Waking from Itself.

THE HANGOVER PART III wipes the slate clean. A brand new comedy with the same beloved characters; focus shifted, personalities disordered, breasts augmented.

Sexpot, Dork and Clueless on another wild ride, with Evil Sprite in tow. Except this time, the evil sprite, Mr. Chow, is inadvertently the leading man! And the least likely of the “Wolf Pack” – man-child Alan – finds his arc of redemption!

The Wolf Pack – sexpot Phil (Bradley Cooper), dork Stu (Ed Helms) and clueless Alan (Zach Galifianakis), along with Wolf Pack-adjacent member, Doug (Justin Bartha) – are thankfully not dragged through the same “day-after-bender” situation, as they were in THE HANGOVER PART 2, but rather find themselves pawns caught in a game between two underworld sociopaths. In Vegas. Stu: “Someone needs to burn this place to the ground…”

One of the sociopaths is the squiggly Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong, who appeared as a B-gangster in the first HANGOVER film, then as a jagged plot disintegrator in PART 2; here, driving the plot and involved in all its twists); the other is bellicose kingpin Marshall (John Goodman, from whom Chow stole 11 million in gold, and who may keel over at any moment from ingesting 11 million in hamburgers).

While transporting Alan to a therapy center, the Wolf Pack is accosted by Marshall’s men and brought before Marshall, who orders them to find Mr. Chow (having just escaped from a maximum security prison, SHAWSHANK style), to retrieve his gold bars. Marshall holds Doug as collateral, effectively excluding Justin Bartha from the body of the script again, relegating him to damsel-in-distress once more. But it doesn’t matter in the least, because while the “action” plot revolves around Chow, the “redemption” subplot seeks to make a man of Alan. That’s why there seems to be nothing at stake in holding Doug. The same goes for Mike Epps, reprising his role as Black Doug, Marshall’s henchman, so when Marshall shoots him offhandedly, it makes not one ripple in our sentiments, or in the pool that Black Doug falls into.

Ken Jeong proves he can hold the camera’s gaze compellingly with a devious, deranged performance as Chow, a perfect mix of venom and pathos, playing the other characters like the bitches he terms them: killing his fighting chickens that he feeds only cocaine… and chicken, conning the Wolf Pack into stealing even more of Marshall’s money, partying like Caligula and killing like a hitman. It’s a powerful jumping off point for leading man roles.

And Galifianakis imbues his Alan with an aggressive innocence/ignorance that overshadows the seemingly well-adjusted characters of Phil and Stu. He starts the movie in the worst immature, baby-man condition he has ever been in – buying a giraffe and killing it accidentally. Alan’s father (Jeffrey Tambor) dies of a stress-related heart attack over him, and Alan gives a distracted eulogy where he wishes his mom had died instead. Alan’s family request the boys accompany Alan to therapy, and Alan only agrees to go because of Phil, with whom he has an unrequited ambiguously gay/hero worship relationship. Phil, in a throwaway line, calls the situation: “He just needs to lose weight and find a girl.” And it is this last happy accident (in the form of a trailer trash Melissa McCarthy) that prompts Alan to grow into adulthood.

Heather Graham cameos as Jade, the stripper that Stu married in Vegas, raising her little boy, who is… Grant Holmquist – the same little boy who was the main baby that Alan carted around in THE HANGOVER. A touching scene when Alan comes face to face with this boy – a serious young actor with a great screen presence – and a part of Alan’s growth as a man.

Co-written by Todd Phillips (who directed all three) and Craig Mazin (who co-wrote PART 2), it is quite surprising how THE HANGOVER PART 3 sneaks up on us, amongst the shooting and screaming and sharing of lollipops (ooweh!). An original story that gives nods and winks to its predecessors, but as homage, rather than desperation. In keeping with tradition, this movie ends with a wedding – Alan’s! – and a post-credits scene that is the best hangover awakening of the trilogy. And the most amazing thing to me is… why this movie is so maligned. Every third movie in a trilogy does not have to perfunctorily occupy the same headspace as THE GODFATHER PART III.

People on computers in 2015 are losing their minds. The world is coming apart at the social media seams. So many recent movies released to groans and griping – THE HOBBIT, FANTASTIC FOUR 2015, BATMAN V SUPERMAN, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2… None of these movies has anything substantially wrong with them, the most vitriol coming from know-nothings who think that typing is tantamount to educated opinion.

As Phil says, “It all ends tonight,” meaning their predicament trying to capture Chow in exchange for Doug, but also in the meta sense that the last remaining member of the Wolf Pack has now been married off – their dynamic will never be the same, even if there is another sequel. But what do you social media twits care? Take a picture of your lunch, follow another meme, and text an emoji in lieu of words. That oughta prove how important your uninformed opinion is…

END

Celebrating 40 Years of Stunning Mediocrity.

The American comedy institution SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE continues its tradition of not being funny, by throwing a 40th Anniversary Special and not being funny.

SNL 40 is not only Not Funny, it’s embarrassing, pathetic and painful. Why do these people put themselves through this? Why do they put US through this? Why do audiences keep watching? Excepting a few quality seasons during its formative years, and a handful of good gags and entertaining personalities through its history, SNL has never been a prime cut; longevity seems to be counting more towards SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s comedy legacy than actual quality.

