Movie Review The Last Kiss

The Last Kiss (2006) 

Directed by Tony Goldwyn 

Written by Paul Haggis 

Starring Zach Braff, Jacinda Barrett, Casey Affleck, Rachel Bilson, Harold Ramis, Blythe Danner 

Release Date September 15th, 2006 

Published September 14th, 2006 

Having turned 30 years old this year I had not really thought about it as a milestone. When I was a kid 30 was old but now that I'm there I don't feel old. In fact I don't feel that much different than the little kid who thought 30 was old. Other than living on my own and having to clean up after myself; I still have some of my childhood hobbies, X-Box, baseball cards and such. The characters in Tony Goldberg's latest directorial effort The Last Kiss are just about to turn 30 and they are terrified. Facing things such as marriage, kids and mortgages, the characters in The Last Kiss face the kind of crises that most men save for their 50th birthday not the 30th.

Zach Braff leads a terrific ensemble in The Last Kiss as Michael; an architect who has just found out his girlfriend Jenna (Jascinda Barrett) is going to have a baby. The panic written on his face is masked by his good humor but is still quite apparent to his pals, Izzy (Michael Weston), Chris (Casey Affleck), and Kenny (Eric Christian Olson).

Michael's friends, like Michael are just about to turn 30 and are also facing grown up issues. Izzy just lost the girl he has loved since high school and is planning an escape to Mexico. Kenny is thinking of going with Izzy on the road trip, a desire that arises after a woman he met and had one night stand with tries introduce him to her parents. And then there is Chris; the only married man in the group. Chris and his wife Danielle (Lauren Lee Smith) have been struggling since having their baby boy and Chris thinks he wants out.

For Michael the troubling grown up thought has coalesced around one thing. If he commits to being with Jenna for the rest of his life she will be the last woman he will ever kiss, a haunting prospect for a 29 year old who feels his best years are still ahead of him. When a college girl, Kim (Rachel Bilson), approaches him at a wedding he see's her beauty but it is her youth that reminds him of his past. He still feels college was the best time of his life. When Michael chances a tryst with Kim it's out of fear of the future as much or more than simply lust.

Directed by Tony Goldwyn from a script by Oscar winner Paul Haggis, The Last Kiss is smart in the ways it draws out these characters and their conflicts. The problems come from the fact that these characters, are childish, selfish and petulant, not exactly the kind of people you go to the movies to meet. Now, there is something to be said for how truthful these characters, true to themselves and their established natures, that still does not make them enjoyable.

Then there is the ending that employs a gimmick in order to resolve the conflict between two central characters. Because neither Goldwyn or Haggis could think of a smarter more mature way to resolve the picture we are left with a character resorting to extreme stubbornness to bring the movie to its conclusion. It's not an egregious issue, nothing that would keep me from recommending this otherwise likable film but it does keep the film from rising from a good movie to a really good movie.

Zach Braff is is quickly becoming a welcome presence on the big screen. His debut in Garden State was a revelation as Braff shows chops as an actor and director. As an actor for hire in The Last Kiss, Braff is rumored to have punched up his dialogue a bit at the behest of director Tony Goldwyn. Whether it was Braff or writer Paul Haggis, the writing of Michael is the smartest thing in the film. It's a difficult role because Michael rarely does what we in the audience want him to do. He more than risks being likable but because he is played by Zach Braff we forgive easier than we might with another actor.

Jascinda Barrett is a rising star who I first noticed in the little seen drama The Human Stain. Since then she was a small but winning presence in Bridget Jones 2 and she managed to survive the abysmal remake Poseidon. It's not just her lovely spokesmodel features, Barrett has a real talent for finding the depths of her characters. In The Last Kiss she wonderfully plays Jenna's contentment early on and her stunned sadness later as he entire world crashes around her.

Barrett's Jenna is central to Michael's plot but she is also deeply inolved in the films best subplot. Veterans Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson play Jenna's parents. Wilkinson's therapist believes everything is fine as does his daughter but Danner shows that everything is not okay when she decides to reveal an affair she had three years prior to the films timeline and decides to leave her husband. Danner has a fabulous moment where she meets up with the man she cheated with and is sad to find he is now happily married.

Watching Barrett play off Wilkinson and Danner is lovely and grounds the film in maturity when it desperately needs it. Without this subplot the film would be nothing but childish posturing and male pattern whining.

Arrested development is a popular theme in 2006. Characters in movies as varied as the stoner comedy Grandma's Boy, the romantic comedy Failure To Launch, Owen Wilson's Dupree in You Me and Dupree and Vince Vaughn in The Break Up, are all examples of men with severe fears of commitment and growing up. It is as if adulthood has replaced Freddy Krueger as the boogeyman of modern times.

The Last Kiss is the most mature of the group of films which make what used to be called Peter Pan syndrome their subject. These characters are no more willing to grow up but are more thoughtful about the subject than the examples I cited before. By that measure; The Last Kiss is a worthy effort. It helps to have such a naturally funny cast to pull it off.

Movie Review: The Wicker Man

The Wicker Man (2006)

Directed by Neil Labute 

Written by Neil Labute 

Starring Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Leelee Sobieski, Frances Conroy

Release Date September 2nd, 2006

Published September 1st, 2006

Director Neil LaBute's war of the sexes examinations of the male-female dynamic are some of the most caustic and elucidating treatises on men and women thus far brought to the screen. His In The Company of Men, Your Friends, and Neighbors and The Shape of Things are withering, gut wrenching contests of highly neurotic will. Each film a wringing of the writer-director's psyche on to the screen. To this point in his career LaBute had avoided simplistic metaphor in favor of the raw examination of his feelings of insecurity and inferiority.

For his latest film, however, LaBute has waded neck deep into the muck of a loaded metaphor. In The Wicker Man, a loose remake of 1973's horror thriller of the same title, LaBute places his battle of sexes inside a dopey thriller plot that any other director could have pulled out of his ass. Working uncomfortably within genre constraints, Labute chafes at his thriller plot which crowds out the more interesting ideas about men and women that he desperately crams into into sides of the picture.

Thus The Wicker Man becomes a dippy hodgepodge of thriller cliches and mixed metaphor. But mostly, it's  a tedious trip to the movies.

Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) just received a letter from his ex-lover Willow (Kate Beahan) and was rather shocked at the content. This women he loved; who disappeared without saying goodbye some years earlier, is calling on him to come to a remote island off the coast of Washington state where a girl who may or may not be his daughter has gone missing.

Making the journey to the island, Edward encounters a society of women who worship nature and dominate the men of the island who are seemingly slaves. Lead by Sister Summerisle (Ellen Burstyn); there is a distinctly creepy vibe to this little cult despite the gentility of most residents.

Searching for the child Edward is stonewalled by everyone as someone is tries to make it seem as if the child never existed. The truth is a sinister twist you can likely see coming even if you have never seen the original 1973 Wicker Man. The only real shock you may get from The Wicker Man 2006 is in the credits when you see this dull witted, plodding mess is directed by the usually tart and ingenious writer-director Neil Labute.

Based on the British cult classic; The Wicker Man was reimagined by Neil LaBute as an examination of a society dominated by women. The female of the species have always fascinated LaBute whose debut picture In The Company of Men examined a pair of misogynists who take advantage of a beautiful blind woman only to have her destroy them. Your Friends & Neighbors was yet another navel gazing assessment of male female dynamics.

