Movie Review: The Love Guru

The Love Guru (2008) 

Directed by Marco Schnabel 

Written by Mike Myers, Graham Gordy 

Starring Mike Myers, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Jessica Alba 

Release Date June 20th, 2008 

Published June 19th, 2008 

Memo to comedy writers and directors: Just because a character in a movie does a particular thing, does not make that thing funny. For example, in the new "comedy" The Love Guru co-written by and starring Mike Myers, just because Myers' Guru Pitka fights a man with a urine soaked mop and ends up hit in the face with said mop does not make the action of getting hit with a urine soaked mop funny.

The Love Guru operates entirely under the delusion of it's own brilliance. The Love Guru stars Mike Myers as the world's number 2 guru, behind Deepak Chopra, Guru Pitka is the character's name and Myers is as offensively caricaturing Indian culture as you imagine. The Love Guru proceeds from scene to scene making one joke about genitalia after another assuming each is funnier than the next because Myers himself seems so entertained by the joke.

One of the hallmarks of The Love Guru is Myers' enjoyment of his own humor. Guru Pitka is almost always the first to laugh at his own jokes and it isn't a stretch to imagine that Myers as well is the first to laugh at the jokes he wrote for himself. What accounts for a plot in The Love Guru involves a star hockey player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), who stinks on ice after his wife, Prudence (Meagan Good), leaves him for a rival goalie, Jaques 'Le Coq' Grande (Justin Timberlake). Are you laughing yet? I know I wasn't. 

The Guru Pitka is hired by the owner of the hockey team, Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), to try and reunite the hockey star with his lady love and by extension help him regain his ability to play hockey like the star he once was. Guru Pitka believes that if he he accomplishes the task of rescuing this hockey player's lost mojo, he will earn a coveted slot on the Oprah Winfrey show and a chance to surpass his nemesis Deepak Chopra as the world's number one guru.

You can call that a plot, I've gone to great effort to make it read like one for my own sake. In reality however, the film is really just a sloppy, irredeemable mess of penis jokes, poo jokes and other such lowbrow bits that are broken up briefly Myers' attempt to convince us that Guru Pitka could romance Jessica Alba. I would have a hard time believing Myers without this silly character would be able to date Jessica Alba, asking us to believe that she would be interested in Myers as this offensive caricature of a character is a disservice to both our intelligence and Ms. Alba's integrity. 

Do you know how I can tell Jessica Alba is a good actress, because she doesn't reflexively wretch when Myers is doing his shtick. That she can vaguely feign romantic interest in the character of Pitka is an acting feat that no actress could pull off. Alba is thoroughly defeated by the task but she gives it more of an effort than most would. Her professionalism is to be commended even it is unwarranted for this lowbrow awfulness. 

I realize that Vern Troyer considers Mike Myers his friend and that he's up for the kinds of gags Myers likes to do, but his casting here as the coach of the hockey team is a perfect example of what makes The Love Guru so awful. Myers thinks it is simply funny that a little person exists in the world. That's it, that's the joke for Mike Myers and my evidence is every joke related to Vern Troyer in The Love Guru. Myers simply thinks the existence of a man of Vern Troyer's size is funny and he gets away with it because Troyer willingly goes along with the gag and we've allowed Myers to get away with it. 

Idiotic to an ungodly degree, mindless and insulting, The Love Guru will rank among the years worst films of 2008. 

Movie Review Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Get Rich or Die Trying (2005) 

Directed by Jim Sheridan 

Written by Terrence Winter 

Starring 50 Cent, Terrence Howard, Joy Bryant, Bill Duke, Viola Davis 

Release Date November 9th, 2005

Published November 8th, 2005 

Right off the bat I should say that I am not a big fan of rapper 50 Cent. I enjoyed his breakthrough hit "In Da Club" despite it's subsequent ubiquity in every nightclub in the country. His follow ups have been in ever declining quality since. I have a great deal of respect for his rise from a drug dealer on the streets to a millionaire superstar and the tenacity and determination it must have taken to survive being shot nine times.

