Movie Review: Eagle Eye

Eagle Eye (2008) 

Directed by D.J Caruso 

Written by John Glenn, Travis Adam Wright, Hillary Seitz

Starring Shia LeBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Anthony Mackie

Release Date September 26th, 2008

Published September 25th, 2008

Director D.J Caruso has had a strange career. He debuted with a funky modern noir character piece called The Salton Sea. He followed that brilliant indie feature with a braindead studio flick, Taking Lives, with Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke. He followed that with another piece of junk, the Matthew McConaughey-Al Pacino thriller Two For The Money.

Then Caruso remade Hitchcock's Rear Window with a modern twist and Disturbia returned the talent of the guy who made The Salton Sea. Now, reteamed with Disturbia star Shia LeBeouf, Caruso has taken another step back. With the chase movie junk of Eagle Eye, Caruso demonstrates a talent for blowing stuff up with a nihilists eye for consequence.

Jerry Shaw (LeBeouf) is something of a loser. Though he had opportunities, like a full ride to Stanford, he blew them off to become a copy technician in Chicago. One day Jerry hears that his twin brother has passed away. The brother was a military genius with a top secret job that neither Jerry or his parents knew anything about.

Days after his brothers death, Jerry's once empty bank account begins spilling cash on the street in front of him. The euphoria lasts until he arrives home and finds a large weapons cache awaiting him. A mysterious woman's voice on the phone tells him he has been activated and has 1 minute to get out of the apartment. He is captured by the FBI lead by Agent Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton).

While in custody that mysterious voice somehow ends up on his one phone call and once again Jerry is given a chance to escape. Meanwhile, a woman named Rachel Holloman is told by that same mysterious voice that her son will die if she doesn't get in a car and pick up Jerry. These two strangers are now pawns in a game of nationwide terror and can only follow orders to stay alive.

The plot of Eagle Eye is mousetrap efficient. The stakes are set and the players are put in place with proper motivations. The failing of Eagle Eye comes in not knowing what to do once all the pieces are ready to fall into place. The unfortunate fallback position of director D.J Caruso are a series of ever increasingly violent car chases.

These characters, their plight, could be interesting if the writers and director had serious intentions and an over arching point of view. But they don't. What they have is a plot on which to stage a series of car chases that at one point take on the comic pose of The Blues Brothers with nameless, faceless Chicago cop cars getting, flipped, flopped and smashed with little regard for the cops inside.

Shia LeBeouf has a tremendous talent for bringing the audience inside his character's troubles. We identify with him quickly because he is not the most handsome, or the biggest, or buffest action hero. He is street smart and witty and not every solution he invents actually works. He brings to Jerry Shaw the same qualities he brought to his hero in Disturbia and Transformers, a sense of awe of the situation he is in.

So often action movies or thrillers have characters who quickly adapt to the most outlandish circumstance. Not LeBeouf who allows himself to look and be out of his depth. It is a seeming lack of ego that endears him to audiences. Now, there are a few moments in Eagle Eye that force him to be a little more adept than your average person, but not for long and LeBeouf smoothes it over with good humor and a sly wink.

The script for Eagle Eye lets LeBeouf down by not giving his character more of an inner life. Jerry reacts to everything around him very well but the why behind his plight is weak. Eagle Eye wants to be about paranoia, technological emperialism, and big brother government. Those ideas are there in small bites but the overall purpose of Eagle is chase scene carnage.

There was an opportunity for Eagle Eye to be a modern techno thriller with a brain. D.J Caruso has that kind of talent. Sadly, Caruso has coopted his talent to the mainstream movie audience and now only delivers hyper-adrenalized, highly stylized, violence that measures on the Michael Bay scale. The funk is there in Eagle Eye, in the performance of Shia LeBeouf and the slightly offbeat energy of Billy Bob Thornton, but it is overwhelmed by mindless carnage.

Movie Review Source Code

Source Code (2011) 

Directed by Duncan Jones

Written by Ben Ripley

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Jeffrey Wright, Vera Farmiga

Release Date April 20th, 2011

Published April 19th, 2011

The less you know going into "Source Code," the more you will enjoy it. "Source Code" is an ingenious sci-fi thriller that delivers surprises that seem nearly impossible in the age of the spoiler alert. Directed by Duncan Jones and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan, "Source Code" is an early candidate for year end best of lists.

Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a Chicago commuter train disoriented and very confused. The woman in the seat across from him, Christina (Michele Monaghan) looks at him as if she knows who he is but she calls him by a different name. None of the other passengers seem familiar. Finally, when he gets to the mirror in the bathroom he finds a face he does not recognize.

Then, the train explodes and Colter is fired to another reality. Now, he is strapped to a seat inside some kind of pod. Over an unseen intercom a woman's voice begins quizzing him about what he had seen on the train. Slowly, Colter begins to recognize the commands he is being given.

There has been a terrorist attack on a Chicago commuter train and 100 people on board are dead. It is Colter's mission to go back to that train before the bomb goes off and find and identify the bomber and report back to the voice on the intercom, Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and her boss Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright.)

To tell you more than that, the very basic description of the opening minutes of "Source Code" threatens to rob you of the joys of this terrifically crafted sci-fi thriller. "Source Code" is about plot, it's about confusion and it's about shocking clarifications. Director Duncan Jones and writer Ben Ripley unfold the plot of "Source Code" with the clever twistiness of a young M.Night Shyamalan.

Source Code is a time travel movie and the time travel aspect is a lot of fun. Duncan Jones and his team create their own time travel rules and employ those rules to create nail biting suspense. We and Jake Gyllenhaal's Colter know what the rules are but most of the other characters don't and that creates a terrific tension as the everyday people Colter is trying to rescue become his accidental antagonists. 

Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright commit completely to the notions of "Source Code" and their investment in the plot and in their individual characters sells all of the pseudo science as a believable plot. Either you buy what these actors are selling or you don't. I bought it and I loved "Source Code."

The crafty plotting and terrific cast of "Source Code" create a thrilling and fun movie going experience. Do not let anyone spoil the plot for you and you may love "Source Code" even more than I did and I had far too many clues going in and still was blown away. "Source Code" is an excellent movie.

Movie Review: Due Date

Due Date (2010) 

Directed by Todd Phillips

Written by Adam Sztykiel, Todd Phillips

Starring Robert Downey Jr, Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Juliette Lewis, Jamie Foxx

Release Date November 5th, 2010

Published November 4th, 2010

The comparison between “Due Date” and the 80's classic “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is inescapable. Then again, as conventional as “Due Date” is, it can be compared to dozens of road trip comedies released in the decade and a half since Steve Martin and John Candy seemed to define the road trip aesthete.

Conventional may sound like a negative but it's just another way of saying that the humor of “Due Date” is familiar; you feel as if you have heard these jokes and witnessed these gags before. That said, despite the conventional approach of “Due Date” it is funny because stars Robert Downey Jr and Zach Galifianakis are funny. If you don't love these two actors and their opposing comic styles going in, don't bother seeing “Due Date.”

Peter Highman has a simple task ahead of him; board a plane for Los Angeles and three days later witness the birth of his first child as his wife Sarah's labor is induced. It all seems so simple until Peter meets Ethan (Zach Galifianakis). Ethan is a whirlwind of trouble; he and Peter meet when Ethan's ride to the airport nearly kills Peter as he is exiting his town car. The ensuing chaos causes Peter and Ethan to mix up luggage and Peter nearly misses the plane while carrying Ethan's marijuana pipe. Allowed onto the plane, Peter finds himself seated in front of Ethan and like clockwork Ethan sets about getting them thrown off the plane.

Since Peter's bags are on the plane and he had tucked his wallet in the seatback in front of him he has no money and no means to rent a car. He can't catch another plane because Ethan's rant about bombs and terrorists has landed them both on the no fly list. Now, with only his Blackberry on hand, Peter is stranded until Ethan comes along offering a ride.

Like Peter, Ethan is heading to Los Angeles. He is joined by his dog and the ashes of his late father packed in a coffee can. If you've seen the trailer and commercials then you have witnessed much of the wackiness that ensues during this road trip including crashes, arrests, injuries and the accidental ingestion of dad's ashes as coffee.