LaBute's most intense, and I think telling, portrayal of women was 2003's The Shape of Things in which a nerd, played by Paul Rudd, is reshaped, literally and figuratively, by a woman played by Rachel Weisz. The change in the nerdy exterior of Rudd's character is eventually revealed to be a large scale social experitment by Weisz's ambitious college student. This film exemplifies an idea that comes a little clearer in The Wicker Man, Neil LaBute is afraid of the power women wield over men.

Women can drive men to do anything in Neil LaBute's universe and men are ill equipped to stop them. In The Wicker Man all of the men of the island exist as breeding stock and nothing more. Cage may be an alpha male but he is naturally undone by the far more clever women who, even though their devious plot is too convoluted to be believed, control his every move.

This idea of LaBute examining his fear of women through a thriller story about a cult of powerful women is interesting but that is not really what we get in The Wicker Man. Rather, what came of the picture is a dull mystery about a dopey tough guy and a search for a missing girl that has all of the suspense of a David Spade movie.

Is it possible that Neil Labute lost control over this picture in the editing room? Given the exceptional talent he has shown in the past that is really the only explanation I can think of for the odd shifts in tone in the picture and the uncomfortable attempts to force suspense where none exists. A scene where Cage seeks a place to stay for a night finds Cage overacting and gesticulating in a vain attempt to give the scene some tension when in fact it is just a guy checking in to a slightly off-kilter inn.

Neil Labute is simply too talented to have crafted such a mess of a movie like The Wicker Man.

Nicolas Cage as a cop hunting for a missing girl on a remote pacific northwest island is the bare bones of a plot that includes references to the occult, to witchcraft, and druidism. Unfortunately, somewhere in the editing, the film became about the search for the missing girl, a red herring of immensely stupid proportion, and not about these eccentric and downright weird characters.

Neil LaBute, a master of dialogue and conniving characters, here settles for a mystery story that eschews any real examination of the characters. He sets up metaphors but never delivers the true subtext. You can infer from the fact that the island is home to a cult dominated by women with men kept as breeding stock; that LaBute is commenting subtextually about the power of women over men. However, LaBute never takes the time to examine the dynamic. All is inferred then shoved aside for more thriller genre goofiness.

The Wicker Man is a shockingly goofy movie that leaves one scratching his head; wondering how such talented people as Nicolas Cage and Neil LaBute could have made such a stunningly bad picture. The ambitions of both Cage and LaBute are visible around the edges but front and center is sheer goofiness that leaves its cast and creators with egg on their faces.

Movie Review Idlewild

Idlewild (2006) 

Directed by Bryan Barber

Written by Bryan Barber

Starring Andre Benjamin, Big Boi, Terrence Howard, Faizon Love, Paula Patton, Ving Rhames

Release Date August 25th, 2006 

Published August 26th, 2006 

I've seen bad movies and I've seen disappointing movies but I have never had a movie leave me with the kind of disappointment and frustration as Idlewild. After a sensational trailer that made the film look like an epic musical from hip hop's reigning duo, Idlewild turns out to be a wildly eclectic misfire of both filmic and musical proportions.

Idlewild tells two stories at once. Two pals, Rooster (Big Boi) and Percival (Andre 3000) are living their lives in Idlewild Georgia circa 1935, give or take a year. Rooster is a nightclub performer and part time thug who helps a mobster (Ving Rhames) move booze. Percival is Rooster's piano player but most of his time is spent working as an undertaker in his father's (Ben Vereen) mortuary.

Both Rooster and Percival have dreams well beyond the juke joints and southern climes of Idlewild. Rooster is a family man who longs for the days when there won't be a bullet with his name on it. Percival is a talented musician; who writes terrific songs that no one has ever heard. He dreams of one day leaving Idlewild for the big city's up north to perform his songs.

The two friends' lives are changed in a matter of days when a rival gangster named Trumpy (Terrence Howard) kills his way to the top of the liquor trade by killing Rooster's boss Ace (Faizon Love). This leaves the club in Rooster's hands and the ruthless mobster at his back.

Percival meanwhile is hit with a bolt of lightning in the form of Angel (Paula Patton); the feature act that Ace hired before he met his untimely end. Angel takes an immediate liking to the piano player and the two make beautiful music together on stage and off. Angel encourages Percival to leave Idlewild with her for a shot at stardom in Chicago, this despite a secret that threatens to cost both of them their lives.

These two plots compete for attention in a picture crowded with colorful characters whom director Brian Barber cannot find time for. Consider for a moment the supporting cast that includes Ving Rhames, Ben Vereen, Terrence Howard and makes little room for Patti LaBelle -in a blink and you miss it cameo-, Macy Gray, Paula Jai Parker (Hustle and Flow), and Bill Nunn. Characters are introduced very briefly, often unnamed because there is simply no time.

Barber simply has too many balls in the air, from his sprawling cast, to his lavish musical numbers to the love story and the gangster story and finally trying to coalesce all of this into a coherent conclusion. That he does manage to reign it all in at the end to give the film at least a sensible finale is quite a feat.

The story experience of Idlewild runs a distant second to the music of Idlewild which is seemingly the purpose of it all. Idlewild plays like an overlong concept music video collection. The competing storylines, gangsters and booze vs art and love story, play not unlike the last Outkast project, the dueling albums Speakerboxx/The Love Below.

Like that 2 disc collection, Andre 3000 and Big Boi in Idlewild are essentially working on different projects in which each makes a cameo in the other's story. The only differences are that this is a movie, not just a CD and it all comes together under one title instead of two.

Of course, the star of Idlewild is the music and again drawing parallels with Speakerboxx/The Love Below, Andre 3000's music is more daring, unique and entertaining than Big Boi's, only lacking Big Boi's showmanship which he uses to sell his best contribution to Idlewild, the song "Bowtie" a rousing introduction of his slickster character Rooster.

Andre 3000's musical contributions to Idlewild are a wildly eclectic mixture of hip hop and old school rhythm and blues piano arrangements. His musical repertoire, as he demonstrated on The Love Below and previous Outkast records, is seemingly limitless and he shows that once again in Idlewild. And Andre is as unique with his lyrics as with his music in Idlewild. Check the song "Chronomentrophobia" and don't bother looking up that title in the dictionary.

Idlewild as a movie is a jumbled, messy enterprise. As a collection of music videos, this a good, not great concept soundtrack. Andre 3000's work on Idlewild, much like on Speakerboxx/The Love Below, is superior to his partner Big Boi's but neither really reaches the heights of their previous works.

For Outkast fans, Idlewild is an easy recommendation, the music is by no means sub-par, just not as good as what came before. For non-fans Idlewild is an okay introduction to the work of Outkast, but you are better off grabbing a copy of Stankonia or Speakerboxx/The Love Below to get a real idea of the genius of Outkast.

Movie Review: 'Beerfest'

Beerfest (2006) 

Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

Written by Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Eric Stolhanske

Starring Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Nat Faxon

Release Date August 25th, 2006 

Published August 27th, 2006

I must admit that I have never been a fan of the comedy stylings of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. Their brand of frat boy juvenilia falls somewhere between the South Park guys shrill nihilism and fingernails on a blackboard as far as I'm concerned. So seeing their new film Beerfest, about an underground beer drinking Olympics, was not something that excited me.

