Movie Review The Last Kiss

The Last Kiss (2006) 

Directed by Tony Goldwyn 

Written by Paul Haggis 

Starring Zach Braff, Jacinda Barrett, Casey Affleck, Rachel Bilson, Harold Ramis, Blythe Danner 

Release Date September 15th, 2006 

Published September 14th, 2006 

Having turned 30 years old this year I had not really thought about it as a milestone. When I was a kid 30 was old but now that I'm there I don't feel old. In fact I don't feel that much different than the little kid who thought 30 was old. Other than living on my own and having to clean up after myself; I still have some of my childhood hobbies, X-Box, baseball cards and such. The characters in Tony Goldberg's latest directorial effort The Last Kiss are just about to turn 30 and they are terrified. Facing things such as marriage, kids and mortgages, the characters in The Last Kiss face the kind of crises that most men save for their 50th birthday not the 30th.

Zach Braff leads a terrific ensemble in The Last Kiss as Michael; an architect who has just found out his girlfriend Jenna (Jascinda Barrett) is going to have a baby. The panic written on his face is masked by his good humor but is still quite apparent to his pals, Izzy (Michael Weston), Chris (Casey Affleck), and Kenny (Eric Christian Olson).

Michael's friends, like Michael are just about to turn 30 and are also facing grown up issues. Izzy just lost the girl he has loved since high school and is planning an escape to Mexico. Kenny is thinking of going with Izzy on the road trip, a desire that arises after a woman he met and had one night stand with tries introduce him to her parents. And then there is Chris; the only married man in the group. Chris and his wife Danielle (Lauren Lee Smith) have been struggling since having their baby boy and Chris thinks he wants out.

For Michael the troubling grown up thought has coalesced around one thing. If he commits to being with Jenna for the rest of his life she will be the last woman he will ever kiss, a haunting prospect for a 29 year old who feels his best years are still ahead of him. When a college girl, Kim (Rachel Bilson), approaches him at a wedding he see's her beauty but it is her youth that reminds him of his past. He still feels college was the best time of his life. When Michael chances a tryst with Kim it's out of fear of the future as much or more than simply lust.

Directed by Tony Goldwyn from a script by Oscar winner Paul Haggis, The Last Kiss is smart in the ways it draws out these characters and their conflicts. The problems come from the fact that these characters, are childish, selfish and petulant, not exactly the kind of people you go to the movies to meet. Now, there is something to be said for how truthful these characters, true to themselves and their established natures, that still does not make them enjoyable.

Then there is the ending that employs a gimmick in order to resolve the conflict between two central characters. Because neither Goldwyn or Haggis could think of a smarter more mature way to resolve the picture we are left with a character resorting to extreme stubbornness to bring the movie to its conclusion. It's not an egregious issue, nothing that would keep me from recommending this otherwise likable film but it does keep the film from rising from a good movie to a really good movie.

Zach Braff is is quickly becoming a welcome presence on the big screen. His debut in Garden State was a revelation as Braff shows chops as an actor and director. As an actor for hire in The Last Kiss, Braff is rumored to have punched up his dialogue a bit at the behest of director Tony Goldwyn. Whether it was Braff or writer Paul Haggis, the writing of Michael is the smartest thing in the film. It's a difficult role because Michael rarely does what we in the audience want him to do. He more than risks being likable but because he is played by Zach Braff we forgive easier than we might with another actor.

Jascinda Barrett is a rising star who I first noticed in the little seen drama The Human Stain. Since then she was a small but winning presence in Bridget Jones 2 and she managed to survive the abysmal remake Poseidon. It's not just her lovely spokesmodel features, Barrett has a real talent for finding the depths of her characters. In The Last Kiss she wonderfully plays Jenna's contentment early on and her stunned sadness later as he entire world crashes around her.

Barrett's Jenna is central to Michael's plot but she is also deeply inolved in the films best subplot. Veterans Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson play Jenna's parents. Wilkinson's therapist believes everything is fine as does his daughter but Danner shows that everything is not okay when she decides to reveal an affair she had three years prior to the films timeline and decides to leave her husband. Danner has a fabulous moment where she meets up with the man she cheated with and is sad to find he is now happily married.

Watching Barrett play off Wilkinson and Danner is lovely and grounds the film in maturity when it desperately needs it. Without this subplot the film would be nothing but childish posturing and male pattern whining.

Arrested development is a popular theme in 2006. Characters in movies as varied as the stoner comedy Grandma's Boy, the romantic comedy Failure To Launch, Owen Wilson's Dupree in You Me and Dupree and Vince Vaughn in The Break Up, are all examples of men with severe fears of commitment and growing up. It is as if adulthood has replaced Freddy Krueger as the boogeyman of modern times.

