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.

The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002) – DVD

April 18, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

The Wild Thornberrys
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
screenplay by Kate Boutilier
directed by Jeff McGrath and Cathy Malkasian

by Walter Chaw Preaching its message of courage, family, and self-confidence with grace and a bare minimum of soapbox grandstanding and mawkish sentimentality, The Wild Thornberrys Movie is a picture of warmth and imagination. Its globe-trotting wildlife-show family, the titular Thornberrys, have as their most conspicuous member gawky Eliza (voiced by Lacey Chabert), a freckled, bespectacled, orthodontically challenged little girl who earns the power to communicate with animals through an act of kindness. The locating of a traditionally unattractive young female as the superhero at the centre of an adventure serial (the picture is based on a Nickelodeon series) is so rare an idea in American animation that its appearance here makes for one of the more bracing, genuinely exciting creations of the modern popular culture. Its mainstay status in Chinese martial arts and Japanese anime films remains a gulf that U.S. culture, in its occasional simple-mindedness, remains far from bridging.

Stanley: Hop to It (2003) + Stanley: Spring Fever (2003) – DVDs

April 16, 2003Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Television

Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-

by Jarrod Chambers My first encounter with “Stanley” was at Walt Disney World in Orlando, at the Disney-MGM Studios. There is a show combining live actors and puppets at Playhouse Disney, and Stanley and his goldfish Dennis were among the attractions. When they announced that they were going to look up gorillas in The Great Big Book of Everything, every kid in the place leaped to their feet and sang along with the Great Big Book of Everything song. I quickly realized that I was one of the few who had not heard of “Stanley”.

A Mighty Wind (2003)

April 15, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Music, Pseudo-Documentary, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Bob Balaban
screenplay by Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy
directed by Christopher Guest

Mightywindby Walter Chaw Though Waiting for Guffman remains the best of the three Christopher Guest-directed improv-sketch mockumentaries, A Mighty Wind finds Guest’s troupe returning somewhat to form after the disappointing and mean-spirited dog show spoof Best in Show. Following the efforts of grieving son Jonathan Steinbloom (Bob Balaban) to reunite the folk acts represented by his late father Irving for a tribute concert to be broadcast on public television, the picture is essentially an outline fleshed-out through a bunch of improvisations tied loosely together by largely disconnected vignettes. Free, for the most part, of the cheap shots of Best in Show, A Mighty Wind‘s failures are again a cartoonish turn by Eugene Levy and a healthy dose of sentiment that goes down suspiciously like arrogance. If there’s a unifying thread to Guest et al’s forays into parody (including Rob Reiner’s directorial debut This is Spinal Tap), it’s that faint, pervasive whiff of superiority… And the atmosphere appears to be getting thicker.

Anger Management (2003)

April 11, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Jack Nicholson, Theatrical

**/****
starring Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson, Marisa Tomei, Krista Allen
screenplay by David Dorfman
directed by Peter Segal

Angermanagementby Walter Chaw Packed with SNL alum in secondary roles and directed by Peter Segal, the steady hand behind Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Adam Sandler’s follow-up to the remarkably good Punch-Drunk Love is the remarkably familiar Anger Management. It finds Sandler returning to his old, tedious ways: the athlete cameos, Asian hate, scatological humour, mockery of disability, vintage sing-alongs, sentimental finales, and “you can do its.” Good news for the ever-diminishing cult of Sandler, the rest of Western civilization should cringe at Jack Nicholson returning to his Corman days by reciting a series of dick and fart jokes while banking to a dangerous degree on his lupine grin. The most frustrating thing about Anger Management isn’t that Sandler is back to his old tricks, it’s that there are observations embedded here about the state of our culture in decline that exhibit a genuine insight and cynicism that could have made for a fascinating satire rather than this unintentional one.

A Man Apart (2003) + The Man Without a Past (2003)

April 4, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Finland, France, Germany, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

A MAN APART
**/****
starring Vin Diesel, Larenz Tate, Steve Eastin, Timothy Olyphant
screenplay by Christian Gudegast & Paul Scheuring
directed by F. Gary Gray

Mies vailla menneisyyttä
***½/****
starring Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Annikki Tähti, Juhani Niemelä
written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Manapartwithoutapastby Walter Chaw The one an absurdist sketch, the other just absurd, both Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past and F. Gary Gray’s A Man Apart use violence as a catalyst for existential introspection, but while Gray’s emetic excess deadens with its Death Wish-cum-The New Centurions wish-fulfillment fantasy, Kaurismäki’s gentle fable finds grace amongst society’s victims. Gifting their respective stars each with a hospital scene and subsequent resurrection and new lease on life, the two protagonists are paired with a lady love once back on the street–Kaurismäki’s hero with a Salvation Army matron (Kati Outinen), Gray’s with a ridiculously loyal partner (Larenz Tate) who discards his role as conscience to become an extension of a revenge plot that’s made more ludicrous with a heaping dose of morality and a Lethal Weapon graveside penance.

