Aladdin (1992) [Platinum Edition] – DVD

October 5, 2004Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
screenplay by John Musker & Ron Clements and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
directed by John Musker & Ron Clements

Aladdincapby Bill Chambers Jeffrey Katzenberg may have revived the American animated feature while he was at Disney, but only one of the hits his reign yielded is worth a second viewing. Where 1989's The Little Mermaid and especially 1991's nauseating Beauty and the Beast tried to pass themselves off as Golden Age Disney (1937 (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)-1950 (Cinderella), for argument's sake), before a certain stateliness loosened its grip on the house style, 1992's Aladdin took its cue from Uncle Walt's twilight years, the Sixties, when he was interested in telling–as he geared up to pass the torch, perhaps–mentor stories (The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book) and pop culture had finally caught up with his incongruous predilections for psychedelia and bohemianism. It's a risk to emulate the period considered the birth of the studio's Dark Ages, and Aladdin is the least spurious movie of Disney's renaissance because of it.

Eddie Murphy Raw (1987) – DVD

October 4, 2004Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Concert Doc, DVD

**/**** Image B Sound B+
directed by Robert Townsend

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Late one night when I was 15, I sat in my parents' basement and enjoyed every vulgar minute of Eddie Murphy Raw on Pay-TV. At the time, I was only marginally more sexually aware than a garden hose–all I knew was that Eddie was saying naughty things and that it was a priori true that naughty things were funny. Alas, some youthful pleasures don't bear revisiting. It's now sixteen years later and I must confess that my second viewing of the film didn't go so well: in the cold light of maturity, it seems like the record of a brilliant performer spouting the worst sort of misogynist drivel and calling it the truth. And while the lightning-fast delivery and easy charm of the man soften the blow somewhat, it's still a depressing waste of his talent that seals Murphy's pact with the devil, which would eventually cast him into family-comedy hell.

Shark Tale (2004)

October 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, Will Smith

*½/****
screenplay by Michael J. Wilson and Rob Letterman
directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman

Sharktaleby Walter Chaw Shark Tale is a soulless platform for the Will Smith persona, here voicing a duplicitous social climber called Oscar who disdains his legacy as a car wash (make that “whale wash”) employee in favour of a feckless dreamlife of bling and adulation. His wishes come true when a series of unfortunate events constructs the impression that little Oscar has slain Frankie (Michael Imperioli), favoured son of Godfather Don Lino (Robert De Niro), with Lino’s “other” son, Lenny (Jack Black), still missing. Dubbed “Shark Slayer” by all of a submerged fish-tropolis, Oscar finds himself a celebrity spokesman, complete with a posse composed of agent Sykes (Martin Scorsese), grouper groupie Lola (Angelina Jolie), and the girl-Friday-next-door with the heart of gold, Angie (Renée Zellweger).

Mork & Mindy: The Complete First Season (1978-1979) – DVD

September 27, 2004Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Television

Image A- Sound B+
"The Mork & Mindy Special," "Mork Moves In," "Mork Runs Away," "Mork in Love," "Mork's Seduction," "Mork Goes Public," "To Tell the Truth," "Mork the Gullible," "A Mommy For Mork," "Mork's Greatest Hits," "Old Fears," "Mork's First Christmas," "Mork and the Immigrant," "Mork the Tolerant," "Young Love," "Snowflakes Keep Dancing On My Head," "Mork Goes Erk," "Yes Sir, That's My Baby," "Mork's Mixed Emotions," "Mork's Night Out," "In Mork We Trust," "Mork Runs Down," "It's a Wonderful Mork," "Mork's Best Friend"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover When you're a kid, you're introduced to the movies and TV shows that pleased your elders and think: did people really believe in this stuff? You see the stilted acting, the forced situations, the alien ways of relating and decide that we've made progress–that we'll never be that dumb again. Then the years go by, and you forget the things you watched as a kid, and for a while, you think you're still living in that sensible golden age–until you revisit those childhood pleasures and gasp in horror. At that point, you realize not only that some of the things you worshipped as a young pup are as stilted, forced, and alien as the aged entertainment you once derided, but also that there are kids alive today who are scoffing at these museum pieces and writing you off the way you wrote off your parents. Such is the case with "Mork & Mindy", a Garry Marshall sitcom to which I was religiously devoted as a credulous six-year-old; now, after enduring all ten-plus hours of season one, I'm forced me to ask: did I really eat this stuff up? And will I burn in cultural hell as a result?

