Alex & Emma (2003)

June 20, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Luke Wilson, Kate Hudson, Rob Reiner, Sophie Marceau
screenplay by Jeremy Leven
directed by Rob Reiner

Alexandemmaby Walter Chaw We’ve been here with Rob Reiner before, the whimsical fantasy film manifesting in the pretty good (but pretty overrated) The Princess Bride (as well as the cheerfully awful North), while the romance between a prototypical thug and a difficult woman found shape in the Woody Allen film that everyone could agree on, When Harry Met Sally… (and the grotesquely unwatchable The Story of Us). Watching a Reiner film, then, at least post-’80s, is a little like playing Russian Roulette with a pair of eye-gouging forks–and, too often, playing to lose. Not so much an auteur as a bookmark and a warm body, Reiner is the Mantovani of movie directors, and the extent to which you like a tongue bath is a succinct barometer of how much you’ll appreciate his later films. With that in mind, Alex & Emma is so free of conflict and originality that watching it is actually a little like watching good avant-garde cinema: Freed from the constraints of narrative, one enters something like a fugue state, where the images flit by on screen in the simulacrum of sense, eliciting meanings in ironic counterpoint to traditional significance.

Laurel Canyon (2003) – DVD

June 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Frances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale, Natascha McElhone
written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko

by Walter Chaw Buoyed by a fantastic performance from Frances McDormand, Lisa Cholodenko’s follow-up to her deft, well-regarded High Art is the disappointing, sprawling, somewhat overreaching Laurel Canyon. In its ambition it resembles Rose Troche’s third film, The Safety of Objects–that picture also saddled with a large, veteran cast and a problem with focus, but most importantly with the responsibility of a young filmmaker given the opportunity, with a bigger budget and well-regarded performers, to produce a piece commensurate in scale to that perceived expectation. The problem with the situation is that more times than not it leads to the type of film that Laurel Canyon is: ostentatious in structure, but in that way also a departure from the succinct character observations that brought the young artist the opportunity in the first place.

Hollywood Homicide (2003)

June 13, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
starring Harrison Ford, Josh Hartnett, Keith David, Lena Olin
screenplay by Robert Souza & Ron Shelton
directed by Ron Shelton

by Walter Chaw The kind of movie where a cop who calls himself “Smokey” is referring to Smokey Robinson (more to the point, the kind of movie where Smokey Robinson makes a cameo), Ron Shelton’s Hollywood Homicide is a diary of decline made by aging filmmakers and aimed at an aging audience. Shelton returns to the old guy/young guy/slut dynamic of Bull Durham while Harrison Ford turns in what is possibly the first “old guy” performance of his career–one that pings poignantly off his patented “weary bemusement” shtick before a finale (a comedy of humiliation) that functions as the only part of the film that really works. Sandwiched between the standard buddy/too-convenient-crime caper formula set-up and that deliriously good conclusion is a laboured exercise in forced bonhomie and a mysterious existential melancholy that feels a great deal like a tired exhalation. Hollywood Homicide is an extraordinarily average film that has something of a distinct, dark intimation nudging at its corners. A shame the Ron Shelton of today is not the Ron Shelton of Cobb.

Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003)

June 12, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Eric Christian Olsen, Derek Richardson, Luis Guzmán, Eugene Levy
screenplay by Robert Brenner & Troy Miller
directed by Troy Miller

Dumbanddumbererby Walter Chaw Harry (Derek Richardson) and Lloyd (Eric Christian Olsen) are imbecile best friends played by two young actors doing their best (which is pretty good) Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey impersonations. Meet-cute’ing in a high school being bilked by an evil administrator (Eugene Levy) and his lunch lady squeeze (Cheri Oteri), the pair tick off the litany of Farrelly-inspired gross-out gags with neither the heart nor the timing. Asians are made great sport of in an antiquated sort of way that isn’t so much offensive as slack, scat-like material is smeared all over a bathroom, Bob Saget gets a paycheck, and Mimi Rogers makes out with Rachel Nichols in a Hef grotto. On the plus side, its entendre-laden script isn’t actually worse than Down With Love‘s.

