Ape-ocalypse Now…

Reboot. Gorilla style.

In a cold open, two pilots – an American and Japanese – crash-land on a deserted Pacific island. It is 1944. They try to kill each other, in a foot chase that leads to a mountain ledge. As they grapple, something… YUGE… rises from below. A gorilla! No, not just a gorilla – a GORIL-LIL-LIL-LIL-LA!

Opening Titles, scrolling through the years, showing watershed events – nuclear tests, Viet Nam, space race – to 1973.

An American scientist leads a military expedition to an island discovered by satellite photos, to beat the Russians there and discover its secrets – and is confronted by that same gorilla, who goes ape on their helicopters. All the extras die. The next move is up to the scientist and the military. To kill or not to kill this ancient beast…

KONG: SKULL ISLAND is APOCALYPSE NOW meets GODZILLA. For a very marketable reason. Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment are even now planning the Daikaiju Match of the Century – Kong Vs Godzilla! For that to happen, they had to make the 50-foot Kong of the past 84 years more GORIL-LIL-LIL-LIL-LA. To face the modern 350-foot GODZILL-LIL-LIL-LIL-LA. Not only is the ape’s size amped up to 100 feet, its role is modified to be more of a rampaging beast, a creature that ruled the Earth before Man; it is played like it might not be an ape at all but just a giant carnivorous creature with a hint of blond ambition… The stage is set…

… for Francis Ford Coppolla. Writers Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly, and director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, save on man-hours, printing costs and originality, by simply copying and pasting Coppolla’s 1979 APOCALYPSE NOW, with Huey helicopters, loudmouth military grunts, obsessive military captains, a riverboat ride, wild machine-gun fire, napalm, wartime cinematography, and that same overused seventies soundtrack that hits all the Creedence and Jefferson Airplane beats. It worked for that big ape, Brando…

“Sir, I think we’ve found Marlon Brando.”

Starring Tom Hiddleston’s British Smug, Brie Larson’s Tight T-shirt, Samuel L. Jackson’s Shouting, Toby Kebbell’s Dog Tags, John Goodman (who doesn’t roll on Shabbas), Corey Hawkins Being Black and Nearby, Jason Mitchell Straight Outta Compton, John Ortiz as Welcome Back Kotter, and John C. Reilly as Sasquatch.

Jackson is Captain Insecure Dicksize, who, after his men are annihilated by Kong for invading Kong’s territory, obsesses over killing Kong. Like every American chickenhawk, he lays the blame of his troop’s death not on himself for invading, but on the party being invaded. “I know an enemy when I see it!” Uh, okay, but Kong is not your enemy, jarhead. YOU struck first, without warning, without permission. Movie shows us very explicitly that the only “monsters” on the island are the ones who arrived in Hueys. They even make Goodman’s scientist, Dr. Crackpot, a superficial monster whose parents were killed by Kong, which he regards as “something with no conscience, no reason.” Well, not really. The reason: you were encroaching on his territory.

Crackpot tells Dicksize his organization is after Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms (MUTOs, which ties it to GODZILLA 2014, where the winged monsters were called MUTOs – a stupid name, because once you find them, and classify them – huzzah! Massive Identified Terrestrial Organisms.) “The Castle Bravo tests were not nuclear tests – they were trying to kill something.” (Almost the same dialogue in GODZILLA, describing the Bikini Atoll tests.) His token black assistant pipes up about his Hollow Earth Theory, which has turned out to be true. No one cares. Not even the black demo he’s here for.

The wonderful rounded hills of Skull Island.

Crackpot wants evidence to take back to civilization. Shouldn’t the focus then, be more on T-shirt taking pics, rather than Dicksize’s vendetta? That’s when we realize even the filmmakers have lost the plot: When we see a graveyard filled with giant bones of dead apes (Kong’s parents), T-shirt says “I’ve taken enough pictures of mass graves to recognize one.” Yeah, well, how about taking a picture of THIS one? Because – evidence.

We see her snapping pics, but of all the wrong things. That picture of a giant footprint might be a tiny hamster’s without showing a canteen or person’s foot next to it for scale. Or how about this? At least all the male scientists back home can get a perfect idea of size if you place your D-cup rack next to it.

