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

Thought for Food.

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

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

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

Read my lips.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A masterfeast!

END

Testosterone Country

Get Rich or Die Lifting.

Colors straining against the filmstock like a 2-sizes-too-small t-shirt straining against pectorals, muscles thrumming like rippling duck butter, and planning as meticulous as a grade-schooler trying to get to second base, the whey-protein dramedy PAIN AND GAIN is a flamboyant recounting of a true crime story involving three Florida bodybuilders who kidnap a wealthy restaurant owner and supplant themselves in his affluent lifestyle. If only they had as much brain as muscle.

Mark Wahlberg is dissatisfied gym rat Daniel Lugo, who is inspired by a motivational speaker (Ken Jeong) to seize his destiny. Oh, my destiny! I thought you said seize the first rich person who hires me as their personal trainer. That would be businessman Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub). Lugo cajoles two other like-minded gym rats into his scheme to torture Kershaw into giving up his security passwords – Paul Doyle (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), and Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie).

And everything falls apart like a badly-constructed Bowflex.

Ed Harris plays reluctant, retired detective Ed Du Bois, on the trail of this remarkable case. He narrates the opening: “The event you are about to see took place in Miami, Florida between October 1994 and June ‘95. Unfortunately, this is a true story.” Well, no it isn’t. The actual tale of the Sun Gym gang is completely different from this wild-eyed telling, so in one respect it’s a little uncouth to laugh at the victims of these criminals. We can titter at the cluelessness of the criminals that led to their capture, but the filmmakers (writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and director Michael Bay) paint the victims as unsavory characters themselves that are probably deserving of their ill fates…

The three gym dumbbells have not thought through the Kershaw scheme past the kidnapping. Doyle is also a born-again dumbbell—I mean, Christian, who has just done time, so is affected by the religiosity of Kershaw, who calls Doyle “eldad,” with Doyle calling Kershaw “pepe” (terms of endearment). Lugo explodes at one point, “Stop calling him pepe like you were in the 6th grade together!”

Yes, the performances are hilarious, and I hope it doesn’t affect my card-carrying membership in the Pansexuality Guild, but after watching PAIN AND GAIN, I have a total man-crush on The Rock! He is obviously a great action star and seemingly a very nice guy in interviews, and of course, a body built by demi-gods – but after this role, which showcases not only more of his muscle mass than ever before (oh, dem boulder muscles!), but also his superb comedic chops, I think someone better check outside his house right now to make sure I’m not stalking him. Just as Mark Wahlberg trounced Will Ferrell as a comedian in THE OTHER GUYS, here Dwayne Johnson does the same to Mark Wahlberg! (And let us not forget Johnson’s blazing comedic few minutes in THE OTHER GUYS as well, satirizing his own man-mountain character.)

Doorbal (Mackie) has his own problems, taking steroids that are making him soft downunda, which is coincidental, as the woman who revives that iron bar is a nurse from Australia (Rebel Wilson). Doyle’s stripper girlfriend is Sorina (Bar Paly), the type of woman that makes man-kind give thanks to god-kind: busty, blond, braindead, and a body built for banging.

Lugo decides that Kershaw needs to be killed, which none of them want to do. At first. Then their attempted murder becomes more cause for comedy hijinks, as the gang tries to set Kershaw on fire and burn him in his car. Kershaw miraculously escapes. Then they run over him in their van, all of them arguing over who is responsible for his death, aligning it with who was touching the steering wheel at the time. Kershaw lives through this as well, and makes it to a hospital. This doesn’t stop the gang brazenly planning to walk in and simply smother Kershaw where he lies, until their plans meet with other obstacles – themselves.

Not content with Kershaw’s riches, Doyle tries to rob an armored car, with paint-splattering results, and Doyle and Lugo try to scam a phone-sex business owner, and end up killing him accidentally. Lugo actually makes it to living in Kershaw’s beachfront home and befriending the neighbors, as if he is the new tenant, before it all comes crashing down.

