Movie Review: Dance Flick

Dance Flick (2009) 

Directed by Damien Dante Wayans

Written by Keenan Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Craig Wayans 

Starring Shoshana Bush, Damon Wayans Jr, Essence Atkins, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans 

Release Date May 22nd, 2009 

Published May 23rd, 2009

Streaming on Starz via Amazon Prime (Subscription) 

The spoof movie hasn't been funny since Airplane 2. Fact. You want to talk Naked Gun? It's not necessarily a spoof movie. A spoof movie is one that takes particular movies or genres and aims to send up their inherent ideas and conventions. Scary Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Date Movie. There is not one laugh in any of these movies.

What we get instead are a series of thuddingly obvious jokes, vague impressions and head scratching vulgarity without any real aim. Dance Flick joins this laughless group.

Directed by Damian Dante Wayans, Dance Flick takes on the conventions of the dance movie starting with the premise of the 2000 drama Save The Last Dance and integrating it with riffs on You Got Served, Step Up and Stomp The Yard. It's not exactly timely. Save The Last Dance which gives Dance Flick its form and plot is nearly a decade old. Step Up 2 bombed last year and my memory of You Got Served and Stomp The Yard would have run together years ago were it not for IMDB.

Given the nature of our moderm media being timely while making movies is not easy. Movies take several months to make and by the time a movie like Dance Flick is completed and released the movies being riffed on are already well out of the cultural memory.

That hasn't stopped the Wayans Brothers in the past from desperately and vainly attempting to be of the moment and their spawn, the makers of Epic Movie, the Scary Movie sequels, Disaster Movie and the like from trying to be timely and failing miserably. In this way, Damian Dante Wayans is really a risk taker, he picks an older movie and sticks to it giving his movie a form that doesn't necessarily rely on timeliness.

Sure, some of the jokes feel a little past their sell by date but they are slightly less desperate than those of other similar movies. Unfortunately, they're just as unfunny. Dance Flick despite not sweating the times Dance Flick still fails to find the funny by crafting jokes so obvious, dumb and outright insulting that the audience spends more time predicting the next joke than laughing at it.

There is one laugh in the movie. It comes when Damian Wayans as the star of the film Thomas and Shoshanna Bush, riffing Julia Stiles luckless character from Save The Last Dance, are talking about her mother dying and Wayans goes off blaming her for her mother's death. It's mostly Wayans' manner that is funny and not necessarily any particular joke, but funny is funny. I laughed.

The biggest obstacle to the parody of Dance Flick is the fact that the targets themselves are so earnestly committed to their dancing premises that they really are send ups of themselves. Movies like Save The Last Dance or Step Up or You Got Served are so campy in their earnest attempts at making dance seem like the most important thing in the world that, in a way, that earnestness beoomes shield from the kind of mocking dealt out in Dance Flick. If something is already ridiculous how does one make it more ridiculous?

Dance Flick doesn't stink nearly as bad as Disaster Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movie or the like but that is a pretty low bar. As I said before there is one laugh in this movie and that's it. If one laugh is good enough for you then absolutely see Dance Flick. Why pay 7 to 11 dollars to see something like Dance Flick when movies it parodies like Save The Last Dance, Stomp The Yard, Step Up and You Got Served themselves have inherently humorous moments that nearly send up themselves.

Movie Review Norbit

Norbit (2007) 

Directed by Brian Robbins

Written by Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy

Starring Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Cuba Gooding Jr., Eddie Griffin, Marlon Wayans, Charlie Murphy 

Release Date February 9th, 2007 

Published February 9th, 2007 

The last thing Eddie Murphy needs with Oscar ballots still uncounted is a movie like Norbit. Unfortunately, Norbit is out there and TV commercials are exposing Eddie at his most commercially bankrupt. Will Norbit cast Eddie an Oscar? It's possible. Norbit is an example of Murphy at his most bankrupt, displaying his declining comic talent for the world to see, at a time when Hollywood is close to honoring him for the best dramatic work of his career.