Home on the Range (2004) – DVD

September 24, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Western

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
written and directed by Will Finn & John Sanford

by Walter Chaw It opens with a musical number and a rabbit with a peg leg–and what feels like days later, Home on the Range ends with an ear-splitting action sequence featuring Cuba Gooding Jr. typecast as an over-animated pack animal. Meanwhile, a crass two-dimensional cow is typecast as Roseanne, her prize heifer Maggie introduced onscreen udder-first: "Yeah, they're real, quit staring." Real nice. And the intrigue, such as it is, revolves around yodeling cattle rustler Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid) narrowing his sights on the bucolic Patch of Heaven ranch, no-kill home of stock chickens ("It's a chick thing," hardy har har), a duck, a goat, and some swine.

Silver City (2004)

September 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Mystery, Satire, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfuss, Billy Zane, Danny Huston
written and directed by John Sayles

Silvercityby Walter Chaw The Summitville Mine Disaster in Colorado left over 20 miles of the Alamosa river "dead," so contaminated by waste materials (cyanide chief among them) that it very simply killed all the fish. A good thing, I guess, that there wasn't a sizable human population downstream. A superfund site now and fast becoming a sore election point in a Senate race between A.G. Ken Salazar and beer magnate Pete Coors as third-party interests begin a round of misleading, venomous attack ads, Summitville represents in a way a handy microcosm of the ugliness of the Kerry/Bush presidential election. There's a point when third-party interests and smear campaigns, on either side of the divide, start to demean all of us as a people, feeding on our worst instincts and treating us like dumb, mute animals. The political discourse in our country has devolved into a playground jibe match where it's easy to forget in the mud storm who's the rubber and who's the glue; no great surprise that the general death of conversation in our culture includes the whole spectrum of politics.

Mean Girls (2004) [Special Collector’s Edition – Widescreen Collection] – DVD

September 21, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer
screenplay by Tina Fey, based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman
directed by Mark S. Waters

Meangirlscapby Walter Chaw Plastics instead of Heathers; Lindsay Lohan instead of Winona Ryder; director Mark Waters instead of screenwriter brother Daniel; lunchtime poll: same. The biggest difference between Mean Girls and Heathers is the lack of that unmistakable spark of dark, playful genius. Both the Waters brothers made a splash with their initial public offerings (Mark with the fantastic The House of Yes, Daniel with Heathers), but while Daniel's portfolio is sprinkled with lead balloons like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and the fitfully interesting Demolition Man, he did score with Batman Returns; Mark, alas, has a Freddie Prinze Jr./Monica Potter, a Jason Priestly/Mariel Hemingway, and a pair of Lohans in his deck, making The House of Yes an anomaly, it seems–as outcast from its comrades as Waters's imperfect characters are from his vision of a perversely stolid normality. Not to say that Waters's work post-The House of Yes is without unifying vision, just that his tendencies betray themselves as desperately wanting to be popular. It's a yen that makes Mean Girls actually a little autobiographical, and, probably as a direct result of that transparency, better than it should be.