For once, Michael Bay’s swashbuckling direction doesn’t get in the way, and actually works for this outrageous hyper-reality. All deltoid quips and loud colors and hero angles – for the bad guys. While the victims look putzy. We are forced to root for the slimeballs, and there is no good reason why. Is it because they’re lifters? How much do you bench, bro? When they stride three abreast in superhero slow motion, Wahlberg and Johnson are Iron Man and Iron Monger alongside the more streamlined Mackie, who is ironically the chubby-chaser. Wahlberg chants, “I’m hot! I’m big! I’m hot! I’m big!…” As Michael Bay tumescently rolls camera.

You would think the scenes of the gang dismembering the bodies of the phone-sex guy and his wife would give Bay pause on the flamboyance. Nope. It only gets sexier.

Michael Bay makes a funny, entertaining movie about a sordid series of incidents that shouldn’t be trivialized in a comedy. But I get it: Bay shows other people’s pain – to make monetary gain.

END

“What’d you say to us?”

Shelling to a new generation.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES have been around as a merchandising product forever! In a long list of TMNT comicbooks, cartoons and movies, this 2014 reboot is the latest iteration and definitely the turtliest.

Four ninja mutant turtle teenagers (“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous!”) must stop a bladed samurai criminal intent on poisoning New York City and then selling the antidote for a blank check. (Isn’t that the plot of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2? Isn’t that also the real life plot of Big Pharm? Sell the public thousands of unessential medications to create side effects and then sell same public thousands of medications that nullify those side effects while creating others…)

Originally a dark satire Mirage Studios comic by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman (issue #1, May 1984), as with any marketable product that becomes wildly popular, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was overtaken by executives with ponytails and devolved into guys in muppet suits being assfaces.

Adult superhero credibility has been restored to the turtles with director Jonathan Liebesman (WRATH OF THE TITANS) and – I hate to say it! – producer Michael Bay (TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION) in this action comedy drama that brings a hyper-reality grittiness to the ninjitsu reptilians. Set in the modern world with computers and cellphones ubiquitous, with references to Bale’s BATMAN, X-MEN, HARRY POTTER, etc., there is still the rapid cheesy repartee (and cheesy pizza!), still the fact that these mutated turtles were trained in martial arts by a rat, still the skateboarding and outlandish stunts and facemasks that serve no purpose whatsoever. But CGI and motion capture has enhanced all these attributes and the rugged visualization of the turtles sells it to an audience I’m betting is wider than ever before. Box office tells us so.

Matter of fact, the turtles are the best thing about this movie (thankfully – since they are the subject and the title and the stars and the marketable dolls). Pete Ploszek is blue-masked Leonardo (voiced by Johnny Knoxville), Alan Ritchson is red Raphael, Jeremy Howard is purple Donatello, and Noel Fisher is yellow Michelangelo. Dynamic, eccentric, fun-loving and battle-deadly, they retain a familial chemistry while not being maudlin or annoying, and their visual appearance is muscular (pun intended), with their stuntwork and combat skills breathtakingly realized. It’s analogous to watching BATMAN BEGINS, in how it is surprisingly rooted in the real world, so much so that no one ejaculates, “I love being a turtle!” and that out-of-touch surfer expletive “Cowabunga!” is expressly verboten. (By the way, were they mutated with human DNA, to grow pecs and delts and biceps like Franco Columbu?)

Good Lord – Megan Fox! What a useless person. One bleached anus away from being a porn actress. As the turtles’ human reporter friend, April O’Neil, Fox brings her Non-Acting Skills and over-Botoxed lips to a role that could have been played by a Real Doll. Is there anything in this world she is good for? The post-teen contingent leer and wink-wink and imply that sex is her forte or, at the least, her only usefulness on Earth, but fellas, I’m betting she’d ruin even that last attempt at functionality once she opens her weird-shaped mouth and starts yapping incessantly.

Will Arnett is ambiguously-nutless fellow reporter Vernon Fenwick. Let’s establish from the outset, the word comes from on high, we can’t have any chemistry between the two humans – even though they’re in each other’s prime Pumping Paradigm – because that would detract from the camaraderie and poignancy of the turtles’ relationships to each other and their “father” Splinter (the rat, mocapped by Danny Woodburn, voiced by Tony Shalhoub). That’s okay, sez director, Fox can’t do chemistry anyway and Arnett is here as a fifth wheel.