SNL 40, broadcast by NBC on Sunday February 15, 2015, touted as “Comedy’s Biggest Stars Come Home,” boasts a studio audience that consists of everybody who is anybody (from Spielberg down), brings together past alumni, past hosts, shows montages of classic sketches and bits, only has time for a few musical numbers, showcases veteran cast re-doing classic bits, and retains an overall sense of undeserved mutual cock-stroking.

I’m not going to outline a laundry list of bits; in this overlong show, the bits themselves are irrelevant. It’s the overarching impact of this drudgerous wankfest; the cognitive dissonance of continually hearing how “good” it is and yet witnessing exactly the opposite. Bits which are poorly written and badly rehearsed, amateur timing from supposed professionals, forced laughter, titters where there should be guffaws, and sometimes, those uncomfortable silences into which your career spirals never to be resurrected again… We view this whole shenanigan with hands over our faces, peeking through the gaps in our fingers.

It reminds me of the recent Monty Python reunion shows at the O2 arena (Jun 2014: Monty Python Live (Almost)); though that tour was a nostalgic success, even an artistic and commercial success, it was a complete failure in its attempt to recapture the timing and verve and urgency of youth. Which is what reunion shows like that – and this SNL one – are all about. Recapturing our youth. (And of course, selling advertising and merch to us in the process.) To the young or uninitiated, these shows will be a success or failure purely depending on NOW. To we who lived our youth through those original times, these shows succeed or fail on how well they recapture it. And let’s face it, they can’t recapture it. They will always only remain “failed attempts.” But it’s not just that metaphysical youth aspect – it’s the fact that when an old person tries to do something they did when they were young, it just doesn’t look right or read as well as it did when in their prime. It’s a terrible, sad fact of life.

Dan Aykroyd cannot possibly recapture the original “flavor” of his Bass-O-Matic sketch from the 70s. But he tries valiantly. And fails. In one of SNL 40’s first sketches, Aykroyd appears with that cheese-eating grin. He looks old. Really old. And fat. Camera pulls back and we see he is holding up a dead fish, a bass…

Silence.

Not even crickets. It’s just an old fat guy holding a fish. Now one would think that after all the lengths they’ve just gone to, of bashing us with the message that SNL is some kind of mythical laugh factory, that seeing the opening to the “classic” Bass-O-Matic sketch would elicit a cheer of recognition from the audience.

Silence. Because the studio audience (not the old stars, but the civilians) are too young to recognize this 35-year-old sketch! It was never one of the best sketches, but at least the performance in its heyday had a young, vital guy delivering his lines fitfully in a Pythonesque lightning strike. Now it’s just an old fat guy holding a fish. (At least with the 2014 Python shows, when Cleese came on with his dead parrot, stating, “I would like to register a complaint!” the audience’s rousing roar of recognition drowned out the pathos. Here, it was just pathos. This was devil’s territory from the get-go.) There was no way Aykroyd could attain the verve and urgency and timing of his youth. His speech was too slow for comfort, he missed putting one of the fish into the blender, he turned on the blender and it froze… His fake smile went on for miles, but the flop sweat on his soul was glistening hot…

You ask, “Why don’t they just pack it up?” Because this is what they do! What else CAN they do? This is how they made their bones. But recapturing the magic is definitely out of the question after a certain time…

Chris Rock gives a prolonged tribute to Eddie Murphy, who has gone the way of the dodo. The last quality thing he did was …um… uh… Then Eddie himself steps out to raucous applause and proceeds to do two minutes of SNL tradition (i.e. see paragraph 1).

The opening dance number with the somehow-talented Jimmy Fallon and ever-talented Justin Timberlake is spiffy. No complaints there; it retains that just-above-mediocre level that SNL sometimes attains on its absolute best nights.

Then the monologue with old hand Steve Martin (long since Not Funny himself, but somehow squeezing some last driplets of humor from his dead soul). During the monologue, Martin is beset on all sides by superstars who want to host, including Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, Chris Rock, Peyton Manning, Billy Crystal, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon… and then producer Lorne Michaels makes one of his many missteps, in his quest to attract a younger, more current audience (it’s a well-known fact that Michaels has final say on all decisions, good and bad, and all the artists cringe and bow to his every whim, as per WAYNE’S WORLD): Into this lion’s den of icons, Lorne decides to trot out… Miley Cyrus. Wait– Miley Cyrus?! Yes, that class-less hooker whore cunt Miley Cyrus shares the stage with the above legends who have done something useful with their lives. (No, tell us what you really think of Miley Cyrus, Poffy?) God knows how long she had to burnish Lorne’s perineum with that ball-licking trollop tongue to score this spot over other performers closer to the human race.

McCartney tanked. Introduced by Gollum– I mean, Keith Richards, the Beatle’s minstrel, the songster, the legend – bombed horribly. In the first seconds of Maybe I’m Amazed we could hear his voice is non-existent. And it went downhill. Now I’ve even closed the gaps in my fingers. I don’t want to watch. I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to live. At the time of writing, you cannot even find this performance on YouTube – you have to go deep into the TV station’s archives to find it – which means everyone involved (from management to McCartney himself) unanimously agree that it was so bad, it needed the hiring of pro hackers to restrict this video from being posted on YouTube at all costs. They will fail, of course, because YouTube is a behemoth that will eat all of us alive and screaming in the end.