Saved! (2004) – DVD

September 20, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Satire

½*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit
screenplay by Brian Dannelly & Michael Urban
directed by Brian Dannelly

Savedcap

Hot on the heels of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Mean Girls, Saved! presents the same evil-girl-clique-victimizes-good-girl formula that is still defined by the wicked Machiavellian brilliance of Heathers, the last word on eloquence and intelligence in the bully sub-genre of teensploitation. In the wake of Columbine and the end-of-the-millennium spate of school mayhem, the greatest disappointment isn't the unabated gratification of the jock set, but the fact that school-based satires have yet to find the courage to address the absurdity of reaction post-atrocity while continuing to produce school-based satires at an unabated clip. If anything speaks to the ultimate triumph of the guilty bourgeoisie and the ineffectual leadership in charge of our nation's public schools, it's the glaring inadequacy of our cinema, that most agile and sensitive of our cultural barometers, in reproducing the voice of the oppressed. It's up to television's "Freaks and Geeks" (was, anyway) and NPR's stable of gifted monologists (Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggars, David Sedaris, and so on) to pick up the considerable slack.

Wimbledon (2004)

September 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, France, Romance, Sports, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Kirsten Dunst, Paul Bettany, Kyle Hyde, Robert Lindsay
screenplay by Adam Brooks and Jennifer Flackett & Mark Levin
directed by Richard Loncraine

by Walter Chaw If you go see Wimbledon, the umpteenth edition of Tired Romantic Comedy Theater, it's only because you have a checklist in your head and aren't content with a film that doesn't satisfy every contrivance. There's the meet-cute, the unlikely match, the handsome rival, the gay best friend, the falling-in-love montage, the plot conflict (spouse, parents), the break-up montage, the public apology, the triumphant reunion. Director Richard Loncraine's tepid foray into Richard Curtis territory is rife with the kind of familiar hallmarks that lull throngs of lonesome Mia Farrows to the warm embrace of The Purple Rose of Cairo–a brief respite from the used paperback bookstores that rely on a steady trade of romance novels the way that independent movie stores rely on porn. In fact, there's not that much of a difference between Wimbledon and porn: plot is predictable and secondary to the performers, who provide whatever interest there might be in the enterprise. Everything else is plug and play, so to speak.

TIFF ’04: Palindromes

September 15, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, TIFF
*½/****starring Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Masurwritten and directed by Todd Solondz by Bill Chambers Preceded by the snarkiest, if also funniest, on-screen dedication since The War Zone's "For my father" ("In loving memory of Dawn Wiener"--Dawn being the pre-teen heroine of Todd Solondz's breakthrough feature Welcome to the Dollhouse), Solondz's fifth film, Palindromes, is a virtual sprinkler head oscillating back and forth to spritz everything in the director's purview with venom. (It's his idea of moral ambivalence.) A "palindrome" is something that reads the same forwards and backwards, and by casting several different actresses to…

The Mangler (1995) – DVD

September 13, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Tobe Hooper, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, South Africa, Stephen King, Thriller, UK

*/**** Image A Sound B Extras C-
starring Robert Englund, Ted Levine, Daniel Matmor
screenplay by Tobe Hooper, Stephen Brooks and Peter Welbeck
directed by Tobe Hooper

by Walter Chaw I think there's probably profit in taking the tactic that Tobe Hooper's The Mangler is his shot at the lurid comic book genre and, more specifically, the weird self-abnegating prosthetics opera of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. But I'm not the guy to do it. Sufficed to say that Robert Englund appears in fright latex, affecting equal parts Dr. Strangelove and Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Potter as Mr. Gartley, the decrepit, despotic owner of an old industrial steam laundry that features as its centerpiece the massive, four-story long Hadley Watson Model-6 Steam Ironer & Folder, which sits in the middle of his brick sweatshop belching steam like the boiler in The Overlook Hotel.

TIFF ’04: p.s.