Mad About You: The Complete Second Season (1993-1994) – DVD

June 11, 2003Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Television

Image C- Sound B
"Murray's Tale", "Bing Bang Boom", "Bedfellows", "Married to the Job", "So I Married a Hair Murderer", "An Unplanned Child", "Natural History", "Surprise", "A Pair of Hearts", "It's a Wrap", "Edna Returns," "Paul Is Dead", "Same Time Next Week", "The Late Show", "Virtual Reality", "Cold Feet", "Instant Karma", "The Tape", "Love Letters", "The Last Scampi", "Disorientation", "Storms We Cannot Weather", "Up All Night", "With this Ring Parts I & II"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Right up there with crop circles and the Bermuda Triangle, one of the great unexplained phenomena of our time is the long and storied success of the '90s sitcom "Mad About You". Somehow its cloying, sub-Woody Allen New York-isms touched a nerve with the public to make it a ratings winner, but it's a collection of fuzzy relationship humour too nice to grab the sensibilities of this viewer. Next to something like "Seinfeld" (whose namesake was constantly being compared–favourably–to "Mad About You"'s star and co-creator Paul Reiser), the show lacked the goods necessary to limp to the end of one season, let alone the seven it would eventually clock.

Film Freak Central does the Sixth Aurora Asian Film Festival

June 10, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, Hong Kong, Japan, Philippines, Romance, South Korea, Thailand

Aurorafestpagelogo6thJune 11, 2003|by Walter Chaw There’s a genuine sense of community engendered by the Aurora Asian Film Festival, down on East Colfax where a great deal has been done to make an old community feel intimate and inviting. Old-growth trees dot the sidewalks and nice cobbled walks bisect the intersections. A lot of construction along Colfax reminds that this area may boom if we ever get Democratic leadership back in office, and a lot of uniformed police officers remind that until we do, economic revitalization is sort of holding its breath down here. On the last night of the festival, I moderated a Q&A with director Gil Portes after an exceedingly well-received screening of his tedious film Small Voices; just before that, my wife and I had dinner at my favourite diner (Pete’s Kitchen) and then dessert at a little Mexican bar across the way that not only had no waitresses who spoke English, but also no menus (and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes playing in Spanish on a beat-up television (it’s better that way)). Nothing like a little cultural displacement to get the juices flowing.

Franchise Boogie: The Jungle Book 2; The Brady Bunch Movie; A Very Brady Sequel; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Die Another Day; The Animatrix

June 9, 2003Posted in1990s, 2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, James Bond, Musical, Sci-Fi

THE JUNGLE BOOK 2 (2003)
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Karl Geurs
directed by Steve Trenbirth

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE (1995)
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christine Taylor, Christopher Daniel Barnes
screenplay by Bonnie Turner & Terry Turner
directed by Betty Thomas

A VERY BRADY SEQUEL (1996)
***½/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Christine Taylor
screenplay by Harry Elfont & Deborah Kaplan and James Berg & Stan Zimmerman
directed by Arlene Sanford

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
screenplay by James Cameron & William Wisher Jr.
directed by James Cameron

DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)
**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade
directed by Lee Tamahori

THE ANIMATRIX (2003)
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
written by The Wachowski Brothers*, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe, Peter Chung
directed by Peter Chung, Andrew R. Jones, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, Mahiro Maeda, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe

(*We defer to screen billing but recognize this is inaccurate.-Ed., 2016)

by Bill Chambers The studios apply their stratagem for summertime theatrical releases to DVD in 2003, having overcrowded video store shelves this month and last with sequels and offshoots to the degree that, a few weeks from today, you will notice that a Matrix film and a Terminator film are vying for attention both at home and at the multiplex. As Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II, and Legally Blonde 2 touch down in theatres, Die Another Day, The Jungle Book 2, and the Brady Bunch movies land on DVD, and then there are the cross-promotions: It seems like everyone wants a piece of the fallout from Universal’s big-screen Hulk, with Fox, Buena Vista, Anchor Bay, and Universal itself issuing “Hulk”-branded discs prior to the feature film’s June 20th opening. Synergy this aggressive may well erase the line separating legitimate media from its ancillaries yet; Fox takes a bold step in this direction with the upcoming From Justin to Kelly, slated to debut on disc a mere six weeks past its theatrical premiere date, thus rendering the latter a glorified trailer for the former.