People clapped. You have to clap, right? But now you’re not clapping because you were blown away by the performance or inspired or even mildly impressed (unlike that artistic inspirational perfection of George Harrison and Paul Simon doing Here Comes The Sun and Homeward Bound on SNL in 1976); you’re clapping in pity, that a 75 year old man can kinda sing a Paul McCartney song with a band and everything. Isn’t that special? He gets so excited when they let him out of the home and the boys let him play with them, it’s good for him, great-granddad needs to make some new friends…

The saddest thing is that of McCartney’s tens of thousands of times performing this song, when it hit the atmosphere crackling like a million suns, this SNL 40 abomination (when it surfaces in mainstream social media) is going to be the most codified, the most batted about the internet like cats and tits, commented on and analyzed and critiqued by this generation of twitter twats. Weep for the death of legends. Weep for the death of youth. Weep for Gollum who lost his Precious.

Some apologists might mitigate, Well, a couple of things were good (Billy Crystal asking, “You are Steve Martin, right?; a reasonably enjoyable “digital short” from Sandler and Sandberg, Will Ferrell’s Jeopardy, etc.). Of course a couple of things were good – these are professional comedians, and a stopped clock is right twice a day. But only a couple of things, in a show that is supposedly THE comedy lodestar of the United States? If you were making automobiles or heart monitors, this kind of percentage would be entirely unacceptable.

If SNL 40 had kept it to nanosecond montages of old bits, it could have salvaged a shred of dignity. Instead, each personality dragging their feet onto that supposedly hallowed stage just prolonged an agony that wasn’t going to go away with the constant sucking of Lorne Michaels’ dick.

Here’s to the next 40 years of not being funny.

END

The Birdman Flyeth Higheth.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
— Raymond Carver, “Late Fragment” (opening titles to BIRDMAN)

BIRDMAN exists in a surreal modernism that is wholly self-aware of its connection to reality, reveling in its analogs and satirical digs at Icarus, the Phoenix, superhero culture, and the faux-import of capitalistic success and social media, so us dopey reviewers are not scoring any points by calling down these puns or punchlines as if they were missed gems. Matter of fact, BIRDMAN is also aware of us dopey reviewers hunching here in the fluttering dark, and our proclivity of puling inanities through our poison pens whilst vicariously feeding off the very subjects of our caterwauling.

Get out of our heads, BIRDMAN!

Birdcuke

20 years after turning his back on a major superhero franchise and shunning its limelight, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton, ROBOCOP 2014) is making a comeback of sorts, but not with an easy blockbuster – an obscure play on unforgiving Broadway. Trying to find meaning in his life and art, while fans keep calling him his superhero character from the past and driving him batty. Wait! There’s something screwy going on here… Riggan is Michael Keaton, who, 20 years after turning his back on a major superhero franchise and shunning its limelight, is making a comeback of sorts, but not with an easy blockbuster – an obscure movie about unforgiving Broadway. Trying to find meaning in his life and art, while fans keep calling him his superhero character from the past and driving him batty. Wait! There’s something screwy going on here…

BIRDMAN is, if not a game-changer, one of those films that comes along once in a long while that rattles the cages of cinema. CITIZEN KANE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, PULP FICTION come to mind: movies that marry movie-making technology to the pulse of culture, swirl it in a stream of stars, then supernova the blackness just when we thought it was too safe to go to the movies.

In BIRDMAN’s case, the cages it rattles are those of the superhero genre. Not a superhero movie per se, but a meta-superhero movie, prying at the cinematic world of superheroes from outside of the screen; knowing they exist only on celluloid, knowing their box office is transitory and their stars’ Q ratings ephemeral, yet also aware that their fantasy existence drives the real world economy. And I thought only this side of the screen could do that. But this movie is on that side of the screen. Looking back at itself from this side of the screen at that side of the screen…

Get out of our heads, BIRDMAN!

Apparently it makes no difference to Keaton himself that he is playing this character so close to the real life bone. It’s just a coincidence, and just another role to him – as BATMAN was. It’s people that draw the connections between real and reel life, and create the false perception of “comeback.” One person’s opinion, one review, one retweeted twit, can make all the difference – and even this element is portrayed in the movie, both in a vindictive New York theatre critic (her column denotes whether plays live or die), and Riggan’s sudden YouTube fame, which is brought about not by achievement or virtuosity, but by being accidentally outside in his undies and having to “speed walk” through Times Square to get to the theater. Caught on film. Posted. 300,000 views. Fame. And here he was trying to write, direct and star in a Broadway play, wondering how to ever reach the masses to promote his serious stab at art. It’s an ironic indictment on our utterly pathetic, intellectually dismantled culture – and the funniest thing you will see in film this year. (Just the fact that he “speed-walks” instead of runs or tries to cower in his nakedness. Kills me.)