Thankfully, “Due Date” is a little more than the sum of its gags. What makes “Due Date” work, even as it contains few surprises and an overly familiar plot, is that Rober Downey Jr and Zach Galifianakis are such a terrifically offbeat screen pairing. Downey and Galifianakis seem to have zero chemistry and that is exactly what works for this duo. 

Downey is brilliant in subverting expectations with defensive hostility; his Peter stubbornly refuses to accept that he is a character in a road trip comedy, one who because of social convention must accept pain, humiliation and delay simply out of kindness, and that stubbornness comes out in his righteously angry outbursts aimed at Ethan and even at his dog and his late father's ashes. 

Galifianakis too has a way of subverting what is expected of him. Employing a joyous mix of childishness and naiveté his Ethan is a man child of rather epic proportions. Not merely some Adam Sandler type who clings to his illusion of youth through fart jokes and other juvenile behavior, Ethan is truly an overgrown child with both the immaturity and vulnerability one would forgive in a pre-teen but comes off as just nuts in a big hairy adult. 

Ethan is a wonderful dichotomy. His behavior would be excused were he 12 years old but as a bear of a nearly 40 year old man his behavior is unpredictable, irritating and strangely charming. Zach Galifianakis is the rare comic actor who can play this dichotomy without it becoming an overbearing act. 

Director Todd Phillips had Galifianakis bring that same disquieting vulnerability to “The Hangover” and it gets the same big laughs this time. Yes, one must begin to wonder whether Zach can play a different comic note, for the record I believe he can, he did rather brilliantly in “It's Kind of a Funny Story,” for now this same comic note is still funny. Future roles will show how well Galifianakis plays other beats or somehow evolves this persona. 

Sure, you've seen this all before but thanks to Downey and Galifianakis, “Due Date” is still funny. The same jokes you've seen a few times in a few other road trip movies are funny because Downey and Galifianakis are telling them in a slightly off-key manner, one that works just for them. 

You have to be a fan of the comic styles of Downey and Galifianakis to like “Due Date.” You have to enjoy Downey's wry sarcasm ala “Iron Man” or “Sherlock Holmes” and you have to have enjoyed Galifianakis's man-child act from “The Hangover.” If not, “Due Date” will not work for you. I am fan of both actors and thus I really liked “Due Date.”

Movie Review Made of Honor

Made of Honor (2008) 

Directed by Paul Weiland

Written by Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont

Starring Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Kathleen Quinlan, Sidney Pollack

Release Date May 2nd, 2008

Published May 2nd, 2008

Forget about An Inconvenient Truth or Leonardo DiCaprio's recent enviro-doc The 11th Hour or any nature movie you've ever seen. The most environmentally conscious film ever is without a doubt the new romantic comedy Made of Honor, the first movie ever made entirely of recycled materials. Recycled script, recycled characters, recycled plot, recycled everything. There is in fact next to nothing in Made of Honor that isn't recycled from some other romantic comedy right down to the stock scenes of a chase to the church and a character who gets punched in the nose at a wedding.

Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey stars in Made of Honor as Tom, an amoral ladies man who lives to sleep with a different woman every night. He has the perfect set up, he sleeps with random babes but has his best friend Hannah to provide him with the kind of female companionship he truly desires. Unfortunately, Hannah has a trip to Scotland that disrupts Tom's set schedule. With Hannah out of the country and mostly out of touch Tom realizes that his life stinks without her. He decides that he loves her and will tell her when she returns. However, Hannah doesn't return alone.

While in Scotland she fell for a hunky Scot named Colin (Kevin McKidd) and accepted his proposal. On a whim, she is getting married and she wants Tom to be her Mate of Honor. If you can't predict what happens from there then you have likely never seen a romantic comedy before. From the chase to the church to someone getting punched out at the wedding, Made of Honor recycles every imaginable rom-com cliché. The movie, directed by Paul Weiland even tosses in some questionable low brow humor for good measure.

Made of Honor is so astonishingly clichéd and predictable that had it included an all cast sing along to a well known pop song it would tip completely over into an ironic rom com parody and I could recommend it. As it is, Made of Honor is an earnest attempt at romantic comedy that fails on familiarity alone. On most every level the film is... competent. Patrick Dempsey is appealing. Michelle Monaghan is love and everything from the supporting cast to the direction is competently crafted. The problem is we've seen it all before. The script from three different writers recycles every cliche in the book and somehow expects us to simply accept it.