My worst fears for how bad I assumed Beerfest would be were confirmed within the first 15 minutes of the film. Beerfest is yet another example of Broken Lizard's almost nihilistic approach to comedy, all grotesquerie, no real humor

Jan and Todd Wolfhouse (Paul Soter and Eric Stolhanske) have just lost their beloved grandfather. To honor his memory, at the request of their grandma (Cloris Leachman), they will fly to Germany to scatter gramps' ashes at his favorite spot Oktoberfest. Once in Germany the boys find themselves taken to an underground lair where a secret international beer drinking contest known as Beerfest is underway.

The German team, it turns out, are cousins of Jan and Todd. However, a family secret divides these clans and Jan and Todd find that grandpa and grandma have secrets that fall under the category of 'too much information', ick! To fight back against their evil German cousins and reclaim the name Wolfhouse from international infamy, the brothers decide to start the very first American beer drinking team.

Hooking up with some old college friends, including a scientist nicknamed Fink (Steve Lemme), a big fat hog named Landfill (Kevin Heffernen) and a former college ladies man and beer pong champion Barry (Jay Chandreskhar) who, in a perfect example of the broken lizard style of humor, has become an alcoholic male prostitute. Barry's current gig has him showing his privates to strangers for a dollar, hilarious gag or desperate cry for help from whoever wrote the bit? You decide, I'm going with the latter.

That is the problem with much of Broken Lizard's comedy stylings. So much of what they think is funny are half baked ideas that are often more grotesque than humorous. Take the introduction of the Fink character. His job as a scientist finds him masturbating frogs for cloning purposes. The gag at the end of the scene after the frog has climaxed is Fink lighting a cigarette, ho ho, how clever.

And that frog gag is likely the funniest bit in the movie. Funny in the kind of sad desperate way that marks much of Beerfest. The gags are all sad attempts to either out gross or out sick the likes of Jim Carrey or the Farrelly brothers. They achieve the grossness and sickness but they cannot find what makes it possible Carrey or the Farrelly's to push that gross envelope. There is no heart to Beerfest.

The Farrelly's especially make an effort to bring a heart to even their grossest outings. Broken Lizard does not do heart so gross is all they've got and for me that is not nearly enough.

I did not laugh once during Beerfest. Not once. I did not actively try not to laugh. I saw the film after watching the truly disappointing Idlewild and hoped that Beerfest might raise my spirits after such a thorough disappointment. Alas, Beerfest only worsened an already bad day at the movies by not providing one humorous moment.

From Donald Sutherland's shockingly awful cameo as the boys late grandfather to jokes about Cloris Leachman and a sausage to the masturbating frogs, there is nothing remotely funny about Beerfest. Even the drunkenness, the loads and loads of alcohol that is consumed by these characters fails to elicit a single laugh.

The Broken Lizard comedy troupe is simply too juvenile, too sophomoric and too unfunny to continue making movies. Dump them into a comedy central series next to equally unfunny comics like the blue collar comedy guys and shuffle them off the big screen. Their brand of humor belongs on late night cable where I can choose to ignore it in favor of yet another VH1 celebreality series.

Broken Lizard no longer belongs on the big screen where as a critic I am forced by job title to acknowledge their existence.

Movie Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane (2006) 

Directed by David R. Ellis 

Written by Sebastian Gutierrez 

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Rachel Blanchard, Flex Anderson, Lin Shaye, David Koechner 

Release Date August 18th, 2006 

Published August 17th, 2006 

The phenomenon that is Snakes on a Plane is one of the more remarkable marketing triumphs in history. New Line Cinema with the simple decision to abandon their preferred title of Pacific Air Flight 121 in favor of the working title placeholder Snakes on a Plane, created an uncontrollable internet sensation that they could not have planned or even imagined.

Now that the film itself is replacing the faked trailers, posters and audio clips, could it even come close to matching the pre-release hype? Yes and no. Yes, the film features seriously campy moments of ridiculous gore and foul mouthed fan requested dialogue. And no, the film was supposed to be either so bad it's good or actually be pretty good and it turned out to be neither.

Snakes on a Plane is simply nothing more than a bad movie with an eye catchingly simpleminded title.

There really is not much to describe in terms of plot. The title says almost all you need to know. There is a plane with snakes. To be more specific, a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles carrying a federal witness, Sean played by Wolf Creek star Nathan Phillips, and a pair of FBI agents Neville Flynn (Jackson) and his partner John (Mark Houghton), is filled with poisonous snakes by a mob boss whom Sean witnessed murdering a prosecutor.

Also on board this flight are a group of caricatures and stereotypes who line up to be victims of the hissing, slithering bad guys. Flex Anderson plays a germ phobic rap star, Kenan Thompson -from Saturday Night Live- is his sassy, video game loving bodyguard. Julianna Marguilies, once an Emmy candidate on E.R, plays a flight attendant on her last trip alongside Farrelly brothers regular Lynn Shaye whose character just turned down early retirement. Comic actor David Koechner shows up to give the film a little comic jolt as the plane's politically incorrect pilot but his energy is quickly dissipated.

Maxim magazine regulars Rachel Blanchard and Elsa Pataky round out the cast of those with the best chance to survive, process of recognizability elimination, if we have a vague idea who you are you have a better chance of surviving. It's what would happen if the love boat turned into the titanic.

Blame director David R. Ellis who had shown a modicum of suspense skill in his previous high blood pressure thrillers Final Destination 2 and Cellular. In Snakes on a Plane Ellis can barely ring a few minor seat jumps from this story which would seem to have built in thrills. Snakes are falling from every opening, slithering up from every hole in the floor, the possibilities for them to strike are endless and yet Ellis never really establishes the tense situation beyond his colorful ideas as to where to attach a rubber snake to the human body.

As for star Samuel L. Jackson, it's difficult to decipher whether Jackson is in on the joke of Snakes on a Plane or the subject of the joke that is Snakes on a Plane. In interviews Jackson blasted the idea that the film would be full on camp and yet he was more than happy to include the joke phrase that internet fans demanded the creators put in the film. His delivery of the line "I'm tired of these motherf*****g snakes, on this motherf*****g plane" does rouse the audience but it seems to lack conviction and feels more than a little forced.

With something as cheeseball goofy as Snakes on a Plane you can't help but have a few cheap thrills to enjoy. It's nearly impossible not to enjoy watching the plane's resident jerky passenger, the pushy fastidious complainer guy, get his snakey comeuppance. There are also some very creative ways to dispose of snakes such as with a lighter taped to the side of a bottle of hairspray or the kickboxer with the quick squishing kick.

These momentary thrills along with a high gore quotient will be more than enough for some people. For me however, I checked out during the scene in which a nameless extra is using the toilet and ends up with a snake attached to a very sensitive portion of his body. There are cheap jokes and then there is simple crass exploitation. I should not have expected anything less from Snakes on a Plane but that does not dismiss my disgust and dismay.

Criticizing Snakes on a Plane for being mindless is as futile as... well.. being trapped on a cross pacific flight with boxes of angry poisonous snakes. You simply have to accept fate. Snakes on a Plane was going to be brainless from the moment it was conceived. It was a dullard idea when the first screenwriter put fingers to keyboard to type it out.

Still there was the potential here for some camp fun, there in fact is a little camp fun, but there is simply not nearly enough fun for me to recommend Snakes on a Plane.