The Last Kiss is the most mature of the group of films which make what used to be called Peter Pan syndrome their subject. These characters are no more willing to grow up but are more thoughtful about the subject than the examples I cited before. By that measure; The Last Kiss is a worthy effort. It helps to have such a naturally funny cast to pull it off.

Movie Review: Year One

Year One (2009) 

Directed by Harold Ramis

Written by Gene Stupnitsky, Harold Ramis, Lee Eisenberg

Starring Jack Black, Michael Cera, Hank Azaria, Oliver Platt, David Cross

Release Date June 19th, 2009 

Published June 18th, 2009  

It's a nice idea. Get a bunch of funny people together; throw on some funny costumes, make some references to the bible and wait for one the talented performers to say something funny. That is the basic idea of Year One. Throw Jack Black and Michael Cera together with a large group of funny people like Bill Hader, Hank Azaria, David Cross and Paul Rudd and assume something funny will happen. Occasionally something funny does happen. More often however, a premise for a satiric scene is set and everyone stumbles about searching desperately for a punchline.

Jack Black stars in Year One as Zed a wannabe hunter. He stinks at it and the other hunters hate him. Unfortunately for Zed, he stinks at being a gatherer as well and those are really the only jobs in the caveman world. Zed's best friend is Oh played by Michael Cera. Oh is an expert gatherer but pines for a girl who only dates hunters. When he tries to go all caveman on her and drag her back to his hut, she beats him down, his latest in a long series of humiliations to come.

When Zed burns much of the village down he is banished and Oh decides to leave with him. Together they wander into biblical times where they witness the murder of Abel (Paul Rudd) by his brother Cain (David Cross). They move on and witness Abraham (Hank Azaria) offering his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz Plasse) as a sacrafice to God. Finally, Zed and Oh wind up in Sodom where the high priest (Oliver Platt) is a mincing queen and the princess (Olivia Wilde) thinks she can steal the crown with Zed's help.

The bible stuff is odd because Year One is not necessarily a biblical satire. It may have wanted to be but all the movie ever does is introduce biblical characters in their famous context and then waits for the actors to find something funny to do. These are very talented actors, some of whom with years of improv and sketch comedy training but without a solid script to work from even the best of the improv crowd simply flails about searching for something funny to do.

Stuck with an idea and not a character, Jack Black falls back on his well known antics and shows why audiences are growing tired of his schtick. Michael Cera to is in fallback mode as he transports his much loved persona as a gawky, shy, loser who always seems the subject of humiliation into the role of Oh. The same nervous energy that people found charming in Superbad gets old fast out of context in Year One.

Director Harold Ramis must have thought that all he needed were funny people and a lot of goofy costumes and somehow they would find something funny. Instead, we have a lot of funny talented people lurching about searching for punchlines that should have been provided for them by an actual script.

Not only does what there is of a script stink but Ramis's direction is stunningly lax and inept. Scenes arrive and sputter to a finish or, in the case of an early scene where Cera is attacked by a snake and then a cougar, the scene doesn't really end so much as the scene suddenly is abandoned without resolution. This is a stunning level of apathy from such a veteran director.

Year One is one of the biggest disappointments of the summer.

Movie Review The Ice Harvest

The Ice Harvest (2005) 

Directed by Harold Ramis 

Written by Richard Russo, Robert Benton 

Starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Randy Quaid, Oliver Platt 

Release Date November 23rd, 2005 

Published November 22nd, 2005 

Director Harold Ramis is best known for lighthearted comedy with an edgy intellect. His best work, 1993's Groundhog's Day, is such a true gem of a film that its polish has only shined brighter in the years subsequent to its release. Most credit for that film goes to Bill Murray's complex curmudgeonly existential performance. But, behind that performance was Ramis' sly, sneaky direction that played games with the audience that many did not discover until years later.

Even in lesser efforts like Analyze This and Analyze That, Ramis has at least delivered moments of pithy intellect and sly commentary. Ramis' latest effort Ice Harvest is nothing like anything he's directed before. A black hearted comic noir so thick with dark irony and detached violence one wonders if a late night cocktail of Pulp Fiction and Fargo somehow festered in Harold Ramis' dreams.

John Cusack stars in Ice Harvest as Charlie Arglist, a low level midwestern mob lawyer whose job seems to be holding down bar stools in mob controlled strip clubs. Charlie had never shown an ounce of ambition until a mobster named Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) convinced him to lift two million dollars in mob money from a local bank.

Getting the money was easy, now Charlie simply has to get out of Wichita. Unfortunately that will have to wait until morning as the entire town is nearly shut down due to an ice storm. Vic also has a few loose ends to tie up before they can go, including his soon to be ex-wife and a mobster, Roy (Mike Starr), who has discovered Vic and Charlie's scam.

