Sam Jackson calls a phone-sex operator and chokes his snake.

Reptile Dysfunction.

A young motocross rider witnesses a mob murder in Hawaii and is scooped up by the FBI to testify in Los Angeles. On the plane journey to the mainland, the mobster releases hundreds of SNAKES ON A PLANE to wipe out the witness. If this method seems a little hit-or-miss, expensive, inefficient and downright stupid, you’re absolutely right.

SNAKES ON A PLANE is as much a waste of time as you imagine it to be. It gained internet notoriety during its production and therefore has an aura of unwarranted fame/quality surrounding it. (It was the SHARKNADO of its day!) Thankfully, it was recognized as the piece of shit it is upon its release, and lost money. From its opening scenes that reek of TV movie production levels, to its execrable acting and idiotic storyline, to its CGI snakes and attempted humor, it is one hot reptilian mess.

Australian Nathan Phillips is witness Sean, on the run from mob boss Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson, whose acting is as stiff as his six-pack), and saved by FBI agent Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson, who inexplicably agreed to do this movie not despite its title, but because of it!).

The stupidest part of this stupid movie is the framing of the opening murder scene and how Sean witnesses it. After Eddie Kim, surrounded by his henchmen, beats a lawyer to death with a baseball bat, they hear a scuffle in the bushes and see: the tail-end of a bike disappearing out of frame. On this millisecond sighting of Sean (wearing a helmet and full gear, and not seeing his license plate, and not able to distinguish the bike model as 95% of it is out of frame by the time they see it), they track Sean to his apartment (which, by the way, looks like a hotel) and try to whack him.

But Flynn is there first, to save Sean and shoot the henchmen who can’t aim. But consider: If the above non-sighting applies to Kim and his henchies, then the same applies to the FBI. How did the FBI ever track down Sean? Okay, so one of the FBI guys shows Sean a Red Bull can in a baggie – the same one he was drinking at the murder site (this assumes they discovered the lawyer’s body – how? when?) – and also assumes they are frickin’ magicians for lifting Sean’s fingerprints from the condensed liquid on the can’s surface! This also assumes they’ve got his fingerprints on file to verify his address; also discovering that Eddie Kim has put a hit out on him, thus sending a macho agent to scoop him up rather than a routine donut gobbler. If this Hawaiian FBI branch is this good, why couldn’t they track down that lawyer before Eddie Kim beat him to death? And why can’t they find Obama’s birth certificate?!

So Eddie discovers which plane Flynn and Sean are taking back to Los Angeles and plants hundreds of dormant snakes in the cargo hold, with a time-release chemical that would drive them wild enough to escape the hold and bite everyone to death after the plane takes off. Remember, human beings with brains are writing this shit.

The filmmakers are too cute by half by actually introducing a crapload of characters that we’re meant to care about. Which we don’t. Julianna Margulies is the head stewardess, Kenan Thompson is bodyguard to a rapper (Flex Alexander), David Koechner is the pilot; watch for Taylor Kitsch as a mile-high banger with his big-titted bitch in the bathroom (that one we care about).

Once the CGI snakes are loose and start attacking all the passengers, and are dispatched in various ways by Flynn and the desperate victims, you can safely fall asleep and won’t miss anything interesting.

SNAKES ON A PLANE is R-rated, simply so Jackson can do his Jules Winfield and say, “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” Hey, that’s how we ALL feel, you mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker…

END

The Corporatization of Dumbification.

There are a few above-average jokes in ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, but most of them are quite average.

Underpinning the plot of a TV news anchorman struggling to find meaning in his job and love life, there is the cheeky indictment of the vapid 24-hour news culture and, by association, indictment of all those responsible for perpetuating it – you dummies. This saves the movie from being a crumpled, directionless ad-libathon.

Once again set in the Swingin’ ’70s, Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) leaves his wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) when the network chief (a grizzled, deadpan Harrison Ford) promotes her as the first female anchorwoman and fires him. A New York network producer (Dylan Baker) recruits Burgundy for a new concept – a 24-hour news channel. Burgundy: “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard – news going round the clock?!” Called GNN (The Global News Network) and funded by an Australian entrepreneur (Josh Lawson), “We own the news – we can say what we want!” (cough-Rupert Murdoch), it’s starting to look dangerously close to FOX marrying CNN.

Like a League of Retarded Gentlemen, Ron assembles his news team that had gone their separate ways: aggressively-gay-for-Burgundy Champ Kind (David Koechner), managing a fast food chicken store that served fried bat; sexual panther Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), working as a kitten photographer; and thick-as-a-Brick Tamland (Steve Carrell), who was dead.

