Movie Review: Choke

Choke (2008) 

Directed by Clark Gregg

Written by Clark Gregg

Starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly McDonald, Jonah Bobo 

Release Date September 26th, 2008

Published November 24th, 2008

The thing about Choke is if you aren't a fan of Chuck Palahniuk's disturbing prose I cannot think of one reason why you should see this movie. Choke stars Sam Rockwell as a sex addict who doesn't learn anything, doesn't really grow and really doesn't do much of anything but revel in his own crapulence. If you find that idea appealing, maybe you might like this movie.

Or you should just read Palahniuk's book.

Sam Rockwell stars as Victor Mancini. A tour guide at some nameless olden days village, Victor only maintains so he can hang out with his pal Denny (Brad Henke) and pick up the occasional quickie with a tour goer, chaperone or fellow employee. His real job, the one that pays to keep his mother in a nursing home, is getting people to save his life in restaurants.

Victor intentionally chokes on food and enjoins the person performing the heimlich maneuver on him to take care of him. Generally, when people save someone's life they feel good about and are open to further helping the victim. Victor takes full advantage of their charity. In his spare time Victor attends a support group for sex addicts. He's not there for counseling but rather to meet easy women.

Why is Victor who he is? It's his mother. Ida Mancini is a manic depressive. Her wild mood swings found young Victor constantly on the run, often from the authorities. Victor went to a number of foster homes but was always 'rescued' by Ida when she extricated herself from whatever trouble she found for herself. Now Ida is suffering from dementia and Victor spends hours pretending to be whoever she thinks he is that day.

Choke is a character study. We are to examine and I suppose learn something from Victor. Myself? I was left to observe how unappealing Victor is. Sam Rockwell is a good actor and in the right role he is exceptional. Here he seems to get Victor on a human level but he doesn't seem to bring anymore to him than what was on the page.

The role of Victor requires an actor who plays things with his face and body and voice. Rockwell puts on the airs of Victor but doesn't go much deeper. Director Clark Gregg tries to flesh things out with flashbacks to Victor's childhood but the whole Oedipal story is a non-starter.

I just can't figure out what I am supposed to have enjoyed about Choke. It's the unpleasant story of a man addicted to sex who doesn't have sex for love or to connect with another person but only for the temporary escape from his misery. I don't doubt there are people like Victor in the world but I don't want to watch a movie about them either.

There simply isn't anything to recommend about Choke. Victor begins a miserable slob and ends as a miserable slob. He doesn't really learn anything and though the ending teases a lesson learned it's confusing as to what the lesson is or whether we are seeing what are really seeing. Even if the ending meant to tease a change in his life Victor never earned the change. He didn't change his life he merely demonstrates again and again his misery.

How can anyone recommend you watch that?

Movie Review: Zathura

Zathura (2005) 

Directed by Jon Favreau 

Written by David Koepp, John Kamps

Starring Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins 

Release Date November 11th, 2005 

Published November 10th, 2005

It is one thing for Hollywood studios to slap together big, dumb, loud blockbusters for teens and adults. But when they extend that brainless genre to kids that is where we as an audience must draw the line. The new kid targeted adventure flick Zathura is a rarity for its kind: a big, dumb, loud action movie aimed at the pre-teen market.

Two bratty brothers, Walter (Josh Hutcherson) and Danny (Jonah Bobo), bicker and annoy one another until Danny discovers a unique board game in the basement of their dad's (Tim Robbins) house. The game, Zathura, is a 50's era space adventure, a metal gears and paint concoction that was likely the X-Box of it's time.

Danny the younger brother wants to play but older brother Walter just wants to watch Sportscenter. When Danny turns the key and presses a button to start the game Walter finds he will have to play whether he likes it or not. The game has shot the boys into space and the only way to get home is to finish the game before the various meteor showers, robot malfunctions, or bloodthirsty aliens finish them.

Along for the ride is the boys' sister, Lisa (Kristen Stewart), who was supposed to keep them out of trouble but because of the game, she now finds herself frozen in cryo-sleep, as one of the game cards helpfully explains. Also joining the boys for this adventure is an astronaut (Dax Shepard) who was lost in space some 15 years ago after he and his brother had played the game.

Directed by Jon Favreau, Zathura is a surprisingly bombastic and ridiculous exercise in over modulated special effects and a complete lack of subtlety. The light touch that Favreau brought to his last kiddie flick, the very funny Elf, has been replaced in Zathura by a sledgehammer, hammering into place a pair of unlikable, often nasty, child characters into a predictable plot that is desperately padded to reach a feature length run time.

Zathura was adapted by David Koepp from a short illustrated novel by Chris Van Allsburg. The padding is necessary because Van Allsburg's book is a far from feature length at a mere 32 pages. Many of those pages are filled only with Van Allsburg's lovely charcoal drawings. That does illustrate the challenge that Jon Favreau and David Koepp faced in this adaptation but it does not excuse the choice to make the characters insufferable little brats who push the plot forward with the worst decisions imaginable all while the entire movie shrieks and rumbles like a sugared up kindergarten class. 

The special effects in Zathura are the film's strong point. Jon Favreau creates a terrifically cartoonish outer space that is perfectly in line with a child's imagination. The robots and aliens are cool looking, with the robot also providing the films few moments of genuine laughter. If I have any issue with the aliens it's that they may be a little too scary for the young audience that is being sought after by Zathura.

Unfortunately, the weak points of Zathura are a group of unlikable, unendurable characters. The brothers bicker constantly and meanly and when they aren't bickering with each other they are bickering with their dad played by Tim Robbins in a forgettable cameo or they are bickering with their even less enjoyable sister played by Kristen Stewart. Are kids, especially young brothers, often at each other's throats? Yeah, maybe. Does that make me want to watch a movie about them being at each others throat's? No, especially when the film is supposed to be a fun filled space adventure.

The game plot of Zathura is a direct lift from Jumanji and that is not surprising as both are based on books by Chris Van Allsburg. The books were, in fact, sequels though in the movie there is no recognition of one to the other aside from essentially similar plots.  Where Jumanji succeeds and Zathura fails is in creating characters we like and enjoy spending time with. Robin Williams may have his moments of being cloying and pandering but he can always pull out a big joke here and there and when he's on he is one of the funniest actors in the business. Jumanji only has a few moments of the best of Robin Williams but I will take those few moments over just about anything in the laughless Zathura.

Where is the wonder of a trip to space? Where is the excitement of adventure? In Zathura we have nothing but kids running from loud explosions in between bursts of ugly brotherly spats. Couldn't we have just one scene where the kids enjoy the magic of space? I realize the astronaut has long since been replaced by the sports or TV celebrity in the imaginations of children but come on, space is space and what kid couldn't find being in outer space more important than fighting with their sibling?

Zathura is a frustrating 84 minutes of big, dumb, loud action, special effects and sibling rivalry. Most frustrating, however, is the missed potential of such an interesting plot and such an interesting director. Jon Favreau has the potential to be a very good director if he can develop his characters better than he does in Zathura. He has the right ideas in there but the wrong approach and thus Zathura is a less than stellar effort. Safe for kids between 10 and 13 who enjoy loud noises and big bright explosions Zathura certainly has an audience but it's an audience that would be better served with more attention to character than to how loud you can crank the volume before the speakers blow.