Movie Review: The Stepfather

The Stepfather (2009) 

Directed by Nelson McCormick 

Written by J. S Cardone

Starring Dylan Walsh, Sela Ward, Penn Badgley, Amber Heard, Jon Tenney 

Release Date October 16th, 2009 

Published October 17th, 2009

Must we suffer more unnecessary remakes? Ugh. With a paucity of original ideas Hollywood has been mining its history, good and bad, for movies to revamp, re-imagine and re-engineer in hopes of shaking loose a few dollars from a mass audience that likely wasn't alive or aware whent the original movie was created.

The latest case in point is The Stepfather, a remake of an exceptionally lame horror thriller about a shady creep who murders the families that take him in as a step-daddy. The 1988 movie, at the very least, had the kink of an previously unexplored premise, step-dad as psycho killer. The new film is but a shadow reflecting the ultimate lameness of the original, minus the kink.

Penn Badgely, the hard bodied star of the CW Network's Gossip Girl takes the good guy role in The Stepfather as wayward black sheep Michael. Having just returned from military school for some unseen acting out, Michael finds his family has changed. Where once his father was is now David Harris (Dylan Walsh).

David hooked up with Michael's mom Susan (Sela Ward) one day in the grocery store. Their courtship was so quick that Michael wasn't gone a semester before wedding plans began. Not that Michael cared where his father went, Jay Harding (Jon Tenney) was a cheater and given the boot about the time Michael was sent to military school.

David is, at first, an exceptionally corny and overly welcoming presence in the house. However, once Michael and other begin to probe about his past David goes from cornball to creep. Soon bodies begin to pile up and Michael has to find some way to stop the psycho from making his family the latest in a series of family victims.

As loathsome as The Stepfather is there is some terrifically off-beat work by “Nip Tuck” actor Dylan Walsh. The ways in which he forces David's normalcy on others is at once tense and humorous. His secret glowering and tics become something of a dark, inside joke between him and the audience.

Sadly, little else in The Stepfather captures that off-beat spirit. Director Nelson McCormick hues closely to the formula right down to the inevitable rain soaked battle for survival between the besieged family and the family psycho-path. The ending is typical horror kitsch right down to the knowing wink.

The Stepfather is as dopey as you would expect. You really had no reason to see the 1988 original. There is less reason to see this unremarkable remake.

Movie Review: Easy A

Easy A (2010) 

Directed by Will Gluck

Written by Bert V. Royal 

Starring Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Stanley Tucci, Aly Mischalka, Patricia Clarkson

Release Date Septeber 17th, 2010 

Published September 16th, 2010

There is a shortage of witty repartee at the movies these days. Thus, when wit is on display in such wonderful fashion as it is in the teen comedy “Easy A” it must be celebrated. Written by first time screenwriter Bert V. Royal, Easy A may at times get a little too cute for its own good but the witty passages help us ease past that which is a little too precious.

Easy A stars Emma Stone as Olive, a typically verbose movie creature whose above it all manner works only because you believe she is indeed above it all. Olive has quick, incisive wit that finds the joke fast but never sacrifices the really good thesaurus words. Get used to Olive's high minded verbiage because she is our narrator for this story which plays out as a flashback during an odd but eventually sensible web-cast.

Olive is anonymous within her school until one mistaken conversation with her best friend Rhiannon (Aly Mischalka) is overheard by the school busybody Marianne (Amanda Bynes) and blows up into a massive, school wide scandal in moments thanks to the wonders of social media.

In an effort to shake off a weekend with her best pal and her parents without hurt feelings, Olive invented a date with a college boy. The following Monday Rhiannon accuses Olive of giving up her V-card, the aforementioned overheard conversation that is then blown up. All might have been dismissed as quickly as it exploded, as often happens in our fast paced social media world, but Olive kind of likes being a tramp, at least people know her now.

They know her alright, even more so after she agrees to use her new tramp status to help out Brandon a gay teen who seeks one straight conquest to alleviate the brutal treatment he gets from those who assumed he was/is gay. Olive's good deed soon becomes an industry of helping nerds, geeks and dweebs in need of a social upgrade in exchange mostly for pricey gift cards. Naturally, Olive's actions are not without consequence but it's rather unique the way said consequence rises and falls and then rises again in unexpected ways.

From time to time Olive’s incisive wit is a little too on the nose and things get a little too Juno-esque in Easy A but those moments are thankfully few. Most of Easy A is a tart mix of sexy and smart with witty dialogue that spills forth from terrific characters especially Emma Stone and the sensational duo of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s parents.

As Stone digs deep into Bert Royal’s exceptional dialogue, Tucci and Clarkson join in the fun bringing life and energy to roles that are more often than not cast as clueless, put upon and foolish. The scenes between Olive and her mom and or dad, are the best scenes in Easy A for their sheer loving, comic energy.

Also good is Penn Badgley an actor who has never impressed me until now. Playing the school mascot, who happens to also be Olive’s original school crush, Badgley matches Olive’s hyper intelligent wit word for fast pitched, jokey word. Till now Badgley has been little more than eye candy on TV’s Gossip Girl, with “Easy A” he shows real chops.

“Easy A: is a strong showcase for all involved from director Will Gluck, who needed the boost after the atrocious comedy “Fired Up,” to newcomer Bert V. Royal who could not have asked for better debut feature and especially for star Emma Stone who, whether “Easy A” is big box office or not, firmly establishes herself as a first rate leading lady, heir to the Drew Barrymore throne of the cool, hot chick.

Witty, sexy, funny and exceptionally well cast, Easy A is a terrific teen comedy that, though the bar was exceedingly low, raises the expectations of the moribund genre of teen sex comedies. “Easy A” references a number of John Hughes classics along the way and is the rare modern teen comedy to have earned the right to make those references.