No acceptance here, Made of Honor stinks like the compost of dozens of similar romantic comedies. No matter the appealing  elements we've seen it all before and thus there is no reason to see Made of Honor.

P.S

As for the bizarre title "Made of Honor". Now having seen the movie, I still can't make sense of it. Tom is the Maid of Honor but why the title goes with 'Made' is a complete mystery.

Movie Review Mission Impossible Fallout

Mission Impossible Fallout (2018) 

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Written by Christopher McQuarrie 

Staring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan 

Release Date July 27th, 2018 

Published July 25th, 2018 

The Mission Impossible series has been a rollercoaster of quality since its inception 22 years ago. The first film wasn’t great but it did begin the slow, upward crawl of the series. Then, the series picked up speed by embracing the slick, shallow style of director John Woo for Mission Impossible 2. Finally, in Mission Impossible 3, the series peaked with the J.J Abrams directed thriller that was brimming with suspense and bursting with action while telling the best story the series has told thus far.

It was back down the quality coaster after that with Ghost Protocol but Rogue Nation began the climb back upwards and now Mission Impossible Fallout has arrived to provide another, somewhat smaller peak for the franchise. Filled with smart twists and turns and a strong payoff, Mission Impossible Fallout is perhaps the best blend yet of Fast and Furious style goofy fun with the stylish grit of the Bourne franchise, the true sweet spot of the Mission Impossible franchise.

Mission Impossible Fallout finds Ethan Hunt on the trail of nuclear warheads that are on the black market. The spy ring known as The Syndicate, is without its leader, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), whom Ethan and his team captured in Rogue Nation, and they’ve been making up for his absence with even more terror attacks around the globe. The nukes however, are their final big play and Ethan needs to get to them before The Syndicate does.

Unfortunately, after missing out on the nukes in Berlin, Ethan is forced to take along a C.I.A Agent to watch over him and his team. Agent Walker (Henry Cavill) is a hard-headed, cold-hearted, efficient spy who specializes in killing whoever needs to be killed to accomplish his mission. Naturally, Walker’s approach clashes with Ethan’s more nuanced take on spycraft, the kind that doesn’t get a whole lot of other people killed.

Fallout brings the return of Rebecca Ferguson in the role of Ilsa Faust. When last we saw Ilsa she was getting out of the spy business, leaving behind her career at London’s MI6. Sadly, the spy game is not so easy to walk away from. This time, Ilsa’s aims are in direct conflict with Ethan’s and the two will come close to killing each other on more than one occasion during Mission Impossible Fallout.

Fallout was written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter who tried to save Ghost Protocol with some script doctoring before taking the full reins of the series for Rogue Nation.

McQuarrie may be just the right creative force for the series. His style combines the slick and stylish visuals that are a hallmark of the series but he’s also not blind to the details of good storytelling and doesn’t let the stunts get in the way of telling a good story. Stunts are, of course, the bread and butter of the Mission Impossible franchise but, throughout the series, the necessity of Tom Cruise to put his life on the line for some adrenaline rush and a good public relations have come at the expense of the story. Ghost Protocol for instance had a pair of big action set pieces set in stone before the film even had a script. The writers had to write the stunt rather than coming up with stunts to go with the story.

Any screenwriter would likely admit that having to write to the action rather than forming an organic storyline is less than an ideal way to write a script. That problem plagued Ghost Protocol and to a lesser extent, Rogue Nation where McQuarrie merely had to write in Cruise hanging from the side of a plane as it took off. Fallout has some big action but none of it feels sewn on to the story, it all feels as if it proceeds from the story.

Perhaps the biggest stunt in the movie, if not the most talked about, is a helicopter battle where Cruise has to nearly fall off of the helicopter and save himself by the skin of his teeth. It’s a spectacular sequence and part of a kinetic closing act that is intense and rarely lets up on the excitement and suspense all the way to the end. The most talked about stunt in Fallout is a foot chase in which Cruise parkours his way across London rooftops in pursuit of the enemy.