With that said, his film debut Get Rich Or Die Tryin' reminds me of his most recent CD's. Irrelevant, mainstream ego polishing that only intends to burnish the image of an already rich and successful superstar. If the film were more entertaining you could forgive that, but as it is Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is simply an exercise in vanity and finance.

In Get Rich or Die Tryin' 50 Cent plays a composite character version of his real self, Marcus aka Black Caesar, his rap nickname. Marcus grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, New York, the son of a drug dealing single mother who was murdered when he was 12 years old in a turf war. Young Marcus soon joins the family business slinging cocaine on street corners, eventually earning himself a place in a drug syndicate headed up by Levar (Bill Duke) and his second in command, Majestic (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), both of whom knew his mother.

Given his own territory and crew, including his childhood friends Antwan (Ashley Waters) and Keryl (Omar Benson Miller) and a newcomer named Justice (Tory Kittles), Marcus quickly becomes a big earner and a bigger target. Marcus is the target of not only cops but other gangs and even members of his own syndicate. A rivalry with Colombian dealers is a particularly dangerous situation that nearly takes the life of one of the members of his crew.

Eventually, as happens to most small time dealers, Marcus gets picked up by the cops and goes to prison. While in the joint he meets Bama (Terrence Howard), who saves his life during a knife fight. Bama encourages Marcus's life's dream to become a rapper and when the two are released Bama becomes the manager of Marcus' new career. This new career path includes leaving behind the syndicate much to the chagrin of Majestic who becomes a dangerous enemy.

Along the way, before he went to prison, Marcus falls for the beautiful Charlene (Joy Bryant). The two had been close friends as kids before she was sent away to live with relatives at a young age. Marcus sees Charlene on the street one day and the attraction is fully renewed. The two soon have a child on the way, yet another reason for Marcus to want to put his dangerous past behind him.

Directed by the venerable Irish director Jim Sheridan, Get Rich Or Die Tryin' tells Marcus' story from his first person perspective. The movie is about Marcus and is only vaguely an allegory for the struggle of the average inner city kid. Sheridan has some big ideas he wants to express and points he wants to make about poverty and struggle but his subject is only vaguely interesting.

The life of Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson has certainly been dramatic: his mother's death, his becoming a drug dealer at the age of 12, his having been shot nine times and surviving to become a world wide superstar. That is dramatic stuff.  So why is the movie so subdued and slightly mundane? The fault lies with Jackson.  His performance is passive to the point of non-involvement. For a world renowned superstar Jackson is surprisingly lacking in charisma even when on the microphone rapping.

Jackson is hurt further by acting opposite the excellent Terrence Howard. Not only does Howard outshine Jackson in this film about Jackson's own life but Howard's performance earlier this year in Hustle and Flow showed him to be an even more exciting rapper than Jackson.

Director Jim Sheridan was attracted to the idea of telling this story because he found parallels between the crime and poverty of inner city America and the blood drenched streets of his Irish youth at the height of religious and political warfare involving the Irish Republican Army. The comparison is relatively fair in terms of the violence and death involved in the lives of both but will the audience for Get Rich Or Die Tryin' care or even be aware of the comparison?

The most appealing part of Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is the soundtrack made up entirely of 50 Cent's music from his CD of the same title-- above average work for 50 Cent's most recent career efforts. However, there is not nearly as much time spent recording raps as there are scenes of the marble mouthed rapper's garbled gangster dialogue. 50 Cent's voice may be a plus in his rap career but it does nothing for his acting career. What music there is is okay but not great and nothing to match 50 Cent's breakthrough single.