Movie Review Material Girls

Material Girls (2006) 

Directed by Martha Coolidge 

Written by Jessica O'Toole, Amy Rardin 

Starring Hilary Duff, Haylie Duff, Anjelica Huston, Lukas Haas, Brent Spiner, Maria Conchita Alonso 

Release Date August 18th, 2006 

Published August 20th, 2006 

Trashing a movie like Material Girls is like shooting fish in a barrel. You could rip this movie just from having seen the press materials. So how does a critic approach a movie like this? My tactic is to try and be understanding of the niche audience the film is meant to entertain. In the case of Material Girls, the audience is 12 year old girls. So, what do 12 year old girls have in store for them in Material Girls? Nothing they haven't seen before. Vapid, shallow starlets in haute couture learning shallow lessons about love and family and how to be yourself.

Is the movie funny? Not to me. But, will the target audience laugh?

The Marchetta sisters Ava (Haylie Duff) the oldest, and younger sister Tanzy (Hilary Duff) are privileged Hollywood socialites living in the lap of luxury thanks to the fortune provided by their late father's cosmetics company. They are the face of the company, modeling the products on billboards across the globe affording them a lavish lifestyle of parties and rich friends.

Secretly however Tanzy harbors the ambition to go college and become a chemist while Ava looks to become the wife of a famous TV star. Things go bad for the Marchetta's when a shady reporter breaks a story that Marchetta cosmetics are causing consumers to get nasty rashes. This just as a ruthless rival, Fabiella (Angelica Huston), makes an offer to buy the company, something the girls top advisor and their father's former best friend Tommy (Brent Spiner) suggests they do.

The girls are more stubborn than expected, they plan to fight for their father's company. Unfortunately the scandal bankrupts them, a fire takes their fabulous mansion and Ava's TV star fiance dumps her. This jovian series of events leaves the girls living in the ghetto with their loving maid Inez (Maria Conchita Alonzo) and seeking the help of the common people they had so long looked down their noses at.

The characters may evoke comparisons to the famous Hilton sisters or even Mary Kate and Ashley Olson, but Material Girls is no satirical gloss on excess in celeb-land. Rather, this is yet another simpleminded exercise in teen girl empowerment. The message of Material Girls is to be false and bad things will happen, be true to yourself and good things will happen. There are post cards with as much wisdom that cost a lot less than the price of a ticket to see this film.

A pair of pencil thin Hollywood sisters telling America's teens that being yourself is the true path to happiness has a falseness to it that is far too obvious to bother pointing out. But trashing a movie like Material Girls for being shallow is like criticizing the clouds for the rain. This movie was shallow from the moment it was conceived to the day director Martha Coolidge completed principle photography.

For her part Martha Coolidge does little to distinguish herself as a director. Material Girls is not a movie that will stand out on a resume, even one whose biggest highlight is the TV movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, a slight but compelling memoir. It's not that Coolidge is unskilled but her talents are put to task in Material Girls creating something so superficial and so mindless that whatever skills she has feel like wasted effort.

The Duff sisters are a pair of attractive young women who at the very least can rely on their looks to draw a crowd. It's a shame that the only pleasure derived from Material Girls comes from objectifying the two lovely young stars but you have to take what you can get when it comes to something as insipid and banal as Material Girls.

Among other very minor pleasures to be found in Material Girls it's nice to see Lukas Haas get some mainstream Hollywood work. His role as a legal aid lawyer and love interest for Haylie Duff is nothing to get excited about but I have always liked Haas, all the way back to his breakout performance as the mute child of Witness.

Shallow, mindless, a waste of film. All valid criticisms of Material Girls. All judgements I could have made without having seen the film. I did see the film. The key assessment is that this movie was not made with 30 year old film critics in mind. This is a movie made for the attention spans of the modern 12 year old girl. Whether or not they like the film I have no idea. I know that if I had a 12 year old daughter I would not want to expose her to such a vapid waste of 90 minutes.

Movie Review: Accepted

Accepted (2006) 

Directed by Steve Pink 

Written by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Mark Perez 

Starring Justin Long, Blake Lively, Anthony Heald, Jonah Hill, Lewis Black, Columbus Short 

Release Date August 18th, 2006 

Published August 19th, 2006 

The college comedy is a genre all it's own. It has conventions and clichés and stock characters. The latest example of the genre, Accepted starring Justin Long, breaks no new ground in the college comedy genre. It's a slight, forgettable little comedy that has a more than a few redeeming qualities but not much to recommend it.

Justin Long stars in Accepted as Bartleby Gaines an underachieving slacker whose inattention to his schoolwork has left him without a college acceptance letter. Every school he applied to has rejected him. Even Ohio State! His safety school. With his parents breathing down his neck Bartleby launches one of those only in the movies kind of schemes, he starts his own college.

With the help of his computer nerd best friend Sherman (Jonah Hill), who got into the hometown school Harmon College, Bartleby founds the South Harmon Institute of Technology, if you don't get the joke of that name don't worry the film will explain it again and again and again. At first it's just a very convincing website and acceptance letter but when mom and dad insist on driving Bartleby to school he makes the drastic choice to use his tuition check to rent a building.

Bartleby is not alone in his rejection and acceptance of this wacky scheme. Joining Bartleby at South Harmon is his pal Hands (Columbus Short) who lost his football scholarship after an injury and Rory (Maria Thayer) a Ivy league wannabe who only applied to Yale and swore off other college's after being rejected. Pooling their collective tuitions they rent and renovate an old psychiatric hospital and manage to fool their parents into thinking South Harmon is for real.

Unfortunately they also convince a bunch of other rejects who show up at South Harmon expecting their freshman year. Can Bartleby and friends keep up the ruse of South Harmon or will they be headed to jail on fraud charges. If you don't know already then you probably haven't seen very many movies.

Predictability is not the biggest problem with Accepted. It's biggest problem is Director Steve Pink and writers Bill Collage and Adam Cooper who fail to put their own unique spin on the requirements of the college comedy genre. While director Pink does a good job of keeping up an energetic pace and his cast crafts some lovable characters, there is not one college comedy cliche that Accepted manages to avoid.

The bad guys are the crusty dean from the rival college played with extra crust by Anthony Heald. The dean is joined, in typical Animal House fashion, by a group of overprivileged white frat boys lead by Arian dreamboat Travis Van Winkle. No points for guessing that Travis's character, Hoyt Ambrose, has a hot but very sweet girlfriend who also has eyes for Bartleby. The lovely Blake Lively is Monica who you can bet won't be with Hoyt much longer than the plot deems necessary.

Wait, you won't believe it, there is a bigtime party in the movie too, that happens to be on the same night as major bash thrown by the evil frat guys. No points again for guessing that the bad guys are crashing our heroes party with vague threats and evil intent. These scenes have been repeated more times than I or you can count and there is nothing even remotely original about them in Accepted.

I have said in countless reviews of similar genre pictures that the key to genre filmmaking is not originality but rather taking the established conventions of genre and simply doing them better or at the very least slightly different than they have been done before. Accepted simply repeats the conventions with different actors. These are some very good actors but we've heard all of the jokes before.

The film becomes almost saccharine near the end when a full of himself Bartleby gives one of those rousing the troops speeches that becomes an earnest defense of his wacky scheme. This almost works because we like Justin Long as Bartleby but the speech is simply another of the many clichés that Accepted doesn't just repeat it relies upon.