Oscar voters aren't likely to see Norbit, which might lessen the impact, but just the sight of his giant fat suited character on TV could be enough for a few voters to turn their attention to actors with a tad more talent and integrity. 

Norbit (Eddie Murphy) was abandoned as a baby, thrown from a moving car at the doorstep of an orphanage/Chinese restaurant. There, Mr. Wong (Also Eddie Murphy) took young Norbit in and raised him as his own. Growing up in the orphanage, Norbit fell for a fellow orphan named Kate until she was adopted. With Kate gone, Norbit fell under the spell of Rasputia (Eddie, again) a giantess who protected him from bullies and years later forced him to marry her.

Trapped in an awful marriage to an awful woman, Norbit wants a way out. This is when Kate (Thandie Newton) returns and Norbit see's a different path for his life. Unfortunately, Kate has brought her fiance Deion (Cuba Gooding Jr.) with her. Can Norbit escape Rasputia and win Kate away from the scheming, jerky, Deion? These are the strands that stand in as a plot for Norbit.

Directed by Bryan Robbins, the auteur behind The Shaggy Dog and Ready To Rumble, Norbit is a terribly unfunny series of sitcomic sketches whose sole purpose is placing their star in a different funny outfit. The makeup on Eddie Murphy, done as it was in The Nutty Professor by effects master Rick Baker, is damn impressive but not nearly impressive enough to warrant a movie that is basically dedicated to the talent of the makeup department.

Norbit is pretty bad but not entirely laugh free. Comics Eddie Griffin and Katt Williams have small roles as pimps, Pope Sweet Jesus and Lord Have Mercy. The roles are awful stereotypes but Griffin and Williams are too talented not to deliver a couple of good laughs. In a scene near the end of Norbit, the two riff on love and steal the show for a few minutes.

Also kinda funny is Murphy's awful chinese caricature Mr. Wong. Murphy gives Mr. Wong all of the best and most shocking lines in the film and the racist banter and love of whaling are just wild enough to earn what few laughs are offered in Norbit.

As for Rasputia, Murphy's giant drag cliche, the character is a force of nature but there isn't anything there beyond the fat jokes. Unlike Tyler Perry's Madea who combines the bizarre look of a man in drag with a character that has its own level of odd integrity, Rasputia is just a walking stereotypical punchline. That Murphy infuses Rasputia with unending self confidence keeps the jokes from becoming meanspirited but the real problem is not political correctness or hurt feelings but rather that none of the jokes are funny.

Toss Norbit on the pile next to Daddy Day Care, Metro and Holy Man, yet another step in the decline of the comic talent of Eddie Murphy. Eddie's concert video Delirious hit DVD recently and is a hilarious example of how talented and gut bustingly funny Eddie Murphy once was. Why his skills have declined so badly is a mystery.

Like Adam Sandler impressing so many critics in Punch Drunk Love, Eddie Murphy's turn in Dreamgirls now looks like a flash in the pan, a moment of brilliance in a sea of declining talent. What a shame.

Movie Review Little Man

Little Man (2006) 

Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans 

Written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans

Starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kerry Washington, Tracy Morgan, Chazz Palminteri 

Release Date July 14th, 2008 

Published July 14th, 2008

The Wayans' brothers brand of lowbrow humor is undeniably popular. Having driven the cross dressing comedy White Chicks to box office heights no one expected, the brothers were also the minds behind the Scary Movie franchise before branching out on their own. The Wayans brothers joint is another high concept comedy with a transformational twist. In Little Man Marlon Wayans transforms from a 6 foot 2 inch, rail thin, stick figure to a 3 foot tall, barrel chested criminal dwarf. It's a shockingly good special effect. If only the film's comedy were as impressive.

Fresh from prison Calvin (Marlon Wayans) and his pal Percy (Tracey Morgan) have already landed a new criminal gig. They are to steal a giant diamond from a jewelry store and deliver it to a gangster (Chazz Palminteri) in exchange for 100,000 dollars. To get the diamond Percy packs the diminutive three foot tall Calvin into a gym bag and lets him loose in the store while he distracts the employees.