Movie Review John Tucker Must Die

John Tucker Must Die (2006) 

Directed by Betty Thomas

Written by Jeff Lowell

Starring Jesse Metcalf, Brittany Snow, Ashanti, Sophia Bush, Arielle Kebbel, Penn Badgley, Jenny McCarthy, Taylor Kitsch 

Release Date July 28th, 2006 

Published July 29th, 2006 

The most striking thing about the new teen comedy John Tucker Must Die is its impressive online ad campaign. Taking full advantage of the zeitgeist grabbing MySpace.com, the producers of John Tucker Must Die created the films official website on MySpace. They recruited teens in the films target demo to spread word about the film on their blogs and on MySpace message boards and they plastered every inch of the site with pictures of star Jesse Metcalf whose hunky visage was the selling point for the films target audience of teenage girls.

By the time the film actually arrived in theaters it really didn't matter if the film was any good, the marketing had worked like gangbusters in turning out the exact audience demo the studio had been trying to attract.

Now that that is out of the way the question remains; is the film any good? It's not a simple answer. On the one hand I as a 30 year old male film critic felt the picture was derivative, lazy and not nearly as funny as it thinks it is. On the other hand, watching the film in a theater crowded with teen girls cackling at the films every turn of plot, I can't deny the film is effective in many ways.

Jesse Metcalf is the titular star of John Tucker Must Die but the lead role actually belongs to Brittany Snow as Kate. Always the new girl, thanks to her mom (Jenny McCarthy) and her misadventures with men, Kate arrives at yet another new school once again as an outcast. Being her usual anonymous self, Kate flies below the radar observing the goings on at her new school and particularly the goings on surrounding the school super-stud John Tucker.

Tucker is captain of the basketball team and is currently dating the head cheerleader Heather (Ashanti), the valedictorian Carrie (Arielle Kebbel) and the schools top causehead Beth (Sophia Bush). Because the girls run in different circles they know nothing of each other and John Tucker. Kate knows because John has taken each of them to the restaurant where she works.

One day John's girls are fatefully thrown together and one just happens to mention John. All hell breaks loose between the three girls and eventually engulfs poor Kate. Asking the logical question why they are beating on each other when it's John they should be mad at, Kate sets in motion a plot to get revenge on the cheating, lying John Tucker.

The plot and poster might give one the impression of a dark comedy about a high school murder plot. Unfortunately, John Tucker Must Die is not nearly as ambitious as its title. The girl's revenge plot is more mean spirited than it is vengeful. The early plotting involves turning John into the poster boy for STD's, spiking his water with estrogen and tricking him into wearing a thong in front of all of his buddies.

When none of these plots is able to derail the surprisingly resilient John Tucker, the girls hatch one final plot. After John finally breaks up with each of the three plotters, they decide to turn Kate into John's ultimate fantasy girl. Using their inside knowledge of his likes and dislikes, they will get John to fall for Kate and then have her dump him like he dumped them.

My plot description is a little more straightforward than the film itself which is often distracted ogling its supermodel cast. There is no one in the cast of high school age and rarely do you see a face that does not belong on a magazine cover. Seriously, what planet is this movie from planet Maxim in the FHM universe. It's difficult to take anything in the film seriously when you are distracted by more than fifty of Maxim magazine's future and even former cover girls (star Arielle Krebbel is one of Maxim's top 100 hotties).

Like so many broad teen comedies, John Tucker Must Die wants it both ways. It wants to be broadly comic but also have honest pathos and characters we care about. Well, you can't have it both ways. Director Betty Thomas and writer Jeff Lowell needed to make up their minds at some point and decide if John Tucker Must Die was going to be a dark teen comedy a la Mean Girls or a more sensitive but broad film like those awful Freddie Prinze Jr movies from the late 90's early 2000's.

Is this American Pie or a movie Hillary Duff turned down. John Tucker Must Die doesn't know what it wants to be. Thus it winds up a beaten mutt of a movie with elements of any number of different movies with no real center of its own.  

With all of the obvious problems of this film I certainly cannot and will not recommend it. However, I can't completely write the film off either. Watching the film with a nearly sold out audience filled with girls from 12-16 who roared with laughter throughout, I could not help but be struck by the effect the film had on its target demographic.

I'm not actually sure if I am impressed or a little frightened by how well John Tucker Must Die hits with teen girls. It tests so well that it must have been tested to death upon its initial completion so that each scene would hit the target audience just right. A scientific approach to filmmaking that I find terribly disturbing. I'm honestly conflicted. On the one hand, who am I to deny people a calculated good time? On the other hand this is not art in any way shape or form.

There likely was little to no artistic effort put into crafting John Tucker Must Die. It is a product tested and sold to a market of consumers pre-destined to want to consume and enjoy it. A filmic symbol of our mechanistic society that meets the exact needs of consumers no matter what needs they may be. This mechanism however robs us of humanity and experience.

Watching a film should be an experience that reaches out to the audience and leaves them with a sense of having been a part of something, like all great art. Movies like John Tucker Must Die are merely mass consumed quantities like popcorn or chocolate bars. Easily digested and disposed of. They contain minor pleasures and empty calories but leave no trace of themselves later.

An example of what I hate about modern Hollywood, John Tucker Must Die is the ultimate in product placement. The product just happens to be the film itself rather than a McDonalds or Coca Cola. John Tucker Must Die is itself a mass consumer product of disposable value and forgettable minor pleasures. The ad campaign and MySpace site may have a place in marketing history, but the film is more forgettable than that bag of fritos you finished off sometime ago and cast into the abyss of an empty garbage can destined for a landfill.