Man on the Train (2002); Chaos (2001); And Now… Ladies and Gentlemen… (2002); The Son (2002)

June 5, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Drama, France, Germany, Japan, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

L’Homme du train
***/****
starring Jean Rochefort, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-François Stévenin, Charlie Nelson
screenplay by Claude Klotz
directed by Patrice Leconte

CHAOS
*/****
starring Catherine Frot, Vincent Lindon, Rachida Brakni, Line Renaud
written and directed by Coline Serreau

AND NOW… LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…
***½/****
starring Jeremy Irons, Patricia Kaas, Thierry Lhermitte, Alessandra Martines
screenplay by Claude Lelouch, Pierre Leroux & Pierre Uytterhoeven
directed by Claude Lelouch

Le fils
****/****
starring Olivier Gourmet, Morgan Marinne, Isabella Soupart, Nassim Hassaïni
written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne

by Walter Chaw After a brief period where French cinema seemed exclusively interested in the ugliness and violence festering in its anti-Semitic margins, what with pictures as variegated as Baise-moi, Trouble Every Day, My Wife is an Actress, and indeed, Gasper Noé’s sensationalistic Irréversible (which demonstrates a continuing fascination with a tumultuous French cinema in extremis), the old guard begins to reassert itself with its own tales of the underbelly of life displacing the façade of the comfortable upper class. Patrice Leconte’s new film Man on the Train (L’Homme du train) is reserved and slight while Chaos by Coline Serreau (who was born the same year as Leconte, as it happens) tries to soften the cruelty of much of modern French cinema by overlaying it with a patina of feminist uplift and misplaced social satire. Films like Rohmer’s The Lady and the Duke and Godard’s In Praise of Love attempt to draw a line between the nouvelle and the digital age (and Chaos is shot in ugly DV), and pictures like Rivette’s wonderful Va Savoir and now Claude Lelouch’s And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen… act as surveys and auto-critique of the medium itself. With these three pictures, the meta-critical instinct–something of a hallmark of French culture in general and cinema in particular–finds a new voice in, ironically, its older generation of directors. Somewhat apart from all of that is the Dardenne Brothers’ The Son (Le Fils), which is on its own stylistically but looks thematically for common ground in its own tale of obsession and reconciliation.

Adaptation. (2002) [Superbit] – DVD

May 29, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Charlie Kaufman, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, Nicolas Cage

****/**** Image A+ Sound A+
starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Cara Seymour
screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman, semi-based on the novel The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
directed by Spike Jonze

by Walter Chaw A breathless map of the nervous play of axons and dendrites, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. is an intimate cartography of the human animal in all its florid insecurity, ugliness, and potential for passionate pursuit. In relating its tale of screenwriter Kaufman’s existential wrestle with adapting Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, the picture takes on a tangle of Lacanian meta-observation that begins with the nervy creation of a Kaufman-doppelgänger/id-projection and ends with a literal destruction of said phantom. A deceptively simple film given all its contortions and acrobatics, Adaptation. is concerned with the ways in which a man doubts himself, doubts his relationships (as well as the implicit lie of the social “professional smile”), and learns almost too late the damnably difficult (for the intelligent and the sensitive) ability to accept the simple and the obvious at face value. The picture suggests that to be genuinely adaptive is to give oneself over to entropy armed only with the knowledge of self; more than right, its journey is fantastic.

Just Married (2003) – DVD

May 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Germany, Romance

½*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Ashton Kutcher, Brittany Murphy, Christian Kane, David Moscow
screenplay by Sam Harper
directed by Shawn Levy

by Walter Chaw Just as 2002 began with Orange County, a disappointing, somewhat lacklustre comedy (though certainly nowhere near as terrible as the film I’m here to review), 2003 begins with Just Married, a comedy so dedicatedly unfunny that the best way to approach it would be through the perspective that it’s actually meant to be disturbing. In fact, until the first line of dialogue about a minute in, the picture feels like a mordant, tongue-in-cheek, domestic-horror film–something along the lines of The War of the Roses. It doesn’t take long for optimism to give way to extreme predictability, unrelieved puerility, and the creepy realization that Cristophe Beck’s invasive score is a riff on Orff’s “Musica Poetica,” best known perhaps as the main theme to Terence Malick’s own black love story Badlands. There seems a realization, in other words, that a better, darker film about America’s fifty-percent divorce rate is waiting frustrated in Just Married‘s wings.