What a Girl Wants (2003)

April 4, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Family, Romance, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, Kelly Preston, Anna Chancellor
screenplay by Jenny Bicks and Elizabeth Chandler, based on the play “The Reluctant Debutante” by William Douglas Home
directed by Dennie Gordon

by Walter Chaw A cynical play for the babysitting money of a very particular demographic, What a Girl Wants is a by-the-numbers Cinderella story that’s not only a carbon copy of The Princess Diaries but also the umpteenth iteration of a distaff preteen fantasy that equates irreverent immaturity with being true to one’s own self. It takes potshots at the stuffiness of the British in the same way that urban comedies take aim at the stuffiness of white folks, seeking to loosen up the awkward unfortunates with a pathetic dance sequence. And it offers Nickelodeon phenom Amanda Bynes yet another opportunity to try on a bunch of outfits in not one, but two dress-up montages. The film believes that it knows what will please twelve-year-old girls (and their 35-year-old fathers), and it may well indeed, but the problem with What a Girl Wants is that there’s precious little honour in satisfying the basest needs of its audience with the equivalent of leftover porridge.

Sordid Lives (2001) – DVD

April 2, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound D Extras C
starring Olivia Newton-John, Beau Bridges, Delta Burke, Bonnie Bedelia
written and directed by Del Shores

by Walter Chaw Essentially an extended drag shtick captured on surveillance-quality DV, Del Shores’s Sordid Lives finds the playwright’s stage production translated literally to the big screen (well, to the television screen) without, one presumes, the pace and the busyness that would have made it bearable. Poorly-aimed pot-shots at dysfunction (sexual, familial) share the stage with the classic “gathered for a funeral” plot that forms the basis of so many community theatre productions, mainly because no matter how ribald the comedy becomes, there will always be the opportunity for a sickening dose of sentiment at the final curtain. There’s nothing suburban middlebrow consumers like better than a shot of the ol’ pulpit to forgive all sins: round-in-the-round as buffet-dinner confessional.

Head of State (2003)

March 28, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Satire, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Chris Rock, Bernie Mac, Tamala Jones, Lynn Whitfield
screenplay by Chris Rock & Ali LeRoi
directed by Chris Rock

by Walter Chaw Chris Rock’s directorial debut Head of State is a little like Weird Al Yankovic’s UHF or Dana Carvey’s Opportunity Knocks: a vehicle meant to showcase a sketch comedian’s strengths but functioning more as an exposé on said comedian’s weaknesses. It vacillates between a potentially interesting central plot and a couple of misogynistic and boring subplots, managing by the end to come off as shrill, cynical, and disjointed as well as overly cutesy and infatuated with its own cult of bling. Its one saving grace is that it seems to occasionally know what satire is, conceiving of a “white folks can’t dance” sequence that actually scores a couple of points in letting the poor Man dance well instead of mockingly (see Bringing Down the House), and in the identification of “God Bless America” as the hypocritical exclusionary bullshit that it is.

Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002) [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

March 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
written and directed by Paul Vischer and Mike Nawrocki

by Walter Chaw Sort of Monty Python-lite with a Christian message, the VeggieTales direct-to-video series of didactic sketches is, I’m told, the top-selling home video series in history, speaking at once to the creepy rise of grotesquely hypocritical religiosity in the United States and the fact that VeggieTales, judging by its first feature-length film Jonah, is extremely clever and entertaining. Packed with visual gags and semi-subtle references (a “Moby Blaster” video game in a seafood reference recalls Melville’s fondness for the Jonah tale), Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie is a bouncy Christian animated musical with a handful of compulsively catchy tunes and some crisp computer-imaging work. It occurred to me a few times during the course of the picture that as far as Christian entertainment goes, this is the first product that didn’t disqualify the term as an oxymoron.