Yes, BIRDMAN is a comedy. Black. Cynical. Honest. Directed and co-written by Alejandro González Iñárritu (BABEL, BIUTIFUL), it is old school filmmaking done with new school tools. Willfully staged like a play with one roving camera, plot centers around a stage adaptation of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. A play within a play, ambitiously crafted to look like one long unbroken take. Of course, it’s not. And if you possess a modicum of filmmaking dialect, you’ll see where Iñárritu inserts his clandestine cuts. Yet even if the ebullience of one unbroken 119-minute take cannot be achieved in reality, all the individual scenes are actually one take each. Long, flowing, dialogue-driven masterpieces of momentum, unbroken with cutaways or inserts, wonderfully blocked, meticulously planned (the long walks down winding corridors to various rooms are a planning nightmare all their own). In other words, it’s awesome – in the true sense of the word: inspiring awe.

Emma Stone (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN) is Riggan’s cynical daughter, his ex-wife is stolid Amy Ryan (JACK GOES BOATING), his girlfriend, Andrea Riseborough (OBLIVION) (klaxons!–lesbian makeout scene!). His stage starlet is luminous Naomi Watts (MOVIE 43), his ruffled producer/lawyer, Zach Galifianakis (playing it straight, yet funnier than in HANGOVER PART 3). Star of the play is Actor’s Actor Edward Norton (THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL) – even in this movie, playing an Actor’s Actor – creating his own Method reality for himself (for his drinking scenes, he’s got real gin; for his sex scenes, he’s got real wood…).

Throughout, Riggan doubts. He doubts his talent, his cast, his finances, his future, his loved ones, his legacy, and wedging a chisel under each of those doubts, the Birdman himself – a raspy voice in Riggan’s head, a regretful specter clinging to past glories, cajoling him to greatness or self-destruction, we can never quite tell: “We had it all – we gave it away! We handed these posers the keys to the kingdom…” During these interludes, Riggan finds he can move objects with a gesture, smashing glasses against the wall, overthrowing furniture (“They don’t know what you’re capable of!”)… Is he really telekinetic?

That face. Kills me.

To the external world, Riggan maintains he is not in the least regretful of abandoning his tentpole character. (They ask, “Why would someone who plays the lead in a comicbook franchise adapt a Raymond Carver play?” They try to vocalize their astonishment at art for art’s sake with obscure quotes from supposedly learned sources, only serving to broadcast their faux-erudition rather than identify the artist’s drive. Then there are those who simply ask, “Is it true you inject yourself with pig semen?”) But his inner Birdman constantly surfaces (an uncredited Benjamin Kanes in full costume – for the duration, I thought it was Keaton under the mask – look at that distinctive Keaton-esque lip structure!), reminding Riggan he “needs” Birdman as much as Birdman needs him, for continued survival in the hearts and minds of the fickle populace that pay his salary, “a sad overactor grasping at the last vestiges of his career…”

The urgent soundtrack is comprised mostly – of drums alone! Antonio Sanchez. An astonishing achievement.

There are a couple of interludes where the film cannot sustain its energy – when Norton is chatting up Stone. Mike the Actor cultivating Riggan’s cynical daughter, floundering in her “worldly” effluvium that only showbiz brats seem to exhibit (to whit: Jaden Smith). These scenes detract from the film’s momentum, that Keaton drives effortlessly when he is onscreen.

We see a meteor across the sky. An obvious metaphor, yes. An indictment on our shallow dying culture and its latest fad. There may also be a meta-indictment of the way we “need” the escapism of superheroes when we ourselves are so impotent. I’m not sure, I’m still recovering…

Stay in our heads, BIRDMAN!

END

Iron Hangover.

Not exactly the road trip from hell (that honor goes to PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES), but DUE DATE swings so close to hell that you might as well make the detour and visit the gift shop.

Kicked off a cross-country airplane flight for causing a disturbance, his wallet and luggage lost, business traveler Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) must resign himself to hitching a ride with the passenger who caused him to be kicked off, aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis).

Trying to make it back to Los Angeles before the birth of his first child, Peter must tolerate the outlandish quirkiness (some might call it retardation) of Ethan, who carries his dead father’s ashes in a coffee can, has no clue how to approach acting (except to throw in the phrase, “What are you, a girl or somethin’?!” at regular intervals), and isn’t averse to masturbating himself to sleep in a car seat whilst speaking to Peter inches away in the back seat.

We’ve all met Ethan. We’d love to strangle him, as blissfully unaware as he is of his social ineptitude and lack of talent, but we don’t, due to our etiquette of not strangling really really really annoying people that are too slow to realize they are. In this movie, we’d like Peter to do our strangling for us; the fact that he doesn’t, though his temper is often redlining, is what makes the movie believable, grounding it in a hellish reality we’ve all been to before.

Ethan’s foibles (and Peter’s lack of strangling him) get the pair into one sticky situation after the next – bitchbeaten by an irate “handicapable” Western Union employee (ever-dependable Danny McBride), detouring to score Ethan’s drugs from a trailer-trash mother Juliette Lewis (somehow, this role keeps perfectly fitting Juliette Lewis), involved in a massive car accident due to Ethan sleeping at the wheel, are rescued by one of Peter’s buddies (played by Jamie Foxx – which opens up questions on whether Peter’s wife (Michelle Monaghan) is having an affair with Foxx), and are arrested by Mexican drug enforcement officers.

