Comedy Archives - Page 38 of 77 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Norbit (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 4, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Eddie Murphy, Esoterica, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B-
starring Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Cuba Gooding, Jr.
screenplay by Eddie Murphy & Charles Murphy and Jay Scherick & David Ronn
directed by Brian Robbins

by Walter Chaw I looked up George Carlin’s seven dirty words that you can’t say on television and, sure enough, there was the outline for the gags, narrative, reason for being, you name it, of Eddie Murphy’s Norbit: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. Marvin the Martian-talking geek pastiche Norbit (Murphy) is an orphan abandoned on the doorstep of Golden Wonton Restaurant and Orphanage by unkind kindly Asian caricature Mr. Wong (Murphy again), who, in a moment that doesn’t feel like a joke but definitely feels full of rage, confesses that he traded his two-year-old daughter for a yak (in another, he reveals his dream to be a whaler, making him more Japanese than Chinese, but hey, a slant’s a slant). Not connected to anything like atonement or social/racial satire, Mr. Wong hovers there in the background as occasional wise commentary while Norbit loses his childhood sweetheart Kate (Thandie Newton) and marries the monstrous Rasputia (yes, Murphy). Norbit loathes fat people, Asians, women (note the two girls who really, really want to get turned out by Eddie Griffin’s pimp archetype), and black people most of all. I guess this is meant to soften the misanthropy, except it doesn’t really matter that the perpetrators of the screenplay are Murphy and his out-of-work brother Charlie–catching this coattail now after Dave Chappelle rolled up his–if the director is a white guy.

Shortbus (2006) [Unrated] – DVD

May 30, 20072000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Romance

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A-
starring Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, Justin Bond
written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I put John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus on my Top Ten for 2006. This was perhaps more for intent than for execution: ’06 was a pretty lousy year for cinema, and I was just happy to see something from this continent that wasn’t completely asleep at the switch. Still, I think it’s too easy to write the movie off (as many commentators have) as pie-in-the-sky warm-fuzzies. What impressed me most about Shortbus was that its famous nudity and hardcore sex had not been severed from the rest of human experience. Mitchell may not be an aesthetic master, but he’s onto something that few of the would-be indie rebels are: that there is no separating the person from the body, and that sex is as much a social and personal experience as it is a physical one. As the social/personal body is very likely to be a morass of guilt, doubt, confusion, and fatigue, the upbeat ending suggests a covering for a core of despair.

Shrek the Third (2007)

May 17, 20072000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Eddie Murphy, Family, Fantasy, Japan, Romance, Theatrical

½*/****
screenplay by Jeffrey Price & Peter S. Seaman and Chris Miller & Aron Warner
directed by Chris Miller

by Walter Chaw A bad franchise reaches its nadir as DreamWorks Animation's flat-awful Shrek the Third (hereafter Shrek 3) tackles the King Arthur mythos in eighty unwatchable minutes of thunderously boring and occasionally moralizing shit, puke, and hitting gags. The only thing mildly entertaining in the whole mess is a prolonged death scene for a frog followed by a chorus of the things singing a Wings song–entertaining, though not in any way inspired or satirical. As calling the movie dumb would constitute a recommendation for people actually interested in seeing it, better to call it the kind of life-suck where you can feel the irretrievable minutes siphoning out your eyes. To say that children would enjoy it is a smokescreen for the mentally-underdeveloped and emotionally immature to indulge in lowest-common-denominator slapstick and the type of hollow banter that passes for wit in great swaths of greater primate societies. All else fails and toss in a cover of Heart's "Barracuda" by that champion of women's rights and humps Fergie–paired in facile shorthand with a throwaway gag featuring one of the pantheon of fairy tale princesses burning her bra. (Describing it is already more funny and clever than the action itself is in the film.) Prescribing medieval Ever After revisionist feminism to something as essentially useless and inert as Shrek 3 is jarring to the point of total incoherence. If anything, this film is the prime example of what happens when the aim of crafting something for the express purpose of entertaining dullards, mental defectives, and toddlers results in something so middlebrow that it tends toward a vacuum. In its "defense," it's more likely to cause naps than to cause hyperactivity.