Comparisons to Eminem's rap bio-pic 8 Mile are inevitable and I agree with the consensus that 8 Mile is the better of the two. But Get Rich Or Die Tryin' pales in other comparisons as well. In terms of movies about rap and hip hop, the music of Hustle and Flow blows away anything in Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. As far as movies about the struggles of the inner city gangster, 2004's Never Die Alone is better in terms of gritty urban violence and Boyz In The Hood remains the most lasting and impactful story of inner city struggle.

The fact is that the story of Get Rich Or Die Tryin would never be told if it were not the life story of a multi-platinum rap superstar. The story is relatively mundane when put alongside films of similar inner city settings. The violence in Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is anti-climactic and aside from Marcus' being shot nine times, the violence has little if any emotional impact. In interviews about reenacting having been shot nine times 50 Cent has said that the scene was not hard emotionally and he acts it as if it weren't that difficult.

Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is supposedly controversial for its violence, but the only thing interesting about the violence in this film is the indifference of the characters toward that violence. I would like to believe that the blase attitude the characters take toward violence is a function of the characters having become inured to it from having grown up with it their entire lives. However, my impression was that that the attitude was more a result of 50 Cent's cyborg-like performance. No fear, excitement or pain registers on 50 Cent's face no matter what happens to him, even having nine bullets pumped into him.

For a more unique view of 50 Cent's life and an unauthorized one at that, take a look at the new documentary 50 Cent: Refuse 2 Die from New Line Home Video. The doc claims to tell the real story of 50 Cent, his family, and his rise to the top of the rap game. I can't speak to the accuracy of Refuse 2 Die but I can tell you that it is more interesting than the fictionalized, sentimentalized version of 50 Cent's life depicted in Get Rich Or Die Tryin'.

Movie Review: The Losers

The Losers (2010) 

Directed by Sylvain White 

Written by Peter Berg, James Vanderbilt 

Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Columbus Short 

Release Date April 23rd, 2010 

Published April 22nd, 2010 

A ragtag band of America's best soldiers are burned by unknown superiors and forced to go outside the law to get their lives back. “The A-Team?” No, “The Losers” starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba and Zoe Saldana. Oh but don't worry, this isn't some derivative waste of celluloid, it's merely a boring rehash of tired cliches dressed up in music video edits and big explosions. OK, yeah that is rather derivative.

Clay (Morgan) is the leader of “The Losers,” a group of Special Forces soldiers whose latest mission  involves taking down a hostage taking drug dealer somewhere in South America. The mission is a lie. Instead, the man is a puppet that some CIA spook wants out of the way. The bad guy hides behind a large group of orphans to hold off people like The Losers. When Clay and his team, tech expert Jensen (Chris Evans), Second in Command Roque (Idris Elba), pilot Pooch (Columbus Short) and sharp shooter Cougar (Oscar Janaeda), find the kids they decide to rescue them. The rescue goes bad when the CIA decides to eliminate “The Losers” and instead eliminate the little kids.

Trapped in South America with no passports, identification or cash, “The Losers” seem resigned to their fate until an encounter with a mysterious woman. Her name is Aisha (Zoe Saldana) and she knows who burned “The Losers” and how they can find him and though her motives and origin are suspicious it doesn't stop Clay from falling into bed with her. ”The Losers” has a certain charm to it, especially in the loose, fun performance of future “Captain America” Chris Evans, but for the most part it lags because there is just nothing new here. “The Losers” is filled to overflow with been there, done that action set pieces and dull, lifeless effects and quick edits.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is solid actor with a strong, manly appeal. His weathered mug and half smile seem built for gritty, grunge action movies. Too bad for him that “The Losers” is a slick, lifeless effects movie and not the kind of grungy, punk rock war movie that might suit Morgan and his performance here far better. That said, Morgan has a great sexual chemistry with “Avatar” angel Zoe Saldana and their sex scene is arguably the only reason to see “The Losers.”

Sadly, this movie is not about watching good looking people get down. Rather, The Losers is a lame caper flick in which the caper isn't very clever or original and the film-making is derivative and dull. “The Losers,” I am told, is based on a popular series of comic books. I am further told that many of the frames in the film are modeled on actual panels from the comic. This is notable for comics fans and entirely inconsequential for me. Maybe we should check out the comic and skip “The Losers” movie.

