Movie Review Open Season

Open Season (2006) 

Directed by Roger Allers, Jill Cullen

Written by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, Nate Maulden

Starring Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinise, Debra Messing, Jon Favreau 

Release Date September 29th, 2005

Published September 30th, 2005

Sony Pictures Animation is brand new to the computer animation game. Their first feature Monster House, with producer Robert Zemeckis, was a fun, clever, kid friendly concept that would have benefited from a better release date. The second feature from Sony is equally as fun, though not quite as clever, and shows that Sony may be the first big studio animation arm to be truly competitive with Pixar in terms of creating fully integrated animated films with appeal beyond the child audience.

Monster House is a better, more accomplished example of the quality of Sony's work, but the new animated picture Open Season has just enough quality work to show Sony's potential.

Martin Lawrence gives voice to Boog in Open Season, a bear who has been domesticated. Living in the garage of a caring forest ranger (Debra Messing); Boog has his TV, nine square meals a day and he's even learned how to use the toilet. His domestic bliss is upended when he meets Elliott (Ashton Kutcher). Poor Elliott has been captured by an evil hunter (Gary Sinise) and strapped to the hood of the hunters truck.

Boog, on a day in the city with his forest ranger pal, see's Elliott and helps him escape. Elliott, thinking he has made a new best friend forever, follows Boog home and entices him out of the garage for a night on the town. The two end up vandalizing a mini-mart, an offense that causes the local sheriff to force the forest ranger to release Boog into the wild.

Never having had to survive on his own, Boog finds his new life in the forest to be, pardon the pun, un-bear-able. So, with Elliott's help, Boog tries to find his way back to the garage. Along the way he earns the ire of almost every other creature in the forest, especially after he crushes the local beaver dam and flushes everyone into the valley where hunters are awaiting the opening of hunting season.

Part of the strategy of Sony Pictures Animation is working with talented artists with great track records. On Monster House they worked with a rookie director, Gil Kenan, but backed him up with the proven talent of producer Robert Zemeckis. On Open Season Sony worked with director Roger Allers who directed the all time animated classic The Lion King.

Open Season does not compare with The Lion King in terms of the quality of its storytelling but the animation of Open Season is at times the equal of any and all of the great animated pictures, digital or otherwise. The forest landscapes of Open Season are absolutely gorgeous which is strangely at odds with the otherwise mundane  talking animals storyline. The animation tends to overwhelm a story beneath the dignity of the artistry of the animation.

Not that the story of Open Season isn't cute or funny, it is, but the grand animation of Open Season would be better suited to a more dramatic feature, ala The Lion King.

Part of the fun of Open Season is the voice work of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher. These two actors, who have struggled mightily in their live action work, are dynamic vocalists in Open Season. Lawrence does a terrific job of channeling the child-like innocence of Boog and combining it with an attitude of entitlement of a very spoiled child. As Boog becomes more mature, Lawrence channels his usual bravado and good humor into Boog to great effect.

Kutcher is a natural for voicework. He is naturally over the top and exemplifies boundless energy, as he so often showed on That 70's Show. Elliott, like TV's Michael Kelso, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he has a big heart and that comes through in his voice. He just wants to be liked, he just wants to make friends and in that sense he is very reminiscent of another beloved animated sidekick Eddie Murphy's Donkey from the Shrek movies.

If the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made an animated feature, I'm guessing it would look alot like Open Season. The film is like PETA propaganda. The hunters are mouth breathing morons and seething villains who hunt for the joy of the kill and not merely for sport. The animals are, of course, cute and smart and essentially more human than their human counterparts.

I am a little concerned about one thing about this animated tale of a grizzly bear who is kept as a pet. There was a documentary last year called Grizzly Man in which a man named Timothy Treadwell failed to understand how dangerous the grizzly bear truly is. Treadwell convinced himself that the bears were his friends, he even named them like pets. Timothy Treadwell died, eaten by his pals the grizzly's. Parents, be sure to make your children understand that Grizzly bear's are not pets.

If Sony Pictures Animation is going to compete with the gold standard set by Pixar they will need to do a little better than Open Season. That said, Open Season; in its lovely animation and wide appeal story, does demonstrate the potential of Sony's animated arm. Working with talented directors like Roger Allers is definitely a sign of the commitment of the company to the quality of their work.

The kids will love the talking animals and the adventure stories and mom and dad won't be bored thanks to the remarkable animation that often invites audiences just to gaze at it forgetting for a moment the mundane story.

Movie Review: The Big Bounce

The Big Bounce (2004) 

Directed by George Armitage 

Written by Sebastian Guttierez 

Starring Owen Wilson, Sara Foster, Charlie Sheen, Gary Sinise, Vinnie Jones, Morgan Freeman 

Release Date January 30th, 2004

Published February 3rd, 2004 

The books of Elmore Leonard have been adapted for the screen more than John Grisham’s have and almost as often as Stephen King’s have. And like Grisham and King’s adaptations, they are extremely hit and miss. When they're good, like Out Of Sight, Jackie Brown, or Get Shorty, they are very good. When they are bad they are very bad like 1997's Touch starring Skeet Ulrich. Or bad like the first time Leonard's novel The Big Bounce was brought to the screen in 1969--a humorless, dull caper flick with Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor Young. The latest adaptation of The Big Bounce at least brings a little light humor to its throwaway caper plot, but it is just as inconsequential as the original and yet another letdown of it's source material.