DUE DATE’s comedy works best when pitting the two personalities of its principals against each other: Downey’s insouciant businessman (honed to a zenith in the IRON MAN series) scraping against Galifianakis’s incognizant idiotman (which he has spent his career honing, most notably in the HANGOVER series). In one poignant scene, we actually see these two fine actors stretching beyond their types, when Peter challenges Ethan to do an acting scene in a roadside bathroom, to prove he’s got what it takes to improvise. We can actually witness the point where Galifianakis makes Ethan cross over from “bad performance” (where he throws out the obligatory, “What are you, a girl or somethin’?”) to alluding to his loneliness at the loss of his father. The mark of a good actor is how well he can act badly (as Geoffrey Rush shows us in THE KING’S SPEECH). And then Downey actually tops Galifianakis with tales of his own callous father. To top off that fantastic performance, Ethan’s response to Peter’s tragic tale is uproarious laughter – not just inappropriate, but incognizant of the gravity of relationships, “My father would never do that to me! He loved me!” And that seals this movie as a gem for performances.

Then it jumps the shark.

Written and co-directed by Todd Philips (THE HANGOVER), DUE DATE is not absurdist comedy, so though it can get away with Danny McBride in a wheelchair running hogwild with a nightstick, it can’t just stage a massive chase scene on the freeway from Mexican drug police, with damaged property, stolen property, shots fired, etc. and then have NO REPERCUSSIONS. Is this the real world or David Cronenberg? A question I often ask myself when stuck on a road trip with an incognizant idiotman.

END

Trying to Capture Lightning in an Alcohol Bottle.

“I can’t believe this is happening again!” Ed Helms says in THE HANGOVER PART 2. You and us both, Ed.

This movie’s predecessor THE HANGOVER (2009) was not unique, but worked so well because it embraced a kind of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND willful acceptance of its outlandish premise of stranding a clutch of hooligans and forcing them to find their way home against a ticking clock. It worked so well… they decided to use it again.

Copy and paste. Change slug line from EXT. LAS VEGAS to EXT. BANGKOK. Presto! Sequel! Funding!

Uh, guys… generations have not birthed and died; the Earth’s axial tilt has not reversed poles, and the same people who saw THE HANGOVER probably own a Blu-Ray copy of it that has not even been pushed to the back of the shelf yet. So why are we paying to watch the same movie again?

The “Wolf Pack” returns: unfunny Ed Helms as Stu, sexpot Bradley Cooper as Phil and Zach Galifianakis as dimwit Alan; even beige and uninteresting Justin Bartha returns as Doug to continue being beige and uninteresting.

Stu is getting married in Thailand, native land of his bride-to-be (Jamie Chung) and her brother Teddy (Mason Lee), and invites the pack along to celebrate his last night as a bachelor…

And then this movie – in unbridled audacity – rolls out the same gags we saw in THE HANGOVER: a quiet toast raising their glasses – check. Pan up from principals into the night sky – check. Principals wake in trashed hotel room with a hangover – check. Alan’s head is shaved, Stu has a Tyson-esque face tattoo, Doug and Teddy are missing and a monkey chitters about with Teddy’s finger. And no one remembers anything.

Except us. We remember THE HANGOVER.

Ken Jeong appears as Mr Chow, an elf-like demonic sprite so high on crack the script almost became original. But hang on – that’s how he made his appearance in THE HANGOVER too. And he was naked there. So much for ‘original.’ Before stopping his heart with a massive bump, he ominously offers advice on Teddy’s whereabouts: “Bangkok has him now…”

On with the plagiarism: checking their pockets for clues – check. The missing person confused for someone else – check. Stu has a ladyboy prostitute – check. Mike Tyson – check. End by looking at photos of their lost night on a camera – check.

Only redeeming factor is Galifianakis, whose dimwitted Alan is still confused enough to be funny in places. Even Bradley Cooper’s chest couldn’t save this movie. Ed Helms should just admit that he’s not a comedian and join an accounting firm. And Justin Bartha should go back to being Nicolas Cage’s bottom bitch.

And now: that finger. Teddy’s finger has been cut off, half the movie spent on its recovery, and everyone – including Teddy – seems pretty calm about it when the Happy Ending Flow Chart reunites everyone. When the Wolf Pack finds Teddy, his hand bandaged, I was expecting the first words out of Teddy’s mouth to be, “Where’s my motherfucking finger?!” But everyone’s just happy and gay. Ironically, the movie is giving us the finger. The writers themselves made Teddy a cellist – not a politician or truck driver or office manager, where the loss of a finger might not even matter – No, he’s a MUSICIAN, where the re-attachment of even a mildly inefficient digit will derail his career. Barring exceptional examples like Tony Iommi losing the tips of two fingers, or Rick Allen losing his arm and somehow struggling back to virtuoso status, how can everyone be so blissfully blasé about Teddy’s chopped-off finger?

The original HANGOVER was so good because the protagonists were victims; they weren’t willful drunks or troublemakers, and were only reacting to their out of control situation. We feel less empathy for HANGOVER 2 because though the characters themselves aren’t to blame, we clearly feel the venal hand of the filmmakers (director/co-writer Todd Phillips, and writers Craig Mazin, and Scot Armstrong) willfully putting them in this situation, and willfully making them troublemakers, merely to squeeze revenue from a tried and true formula. Have we learned nothing from the decades of inferior sequels spat at us from the maw of Hollywood?