The In-Laws (2003)

May 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Germany, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Michael Douglas, Albert Brooks, Ryan Reynolds, Lindsay Sloane
screenplay by Nat Mauldin and Ed Solomon, based on the screenplay by Andrew Bergman
directed by Andrew Fleming

Inlawsby Walter Chaw Casting Albert Brooks as the prototypical nebbish and Michael Douglas as a testosterone-geeked maniac is almost too easy, but given a vehicle like The In-Laws, with this much heat invested in its direction, the casting doesn’t seem so much lazy as inspired. Based on a 1979 film starring Alan Arkin and Peter Falk in the roles of put-upon father-of-the-bride and crazed father-of-the-groom, respectively, the remake doesn’t have a single scene as classic as the “serpentine” gag of the first but compensates with the sort of instant familiarity afforded by veteran personalities in comfortable roles. Douglas has been here before in another tale of familial dysfunction, The War of the Roses, and Brooks has never really been anywhere else; the picture, paced like a trip-hammer by director Andrew Fleming, only really fails in its drab newlywed couple and a passel of homosexual gags that are badly dated and bordering on unkind.

About Schmidt (2002) – DVD

May 22, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Jack Nicholson

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Jack Nicholson, Hope Davis, Dermot Mulroney, June Squibb
screenplay by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, based on the book by Louis Begley
directed by Alexander Payne

Mustownby Walter Chaw Alexander Payne’s (Citizen Ruth, Election) third film is his best. He (like Wes Anderson and his third film, The Royal Tenenbaums) has come into his own as an auteur voice for a new American cinema that finds its underpinnings in David Lynch and John Cassavetes–in the Midwest grotesque and the elevation of the banal. In relating a Prufrockian tale of a man reassessing the ruin of his life upon the occasion of his retirement from a life-insurance firm, Payne strikes a balance between absurdity and pithiness, becoming in the process the sort of satire that exposes essential truths about the disintegrating spiral of life and the human condition. Married as it is to another wonderful late-career performance by Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt is heartbreaking and brilliant.

A Guy Thing (2003) [Special Edition] – DVD

May 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Jason Lee, Julia Stiles, Selma Blair, James Brolin
screenplay by Greg Glienna & Pete Schwaba and Matt Tarses & Bill Wrubel
directed by Chris Koch

by Walter Chaw Paul (Jason Lee) is a big-grinning milquetoast one week away from marrying chilly Karen (Selma Blair) when he wakes up next to free-spirit Tiki girl Becky (Julia Stiles) and begins to reassess his straight-arrow existence. Battling a case of the crabs, an excess of fantasy sequences, and the sort of embarrassing in-law situations that remind suspiciously of co-screenwriter Greg Glienna’s Meet the Parents, Paul takes about ninety minutes longer than the audience to realize that he belongs with Becky.

Film Freak Central Does Film Forward

May 13, 2003Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Chile, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Romance, Thriller

MadstonefilmforwardlogoMay 13th, 2003|An interesting move from an interesting company, Madstone Theaters is releasing six undistributed films, each for a one-week alternating run called "Film Forward". The first thought that comes to mind is that undistributed films are most likely that way for a reason. There's an old Tinsel Town axiom that applies to most of the stuff that winds up shelved for a lengthy period of time (View from the Top, A Man Apart, The Weight of Water): studios often don't know when something's good, but they almost always know when something's bad. The idea of "Film Forward" should be appealing, at least intellectually, for the movie-savvy audience that Madstone is trying to cultivate; the question with currency is, as it always is, whether self-confessed movie snobs will put their money where their mouths are.

Daddy Day Care (2003)

May 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Eddie Murphy, Anjelica Huston, Jeff Garlin, Steve Zahn
screenplay by Geoff Rodkey
directed by Steve Carr

by Walter Chaw A little like a drowned earthworm, Daddy Day Care is less repulsive than pathetic, an anemic, flaccid little curiosity with nary a hint of life nor much resemblance to what it was when it was alive–or maybe now I’m talking about its star, Eddie Murphy. After the year Eddie just endured, however, with the elusive “legendary flop” hat trick of Showtime, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and I Spy, I wouldn’t be all that spry either. Eddie’s first flop of the new year is, as unlikely as it seems, somehow more listless and boring than his previous three films, taking its inspiration from the Bush economy and our failed childcare system and making of it a saccharine puff-piece heavy on manufactured epiphanies and potty humour. It’s Kindergarten Cop without the gratuitous violence; who knew that gratuitous violence in what advertises itself as a children’s entertainment would be missed?