Things don't go as planned and soon the pair are being chased by the cops and must ditch the diamond. Calvin drops the rock into the bag of a newlywed couple, Darryl (Shawn Wayans) and Vanessa (Kerry Washington), in a grocery store in hopes of snatching it back after the cops have left. Unfortunately for Calvin, the couple leaves the store before the cops and now he and Percy must find a way to get the diamond back without simply busting down the couple's door.

So Calvin launches a complicated plan. Having overheard Darryl and Vanessa in the grocery store arguing about having a baby, Calvin decides he will give them a baby. With Percy placing him in a basket with a note, Calvin will become baby Cal and infiltrate the home and when Darryl and Vanessa aren't looking he will steal back the diamond and make his escape.

Of course if the plot were that simple there would be no movie. Thus, we get scenes of Calvin being changed -surprisingly large penis for a baby, ha ha-, Calvin being nursed -he's got a full set of teeth, hee hee- and a disturbing scene where Vanessa awakens having been fully, hmm, satisfied and finding Calvin in bed next to her, Ugh.

The jokes are the typical low brow variety that the Wayans' brothers have made bank off of in each of their previous efforts so why change now. Just because I don't find anything in Little Man all that funny doesn't mean there is not an audience for this brand of humor and the box office returns for the far more abysmally unfunny White Chicks prove that.

This is why I don't hate Little Man,  I just don't care anymore. The Wayans' have desensitized me to this level of gross out, low-brow humor. So Calvin posing as a baby is inferred to have had sex with Vanessa, I don't care. So, there are numerous diaper changing jokes, I really don't care. The Wayans' brand of humor has become so mundanely offensive that apathy has set in.

The one thing that surprised me and even roused my imagination for a moment during Little Man was the interesting special effects used to turn the 6 foot 2 inch Marlon Wayans into a three foot tall criminal.  On a technical level it's so good that I was able to forget about it and return to being bored into a stupor by the rest of the film very early on. That is impressive in some way.

Keenan Ivory Wayans is not a bad director, just a director with a low standard for humor. A veteran of years of sketch comedy and now several features, Keenan knows how to develop a strong rhythm and coherence to his stories. Now if the stories were funnier maybe his skill in crafting a feature comedy might be easier to recognize.

In the end, Little Man is not awful enough for me to trash in the worst movie of the year kind of way. It is, however, not nearly good enough for me to recommend even to the most forgiving moviegoer. My general feelings towards Little Man are ones of apathy. I simply did not care about the movie enough to like it or dislike it. Critics don't often offer such dispassionate opinions but I offer you one here. I simply don't care about Little Man.

Movie Review: White Chicks

White Chicks (2004) 

Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans 

Written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans 

Starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Terry Crews, Frankie Faizon 

Release Date June 23rd, 2004

Published June 23rd, 2004 

This may be an unpopular admission, but I like Shawn and Marlon Wayans.

After their disastrous hosting job on the MTV Movie Awards a couple years back, the boys were savaged by many. The second film in the Scary Movie franchise did little to help their reputation. Still in their short lived TV series, the first Scary Movie and in countless interviews, the brothers have come off as likable, intelligent and funny. So I like them. Which makes White Chicks a difficult film to review because the brothers are far less than likable in this dreadful cross-dressing comedy.

Shawn and Marlon play brothers and undercover FBI agents Kevin and Marcus Copeland. When we meet them they are undercover in a grocery store where a drug deal is supposed to go down. Too bad the guys grab the wrong guys and the real bad guys get away. Worse yet, their undercover mission was not authorized by their boss (Frankie Faizon) and they are almost fired.

Barely retaining their jobs, Kevin and Marcus are stuck with a crappy babysitting gig far from the action of the big case. The brother’s job is to escort bitchy socialite sisters Brittany (Maitland Ward) and Tiffany Wilson (Anne Dudek) to the Hamptons where the sisters are bait in a kidnapping sting. Of course Kevin and Marcus screw up, a car accident leaves the girls slightly banged up and they refuse to go to the Hamptons. This leaves Marcus and Kevin with only one option, call a bunch of makeup and costume artists and take the girl’s place.