Not only does Ron’s team have to conquer the resident super-pretty, super-smarmy anchormantastic Jack Lime (James Marsden), Ron also discovers his wife has started dating a psychiatrist, Gary (Greg Kinnear as the pony-tailed 80s lover, with sweater tied evocatively around neck). To regain his pole position as top anchorman and regain his wife in pole position, Ron tries anything to make his news sexy and score ratings…

Strangely enough, just by being their dumb selves, Ron’s news team spikes the ratings (“It’s crap but they can’t stop watching!”), but when Veronica on the competing network scores an interview with Yasser Arafat and threatens to usurp all their viewers, Ron must up the ante.

He sees a car chase on a monitor marked “Not Intended For Broadcast” and in desperation orders the producer, “Give it to me live!” “But that’s not news, Ron!” And ANCHORMAN 2 crosses over into simultaneous satire and indictment, as Ron – in his supposed ignorance – replies, “This is the pulse of what is going on in the country right now!” Never a truer word said in jest, as every “reporter” and “newscaster” in the real world should hang their head in shame between their limp phalluses for actually broadcasting such cheap thrill crap because they sincerely believe “this is the pulse of what is going on in the country right now.”

When Ron is told, “Speculate on who’s driving the car,” we’ve arrived at CNN.

Meagan Good plays a badly written and badly acted producer. We know it’s the ’70s, but there are still innumerable problems in the way the filmmakers portray her seducing Ron and then later knocking him out. For example, stating that you “grew up with five brothers” might give you backstory on why you can fight, but that doesn’t give you license to knock someone out in front of numerous witnesses for verbally insulting you, especially if it’s a double-standard woman-on-man knockout (i.e. think of how offensive it would be were it the other way ’round?). There might be numerous wink-wink politically incorrect jokes about the outdated manner women were treated in the ’70’s, but why isn’t it seen as politically or just ethically incorrect to hit a defenseless man?

Written by Ferrell and Adam McKay, and directed by McKay, released 9 years after its predecessor, ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES is a stream of disjointed jokes and ad-libs peripherally or hardly related to the plot. Each bit is unevenly funny (like the original), and as usual the gag reel is funnier than the movie.

There’s Ron’s flute solo on ice, channeling BLADES OF GLORY, there’s an extended isolation sequence of blind Ron, eking out an existence in a lighthouse with his reunited family, there’s unnecessary narration, there’s Fred Willard delivering the best line about the new 24-hour format (“I think they’ll stick with their integrity”); and Brick even finds true love with a woman-child as odd as he (Kristen Wiig). There are three KISS references. (I’m beginning to suspect Paul Rudd is at the root of ad lib KISS references: innumerable references in ROLE MODELS which he also starred in, the only other common denom being Judd Apatow. Now we wait for ANT MAN to gag about looking like Eric Carr and my suspicions will be confirmed…)

An example of an uneven gag: the crack smoking bit. After Ron’s team toke on air, we cut to the punchline shot of them being uncuffed while on the street, with Ron concluding, “Well, now we know you can’t smoke crack on TV.” Mildly funny, mostly perplexing. If we imagine the scenario, we can presume they were chased out here, tackled and cuffed before this scene, but to achieve this shot, the producers had to dress the whole street and light it for a night shoot (which is harder than a day shoot), including wetting it down, organizing background action and extras, including cop costumes, a prop cop car, the rights to film at that fountain, etc. Couldn’t they have donated this money to a museum or cancer foundation, instead of waste it on a joke that could have worked just as well if they were being uncuffed on the studio floor?

The audience watching Ron’s “entertainment news” is shown to be all rednecks. But let’s face it: anyone who subscribes to this hijacking of quality media is being a redneck in mind and body. WE ARE RESPONSIBLE for what ultimately seeps through to our square eyes and numb brains. Says Ron, “Why tell them what they need to hear? Why can’t we tell them what they want to hear?” And isn’t that how this crap fest started rolling downhill like a trolley with no brakes?

As in ANCHORMAN (2004), the best bit is the gladiator battle between the news networks, with “no touching of the hair and face.” Featuring power cameos by Sacha Baron Cohen for the superior BBC, Jim Carrey and the incredibly polite Canadian News Team, Liam Neeson for the History Network (replete with minotaur and John C. Reilly as The Ghost of Stonewall Jackson), Amy Poehler and Tina Fey for Entertainment News, Will Smith for ESPN, Kanye West as an anachronistic MTV VJ, and – wait for it! – Vince Vaughn reprising his Wes Mantooth (I die laughing just thinking about that name).

Strangest aspect of this biting movie is that real life entertainment news networks (which is – let’s face it – all news networks) embrace Ron Burgundy as a compadre, as if he is promoting their existence as worthy. Either they have a really good sense of humor, or they are, in fact, as dumb as ANCHORMAN 2 makes them out to be. As I watch another interminable car chase on a major news network… I’m guessing the latter.

END

SEMI-PRO is Mostly Amateur.