William Fichtner, as with all his roles, is once again magnetic as CEO/scientist Eric Sacks. Love William Fichtner! In his varied roles, we never know which way Fichtner will turn, from his buffed bad guy in THE LONGEST YARD to skinny good guy in CONTACT, and many times ambiguous in-betweener (ARMAGEDDON, THE PERFECT STORM). Here, he is co-creator of the mutagen that transformed the tiny turtles into super shells, and is a good guy until he has to act opposite vapid Megan Fox, whereupon he tries to shoot her. Technically that makes him the bad guy, but in my book, he’s still the good guy.

Turtles must face the indomitable Shredder (Tohoru Masamune), who looks like a Transformer (Oh, Michael Bay, you rascal!) and his organization of black-garbed podiatrists known as the Foot Clan. Only the turtles’ mutagenic blood will create the antidote to the poison Shredder and Sacks have created, so he must keep them alive while trying to kill them. Linear chase movie/action sequences ensue, with the primo gag being the semi-trailer sliding down a snow slope, pursued by the Foot (is one foot running the same as one hand clapping?).

I’ll admit: went in expecting crap; came out feeling… cowabunga.

END

Justice IS blind – so can’t see Truth.

In movies, the good guys always seem to win court cases. Over an ingratiating orchestra swell, no less. But in reality, good or bad has nothing to do with the outcome of court cases. It’s how you play the game. If you can afford to be in the game in the first place.

A CIVIL ACTION is based on a real life Massachusetts court case, novelized by Jonathan Harr, about a group of families suing two factories in their Woburn locale, accusing them of polluting the town water supply and causing the leukemia deaths of their children. The factories were owned by corporations, and though a settlement was reached, even as the pittance was being paid out, it broke the back of the lawyer who represented the families and destroyed the spirits of the already-shattered families.

John Travolta is lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, who informs us during the opening credits that a lawyer would be doing his clients a disservice were he to get emotionally involved with their case. Then for dramatic arc, and in real life it would seem, Jan went against his own principles and tongue-kissed the case to bed every night and woke with its morning breath in his nostrils every day.

Robert Duvall is veteran lawyer Jerome Facher, his doddering, distracted persona disguising a clinical tactician who outplays Jan at every step of the game precisely because he is not emotionally involved. And has no desire to unearth any ethics or truth in the case. When Jan tells him that the families he represents want the truth about the contaminated water, Facher replies amusedly, “Are we talking about a court of law? A court isn’t the place to find the truth… This case stopped being about dead children the minute it entered the justice system, the minute you filed the case.”

William H. Macy is Jan’s accountant, who helplessly watches the firm go broke against his desperate mortgaging of all their homes as collateral and selling all their office furniture; Tony Shalhoub and Zeljko Ivanek are Jan’s snowed under assistants.

John Lithgow is the forceful, biased judge, who plays golf with Facher. From the outset, Jan is battling the judge’s tripwire impatience as the new guy intruding into this Old Boys’ Club.

Kathleen Quinlan heads the group of families suing for the truth (one of her sons is dead), and James Gandolfini is a factory worker who harbors damning secrets about the dumping of waste chemicals. In his words – presaging the credo of what would become his most enduring character – “I ain’t a rat!” (THE SOPRANOS would appear literally on the heels of this movie and change his career forever.)

Jan tell us: “Odds of a plaintiff’s lawyer winning in civil court are two to one against. Your odds of surviving a game of Russian Roulette are better than winning a case at trial. So why does anyone do it? They don’t. They settle. Only one and a half percent ever reach a verdict. The whole idea of lawsuits is to settle – to compel the other side to settle. And you do that by spending more money than you should, which forces them to spend more money than they should. And whoever comes to their senses first, loses. Trials are a corruption of the entire process. And only fools with something to prove end up ensnared in it. And when I say ‘prove’ I don’t mean about the case, I mean about themselves.”

The judge breaks the case into segments, the first three months boring the jury to death with geologic education, in which time Jan’s firm went broke on scientists, physical evidence, soil experts, trying to swerve the case to the emotional hammer of kids dying, all the while being shunted towards bankruptcy by the continual obfuscating and objections of Facher. (In a flashback scene, we see Facher lecturing students about objecting to every detail, pointing out that should they fall asleep in court, their first words upon awakening should be, “I object!”)