September 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, TIFF
P.S.**½/****starring Laura Linney, Topher Grace, Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Hardenscreenplay by Helen Schulman and Dylan Kidd, based on the novel by Helen Schulmandirected by Dylan Kidd by Bill Chambers Curious that Dylan Kidd, the mind behind the revelatory Roger Dodger, felt compelled to include a "director's statement" in the pressbook for his sophomore feature, p.s., but it's nonetheless an essential read in that it gives the lie to artist intentionality. "From Aristotle to Joseph Campbell to Robert McKee," Kidd writes, "everyone's in agreement: you can't have drama without obstacles...The idea behind p.s. was to tell a story where nothing stands…

TIFF ’04: Sideways

September 12, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
***/****starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Ohscreenplay by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Rex Pickettdirected by Alexander Payne by Bill Chambers Alexander Payne has a gift for wry humour, of course, and in Sideways, there's a nice, sardonic hold on a bathroom door's sign--"MEN"--after Jack (Thomas Haden Church), having learned nothing from a sour indiscretion that netted him a broken nose, starts hitting on a waitress. By the same token, the curlicue noted above is typical of the level of organization, for lack of a better word, in Payne's work, which always…

TIFF ’04: I ♥ Huckabees

September 11, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Germany, TIFF, UK
i ♥ huckabeesI Heart Huckabees**/****starring Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzmanscreenplay by David O. Russell & Jeff Baenadirected by David O. Russell by Bill Chambers David O. Russell's debut feature Spanking the Monkey now bears the mark of Kane. (Citizen, that is.) A funny, caustic mood-piece that heralded the Second Coming of Hal Ashby, it was also an impossible thing to live up to--or down, for that matter, Spanking the Monkey's mother-son incest plot in some ways a modern correlative to Citizen Kane's taboo-shattering demystification of William Randolph Hearst. Russell's work since (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings) has…

The Ladykillers (2004) [Widescreen] – DVD

September 9, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons
written for the screen and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Ladykillerscapby Walter Chaw There's a great line in the Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers: The General (Tzi Ma), asked for his Buddhist perspective on a caper gone awry, offers, "Be as leaf floating down river. Kill old lady." Still, it's a poor blueprint for a film, as the picture locates its narrative rhythm in a desultory, listless noodle that ends right when it threatens to begin. With Tom Hanks playing the Alec Guinness role of affected cad with larceny–eventually murder–on his mind, The Ladykillers feels like an inside joke. (A slapstick gag featured prominently in the previews, for instance, sees Hanks plucking bills from the air in what has become the defining image of his career, from Forrest Gump's feather inanity to Hanratty's dollar bill futility in Catch Me If You Can.) Returning in a way to more familiar ground after the screwball shrine of Intolerable Cruelty, it's nice to see the Coens, credited as co-directors for the first time in their twenty-year collaboration, tackling another caper noir, but it feels more than a little stale this time around, contrived in the way that genius starts to feel when inspiration flags.

The Three Musketeers (2004) – DVD

August 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers
*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Mickey Evans
directed by Donovan Cook

by Bill Chambers I must confess to something like a fetish for the joint screen ventures of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy, animation's answer to The Ritz Brothers. Their 1937 short Lonesome Ghosts is one of the essential building blocks in my love of cinema: I used to own a silent 8mm cartridge of it that could be viewed by handcranking a to-the-eye projector, and I unwittingly taught myself persistence of vision through bored frame-by-frame dissections of Mickey tiptoeing across the floor and Donald losing his cool. And as far as Mickey Mouse is concerned, he has Donald and Goofy in tow in his best colour outings–with a handful of exceptions (such as 1941's guardedly wistful The Nifty Nineties, or the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence from Fantasia) that cast Mickey as an emblem of virtue rather than as a virtuous individual (thus seizing on the iconic resonance of the character's design), Mickey's solo shorts circa the war years are far too polite for their own good. Mercurial Donald and accident-prone Goofy add a much-needed pinch of salt. 