Will Ferrell stars as Jackie Moon in SEMI-PRO, the owner-coach-player of Flint Michigan basketball team, the Tropics, last place in their local Basketball Association. When the Association accepts a merger with the NBA, they threaten to drop the Tropics from their roster, so in order to make his team’s NBA dreams come true, Jackie Moon must attempt to do the impossible: make a Will Ferrell movie that is funny.

Scot Armstrong (OLD SCHOOL) writes a movie that will neither appeal to fans of comedy or basketball, and Kent Alterman (an executive producer turned director with this debut) should have kept his former job.

As Jackie Moon tries to rally his team into a mean machine, the gags, the stunts, the promotions, the interpersonal relationships are all over the place; it’s not cohesive. Semi-Pro refers to athletes who are paid, but must also have other jobs to supplement their income. SEMI-PRO looks like it was made by a production crew in the same boat; the tone of the movie keeps shifting with each scene. Nothing works. The movie is a mess!

Ferrell is surrounded by regular compatriots, Will Arnett, David Koechner, Andrew Daly and Andy Richter (the Rob Schneider of Will Ferrell movies). Andre Benjamin (OutKast) is ubercool as a Tropics player who invents the Alley-Oop, Woody Harrelson is a washed-up player trying to make a comeback (does anyone remember this guy was in the kinetic WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP?), Rob Corddry is a fan who worships Woody so enthusiastically that he relishes his own wife (Maura Tierney) rekindling her affair with him, and Will Ferrell shoots for another absurdist hoop and misses.

END

Kind Encounters of the Close Third.

It’s a buddy comedy of the crude kind, a road movie of the chase kind, a close encounter of the third kind!

Hey, isn’t that Roger from AMERICAN DAD? Or do all aliens just look alike to me?…

Two Brits on a pilgrimage to famed UFO sites in Nevada pick up a real extraterrestrial alien on the run, named Paul, and find themselves targets of a manhunt (a little green man-hunt) from government spooks (Bill Hader, Joe Lo Truglio and FBI agent Jason Bateman, playing it cooler than a polar bear drinking Coca-Cola).

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the two Brits, Graeme Willy and The Writer Clive Gollings (that’s how he introduces himself – hilarious! I gotta start doing that! – for the sci-fi story he has spent his adult life penning, with Graeme providing the cover artwork – a hot alien chick with three breasts, which seemingly has the same effect on everyone, human or alien, without even reading the story – “three titties: awesome!”).

Pegg and Frost (as co-writers of this film) do a great job of capturing that uncomfortable vestige of American jingoism when they ask a Mexican concierge, “Do you believe in aliens?” and he suspiciously replies, “What do you mean, ‘aliens’?”

Alien Paul is a CG entity thrown amongst this real life comedy, styled after the infamous “grays,” with big eyes, big head and tiny gray-green body. Voiced by Seth Rogen, Paul is pretty much just an easygoing stoner dude, who has been filling his time on Earth since his crash landing in the 50s working with the government and dabbling in giving Spielberg movie ideas. Now he’s on the run from that same government, and lamenting that all his fictional ideas – like Mulder and Scully – are being attributed to others.

The trio pick up Creationist fanatic Ruth (Kristen Wiig), whom Paul mind-melds with to make her understand evolution, whereupon she realizes she can fornicate and drink and cuss all she wants. The great character actor John Carroll Lynch joins the chase as Ruth’s bible-thumping father.

Add points to movie for its atheist stance. Paul laments about Creationists, “You just can’t talk to these people!”

Subtract points for the character paradox: UFO fanatics Graeme and The Writer Clive Gollings claim to be “men of science” and they poo-poo Ruth claiming the Earth was created in five days and is 4,000 years old. And so they should… Yet they believe the government is hiding crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft at Area 51. You just can’t talk to these people!

PAUL is a fun romp across the Nevada desert, a straightforward action chase comedy, yet the story contains a lot of heart and is touching in places, with the payoffs hitting well; with innumerable nods and winks to iconic extraterrestrial movies, among others, E.T., ALIENS, STAR WARS, and the greatest extraterrestrial movie of all time, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. We even see the greatest alien fighter of all – Sigourney Weaver in a surprise cameo.

And of course, Jeffrey Tambor as vain, cynical sci-fi writer-god Adam Shadowchild. Who the hell is Adam Shadowchild?

END

Anne Heche contemplates being the meat in a Legend Sandwich…

Conflation Nation.

“Of course there’s a war – I saw it on TV.”
–Robert De Niro, WAG THE DOG.

War is only real if you let them get away with it. As George Carlin used to say, “Why do the troops keep turning up?” But even if the troops didn’t turn up for active duty, WAG THE DOG is an example of what the government can do with a little false-flag media.

WAG THE DOG is only a movie. It’s ostensibly a “satire” but as Roger Ebert insightfully observes, “It is getting harder for satire to stay ahead of reality.”

The U.S. President in a sex scandal. What can the American government do to atone for it? Not apologize to the public, or make amends, or even try to make the president a better man – but manufacture a fake war to take the focus off him, just two weeks before an election.