Cruise was injured in the chase, breaking his ankle attempting to jump from one building to the next in a gnarly jump that rumor has it, is in the final cut of Fallout, though the scene proceeds at a pace where you may not notice it. Cruise’s injury shutdown production for eight weeks and ballooned the film’s budget to reportedly more than $250 million dollars. It probably was not worth it for this particular stunt but studios aren’t inclined to tell a star like Cruise not to do his own stunts.

Mission Impossible Fallout has the best traits of the lesser parts of the Mission Impossible franchise. Slick, stylish and occasionally shallow, the film could have been just another stunt-fest. Thankfully, the story picks up with a couple of great twists, especially a rare call back to the first film in the franchise, and by the end the story and the pace are feeding each other and the thrills coming at you at a frenetic pace.

I really enjoyed how Fallout combines the goofy thrills of a Fast and Furious movie with the gritty seriousness of the Bourne franchise. That’s right where this franchise should be, serious but not too serious, outlandish but not over the top. The first Mission Impossible showed what would happen if you took this material too seriously, the second film showed what happened if you didn’t take things seriously enough. MI3 nailed the formula with great story and great action and Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and now Fallout have tried with varying success to match what Abrams did in MI3 to little avail.

Fallout is the closest the series has come to its creative peak and for that it is definitely worth checking out in theaters this weekend.

Movie Review: Unfaithful

Unfaithful (2002) 

Directed by Adrian Lyne

Written by Alvin Sargent, William Broyles Jr. 

Starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Olivier Martinez, Michelle Monaghan, Chad Lowe 

Release Date May 10th, 2002 

Published May 9th, 2002

I have never understood people's desperate need to get married and buy a house in the country. Being a city person, I just can't imagine leaving behind the constant motion for the quiet serenity. There is something very dull sounding about spending the rest of your life with someone so far away from where there are things to do. Maybe that is what drives Diane Lane's seemingly happy, married mother of one to risk her marriage on a stupid fling. Or maybe she just needed to be in a city.

In Unfaithful, Lane is Connie Sumner, mother of one son named Charlie (Malcolm in the Middle's youngest, Eric Per Sullivan) and wife of Edward (Richard Gere), a businessman whose business is never really explained. The marriage is typically mundane. Edward takes the train into work every day and comes home at the same time every day. Connie doesn't work as often as Edward; her job obtaining items for auctions brings her into the city maybe once a week. 

On one particularly windy day, as Connie is shopping for her sons ninth birthday, the wind literally blows her into the arms of a handsome rare books dealer named Paul Martel (Oliver Martinez). Paul is a good ten years younger than Diane, but his lust for her is quite obvious. Maybe having a younger man find her attractive (or maybe Paul's cheeseball game, in which he gives her a book that he has planted in a particular spot for just this occasion) something stirs in Connie and her intrigue will lead her to stray from her marriage.

Edward is not entirely clueless. In fact, after Connie's first meeting with Paul, Edward senses something is wrong. Eventually Edward's suspicions grow to the point where he hires a private detective to follow his wife. Of course, he finds out what he suspected is true and this leads to a plot twist that is surprising, not for shock value but for how studied and quiet it is.

Director Adrian Lyne does something interesting with Unfaithful. A less-skilled director would have made Unfaithful into a predictable thriller with either the husband or the lover as some kind of psycho who flies into a rage and tries to kill everyone. Lyne, however, is more interested in the effect on the marriage. All of the actions taken by the characters are a logical extension of real emotion and not mere plot manipulation. Even toward the end, when the film takes its twisted turn, the actions still feel realistic.

Diane Lane is receiving the best reviews of her career for this role, and they are deserved. Gere is also strong, but the film's best element is director Adrian Lyne, whose lovely camerawork and studied pacing brings a realistic portrait of a troubled marriage that shouldn't be troubled.

Unfaithful is an interesting portrait of the need to break routine and cause change in one's life even if that change is painful and unnecessary. No matter how much two people love each other, there is only so much they can do together without getting bored. That may not be romantic or moral, but anyone who has ever been in a long-term relationship can understand the need for personal time and space and the need to have something that is entirely your own. This doesn't justify cheating on a wife or a husband but a film like Unfaithful provides a logical explanation of this destructive behavior.

