Ronnie James Dio in an eponymous ode, this video is more Dio than Dio ever was – the production value could never be matched by Dio’s budgets in his heyday – which begs the question on whether the satirists have become the satire yet.

Is it still tongue-in-cheek? Yes.

For holding at bay the curse of self-consciousness and self-awareness is a schoolkid honesty and sophomoric sensibility, illustrated best in the three additional mentally-twisted shorts on the DVD – showing us that, talented though they may be, The D are still two sick puppies with abject disregard for social protocol, a near-miracle in this frightened and quivering politically-gutless modern age. It might be guilty laughter watching “Rock Star Sperm For Sale,” but it is unbidden guilty laughter. We wish we could all be this honest and juvenile and callous.

The DVD also sports the full-length concert at the Brixton Academy in London; a daring, stark presentation featuring only the duo themselves, harking back to their roots when there was no “band” intrusion into their chemistry. It is testament to The D’s charisma and talent (Black’s freneticism, perfectly complemented by the understated Gass) that they can hold an internet-bred audience with such rigor…

We bear witness to one of the truly great comedy teams of our time.

Praise be to Satan on his big-assed steed!

END

Cable for Nothin’ and your Guilt for Free.

“Chip Douglas” (Jim Carrey) is a cable installation guy who gives Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick) free cable extras, then psychopathically wields that favor to progress their buddy-ship.

An above-average dark comedy, jealously maligned – for the wrong reasons. Incorrectly marketed, burdened by the speculation regarding the largest actor’s salary in the world at the time (to star Carrey), misunderstood by critics and panned by mongoloid fans who only wanted more Ace to sit on their face, THE CABLE GUY (at the time of its release) was routinely dismissed simply as The Film That Wasn’t Worth A Twenty-Million Dollar Paycheck.

Maybe si. Maybe no. But no one will remain on that pedestal forever, so if your agent is savvy enough, if your producers can talk a good enough game, if the marketplace will support the burden – take the 20-mil and run! Why did this supposedly capitalistic society vilify the janitor who became a comedian, the comedian who became a movie star, the movie star who defied an industry?

(Rest assured, I’d be whining along with the critics if the excruciatingly unfunny Jason Biggs was in Carrey’s shoes.)

In 2004, actors regularly draw above-20-mil paychecks because the bloated economy can now more readily support this hedonism. These actors invest one-tenth of effort as Carrey did for his role as Chip Douglas the psycho cable guy. Ironically, it is this commonality of avarice, this passé flippancy towards Hollywood’s golden-haired elite, which allows THE CABLE GUY, in retrospect, to suffer less the slings and arrows of outrage over the ‘greed’ of its leading man.

The juice is loose!

The movie and eponymous character are foreboding, blackly funny and – like Kilmer’s iconic Huckleberry Holliday – complete departures from anything anyone had come to expect from Carrey in his upwardly-spiraling comedic career; critics and fans alike were taken aback at the frightening surrealism that Carrey brought to his disturbed character. The critics were too enamored with that 20-mil to delve any deeper than his ‘offensive’ lisp, and the contingent of arse-speak fans sat by numbly, waiting for an “Allllrighty then!” which would never come.

Admittedly, Carrey’s hamming had reached King Kong-ian proportions by the time this movie hit cinemas, his two preceding films being ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS (an excursion to the zenith of over-enthused surfwave-smirk and ultra-over-acting) and BATMAN FOREVER (where Carrey actually saved the movie from Tommy Lee Jones’s attempt at Jack Nicholson and Chris O’Donnell’s mannequin non-presence, with his over-ultra-supra Method); one of his lines in BATMAN summed up what many perceive as Carrey’s shortcoming, when his Riddler character says, “Was that over the top? I can never tell!” Audiences expected that slam-hamming to be carried over into CABLE GUY, and the misrepresentative trailers didn’t help. Not having a convenient hole to pigeon the movie, the trailers advertised it as a simple comedy, and critics roundly dismissed it as unfunny, too dark, puzzling…

But here’s the clincher – when Carrey played those over-the-top outré-hams in previous films, they stoned him for it; denigrating him as if from thrones of thespian munificence, yet when he subtly alters persona to portray a character more complex than the hams, suddenly they don’t want him to change, because it taxes their stunted filmic vocabulary to have to think about The Cable Guy’s layered personality.

Watch for Owen Wilson (at the time, not yet The Nose That Saved Hollywood) as the insincere date; Bob Odenkirk, Andy Dick and Janeane Garofalo (Stiller’s Posse), Jack Black (only hinting at the Tenacious within) Kyle Gass (as the Couch Potato!), Leslie Mann as Broderick’s girlfriend, Eric Roberts (in a screamingly-funny self-parody), George Segal (“Are you on the pot? You know you’re killing your mother!”) and director Ben Stiller himself, playing twins, parodying the Menendez Brothers TV murder trial/fiasco (“The killer was – Aaaaaasian!”).

The makers of THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998) would learn the lesson in not marketing that film as a “comedy,” thereby allowing Carrey’s acting prowess to shine, unburdening themselves from the pressures of public expectation. Indeed, THE TRUMAN SHOW is an extension of THE CABLE GUY’S themes of alienation, false perception, reality misapprehended. That film’s deeper psychological impact was so pronounced because we were now seeing Carrey as an Actor (not a comedian or overpaid janitor) in a role which extended the Cable Guy’s predicament to seeking not only friendship – everyone in town was “pal” to Truman Burbank – but sincere friendship. Truman, like the Cable Guy, was a victim of illusion.

So now that I’ve gotten that bitching off my chest, I wonder what’s on cable tonight?… I’ve got ALL the movie channels. Free. My Cable Guy is bringing the ice cream, his favorite flavor: man-crush…

END