He’s termed a government spin doctor in the junkets, but Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) is what mobsters would call a “cleaner.” (And isn’t the government just a legalized form of thug life?) He makes problems go away. He and the White House PR aide (Anne Heche) manufacture the “war” with Albania (“because no one knows where it is or what’s happening there”) with the help of a Hollywood producer, Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman, channeling Robert Evans).

Aided by Denis Leary (facilitator) and Willie Nelson (composing a theme song for the conflict); bringing home a fake war vet, who happens to be PTSD to the gills (Woody Harrelson), and tailed by William H. Macy (CIA).

I’m biting my tongue here on the real life parallels of American government. WAG THE DOG is an allegory of this Orwellian society sometimes called America, where government manufactures crises in order to solve them and pretend efficiency. Like the bailout crisis of 2008; like the debt ceiling crisis of 2011. Who caused them? Not us. Who “solved” them? Not us. But the taxes and fortunes of the oblivious American people were raided by the American government as excuse for the quelling of those crises.

So the uncomfortable dichotomy in WAG THE DOG is its biting humor (for the audacity of the liars in this story) tempered with outrage (for the audacity of the liars in real life that this story bases itself on).

Movie brings together acting legends De Niro and Hoffman, cheekily playing off each other like a devil against an atheist; De Niro’s diabolical twinkle in his eye says, ‘Do right by me or you will burn in a lake of fire’ and Hoffman’s cute obliviousness doesn’t truly believe a lake of fire exists unless he produces the movie about it.

Flooding the media with war images produced by Motss, Brean can safely proclaim to his CIA questioners who doubt the veracity of the war, “Of course there’s a war – I saw it on TV!”

And our minds again wander to the terrifying reality of Orwell’s America: how the Bush admin flooded the media with “news conferences” that they engineered themselves as propaganda to showcase their murderous policies like Shock and Awe, and nonsensical programs like No Child Left Behind; to check off their ever-moving benchmarks in the fake War On Terror; to “prove” their transparency (ironically, by being duplicitous!). It’s not just the felons in the Bush administration; every government finagles the media, but the Bush Klan were so hamhanded and arrogant that they blew it for everyone. Now we know it is common practice to hire PR companies like Burson-Marsteller to “re-brand” activities, entities, corporations, even policies, to repackage lies and malfeasance.

“… the administration’s ambitions to manage the news knew no bounds…”
–Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, writing about Condi Rice’s attempt to keep bin Laden videos out of the media.

In WAG THE DOG, as in real life, they plant “reporters” in press conferences to ask questions that they answer with their spin; they disallow legitimate investigative reporters into their midst for fear of diluting the message; they preclude unfavorable coverage by threatening the news networks with lack of access (i.e. either report the lies or report nothing at all; any “news” is better than no news)…

Released in 1997 (when Clinton was prosecuting his own underhanded wars with little or no media coverage), whether this movie is satire or fact, it is undeniably prophetic, because in 2011, this is exactly how “war” is being prosecuted in America – via the media. Yes, there are ground troops and people dying in Iraq and Afghanistan (what Dubya liked to call “over there”) but it’s less than 1% of the American population who are involved or who know people involved in this political skirmish that has no reason and no goal. America is not “at war” – there are no bombers droning overhead, no blackouts, no rationing, and the only ruined streets and bridges are those that the local governments choose to ignore, choosing to funnel that taxpayer money into their own pockets. For America, war is an entertainment diversion; it only exists on TV.

(On the day I was writing this article, political commentator Lawrence O’Donnell made an observation about how the majority of America doesn’t even realize it is at war: “…a nation where it is impossible to in any way experience a country at war, a nation where not a single deprivation has been suffered because the country has been at war for a decade; a nation where no one has to wait in line for bread or fuel or anything else in short supply because of war…” Full disclosure: it was in a different context, but it corroborates everything I stated above.)

If you plop a person anywhere in America with no access to media, they could live out their life oblivious to America supposedly involved in “two wars” and innumerable illegal skirmishes ‘pon de side. If you did not turn on the news, would you ever know about drone attacks in Libya, or Yemen, or Pakistan? It’s just a frivolous game that politicians think it’s their job to play. Assholes. As Keith Olbermann used to say, “George W. Bush is having a war in Iraq – for the sake of having a war in Iraq.”

As Brean and his associates escalate the “war,” they escalate the lies to unimaginably audacious proportions, the aide constantly wondering if the lies will “take” with the public. Of course they do. When TV talks, people listen.

How many citizens of the indoctrinated United States of America will come away from WAG THE DOG knowing that it was a riotous satire once upon a short time ago, but has turned into a depiction of unethical real life political engineering? Only much tamer.

END

Factory Space.