Tom Goes to the Mayor: The Complete Series (2004-2006) [Businessman’s Edition] + Anything But Love: Volume One (1989-1990) – DVDs

May 15, 20071990s, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Romance, Television

TOM GOES TO THE MAYOR: THE COMPLETE SERIES
Image A- Sound A- Extras A-
"Bear Traps," "WW Laserz," "Pioneer Island," "Toodle Day," "Rats Off to Ya!," "Porcelain Birds," "Vehicular Manslaughter," "Boy Meets Mayor," "Calcucorn," "Gibbons," "Pipe Camp," "Re-Birth," "Vice Mayor," "My Big Cups," "Bass Fest," "Jeffy the Sea Serpent," "White Collarless," "Wrestling," "Saxman," "Spray a Carpet or Rug," "Surprise Party," "CNE," "Friendship Alliance," "Zoo Trouble," "The Layover," "Couples Therapy," "Glass Eyes," "Undercover," "Puddins," "Joy's Ex"

ANYTHING BUT LOVE: VOLUME ONE
Image C Sound B Extras D
"Fear of Flying," "Deadline," "Burning the Toad (The Jack Story)," "Love and Death," "Dorothy Dearest," "This is Not a Date," "Ch-Ch-Changes," "Those Lips, Those Thais," "It's My Party and I'll Schvitz If I Want To," "Scared Straight," "Mr. Mom," "Just the Facts, Ma'am," "Bang, You're Dead," "Truth or Consequences," "It's Better to Have Loved and Flossed," "Hearts and Bones," "Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," "Breast of Friends," "Hotel of the Damned," "All About Allison," "Proof It All Night," "Three Men on a Match," "Partying is Such Sweet Sorrow," "The Ice Woman Cometh," "Hooray for Hollywood," "Robin Q. Public," "The Days of Whine and Haroses," "Thirty… Something"

by Ian Pugh Equal parts hilarious and repellent, "Tom Goes to the Mayor" boasts an intentionally ugly aesthetic typified by characters who consist of static, colour-drained photographs of their performers sent through Photoshop's "photocopy" function, their "animation" being the occasional change in pictures to depict a new facial expression. Frequently interrupting are live-action interstitials, usually mock commercials for restaurants or gift shops from a local cable network full of blurry star-wipes and awkwardly-superimposed titles. The show's devotion to these stylistic grotesqueries is not burdened by complex plots, its basic formula boiling down to the title itself: naïve doormat Tom Peters (co-creator Tim Heidecker) comes up with an idea to improve the tiny community of Jefferton only to be blamed for the disasters that occur when he submits his plans to the indifferent, self-absorbed mayor (co-creator Eric Wareheim). Of course, Tom's ideas are routinely terrible on their own (as evidenced by the moronic T-shirt slogans (1.5, "Rats Off to Ya!") and non-functioning toy calculators (1.9, "Calcucorn")), a fact which completes a trinity of exploration into an arena right alongside Saturday morning cartoons (recalling cheapo anti-animation fare like "Clutch Cargo" and "The Marvel Superheroes") and public-access television, where quality control is impertinent. Between Jefferton's overload of obnoxious tchotchkes and its smorgasbord of disgusting food platters, "Tom Goes to the Mayor" is uniformly disturbing and sometimes nauseating. In other words, it succeeds spectacularly.

Major League (1989) [Wild Thing Edition] – DVD

May 9, 20071980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Sports

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, Bob Uecker
written and directed by David S. Ward

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Major League doesn't have clichés, it is clichés. The film is a collection of sports- and slob-comedy riffs designed for maximum familiarity and a minimum of creative fat. What you see is what you get–and if you don't like what you see, there are legions of sports fans behind you who will, and have, to the extent of justifying a "Wild Thing Edition" DVD covered in Astroturf. Of course, sometimes we don't want anything beyond obvious underdogs obviously set up to obvious victory, and if you're in the mood for such faits accomplis then you could do a lot worse than to suckle at this comforting cinematic teat. But for the most part, lovers of cinema are warned to not get their hopes too high, while fans of crackling dialogue are advised to seek their kicks elsewhere.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Waitress

May 4, 20072000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance

**½/****starring Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto, Adrienne Shellywritten and directed by Adrienne Shelly by Ian Pugh It takes place in a Mayberry-like Southern landscape and features Andy Griffith himself as a sweet old man with a grumpy façade, so it probably goes without saying that Waitress has the tendency to be a little too syrupy for its own good. But Adrienne Shelly's final film as writer, director, and actress collects its down-home '50s romantic comedy stylings and silly pie-recipe jokes into something that can be genuinely affecting when it tries--and if, through its mawkishness, it reveals Nathan Fillion as…

