Movie Review Big Miracle

Big Miracle (2012) 

Directed by Ken Kwapis 

Written by Jack Amiel, Michael Begler

Starring Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski, Dermot Mulroney, Tim Blake Nelson, Vinessa Shaw, Ted Danson

Release Date February 3rd, 2012 

Published February 4th, 2012

Movies released in the first two months of any year tend to stink. It's not a rule and this fact is certainly not based on an intention to release bad movies; it's a function of Hollywood studios seeking a time of light movie-going during which to off-load a troubled project that does not hold the potential to battle the box office behemoths of the Spring, Summer and Winter seasons.

This fact makes a movie like "Big Miracle" all the more welcome. This delightful story, based on real life events, is thoughtful, sweet, harrowing and, in the end, uplifting; a very rare combination at this oft-neglected time of the movie-going year.

Based on a true story

Drew Barrymore stars in "Big Miracle" as Rachel Kramer a Greenpeace activist who, when we meet her, is living in Alaska and battling a big oil company, headed by J.W McGraw (Ted Danson), over drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Preserve. When Rachel hears the story of a trio of whales trapped off the coast of an Alaskan whaling village she begins an extraordinary campaign to free the trapped creatures that becomes an international cause.

The reporter who uncovers the whale story happens to be Rachel's ex-boyfriend Adam (John Krasinski). Yes, this fact is a plot convenience but get over it; Barrymore and Krasinski have good banter and romantic chemistry and that brings another layer of joy to "Big Miracle." Also adding to the joy of this terrific, heartfelt little movie is young Ahmaogak Sweeney who plays Nathan, a native of the village; grandson of a local whaling captain, and our narrator.

A colorful and clever supporting cast

There are minor missteps in "Big Miracle" like the casting of Kristen Bell and John Michael Higgins as heartless reporters chasing the whale story for ratings, but for the most part the film is spot on. The majority of the supporting cast is populated by colorful characters like Rob Riggle and James Le Gros as a pair of brothers from Minnesota who's de-icing machine for ice fisherman becomes a key component in keeping the breathing holes open for the whales.

Director Ken Kwapis is a veteran storyteller from TV's "The Office" and the big screen teen adventure "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." Kwapis has a real knack for combining heart and humor without seeming cloying or manipulative. In "Big Miracle" he takes a real life story and invests it with relatable warmth and a cast that earns our sympathy from the opening frame.

Smiling, laughing and Cheering

"Big Miracle" may be the big surprise of the early portion of 2012. This sweet family-friendly does have moments that will be hard for young children to watch but by the end the whole family will be smiling, laughing and cheering.

Movie Review License to Wed

License to Wed (2007)

Directed by Ken Kwapis

Written by Vince Dimeglio 

Starring Robin Williams, John Kracinski, Mandy Moore 

Release Date July 3rd, 2007 

Published July 3rd, 2007 

Robin Williams is one of the quickest, funniest wits in the business. His whirling comic dervish is a perpetual motion device of comic invention. His mind leaps from one wild reference point to the next, selling even the worst one liner with high energy histrionics that themselves often earn a laugh. If he has one major weakness, it's a taste for the maudlin and simple minded.

Williams' worst films aim for the heart instead of the funny bone with eye rolling results. His latest comedy License To Wed falls somewhere in between Williams at his best and worst. His wildman preacher, Reverend Frank, is perfectly suited to his fast paced style. However, License To Wed being a romantic comedy also opens up the opportunity for the overly sentimental and sappy, an opportunity Williams cannot resist.

When Ben (John Kracinski) met Sadie (Mandy Moore) it was love at first sight. Both of them knew right away that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and six months after that first meeting; Ben asked her to marry him and she said yes. Of course, it could never be that simple. Though Ben wants to fly down to Jamaica for the wedding, Sadie wants to marry in the church she grew up in and planned her dream wedding around.

To give Sadie the wedding of her dreams Ben has to survive meeting Reverend Frank (Robin Williams) who is not just the church pastor but also a pre-marriage counselor who will refuse to allow a couple to wed if they cannot survive his rigorous pre-marriage course. The couple has three weeks until their wedding day and during that time Reverend Frank will drive them completely nuts to make absolutely certain they are ready to be wed.