Mike Judge (OFFICE SPACE, 1999) writes and directs this amusing little tale of Joel (Jason Bateman), owner of an extract factory, who is so dissatisfied with his non-existent wife-sex, he conspires to force her into an affair so that he himself can have a guilt-free affair with one of his hot new interns. To his chagrin, his plan goes horribly right.

Ben Affleck is Joel’s best pal and Bad Influence who convinces Joel to hire a male prostitute (Dustin Milligan) to pose as a pool boy and seduce Joel’s apparently frigid wife (Kristen Wiig).

Meanwhile, all is not well on Joel’s factory floor, as an injured employee (Clifton Collins Jr.) is threatening to sue the company for an accident that nearly castrated him. And the temp whom Joel wants to fool around with (Mila Kunis, still scoring acting jobs based on her looks) is a grifter busy seducing the injured employee to scam him for the insurance money.

EXTRACT, though not a classic like OFFICE SPACE, is still an amusing diversion; well-written and directed, with many funny vignettes: Joel and his buddy trying to get seduction details just right with the airhead gigolo; the gigolo returning time and again to do Joel’s wife “for no charge, dude”; the death metal bandguy handing out flyers to his “gig” (a backyard garage performance); Ben Affleck’s long-haired, bearded barman character whose sage advice on dealing with life problems is suggesting which hard drug best suits each problem…

Judge knows how to fill the screen with quirky characters: the neighbor like a skin rash who won’t take a hint (David Koechner); J.K. Simmons as the floor manager whose disdain for the staff causes him to call them all “Dinkus” and/or “Boy Genius”; and another Simmons as the dastardly Jewish lawyer – the one and only, Gene – overacting as if he’s onstage at a KISS concert.

Judge creates a very watchable comedy – although I don’t think I can ever forgive him for Beavis and Butthead.

END

Abused Cars.

I have hair on my balls. And I sell cars. The end.
— Don “The Goods” Ready.

Slick, smarmy and sweaty-balled, THE GOODS is the bastard child of USED CARS and GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS.

Don “The Goods” Ready (Jeremy Piven) is a freelance super-salesman (his business card simply says, “Don Ready. I move cars, Motherfucker”) who is called in with his prevaricating posse to “sell the metal” when it is suntanning on the car lot.

Don Ready is such a smooth talker, he can rationalize why he should be allowed to smoke on a plane into a Quest for American Freedoms. Which he does – and gets to bra down stewardess Kristen Schaal in the process. (If only Jeremy Piven had these The Goods back in 1993, they’d never have thrown him off that roof in JUDGMENT DAY.)

Don is contracted in desperation by Selleck’s (James Brolin) Motors to move 200 cars over July 4 weekend to avoid losing the lot to a competitor (Alan Thicke, with hair still bigger than Daniel Boone’s coonskin cap).

So begins a vulgar, smack-talkin’, smooth-sellin’, car-ballin’ frenzy with big laughs on left-turn jokes motoring by with the speed and sex of a blonde in a red ‘Vette. The gags are so slick and numerous that the naff subplots of Ready falling in love and craving offspring were quite unnecessary. Oh well, that’s the American mainstream movie system selling itself to you like a car you don’t need.

Ving Rhames is black dynamite as a womanizer who has never “made lehve”; Ken Jeong is the Korean salesman specifically here for Pearl Harbor; Charles Napier is the crusty old salesman constantly referencing his days of thunder in “the REAL war”; THE DAILY SHOW alumni Rob Riggle and Ed Helms play a ten-year-old in a man’s body and a man who acts like a ten-year-old respectively – Rob loves drawing dinosaurs and Ed’s greatest love is his boy-band, nay, man-band; Jordano Spiro is the unnecessary love interest for Don Ready, supposedly intelligent and cynical over snatch-grabbers like Don Ready yet dumb enough to fall for Don Ready; Craig Robinson is a DJ who equates taking requests as taking shit from Whitey; and Kathryn Hahn, with her perverse predation of Rob’s boy-man, is as vulgar and funny as Madeline Kahn was to an earlier generation.

But THE GOODS is owned by Jeremy Piven, like TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY is owned by Jack Black, like ACE VENTURA is owned by Jim Carrey, like TOMBSTONE is owned by Val Kilmer…

So it is strange when reviewers seem surprised at Piven’s character. I beg to say “Whuhhh?” In JUDGMENT DAY, Piven is fast-talkin’ salesman Ray “the Razorman”; in TV’s ENTOURAGE he is fast-talkin’ Hollywood agent Ari Gold; in SMOKIN’ ACES he is fast-talkin’ Vegas snitch Buddy Israel; in GROSSE POINTE BLANK, a fast-talkin’ house salesman; in RUSH HOUR 2, a fast-talkin’ Versace salesman… When has Jeremy Piven NOT been this character?

END

Get Dumb. And Dumber.

Who wrote this crap? Would you believe…?