Pulp (1972) – DVD

May 3, 20071970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott
written and directed by Mike Hodges

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Pulp is so determined to not work on any level that you almost admire it in light of the effort. It's neither a parody of nor a tribute to the pulp genre, neither comedy-thriller nor thrilling comedy–it's just a freak that repeatedly falls flat on its face, leaving you with no choice but to grasp it close like an idiot child. The first time I saw this film, I was mostly annoyed by its determination to short-circuit the fun that might have come from genre trappings, not to mention its refusal to offer genuine alternatives. With a second viewing, it looks a little better, and though not a success, it earned my admiration for being so far out of its depth that a bit of pleasure at its expense was unavoidable. It may have earned an extra half-star were it not also sexist and homophobic in dated ways that have risen to the surface like yeast.

Free Zone (2005) + The Secret Life of Words (2005) – DVDs

May 3, 20072000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Comedy, Drama, France, Ireland, Israel, Road Movie, Romance, Spain

FREE ZONE
*/**** Image C- Sound B Extras F
starring Natalie Portman, Hanna Laslo, Hiam Abbass
written and directed by Amos Gitai

THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins, Javier Cámara, Julie Christie
written and directed by Isabel Coixet

by Walter Chaw The not-at-all-hamfisted allegory of an Israeli woman and a Palestinian woman trekking across the disputed land to find an American who will settle some non-specific debt, Amos Gitai's tediously strident Free Zone opens with ten minutes, uninterrupted, of Natalie Portman weeping over what we discover to be the end of a love affair. It's showy and about as subtle as a kidney-punch–ditto the conception of Portman's passive Rebecca (Portman), the American on the sidelines, a matinee-beautiful beacon who stands by as impassively as Milton's God. That said, the device of a long, car-bound road trip narrated by flashbacks of the protagonists' separate journeys to this journey is, at least for a while, intoxicating. The problem–and it's a doozy–is that Gitai's picture is so blatant an allegory that nothing any of the characters say comes free of dramatic distance or irony, making it impossible to take the film seriously as anything other than ventriloquism for Gitai's, let's face it, unsurprising politics. Nothing wrong with Wailing Wall lamentations about the state of the world, but watching someone shake a fist at a dead horse, long past the hope of resurrection, for upwards of two hours, is tiring and futile. Is there traction in proposing that the film merely mirrors the hopelessness of the Middle East conflict? I guess, but then how many people–specifically, how many people renting a film called Free Zone directed by Amos Gitai–are going to feel edified by that?

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Severance

April 27, 20072000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Film Festivals, Germany, Horror, Hungary, UK

**½/****starring Tim McInnery, Toby Stephens, Claudie Blakley, Danny Dyerscreenplay by James Moran & Christopher Smithdirected by Christopher Smith by Ian Pugh Severance appears to have been crafted with the hope that someone out there with press credentials will use the poster-friendly quote "'The Office' meets [some horror film]," and, in order to guarantee that possibility, it mashes together about eight different subgenres of horror to simmer with the dry British humour. As we begin, David Brent manqué Richard (Tim McInnery) leads his merry band of office drones into the woods for a teamwork seminar in Bulgaria; they share a little…

Hot Fuzz (2007)

April 20, 20072000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, France, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

***/****
starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton
screenplay by Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg
directed by Edgar Wright

by Walter Chaw Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost return after the triumph of Shaun of the Dead with the nominal success of Hot Fuzz: the one a dead-on skewering of/homage to the zombie genre, the latter an equally-dead-on skewering of/homage to the buddy-cop genre that leads one to conclude that the zombie genre is infinitely more fulsome a target than the buddy-cop genre. Though it's clearly the product of smart guys who care about the films they lampoon, there's obviously a difference between making a movie that can stand proudly alongside George Romero's body of work and making one that could keep good company with Michael Bay's. (There's a lot of meat to be mined in a clever dissection of the zombie genre, in other words, whereas most action flicks of this type are already self-parodying exercises in excessive hetero-affirmation amidst much piece-fondling and weeping.) What works best about Hot Fuzz isn't its admirable respect for and similarly keen understanding of films like Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man and Richard Rush's fondly-remembered Freebie and the Bean, but that it, like Shaun of the Dead, functions remarkably well as an example of the genre–something of which most parodies (i.e. arbitrary garbage like Shrek) are completely incapable.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Eagle vs Shark