Hiddleston the tracker is introduced like Wolverine in a bar fight. Then we never see him use any skills again for the rest of the movie, except looking like Thor’s brother. Movie tries to flesh out his character with talk about his father in the RAF mounting an attack from which he never returned (but we’re just wondering when he’s going to mount an attack on T-shirt’s nicely-rounded Hamburger Hills). Other futile attempts at characterization also fall flat, like Dicksize being a career military man, left rudderless when assigned leave, and then creaming his camo when assigned the Skull Island mission. We recognize each of these characters from bullet points in the Selling Your Hollywood Screenplay Manual:

• the girl who befriends the monster
• the jock who befriends the girl
• the fanatic general
• the nervy company man who is eaten first
• the token black dude
• the token Asian chick
• the loon who lives with the natives…

John C. Reilly is the bearded loon, who turns out to be the pilot from the cold open. He’s the Dennis Hopper in this Ape-ocalypse, and the only character well-rounded enough for a poignant post-credits resolution. Providing exposition on the ape (“Kong is king around here; god to these people”), and the “skull-crawlers” (“I never said that name out loud before, it sounds stupid now that I think about it”) – giant iguana-like monsters that are genuinely scary, taking the place of the tyrannosaurs in any given Kong adventure. Why? Because of Kong’s new SIZE; he needs bigger foes. Everything is giant – oxen, spiders, stick insects, squid – except for the human roles. Outstanding production values save KONG from the B-movie pile, but the vapid characters drift it back.

I love the smell of ape-harm in the morning.

For once, the great ape is not played by Andy Serkis in mocap; Toby Kebbell and Terry Notary don the motion-capture suit (veterans of playing apes in the modern PLANET OF THE APES saga), and find the connective tissue between all the Kongs:

He tries to rip apart the monster’s jaws (like KONG 1933), he walks upright (like KONG 1976), he is seamless, wondrous CGI (like KONG 2005). And his “realism” sells this film. We do not doubt any more that what is onscreen is absolutely in the environment. I like the way Kong just wanders around and appears here, appears there, unhurried. As I always complain in JURASSIC PARK movies, we never get to see the dinosaurs just being themselves before the Running and Screaming starts. It’s nice to see Kong stop to get a drink.

When T-shirt finds an ox trapped under a helicopter and tries to save it, Kong is there to help. He looks down upon her magnificent push-up bra, ponders on his animal attraction, then strides away. (But Kong is a carnivore – those incisors didn’t evolve for herbivorous diet – wouldn’t he EAT the ox? Instead, we only see him eating a squid when it attacks him. As in every movie that anthropomorphizes animals (MADAGASCAR, ZOOTOPIA), mammals don’t eat mammals – but feast on fish. Unless you’re in NEMO, fish are no higher than plants in Hollywood’s hierarchy.)

The scant connection between blond and ape is downplayed here, because of the extended universe the studios intend to tread. If Kong fell in love – he would have to die. The theme will never more be “beauty and the beast.” Kong is necessarily beauty (of nature) and beast (of destruction) all in one.

That’s what happens when you do it gorilla style.

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

The D-List goes A-Team.

He’s committed to the ridiculous in a way that is sublime.
— Joss Whedon on James Gunn helming GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.

It’s hip, it’s modern, it’s retro. It’s colorful and calamitous. It’s THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY!– The Who of the What now?

Marvel Studios throws the dice and comes up Ee-Oh-Eleven with an unknown property. Well, not unknown any more. The Guardians of the Galaxy comic series (first published Jan 1969) was never in the marketing league of Spider-Man, Iron Man or even Wolverine, and we gape in senseless wonder at the chutzpah of the far-seeing (and obviously connected) individuals who carved a new super-verse out of whole cloth. Ending in triumph, as GUARDIANS (according to Wiki) is the highest-grossing superhero film of 2014.

I am Cuuuuuke!

Earthling Peter Quill (Chris Pratt, THE LEGO MOVIE, body-buffed and Han Solo-ed to the max) is a space pirate who steals a mystical Orb that seemingly everyone in the universe chases him to retrieve. He acquires the Orb in a manner much like our pal Indy in that film starring Han Solo. Movie’s unique tone smacks us in the face with its breezy insouciance and nostalgic soundtrack, as Quill pops a cassette tape into a Walkman and dances through the caves to his goal, accompanied by Redbone’s Come And Get Your Love.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more crucial opening sequence for a superhero movie, and one better-played. They’ve actually got Quill disco dancing through the opening – talk about walking a fine line – I mean, Tobey danced and look what happened. With Quill swishing his hips they establish immediately This ain’t Iron Man, This ain’t Wolverine, hell, This is hardly even Marvel, as the movie’s roguish sense of humor launches us to a headspace far removed from those iconic super-swaggerers. We can hardly even believe this is the doughy guy from PARKS AND RECREATION, as Quill is devil-may-care funny, canny, unlawful and a lovable lump all rolled into one. And he wants to be called Star Lord… uh, scratch the “canny” bit. His Valley Girl idiom overlaps the techno farscape, as his first lines to his ambushers include, “Dude, chill out!”

