Movie Review The Grinch

The Grinch (2018) 

Directed by Scott Mosier, Yarrow Cheney

Written by Michael LeSieur, Tommy Swerdlow 

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury 

Release Date November 9th, 2018

Published November 9th, 2018

I went into The Grinch assuming I would see the standard rehash of a beloved classic combined with the modern pop culture references that 'clever' filmmakers believe to be an innovation. That’s what modern Hollywood tends to do so why should I expect anything more? Horton Hears a Who for example is merely a projectile vomited version of the Seuss story dressed up with references to anime and the standard amount of gross out humor that the kids enjoy.

What reason would I have to expect more from The Grinch? The film comes from Illumination, the company behind The Secret Life of Pets, Despicable Me and Minions so that certainly wasn’t going to aid my expectations, they’re basically a marketing machine that happens to make movies. There is Scott Mosier as co-director, that caught my eye.

Mosier has been the right hand of writer-director-podcast magnate Kevin Smith for years. At the very least, I could count on him not to countenance any falseness or saccharine sentimentality Indeed, the makers of The Grinch do avoid schmaltz and unearned sentimentality but the surprising thing is how often, what is still a product intended to sell tickets and toys, comes to genuine, unforced emotion.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the voice of The Grinch, the dyspeptic, cave-dwelling, Christmas-hating, loner from the imagination of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr Seuss. This version of The Grinch matches The Grinch we’ve always known, at least early on. He’s grumpy and rude and judgmental and then, of course, that famous song, reimagined by Tyler The Creator, comes along to pile metaphor, atop metaphor, to remind us what a bad guy The Grinch is.

But listen to that song for a moment. First of all, it’s all kinds of strange with Tyler The Creator’s odd approach to composition and his only vague interest in the original lyrics, he has a very particular fascination with the line ‘You’re a bad Banana, with a greasy black peel’ for whatever reason. But, that’s not the part I’m talking about. There is a line that Tyler invented for this version that has a pointed quality that hints at something about The Grinch character in this movie.

When Tyler The Creator says ‘Halloween comes around, we ain’t knockin’ at your door’ he says the line with a disbelieving quality that asks ‘what are you so mad about? We’re happy to leave you alone.’ This hits at the main thesis of this new version of The Grinch, loneliness, isolation and social anxiety. The reason The Grinch is so desperately unhappy is because he doesn’t really want to be alone.

This plays into a very modern theme that the filmmakers lay under the traditional Grinch story. While we’ve come for the Christmas stealing and the lesson learning, the makers of The Grinch have evolved the story to examine the inner, emotional life of The Grinch in an unexpectedly thoughtful fashion. The film gives weight to the idea that The Grinch doesn’t hate Christmas, he hates the alienation that the family holiday inspires within him.

It’s a simplistic notion, sure, but one the filmmakers treat with the right amount of seriousness and deliver in the midst of a solid number of jokey jokes to keep from getting too weighty for a kids flick. The Grinch has just the right amount of believable angst and silliness that I found myself satisfied on all sides by this charming new take on this iconic story.

Whereas the original Dr Seuss take on The Grinch was as a grouchy, grumpy figure of malevolence inspired by the perceived hypocrisy of the Who’s to try and teach them a lesson, only to have the lesson turned on him, this version of The Grinch gives generous space to the emotional side of The Grinch character. In this version, The Grinch is allowed time to reveal his nature to the audience rather than the live action movie version of the story busily, noisily and clumsily attempting to explain The Grinch while Jim Carrey ranted and vamped.

This version, thankfully, is less chaotic and has a genuine thoughtful quality. That’s not to say that the movie plumbs the depths of The Grinch, mining for insight. Rather, the movie is about the emotional journey of a character overcoming years of traumatic memories and isolation to step out into the world in hopes of acceptance. That’s a strong journey for a character and not one you expect of a character as seemingly uncomplicated as The Grinch.

For that, and the lovely animation, I must say, I very much enjoyed this modern, neurotic take on The Grinch. It’s silly and sweet and it looks great. The crisp character design has the quality of bringing together the classic lines of Seuss and a modern quality of today’s most advanced CGI, a marriage that has, until now, struggled to connect.

Movie Review Rock Dog

Rock Dog (2017) 

Directed by Ash Brannon

Written by Ash Brannon, Kurt Voelker

Starring Luke Wilson, J.K Simmons, Eddie Izzard, Lewis Black, Kenan Thompson, Mae Whitman

Release Date February 24th, 2017

Published February 24th, 2017

To complain that “Rock Dog” is a low-quality bit of animated flotsam is something akin to complaining about the wind blowing, that’s simply its nature. “Rock Dog” is an animated cash-in from China that isn’t meant to be good but rather is intended as a product, and a cheap one at that. China may still be under the boot of Communism but the burgeoning capitalists working their way around the government have learned a thing or two from Hollywood charlatans who pump out products rather than art or even the modest bit of fluffy entertainment.

“Rock Dog” features the voice of Luke Wilson, a paragon of youthful enthusiasm at a mere 45 years old, as teenage mastiff singer Bodi. Bodi lives on Snow Mountain with his bruising mastiff daddy Khampa (J.K Simmons) who has seemingly planned Bodi’s life for him. Like his dad, Bodi is expected to become a guard dog, protecting the simple and sweet sheep of Snow Mountain from the dastardly and deadly wolves, led by Linnux (Lewis Black).