April 18, 20072000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Film Festivals, New Zealand, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****starring Loren Horsley, Jemaine Clement, Joel Tobeck, Craig Hallwritten and directed by Taika Waititi by Ian Pugh Perhaps the most creatively null film since the remake of When a Stranger Calls, Eagle vs Shark doesn't just feel like Napoleon Dynamite, doesn't just owe its existence to Napoleon Dynamite--it practically fucking is Napoleon Dynamite, and God help you if you need another one of those. The only difference, really, is that it takes place in New Zealand and focuses more on the romantic angle: shortly after she is ousted from her job at a fast-food joint, quiet loser Lily (Loren…

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: Dante’s Inferno

April 17, 20072000s, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Esoterica, Film Festivals

*/****screenplay by Paul Zaloom, Sandow Burk & Sean Meredithdirected by Sean Meredith by Ian Pugh Dante Alighieri (voice of Dermot Mulroney) is a drunken slacker and Virgil (James Cromwell) packs heat in a 21st-century update of The Inferno populated entirely by puppets crafted from paper--and that's about as far as it goes for cleverness in Sean Meredith's Dante's Inferno, but at least the puppets are well-drawn. Although the concept is daring and the toy theatre action is beautifully choreographed, the intrinsic problem in modernizing the first third of The Divine Comedy is that you're more or less obliged to include…

Color Me Kubrick (2006) + The Hoax (2007)

April 10, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Drama, France, Isle of Man, Theatrical, UK

Colour Me Kubrick: A True…ish Story
½*/****
starring John Malkovich, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant, Luke Mably
screenplay by Anthony Frewin
directed by Brian W. Cook

THE HOAX
**½/****
starring Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Marcia Gay Harden, Stanley Tucci
screenplay by William Wheeler
directed by Lasse Hallström

by Walter Chaw Suffice it to say that any picture featuring a sped-up version of the "William Tell Overture" is so drunk on its own whimsy that it most likely sucks with a dedicated vigour. Case in point: Brian W. Cook's twee Color Me Kubrick, which chronicles, sort of, the life and times of impostor Alan Conway (John Malkovich) as he sashays through days of getting free drinks and the occasional hummer by telling people he's the eponymous director. Never mind that Conway doesn't appear to know the difference between Stanleys Kubrick and Kramer, or that Malkovich's portrayal of him is so offensively fey that it could be used as a fright vid at "Focus on the Family" scare revivals–Color Me Kubrick is a grand drag revue without a rudder, and because it's not particularly entertaining, it harbours no purpose great or small. Malkovich is only ever Malkovich in all his alien glory, neatly eclipsing his supporting cast, any momentum in the script or direction, and, ultimately, any pathos in Conway's sad need to be someone else. (More egregiously unexamined is everyone else's sadder need to be in the orbit of celebrity.) Unimaginatively shot and, it can't be reiterated enough, abominably written (one scene has Conway suggesting he's cast John Malkovich in 3001: A Space Odyssey, to which his dinner mate asks, "John who?"–droll, no?), the picture is mainly interesting because, after having sat on the shelf for a while, it's finally surfaced in tandem with Lasse Hallström's similarly-mothballed film about another fabulist, Clifford Irving.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: The Boss of It All

April 10, 20072000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Denmark, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Sweden

Direktøren for det hele***/****starring Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Iben Hjejle, Fridrik Thor Fridriksonwritten and directed by Lars von Trier by Ian Pugh Presenting himself to us as an image reflected in a window, Lars von Trier literally begins The Boss of It All with an assurance that the following hundred minutes will be nothing more than a light comedy not worth "a moment's reflection." He then introduces us to pretentious, untalented actor Kristoffer (Jens Albinus), who has been hired by office worker Ravn (Peter Gantzler) to pose as the company's absentee president in delicate negotiations to merge with an Icelandic…

Blume in Love (1973) – DVD

April 10, 20071970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A Sound A
starring George Segal, Susan Anspach, Kris Kristofferson, Shelley Winters
written and directed by Paul Mazursky