Through misadventures aplenty, Quill joins forces with a group of warriors, all with one thing on their minds – killing each other for the sake of cash. And that’s the dynamic that sets the Guardians apart from other “superheroes” – they’re super anti-heroes. Not one of these protagonists is altruistic, not one would consider battling evil for goodness sake; through this pulsating, laser-throbbing bambalam, they are committed to being the outlaws we meet them as, and are unintentionally thrown together to Save The Galaxy only because, as Quill emphatically declares, “I’m one of the idiots who lives in it!”

Zoe Saldana (AVATAR) is Gamora the flying turtle, who is friend to children– sorry, thinking of GAMERA… Gamora, the green-skinned assassin pitted against Quill to steal the Orb. His abs make her join him. Her green groin makes him save her; as STAR TREK and LOST IN SPACE taught us, human males harbor an inordinate lubricité toward green-skinned bitches.

Dave Bautista (aka Batista, six-time WWE world champion) is red-hued Drax, simple in mind, decorated in body, an escaped prisoner harboring a vendetta against Gamora and her power-mad father for killing his family.

Rocket the raccoon-like-creature (voiced by Bradley Cooper, AMERICAN HUSTLE), is a CGI fur-splosion that isn’t really a raccoon but made to resemble one by his genetic creators. This diminutive weapons expert is a common thief, along with his sidekick Groot, a CGI tree-being voiced by Vin Diesel. Groot repeats only one line, and though he is saying many things, the manifestation of his speech to our human ears always sounds like, “I am Groot!” He is the comic relief that only his impetuous pal can understand (think: a better-written Chewbacca); paired with the biggest loudmouth he is the quietest and most introspective, feeding off his own leaves at times (is that kinda like eating your own hair?); he is the beating heart of this thrill ride.

“Stop looking at his abs and SHOOT him!”

For all their bravado and fisticuffs gusto, all these outlaw anti-heroes are damaged in some way. Their partnership allows them to reconcile those scars, as when Quill starts the healing with his pep talk: “You know what I see when I look at us? Losers! …Uh, by that, I mean people who have lost something…”

Space invader Yondu is a blue-skinned alien who adopted Quill as a tragic boy. Played by Michael Rooker in probably the most commanding, badass role of his career, his weapon of choice a psychically controlled lethal arrow, Yondu also wants the Orb. And to show Green Arrow who’s da boss.

Josh Brolin is villain of the galaxy, Thanos The Hands Of Fate, brother to Manos The Hands Of Fate, who also runs an evil cult. Gamora is his step-daughter, who hates him because he named her after a turtle and because his real daughter has better ta-tas (Karen Gillan as Nebula).

Thanos’s Torgo is Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace, Legolas’s father in THE HOBBIT). He orates Shakespearean, carries a deadly thunder-mallet, and is way more terrifying than most villains because he doesn’t just kill you, he accuses you first.

Djimon Housou is bounty hunter Korath, mighty wearer of painful contact lenses. There’s Glenn Close as leader of some planet, John C. Reilly as her bottom bitch; there’s Benicio Del Toro in an ominous cameo as The Collector, Peter Serafinowicz (the concierge in COUPLES RETREAT) as a pilot in a poignant death-struggle, and there’s Stan Lee as “Xandarian Ladies’ Man.”

All these characters whizbang through this kinetic storyline deftly, with powerful and poignant payoffs to their participation. Written by Nicole Perlman (THOR) and James Gunn (SUPER), and directed by Gunn, GUARDIANS is heavy on dark comedy, with explosive production values, excellent direction and thrilling action scenes; people narrowly escape from explosions, walk in slow motion towards the camera, save their loved ones as they learn sacrifice, discover how to work as a team, are inundated with 80s pop culture references and jive to Bowie’s Moonage Daydream and Blue Swede’s Hooked On a Feeling…

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is an unexpected lightning strike that needs to be captured in that mythical bottle, or its bedazzlement will be lost to the galactic slipstream… As Groot might say, paraphrasing Roy Scheider in JAWS, “I am Groot!”

Uh, that means, “They’re going to need a bigger bottle.”

END

Pwnage.

Two couples whose sons were involved in a school fight meet to discuss how to deal with their sons. And fight.

Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly are Penelope and Michael Longstreet, whose son lost two teeth being hit with a stick by the son of Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz). Film opens with Penelope at her computer, surrounded by the others, writing a statement about the incident. There is disagreement over the phrase “armed with a stick,” which is resolved quickly to “carrying a stick,” but we immediately sense the façade of amity that every character has thrown up around themselves to get past this uncomfortable meeting with strangers.

The beauty is in watching the erosion of that façade.

Director Roman Polanski (THE PIANIST) turns Yasmina Reza‘s French play, LE DIEU DU CARNAGE, into a quirky little thought experiment. “Thought experiment” because, though this situation has been lived by countless parents over the millennia, Reza decides to keep the two sets of parents in the same room until entropy is attained. (Entropy: not just a thermodynamic steady state, a German doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration.) Because if you draw anything out long enough – friendship, marriage, treaty, contract – it will disintegrate due to humans being human.

The four actors give excellent performances in this well-directed dramedy, constantly reminding themselves they are more sophisticated than savages and that they should not descend to incivility. Yet we can see where all roads are leading, as they alternately blame, bond, accede guilt, ally, bully, vent, belittle, taunt, accuse, and ultimately resolve nothing.

Reilly seems slightly miscast (a talented actor whom we’ve grown accustomed to seeing as a screwball), yet he holds his own against these Actor’s Actor heavyweights. His Michael is self-admittedly a gruff guy who is faking civility, and would probably not even care about his son’s incident if it were not for his wife Penelope forcing the drama.

Waltz (in the few English roles we’ve seen him in), as always, the most studied, sober and deepest in the skin of his lawyer Alan, allowing himself a breeziness that shows us he is also not too concerned about the universe collapsing on what were once simply boys-will-be-boys actions. Though he would much rather be someplace else, almost seeming callous about the fates of the two boys, he still manages to sporadically exude that snakecharm ominousness that defined him in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. When Penelope mentions his son “deliberately” hitting her son, his smile is toxic, “Why do you have to slip in the word ‘deliberately’? What kind of lesson are you trying to teach me?”

Winslet is at turns a gracious guest and drunken alleycat. Like the rest of the cast, her Nancy is trying in vain to be upper class and almost succeeding. Vomiting over Penelope’s art books doesn’t help, her “proper” demeanor further deteriorating under alcohol.

Foster’s Penelope has staked the most emotion in this issue, an almost fanatical desire to see justice meted out. Towards the end, her reactions are extreme; it seems like director Polanski, though he must have filmed enough varied takes, used the takes that were not the most appropriate reactions for the scene. But then, all the characters seem to get in on the inappropriate reactions, calling each names, insulting each others’ sons, emasculating, denigrating, crying, histrionics; madness which we feel would prompt any sane guests to leave, not with polite or fake excuses, but with an unceremonious “Let’s-go-honey” race to the door. Yet they all remain in the same room without fisticuffs ensuing! Is this the measure of civility? Slander without bloodshed?

CARNAGE is a snide satire on this politically correct era of coddling. In a simpler time, one schoolboy losing two teeth to another was considered part of growing up. Now First World countries seem to think children are delicate crystal angels. This statement was made – sarcastically as hell – on the SOUTH PARK episode “Sarcastiball,” where all gruffness, incivility and energy were leached out of school football games so that kids wouldn’t get hurt. Only in First World countries would anything as small as two missing teeth be turned into a national incident; where people are sooooo sensitive about injuring other people yet hypocritically want to go to war at the drop of a muslim.

Alan tells Penelope: “I believe in the god of carnage. The god whose rule’s been unchallenged since time immemorial.” Sounds less like a case of belief in a god, more like a case of humans being human.

END

For To Make Democratize in America.

In the grand tradition of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visiting Columbia University in 2007 and denying the Holocaust, claiming Iran has no gays and lets women roam free with equal rights, so too is Wadiya’s dictator Hafez Aladeen, granted all courtesies when visiting the United Nations to extol the virtues of his oppressive Middle Eastern government, where the people think they’re free. Because if there’s one thing Middle Easterners know about Americans, it’s that they looove oppressive government where the people think they’re free.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s actual “films” (ALI G INDAHOUSE, TALLADEGA NIGHTS) have never been as biting as his recent “mockumentaries” (BORAT, BRUNO), and the trailers for THE DICTATOR portrayed it like a half-hearted stab at bottling his mockumentary lightning in a feature film. But writer-star Cohen smashes it out of the comedy park, smoothly sidestepping our expectations in this satire on the American perception of democracy. He really has a handle on how far to poke into the redneck chest.