Well, it wasn’t Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. Their Maxwell Smart (personified by Don Adams) was hilarious. As the creators-writers of the 1965 television series, GET SMART, they are listed as “creative consultants” as soon as the end credits roll. It’s as if the writers of this torpid remake (Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember) were trying to pass the blame as soon as the movie ended and you realized you hadn’t laughed once. (That half-cough when Hymie appeared in the last five minutes didn’t count.)

Do they think we’re as dumb as Smart? We know it’s their fault this GET SMART movie retains none of the magic and vitality of Brooks’s and Henry’s TV series. Director Peter Segal‘s pedigree does not bode well either, his last three films trumpeting his mediocrity: THE LONGEST YARD, 50 FIRST DATES, ANGER MANAGEMENT.

Segal and Astle and Ember forgot that 1965’s GET SMART was a cheeky spoof of the spy movie genre. GET SMART 2008 is an espionage action movie. But someone forgot to tell Steve Carell, who thinks he’s being paid for a slapstick comedy. Movie takes itself so seriously, with insufferable CGI (the iconic corridor of security doors, the Cone of Silence), real-world technology and even murders, that Carell looks like an idiot savant dropped into THE BOURNE IDENTITY.

Maxwell Smart (Carell) is an analyst at the modern spy agency, CONTROL. He aspires to be a field agent, like the legendary Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson) or Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). Throw in an unnecessary backstory about Max being overweight and we have our first waste of screentime in the can. At headquarters, two Information Tech dweebs make the usual IT jokes, while two Agents (David Koechner and Terry Crews) make the usual dweeb jokes about the IT guys. More lost screentime.

After CONTROL HQ is destroyed by KAOS, the organization intent on spreading… uh, chaos, Max is made a field agent and sent on a mission that I didn’t pay enough attention to for it to be worth mentioning. The mission is the McGuffin, serving only to give Max something serious to aim for while he misses the mark with unfunny gags, including shooting himself with tiny darts, dancing with a fat lady, being dragged by a train… while we, the Susceptible Audience, are hopefully busting a gut.

Suffice to say, Max and 99 eventually blow up a WMD facility (oh, how very Dubya of them!), while fighting a villain who looks like Jaws from THE SPY WHO LOVED ME.

Instead of the coy bedroom eyes of Barbara Feldon, Anne Hathaway plays Agent 99 as if she’s on a constant period. Dwayne (formerly The Rock) Johnson is given too little screentime for his smarmy assassin character. Alan Arkin plays The Chief almost as flustered as the original’s Edward Platt. Instead of the fruitiness of Bernie Kopell’s Siegfried, Terence Stamp plays the “Cherman” villain as if he’s on a constant period. Stamp is almost the same age as Bernie Kopell (who is relegated to a cameo), so the question is, why couldn’t the real Siegfried play Siegfried?

Max’s iconic one-liners just don’t work – “Sorry about that, Chief!” “Missed it by that much!” “Would you believe…?” – because they are said only once and never given the chance to grow into callbacks.

This movie would be enjoyable for youngsters who have never seen the original television series (which would look dated and unfunny to them anyway). The only way for it to be enjoyable for those of us who have seen the television series – is to watch the television series.

I miss Don Adams’s slapshot delivery. I miss Thaddeus’s furrowed brow. I miss 99 saving Max’s life and not turning it into a fist-up for feminists. It is obvious the filmmakers don’t “get” GET SMART. They missed it… by THAT much.

The DVD features a “Comedy Optimization Mode” with “hilarious alternative jokes.” That’s a good thing, since the actual jokes in the film are not “hilarious.” One alternative gag shows two Middle Eastern “terrorists” (they must be terrorists cos they’re Middle Eastern, right?), wearing their white thobes, commenting to each other, “I’m not wearing any underwear.” “Neither am I.” When I rail at movies and songs stealing ideas of mine, I didn’t think they’d actually steal one of my gags from fourth grade.

According to IMDb, Steve Carell and B.J. Novak did uncredited work on the script. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t put my name on this stinker either.

END

Black Lung Satire.

Aaron Eckhart has always deserved to play a role as ferociously incisive as this. THANK YOU FOR SMOKING fleshes his latent silver-tongued devil in the form of Nick Naylor, a spokesman for Big Tobacco; the type of guy who could sell ice to Eskimos in winter.

Cucumberlung

Movie opens with Nick on one of those daytime talk shows responsible for the redneckification of America, guesting alongside lobbyists against the tobacco industry and – purely as emotive stab against tobacco – Cancer Boy. (As hilariously direct as this epithet is – correct me if I’m wrong – wasn’t Cancer Boy, as a proper noun, invented by The Kids in the Hall?) Using his gifted gab, Nick skillfully turns the audience aggression aimed at Big Tobacco against the anti-smoking lobbyists, using the head-shaved, irradiated Cancer Boy as prime example of Tobacco’s good intent, “Though these lobbyists would like to see Cancer Boy die to prove their point, it is in Tobacco’s best interests that he LIVES, to continue using our product.”