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Paul Mazursky is at once clear-eyed and fogged-up in his hot-button relationship movies. His best film, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, dips its toe into the waters of swingerism then rushes back to the beach–Mazursky immerses himself in the California psychobabble about with-it relationships only to return to standard heterosexual coupling. Similarly, Blume in Love wants very badly to be about cheating, divorce, and the attendant emotional fallout of both, but unfortunately, Mazursky the observer of mores keeps getting tangled up with Mazursky the traditional romantic, meaning he broaches subjects with which he ultimately refuses to deal. Blume in Love is watchable and often compelling when it's doing nothing at all, but it mistakenly turns a blind eye to the astounding solipsism of its protagonist for the sake of love conquering all.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: The Ten

April 8, 20072000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Film Festivals, Mexico, Romance

½*/****starring Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Jessica Albascreenplay by Ken Marino & David Waindirected by David Wain by Ian Pugh Along with ninjas and pirates, Jesus is a popular target of hipster irony because the idea of throwing such a deadly-serious figurehead into a light of silliness, informality, and kitsch seems automatically hilarious--and it may have been, once upon a time, before Jesus bobbleheads, Jesus magic eight-balls, and Dogma's Buddy Christ drove it right into the ground. The joke is so easy, in fact, that I wouldn't be surprised if the notion of Jesus as a prosthetic-leg salesman occurred…

Extras: The Complete First Season (2005) – DVD

April 3, 20072000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Satire, Television, UK

Image A- Sound A Extras B
"Kate Winslet," "Ben Stiller," "Ross Kemp," "Samuel L. Jackson," "Les Dennis," "Patrick Stewart"

by Ian Pugh The oft-invoked reason as to why we indulge in "entertainment journalism" is because it demystifies the culture of celebrity. Proof of star public outbursts and make-up-free faces, in other words, forces them to "our" level of humanity. At first glance, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's BBC sitcom "Extras" feeds into that fascination through parody: Proposed as unreachable titans via eponymous episode titles, the guest stars who tower over "background artists" Andy Millman (Gervais) and Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen) are invariably revealed to be windbags and/or perverts. It's possible to see this as an attempt to deter us from rumour-mongering: Kate Winslet becomes a bitter Oscar bridesmaid ("You are guaranteed an Oscar if you play a mental," she says upon seeing a woman with cerebral palsy), for instance, and Ben Stiller–improbably directing a film about the Yugoslav Wars–presents himself as precisely the kind of loser he plays in the movies but with twice the ego.

Blades of Glory (2007)

March 29, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Sports, Theatrical

*/****
starring Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Craig T. Nelson
screenplay by Jeff Cox & Craig Cox and John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky
directed by Will Speck & Josh Gordon

by Walter Chaw A goodly portion of Will Ferrell's fame has to do with his complete comfort with his body and sexuality. No surprise, then, that Blades of Glory's one-trick pony is straight men doing gay things in what is widely regarded as the gayest sport at the Winter Olympics. Not necessarily that figure skating is dominated by gay men (aside: isn't it?), but that the sight of men in spandex and codpieces pretending to be swans is uncomfortable for great swaths of middle-America and thus subject to ridicule and hatred. The first shot of the film suggests the divide as little Jimmy MacElroy (Zachary Ferrin as a child, the untalented Jon Heder as an adult) joyfully Salchows on an ice rink segregated from the "normals" playing hockey below. Recognized for his nascent useless talent, he's adopted by a megalomaniacal millionaire (William Fichtner in too small a role) who grooms little Jimmy into an Olympic champion whose only rival on the ice is portly sex machine Chazz (Will Ferrell). When the two get into a fistfight on the awards stanchion, they're banned from competing in their division–leading, of course, to their decision to return to glory in the pairs division. I'm not suggesting that Blades of Glory is hateful, really, so much as facile and easy. If you think Ferrell not wearing much as one half of the first man-man figure skating team is hysterical, and if you consider the gag of straight men touching each other's groins for the sake of a spectacle that's already beyond parody to be comedy gold, then have I got a movie for you.