Accepted has a secret weapon in comedian Lewis Black. Brought in as a burnout ex-educator to be South Harmon's Dean, Black brings his sardonic, downer persona to Accepted and gives the film it's one shot of originality. Doling out his opinions on the education system, taxes and bureaucracy, like he was delivering one of his brilliant stand up routines, Black teaches the kids of South Harmon more about the real world than anything they could learn at a real college even if it is delivered with severe cynicism.

Justin Long is an appealing young actor who has been turning heads in supporting roles since his breakout turn on TV's Ed. He came to mainstream attention as the youngest member of Vince Vaughn's Dodgeball team and turned in a radically different cameo as a gay art gallery employee in Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston's The Break Up earlier this summer.

Now, in his first starring role in a mainstream comedy, Long shows a great deal of charisma and charm but the role is to familiar to be as funny as it could be. There is simply nothing that Long can do to break the mold of the classic, fast talking, quick witted campus legend. It's the mold put in place by past college comedy leads like Ryan Reynolds in Van Wilder or Jeremy Piven in the cult classic P.C.U. It's a template with it's roots in classic Bugs Bunny cartoons where our hero is always imperiled but also always one step ahead of that peril thanks to his quick wits.

Originality is not a prerequisite in a college comedy genre. There are some unavoidable conventions of the genre that filmmakers simply cannot avoid. What the better filmmakers do is try and twist those conventions with their own unique vision. Unfortunately director Steve Pink lacked the vision to bring any new twists to Accepted which wastes a terrifically likable cast on a retread of every cliché in the book.

Movie Review Pulse

Pulse (2006) 

Directed by Jim Sonzero 

Written by Wes Craven 

Starring Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, Christina Millian, Zach Grenier, Octavia Spencer 

Release Date August 11th, 2006 

Published August 12th, 2006 

After The Grudge and The Ring became major hits Harvey Weinstein the imperial head of Miramax/Dimension films put the film Pulse in turnaround meaning he did not want to make it. Weinstein saw that the film had nothing new to offer and was merely a sad retread of J-horror cliches. When Weinstein and his brother Bob left Miramax for their own company the new owners decided to make the movie.

If only they had listened to Harvey. Pulse is just what Weinstein saw when he pulled the plug on the film, a dull, uninspired horror retread.

Mattie Webber (Kristen Bell) has not seen her boyfriend Josh (Jonathan Tucker) in days. He doesn't answer his phones or respond to email. When she finally finds him at his apartment he is ashen and bruised. He disappears into another room and when Mattie follows him she finds him hanging himself with a phone cord.

Josh's suicide is part of a rash of suicides in the area that are linked to a creepy website that invites viewers to see ghosts. Visitors to the site are soon ghosts themselves, turning to ash, melting into walls and walking off buildings. With her friends disappearing one by one Mattie seeks the help of the man who bought Josh's old computer, Dexter (Ian Somerhalder) to find out just what caused Josh and everyone else to want to die.

Pulse is based on the incomprehensible japanese horror flick Kairo which I watched and was completely baffled by. The Americanization of Kairo at the very least clarifies the plot but that is really the film's only positive quality. Director Jim Sonzero crafts a typically murky, gray-green horror film that mimics the look of The Ring and The Grudge right down to the perky blonde lead.

I don't mean to write off Kristen Bell as merely perky and blonde. The feisty star of TV's Veronica Mars is a terrific young actress with a very bright future who simply made a bad choice in accepting a Japanese horror film off the scrap heap of dozens of J-horror flicks still awaiting an American adaptation. Bell has all american girl looks with a smart sexy smirk that is sadly dimmed by the dreary scare free atmospherics of Jim Sonzero's uninspired direction.

There is an interesting idea lost in the morass of Pulse. The film's plot combines vague assertions to George Romero and The Matrix. The dead emerging from our technology to suck out our souls is an anti-technology message right after the heart of any luddite or technophobe. Unfortunately director Jim Sonzero lacks the imagination to give this idea a proper examination. Instead, what we get is gray-green fuzziness and typical horror movie tropes.

All of the film's attempts at scares are hackneyed horror cliches in which friends and ghosts jump out from dark corners just as the film's soundtrack reaches a stilted, screeching crescendo causing our heroes to leap and scream. Maybe if you haven't seen this before you might get a bit of a jump but by the 10th or 15th time this scene repeats in Pulse you will be more irritated than jumpy.

Murky, dreary and dull, Pulse is a tension free horror slog through tame PG-13 scares. An interesting idea of the horrors of our modern Wi-Fi society squandered by direction that lacks imagination and ingenuity. When even the spunky, sexy Kristen Bell cannot break free of the dank, gloomy listlessness you know the film must be truly awful.

Not even hardcore horror fans, or fans of the Japanese original Kairo, will find anything worth watching in Pulse.

Movie Review: World Trade Center

World Trade Center (2006) 

Directed by Oliver Stone 

Written by Andrea Berloff 

Starring Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Michael Shannon, Stephen Dorff, Jon Bernthal 

Release Date August 9th, 2006

Published August 9th, 2006 

When United 93 was released back in March of this year I was floored by that films documentary realism and emotional punch. However, I was unable to recommend the film. To whom do you recommend a film that gives the feel of actually reliving the greatest tragedy you have ever witnessed. Standing in the theater the following day watching audiences cue up with pop and popcorn in hand I was struck with how vulgar it seemed to munch popcorn while reliving 9/11.

World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's flag waving, rah rah, patriotic remembrance of that day feels like a film you could munch popcorn to. Classically Hollywood, World Trade Center is about bravery, self sacrifice and the kind of heroism rarely ever seen. It's also saccharine, remote and rather simpleminded. Though skillful and respectful World Trade Center fails to grasp the gravity of it's subject and thus never feels important enough to justify having been made at all.

On September 11th John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) rolled out of bed at 3:30 am without waking his wife Donna (Maria Bello), it was going to be just another tuesday morning at the port authority police precinct. Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) rose a few hours after Mcloughlin and kissed his wife Allison goodbye before joining McLoughlin at PAPD headquarters.

This of course was to be no ordinary Tuesday for anyone in the country. After receiving assignments for the day, McLaughlin in charge of everything and Jimenez sent to Port Authority bus terminal, things turn horrifying quickly. As Jimenez is shooing away homeless people the shadow of the first plane passes over him headed for it's deathly collision.

Returning to the station, Jimenez will join McLaughlin, his pal Dom Pezullo (Jay Hernandez) and several other officers in heading off to the trade center towers to evacuate the people inside. Arriving at the towers, after commandeering a city bus, the officers find a horror show of the injured and the dead. Some are victims who leapt to their death rather than burn alive in the towers.

McLoughlin, Jimenez, Pezullo and another officer, Antonio Rodrigues (Armando Riesco), are the guys who chose to run into the towers and get people out. The cops are in the concourse between the towers when they began to collapse. Rodrigues was killed, Jimenez and McLoghlin were buried by the first tower  collapse while Pezullo managed to be unharmed and attempted to free Jimenez. Sadly Pezullo died when the second tower fell.

One of the most striking elements of these scenes in which the actors are trapped in the rubble is the complete loss of time. Unless you methodically researched and kept time on your watch you don't remember and cannot keep track of the time between when the planes hit, when the first tower fell and when the second tower fell. We have the benefit of hindsight but the characters do not, so every scene in which they wander the trade center gathering materials, in which they are first nearly crushed by debris of the first tower to the second tower falling, is filled with dreadful tension.