In most movies, an eleventh hour revelation drives the Good Guys towards home plate, victory, and that annoying orchestra swell, but in A CIVIL ACTION, even as Jan uncovers damning evidence that would enable him to appeal the case, with an elusive eleventh hour witness, there is no money left for “justice” to be served. And “the law” – ironically – stands in the way: the long standing principle of res judicata, “that a matter once decided in a court of law remains decided – even if that decision flew in the face of reality.”

Co-written and directed by Steven Zaillian, co-produced by Robert Redford (always into “sensible” films with something to say), A CIVIL ACTION is a success as a movie precisely because it is such a major downer. It conveys an infuriating claustrophobia, that maddening feeling that we can’t, in fact, fight City Hall, no matter what Greg Brady says.

Schlichtmann becomes a shell of a man, obsessed with trying to do the right thing, sitting in his bare office with no desk, phones and electricity cut off and no future prospects. And it’s raining outside.

A late scene shows young punks throwing firecrackers across a river on the contaminated land; one of the firecrackers lands in the river and the whole river catches alight.

Movie ends with the Environmental Protection Agency getting involved – one giant institution against another; a clash of the Titans, if you will. In Greek mythology, only a Titan could destroy another Titan; and in the modern obfuscating world of blind justice – does anyone see the irony in that phrase? – it is still impossible for an individual to destroy a Titan, even with the best intentions and the Truth on their side.

Harr’s book ends on a somber, pessimistic note, but the movie was made after the book, with more current information. Closing text informs us that the two offending corps, Grace and Beatrice Foods, were indicted by the EPA and paid 69 million dollars in cleanup costs. Jan is now representing 60 families in New Jersey in another contaminated water case.

Is this guy a sucker for punishment or what?
END

GROUNDHOG DAY with supernatural teeth.

Remember IDENTITY? It’s John Cusack trapped in a hotel again! And just like IDENTITY…

Step into my parlor…

It was a dark and stormy night. A car misses a turnoff, the driver reverses to see the hotel sign; turning down the side-street, he soon parks, runs across a picturesque bridge to a rustic hotel, sheltering himself from the tempest. All staples of a classic horror story – until the driver enters the hotel, into the first twist on the classicism: Mr. and Mrs. Innkeeper fall over themselves trying to convince him their premier room IS haunted (with brochures and tall tales), while the driver impatiently just tries to get the key from them, to get out of his wet clothes.

But this is no average guest who will be jellified by something spooky. The driver is Mike Enslin (Cusack), a paranormal debunker, whose journalistic vocation is to seek out haunted locales and rate them; settling into the room, rapping on the walls, passing sensors over objects, nonchalantly sticking his head up the fireplace, in search of… True Terror. Next day driving home, he assesses the hotel’s creepiness factor into his dictaphone, giving it “five skulls” (out of ten).

He is not easily impressed.

So when he is warned against staying in The Dolphin Hotel’s room 1408 (1+4+8 =13, wink), he takes the challenge, only to find actual pants-browning horror awaits.

The movie “1408” is arguably one of the better filmic adaptations of a Stephen King tale, somewhere between the silly THE HAUNTING (with Liam Neeson, 1999) and the truly scary THE CHANGELING (with George C. Scott, 1980). Rooted in a regular world (APT PUPIL, SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), yet flickering between reality and what could be an internalized dimension (THE SHINING, SECRET WINDOW), 1408 is well-directed (by Mikael Håfström, DERAILED, 2005), though loses something in the screenplay by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewksi. We are thrown so headlong into the setup – of getting the skeptical, arrogant reporter into the haunted room – that Enslin arrives at Being Scared too quickly.

Whereas other hoteliers insist on Enslin’s overnight stay (increasing patronage in their “haunted” rooms by 50%), the manager of The Dolphin, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson, who seems to forget he is allowed to stop being Jules after PULP FICTION), insists otherwise, offering as evidence a thick folder of documented deaths in Room 1408. “It’s an evil fucking room,” he tells John Travolta – I mean, John Cusack.