Okay so there were a number of better options but this was the only one that got our heroes into white-face and drag. Now the boys must convince everyone from their FBI partners to Tiff and Brit's closest friends and enemies that they are the Wilson sisters. This is where the film completely tosses plausibility to the wind in favor of impossible contrivance.

Yes I realize there is a thing in Hollywood movies called the willing suspension of disbelief, but this is ridiculous. Anyone who could mistake Shawn and Marlon Wayans in their drag get-ups as these two attractive women, Maitland Ward and Anne Dudek, would have to blind, deaf and dumb. That is a little bit too much suspension of disbelief for me. I might be willing to overlook it a little in Marlon's case, his slight frame is better suited for drag, but Shawn Wayans looks only like a man in a bad drag outfit.

Even if the drag bit were a little more convincing, the plot and the various comic situations are so dreary that it wouldn't matter. After dressing Shawn and Marlon in drag, co-writer, director and big brother Keenan Ivory Wayans can think of nothing funnier than having them win a dance contest and act black stereotypes under the guise of being white woman. The running gag is that the guys can't help but revert to being themselves in situations where they are supposed to be acting like white chicks.

The kidnapping plot is far less inspired, involving a career low performance from John Heard as well as the smoking hot Brittany Daniel and model Jaimie King. The only actor that walks out of White Chicks better off is former football star Terry Crews who tops both Marlon and Shawn in the number of laughs, even with far less screentime. 

Crews' character Latrell is a basketball star with a fetish for, ahem, white chicks. When he takes a liking to Marlon in the guise of Tiffany, it leads to the film’s best scene, the restaurant date so prominently shown in the film’s trailer. There is more to that what is seen in the trailer and it's almost worth the price of admission. Just wait till Crews sings, by far the film’s biggest sustained laugh, or maybe it's only sustained laugh.

The problem comes from the idea of parodying Paris and Nicole Hilton who are the oh-so-obvious templates for the film’s bitchy heiresses. Paris is already such an outsized character, on TV every week making a continuing fool of herself and not caring or realizing. Parody of her behavior is far less interesting than the real thing. Worse yet, the little satire that they include has no bite. It's in fact sympathetic to the stick thin, shopping obsessed socialites that are supposed to be its targets.

I know the Wayans Brothers are funny but they need to cultivate better material. Shawn and Marlon are credited with the script with big brother Keenan but there is also a lawsuit soon to hit the courts from a couple guys who claim they submitted this idea to the Wayans’ production company. Why anyone would want to claim this script is beyond me, but on the bright side maybe all these bad jokes weren't entirely the Wayans fault.

Movie Review G.I Joe The Rise of Cobra

G.I Joe The Rise of Cobra 

Directed by Stephen Sommers 

Written by Stuart Beattie, David Elliott, Paul Lovett 

Starring Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans, Dennis Quaid, Ray Park, Joseph Gordon Levitt 

Release Date August 7th, 2009 

Published August 6th, 2009 

It is very, very, bad form to reference the great French auteur Jean Luc Godard in a review of something as ludicrous as G.I the movie but, the great director's quote that the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie an apt and ironic way to discuss Paramount Pictures persnickety reaction to bad reviews of their other toy based movie Transformer Revenge of the Fallen (Again many apologies for dragging you into this Monsieur Godard). 

G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra acts as a near perfect commentary on the Transformers sequel. The parallels are almost endless. You have properties based on toy lines. You have stunningly awful dialogue shouted by utterly moronic characters and stories so incomprehensible that they leave almost no logical basis whatsoever for their very existence. Oh, and don't forget the girls in the super tight clothes. The only difference between these movies is that G.I Joe knows it's ridiculous and runs with it while Michael Bay thinks he's making Lawrence of Arabia with giant talking robots. 