Later, giving a speech at his son’s school, he tears a new hole for a ten-year-old girl when she offers her mother’s opinion that smoking is unhealthy, “Oh, is your mommy a doctor?”

From Christopher Buckley’s novel, directing and writing his first feature film, Jason Reitman (son of Ghostbuster Ivan) creates a character we rarely see in Hollywood movies: a hero quite aware of, and at peace with, his moral flexibility.

Zealously embracing his job as Sultan of Spin, Nick is a mixture of forest fire (machine-gunning his dialog in short, sharp bursts, savagely taking down all comers), and innocence (Eckhart retaining that disarming demeanor he displayed in YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, 1998). We “don’t see him coming” – unlike the Cruise of MAGNOLIA or the Martin of LEAP OF FAITH – slamming home runs with every fallacious, roundabout rebuttal.

Robert Duvall is the industry’s Puff Daddy – some mighty level of Big Tobacco CEO; William H. Macy now officially owns the character he plays here – Senator Ortolan Finistirre, yet another perplexed dexter, trying not to stumble under the pressure of Nick’s smooth operator; Sam Elliott could not be better cast as an ex-Marlboro Man (we cannot even imagine sullying his deep-voiced masculinity with BROKEBACK sniggers), and J.K. Simmons has been honing this gruff boss routine since SPIDER-MAN.

The unconvincing Katie Holmes plays a reporter who sexually squeezes incriminating info from Nick, precipitating the loss of his job. Her vapid acting skills bear out the theory that she should still be plying her trade in teen romantic comedies. Or amateur porn.

Nick’s lunchtime buddies, lobbyists for alcohol (Maria Bello) and guns (David Koechner), who take a perverse pleasure in terming themselves the MOD Squad (“Merchants Of Death”), bond over wicked lobbying anecdotes and their respective industry’s death tolls. Bello would have indisputably made a more ravishing and convincing underhanded reporter than Holmes. (I’m not advocating they swap roles. I’m advocating that Holmes should find employment more suited to her unique talents – maybe a toilet cleaner at Wal-Mart.)

The thin plot finds Nick commissioning a super-agent (Rob Lowe, a biting composite of Hollywood Cliché, from his smarmy assistant to his kimono) to get cigarettes back into the lips of A-List stars in A-List movies – like smoking’s glory days with Bogey and Bacall; when men were men and women were not she-males.

This simple story only exists to give Nick something to do while the movie studies his incorrigible character. His suave amorality is tempered when dealing with son Joey (Cameron Bright). To be a good part-time father, Nick must use his rationalization skills to educate Joey about a world unable to see its own contradictions.

To prime Joey for a school debate, Nick espouses: “If you argue correctly, you’re never wrong” – which, being true, is an indictment not just against lobbyists (on any side) and their unholy string-pulling in congress, but also against the current legal system, the entertainment industry and any forum where the slickest LIE will triumph over a mundane Truth.

Deeper than the father-son relationship, the movie’s ultimate purpose:  a quick-witted satire on how Spin has crept into every aspect of our modern lives. Smoking lobbyists are the subject here but their deceitful nature has only been nurtured by society itself: fat chicks call themselves “thick”; we tell prospective buyers that our car with the massive oil leak “runs well”; 19 months into a stalemated war, a Mission Accomplished sign flies high at a Presidential address; and a drug which causes irregular heartbeat, dizziness, high blood pressure, nausea, diarrhea, impotence, dry mouth, headaches and blurred vision is marketed as an “Anti-Depressant”… to make you more sociable! (Either way you end up staying home – from imagined anxiety, or real anxiety that you may crap your pants and have a heart attack while trying to get it up. More dangerous than heroin, they call it Zoloft.)

In a plot development which would have sent most screenwriters squealing for their generic PG-13 character arcs, Nick is kidnapped by anti-smoking fanatics, forced to overdose on nicotine patches and, in a tableau reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pietà, left to die in the lap of Daniel French’s Lincoln statue. The imagery is portentous because Nick effects a resurrection of sorts: his tolerance to nicotine, through smoking, kept him alive – and is woven into the fabric of his spin thereafter: “Smoking saved my life!”

In a refreshing denouement, Nick experiences no epiphanies on morality or political correctness. When he wins a showdown with Senator Finisterre, he refuses an offer of his old job back – not because he has recanted on his stance, but because he refuses to sell his exemplary services back to the company that fired him. Movie ends with Nick continuing as a devilish apologist for maligned causes, taking his talents and amorality elsewhere.

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING is a biting rejoinder to all things politically correct. It reminds us to educate ourselves in the face of staggering obstacles. And it illustrates that the obstacles to truth are sometimes the very people exhorting you to seek it.

