Movie Review Swinging with the Finkels

Swinging with the Finkels (2011) 

Directed by Jonathan Newman

Written by Jonathan Newman

Starring Martin Freeman, Mandy Moore, Jonathan Silverman, Melissa George

Release Date August 26th, 2011

Published September 15th, 2011 

"Swinging with the Finkels" is an odd sort of romantic comedy. The story of a bored married couple who consider Swinging, swapping partners with another married couple, as a way to spice up their spice-free marriage; "Swinging with the Finkels" has moments that are insightful and cute thanks to its pair of appealing leads.

Martin Freeman and Mandy Moore are the titular Finkels, Alvin and Ellie. College sweethearts, Alvin and Ellie have stopped being intimate with one another and Alvin is ready to chalk it up to the typicality of being married for so long. Since the two don't communicate well their uncoordinated attempts to rebuild intimacy fail quite comically.

Finally, after witnessing the seeming end of the marriage of their closest friends, played by Jonathan Silverman and Melissa George, Alvin and Ellie make one last desperate attempt to change their marriage; swinging. An ad on a website brings a very nice couple to Alvin and Ellie's flat and the night seems to go as planned.

Whether or not the swing is the thing to get Alvin and Ellie going again I will leave you to discover. What is unique about writer-director Jonathan Newman's approach to swinging is how anticlimactic the night is. Aside from a very awkward encounter between Alvin and his husband counterpart, it's a relatively peaceful event.

"Swinging with the Finkels" is not about a big, dramatic, central event but rather about smaller, quieter moments as Alvin and Ellie and their closest friends discuss the small events that add up to the bigger dramatic stuff, like the potential end of Alvin and Ellie's marriage.

Martin Freeman is a terrific actor with a very communicative face. His work has generally played off of his ability to be apoplectic; most notably his consistently overwhelmed traveler in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." In "Swinging with the Finkels" however, we see Freeman as an average, intelligent guy earnestly interested in examining how he has arrived at this point in his life and marriage.

Mandy Moore is her usual adorable self, willing to sacrifice her dignity for the laugh; especially in a scene of self pleasure that ends with an elderly man getting hit in the crotch. You will have to see the movie to see how that happened. Moore's performance however, like Freeman's, is about the quiet, thoughtful moments as much as its about the broad, crotch shot humor. 

"Swinging with the Finkels" is, in fact, so much more thoughtful than its title implies. Yes, it has moments or broad or merely awkward humor, but the the story centers strongly on the troubled marriage and how the couple attempts to understand their issues and determine if they can get past them and whether or not swinging or sex with other people may be the answer. 

Movie Review: Derailed

Derailed (2005) 

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom 

Written by Stuart Beattie 

Starring Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassell, Melissa George, Xzibit 

Release Date November 11th, 2005

Published November 11th, 2005 

When Jennifer Aniston was on "Friends" she was undeniably a star. When she co-starred with Jim Carrey in her first blockbuster movie role in Bruce Almighty, again she looked like a star. Unfortunately, outside her hit TV show and without Jim Carrey to fall back on Jennifer Aniston looks anything but a star in the dreadful thriller Derailed, a misguided attempt to recast Jennifer Aniston as a femme fatale.

Alongside an equally miscast Clive Owen, Aniston struggles with a ridiculous plot, poor direction and a thriller concept that is entirely devoid of thrills.

Though Jennifer Aniston is clearly the draw of Derailed, Clive Owen is the star of the film as Charles, a bored husband and father who jumps at the chance to meet a sexy stranger on a train. That sexy stranger is Lucinda (Aniston), a banker, also married with a child but unhappily married as she is rather quick to confess. The two share a few moments on the train, then lunch the following day, drinks the next night and finally a seedy hotel.

It is in the hotel that a minor fling becomes a huge mess. Just as Charles and Lucinda are getting intimate, the door bursts open and in comes Laroche (Vincent Cassel), a petty thief who they assume just wants a few bucks. If only that was all he wanted.  Unfortunately, before he leaves he beats Charles severely and then rapes Lucinda.

Here is where the films logic becomes derailed, pun intended. So should Charles and Lucinda call the police and report what happened? If they do their spouses will find out what happened and they will lose everything. So it's understandable then that they just let it be. Charles tells his wife Deanna (Melissa George) that he was mugged.  She thankfully does not ask about going to the police, and both Charles and Lucinda go their separate ways.

Not long after, however, Charles gets a call from Laroche asking for twenty grand or else he will tell his wife Deanna that he cheated. Charles again has ample opportunity to come clean to his wife and call the cops but because the plot requires his stupidity, he pays the money. This, despite the fact that he needs the cash to pay for the care of his sick daughter Amy (Addison Timlin), who needs constant care for diabetes.

The money puts off Laroche only temporarily as he once again comes calling, even showing up at Charles' house, asking this time for one hundred grand. Can you guess that Charles still is not smart enough to call the cops? Of course he isn't, but to his luck the screenplay by Stuart Beattie provides a street smart African American ex-con named Winston (rapper RZA pronounced "riza") as a mail room worker at Charles office who offers to help him out for only ten grand.

By this point in the film I would not have cared if Charles enlisted the help of the entire Wu Tang Clan to get the bad guys off his back. Derailed is such a clueless mess of a movie that watching it is more frustrating than a game of Sudoku blindfolded. The lapses of logic are staggeringly stupid and though it's become old hat to call bad thrillers predictable I have to break out that old chestnut as well. Ads for the film ask that we don't give away the big twist and I won't, watch two minutes of the movie and you will guess the twist on your own.

Derailed has one of those idiotic plots that could be cleared up with one smart action by the main character or attention to one minor detail by one of the supporting characters. The players in Derailed must remain willfully ignorant in order for this plot to work and that is endlessly frustrating for the attentive movie goer.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about Derailed is the performance of Clive Owen. Sleepwalking his way through this ridiculous role, Owen's Charlie is passive even when threatened repeatedly and entirely manipulated by the plot at every turn. What may I ask was supposed to make Charlie an interesting thriller hero? He cheats on his wife while she is at home taking care of their sick daughter. He blows the savings meant to save his daughter's life to cover up his affair and when his family is threatened directly by the bad guys he does nothing but accept his third ass whipping in the movie. I hated Charlie as much as I hated the lowlife bad guys who took his money.

I feel very bad for Jennifer Aniston. After losing her husband Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie and watching those two strike box office gold with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she finds her first gig since the breakup to be arguably the worst performance of her career. Worse even than that Leprechaun sequel she was in before "Friends". It's not entirely her fault.  I'm sure someone convinced her to forego her good judgement and believe that this insipid plot could actually work if they sexed it up a bit, but even the sex in Derailed is a letdown.

Clive Owen continues a baffling string of monotone dull performances. Someone in Hollywood desperately wants Clive Owen to be a big star but his performances in Beyond Borders, King Arthur and now Derailed show an actor bored with unchallenging material and allowing that boredom to seep into his performance. When challenged in movies like his breakthrough performance in Croupier, in the thriller I'll Sleep When I'm Dead and the scathing relationship drama Closer, Owen shows he has real acting chops. Stop trying to force Clive Owen to be a star, he clearly doesn't want it.

Derailed is an abysmal movie, a worst of the year list kind of movie. A forgettable, stupid unrelentingly bad B-movie dressed up with A-list actors slumming in idiot parts.