Charlie is not simply waiting out the storm either. He is hiding from Roy while being seduced by Renata (Connie Neilsen), the manager of one the many strip clubs Charlie frequents, who is well aware of the money Vic and Charlie stole and has an eye on joining them in their getaway. Before Charlie can close that deal however, there is the matter of his best friend, Pete (Oliver Platt), who has chosen this night to get record-breakingly drunk and only Charlie can help him get home.

Pete happens to be married to Charlie's ex-wife which leads to an awkwardly humorous scene where Pete confronts his wife's growing dissatisfaction with their marriage in the midst of Christmas dinner at her parents house as Charlie stands by saying goodbye to his young daughter and unhappy son who he never sees. Platt is very funny in the scene but his plot really has little or any relation to the rest of the movie.

The rest of the film is full of double and triple crosses, bodies pile up high and all the while director Harold Ramis and writers Richard Russo and Robert Benton can't decide if they are making a dark comedy or a modern noir. Cusack's performance is, for the most part, dark comedy. Charlie assesses every plot development with a cowardly paranoia and suspicion that makes him the butt of every joke and the comic victim of every other character in the film.

In fact most of the cast is playing dark comedy. Thornton plays it cool for the most part but then there is the scene, featured prominently in the films trailer, where he has stuffed Roy in a trunk and comically beats it with a golf club which is straight slapstick. This is followed by a funny exchange in the car on the way to dump the body as Roy, in the box, attempts to save his life by convincing Charlie that Vic is going to kill him too and run off with all the money. The scene is funny but nothing after it is and much of what comes before it is unamusing as well.

As Cusack, Thornton, Platt and Starr are all playing dark comic riffs, Ramis is directing a bleak, mean spirited and violent Coen brothers' style anti-thriller with Neilsen's femme fatale and Randy Quaid's mob boss clearly not in on the rest of the cast's joke. The film shifts uncomfortably from ugly violence to black comedy, never able to incorporate the two in a way that makes both work.

Ice Harvest is shot as confusingly as it is plotted. Certain scenes have the bleak grays and blacks and dark colors of a noir mystery right down the rascotro lighting. Other scenes feature the bright colors and slick styling of any major mainstream comedy. A scene of Charlie standing in the empty frozen tundra of a Kansas highway is straight noir but the scenes between Cusack and Oliver Platt are from a dysfunctional holiday comedy filled with brightly decorated Christmas items. The shooting further muddies the line between the film's noir and dark comic intentions.

John Cusack does find a way to make his hapless loser Charlie work in terms of winning the audience to his side. Even as Charlie engages in some of the bad behavior in the film he retains an air of detached observation. With every dark development Charlie rarely gets riled up, he merely rubs his eyes in frustration and gets down to the distasteful business of surviving this one extraordinarily difficult night.

Oliver Platt's performance is equally as winning as Cusack's. The two actors spark a terrific chemistry in the few scenes they have together. Despite his oafish and even rude actions, Platt's sad sack Pete is very sympathetic in his sad drunken way. Had the film been able to straighten out the problems with its tone Platt and Cusack's performances alone could have made Ice Harvest a worthy effort.

It's not that dark comedy and modern noir are mutually exclusive genres.  It's just a difficult balancing act to make the two elements work together. Fargo, for example, works on both levels because of its exceptional cast and the assured direction of the Coen brothers. Ice Harvest director Harold Ramis is unable to find the balance between the comic performances of his cast and the dark action script.

Ramis wants to escape his reputation as a director of light comedy and indulge his dark side but his comic instincts are uncontrollable and express themselves in the direction of his actors. Ramis clearly wants to indulge his dark side in Ice Harvest but he cannot quiet his crowd pleasing instincts. After years of light, entertaining comedies, Ramis is very in tune to giving the audience the simple pleasures that most seek. Ice Harvest is not a film as a whole that can or should give audiences what they want.

The film's happy ending underscores my point. Watching Charlie escape with the money, and with his pal Pete, I could feel the gears turning as Ramis attempted to please the audience with a pseudo-happy ending. But what did Charlie do to deserve a happy ending? Granted that both Cusack and Platt are very good together and earn our sympathy, their plot is from an entirely different movie. Charlie still did a lot of unforgivable things and punishing him in a darkly ironic way would have been a more appropriate ending.

With a cast this talented Ice Harvest should be far more entertaining than it is. The failure lies with Ramis who, whether unwilling or unable, cannot find a way to mix his comic instincts with this black-hearted script. The result is a mixed bag of darkly humorous moments and awkward modern noir violence. John Cusack delivers a dead-on performance but the film lets him down and more importantly it lets the audience down.