Bodi however, dreams of music and when a radio falls from the sky from a passing airplane Bodi finds his muse in a rock singer named Angus Scattergood (Eddie Izzard). With dreams of having Angus teach him about music, Bodi leaves his family behind to travel to the city and join a band. Unfortunately, the wolves see Bodi leaving and see it as a chance to attack the village. Can Bodi achieve his dreams and still find a way to protect Snow Mountain? Will you care?

Don’t let this incredibly funny voice cast fool you, “Rock Dog” has only three laughs. Mostly “Rock Dog” seems to exist. The story is rudimentary, as my description indicates, when it isn’t filling time with nonsense about wrestling a murderous bear or padding things further with voiceover from Sam Elliott as, ugh,….. Fleetwood Yak. Somewhere several screenwriters high fived over that pun.

No, Fleetwood Yak is not one of the three laughs in the movie, though it did rank among the uncountable groans. No, Eddie Izzard’s rock star cat was responsible for the laughs “Rock Dog” inspires. One comes when he is forced into a bit of old school Warner Brothers slapstick, the second when he feels guilty for stealing a song from Bodi and is shamed by his robot butler and the last wasn’t memorable enough for me to recount but I can at least admit the laugh was there.

Does a negative review of “Rock Dog” matter in any way? Of course, not. Most parents don’t care what they throw in front of their small child’s consciousness. That said, for the few parents who do care, for the parents who are vigilant and give thought and care to what their children consume, this review is for you. This review says don’t waste your child’s developing brain cells on this. It’s not that “Rock Dog” is offensive or even bad for the children who do see it. Rather, that “Rock Dog” isn’t worth the 89 minutes your child could be reading or imagining or exploring a worthy work of pop entertainment. This review is for anyone who actually read all the way to the end of a review of “Rock Dog.”

Movie Review Love Don't Cost a Thing

Love Don't Cost A Thing (2003) 

Directed by Troy Beyer 

Written by Troy Beyer 

Starring Nick Cannon, Christina Milian, Steve Harvey, Kenan Thompson, Kal Penn

Release Date December 12th, 2003 

Published December 12th, 2003  

Of all of the movies that I thought deserved another take, the dopey Patrick Dempsey teen comedy Can’t Buy Me Love never occurred to me. Despite being an iconic 80’s film for many, to me its a slight comedy about a nerd who buys his way into high school popularity had overtones of outright prostitution. I would have preferred to welcome its fall into 80’s obscurity. The ever unoriginal Hollywood swill factory however disagreed with my assessment and thus we have Love Don’t Cost A Thing, a cynical “urban” (read black) take on the story.

Nick Cannon, star of last year’s drumming drama Drumline, stars as Alvin Johnson. Alvin is a high school nerd who spends his time with his nerdy friends rebuilding cars and dreaming of what it would be like to have access to the popular kid’s hallway of their high school. Yes, the high school has a hallway where the rich, popular bullies and their hot girlfriends are separated from the rabble, indicating that even the high school teachers are in on this anti-nerd conspiracy.

Alvin’s dream girl is a popular cheerleader named Paris Morgan (Christina Milian) whose current boyfriend is an NBA star who jumped directly from high school to the NBA. Paris has no occasion to ever speak to Alvin until one night when she borrows her mother’s car and crashes it while arguing on the phone with her boyfriend. While getting the car looked at Paris finds that her mother will find out about the accident unless the car is fixed immediately. Enter Alvin with his car expertise and just enough of his own money to pay for the parts. In exchange for fixing the car, Paris will be Alvin’s girl and in the process help him become popular.

What a shock it is then when the plan succeeds and popularity goes to young Alvin’s head. Alvin drops his nerdy friends, begins wearing trendy clothes and a new hairstyle and before long, Alvin surpasses Paris in his high school stature. Do you think he has a comeuppance in his future? For his part, Nick Cannon affects a nerdy black kid better than I expected. That said, the part as written has him changing rather unconvincingly from Urkel to Puff Daddy and only the Urkel part works. Cannon is a charisma-challenged actor who has yet to show a spark of the stardom that has seemed thrust upon him in the past year since the debut of his Nickelodeon kids show in 2002.

Pop starlet Christina Milian equates herself better than expected, though expectations place her just ahead of Britney Spears on the pop-tart-turned-actress-chart well behind the far more accomplished Mandy Moore. The part as written by director Troy Miller affects depth by having Paris write bad poetry and play the guitar. She also bemoans popularity as a job rather than a mere social status, an interesting idea that goes nowhere.

Director Troy Beyer adapted the screenplay of Can’t Buy Me Love, written by Michael Swerdlick. The word adaptation is used loosely. She essentially just traces within the lines of the original film, changing only minor plot points and the ethnicity of the characters.

Therein lies the most insidious problem of the film. The retrofitting of this unoriginal idea for African American audiences is a sad cynical attempt to capitalize on the paucity of films with African-American lead characters. Because there are so few films with black, lead characters, African-American audiences are prone to support any film that features a black face. This has caused Hollywood’s cynical mass marketing machine to continue to limit opportunities for African-Americans in order to maintain them as a niche market. Assuming they are willing to accept cheap, easy to market trash like Love Don’t Cost A Thing at the expense of more challenging, artistic films with African-American lead casts.

Such cynicism is nothing new from Hollywood but when it deals with race, it becomes far more serious. A film as slight as Love Don’t Cost A Thing doesn’t have any kind of social agenda in its creation. Rather, it has one thrust upon it because there are so few films with predominantly African American casts and even fewer good ones. That is not due to a lack of talented African-American filmmakers but rather due to cheap knock offs and shortsighted money grubbing of the kind that creates movies like Love Don't Cost A Thing.