The Shape of Things (2003)

May 8, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Romance, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
starring Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol, Fred Weller
screenplay by Neil LaBute, based on his play
directed by Neil LaBute

by Walter Chaw Early in Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, a character mistakes “Medea” for “My Fair Lady”. Not an easy thing to do, for sure, it’s something that points to both LaBute’s instinct to proselytize and to his unpleasant air of smug intellectual superiority. LaBute’s films are science projects involved in the dissection of sexual politics; at their best, they illustrate the harshest salvos lobbed in the gender war, and at their worst, they serve mainly to confirm that LaBute has become so disdainful of his audience that first Possession and now The Shape of Things most resemble listless beasts over-burdened with broad symbol, churlishness, and portentous allusion. LaBute wants to hit you over the head and get away with something at the same time, his existential rage cooling in direct proportion to the self-pitying belief that no one understands him.

Black Swan (2002) – DVD

May 3, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, DVD, Mystery

½*/**** Image D Sound C Extras B
starring Melanie Doane, Janet Monid, Michael Riley, Ted Dykstra
screenplay by Wendy Ord and Matt John Evans
directed by Wendy Ord

by Walter Chaw Wendy Ord’s Black Swan had me at “I’m tellin’ you, there were traces of blood on that feather.” The film is a dedicatedly stupid murder-mystery/small-town hick opera featuring your standard collection of comely waitresses bound for better things, saucy diner matrons, scumbags with sidekicks, stolid policemen, preternaturally bright children, and literal idiot savants. Set in a tiny hamlet in the Great White North (“Hopeville,” natch), the picture opens with an indecipherable prologue that cuts between three separate storylines: a bunch of teens in a car; the titular black swan doing whatever it is that large waterfowl do at night; and a pair of scumbags going through their nocturnal rituals. The rest of the film follows suit by stuttering between two children playing hooky, a cute waitress (Melanie Doane) flirting with a drifter while dreaming, Steve Earle-like, of getting out of Dodge, and of an investigation of a possible serial killer who leaves black swan feathers at the scenes of his crimes.

Love Liza (2002) – DVD

April 27, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Germany

***½/**** Image B Sound A- Commentary B+
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Jack Kehler, Sarah Koskoff
screenplay by Gordy Hoffman
directed by Todd Louiso

by Walter Chaw Philip Seymour Hoffman is Dante and the slings and arrows of mendacity are his Virgil, chasing him through the inferno of his day-to-day. A remarkable actor at his frequent best when deserted by a lover, Hoffman in Love Liza is Wilson Joel, a man whose wife has just killed herself and left a sealed letter behind. It becomes his albatross, toted around unexamined, as Wilson descends on a spiral of juvenile addiction (gasoline huffing) and avoidance. He sleeps on the floor outside his bedroom and does his best to dodge his mother-in-law (Kathy Bates)–hiding the sharp odour of his addiction behind the lie of becoming a radio-controlled airplane pilot.

The Hot Chick (2002) – DVD

April 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Teen, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Rob Schneider, Rachel McAdams, Anna Faris, Andrew Keegan
screenplay by Tom Brady & Rob Schneider
directed by Tom Brady

by Walter Chaw What to think of a variation on Teen Wolf wherein the victim of the lycanthropic puberty metaphor is a young girl who turns into Rob Schneider? What to make of a film that wrests its central conceit of enchanted jewellery from the long-putrefied grasp of Mannequin 2? And what to make of a film released in the year 2002 that is this misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and cruel to the obese? Rather than postulate that our culture has regressed to the hale cultural morass of the mid-1980s, it’s doubtless more fruitful to examine the ways in which film is becoming as self-reflexive, meta-critical, and free of irony as television.

It Runs in the Family (2003)

April 25, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Michael Douglas, Kirk Douglas, Cameron Douglas, Diana Douglas
screenplay by Jesse Wigutow
directed by Fred Schepisi

Itrunsinthefamilyby Walter Chaw Appalling at its best, Fred Schepisi’s It Runs in the Family is a congenital disaster best described as an interminable episode of “Old People Say the Darndest Things”. Between this and Last Orders, Aussie director Schepisi seems to desire cornering the market on gravid meditations on decrepitude and death. He finds himself here a far cry from his Seventies output (The Devil’s Playground, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith), which, much like countryman Bruce Beresford’s early work, announced an important filmmaker who has, in the intervening years, become a hired hand and a coin of considerably devalued worth. It Runs in the Family is so relentlessly mawkish that it does give insight into the state of mind that allows condescension to become comfortable status quo by habitually marginalizing the elderly and demented as adorable dispensers of quaint homilies and spunky vulgarity.