Movie Review Playing it Cool

Playing it Cool (2015) 

Directed by Justin Reardon 

Written by Chris Shafer, Paul Vicknair

Starring Chris Evans, Michelle Monaghan, Anthony Mackie, Aubrey Plaza, Ioan Gruffudd, Topher Grace

Release Date May 14th, 2015 

Published June 25th, 2015

For years Chris Evans made bad movie after bad movie. He was seemingly settled into being a handsome, bland, leading man, who would take any role that a star with better taste had passed on. Then he became Captain America and things changed. Something about Steve Rogers brought Evans to a place of comfort with his work.

With “Snowpiercer” a more serious and focused Chris Evans emerged and myself as a critic I saw the actor in a very different light. Now, with the charming romantic comedy “Playing it Cool,” Chris Evans seems fully formed as a performer. Is the movie great? No, but it’s not terrible. More importantly, as a vehicle for its star it is a fine showcase for his seemingly increasing talent.

In “Playing it Cool” Chris Evans plays a screenwriter who does not believe in love. Traumatized by his mother leaving him at a young age, Evans is left with an inability to connect with women. He does however, have an active fantasy life. He envisions his heart as living outside his body in the form of a sad, romantic, character in the range of Bogart in “Casablanca.”

Evans also has the tendency to project himself into other people’s stories. When friends played by an all star supporting cast including Topher Grace, Luke Wilson, Aubrey Plaza and Martin Starr, tell stories, Evans projects himself as the lead in the story regardless of the gender of the lead character. This imaginative device becomes important after Evans meets Michelle Monaghan and for the first time falls in love. Suddenly, she is the co-lead in all of these fantasies.

“Playing it Cool” is strange in a number of ways. The first comes in the fact that Evans and Monaghan’s character don’t have names. In the IMDB credits Evans is referred to as Narrator and Monaghan as Her. This is, I think, meant to comment on how the clichés of romantic comedies play out, the characters don’t really matter as much as character beats and human type people. The structure of “Playing it Cool” has Evans struggling to write a romantic comedy screenplay because he doesn’t believe in love and is well aware of the common tropes of the genre as they begin to play out in his real life.

The meta aspects of “Playing it Cool” play alright but the heart of the film is Evans and his interplay with the cast. I enjoyed the camaraderie of Evans and his small band of fellow artists. There is a real sense of friendship, history, and fun among this group and the interplay is strong enough that it doesn’t matter so much that each individual character is really only a sketch of a person.

Then there is the central romance. Michelle Monaghan is incredibly beautiful. Truly, I am not sure I can objectively assess her performance as I was thunderstruck by how photogenic she is, the camera truly loves her. Monaghan is something of a male fantasy as she is endlessly accepting and she gets all of Evans’ jokes and seems to like the things he likes, and she even has his commitment issues.

There is nothing particularly surprising about the way “Playing it Cool” plays out but I don’t think there is meant to be. This is a romantic comedy where the end is pretty well telegraphed. The key is then how to find interesting and funny things to do on the way to the predictable finish and what “Playing it Cool” has is a charming lead performance and strong supporting ensemble whose sense of fun that makes the predictable palatable.

The maturation of Chris Evans as an actor is likely that of a performer becoming more confident. “Captain America” has given Evans the star power to relax a little and be more than just a handsome face. In “Snowpiercer” the new found confidence led to a dark, violent thriller with an incredible resonance. In “Playing it Cool” that confidence emerges in a heretofore unseen charm and playfulness that seemed forced in previous performances.

Movie Review The Heartbreak Kid

The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly 

Written by Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, Scot Armstrong, Leslie Dixon, Kevin Barnett

Starring Ben Stiller, Malin Akerman, Michelle Monaghan, Jerry Stiller, Rob Cordry, Danny McBride

Release Date October 5th, 2007 

Published October 4th, 2007 

Ben Stiller has the astonishing talent to remain as funny and likable in bad movies as he is in good movies. Night at the Museum, Meet The Fockers, Envy, all not so great movies and all movies where Stiller outshined the material provided to him. Stiller is once again in better than the movie mode in the Farrelly Brothers comedy The Heartbreak Kid. This sorta-romantic comedy, a remake of the 1972 Elaine may-Neil Simon teaming, has a terrific idea at its center and Stiller in fine form. Unfortunately directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly can't help but succumb to their worst instincts in a vain attempt to recapture past glory.