Directed by longtime collaborator Larry Charles, THE DICTATOR finds General Aladeen (Cohen) of the fictional Republic of Wadiya, “invited” to the United States to testify before the United Nations on his secret nuclear weapons program. The American government affords him every courtesy, while biting their tongues at his dictatorship – though not biting them as hard as they should, as the U.S. liaison (John C. Reilly) advises Aladeen bluntly, “While you’re here, you should visit the Empire State Building before one of your sand-monkeys knocks it down.”

Meanwhile, Aladeen’s right-hand man Tamir (Ben Kingsley), bought off by U.S. billionaires, is plotting to assassinate Aladeen and install an Aladeen body-double who will bow to his agenda of making Wadiya a democracy. Tamir gets his chance to install the double when Aladeen is kidnapped by John C. Reilly, who shaves off Aladeen’s distinctive beard, leaving him stranded in America…

Earlier, we met Aladeen in his gold-plated bedchambers (after screwing Megan Fox for jewelry); a lonely man desperate to cuddle, his pathos manifested in his extensive wall of Polaroids, featuring shots of him with superstars he slept with: Halle Berry, Oprah, Ahnuld!… So even though he’s reprehensible, we actually sympathize with this misogynistic, murderous anti-American anti-hero – kidnapped in a strange land, a fish out of water (like CROCODILE DUNDEE, only oilier).

In an attempt to assimilate, Aladeen calls himself “Alison Burgers” and finds work in a New Age shop run by Zoey (an earthy, ‘pit-hairy Anna Faris with a boyish haircut), while he tries to find passage back to his beloved country. He runs across Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas, in a great understated performance), one of his many minions whom he had “executed” in Wadiya – discovering they all came to work in a restaurant in New York called The Death To Aladeen Restaurant. Ever faithful Nadal still wants Aladeen’s name placed alongside the great dictators, like Kim Jong-Il and Dick Cheney, so begins hatching a terrorist plot on New York.

Unfortunately, Aladeen is falling for Zoey (“When the thought of someone’s decapitated head upsets you – that is love”), and recants on his terrorist ways, to Nadal’s utmost disappointment. Aladeen nonetheless retains his dictatorial arrogance – every time Zoey starts talking New Age, he cuts her off with “Who cares?” He starts regimenting her pothead shop, skyrocketing profits and slapping the employees into shape – literally. A hippie employee (Kevin Corrigan) asks Aladeen “Who are you, Osama Bin Laden’s best friend?” to which Aladeen retorts, “He’s not my best friend, although he’s been staying in my guest house since they killed his double. You visit the bathroom after him, you’ll know the true meaning of the word terrorism.” Aladeen also secures for the shop an A-rating from the FDA by holding the inspector’s wife and child hostage (cameo by Garry Shandling as the inspector).

Other cameos: Edward Norton, Aasif Mandvi, Kathryn Hahn, Bobby Lee in a hilarious turn as a lecherous Chinese leader: “Tommy Lee Jones let me roll it in my fingers for $200,000.” Very funny to suddenly recognize all the source music in a foreign language: R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts, Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, et al.

With all the 9-11 references and the lauding of dictatorship, we wonder how THE DICTATOR passed muster with the Gutless MPAA. We can feel the inevitable arc of redemption coming – and it’s going to dilute the comedy, we know it! But wait, Movie Maniacs! This movie is another reason why I constantly call the Gutless MPAA numb-brained. Aladeen doesn’t arc to redemption at all – it only seems that way.

Cohen artfully, insidiously, twists our sympathies to root for the wrong man. Consider: Tamir (Kingsley) wants to assassinate Aladeen, so that he can set up a constitution and democracy for Wadiya, and create trade agreements with America (which all Americans agree is a Good Thing – ousting a dictator, creating democracy and jobs). Aladeen’s double is being groomed by Tamir to deliver a speech declaring his country a democracy, so America should rightfully be rooting for him, no? But we find ourselves rooting for Aladeen to stop his double giving that speech! We invest our sympathies with the reprehensible dictator, who declares tyranny as divine and wants to return to his life of mistreating women, murdering people for small slights and screwing movie stars.

How they work that magic on our simple minds. The true meaning of artful.

And Aladeen’s ending speech? A twisted poke in the eye at American ideals, highlighting how Americans embrace the very poke that blinds them:

Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1-percent of the people have all the nation’s wealth, you could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes, and bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You can ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones, you could torture foreign prisoners, you could have rigged elections, you could lie about why you go to war, you could fill your prisons with one particular racial group and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests. I know all this is hard for you Americans to imagine, but please try. I will tell you what democracy is: democracy is the worst. Endless talking and listening to every stupid opinion. And everybody’s vote counts, no matter how crippled or black or female they are.
— General Hafez Aladeen.