Happy Feet (2006) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

March 18, 2007Adventure, Animation, Antarctica, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, New Zealand, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
screenplay by George Miller, John Collee, Judy Morris, Warren Coleman
directed by George Miller

by Walter Chaw For no other purpose, really, than that I loved its unabashed perversity and darkness, I used to make an annual ritual of watching George Miller’s Babe: Pig in the City. The image of Mickey Rooney in full clown regalia, sopping at an ice cream cone, is the stuff of nightmares, as well as a marvellous example of how much Aussie director George Miller got away with halfway around the world from his financiers. As a kid’s show, Babe II‘s success has a lot to do with it recognizing how familiar is fear and isolation in the life of a youngster, and providing solutions to things that alarm instead of denying their existence. Watching the director’s latest, Happy Feet, the moment Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood, danced by Savion Glover) woke up in a zoo after an odyssey in pursuit of a commercial fishing vessel and was told by his inmate, a HAL-voiced fellow penguin, “Try the water, Dave. The water’s real, Dave,” I realized that we were down the same rabbit hole with Miller, seeing zoo animals as insane at best, made so by the drudgery of routine and the inability to communicate with their jailers. It’s a fertile image amidst Happy Feet‘s most fertile passage (and its connection to the Starchild sequence in 2001 is the second such allusion in a film this month (see also: The Fountain)), one that ends with Mumble tying the secret of interspecies understanding to that old minstrel trick of tap-dancing for a very particular audience of otherwise disinterested aliens.

The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection (1934-1965) – DVD

March 12, 2007****/****, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance, War, Western

THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B+
starring Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Richard Haydn, Eleanor Parker
screenplay by Ernest Lehman
directed by Robert Wise

THE KING AND I (1956)
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson
screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on Margaret Landon’s play “Anna and the King of Siam”
directed by Walter Lang

SOUTH PACIFIC (1958)
*½/**** Image A+ (Theatrical) A (Roadshow) Sound B Extras C+
starring Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, Ray Walston
screenplay by Paul Osborn, based on Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
directed by Joshua Logan

CAROUSEL (1956)
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Ruick
screenplay by Phoebe and Henry Ephron, based on the Ferenc Molnár’s play “Liliom”
directed by Henry King

LILIOM (1934)
****/**** Image B Sound B Extras B+
starring Charles Boyer, Madeleine Ozeray, Robert Arnoux, Roland Toutain
screenplay by Robert Liebmann, dialogue by Bernard Zimmer, based on the play by Franz (a.k.a. Ferenc) Molnár
directed by Fritz Lang

STATE FAIR (1945)
½*/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras A
starring Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, Vivian Blaine
screenplay by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the novel by Philip Strong
directed by Walter Lang

STATE FAIR (1962)
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Pamela Tiffin, Alice Faye
screenplay by Richard Breen; adaptation by Oscar Hammerstein II, Sonya Levien, Paul Green
directed by José Ferrer

OKLAHOMA! (1955)
***/**** Image A (CinemaScope) C (Todd-AO) Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Gordon MacRae, Gloria Grahame, Shirley Jones, Gene Nelson
screenplay by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig
directed by Fred Zinnemann

by Walter Chaw God, The Sound of Music is so freakin’ nice. Nazis are the bad guys, no controversy there; raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens–have you no heart, man? But when I like Rodgers & Hammerstein–and I like them quite a lot, truth be wrenched–I like their ambiguity, their irony, their goddamned fatalism in the face of eternal romantic verities. Consider the animal (jungle?) heat of “Shall We Dance,” cut off like a faucet by the fascistic abortion of The King and I‘s secondary love story; or the persistence of love despite abuse and abandonment in Carousel; or the slapdash kangaroo court that justifies love in Oklahoma!. This is all so much more than the slightly shady (and ultimately redeemed) shyster of The Music Man–this is reality in the midst of the un-, sur-, hyper-reality of the musical form. Yet what The Sound of Music offers up is a military man shtupping an ex-nun with no corresponding sense of fetishistic eroticism. How is it that the two most popular adult Halloween costumes engaged in naughty Alpine sexcapades could be totally free of va-va-va-voom? It’s so relentlessly wholesome that of course it’s the most beloved artifact of its kind in the short history of the movie musical: If you’re of a certain age, the plot of the thing is almost family mythology, resurrected every holiday like a dusty corpse at a decades-long Irish wake gone tragically awry. That ain’t a grin, baby, it’s a rictus.