Drumline (2002) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

March 21, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Nick Cannon, Zoë Saldaña, Orlando Jones, GQ
screenplay by Tina Gordon Chism and Shawn Schepps
directed by Charles Stone III

by Bill Chambers Appealing newcomer Nick Cannon stars in Drumline as Devon, a Harlem high-school graduate making the transition from a big fish in a small pond to a guppy in the ocean that is Atlanta A&T. Devon begins his gruelling training for A&T’s mostly-black drumline on the wrong foot, wearing dark colours when white was demanded, failing to get his roommate to the first tryout on time, and claiming an instrument reserved for upper-tier members of the drumline–and refusing to give it back until he’s shown some respect by veritable drill sergeant Sean (Leonard Roberts). The one bold move that works in Devon’s favour at the start is hitting on Laila (Zoë Saldaña), captain of the cheerleading squad; she and Devon’s superiors, including the drumline’s manager, Dr. Lee (Orlando Jones), aim to turn the boy into a man through demonstrations of tough love peppered with encouragement.

Bushwhacked (1995) – DVD

March 19, 2003Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Family, Mystery

*/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Daniel Stern, Jon Polito, Brad Sullivan, Ann Dowd
screenplay by John Jordan & Danny Byers and Tom Swerdlow & Michael Goldberg
directed by Greg Beeman

by Walter Chaw The Yang to the distaff Yin of Troop Beverly Hills, Bushwhacked, Greg Beeman’s endlessly irritating slapstick take on High Sierra, finds the bird-faced actor Daniel Stern doing his best to milk the hysterical simpleton shtick of his hapless Home Alone villain. Nicknaming Stern’s character “Spider” for no real reason but to, eight years after its release and just now finding its way to DVD, connect it in a disturbing way to David Cronenberg’s thirteenth film by way of arrested Freudian developmental phases and fixations on body function, Bushwhacked, as it happens, is also about as funny as Spider–not a particularly shining endorsement of something that’s ostensibly a comedy.

Roger Dodger (2002) – DVD

March 17, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Campbell Scott, Jesse Eisenberg, Mina Badie, Jennifer Beals
written and directed by Dylan Kidd

by Bill Chambers There’s a clever moment in Roger Dodger destined to slip past viewers that underscores the precision with which the film was conceptualized. Roger (Campbell Scott), the lady-killer whose nickname (which he shares with the stooge in Sidney Lumet’s Q&A) lends the picture its title, walks up to one of the glass walls of a meeting room inside his workplace to communicate with two colleagues on the other side–one of whom sticks the word “incubator” to his own forehead just as the scene cuts. Coming on the heels of a prologue in which Roger has demonstrated his persuasive albeit highly misogynistic grasp of sexual politics to his dazzled peers, this tableau is the movie in a nutshell: With a man of such confidence around, all others are hatchlings hanging on his tutelage. The film is subsequently about Roger passing a certain torch to his visiting 16-year-old nephew, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), and Nick fighting his moral instinct to extinguish it, as when he practices Roger’s art of seduction on a couple of bar-hopping older women played by the pitch-perfect duo of Elizabeth Berkley and Jennifer Beals.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) [VISTA Series] – DVD

March 17, 2003Posted inAdventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, Esoterica, Family, Mystery, Spielberg

***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras A+
starring Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Cassidy, Charles Fleischer
screenplay by Peter S. Seaman & Jeffrey Price, based on the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit by Gary K. Wolf
directed by Robert Zemeckis

by Bill Chambers Who Framed Roger Rabbit opens with an animated short (“Somethin’s Cookin'”) starring Roger Rabbit (voice of Charles Fleischer) and Baby Herman (Lou Hirsch) in which Roger, sitting for the lady of the house, is thwarted in his attempts to keep his young charge from climbing the refrigerator. You’d hardly know it, but we’re seeing these characters for the first time–and the ineffable period authenticity of “Somethin’s Cookin’,” a cartoon commissioned specifically for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, betrays the scrupulous eye of director Robert Zemeckis almost immediately. Animated by the legendary Richard Williams, “Somethin’s Cookin'” is fashioned in Tex Avery’s mix of elegance and elasticity; later, when Bugs Bunny makes an appearance in the movie proper, he still has the slopey head of yore. (Warner actually insisted on the modern versions of Looney Tunes appearing in the film, so Zemeckis had dummy footage mocked up to get their approval that he had no intention of using in the finished product.) The prologue ends prematurely when Roger sees bluebirds instead of stars–in the picture, cartoons are shot on soundstages: Roger Rabbit exists for real, as do Mickey Mouse, Bugs, et. al, and they hail from a Hollywood subdivision called Toontown. They are invincible, but they are also actors who bring their personal lives to work, so sometimes they just can’t generate stars on command.