I can’t believe this is happening again!

END

Movie For Schmucks.

Steve Carell is a schmuck. And in DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, Steve Carell is a schmuck, a bothersome new friend of Paul Rudd, who is not exactly a schmuck, but can’t seem to break into that comedy leading man status that he deserves. We presume his agent and manager and reader must be schmucks.

Carell and Rudd do a fine job with the uneven material they are stuck with, and are surrounded by an exceptional supporting cast that allows us to not feel like total schmucks for wasting our time watching this.

Tim (Rudd) is about to be promoted at his office job. To get in good with the executive crowd, he must attend an executive dinner where the execs hold a competition to see who can bring the biggest schmuck as a dinner guest.

Tim thinks he has hit the loser jackpot when he meets Barry (Carell) by almost running him over trying to rescue a dead mouse from the street (to put into one of his many dioramas featuring stuffed mice, from picnic scenes to The Last Supper). But scatterbrain Barry almost destroys Tim’s life before they can even make the dinner, ruining his relationship, his house, and his chances of promotion.

Jemaine Clement, as Kieran the performance artist, steals the movie effortlessly, departing from his FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS character completely, into an avant-garde beargarden of hilarious fetishism.

Zach Galifianakis is Barry’s boss, Thurman, who has probably been freebasing on General Zod as he wants everyone to bow down before him; he believes himself psychic enough to hold Barry in a state of paralysis with his mind, which Barry encourages by actually being paralyzed when told.

Built and busty Lucy Punch is Tim’s sexually-crazed one-night-stand stalker – a steaming sexy woman who is actually funny as well. Must be the British blue blood.

It’s amusing seeing Ron Livingston in a straight-guy office role, the same “type” he lambasted in OFFICE SPACE.

The great David Walliams (LITTLE BRITAIN) in a relatively straight role, the funniest thing about him, his imposing Swiss investor accent, that sounds nothing like a Swiss accent and even less like an investor.

Bruce Greenwood is Tim’s callous boss who hosts the dinner; Kristen Schaal and Larry Wilmore (THE DAILY SHOW) are some of the talented cast that keep the movie from sinking, and we even see Jeff Dunham and one of his puppets at the dinner (I’m surprised he didn’t win the schmuck competition).

Remade from the French film, THE DINNER GAME (LE DINER DE CONS, 1998), directed by Jay Roach (RECOUNT 2008), DINNER is a reasonable farce that falls apart when we arrive at the actual Dinner For Schmucks! Because throughout the movie, Barry was painted as a true schmuck, but at the dinner, he brings his A-game mouse dioramas. Oh, so he’s simply an eccentric artist! And who looks like the schmuck now trying to make fun of Salvador Dali? (It’s like trying to make fun of Jackson Pollock; sure, the guy is talentless, but to display the force of will to create so much product that trumpets your inadequacy – that’s genius!)

Throughout the story, Barry is an unfocused dweeb, his mind wandering on mundane tangents, with no social graces and clueless on human interaction. But we don’t see this side of him at the dinner – we see the artiste side. Why is Barry suddenly this poignant, passionate soul in touch with the universe through art? To get the Movie Message across, of course.

Shhhh-boing!! Message received! Turns out the real schmucks are the people holding the dinner, because they cold-heartedly laugh at others less fortunate than themselves… But hang on! There’s a difference between people “less fortunate” and actual schmucks. Schmucks SHOULD be laughed at! Barry, for the first part of the film, was a perfect contender for the title of schmuck: incognizant of a woman’s sexual advances, believing his boss could psychically control him, wrecking his friend’s house, relationship, career unthinkingly… His character didn’t arc to arrive at the message – it was rewritten, suddenly making him cognizant of what characteristics NOT to display in public. Leading us to realize screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman don’t really know what they’re doing.

What a coupla schmucks!

END

A dweeb by any other name…

In YOUTH IN REVOLT, ill-defined characters populate a trailer trash landscape, with dialogue trying way too hard to be JUNO.

Even Michael Cera is sick of how dweeby he is. He’s willowy Nick Twisp, who invents an alter-ego to be able to find the audacity to break his virginity with the girl of his dreams, Sheeni (Portia Doubleday). He calls his alter-ego Francois Dillinger, and Cera plays Francois as another character alongside his dweeb Nick, with a pencil mustache and smoking cigarettes with French faux-cool. But this supposedly anarchic muse was not as interesting as the trailers made him out to be.

Nick arcs from being bland, to the realization that The Prick Gets The Girl, to inventing Francois for the express purpose of being a prick – and then allows Francois to become as bland as Michael Cera.

And I thought Jon Heder was a one-note Napoleon. Cera out-one-notes Heder with a character that has plagued us since SUPERBAD. His dual role allows him to stretch about as far as the pinkie he uses to smoke like a European; in such small doses, Francois matters almost not at all.

Thoughtless storyline has Nick getting Sheeni expelled from college by asking another girl to dope her with sleeping pills during classes, so that she would move back to town near him. He succeeds. And when Sheeni discovers his nefarious deed, yet she accepts him unto her teen vagina! Because the script says so.

You lost me at stalker.

Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta, Fred Willard, Justin Long, Zach Galifianakis all have small roles, do nothing, disappear arbitrarily, and pick up an easy paycheck.

I tried to be charitable; asked myself, Were I a teen virgin, would this movie affect me differently? Struggled with that question until my devil cucumber alter-ego set me straight: “This movie is shit!” Oh, alter ego, you’re always so adorably right.

END

Dude, Where’s My Car(eer)?

In DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR?, Ashton Kutcher wakes after a drunken party, doesn’t remember what he did, and spends the movie trying to rectify the previous night’s mistakes. In WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, Ashton Kutcher wakes after a drunken party, doesn’t remember what he did, and tries to rectify the previous night’s mistakes.

It’s nice to see he’s progressed.

Jack (Kutcher) and Joy (Cameron Diaz) are total strangers, who are thrown together when they are mistakenly double-booked into the same Las Vegas hotel room. They’ve both come to Vegas to drown their sorrows, Jack after being fired by his dad boss (Treat Williams) for being a layabout, and Joy after being dumped by her upper class boyfriend (Jason Sudeikis) for being high maintenance, low self esteem.

Jack is with his low-rent lawyer buddy (Rob Corddry, stealing the film), and Joy is with her snitty gal pal (Lake Bell, dying to be Amanda Peet).

Drunken night ensues, and the next morning Jack and Joy find they got married even though they hate each other. Before they can annul, they win a jackpot (Joy’s coin, Jack’s lever pull) – and through the judge stylings of the comedian formerly known as Dennis Miller (whose sharp mind fell to Republican nutjobbery years ago) they are sentenced to stay married for six months in order to claim the cash.

How tormenting it must be for two superhot white American heterosexuals obviously attracted to one another to pretend marriage to each other.

Each tries to annoy or trick the other out of the marriage to claim the money for themselves, with Zach Galifianakis, Dennis Farina and Queen Latifah all cameoing.

I must make mention that in this film, Kutcher has somehow ceased to intrinsically annoy me. By that I mean, he exudes a seasoned maturity as an actor – without comparing him to Gene Hackman or Philip Seymour Hoffman, at least he elevates himself above the Rob Schneider/Napoleon Dynamite set. I will always respect him for his business acumen, but now I can even tolerate him as an actor without having to take my medication. Upside: it’s a good performance. Downside: it’s in this movie.

Each situation where the two antagonists try to outdo each other or force the other to renege on the deal is performed so ineptly, both in the context of the movie and in the actual screenwriting, it’s not even a case of just considering it an old-school farce or a cartoonish bitchslap. It’s just plain stupid – aimed at just plain stupid.

Then there is the underlying, unsubtle message that as they grow closer, they become better people. Now it’s just vomit aimed at vomit.

Joy makes a big issue of “leaving the toilet seat down” but women have lost me on the import of this world-shaking deal breaker: Up or down – who cares?! You’ve got hands – use them! That’s why toilet seats come with hinges! Women call men who leave the toilet seat up insensitive, but isn’t it more insensitive that men have to kowtow to women’s notions of “correct” toilet seat position?

When Joy is forced to show her breasts to a cab driver in lieu of fare, the cabbie says, “There’s nothing like a good breast.” He’s right – Cameron Diaz’s ironing board chest is, in fact, nothing like a good breast.

They hate each other, they hate each other, they hate each other, they love each other. The end. Hard to believe, but DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? was funnier.

END

Loner Class.

UP IN THE AIR is that rare chick-centric movie that doesn’t make me want to vomit or slap someone. It is a story about love, but it’s not a Love Story; it’s a movie about romance, but it’s not a Romantic Movie; it takes us on a bucking and diving flight across the landscape of human emotions and leaves us… up in the air.

Two ships pass in the night. And keep passing.

This movie is refreshing as a bottle of Orange Cream-Mama being shaken and opened in your face. A story about an enigmatic connection between two attractive, intelligent, middle-aged protagonists – not teen hipsters flapping platitudes and doing drugs in tight t-shirts. A movie that doesn’t dumb itself down, nor dumb us down, which surprises even the best of us nihilists.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney, charm working overtime) and Alex Goran (curvy, sensual Vera Farmiga), two Constant Travelers turned on by each others’ elitism, meet at an airport bar and strike up a steamy, traveling relationship, never daring to get closer than a few cities apart. Clooney and Farmiga work beautifully together, underplaying against each other with an easy chemistry that sits on them like favorite sweatshirts.

Ryan’s job is to fire people from theirs, a kind of Termination consultant brought in by corporations too gutless to face their own employees when letting them go. Much like the impermanence of the job market he sluices through like a shark, Ryan’s life is uncluttered and itinerant – that’s the way he likes it: “All the things you hate about flying are warm reminders I’m home.” He describes the time he spent in his apartment last year as “43 miserable days.”

Alex is a little more mysterious, which will prove to be this movie’s trump card.

Ryan’s boss (Jason Bateman) saddles him with a termination novice, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), whose naiveté about career and love is in stark contrast to Ryan’s and Alex’s mature, intelligent take on life, sex and other mishaps. Natalie is an uncomfortable naif in her own skin, representing the flapping teen demographic and spouting the Chick Flick platitudes to prove it. She details her mundane life plan as something worth aiming for, and Ryan’s brother-in-law to be (Danny McBride, in a poignant, subdued role) details the exact same plan later as if it is a fatalistic dead end.