License To Wed, directed by Ken Kwapis (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), plays like a one line Hollywood pitch meeting "Robin Williams as a wacky priest/wedding counselor". It's an idea more than it is a movie and it plays much like an unformed idea that never coalesced into a full length feature. Director Ken Kwapis does manage to capture a few of those typically Robin Williams moments, the kind of fast paced, improv jokes that only Williams can pull off, but most of License To Wed just lays there waiting for another Williams improv to give it life.

The Office star John Kracinski is an appealing comic presence whose deadpan expression and mischievous nature have been terrifically funny on TV turns bland in this banal pseudo-romance. Struggling to connect with the wooden Mandy Moore, Kracinski is pushed into some forced slapstick in order to drag laughs out of scenes that Robin Williams can't save with a quick improv.

Kracinski comes off bland and boring in License To Wed and co-star Moore is little help. Once, I had thought that Moore had potential. She delivered a terrifically bitchy performance in the indie comedy Saved and did a similar number in the daring disaster American Dreamz. And she was terrifically funny in a brief stint on TV's Scrubs. Since then however, she has regressed as she tries desperately for romantic comedy stardom in the dreadful Because I Said So and now License To Wed.

What little that works in License To Wed comes from Robin Williams. Allowed to run amok by what is only a semblance of a plot, Williams can't help but find a few solid one liners and a few big gags. However, he also can't help whiffing on a few stale jokes and in his inevitable soft and cuddly turn. There is no denying though that when Williams is on his game he's as funny as anyone in the business and he rescues more than a few scenes in License To Wed with his talent for improvisation.

As hit and miss a's Willams can be and often is in License To Wed, scenes without him long for his spontaneity and energy. The fact is that this movie got made on the pitch of Robin Williams as a wacky preacher which puts stars John Kracinski and Mandy Moore at a big disadvantage. Their roles are bigger than Williams' and yet as the film is set up, they are in service to him and without him they flounder.

License To Wed has a number of laugh out loud moments, all of them thanks to Robin Williams. Sadly, however, those laughs are random and often don't serve to move the story forward. Some gags, bits and jokes even pause the story to complete themselves, as if the movie itself were acknowledging its own story bankruptcy.

Looking on the bright side, as long as John Kracinski is picking such poor film roles he will have plenty of time for his TV show The Office. That bright side has nothing to do with License To Wed but as an Office fan it made me smile.

Movie Review He's Just Not That Into You

He's Just Not That Into You (2009) 

Directed by Ken Kwapis 

Written by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein 

Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly Bradley Cooper, Justin Long 

Release Date February 6th, 2009 

Published February 5th, 2009

A book based on a line of dialogue from a TV show goes on to become a massive bestseller and adapted into a major motion picture. Shouldn't the TV writer get the credit? After all, Michael Patrick King, the Sex and the City writer and his staff, were the ones who came up with this bit of mini insight. Comedian 

Greg Behrendt merely filled in the margins around that line with banal generalizations, a few John Gray Mars and Venus cribs, and humor aimed at the lifeless Lifetime TV movie crowd. It was that episode of Sex and the City about Berger telling Miranda what men really think that had the 'He's Just Not That Into You' epiphany.

And let's be real here. There was more insight into relationships in that one 22 minute Sex and the City episode than there are in the 300 some pages of Greg Behrendt's book and the nearly 2 hour movie based on it. Skip the movie and the book, let's watch Sex and the City. Unfortunately, I had to see the movie and what a chore it is. Despite one of the most impressive casts this side of a Love Boat-Fantasy Island crossover episode, He's Just Not That Into is a brutal exercise in monotonous, whiny neuroses. If I wanted that I would tape my therapy sessions.

Ginnifer Goodwin is the ostensible lead of He's Just Not That Into You and the poor girl makes a sad, sad spectacle of herself as Gigi the whiniest and most neurotic of a cast full of whiny neurotics. Her Gigi can barely read street signs, forget the subtle signals of human interaction. When she goes out on a semi-decent date with Conor (Kevin Connelly) she seems normal, just a little clueless about the signs that he isn't really that into her. Later, as she waits for him to call for another date she spends endless, ear splitting minutes detailing exactly why she is certain he will call again, including a mind numbing dissertation on the banal phrase 'Nice meeting you'.