As filmed by Oliver Stone these scenes are the best in the film. Harrowing, nail biting moments that have a real emotional kick even as we already know what is about to happen. The actors approach to these moments is stellar without any pretense or knowingness, each actor plowed ahead acting on their assigned duties, working through fears of the unknown, fears of a world on edge that they cannot comprehend.

Nicholas Cage is especially good in the early scenes of World Trade Center before his portrayal devolves into a series of mushy  flashbacks. Early in World Trade Center Cage thrives as the efficient, matter of fact police sergeant who also happens to be the officer behind the disaster scenarios at trade towers. When McLoughlin tells a superior officer that we prepared for any number of occurances after the attack in 1994 but we did not plan for this, the lines hit hard.

The most fascinating moments of World Trade Center focus on a supporting character, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes. Working on 9/11 as an insurance salesman in Connecticutt, Karnes left work soon after seeing the attacks on television. He visited his pastor and told him that god was calling him to the towers to save people. He went to a barbershop and got a military buzzcut and pulled his marine corp uniform out of mothballs and made his way to New York.

Arriving at the site, passing security thanks to the uniform, Karnes was the first person to jump onto the fallen towers and begin searching for survivors. Joined by a fellow  marine, Thomas played ever so briefly by William Mapother, Karnes searched the rubble and found Jimenez in McLoughlin some 20 feet below, trapped in the rubble. Karnes determination and heroism are stunning, so stunning that many have found his story unbelievable. Dave Karnes is for real and his story was real, one of many extraordinary stories that fateful day.

Karnes' story could warrant his own movie, he went on to fight in Iraq for 18 months at the age of 45, the attacks having inspired him to re-enlist. Unfortunately there are only so many stories that Oliver Stone and writer Andrea Berloff could work into a reasonable runtime. Another great story was that of former paramedic Chuck Sereika, played by Frank Whaley, who also gets only a gloss in World trade Center. When Chuck arrived at the site he was no longer a medic, having spent the most recent months in rehab. He intended only to tie a few tourniquets and help where needed. He ended up the first man inside the rubble when McLoughlin and Jimenez were found.

All of these stories are dramatic and compelling but they are the periphery of what is a real Hollywood-ization of 9/11. Most of World Trade Center is dedicated to the heightened melodrama of McLoughlin and Jimenez trying to keep each other alive and there families at home trying not to fall apart. The heightened emotion in these scenes is portrayed with a belt it to the back of the room, broadway musical like theatricality. To much of World Trade Center rings with a tinsel town phoniness that is anathema to a movie based on 9/11.

Most obvious of these egregiously inflated scenes comes at the end of the film. As Nicholas Cage as John McLoughlin is lifted from the rubble of the World Trade Center his stretcher passes through the hands of hundreds of rescue workers who shake Cage's hand and he gives the thumbs up to. With a star the size of Nick Cage laying in the stretcher the scene plays like a Hollywood homage to the heroic saviors of 9/11.

If any group are worthy of a big Hollywood thank you it's the fire fighters, policeman and rescue workers who saved what few lives could be saved that day but the justification does not make the scene feel any less false and cloying.

I find it bizarre and a little disgusting to try and examine the entertaining aspects of World Trade Center. By comparison I rated United 93 a zero in my popcorn rating. That film was just too much like watching 9/11 happen again for me to treat it like a typical movie. World Trade Center , because of it's star power and melodrama is more of a movie movie. I was able to seperate from World Trade Center far more than I could the more visceral and real United 93.

That seperation comes twofold. I was able to find aspects of World Trade Center that I could judge from a movie making standpoint, things such as the performances of Cage, Pena, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello all of which are solid with just a hint of falsehood. Also Andrea Berloff's often overwrought and at times gut wrenching script that never fails to hit a melodramatic note but also misses few chances to really touch you with sincerity.

However, this is still a 9/11 movie and it is rubbing a wound that is still raw. Oliver Stone is very careful to be respectful with his storytelling. There is no shock factor, no forced conspiracy theory, really no controversy about Stone's interpretation whatsoever. The film is an earnest examination of character and heroism that uses the greatest attack on American soil as a framing device. That is both respectable and repugnant. It is both a great piece of storytelling and an impossible rendering of a painful memory.

Because the film is directed by Oliver Stone parsing the films political aspects should become quite a sport. However, these efforts are futile. Stone honestly avoids any overt political message in favor of a simple tale of heroism. If you want to find politics in World Trade Center they will likely be your own. I have read reviews that claim Stone's use of a Brooks and Dunn song on the soundtrack is an example of his red state bent. On the other hand I personally read a minor political statement into Stone's montage of citizens around the globe reacting to the attack and rallying around America. The Bush administration went on to squander this international goodwill almost completely. That however, is my own parsing of the scene not Oliver Stone's.

In searching the film for political viewpoints you cannot ignore the most fascinating and complicated character in the film, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes played by Michael Shannon. There is no question that Shannon was a hero that day selflessly risking his life to locate McLoughlin and Jimenez in the rubble. On the other hand, the creepy intensity that Michael Shannon brings to the role allows a political interpretation.

Karnes is a neo-con wet dream of god and country patriotism who re-enlisted in the military twice to join the war on terror. Karnes is undoubtedly brave and heroic but, the creepy intensity with which he is portrayed could be read, if one were so inclined, as a metaphor for the right wing's frighteningly single minded pursuit of the war in Iraq. That again though, is me bringing my personal politics to a chapter of the movie that may not have politics at all.

Oliver Stone's reputation simply invites this sort of speculation.

World Trade Center is a film that fills me with conflict. There is nothing horribly offensive about the film. It is relatively well crafted with some very powerful moments. But, I cannot escape my own horror at watching 9/11 dramatized. It's still too raw and too fresh in my memory for a movie to portray in a way I feel will show respect and deference for what happened.

That is not Oliver Stone's fault. He made what I'm sure he feels is the best movie he could make given the materials he had to work with. Much of what he delivers is Hollywood hokum that is out of place in a movie about 9/11. However, there is far too much solid work for me to write the film off completely. Michael Shannon for one deserves a serious Oscar push as does Stone's set design team whose attention to detail may be the films most emotional experience.

To whom do you recommend a film about 9/11? I cannot think of anyone to whom I would say this film is a must see. Maybe the academy for what I mentioned before but with great reservation. I cannot fathom who would want to watch a dramatization of this horrifying event in history when so much of it is still so fresh in our collective memories.

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.

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 My Super Ex-Girlfriend

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) 

Directed by Ivan Reitman 

Written by Don Payne

Starring Uma Thurman, Luke Wilson, Anna Faris, Eddie Izzard, Rain Wilson

Release Date July 21st, 2006 

Published July 20th, 2006 

It's a good concept for a movie. The idea of a superhero in a dating situation with a regular human being is an idea that other films, Spiderman or Tim Burton's Batman, have alluded to but only now has a film made this idea its subject. The comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend drew a number of big laughs from this great premise but unfortunately director Ivan Reitman was unable to sustain those laughs for the length of the feature.

Thus what I get with Super Ex-Girlfriend is two thirds of a very funny film and a third of a chaotic special effects movie with no solid finish. It's disappointing but not entirely destructive. Too much of Super Ex-Girlfriend is too funny to be written off entirely because of third act problems no matter how huge those problems are.