Enslin, a confident, cynical atheist, mocks Olin’s caveats: “You know why I can stay in your spooky old room? Because I know that ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties don’t exist – and if they did, there’d be no god to protect us from them, is there?” Absolutely true, which is the underlying paradox in all haunted media – Christians who believe in the paranormal cancel out belief in their god (but don’t tell THEM – after all the brain cells they kill to believe the unbelievable, there aren’t any left over to apprehend the reasoning behind “unbelievable”).

Riddled with cheap “gotcha” moments, it is gradually revealed how Enslin’s marriage disintegrated shortly after his daughter’s untimely death (cancer, I think). The movie bravely defends its atheist stance, at one point (during flashback) Enslin ranting to his wife (Mary McCormack) that they should have helped their daughter fight, rather than fill her head with stupidities of “heaven” and “nirvana.” (If you believe you will meet your friends and see God in imaginary after-life, you won’t battle to hold onto REAL life.)

Like Enslin, I’m not easily impressed. And an atheist. So I’ve got to see compelling evidence for Enslin getting so scared so quickly. Mints on pillow, clock radio turning on by itself (playing The Carpenters’ We’ve Only Just Begun), window slamming on hand, hot water spewing from faucets – these are easily-explained physical phenomena, yet it takes Enslin ages to propose, “someone must be in the room.” As a writer and skeptic, that should have been his first reaction without any supernatural leanings; he should expect these tricks, through his experience with determined haunted hoteliers. And with Olin’s forewarnings, he should have gone into this room swinging with the wall-rapping and electronic-sensor routine. Instead, his first reaction is crapping his panties. As if ghosts do exist. That’s my only grumble with 1408. Otherwise, it rolls smoothly on its fears and gears.

Well, kinda. After some mind-twisting haunting comes down the para-dimensional pike, it still takes Enslin ages to use his WIRELESS COMPUTER CONNECTION and/or CELL PHONE. This ain’t 1954 – it’s modern times, so what would be the first thing you’d do if your doorknob fell off, your key broke so you couldn’t exit, and the hotel landline was connected to some eternally-jovial operator on another dimension?

Like any good haunted room encouraging evil, Room 1408 channels Enslin’s inner dread – his dead daughter comes beseeching him, in the most disturbing scene of the movie; not because she turns into some flesh-thirsting monster, but because she quietly re-dies in his arms. Just goes limp. And Cusack does a mighty job of conveying a parent’s soul-tearing grief. Think back on your own life; if your multitudinous regrets were paraded before you as if real, how far into insane would you trip? Truly, our own pasts are more psychologically damaging than any nameless specters leaping to their deaths or lying bloodied on the bed. And after Enslin’s daughter distressingly crumbles to ash, is it really worth throwing in the cliché of walls bleeding? (Oh no, you di’int!)

It’s the classic staging of Man Trapped In Room (and for a guy being harassed by forces unknown, he sure sticks his upper body out the high window a lot) and what we think is the pat resolution is misdirection. It’s beautifully done, making us breathe easier; yet knowing deep down that it can’t possibly be real. A double-double-cross coming up. And the clock radio hints as subtle as a hammer as it keeps sizzling into life with We’ve Only Just Begun…

Only the twisted mind of Stephen King could come up with a twist so devious. But the Room is in for a shock – when Enslin makes peace with himself over his daughter’s death and wife’s separation; when he finds he has nothing left to live for, the Room has no more hold on him.

And he checks out grandly, giving 1408 Ten Skulls.

Was it a triple-cross? He pulls his damaged dictaphone from a box, presses Play, and what he hears is… well, let’s just say, “You can check out any time you’d like but – you can never leave…”

END

That moment when they need volunteers for a horrible space death.

No Dreck on This Trek.

In its swinging skewering of that TV series which featured that Vulcan guy and that Overacting guy, GALAXY QUEST is everything that the SCARY MOVIE parody franchise is not: well-produced, well-written, well-acted – and funny.

Action Man Poffy

Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) is the ex-captain of a television starship not unlike that one that boldly goes where no man has gone before, from a show which was cancelled 20 years ago, GALAXY QUEST. He and his crew, typecast for eternity as the crew of “The NSEA Protector,” fill their weary, laurel-resting days appearing at science fiction conventions, mall openings and autograph signings.