Movie Review The Longshots

The Longshots (2008) 

Directed by Fred Durst 

Written by Nick Santora, Doug Atchison 

Starring Ice Cube, Keke Palmer, Dash Mihok, Tasha Smith, Matt Craven 

Release Date August 22nd, 2008 

Published August 21st, 2008 

"Zzzz" Zzzz" Huh, what. Oh. Right. I am reviewing The Longshots starring (Yawn) Ice Cube and Keke Palmer. "Zzzz" "Zzzz". Oh. Sorry. Even thinking about this sports movie snoozefest makes me nod off. It's not that The Longshots isn't appealing or well crafted, it's just not all that interesting. A girl quarterback is novel and the true story thing makes it more novel. Beyond that however, the film, directed by (I kid you not) former Limp Bizkit rocker Fred Durst, is a by the numbers sports movie filled with all of the uplift, pomp and circumstance typical to the genre.

Ice Cube stars as Curtis, a layabout former high school football stud whose life just didn't pan out. Now a neighborhood cautionary tale, Curtis is pushed by his sister to take an interest in his niece Jasmine. They have little in common. When one day Curtis tempts Jasmine into throwing the football with him he finds her surprisingly adept.

Curtis decides to nurture her talent and before long she is throwing with more power and accuracy than most boys her age. Curtis decides to get her a shot with a local pop warner team. Coach Warner (Matt Craven) is, not surprisingly, dubious of the girl's talent but is soon won over. The team stinks anyway, why not a girl quarterback. Jasmine gets a shot and whaddaya know, the team starts winning.

You can plot the rest of the movie in your head. There is a subplot with Jasmine's no good, deadbeat father. That plot, like the main sports story, plays out in just the same by the numbers fashion. Clearly, Fred Durst and writer Nick Santora have read their McKee books. They plot everything on a flow chart and never deviate. Predictability quickly gives way to boredom in The Longshots and boredom is a sin no film can survive.

Keke Palmer is a young actress with a very bright future. She however, needs to choose the right roles. Akeelah and the Bee, definitely the right role. The Longshots? Not so much. It's not that she doesn't perform well. It is rather that she is forgotten amidst the supremely dull presaged plot. No actress, no matter how engaging, can overcome a plot as rote and uneventful as that of The Longshots.

(Yawn) The Longshots is a devastatingly dull sports movie. Despite the very talented Keke Palmer and the likable Ice Cube, this movie was DOA. Director Fred Durst and writer Nick Santora doomed this project when they failed to find something more to do with this plot beyond adhering to every melodramatic, sports movie cliche in the book.

Movie Review: The Lookout

The Lookout (2007) 

Directed by Scott Frank

Written by Scott Frank

Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher

Release Date March 30th, 2007 

Published March 29th, 2007 

Scott Frank made his name adapting the work of Elmore Leonard for the big screen. In fact, no other writer in the business has been able to so well capture Leonard's unique rhythm and humor as well as Scott Frank has. His scripts for Get Shorty and Out of Sight were smart and sophisticated Hollywood concoctions with perfectly executed mousetrap plots. Now working on his first outing as a writer-director,The Lookout, Frank brings the same smart sophisticated approach; minus the Elmore Leonard-isms but just as entertaining.

Chris Pratt had life by the tail. As a teenage hockey star he had a college scholarship all lined up. He had a beautiful girlfriend and a rich family to make certain that a life of ease awaited him. That life was shattered in one fateful moment. Driving drunk with his girlfriend and two friends on a desolate country road, Chris gets into a horrendous car accident. His friends were killed, his girlfriend lost a leg. As for Chris he lost his mind.