Someone had the audacity to label their anti-smoking campaign “truth” and no one questioned this lie. I am not even a smoker, yet I find those insufferable neo-hippies an insult and abomination to humanity; themselves, spin doctors of the highest order. Everyone knows smoking is harmful to your health – even Nick Naylor admits this – so placing ever more warnings in the public eye is simply “busywork”; given the choice, those who choose to smoke – will smoke. As those who choose to pig on chocolate, McDonalds or Zoloft will do so no matter how many times their shit turns green.

If the movie is sending a message about Choice, isn’t it intriguing that no one is actually seen smoking in the movie? Even the mighty John Wayne (seen in a snippet from SANDS OF IWO JIMA, 1949) is shot down as he prepares to light up. Relating back to this film’s plot – getting an A-List Hero to smoke onscreen – was this non-smoking decision true irony on the film-makers’ part, or simply the MPAA enforcing their non-smoking edicts on this major release film, making it a victim of the very condition it rails against?

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

END

When The Anchorman was Man-Anchor.

Will Ferrell makes me laugh. I’m not afraid to say it anymore. His shamelessness knows no bounds and I, for one, salute his strangely misshapen nude torso.

In ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY, Ferrell is the blowhard, brain-soft title character, in love with his own self-proclaimed legend. And why not? His veteran standing and perfect hair have made him San Diego’s number one anchorman and a veritable god amongst newsfolk.

Into this perfect 70s world of Men (Men who “discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn”), bringing her “exquisite breasts!” – comes Veronica Corningstone (severely luscious Christina Applegate), aspiring anchorwoman.

Anchorcuke: his hair was perfect.

Of course, this is open invitation to Burgundy’s all-male news team to conspicuously seduce this “woman with a small brain; with a brain a third the size of us. It’s science.”

Simply by being The 70s Male, Ron’s team gives us Truth In Jest: There’s Field Reporter, Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), muttonchop sideburns and a cock of the head to match his jaunty, bellbottomed step; Sports Desk, Champ Kind (David Koechner), cowboy-hatted, beer-swilling Man’s Man, with an affinity for Ron Burgundy’s “musk”; and ambiguously-retarded Weatherman, Brick Tamland (Steve Carrell, whose way-off-script performances here and in BRUCE ALMIGHTY and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN indeed prove his mettle as a comic, yet which doesn’t excuse him from accepting the job in the remake “for American audiences” of Ricky Gervais’ comedic masterpiece, THE OFFICE. That ain’t right.)

And there’s Ron Burgundy himself – Anchorman (“I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany”), Jazz Flautist (“Hey, Aqualung!”), Legend (“Last time I looked in the dictionary, my name’s Ron Burgundy!”). From doing shirtless barbell curls in his office (“sculpting my guns”) to impress Veronica, to wailing, “I’m in a glass cage of emotion!” (while in a phone booth), Ferrell (who co-wrote the movie with director, Adam McKay) takes Burgundy on a mad joyride and abandons him somewhere between 70s chic and imbecile.

Ron’s team must endure the infiltration of female Veronica into their complacent All-Male world, as she steals away the heart and job of their beloved leader. Along the way, every aspect of 70s normalcy is tweaked to hyperbole, from the news team suddenly bursting into an a cappella rendition of The Starland Vocal Band’s Afternoon Delight, to Ron’s appraisal of the “new fad called jogging, or ‘yogging’ – I think the ‘j’ may be silent,” to hosing off Brian Fantana’s almost-lethal man-fragrance, Sex Panther.

The comedy hits on all levels, from the subtle (the television spots, with the News Team all looking up at the camera on cue) to the broad (Burgundy’s and Veronica’s love-making fantasy), to the insensate (the street battle of the Network News Teams, involving tridents, amputations and Roman gladiator man-nets). The usual suspects all cameo: Vince Vaughn (as competing Network Anchor, Wes Mantooth – after bequeathing this character name, where else can you turn?), Tim Robbins with a blond-fro (ditto with this ‘do), Ben Stiller as a seedy Spanish News Anchor, Luke Wilson (whose amputations in battle cause him much annoyance), and Jack Black as a hard-ridin’, hard-vengeance biker (“Did you just throw a burrito at me, Brosef?!”).

The dependably hilarious Fred Willard is Station Director (constantly apologizing on the phone for his son’s felonies at school), who fires Ron after he is fooled into swearing on air – a practical joke by Veronica that goes awry.

So begins Ron’s spiral into oblivion, wandering the streets in a hermit-beard, drunk on milk, whilst Veronica’s star rises as the world’s first female anchor. Ron must mine untapped reserves of Man-Reportage to rise to the occasion and come to terms with Veronica’s equality. In a bear den at the San Diego Zoo, all is resolved.

With its dialogue generally more “cerebral” than most SNL alumni offerings – as ridiculous as that may sound – and a cast willing to take themselves beyond the fringe for the cause, ANCHORMAN ranks alongside A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY or WAYNE’S WORLD as a stupid, stupid idea that somehow went horribly, horribly right.

END