Eddie (Stiller) is 40 years old and never married. He was engaged for 5 years, but as we meet him in The Heartbreak Kid, he is attending his ex-fiance's wedding. Both Eddie's dad (Jerry Stiller) and his best pal Mac (Rob Corddry) give him no end of crap for not settling down when he had the chance. Thus when Eddie meets Lila (Malin Akerman) he rushes things a little bit.

Eddie and Lila fall into a relationship not long after he attempts to foil a bad guy who stole her purse. A whirlwind courtship leads to the hasty decision to get married and a disaster on the horizon. Taking their honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, Eddie quickly realizes that Lila is a little off. She sings along with every song on the radio, she's horrible at math, and she's desperately in debt. She's also not very bright, thus why she is almost immediately laid up in the hotel room with a bad sunburn.

The time alone allows Eddie to meet Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), a beautiful women's lacrosse coach vacationing with her family. The two spark quickly and after spending a day together drinking and soaking in the local culture,  Eddie realizes he is in love. Now, he has to figure out a way to break it to Lila that they are not working out and make sure he has won Miranda's heart.

The set up for The Heartbreak Kid is solid, this is a terrific premise. Unfortunately, the Farrelly Brothers, back behind the camera for the first time since 2005's Fever Pitch, can't resist a return to their basest instincts. Fever Pitch was a sweet, good hearted romantic comedy that played straighter than any previous Farrelly's comedy. The Heartbreak Kid is a throwback to the less interesting Stuck On You, Shallow Hal, Me Myself and Irene days.

Those films distilled the essence of the Farrelly's oeuvre down to the lowest common denominator. Each has its moments, but for the most part each is a lesser and lesser version of the Farrelly's one true classic There's Something About Mary. The Heartbreak Kid is the palest imitation of all; featuring Stiller in the earnest, frustrated good guy role he played so well in Mary.

Sadly, The Heartbreak Kid fails to capture what made Mary such a great comedy. The combination of heart and humor in There's Something About Mary is a near perfect combination of good hearted romance and lowbrow, genitalia based humor. It's a combo nearly impossible to pull off and The Heartbreak Kid doesn't even come close.

Disgusting for the sake of being disgusting, slapstick for the sake of slapstick, The Heartbreak Kid constantly steps on the more interesting aspects of Eddie's romantic dilemma by dropping in unnecessarily crude humor. Do we really need Carlos Mencia as a porn loving, sex offending, hotel manager? Do we need Jerry Stiller grossing out everyone in earshot with his many horrifying sexual innuendos?

Did we need to see Ben Stiller getting peed on or a visual gag about women's privates that may be the lowest joke of any movie in 2007? I certainly don't think so. Not when Ben Stiller, Malin Akerman and Michelle Monaghan are doing such great work creating a comically tense love triangle. The crudity only serves to distract and get in the way.

Ben Stiller gets better and better each time out. In fact, Stiller has never seemed more comfortable onscreen as he does in The Heartbreak Kid. Granted, he's played the flustered good guy for more than a decade but really, you can finally see him losing his many tics and affectations and becoming comfortable being himself on screen. This newfound comfort only serves to turn this already funny actor into a more charming and interesting screen presence.

Stiller's work clearly has a good effect on co-star Malin Akerman who does much of the heavy lifting in the broad comic moments. Akerman is a great beauty who gives herself over to broad comedy in the most unexpected ways. Not everything about her performance works, but you have to respect her bravery and willingness to do anything that was asked of her.

Michelle Monaghan is the perfect romantic foil for Stiller. The two have tremendous chemistry and the romance between them was more than interesting enough to make The Heartbreak Kid work as a romantic comedy. It's unfortunate that Peter and Bobby Farrelly didn't trust their stars enough to back off, just a little, on the lowbrow stuff.

The potential is there for a terrific romantic comedy in The Heartbreak Kid. It's undone by writer-directors desperate for faded glory. Peter and Bobby Farrelly have seen diminishing returns on each of their films since There's Something About Mary. Only Fever Pitch betrayed an attitude that they really didn't care about mimicking their past success.

