Movie Review Our Family Wedding

Our Family Wedding (2010) 

Directed by Rick Famuyiwa 

Written by Malcolm Spellman 

Starring Forest Whitaker, America Ferrara, Carlos Mencia, Regina King, Lance Gross 

Release Date March 12th, 2010 

Published March 14th, 2010 

Oscar winner Forest Whitaker is not known for his sense of humor. It's not that the actor best known as the embodiment of the evil dictator Idi Amin in Last King of Scotland cannot be funny but rather that he is better known for self serious drama and outright frightening evil. The comedy Our Family Wedding is an absolute out of the box move for Whitaker and a testament to his talent that he melts right into a comedic role despite how truly lame all around him is.

Our Family Wedding is a comedy of interracial manners starring Forrest Whitaker as the single dad to Lance Gross as Marcus a kid about to graduate from college and become a doctor. Marcus has a surprise for his dad though, he's getting married to Lucia who he has been living with for two years and plans on taking her with him on a Doctors without Borders mission in Southeast Asia for the next two years.

Whitaker's Brad is not the only one who will be shocked by these revelations, Lucia's Father Miguel (Carlos Mencia) is certain to be surprised by his daughter choosing to marry an African American, non-Catholic who wants to take her to Asia for two years. Oh, and Lucia is dropping out of law school to be with Marcus and her mother (Diana Maria Riva) knew about this but did not tell her husband.

The set up is not bad actually, it has a lot of built in conflict to build on. Unfortunately, director Rick Famuyiwa (Brown Sugar, The Wood) doesn't believe in his material and prefers relying on lame coincidence and goofball slapstick moments to pad the film out to feature length.

Because he couldn't think of anything less original or interesting, Famuyiwa has Whitaker and Mencia meet cute in a most convenient and unfunny fashion. The two push the racist stereotype button repeatedly until the joke becomes unfunny and by the time of the reveal that they are going to be family the joke is worn out.

Race issues are addressed only briefly and with no honest insight. The script by director Famuyiwa, Wayne Conley and Malcolm Spellman injects racial stereotypes as a punchline but fails on all accounts to take race seriously as an obstacle to Lucia and Marcus's romance.

The only really good part of Our Family Wedding is Forest Whitaker who slips comfortably into this comedic role and is the only actor who brings anything of depth to his character. Whitaker indulges the whims of his director, he does chase a goat in the movie (Ugh) but in the non goat chasing scenes he crafts a real character from the minor pieces given to him.

Our Family Wedding is dopey and second rate with a dearth of comedic interest. Forest Whitaker is solid but the film built around him is a rickety mess of lame stereotypes and dopey slapstick. Rick Famuyiwa is a much better director than this film demonstrates. Check out his smooth, smart romance Brown Sugar and skip Our Family Wedding.

Movie Review The Ant Bully

The Ant Bully (2006) 

Directed by John A Davis

Written by John A, Davis 

Starring Zach Tyler Eisen, Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Regina King, Bruce Campbell

Release Date July 28th, 2006 

Published July 29th, 2006 

Is Hollywood killing the golden goose? A recent explosion in computer generated cartoons threatens to saturate the market for a genre that came to prominence based on its lovely uniqueness. In the summer of 2006 we have already seen Over The Hedge, Cars and Monster House and soon Barnyard will open. In the midst of all of this frenzy of computer animation comes The Ant Bully, a forgettable but lovingly rendered kiddie flick from the creative minds behind Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius.

Adapted from a book by John Nickle, The Ant Bully delivers perfunctory kids movie messages about friendship, family and working together in a terrifically crafted computer animated universe.

Nine year old Lucas Nickle (Zack Tyler) has been the target of neighborhood bullies for years. His only solace from the constant humiliation is taking his frustrations out on the ant hills in his yard. Little does young Lucas realize that he is not just bullying ants but nearly destroying a very real society of families and friends. With each squirt of Lucas's hose or stomp of his foot years of progress for the large in number but small in stature ant colony is lost.

While the leaders of the ant colony debate how to react to Lucas, whether to pick up and move away from the hill or find some way to retaliate, the ant wizard Zoc (Nicolas Cage) has a plan of his own. Zoc has developed a potion that will shrink Lucas, known to the ants as 'The Destroyer', to ant size. The potion works and Lucas is taken prisoner and put on trial.

Sentenced by the ant queen (Meryl Streep), Lucas is given the opportunity to prove himself. Rather than the ants eating him, Lucas will become part of the colony and if he can work together with the ants and find his place in the colony he will be returned to his family. Aiding Lucas will be Nurse Ant Hova (Julia Roberts) who volunteers to mentor Lucas over the objections of Zoc, her boyfriend.

