Showing posts with label Glenn Ficarra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glenn Ficarra. Show all posts

Movie Review: Bad News Bears

Bad News Bears (2005) 

Directed by Richard Linklater

Written by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa 

Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden

Release Date July 22nd, 2005 

Published July 22nd, 2005 

Director Richard Linklater has cultivated the persona of a Director who can bounce between brilliant, artful indie films (Before Sunrise, Dazed and Confused) and mainstream stuff without compromising his vision. 2003's School Of Rock was a big studio comedy with a rising star, Jack Black, that studio execs were eager to exploit. Linklater delivered a film that was mainstream funny with just enough of a nod to his roots to keep it grounded in his vision as a Director.

School Of Rock allowed Linklater to make the far smaller film, Before Sunset, the sequel to his wonderful romance Before Sunrise , and the template for his career seemed set. In the indie parlance, Linklater was going to make one for them and one for himself. That seems to be the case with his latest studio film Bad News Bears which will be followed quickly by the experimental animated film A Scanner Darkly.

Unfortunately something got lost along the way and Linklater's nod to studio execs turned out messy and compromised. Bad News Bears is simply bad news for it's rising star Director.

Billy Bob Thornton, coming off his tour de force comic turn in Bad Santa, stars in the lead role essayed by Walter Matthau in the 1976 original, Morris Buttermaker. A former major leaguer, Morris is now a pathetic drunk working for beer money as an exterminator. His only connection to the sport he once loved is picking up a paycheck coaching a group of little league misfits.

The Bears, as they are eventually called, are only allowed into the league after the mother of one of the players, Liz (Marcia Gay Harden), sued to get them in. Other little league coach's like hotshot sports dad Roy Bullock (Greg Kinnear) had wanted the kids out of the league, mostly because none of the kids are any good. But, it's little league and everyone gets to play and it's up to Buttermaker to field a team that includes a kid in a wheelchair and two kids who can't speak English.

Not much has been changed from the original film which operates from nearly the same screenplay by Bill Lancaster as the one Lancaster wrote himself in 1976. Just like the original their is little Tanner (Timmy Deters) all blonde mop and anger, their is Ahmad the meek black kid, and Lupus the one who would rather pick grass than play ball. Each player virtually untouched from the original. The minor updates include an Indian kid, Prem (Aman Johal) who takes over for the original films Ogilvie as the teams stat geek and the aforementioned wheel chair bound kid Hooper (Troy Gentile).

Also in place from the original are the girl pitcher, Amanda (Sammi Kraft) and the wrong side of the tracks bad boy with the big bat, Kelly Leak (Jeff Davies). Gone from their relationship is the subversive sexual undertones, replaced with a more PG-13 puppy love. In fact, of the few changes to the original film are touches to make the film PG-13 where the original was a PG film that today may have been R-rated today.

The lack of anything new in the script reflects an overall laziness that permeates the entire film. Remakes are lazy enough by nature but Richard Linklater brings little to nothing new to Bad News Bears. Linklater seems quite content to translate the script to the screen with only a minimal amount of work on his part. That is not to say the material is not funny, the original film was plenty funny and remains so. This remake resembles the original so much you can't help but find something funny in it.

Also recycled in Bad News Bears is Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa bad boy. Thornton's Buttermaker is not exactly as bad as his Santa, but in his hard drinking, thoughtless, careless way he is certainly a close cousin to that far funnier character. Thornton still manages a few laughs from this retread character, a sign of his strong talent and charisma.

The less said about the child actors in Bad News Bears the better. Where in School Of Rock Linklater coaxed wonderful performances from his young cast to counterpoint Jack Black's comic tour de force, in Bad News Bears Linklater makes his child actors more functionary place holders for Thornton's comic lead. Needless to say, there is no Tatum O'Neal in this Bad News cast.

Bad News Bears is a shockingly lazy and sloppy film for someone of Richard Linklater's talent. No director of his caliber can get away with such a slipshod effort. The direction is not merely lackluster, it's lazy. Richard Linklater should be ashamed that he wasted his time slapping together such a waste of talent and celluloid. Remakes are a big enough waste on their own, when combined with a complete lack of effort on the part of those doing the remaking, they are an all out disaster.

Movie Review: Crazy Stupid Love

Crazy Stupid Love (2011) 

Directed by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa 

Written by Dan Fogelman 

Starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Julianne Moore 

Release Date July 29th, 2011

Published July 28th, 2011 

Will Steve Carell ever grow up? In The 40 Year old Virgin Carell played a man-child who needed the help of friends to get him laid for the first time. Now, some seven years later, Carell is playing a slightly more grown up man-child who still needs help getting laid, this time after his wife of 25 years, Emily (Julianne Moore), has divorced him.

Enter Jacob played by Ryan Gosling. Jacob looks like he walked out of the pages of GQ carrying the swagger of a pro athlete and the ladies man rap of The Game author Neil Strauss. Jacob takes pity on Carell's Cal after repeatedly listening to Cal whine about his wife cheating on him. Naturally, this leads to a montage of Carell trying on clothes while Gosling hits on the various women assisting in their clothing choices. Soon, Cal has a swagger and for the first time in 25 years he's having sex with a woman who is not his wife, in fact, he's having sex with a number of women.

Jacob meanwhile, finds himself in an entirely new place in life. Hannah (Emma Stone) is the rare woman to reject his advances but after she gets a surprise from her would be fiancée she decides she wants the bar-hopping bad boy. Thinking that it would be just a one night stand, Jacob and Hannah have one of those first nights together that you end up telling your kids about.

Crazy, Stupid, Love was written and directed by the team behind the hit 2010 comedy Easy A, Glen Ficarra and John Requa. The duo has a good ear for the way people speak and an excellent feel for the comic rhythm with which people in movies speak. Carell and Gosling have a terrific comic rapport; quite surprising given Gosling's talent for drama and Carell's comic tendencies.

Also excellent is the chemistry between Gosling and Emma Stone. Ficcarro and Requa did great things with Stone in Easy A and the actress continues to show the promise of a budding superstar in Crazy, Stupid, Love. The Jacob-Hannah love montage would be typical, even perfunctory, were it not for the chemistry of these two terrific performers.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is far from perfect; the film goes off the rails a little late in the film after revealing an unnecessary plot twist and a ludicrous plot involving Cal and Emily's babysitter, Jessica (Analeigh Tipton.) That said, young actress Analeigh Tipton is a total sweetheart who has a terrific sub-plot with Cal and Emily's son Robbie played by Jonah Bobo.

The good things about Crazy, Stupid, Love greatly outweigh the bad. Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling are terrific together as are Gosling and Emma Stone. Add in small roles for Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei and you have a recipe for a terrific movie that cannot be spoiled by minor imperfections.

Documentary Review Fallen

Fallen (2017)  Directed by Thomas Marchese  Written by Documentary  Starring Michael Chiklis  Release Date September 1st, 2017 Published Aug...