Aladeen sees Zoey and refers to her as he continues: “Democracy has hairy armpits…democracy kisses you because she wants to, not because her father is in the next room chained to a radiator with electrodes attached to his nipples. Democracy is flawed; it is not perfect, but democracy… I love you!” Now before you jump up and shout, ‘That’s the redemption!’ keep in mind his “recant” is simply done for Panty.

We know his calls for “real democracy and a real constitution” are not real because the closing scenes find him being his usual dictator self. Nothing has changed in Wadiya. Ironically – this is what he told us democracy IS: you can say one thing and do another; blatantly lie to the people. Which is what America’s government does. Therefore, General Hafez Aladeen is more “American” than any Democrat, Independent or Republican!

ALADEEN 2016!

END

Hell hath no fury like an Oedipal Complex scorned.

Jonah Hill hasn’t been taking his Oedipal Complex pills!

Don’t you hate it when the funniest parts are all in the trailers? ALL in the trailers. CYRUS is told in 1 minute and 30 seconds: Lonely John (John C. Reilly) meets fun chick Molly (Marisa Tomei) at a party; she is the only one brave enough to join him in a rendition of The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me. He begins dating her. She is something special. Then he meets her son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill); he’s a grown man, lives with her, and is crazy protective of mom; cue ominous conversation. Scary protective; cue shot of Cyrus in undies with a knife. Obsessive protective; cue rumble at wedding. And Molly is oblivious to the undercurrent of tension between her new lover and her old son.

Cue missed comedic opportunities. At least, I think CYRUS is a comedy. That’s what the 1-minute 30-second trailers say. More like a dark exploration of stunted personalities.

Writers-directors Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass can’t seem to retain a grip on what they’re trying to sell, even with such great comedians and actors at their call. Story skews towards disturbing pathos rather than absurd comedy. There are issues raised that are never addressed, such as John’s stalking of Molly after only their second night together; his invasiveness in turning up at her home uninvited, calling too often, being overtly needy. We could surmise that the Duplasses don’t get laid enough because they don’t realize their male lead is damaged goods, though they may be trying to make John a mirror image of Cyrus. But Cyrus has the luxury of being Molly’s son, so can get away with a little pathological clinginess; John’s clinginess, on the other hand, is portrayed as “true love.”

Yup, the Duplasses don’t get laid enough.

Catherine Keener (THE SOLOIST) appears yet again as a heartless bitch. And Matt Walsh (THE HANGOVER) once again appears as a placeholder.

Marisa Tomei is the shining lodestar here, singlehandedly holding the show together with her talent, because Reilly and Hill, excellent comedians though they are, are out of their league when it comes to the nuance of this dark comedy. They simply play two bemused antagonists, Hill opting to err on the side of blankness if he doubts what emotion should be on his face. It is amazing to see Tomei bridge the emotional gap between Reilly and Hill when all three are onscreen together, imbuing the scene with the correct emotions and reactions required to sell it.

Cue wasted talent in forgettable movie.

END

Sock It To Me.

Sock puppet apocalypse!

First, allow me to register a complaint: Tim Burton’s name is bandied about this production like it was his to bandy. Even the intriguing trailers stank of advertising Burton. Tim Burton is one of the producers and his name is for marquee strength only. “9” is solely the vision of animator-writer-director genius Shane Acker.

Shane Acker. We’ll hear from this boy in the future.

“9” is his jaw-dropping, wonder-making, magnificent animation sight-spectacular, and an ambitious stab at conceptual darkness. Gone awry. The concept is lost amidst this action movie that didn’t need to be.

A tiny hessian puppet named 9 awakens in a blasted cityscape and wonders at his existence. He meets others of his kind, all with numbered names, and they embark on a journey of self-discovery while facing monstrous mechabeasts with unknown motivations and fatal inclinations.

The animation in “9” is so unique and the story so strange that it takes viewing and listening to the Audio Commentary to understand the fullness of the world that Shane Acker created. But Acker attempts too much conceptualization and it gets lost. To relate to the motivations of the burlap sock puppets, they must be anthropomorphized, which turns them into little dolls. Which they aren’t.

The Number P

We discover the hessians (which Acker calls “stitchpunks”) are the vestiges of a living soul, the continuance of the scientist’s mind who forged them, each numbered doll purveying a different element of the scientist’s humanity.