Luke Wilson stars in Super Ex-Girlfriend as Matt an architect who spends his days pining for the engaged girl of his dreams Hannah (Anna Faris) and his nights fending off the lecherous advice of his best friend Vaughn (Rainn Wilson) whose idea of good dating advice is to find a chick and bang her then find another and do the same.

Vaughn did have one seemingly smart piece of advice, he was the one who encouraged Matt to approach Genny (Uma Thurman) , a bookishly sexy art gallery employee. Though the meet cute on the subway is interrupted by a mugger that steals Genny's purse, Matt still manages to land a date by chasing down the mugger and retrieving the lost purse, though he is nearly pummeled by the bad guy.

The relationship is nearly tumultuous as the meet cute as Matt discovers Genny is more than a little odd. Clingy, neurotic but a raging wildcat in bed, Genny is certainly not like any woman Matt has met before. But there is far more to Genny than meets the eye.

Genny happens to be the Clark Kent identity to a superhero known as G-Girl who has made a habit of saving New York City from repeated disasters. Her crime fighting has naturally hindered much of her dating life but once she tells Matt of her secret identity their relationship takes off to another level.

Meanwhile Matt is still pining for Hannah and eventually when it looks like Hannah might be available and Matt has tired of Genny/G-Girl's insane jealousy and neurosis Matt makes the difficult decision to end things. If you think breaking up with an everyday crazy girlfriend is hard, try breaking up with a girl with superpowers.

The first two acts of My Super Ex-Girlfriend are very funny in capitalizing on the unique idea of a superhero and her non-super boyfriend. Director Ivan Reitman and writer Don Payne spin a number of humorous scenes from this brilliant scenario, such as G-Girl and Matt's midair coitus and G-Girl's jealousy at having to leave Matt alone with Hannah while she saves the world. These scenes draw huge laughs from the premise to the skilled performances of Thurman and Wilson and the smart writing.

Unfortunately nobody figured out how to bring this brilliant concept  to a satisfying conclusion.

The third act of Super-Ex which features G-Girl's attempts to punish Matt for breaking up with her and the evil scheming of her arch nemesis Professor Bedlam, played by the wonderful Eddie Izzard, to use G-Girl and Matt's break-up to his evil advantage devolve to simply into a series of chaotic and unsatisfying special effects.

The story closes with a perfunctory predictable and unearned happy ending which ties the story up far too neatly. Eddie Izzard is a wonderful comic actor but his story arc as Professor Bedlam is almost non-existent. For the ending to work he needs to be a more established character. Instead he is a plot instigator, a pawn moving the story to its conclusion and not a functioning character.

Ivan Reitman and Don Payne are far too interested in Matt's mundane existence as an everyman dating a superhero and not nearly interested enough in the far more interesting superhero. Little attention was paid to giving G-Girl powers beyond standard Superman abilities, her backstory is dull and her outfit is neither sexy or functional.

Just creating a character with super powers does not make the character interesting or compelling. Uma Thurman gives an energetic but flailing performance as it seems Reitman decided somewhere along the line to use the broadest comic takes filmed. Thurman is far too classy for much of the overwrought scenes she is forced to play and thus her performance seems strained.

Luke Wilson is spot on as the everyday guy. His reactions are natural and grounded and his charm is endearing without being cloying. Wilson's comic skills are impeccable and he plays even the broadest scenes with a smart economic ambivalence that seems perfectly natural to the character. Like I said, much of My Super Ex-Girlfriend is really good. It's only the film's third act that keeps the movie from rising to a level at which I could excitedly recommend it to you. As it is My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a flawed funny movie worthy of a rental if not an actual trip to the theater.

Movie Review: You Me and Dupree

You Me and Dupree (2006) 

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo

Written by Michael Lesieur

Starring Owen Wilson, Matt Dillon Kate Hudson, Michael Douglas, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader

Release Date July 14th, 2006 

Published July 16th, 2006 

Owen Wilson's career is coming to a serious crossroads. The star of Wedding Crashers and charter member of Hollywood's so called frat pack, with his pals Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell; is reaching a tipping point with his good natured slacker persona. How much longer can Wilson continue to play the same relaxed slacker charmer and remain in the good graces of audiences? 

How much longer can Wilson play a variation on the laid back musing hippy that has made him a star. His latest effort, You, Me and Dupree co-starring Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson, gives us a glimpse of Wilson's coming crossroads crisis. Exhibiting the very limits of his appeal, Dupree is typical of the dazed and confused good natured stoner that Wilson has made his bread and butter, he is also however an example of how that laid back stoner can be as irksome as he is charming.

As we join the story of You, Me and Dupree, Carl (Matt Dillon) is in Hawaii preparing to marry his fiancee Molly when his best friend and best man Dupree turns up on the wrong island and needs to be flown in. Dupree has always been a drifting, lazy, slacker but his friends, Carl and Neil (Seth Rogan) have always loved him.

Now that Carl is getting married the whole dynamic of their friendship is changing. Faced with having to watch his friend really grow up, at 36 years old, Dupree finds himself once again in arrested development. Having been fired from his job for attending Carl's wedding without bothering to get time off from work, Dupree is homeless and sleeping on a cot in a bar.

Seeing Dupree's dire straits Carl, fresh from his honeymoon, invites Dupree to sleep on his couch for a few days much to the chagrin of Molly. Naturally, hi-junks ensue as Dupree makes his mark on his new territory. He floods the downstairs bathroom, eats all of the food and eventually nearly burns the house down while sharing intimate relations with a friend of Molly's.

All of Dupree's actions and his completely oblivious attitude make for one truly irritating character. And then the film takes a giant mid-point turn that those of you who are really sensitive to spoilers might want to skip until you have seen the film........

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After all of the horrible things that Dupree does the filmmakers Anthony and Joe Russo decide to try and turn Dupree into the good guy of the movie. It's really rather astonishing. To the half way point you are with Kate Hudson' Molly in wanting to strangle Dupree but then the movie tries to turn him into this slacker with a heart of gold with a philosophy that heals all and suddenly even Molly is on his side while Matt Dillon's Carl turns into the worst variation of a Ben Stiller Jovian afflicted fool. This may work for those in the audience willing to love Owen Wilson no matter what but if you aren't buying Wilson's usual charm as I wasn't the mid-point twist is nearly as irritating as Dupree himself.

The film is pretty well downhill from this point. Michael Douglas joins the fray as Molly's doting dad who happens to hate Carl. This plot line leads into one of my biggest movie pet peeves. The troubles of Carl could be solved completely with one open honest conversation but if he were to do the logical thing and have this conversation there would be no movie. Thus the plot requires Carl to be a fool. This further undermines Dillon who was already stuck with a role it is clear Ben Stiller turned down.

I cannot say that You, Me And Dupree is completely devoid of laughs. With a cast this talented and lovable laughs are going to come no matter how poor the plot or direction. Owen Wilson occasionally emerges from the Dupree character with this wonderful hangdog expression reminiscent of a loving puppy that messed on the floor but doesn't truly realize he's done anything wrong. It's undeniably charming and at times funny.

Kate Hudson is really spot on throughout. Had not the script and direction let her down at every turn her winning smile and ability to adapt to any comic situation could have turned the whole film around. Its unfortunate that she accepted a role in which her character subservient to the whims of her male counterparts. Though she is clearly the equal of her co-stars in terms of star power, the plot relegates her to a dull supporting role that she seems far to big for.