Reteaming with Ben Stiller however, the Farrelly's sensed an opportunity to regain their A-list status and went for broke trying to recreate something that just can't be captured a second time. Certainly not with such desperate pandering as that which breaks The Heartbreak Kid.

Movie Review Gone Baby Gone

Gone Baby Gone (2007) 

Directed by Ben Affleck 

Written by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard 

Starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan, Titus Welliver 

Release Date October 19th, 2007

Published October 18th, 2007 

Ben Affleck has long been unfairly maligned as an actor. Yes, he made Gigli and Paycheck and Reindeer Games and they are no picnic, fair. But those movies do not define his talent. The vitriol aimed at Ben Affleck has long seemed like over the top piling on and more than a little jealousy, from my perspective. Now, with the release of his directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, Affleck haters will have to eat their words. In a season of Oscar shortfalls, Gone Baby Gone is the fall season's first film to exceed the awards hype.

Casey Affleck stars in the moody, noirish Gone Baby Gone, based on the Dennis LeHane of the same name. Casey plays Patrick Kenzie, a small-time detective in the slums of Boston. Along with his girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan), Patrick usually handles missing person cases involving bail jumpers and child support deadbeats.

Imagine Patrick's surprise when a family involved in a high profile kidnapping seeks his help in finding a missing four year old girl. Amy Madigan plays the child's concerned aunt who hopes that Patrick can use his familiarity in the neighborhood to get better leads than the cops can get. Needless to say, the cops aren't entirely happy for the help.

Morgan Freeman is Jack Doyle, the local police chief in charge of missing children cases. Ed Harris and John Ashton are the two detectives leading the case who accept Patrick's help grudgingly and quite skeptically. Soon witnesses and suspects begin to pile up and so do a few bodies and Patrick finds himself wrapped in a very dangerous mystery and a moral crisis.

Gone Baby Gone plays like a police procedural but there is so much more to it. As the movie goes on Casey Affleck's Patrick is forced to make choices that no one would want to make. Choices that require an examination of his morals and ethics and his sense of right and wrong. The script by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard doesn't make the decisions easy or overly dramatic. The plot elements of Gone Baby Gone develop organically, natural to the story being told.

It's a rare modern movie that gives characters time to make moral decisions that aren't forced or pathetic. Patrick will be haunted by his choices, right and wrong. The consequences are aired and examined and smartly dispatched in one of the best scripts of the year.

Casey Affleck comes to life in Gone Baby Gone. Long known as Ben's little brother, Casey steps out of big brother's shadow with a performance that combines toughness, street smarts and sadness. Never angsty or overly dramatic, Casey's Patrick reveals himself slowly as just a good man turned into a reluctant crusader by some ugly circumstances and a promise he made to a grieving mother.

Affleck is matched grit for grit with Michelle Monaghan who nails the south Boston accent and the neighborhood's tomboy chic. Sexy with just a touch of naivete, Monaghan is the perfect dramatic and romantic foil for Casey Affleck's street smart tough guy detective. Together they spark with terrific romantic chemistry that gives the perfect impression of a relationship begun long before we meet them.

The third lead character in Gone Baby Gone is South Boston, a hard knocks area of one of America's most well known city's. Ben and Casey Affleck are quite familiar with these streets and this neighborhood having grown up there and as a director Ben Affleck gives gritty life to these downtrodden, drug and crime ridden streets.

That familiar turf is likely what drew Ben Affleck to the work of Dennis LeHane on whose series of novels Gone Baby Gone is based. Like Affleck, LeHane is from Boston and knows these streets, these crimes and these people. The naturalistic dialogue comes from a very knowing place in both Affleck and LeHane and while they are unafraid to expose the dark side of Boston even as you can sense a certain loyalty and love in the way they draw these characters.

Gone Baby Gone is the first film of the fall of 2007 that, for me, exceeds the awards expectations. Casey Affleck's confident and concise performance and the terrific adapted screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard seem like locks come Oscar nomination time. And here's hoping that the long time, unwarranted public disdain for Ben Affleck doesn't affect his chances of being nominated for directing Gone Baby Gone.

Ben Affleck's work here is as gritty and hard boiled as a young Scorsese with the polish of modern Hollywood production. Gone Baby Gone is Ben's baby and it succeeds on his talent. This one is a must see.