A shallow ripple in the Force.

Is COWBOYS AND ALIENS a boring western movie, or a clichéd alien invasion movie?

At some point, I wondered whether it was just a tax write-off for Steven Spielberg, who seems to have phoned in his producer’s credit on this one. At least he hired Han Solo.

A cowboy (Daniel Craig) wakes in the desert with no memory and a futuristic bracelet attached to his wrist, which turns out to be a supercool weapon. A classic Eastwood-ian laconic avenger, this Stranger wanders into the nearest town, which is run by a mean-tempered rancher named Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford playing nasty). As the Stranger is run into jail, a strange anorexic woman with catlike eyes, a nice ass and an ironing board chest (Olivia Wilde) skulks around him and makes portentous remarks.

Then aliens attack. Sounds dumb. Plays dumber. At one point, we almost wish that the movie would just remain a good old-fashioned Western, as the production values are top-notch, and fine actors like Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown and Paul Dano are creating memorable, dirt-smeared roles. When mosquito-like extraterrestrial alien ships swoop down and start grabbing people and blowing things up, the tone is meant to shift to fun and action, instead shifting to stupid and eyestrain.

(Note that even though the Stranger has that snappy arm-weapon, Han Solo is the first person to start firing back at the aliens! “Give me a good blaster any day…”)

Dolarhyde (great name, huh?) and the Stranger team up to lead a posse to rescue the snatched townsfolk from the aliens, who have parked their big cigar-like spaceship in the desert and are mining gold.

Poffbacca: a cowboy AND an alien

Like INDEPENDENCE DAY or STAR WARS, the writers’ lack of imagination for the aliens’ battle tactics is astounding: the extraterrestrials have those fancy laser arm-weapons (one of which was stolen by the Stranger), yet when the cowboys attack their ship, what do they do? Run outside naked and start punching everyone.

There are two good aspects to this poorly thought-out art experiment. One is the CGI. Far be it from me to praise CGI as a defining factor of a movie’s quality, but I only mention the Computer Graphics as a comment on the state of the art; the CGI extraterrestrial aliens (which resemble the DISTRICT 9 aliens – no points for originality) are completely IN the movie. There is no doubt at all that we are looking at anything but rampaging extraterrestrial marauders that fully interact with people and horses and the landscape. On the other hand, they are purely used as ‘device’ – no characterization, no depth, just faceless, nameless things that the humans must overcome.

The other powerful aspect of this film is the emotional connection that gradually grows between Dolarhyde and the young Native American Nat (Adam Beach – watch that boy! Oscars in his future!). When Dolarhyde eventually realizes Nat is the surrogate son he wished he had, special effects have already killed him – and through our tears we realize why the great Harrison Ford was chosen as Dolarhyde. Not just for the wealth of Han Solo gags – only Ford could begin as an unsympathetic, cantankerous villain and arc to touching his long-buried heart with such tear-welling effect. Making us weep like Ewoks.

From the comicbook by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and directed by Jon Favreau, with enough screenwriters to guarantee it was going to be a circle jerk, the mashup of genres in COWBOYS AND ALIENS is almost as dissonant as the same mashup involving aliens in INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

Apparently, the overwhelming number of INDIANA JONES fans leaving that movie weeping in outrage was not enough to deter Spielberg from trying to “alien”-ate us again…

END

When Nature Calls Through Its Arse.

You either like Ace Ventura or you want to entrap him in a space capsule bound for the heart of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. If you are of the latter persuasion, don’t read on. It will only prompt you to spend inordinate amounts of money on the space program to construct that black hole-bound capsule.

Jim Carrey once again tears comedy a new black hole as pet detective Ace Ventura in ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS, the Hawaiian shirt-clad sequel to his breakout ACE VENTURA PET DETECTIVE.

More muttonhead insanity for muttonheads. That doesn’t mean this sequel isn’t as bold, brash and bountifully braggadocio as its predecessor; a riotous laugh-a-minute wild kingdom zoo train (but see disclaimer above).

Ace is called out of retirement by an explorer (a game Ian McNiece), to travel to Africa and locate a missing sacred white bat, which will avert war between two tribes. Along the way, he engages in a loogie-fest with the Wachati tribesmen, a test of manly skill with their opponents, the Wachootoo tribe (featuring Tommy Davidson as a maniacal little tribal warrior), is birthed naked by a robot rhinoceros, wrestles a crocodile, is forced into a Wolverine hairdo, deflowers a forbidden virgin tribesgirl, uncovers the whitey corporate plot (with Simon Callow as a contemptuous upper class Brit), and once again talks through his arse.

It becomes obvious from this movie that Jim Carrey’s inimitable performance in ACE VENTURA was no fluke and that his star rising was no accident. Seeing him in action, we realize that the White Boy from IN LIVING COLOR has become a dynamo force of nature that no vagaries of the industry could have stopped. Physical comedians Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Jerry Lewis were from an age long dead – the world was hungry for the next larger-than-life King of Comedy.

Unlike mundane “comedians” like the Ray Romanos, George Lopezes and Larry The Cable Guys (who rely on writing, direction, editing, soundtrack, to convey their stunted comedic stylings), Carrey is able to turn mundane writing and storyline into a visual hurricane of ideas and kineticism, aware of every muscle in his body during every moment of screentime, ever driving to squeeze the last iota of juice from his performance. It is not that he is bombastic – of course he is, that’s Ace – but that he can imbue that bombast with such creativity.

Underneath it all, WHEN NATURE CALLS is a call to nature – the message of conservation spears home loud and clear. You Earth faddies should love that, right?

No matter what you may think of Jim Carrey, he opened the way for a new strand of physical comedy, the likes of which Will Ferrell and Rob Schneider and Jason Biggs should be eternally grateful.

So before you even speak of that black hole, deal with that black hole speaking….

END