The Big Bounce stars Owen Wilson as small time criminal Jack Ryan, a con man looking to lay low on the big island of Hawaii. Unfortunately, Jack is the type who can't avoid trouble and while working a construction gig, he can't help but draw the ire of his bosses, evil land developers played by Gary Sinise, Charlie Sheen and Vinnie Jones. Jack's one friend, Frank (Gregory Sporleder), isn't much help either, encouraging Jack to get back into the breaking and entering racket to help Frank pay off his numerous debts.

Then Jack meets real trouble in the form of his former boss's mistress Nancy (Sara Foster), a sun-baked surf goddess with a penchant for those unfortunate criminal types like Jack. Nancy is working an angle to steal money from Sinise's evil land developer and enlists Jack to help her pull it off. This begins a fun little romance plot with the very sexy Foster getting Wilson's surfer dude con-man into all sorts of trouble. All of which leads to a major twist involving a local judge played by Morgan Freeman and Sinise's drunkard wife played by Bebe Neuwirth.

In the Elmore Leonard universe of hip lingo and languid humor, The Big Bounce is a fun, if forgettable little story, sexy and surprising and always cool. In the film however every bit of humor is strained for and the coolness that Leonard has always injected through dialogue and setting is replaced by Wilson's charming surfer attitude. Wilson is charming and funny but out of place. His character is so laid back and care free that there never seems to be anything at stake.

For his part Sinise would seem to be pivotal in the plot but he is merely a cameo in the film. Instead, the bad guy slack is picked up by Sheen in a role that is badly miscalculated and mind blowingly out of place. Sheen's dunderheaded character is never a threat to anyone and thus has no weight in scenes where he is seemingly the heavy. His character's relationship with Wilson's character is confusing; are they friends? He did bail jack out of jail. They fight, but why they are fighting and why does nothing of consequence happen after the fight? It all just adds to the confounding dynamic between Wilson and Sheen.

For his part, Owen Wilson is the film’s best asset. His laid back charm is fun and enjoyable but it has little context. The romance with Foster is fun and sexy, Foster is unbelievably gorgeous, but the plot is Byzantine in explaining whether they have feelings for one another or not and is noncommittal about those feelings all the way to the films unsatisfying conclusion.

On the bright side, when it's freezing cold and there is a foot of snow on the ground it is nice to escape for ninety or so minutes of fun in the sun on the beaches of Hawaii. But that is not nearly enough for me to recommend The Big Bounce. 

Movie Review The Human Stain

The Human Stain (2003) 

Directed by Robert Benton 

Written by Nicholas Meyer 

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise 

Release Date October 31st, 2003 

Published November 4th, 2003 

This is truly one of the worst titles you've ever seen. It's made worse by the fact that it is only part metaphor and does in fact refer to the gutter-minded definition your so ashamed to ascribe it. In his 2000 novel The Human Stain, writer Phillip Roth makes it clear that his title refers to that infamous blue dress owned by Monica Lewinsky. Yes there is a deeper metaphorical meaning to the title for the books characters but it's the Monica definition that people come away with and in so doing, forget that there is a rather compelling drama behind that title.

For the film adaptation of Roth's novel, director Robert Benton may have been better off without the literal title. The film is all about the metaphor with little mention of Roth's contempt for the Clinton impeachment and to his book’s first act plot point. You shouldn't judge a book (or movie) by it's title but in this case it's hard not to. So many people will avoid seeing this film because of that title that it renders the whole thing meaningless.

Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins) has, in his time as Dean of Classics at Berkshire College, turned the sleepy small town institution into the shadow of an Ivy League University. In so doing he has made many friends and many more enemies. Therefore, it's not surprising then that when he makes one seemingly minor mistake on the eve of his retirement that his enemies seize upon it to get rid of him early.

Coleman's mistake was referring to a pair of students who never showed up in his class as "spooks.” Coleman's reference was to the ghostly definition of the word but because the missing students were African-Americans a complaint was filed and some people seized on the other definition of the word spooks as a racial epithet. And so it is that the very people Coleman himself hired at the college that shove him out the door.

The controversy is ironic because Coleman himself is African-American though you would not know it to look at him. He has for most of his 71 years passed himself off as Jewish and because of his light skin has never had to admit to anyone he is black. Coleman never told his wife of more than 40 years or his colleagues at the college or his closest friend a writer, Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), who after Coleman's death must piece his life together from the scraps of lies and half truths he left behind.

Coleman's death is another great source of controversy. After quitting his job, losing his wife to an embolism and becoming a pariah in his small town, Coleman takes up a scandalous affair with Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) a woman half his age, divorced and working as a janitor at the college. Faunia's ex-husband Les (Ed Harris) is a Vietnam veteran and highly unstable.

