Movie Review Street Fighter The Legend of Chun Li

Street Fighter The Legend of Chun Li (2009) 

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak 

Written by Justin Marks 

Starring Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neil McDonough, Robin Shou, Michael Clark Duncan

Release Date February 27th, 2009. 

Published February 28th, 2009.

Well, we’ve all seen career meltdowns off screen but how about witnessing a meltdown on screen? Chris Klein, best known for American Pie and Election does just that in Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li. As an Interpol agent, Klein delivers a performance of such goofball determination that his mere presence invites a giggle fit. 

Klein combines vocal affectation and exaggerated gesture to evoke something akin to a soap opera actor crossed with a community theater wannabe on top of the jocky persona that has been his calling card in his biggest role. You’ll recall he played the meathead jock with a big heart in election and the meathead jock who goes soft in American Pie. 

In Street Fighter he’s still a meathead but now a meathead with dramatic flair and an action heroes' sense of flair. Were there still a Mystery Science Theater this performance could go down in history as one of the great unintentionally hilarious roles in movie history. 

As for the rest of Street Fighter, villain Neal McDonough, one of those character actors whose name escapes you but his face you’ve a few hundred times, earns a few of the same derisive laughs that Klein does. For McDonough it’s a bizarre accent, part Irish part Cantonese? Vietnamese? Something with an eastern flair that just doesn’t jive with the Irish brogue. 

Michael Clarke Duncan is a long way away from the days when he was Oscar nominated for The Green Mile. He has become the go to beefy guy for beating people up. I can’t really say if there was another way for his career to play out but being an on-screen thug, the rest of his life doesn’t seem like the ideal career unless getting paid is your only motivation. I hope it was a really, really good paycheck. 

And finally star Kristen Kreuk. I am not a regular viewer of TV’s Smallville, but I’m told it’s a well-acted, complex superhero story and Kreuk’s Lana Lang is integral to the plot. She’s been in every episode. She likely wishes she had stayed in Smallville. Street Fighter may have given her; her very first leading role but the movie makes her look like a 12-year-old girl on steroids. The hair and makeup choices really truly make her look far younger than her 26 years. She makes Dakota Fanning look like Liz Taylor. 

That’s not a complement. The character is supposed to be in her mid-twenties. The look is distracting and unfortunate. 

As for the plot, hey, if director Andrzej Bartkowiak doesn’t care about the plot, why should we? Check out that final act and tell me what the bad guy's motive is? It’s a futile search because the script doesn’t supply one. It’s not really needed because the final act is really about fight choreography and some of the dopiest looking low budget effects this side of 1984’s The Last Dragon. At least that movie had a cool soundtrack. 

Movie Review: American Dreamz

American Dreamz (2006) 

Directed by Paul Weitz

Written by Paul Weitz 

Starring Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Marcia Gay Harden, Mandy Moore, Willem Dafoe, Chris Klein

Release Date April 21st, 2006

Published April 20th, 2006 

When I heard that the very talented writer-director of American Pie and About A Boy, Paul Weitz, had decided to take on an ambitious satire of President George W. Bush and the vapid karaoke extravaganza American Idol, I was quite excited. Two such broad targets are, no doubt, hard to miss with hard edged satire. So how disappointed was I when, while finally watching American Dreamz, that Weitz manages to miss the target like a Buffalo Bills kicker in the Super Bowl.

Hugh Grant stars in American Dreamz as Martin Tweed a Simon Cowell clone with a nasty disposition on screen and off. A self loathing jerk, we meet Martin as he dumps his girlfriend while celebrating his shows latest spectacular ratings.

The new season of 'American Dreamz' is about to begin and a new crop of contestants are lining up. In the tiny hamlet of of Padookie, Ohio Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore) is ready for her closeup. An ambitious, plotting, self absorbed teen, Sally celebrates her American Dreamz birth by dumping her dopey but loving boyfriend William (Chris Klein). So broken up about it William runs off to the army and is immediately sent to Iraq.

On the other side of the world Omer (Sam Galzari) is training in an Al Quaeda terrorist camp. However, he spends his evenings singing along to show tunes. He is soon sent to America to live with relatives and finds himself auditioning for American Dreamz, the producers, Tweed and flunkies played by Judi Greer and John Cho, have decided the key to ratings is diversity. They want an arab guy and they choose Omer opposite him they want a jewish guy and they get a hasidic rapper played by Adam Busch.