Flashbacks via old newsreels reveal a Terminator-like past, where a useful artificial-intelligence machine was put to evil use by “The Chancellor” (no prizes for guessing he’s a Hitler allegory), whereby it gained evil sentience, created more of itself and wiped out mankind.

The machine is the villain – although I don’t like the way “science” is offhandedly blamed as the cause of the evil machine, as if science is a religion or a tangible thing. Science is a methodology.

Number 1 (voiced by Christopher Plummer) is especially aggravating in his denunciations of science-as-religion; an analog for Dr. Cornelius from PLANET OF THE APES, he is a quivering would-be leader who must create the perception of peril so that others will look to him for ad hoc leadership (much like Dick Cheney).

Number 2 is Martin Landau, old and inquisitive, who meets a brutal end. Numbers 3 and 4 are mute tabulators of history. One-eyed Number 5 is John C. Reilly. Stripey Number 6 is Crispin Glover. Number 7 is pretty hot, even without boobies, voiced by Jennifer Connelly (who is a 9 in real life). Number 8 (Fred Tatasciore) looks like Oogie Boogie from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. And Number 9 is Elijah Wood.

Giving voices to the rag dolls demeans the production. The Original 2005 Short for 9 (on the DVD) features a mute 9 and 5 in a well-structured little tale with great payoffs; it is alien, bizarre, excellent. The feature film is homogenized for family entertainment – and with Elijah Wood as the star voice, well, it’s just too comfortable to be darkly enjoyable.

I wonder:

• When 7 gets stabbed by a needle, how come it hurts? The hessians have no bloodstreams, no muscles or tendons to tear into; they can’t go into circulatory shock. Even 9 gets his arm torn and he acts “wounded.” Both 7 and 9 are healed – ironically – by stitching them up.
• The hessians’ eyes are apertures, like camera shutters, enabling them to blink. But if your eyes do not have delicate corneas that need to be constantly lubricated, why blink?
• The puppets were brought to life through an alchemical process whereby the scientist’s soul was sucked out of him via a Talisman into them – explaining how they retain his “goodness.” The evil intelligent machine goes about sucking the souls of the little numbered puppets into itself – therefore why doesn’t it progressively get nicer?

A lot of Running and Screaming just to end on a very mundane preachy note. 9’s last words – when he is left with a nuclear family of himself, sexy 7 and the raggie twins, 3 and 4 – are “This is our world now. It’s what we make of it.”

More fun than losing a sock in the dryer.

END

Steps in it.

Will Ferrell as Adam Sandler and John C. Reilly as a funny Will Ferrell.

Both 40 going on 14. Both thrown together as step brothers when their single parents (Richard Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen) marry; set in their ways, yet forced to share the same house, they must somehow find a way to co-exist – or this mixture of funny, half-funny and deadpan stupid gags would all go to waste.

Splash review on the DVD box for STEP BROTHERS, from Kyle Smith, New York Post: “The funniest film I’ve seen this year.” You don’t get out much, do you, Kyle?

Movie opens with a quote onscreen: “Families is where our nation finds hope; where wings take dream.” The credit reads: “an actual quote from George W. Bush.” Rather than pushing any political stance, I think this movie is trying to tell us it’s going to be about a couple of mongoons.

One of the main gags is, of course, that both Ferrell and Reilly are probably no more than ten years younger than their parents. Once we’re over that one, there’s hardly anywhere left to go, yet the movie keeps trying: thrill to the drama of the parents giving the spoiled step brothers an ultimatum of finding a job or moving out; cringe at the brothers’ attempts at making an informercial while destroying their father’s yacht; vomit at the eventual success of the brothers as an unlikely musical duo, saving the day at a business symposium (where Horatio Sanz solicits one titter from us as an 80’s Billy Joel Tribute Band – “We only play his hits from the ’80s”)…

There are a few good lines, all said by someone other than Will Ferrell, but if you enjoy this movie without being whiskied up enough to put a mule-deer into a coma, you’re probably related to him.

END

La Dumba.

Laugh Hard.

Musicians: this one’s for us.

WALK HARD is not for Guitar Hero fakers or karaoke jackasses or talentless DJs with the audacity to call their fade-ups and fade-downs “mixing.” Let me say it again: WALK HARD is for MUSICIANS; for we who have lived the road, beaten the boards, spanked the groupies, trashed the dressing room, fart-filled the studio, fed the beast our day-job dollar, and slapped the roadies and called them Susan.