The Marx Brothers Collection – DVD

August 30, 2004Posted in1930s, 1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, Romance, Sports, Western
by Walter Chaw Hand in hand with their release of "The Tarzan Collection", Warner issues seven Marx Bros. films on five DVDs in a box set commemorating the comedy team's MGM output. Diving into the films in this collection, one finds the Marx Bros. in clear decline and willing--because the failure of their final picture at Paramount, Duck Soup, neutered a lot of their courage--to have Hollywood narratives foisted on their unrestrained chaos. A Night at the Opera is the last near-great Marx Bros. film, and it was their first at MGM; A Day at the Races followed before they…

Without a Paddle (2004)

August 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Mystery, New Zealand, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, Dax Shepard, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by Jay Leggett & Mitch Rouse
directed by Steven Brill

by Walter Chaw Steven Brill's Without a Paddle is relentless and brutal–like Alanis Morrissette's version of Cole Porter's "Let's Do It," the torment of it just never ends. Weathered CIA spooks would spill their mother's social security numbers after five minutes of enduring this kind of torture. It's not fair, really–normal people aren't equipped to withstand a cross between The Goonies, Bushwhacked, Deliverance, Surviving the Game, The Great Outdoors, The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, American Pie, Southern Comfort, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Big Chill that borrows the cell phone gag from Jurassic Park III and even a little something from, I kid you not, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It is, in other words, a gross-out slapstick comedy set in the wilderness that is unkind to Appalachians while making a play for cuddly sentimentality despite more than a few moments that are needlessly graphic or just plain grotesque. Blame the brain trust of actors-turned-screenwriters Jay Leggett and Mitch Rouse–or, better yet, blame director Steven Brill, a Sandler crony who proves that sad nepotism does not a director make.

Laws of Attraction (2004) – DVD

August 16, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Ireland, Romance, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, Michael Sheen
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna and Robert Harling
directed by Peter Howitt

by Walter Chaw Utterly mediocre and hence better than most of the romantic comedies cranked out by the Hollywood schmaltz factory these days, Peter Howitt's Adam's Rib throwback Laws of Attraction has the over-polished sheen of an apple waxed and stroked so many times that it's more aesthetically impressive than palatable. The film bears a Sandra Bullock/Julia Roberts checklist for a screenplay, with blacked-out boxes next to: meet-cute (she sticks a pencil in his ear); two musical montages (one happy, one sad); a celebration of bad behaviour (binge-drinking); fetishizing of one metaphor-laden item (broken leprechaun figurine); baguette sticking out of a grocery bag; betrayal of half-hearted feminist tenets by making heroine bedazzled by jewellery and men; betrayal of female gender by having model-perfect heroine have the "earthy" habit of binge-eating and not vomiting; quirky elderly/gay/parental comic relief figure; a scene where heroine falls down; a scene where hero does/admits to bad thing; travel/architectural pornography; and temporary break-up leading to nauseating epilogue. Yep, Laws of Attraction is pounded earth complete with a tiresomely whimsical score by Ed Shearmur, opening titles lifted from "Dynasty", and a streak of potential subversion so neutered that it's completely childlike.

The Princess Diaries (2001) [Special Edition – 2-Disc Collector’s Set] – DVD

August 13, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Romance, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Sound B-
starring Anne Hathaway, Heather Matarazzo, Hector Elizondo, Mandy Moore
screenplay by Gina Wendkos, based on the novel by Meg Cabot
directed by Garry Marshall

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Mention the word "movies" and you're generally deluged with syrupy talk of "dreams" and "fantasy" and "adventure" and all that jazz, yet no matter how much you see this as the devalued coin of our entertainment-journalism realm, you have to admit that this image means an awful lot to an awful lot of people. The least a pop movie can do is live up to such reverence and be a holy object worthy of some worship, marshalling all the beauty and craft that has generally been Hollywood cinema's one redeeming virtue. But somehow, movies that dishonour this basic pact with the audience not only get made, but also ring the box-office bell to the tune of $108-million–that's how much The Princess Diaries managed to rake in during its 2001 theatrical run, despite the fact that it's as beautiful and dreamlike as a sheet of particle board. Once again, I am left with the dilemma: should I hate the filmmakers for generating this slop, or should I blame the audience for swilling it with pleasure?