Running parallel to the American Dreamz story is that of President Jack Staton (Dennis Quaid). Having just narrowly won re-election, President Staton wakes up one morning and decides to read the newspaper instead of his daily briefing. He then proceeds to not leave the presidential bedroom for three solid weeks, choosing to stay in bed reading the newspaper.

To get the president back on his feet his chief of staff (Willem Dafoe in a Dick Chaney haircut) gets the president an appearance as a guest judge on American Dreamz. This places the small town witch, the Arab dreamer and the dimwit president on a collision course, unfortunately the only collision is with indifference.

American Dreamz walks up to the edge of hard satire and then runs away like a scared child. The film does not have a mean bone in it's body despite attempts to look mean. Grant's Simon Cowell may be a self loathing prick but Grant cannot turn off that natural charisma that makes even a bastard like Martin Tweed charming. He's supposed to be a Machiavellian bastard but the edges are worn off and his manipulations never take away from his likability.

Mandy Moore is supposed to be Martin's equal in terms of self involvement and angry ambition but she too cannot turn off the charms that have made her a star. Moore evinces hateful bitchiness, but in an ill-conceived romantic subplot with Grant, she turns cuddly in a dark comic way and you can't help rooting. a little, for an unearned happy ending.

The characters in American Dreamz break down into two categories, either mean or or dopey. Grant, Moore and Dafoe fall into the mean category while Golzari, Klein and Quaid are in the dopey category. In a satire with sharp edges, with a clearer perspective and point of view, this might not be such a bad thing. But in an unfocused mess like American Dreamz you are left to wonder just what are you supposed to enjoy about these characters.

Weitz aspires at once to the hard edges of Kubrick's trenchant Doctor Strangelove and Christopher Guest's gentle prodding Waiting For Guffman and Best In Show. The mix is weak kneed when it needs to be edgy, as in the too soft take on the President, and to edgy when it needs to be soft as in the American Idol satire.

The saddest thing about American Dreamz is that Weitz's approach could have worked. If he had approached the Presidential satire like Kubrick did Strangelove and the American Idol stuff like Guest took on folkies in A Mighty Wind, then American Dreamz might have mixed these two disparate subjects in a satifying way.

Instead what we have is a complete disaster of weak willed satire, dopey hateful characters and rare moments of laughter. American Dreamz is one of the most disappointing films I've seen in a very long while. The very talented Paul Weitz has many more good films in his future, let's hope he puts this one behind him quickly.

Movie Review Rollerball

Rollerball (2002) 

Directed by John McTiernan

Written by Larry Ferguson, John Pogue 

Starring Chris Klein, Rebecca Romijn, LL Cool J, Paul Heyman 

Release date February 8th, 2002 

Published February 7th, 2002 

Roger Ebert once said of the movie Mad Dog Time that the film did not improve upon the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same amount of time. I haven't seen Mad Dog Time but after seeing Rollerball I completely understand the sentiment. Rollerball is astonishingly boring on top of being mind numbingly awful. 

Rollerball stars poor misguided Chris Klein as the star player of the international sport of Rollerball. I've skipped ahead of the story, he doesn't begin the film by playing Rollerball, but you see the beginning of the film has nothing to do with anything. My theory is that the director owed the extras in the scene a favor and decided to leave it in the final product.

Oh right the story, anyway Chris joins his old college buddy LL Cool J in playing Rollerball. Leave out the age inconsistency in their having been college buddies because counting the inconsistencies in Rollerball might take as long as watching the film itself. Forget about the story description too, it's hard to call something so scattershot a story. From what I gathered, there is something about Jean Reno being a bad guy who hurts people and Chris and LL want to stop him along with Rebecca Romijn who does.... something. I'm not sure exactly what her function was, because all I remember is her awful, awful accent.

Adding to the idiocy, for some reason there is a ten-minute section of the film around the halfway mark that was filmed with a night-vision camera. We don't know why but there it is in all its pointlessness. As for the sport of Rollerball, I believe it's a series quick edits of mindless violence set to some stupid speed metal anthem.

What is most frightening is that this is the re-shot and "improved" version of Rollerball. The film was initially to be released in August 2001 but after a disastrous preview screening attended by our friends at Ain't It Cool News. The producers pulled the film and ordered it re-cut and re-shot. If this is the better version, the original must be something akin to a filmed bowel movement.

Honestly, when wrestling announcer Paul Heyman stars as the Rollerball announcer and brings the film it's only source of dignity there is something very wrong. If you were thinking of seeing Rollerball let me save you the ticket price. Make a fist and punch yourself about the stomach and head for two solid hours. That's easily the equivalent experience of watching Rollerball, if you also poked yourself in the eyes while doing it.