Agent Cody Banks (2003)

March 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Espionage, Family, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Frankie Muniz, Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon, Keith David
screenplay by Zack Stentz & Ashley Miller and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
directed by Harald Zwart

Agentcodybanksby Walter Chaw A pint-sized version of a James Bond film, Harald Zwart’s Agent Cody Banks locates that series’ fascination with modes of conveyance and breasts and places it cannily in the realm of early adolescence. It belongs there, after all, but burying Frankie Muniz’s face in Angie Harmon’s breasts (a second attempt is recognized and discouraged) is filmed statutory rape, even if he’s not complaining. Its screenplay by committee (four writers, with a fifth credited with story) is flat and uninvolving (and feckless), with the sole highlight coming in a background PA announcement asking the owner of a silver Aston Martin to move it from the handicapped parking zone. Otherwise, the picture is just a collection of teensploitation formulas (“the bet” chief among them) married to a few weak gadgets and the same sort of world-saving wish-fulfillment fantasy that Bond has long since made stultifying and passé.

Secretary (2002) – DVD

March 14, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras C
starring James Spader, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeremy Davies, Patrick Bauchau
screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson, based on the short story by Mary Gaitskill
directed by Steven Shainberg

by Walter Chaw Pleasantville for the sadomasochism set, Steven Shainberg’s Secretary is a gentle sexual-awakening fable set in a peculiar fairytale hyper-reality reminiscent of the saturated inward-gazing milieu of David Cronenberg’s Spider. Featuring a courageous, social-convention-shattering performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the picture is The Graduate by way of humiliation and water sports–the hallmark pool scenes feature Gyllenhaal’s Benjamin Braddock character Lee Holloway festooned with water-wings, her position just on the surface the mordant reflexivity of Sunset Blvd.‘s doomed Joe Gillis rather than of Braddock’s bottom-of-the-drink disconnection. Between Secretary and the Jake Gyllenhaal starrer Moonlight Mile, the Gyllenhaal siblings seem intent on tackling their generation’s particular alienations by way of Mike Nichols’s counterculture classic, but where Jake takes a conventional route in Moonlight Mile, Maggie’s exploration of plastics-vs.-individualized happiness embraces the essential shadows of our nasty sexual ids in a Solondz-lite waltz with seething suburbia.

Le6ion of the Dead (2001) – DVD

March 11, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Germany, Horror, Vampire, Zombie

Legion of the Dead
½*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Michael Carr, Russell Friedenberg, Kimberly Liebe, Matthias Hues
written and directed by Olaf Ittenbach

by Walter Chaw Sort of like how I imagine Samuel Beckett would read while huffing accelerant, Olaf Ittenbach’s Le6ion of the Dead rips off a couple of Tarantino screenplays en route to winning the title of the most arbitrary and impossible-to-follow film that isn’t composed primarily of stock footage. Though the director has tried to have his name removed from the picture, citing unapproved edits made in the struggle for an “R” rating, unless the studio wrote the screenplay, pointed the camera, and hired the actors…sufficed to say that there’s enough blame here to go around.

Inspector Gadget 2 (2003) – DVD

March 10, 2003Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Disney, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring French Stewart, Elaine Hendrix, Caitlin Wachs
sceenplay by Ron Anderson and William Robertson & Alex Zamm
directed by Alex Zamm

by Bill Chambers Edited with the Cuisinart clarity of a car commercial, designed with a balloon-animal colour palette similar to that of last year’s psychedelic Thomas in Love, Inspector Gadget 2 (henceforth IG2–incidentally, the on-screen logo reads Inspector 2 Gadget) has style in theory, like Avril Lavigne, but is monotonous and exasperating–also like Avril Lavigne. I haven’t seen the original film, but I did watch the cartoon every morning before school as a kid (we used to sing our own version of the theme song in the playground: “Doo doo doo doo do, Inspector Goo-head“–ah, those halcyon days), so I recognize certain touchstones the sequel, um, touches: faceless supervillain with the pussycat emblem Dr. Claw (who, robbed of his synthetic speech in addition to his lap kitty, looks and acts like Truman Capote in IG2); Inspector Gadget’s niece, Penny (Caitlin Wachs), and her dog Brain (in IG2, a beagle without the flexibility of his animated counterpart), both fledgling detectives; and the always-fuming Chief Quimby (Mark Mitchell), who does not pop out of mailboxes and such things here to deliver messages to Gadget that self-destruct. More disappointingly, he does not have a moustache.