Not in the colloquial sense, but rather literally. Chris lost some of his brain and the ability to remember even his most recent activities. No more hockey. No more girlfriend and even his rich family has receded. Chris is left with his pain and a scar on his forehead. Now working nights cleaning a bank branch and living in a tiny apartment with a blind man (Jeff Daniels) for a roommate, Chris lives day to day off the little notes he must write himself in order to remember anything.

On one particularly frustrating night Chris doesn't go home. Instead he goes to a small town bar where he meets a sweet young girl named Luvlee (Isla Fisher) who thankfully doesn't seem to know who he is. Her friend Gary however, immediately recognizes Chris, they went to High School together. Gary shows Chris a little kindness and friendship and soon Chris has a whole new circle of friends. Unfortunately, Chris's new friends have ulterior motives. Gary and his gang are looking to rob a bank and with Chris's access to a local bank he's the perfect patsy.

That is the surface plot of The Lookout but the substance comes in the performance of rising star Joseph Gordon Levitt. An underappreciated young talent from his days on TV's bizarro alien comedy Third Rock From The Sun, Levitt has made an astonishing transition to indie films with three mind blowing performances. In Mysterious Skin he went into the heart of a teenage gay hustler with heartbreaking results.

In 2006 he starred in the popular indie noir Brick, a film that took a classic forties mystery plot into the halls of a modern high school. Now comes his most full bodied adult performance in The Lookout. Here Levitt plays wounded with such precision and heart rending truth that you can't help but be drawn into his world. As his new friends begin to take advantage of him your rooting interest is so invested that you move to the edge of your seat for the rest of the film.

Director Scott Frank amps up the tension by crafting a tight narrative with no fat, no extranneous elements. What is on the screen in The Lookout is only what is necessary to create this tense, clockwork plot. This no frills approach works to never let the air out of the room. Every scene has a near perfect level of tense pressure

The obvious comparison for The lookout is another tense, exciting short term memory based thriller, 2000's Memento. Both films examine unique characters through the prism of their limitations and finds the truth of their natures. Memento is the more artistically accomplished film but The Lookout is definitely the equal of Memento in terms of entertainment value.

A taut, pulse pounding thriller,The Lookout is smarter than most films of this abused genre. The thriller, much like the romantic comedy and the horror movie, has in recent years, given in to very simple, recognizable formula. Thrillers play out typical, easy to digest plots where one overwhelmed character takes on bad guys and uses standard thriller practices to overcome rote, prototypical villains.

Some filmmakers augment the typicality of the thriller with sleeze. Scott Frank in The Lookout overcomes the expectations of the genre by being smarter and more cunning than most. Combining a talented cast with a subversive plot and just the right amount of violence, The Lookout is set apart from other thrillers by moxie and brains.

The Lookout is one of the best films of 2007. A smart, savvy thriller that benefits greatly from the rising talent of star Joseph Gordon Levitt, a young actor with Oscar gold, no doubt in his future. Were there justice in the world of Hollywood, Levitt would be considered for his work in The Lookout. Sadly, there is no justice and thus the film is almost already forgotten by the Hollywood machine.

Still, there is me and you and everyone we know and we can and should pass this movie on to everyone. Great films like The Lookout are never appreciated in their time, don't let this one wait too long before you come to appreciate it.

The Lion King (2019)

The Lion King (2019) 

Directed by Jon Favreau 

Written by Jeff Nathanson 

Starring Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner 

Release Date July 19th, 2019 

Published July 18th, 2019 

The Lion King 2019 is an incredibly emotional and moving film. Putting aside the comparisons to the animated original, this version of the story is exceptionally well told. Director Jon Favreau has brilliantly captured this Shakespearean tale for the whole family with epic music and resonant themes and given it a modern flavor via a remarkable voice cast who elevate the material with their inventive riffing and gorgeous singing. 