Cuke Hard

The public won’t get WALK HARD as deeply as musicians will. And I don’t care. Cherish it, Musicians. Hug it and pet it and call it George.

After the two formulaic, Hollywood-drenched biopics, RAY and WALK THE LINE, set the standard and simultaneously lowered the bar for musician biographies, WALK HARD takes every single cliché from those glossy turkeys and parties with a penis in your face.

John C. Reilly is fictional songwriter-guitarist Dewey Cox, who rises to superstardom on the wings of cliché. Cliché so battering and obvious, we will never look at musician biopics with a straight face again, especially those featuring the seminal artists of the 50’s who rose from dance halls to superstardom – Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly. They ALL look like spoof biopics now!

Dewey finds he is talented at a young age, soon after slicing his brother in half with a machete, Monty Python style, who telegraphs the tragedy: “Everything’s fine when you have such a long life in front of you!” Later, Dewey’s father (tough-as-nails Raymond J. Barry) would constantly lament, “The wrong keed died!”

John C. Reilly lives Dewey Cox, performing all his comedic songs himself, which are actually enjoyable and catchy country/rock and roll tunes. We follow him from his big break in a colored club “where people come to dance erotically,” to touring with Elvis and Jerry Lee, to immediate radio airplay with his hit Walk Hard (“recorded just 35 minutes ago by Dewey Cox”). Dewey meets The Beatles (Jack Black as Paul, Justin Long as George, Paul Rudd as John), experiments with musical styles from Dylan to Bowie; on through the 70s he hosts a TV show and marries Cheryl Tiegs (playing herself, taking the name Cheryl Cox-Tiegs – yeah, say it out loud). In the 80s, Dewey succumbs to mind-altering drugs while trying to compose a magnum opus with ethnic orchestras, trampolines, farm animals and fruit. He even takes a leaf from his friend Will Ferrell’s book and runs naked through the streets during a freakout.

WALK HARD will be compared to the progenitor of this rocku-mockumentary genre, SPINAL TAP, as WALK-HARD’s makers also display actual hands-on, penis-on knowledge of their target.

Writer-director Jake Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow ladle out every single vignette that musician biopic screenwriters have grown lazy on – from teens at the dance warming to Dewey’s high school band and jiggling in ways that make a priest yell, “devil’s music,” to the record producer admonishing Dewey then suddenly loving his song (a riotous John Michael Higgins cameo, “…and if somehow you are able to sing a song now with these boys whom you haven’t even met… but I’m telling you right now, I don’t think it’s going to happen… I’ll give you 15 seconds”), to the whining wife in curlers (Kristen Wiig) cradling three babies, constantly telling Dewey he’ll “never make it” – even whilst he is on the road supporting a number one album. With a penis in his face.

Musicians know these scenes from their own lives, and how Hollywood has compressed them to nut-squeezing idiocy. Kasdan and Apatow display a virtuoso’s knowledge of their subject, down to making the instrument-playing look authentic (a pet peeve of all musicians watching musician movies). The script is as taut as a guitar string and sings like a Les Paul plugged through a Marshall stack on 11.

Johnny Cash and Ray Charles would be spinning in their graves – if they were not laughing so hard.

Slap a roadie for me. With your cock.

END

Up The Creek…

Kevin Bacon is definitely one of those good-guy actors who can pull off a sinister performance when called upon by a lusterless script. In THE RIVER WILD, he white-waters into mediocrity as the Bad Bacon, holding a family hostage to help him navigate Montana rapids after a heist. Is it TOO much of a coincidence that this movie is set on water and his name is … uh, Wade?

I’ve never considered Meryl Streep “hot.” Until now. Something about her unkempt hairdo and the fact that she’s the muscle in the raft. She’s shot the unshootable rapids called “The Gauntlet” before and Kevin needs her hotness for the plot to wend its way toward the whitewater climax.

Writer Denis O’ Neil and director Curtis Hanson aim for DELIVERANCE and get John C. Reilly as Ned Beatty (the slovenly henchman), David Strathairn as Jon Voight (Action Hero) and the annoying kid from JURASSIC PARK as The Annoying Kid From Jurassic Park.

Since I am no rafter, I can’t comment authoritatively on whether the rafting sequences are authentic. For thrills, it was mundane; for direction, it was adequate; for plot, it was necessary; for hotness, Meryl shouting orders at the men and getting all wet – it was priceless.

Strathairn works from the Plot Convenience Playhouse script of finding everything you need to rescue your wife and kid from a Bad Bacon.

END