Obviously from my plot description there is very little suspense in The Ant Bully. If you don't know the valuable lessons about friendship, teamwork and family that Lucas will learn then you have never seen a kids movie before. The story of The Ant Bully, adapted by director John A. Davis from the book by John Nickle, is neither original nor all that humorous. It works because it is comforting, familiar and the animation is absolutely gorgeous.

Because John Nickle's book is a slight 32 pages much had to be added and those additions include a nasty bug exterminator voiced by Paul Giamatti. The exterminator character leads to the film's climax, a bug war with the exterminator that is a visual marvel if only a story convenience. The war with the exterminator as well as ants angst over how to deal with Lucas, leads to an interesting, if not well explored, idea of the doctrine of The Ant Bully.

John A. Davis considers for a moment an idea of an anti-war movement amongst the ants. Many ants oppose confronting Lucas in a war-like fashion. Later when threatened by the exterminator there is talk of whether striking the exterminator before he strikes the ants is a proper course of action. A cartoon debating the ethics of first strike capability, even as briefly and simplistically as The Ant Bully does, is rather ambitious for such a little movie.

The animation of The Ant Bully is some of the best non-pixar computer animation I have ever seen. John A. Davis, whose previous effort was the imaginatively unattractive Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius, here crafts lovely, lush visual landscapes. The characters are candy colored browns, greens and fleshtones that really pop right off the screen. The action is animated so spectacularly that you nearly forget how unnecessary these scenes are.

The voice cast lead by Nicolas Cage and Julia Roberts is first rate. Cage strikes just the right balance of strength and vulnerability in his vocalization. Roberts, honey voiced and beatific, communicates motherly wisdom and a sensuousness that really draws you to the character of Hova. Bruce Campbell as Fugax does most of the film's comic heavy lifting with his tough guy bravura often punctured by pratfalling cluelessness. Finally, Regina King as Kreela is as always the queen of smart sass.

A better, funnier, more innovative plot could have turned The Ant Bully from a typical kids flick into something worthy of the Pixar canon. As it is I can still comfortably recommend The Ant Bully because of it's artistry and good intentions. John A. Davis has a bright future ahead of him in computer animation if he can in the future combine the gorgeous visuals of The Ant Bully with telling a real good story.

Movie Review: Daddy Day Care

Daddy Day Care (2003)

Directed by Steve Carr 

Written by Geoff Rodkey 

Starring Eddie Murphy, Jeff Garlin, Steve Zahn, Regina King, Anjelica Huston 

Release Date May 9th, 2003 

Published May 10th, 2003 

How many times can one actor be written off? If you’re Eddie Murphy, apparently as many times as you can make a movie. Every time Eddie comes out with a film it's greeted by cynics in my profession as his last chance to be a big star. And each time, Eddie comes back. Eddie has found the back door to maintaining a waning career. He has sold his cool action-comedy persona and adopted a kid-friendly persona that has proven to a career salvation. His latest by-the-numbers kid friendly flick is Daddy Day Care, a rote family comedy, factory produced by the Hollywood machine.

In Daddy Day Care, Murphy is Charlie, an ad executive who loses his job after a product he was working on tanks badly with test audiences (how amazingly ironic). Left at home waiting for responses to his resume, Charlie gets to spend some much needed private time with his son Ben (Khamani Griffin). One day Charlie takes Ben to the park and has a conversation with a mom desperate for a new day care center. With this inspiration and the help of a friend who also lost his job, Phil (Jeff Garlin, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”), Charlie opens a day care center in his home.

Regina King plays Charlie's wife though it's difficult to tell as she disappears as quickly as she's introduced. Steve Zahn rounds out the cast as a doofy assistant with a fetish for Star Trek and a knack for dealing with kids. Speaking of the kids, none of the little actors makes much of an impression beyond being cute.

The setup is so simple it must have taken all of an hour to think of and write down. Well known personality is paired with a group of cute kids. We haven't seen this teaming but, oh, a dozen or so times, and Daddy Day Care doesn't have much of anything new to add to this familiar story. Even the great Anjelica Huston can't do anything to make this film interesting with her role as the film’s villainous pre-school owner Ms. Harridan. Get it, harridan, oh so clever.

Daddy Day Care isn't offensive, it's not poorly made and to it's credit it doesn't overdo the bathroom humor that has become a staple of similar films. Director Steve Carr, who previously directed Murphy in Dr. Dolittle, shows once again that he is a technically proficient director in that he knows where to point the camera and shoot. That said he brings little else to this uninteresting and overly familiar movie.