In what must be closer to the scathing truth than any real life series typecastee would care to admit, Nesmith’s crew moan en masse at their fate, which is double-edged: forced to dork themselves and recite lines from 20 years ago, but able to pay the rent for it. Living long. But not prospering. All except for Nesmith, who enlivens his role as action captain just a little too over-dramatically, not unlike that enterprising captain from that 60’s show.

There is ex-Shakespearean, Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman; though the loudest wheel in disparaging the GALAXY QUEST legacy, never thinks to remove the ludicrous latex headgear that buries him in the role of his alien character – the obvious Science Officer to Nesmith’s Cheesy Captain); Sigourney Weaver, a world away from Ripley, giving a Breasts-First performance as Gwen DeMarco (whose sole spacefaring job is repeating the captain’s orders to the computer and repeating the computers replies back to the captain), and the underrated Tony Shalhoub as Fred Kwan (parodying that Scottish engineer fella, but on ‘ludes); and we all know Sam Rockwell‘s character – the crewman who is sent down to the planet with the major stars – only to NOT make it back to the ship alive (you know – for that touch of “realism”), appropriately named Guy – as in “Guy #6.”

As Dane might have elocuted 20 years ago, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shocking them out of their stupor, the Galaxy Quest crew is abducted by an actual alien civilization, the benign Thermians – who over the years picked up transmissions of the series broadcasts, believing them to be “historical documents” rather than fiction – and seek their aid in defeating a real intergalactic villain named Sarris (Robin Sachs, in a fantastically diabolical performance, with makeup effects by legendary Stan Winston).

These “real” space sequences are where GALAXY QUEST pulls its biggest surprise. No quarter is spared in creating stunning space effects and authentic-looking alien monster villains. For the satire to run on steel-biting wheels, it was necessary to make this “real-life” intergalactic fracas as realistic as possible – otherwise director Dean Parisot would have had just another B-Movie on his hands with the cheapness and artificiality exhibited by the actual series he was spoofing!

The Protector crew must assimilate into their television personalities to weather the real intergalactic battle, as the Thermians, led by Mathesar and Teb (Enrico Colantoni and Jed Rees fleshing out their extraterrestrial roles with decidedly alien flair), have based their culture on the GALAXY QUEST canon – from its technical details (the NSEA Protector in operational full scale) to its slogans: “Never give up. Never surrender!”

This movie is to the 60’s series as Spinal Tap was to heavy metal: it captured all the insider jokes that true fans would notice, and laughed WITH the fans, not at them. Dane disdainfully notes Jason’s Shirtless penchant; a hallway for no reason has chompy, crushy things just to serve as obstacles; engineer Kwan’s method for assessing the breathability of an alien planet’s atmosphere is to open the hatch and take a sniff; all the while, Guy wailing whenever unnecessary risks are taken, as – being credited only as “Crewman Number 6” – he is certain he will be the first to die.

The hero-worshipping of the Protector crew by the Thermians lends itself to unexpected poignancy, when Dane, who holds his most famous phrase in contempt (“By Grabthar’s hammer, you will be avenged!”), unwittingly finds an opportunity to utter it, in grave sincerity, to someone for whom it carries worlds of weight – a dying Thermian who regarded Dane as his otherworldly father… How are we suddenly weeping?

GALAXY QUEST affectionately gives the fanboys their due as rocket scientists trapped in dweeb bodies, as ubergeek Brandon (the stammering Justin Long), with fan-researched tech specs, aids in saving the Protector, blowing up Sarris, and winging our heroes Earthward.

But when Sarris appears at the film’s finale (I mean, the villain-surviving-for-one-last-stab had to be exploited, right? Sigourney Weaver can testify to that!), it is up to Jason Nesmith to save the day with a cheese-alicious duck-and-roll and phaser powerblast worthy of… that guy in the yellow jersey (occasionally Shirtless and body-oiled) who made an art form of melodramatic pausing between lines – you know who I mean… by Grabthar’s hammer, the name’s on the tip of my tongue…

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The Genuine Article.

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

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

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

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

Pofflet, Prince of Denmark

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

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

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

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

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

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