It is during this opening of hearts that Ryan realizes what he is missing. And here is where the movie comes into its own. We’ve all seen that character arc coming, where a guarded character realizes he is missing “opening up to love” and does the Bride-Running-Through-Streets gag to end up with his soul mate and retch vomit splash-on-shoes. But when Ryan realizes he would like a “co-pilot” to share his life, and tries to do something about it – he is thwarted! The character arced, the redemption awaited, and – as so often happens in real life – it was blown to pieces by the complexities of being human. And that bit of realism was beautiful for its left turn.

Directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, UP IN THE AIR and his other auteur work, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (2006), are so much more honest and compelling than that girlie crap he merely directed, JUNO (2007, written by Diablo Cody). Movie’s denouement is a welcome shake to the shoulders, heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Produced by both Reitmans (Jason and father, Ivan), from a novel by Walter Kim, UP IN THE AIR takes the Chick Flick Handbook and tears out the pages on Making Real Men Vomit. Men (and pussy-men alike) can safely watch this whole movie with the person whose purse holds their balls, and not pretend to fall asleep or threaten a brain aneurysm.

Effective cameos from J.K. Simmons as a sacked employee, Zach Galifianakis as a vengeance-crazed sacked employee, and Sam Elliott, whose mustache is now completely out of control.

END

Vegas Knights (without amor).

What happens in Vegas… uhhh, what happened in Vegas?…

It’s not exactly BACHELOR PARTY (1984), but THE HANGOVER is a raunchy surprising stab at lewd, crude, nude immortality.

Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are three friends who wake up in a Vegas hotel room the night after throwing their pal Doug (Justin Bartha) a bachelor party. The room looks like it was just visited by Hunter S. Thompson: a couch is still smoking from being on fire, a hen wanders the premises, Stu is missing a tooth, Alan is missing his pants, there is a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet and they can’t find the groom.

THE HANGOVER reeks of two writers (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) getting hammered one night and trying to talk their way out of getting bitchbeaten by Chinese gangsters. Which is kinda what THE HANGOVER is – one long excuse, wrapped in a rationalization and pinched on the bottom of ludicrous. Todd Phillips (co-writer BORAT) directs this descent into surrealism.

Justin Bartha, who had nothing to do in those Nicolas Cage movies, here finds that even in a movie where he’s got something to do, they can’t find anything for him to do, as he disappears for most of the movie.

Through tiny successive clues – a hospital bracelet, the fact that they’ve got a police car instead of their own car, receipts from various vendors, the name of a wedding chapel – the three friends work their way backwards, revealing their night of debauchery piece by piece. The purposeful story construction wonderfully holds together and never flags, each vignette adding a new comedic element and also another piece to the puzzle.

The friends discover they were victims of the date-rape drug “roofies” – which their doctor calls “Ruphalyn” (upon looking it up, it is called Rohypnol or Flunitrazepam) – which accounts for their lack of memory.

Poffy’s hangover

The three friends share such a tight dynamic we feel we’ve seen them before – and we have. The Three Stooges. Bradley Cooper is the smart, nominal leader, obviously the Moe of the bunch (I’ve not seen him in a more funny, more likeable role, proving he’s got the A-List chops to carry a movie), Galifianakis is the Curly, a wacky cuddly pudding bear using every ounce of his over-weight to milk the hilarity, also shooting his star into A-List territory), and the middle one – er, whatsisname? – is whatsisname here– uh, Ed Helms, the redheaded child of the bunch, proxy for literal redhead Larry. And like Larry, Helms does nothing special except bridge the other two. And his feature song (which describes the gang’s antics) is kinda stupid. But he does marry Heather Graham. She’s the stripper who owns the baby in the closet. (And guys, she gets her knox out for mammary purposes.)

Mike Tyson cameos and shows us why he’s still not an actor.

In a laugh out loud movie reference, when they need to buy back the groom from Chinese gangsters (Chinese kingpin played ever so scrotumly by Ken Jeong), Alan convinces them to gamble for the money, so descends to the casino dressed like Rain Man. (To bring it full circle, Justin Bartha did play a retarded guy in GIGLI. Now the world makes sense again!)

Rob Riggle (THE DAILY SHOW) as a taser-happy cop with the best line, as he calls for a “volunteer” from our friends, “Come here, handsome,” and chubby, bearded Alan steps forward – “No, not you fat Jesus! Slide on back there.”

Shot in and around sunny Las Vegas, with its spanky dialogue and breezy, insouciant verve THE HANGOVER exudes a heady excitement and an overall feeling of blissful meaningless fun – we all relate the Vegas skyline to good times; few of us work there, and even if we had bad experiences there, the boundless possibilities of Vegas still stir our blood to boiling.

And thankfully, as the friends drive into Vegas, with perfunctory aerial establishing shot, the source music is NOT Elvis’s obligatory A Little Less Conversation; instead Can’t Tell Me Nothing by Kanye West. Someone alert Nicolas Cage. The Elvis song, awesome and apropos though it is, has become such a cliché, that for this original departure alone, THE HANGOVER can date-rape me any night.

END