Matt Dillon never should have accepted this role. I'm sure the idea, which came from two of the minds behind TV's brilliant Arrested Development, seemed like a potentially fun idea but he had to have seen the writing on the wall that this was a role meant for the slow boil, comedy of humiliation that is the specialty of Ben Stiller. Dillon is never comfortable in this role which is neither deep enough for his terrific instinctual acting or loose enough for the kind of wild streak that he showed in There's Something About Mary.

In the end You, Me and Dupree turns on the likability and adaptability of Owen Wilson. Sadly he is not up to the task. Dupree exposes the limitations of Wilson as an actor and a persona. Dupree evokes the idea of a stand up comedy routine rather than a fully fleshed out film character. The Owen Wilson persona established in Wedding Crashers, Starsky and Hutch and Zoolander, keeps peeking out from behind the character to wink at the audience and undermine Dupree as a character. You are essentially watching Owen Wilson try out the material of a Dupree character rather than watching a real character develop.

The one word that kept popping into my head throughout You, Me and Dupree was irritating. Dupree as a character and as played by Owen Wilson is irritating. Kate Hudson forced to dial down her star wattage is irritating. Matt Dillon shoehorned into a Ben Stiller character is irritating. The toneless, rhythmless direction of Anthony and Joe Russo is irritating. And at 2 hours in length Me, You And Dupree like it's central houseguest from hell overstays it's welcome and that is truly irritating.

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 Prates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest (2006) 

Directed by Gore Verbinski 

Written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio 

Starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgard

Release Date July 7th, 2006 

Published July 5th, 2006 

2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a major surprise. Here is a film from the Disney formula factory, based on a theme park ride of all things, produced by mainstream dress meister Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by an unproven talent in Gore Verbinski. With all of these factors the film should have stuck to high heaven. Instead, Pirates of the Caribbean was a high spirited, high seas adventure that features arguably the best performance in the career of one of our greatest actors, Johnny Depp, and a pair of rising stars just ahead of the peak of their talents.

Naturally sequelization was a no-brainer, especially after the film began breaking the bank at the box office. Students of the Hollywood game are well aware that surprise hits like Pirates are once in a lifetime events. So it comes as no surprise that the sequel, subtitled Dead Man's Chest, suffers a case of sequelitis. It's the disease that strikes most, if not all attempts to recapture one time magic; see The Matrix and its sequels as the prime example.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is nowhere near as dreadful as Matrix Revolutions, but it does fail to recapture the swaggering, daggering fun of the original film by being bloated, overwrought and incomplete.

When last we saw Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) he had escaped the gallows and was back as captain of his beloved Black Pearl. Aided by the lovely young couple Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Jack escaped the villainous Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and was free to return to his scalawag ways and get on with the business of pirating.

Will and Elizabeth have since returned to port to be married. Unfortunately a new man in charge of the English port, Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), has decided to arrest them for aiding Jack's escape. Beckett is willing to make a deal. If Will can convince Jack to give up his precious broken compass and bring it to Beckett then Will, Elizabeth and Jack himself will have their freedom.

The compass is not actually broken. Rather it is not in the hands of its rightful owner and thus will not point in the direction of its intended destination. The compass points the way to a buried treasure that is not merely gold or precious metal. It points the way to a chest containing the still beating heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) an accursed pirate who sails the seas as an undead sea creature for eternity. Whomever possesses his heart controls Jones and his undead crew.

Jack will not be easily convinced to give up the compass. You see, Jack owes a debt to Davy Jones. It was Jones who gave Jack the Black Pearl some 13 years earlier in exchange for Jack's soul. With Jones now ready to collect the debt, with the help of a monstrous sea creature called 'the kraken', Jack needs to find the heart of Davy Jones to save his own life.

That is plenty of plot and yet barely enough to fill the movie's overlong two hour forty minute runtime. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest suffers from the Hollywood 'bigger is better' syndrome. The idea that because something is bigger or longer that it is somehow better is something Hollywood has practiced but never proven. Dead Man's Chest is further proof of the exact opposite.

Stuffed to the gills with filler scenes of Will's search for Jack, Jack's dalliance with native islanders and a subplot for Jonathon Pryce as Elizabeth's father are all examples of places where director Gore Verbinski might have tightened up the film's narrative.

About the native scenes, not nearly as offensive as those in King Kong, I would hate to lose the rolling cage scene featuring Will and the crew of the Black Pearl inside a giant globe made of human bones being chased downhill by angry natives. The scene is well shot, exciting and quite funny but also quite superfluous to the plot. The scene exists simply to exist. Losing the native portion of the film would cut more than a half hour out of the film's bloated 2 hour 40 minute length and narrow the plot in a more concise manner. Of course, length is not the film's only problem.

Director Gore Verbinski managed a miracle in the first Pirates film corralling a career defining performance from Johnny Depp into what is essentially a factory picture made from a very typical Disney/Bruckheimer formula. For the sequel, unfortunately, Johnny Depp seems to be doing an impression of himself as Jack Sparrow. His heart simply isn't in it this time. Depp does manage more than a few classic moments, especially in his last scene, an instant classic of grand guignol, but for the most part he is going through the motions of recapturing what we remember of Jack Sparrow. There is simply nothing new or energetic about the performance.

Orlando Bloom at least looks more the part of an action hero than he did the first time. Bloom is maturing into a fine actor whose fine features are no longer overshadowing his talent. As written however, his Will Turner does not have a great arc. His part is not nearly as juicy as Jack Sparrow which tends to leave him looking bland but worse yet writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott now have him fighting for the love of Elizabeth with Jack Sparrow which only further serves to expose the characters blandness.

As many issues as I have with the film as a whole, I did not truly dislike Dead Man's Chest. The film has some grand adventure wrapped up in its overlong runtime. Watch for the three way sword fight inside a giant wheel, an extended bit of action that actually has something to do with the plot. Especially good in Dead Man's Chest are the special effects that transform the brilliant Bill Nighy into the sea creature Davy Jones.

Essentially a man with a giant squid on his head, Davy Jones is a remarkable feat of CGI creature creation. Nighy's entire face, including the very expressive eyes, is the creation of CGI. This is cutting edge stuff used to very gross but also grand effect. It is not only Nighy's Davy Jones but a whole crew of CGI sea creatures including a pirate with the head of a hammerhead shark and an unrecognizable Stellan Skarsgard as a pirate covered in barnacles and with a secret that becomes an important plot point for Dead Man's Chest and likely for the third installment of Pirates, subtitled At World's End, due in 2007.

Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the middle child of this major franchise and yes it does feel like it. Though plenty is resolved a lot of unanswered questions are necessarily left open for the next sequel. The unanswered questions aren't quite as annoying as those of the second Lord of The Rings or Matrix films but still irritating.

By the standards of a movie sequel based on a theme park ride, from the Disney/Bruckheimer film factory, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a fun picture. By the standards of great movie making? The film suffers from Superman-itis on top of its sequelitis. Superman-itis is an affliction that affects films expected to be culture defining moments of pop history that turn out to be less memorable than the hype that surrounds them.

I am recommending Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest for the special effects and occasional flourish of it's grand action scenes but lower your expectations Pirates fans this is not the Curse of the Black Pearl just a pale photocopy.