Needless to say, Conor doesn't call back. That however may or may not have anything to do with the supremely needy vibe that Gigi puts out, but because he is obsessed with Anna (Scarlett Johansson) a girl he slept with once and now hangs out with while not getting any anymore. He cannot understand why they aren't sleeping together anymore even though they still hang out. Anyone else want to wack this guy with a baseball bat? With his pal Alex (Justin Long) he rehashes a brief conversation he had with Anna over the phone, who he called right after his date with Gigi, and how she said she would call him right back but didn't.

Anna, you see, was at a grocery store and struck up a flirtation with Ben (Bradley Cooper) just as Conor was calling. She jumped off the phone with Conor despite the wedding ring on Ben's finger. Further, despite that ring, she pushes the flirting, getting his card ostensibly so he can pass it along to an agent friend of his, she's a singer. Ben is able to control himself for a little while though he and his wife Janine (Jennifer Connelly) have been arguing throughout the massive redecoration of their new home. She wants to talk tile patterns and whether he has actually quit smoking and he just wants to have sex with Anna.

All of these various troubled relationships are presented in the most general fashion with little character development and no really interesting dialogue. Director Ken Kwapis and writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein definitely do justice to Greg Behrendt's book but in so doing, they are left with the same lackluster, limp dating advice that populates that absurdly popular book. Kwapis is a terrific television director, he's done some fine work with The Office but in features, yeesh. His resume includes Beautician and the Beast and, ugh, License To Wed.

Then again, he also directed the original Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants which is a movie of great warmth, humor and empathy, all of which is absent from He's Just Not That Into You. Then again, Sisterhood is based on a much better book than He's Just Not That Into You. Not that I have read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I have read He's Just Not That Into You and I feel very comfortable making the assumption. Ken Kwapis has some talent, how he has made such terrible films, and one pretty good one, remains a mystery to me.

Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston and Drew Barrymore round out the all star cast of He's Just Not That Into You and they seem like they may be in entirely different movies. Affleck and Aniston actually escape the dreary humor free children mincing their way through this abyss of stupidity that is He's Just Not That Into You. As a couple who've been together for seven years without getting married they are saddled with the same mindless problems of the rest of the cast but they are onscreen so little and neither allows for any real whining about their problems, they miss out on the sad fates of the rest of the cast.

Poor Drew Barrymore arguably gets it the worst of anyone in arguably the smallest role in the movie. Shoehorned into the plot as Anna's best friend, Drew has a technology problem. With her MySpace page, her cellphone, her home phone, her work phone, her home email, her work email, she has to check every one every few minutes to get updates on her latest relationship. It's exhausting to be rejected in so many forms and she longs for the days of an answering machine. Ugh! Can someone just get this girl a blackberry? An IPhone? Something! Honestly, if modern tech is this hard for you, just give up. Go live in a cave somewhere.

And Drew's role is minuscule compared to Ginnifer Goodwin's Gigi who, if she were a real person, would likely have died from forgetting how to breathe. This is one of the most dull witted characters ever brought to the screen. I like Goodwin, she's an attractive girl who I know is not this mentally challenged. The character she is saddled with in He's Just Not That Into You is a flibbertigibbet moron who could barely read traffic signals, forget body language or even a direct answer from a guy telling her he is never going to call her.

Ladies, this movie is meant for you and the people who made it think that Gigi represents you. They think all of these ludicrous, brain-dead morons stand in for a type that you can relate to. This is what Hollywood thinks of you. If that is not a massive insult I don't know what is. Granted, the men in this movie don't get off easy, Kevin Connelly's Conor is pathetic beyond words, Bradley Cooper's Ben is pathetic and a jerk and Justin Long's Alex is arguably more clueless than anyone else in the film, likely because he is the stand in for Author Behrendt, as the advice giver of the group.

It is Alex who advises Gigi, regarding Conor, that 'He's Just Not That Into You' and fails to communicate that to her because he wasn't writing it on a brick and clubbing her with it repeatedly. His banal generalities about why men do what they do and why women don't get it are the thesis statement of He's Just Not That Into You and they boil down to nothing more insightful than that simpleminded title.