Stephen Summers, the good natured hack behind The Mummy, keeps things light and goofy and allows a good time to be had by all and not just those most forgiving. The plot of G.I Joe The Rise of Cobra is of absolutely no consequence. Ok, fine, here's a capsule: G.I Joe is a secret NATO organization with elite soldiers from around the world who keep bad guys at bay. The latest bad guy to step out of line is an arms dealer named McCullen (Christopher McCullen) who is grinding a 400 year old ax over the way his arms dealing fore-fathers were treated. 

McCullen has developed a weapon that is sentient and can eat all metal structures. The unwanted logical question is: Why, if he built the weapon does he then hire thugs to steal the weapon? We never knew the weapon was stolen or taken from him so it is weird to see him send people to steal it. Who knows why but McCullen indeed does hire The Baroness (Sienna Miller, every nerd's dream in librarian glasses and tight black leather) and Storm Shadow (Byung Hun Lee) a ninja.  I mention that Storm Shadow is a ninja because, like all fanboys, just the word 'Ninja' makes me giddy. 

The attempt to steal the weapon draws the ire of G.I Joe and all out war ensues in both the Joe's buried in the desert bunker and the arms dealer's underwater fortress beneath the ice caps of the north pole. I imagine director Summers and Screenwriter Stuart Beattie laughing like school children as they chose these locations, I certainly did when each was revealed. There is a definite kitsch at work here but not so much that G.I Joe becomes all out camp. It's a little too aware of its own out-there-ness to allow for camp. 

Ah, but kitsch without a doubt, this is kitsch. Just check the buck wild goofy cameo by Mummy star Brendan Fraser who appears for one scene and seems more like a reject from a Rushmore production of Apocalypse Now than the star of G.I Joe sequels to come. Fraser is the only actor truly aware of the goofiness. The rest of the cast mixes dedicated professionalism with a healthy amount of incredulity. 

That is except poor Channing Tatum whose deathly seriousness as the newest Joe, Duke, becomes the film's biggest unintentional joke. Tatum is a handsome kid but his mumbled lines and wooden face turn even his attempts at humor into the most forceful of kitsch. Tatum has a following among young girls who have only recently discovered how to properly apply the new school slang 'hottie'. New school, in that it has only been a part of our low culture for maybe a decade. 

The rest of the cast of G.I Joe seems about as in on the joke as director Sommers. The key is, their awareness never becomes irritating in that winking fashion, again save for Fraser. Dennis Quaid is among many who, I am sure, stifled giggles over his dialogue that is almost entirely exposition. Rachel Blanchard is quite the trooper selling an attraction to the mugging comic relief that is Marlon Wayans. She, naturally, has a 'catfight' with the Baroness that is pure cheesecake but also brief. Sienna Miller has the most backstory of any character and plays it to good effect, as good as can be expected of such a limited and witless script. 

And then there is Ray Park as Snake Eyes. This is the character most fanboys were waiting for and we are not disappointed. Park is already a fanboy legend as the gone too soon Darth Maul in Phantom Menace (There is a stunningly large amount of fan fiction solely dedicated to Darth Maul murdering Jar Jar Binks, not related to this review really but interesting). Snake Eyes is the brother of Storm Shadow and they battle with swords, guns, fists and feet in well choreographed battles that culminate in unexpected fashion. Ray Park has more range behind Snakeyes's leather mask than co-star Channing Tatum has shown in several movies. 

G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra shames Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen not just in its better attitude and knowingness but also in special effects, editing and sound design, the alleged specialties of Mr. Michael Bay. The effects in G.I Joe work because of the clarity and uncluttered direction of Steven Sommers who managed this same economical trick in realizing The Mummy. Where Transformers 2 is a mess of robot carcasses battering one another at an ear splitting volume, G.I Joe is fleet and nimble, keeping the ludicrous action in focus where we can actually make out who is doing what to whom. 

G.I Joe The Rise of Cobra alsi unfolds quicker and lingers on noise far less than Transformers 2. Indeed, as Godard said, if you want to criticize a movie, make another movie. G.I is the other to Transformers 2 and Stephen Summers shows Michael Bay almost every mistake he made and then proceeds to make most of them again, only with a little more style and a whole lot more fun.