The situation that Coleman has placed himself in is one that is obviously dangerous. It's a situation that someone of his dignity and intelligence should never find himself in, as his friends including Nathan and his Lawyer Nelson Primus (Clark Gregg) remind him constantly. However as Faunia tells him when they first meet, action is the enemy of thought. Coleman acts without thinking allowing lust to overcome logic. Whether or not Coleman and Faunia can achieve something beyond lust is one of the film’s central questions.

Parallel to the main love story is Coleman's history. Flashbacks take us back 50 years to when Coleman (played in the past by newcomer Wentworth Miller) first decided his life would be easier if lived as a white Jew. While attending school in New York City, Coleman meets a beautiful Midwestern blonde named Steena Paulson (Jacinda Barrett). Steena has no idea that Coleman is African-American, she assumes he is Jewish which explains his ethnic looks. It seems like true love but when Coleman brings Steena home to meet his mother, he gets his first lesson in why his life might be easier if he pretended he was someone else.

The backstory is actually far more interesting than the central love story. Wentworth Miller and Jacinda Barrett light up the screen with a fiery chemistry. Ms. Barrett is particularly surprising as she pulls off the wide-eyed innocence of a mid twentieth century Midwesterner. Until now she has been cast as sexpots, typecast from her time as a one the over-sexed simpletons on MTV's The Real World (she was in the London cast).

Of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman make strong impressions, they are terrific actors. Their plot however is astoundingly dreary. Any momentary light that shines in their relationship is punished and it's only in the flashbacks to Coleman and Steena, before she dumped him, that we get any reprieve from the constant onslaught of misery.

Director Robert Benton has a knack for capturing older male characters preparing to conquer their old age. It was Benton who directed Paul Newman to his best late years performance in Nobody's Fool. Here he does well by Sir Anthony Hopkins by giving the legendary actor his first romantic lead role. Unfortunately, as great as Mr. Hopkins is, I never believed he and Wentworth Miller were playing the same character. After leaving his job at the college Coleman's connection to his past is left only as an ironic passage in his life. The film shifts it's focus to his relationship with Faunia which has nothing to do with race. It's an entirely different plot.

As for the allusion to the Lewinsky scandal, that was far more the book’s concern than the films. It is referred on more than one occasion and as in the book it is brought up as an example of political correctness run amok. It runs parallel to the ridiculousness of Coleman's own persecution for his racist remark that wasn't racist. Clinton's indiscretion was bad but not impeachable. 

The novel used Coleman and Faunia's many problems to magnify why Clinton-Lewinsky was such a meaningless endeavor, the movie makes the same reference and both seem heavy-handed to those of us who already realize what a bunch of trumped up ridiculousness Clinton-Lewinsky was. Of course issues of race, and death and family are more important than whether or not Bill Clinton got a BJ in the Oval Office. We know that! Thankfully the film doesn't linger on the point.

I would have liked to see more about Coleman growing up. Pretending to be white while coming of age in the 50's and 60’s with the rise of the Civil Rights movement, that has more inherent drama than any semi-controversial small town May-December romance ever could. Someday someone should revisit Roth's novel and extrapolate on the ideas put forth about Coleman's youth. That sounds like a movie I would like to see.

Movie Review Impostor

Impostor (2002) 

Directed by Gary Fleder 

Written by Caroline Case, Ehren Kruger, David Twohy

Starring Gary Sinise, Madeline Stowe, Vincent D'onofrio, Mekhi Phifer, Tony Shalhoub

Release Date January 4th, 2002 

Published January 3rd, 2002 

Four years ago, Dimension films began work on a science fiction film called The Light Years Trilogy. The film was to be 3 short films based on three separate Philip K. Dick stories. The project never fully came together though two of the three short films were produced. One of those was Impostor starring Gary Sinise and Vincent D'onofrio. The suits at Dimension liked the 30-minute version so much they ponied up the dough to turn it into a full-length feature.

They were better off with the half hour version.

Impostor takes place 75 years in the future, with Gary Sinise as scientist Spencer Oldham. Oldham is working on a top-secret weapon in the war against aliens called the Centaurians. Arriving at work after a weekend vacation, Spencer is arrested by the military police headed by Vincent D'onofrio. D'onofrio claims that Oldham is not who he appears, that he is in fact an alien cyborg with a bomb in his chest.\

In a scene reminiscent of the Salem Witch trials, Oldham is to be tied to an operating table while a laser drills into his chest. The theory is to get the bomb out and diffuse it. Essentially, if Spencer is an alien bomb they kill him and if he's not, the test will have proven he wasn't alien. Spencer will be dead but at least he's not an alien. Well of course Spencer escapes, there wouldn't be a move if he didn't, and thus begins a series of dull chase scenes through your typically post-apocalyptic cityscapes.

Sinise is well cast as is D'onofrio but they were likely better served in the original 30 minute version.

There are some interesting scenes in Impostor. For example, the first interrogation scene with D'onofrio questioning Oldham while his friends and coworkers look on has the feeling of a futuristic version of the 1950's communist witch hunts, and as I previously mentioned the Salem Witch trials. The ending does build some palpable suspense with a fun little twist.

But in the end, Impostor is, to paraphrase the band Sum 41, all filler no killer.