You likely already know this story, Mufasa (James Earl Jones) is the King of The Pridelands. He and his beloved Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) have just had a son who will one day himself become the King. Simba, voiced as a cub by J.D McCrary, is a curious young lion who easily finds trouble but with the wisdom of his father, he will one day make a fine King. Unfortunately, Simba’s uncle,  Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has other plans. 

Scar seeks the throne and will use any nefarious means necessary to get there. Scar’s first attempt to get rid of young Simba sends the young lion and his friend, Nala (Shahadi Wright Joseph), into an elephant graveyard where hyenas reign. Simba and Nala are rescued by Mufasa but Scar seizes the opportunity to convince the hyenas to become his very own army. It will be the hyenas who lead to the death of Mufasa while he tries to protect Simba. 

Mufasa dies and Scar runs off Simba by accusing him of causing his father’s death. Scar also sends hyenas to kill Simba but the young lion manages to escape into the desert. Here, Simba begins a new life. With the help of Timon (Billy Eicher) and Pumba (Seth Rogen), Simba is able to leave his grief and shame behind and grow into a mature lion without the strictures of royalty and duty while nursing the scars of his past. 

Nala voiced by Beyonce as a mature lioness, eventually finds Simba is still alive and you know where the story is headed from there. The key to this telling of the story of The Lion King is how we get to the ending and in getting there we have a remarkably rich and fulfilling journey. The story of The Lion King 2019 is told with music and the music of this version of The Lion King is superb. I won’t be hyperbolic and declare that the music here is superior to the original, I will only say that I preferred the ways in which Hans Zimmer and Beyonce, among others, have updated this score and the original songs. 

The changes are seemingly minimal but they make a huge difference in how you accept The Lion King 2019. For instance, the Can You Feel the Love Tonight segment. In the 1994 version of The Lion King the scene is suitably romantic and filled with heartfelt emotion though it is slightly shorter than the new version. The slightly longer version here takes full advantage of this new style of The Lion King with Caleb Deschanel's rich and glorious cinematography underlining the romance and deepening the impact of the moment. 

It also helps to have Beyonce and Donald Glover not just as the singing voices of Nala and Simba, but their speaking voices as well. The jarring shift from one vocal style to the other isn’t damning in the original, just notable. Here however, the seamless shift singing to speaking adds a little more verisimilitude. That and, of course, we are talking about Beyonce whose voice is transcendent. That’s not a dig at Sally Dworsky who is a Broadway veteran of immense talent, it’s merely that Beyonce is a global superstar whose voice connects to audiences in an epic fashion that fits the grandiosity of this CGI approximation of live action. 

Donald Glover is also incredible but in a unique and different way. Glover’s voice acting in the song is superior to the original because he is singing in character and accounting for the fear and angst of Simba in a way that perhaps Joseph Williams cannot because the character is not fully his. He’s more focused on singing the song,Glover is singing the character and I found the difference to be notable. 

Another notable improvement for me over the original was the performance of the song Hakuna Matata which benefits from the unique and recognizable voices and personas of Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen. Neither is well known for their singing but the way they perform this song feels as fresh and even more alive than the original. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella but they are notably stage-bound in their energy, limited by the animation style. 

Eichner and Rogen meanwhile had the advantage of working in the CG realm and director Jon Favreau’s ability to allow them to explore a little and riff within the music. Eichner and Rogen have talked in interviews about how they were allowed to improvise their dialogue and even improvise in their songs and that playfulness is part of what makes this take on The Lion King so lively as opposed to the original. 

The best change however, from the original movie is the song Be Prepared. Performed here by Chiwetel Ejiofor, the song is transformed from a pop ditty talk sung through a thick English accent by Jeremy Irons, to an operatic dirge that is shortened to more specifically state Scar’s nefariousness. Where the original overstayed its welcome and tried to fit the pop nature of the rest of the soundtrack, this version of Be Prepared better serves the character of Scar while also cutting to the chase on Scar’s story. 

Is there a calculated cynicism driving Disney to remake their animated catalog in live action and CGI? Yes, it's unquestionably a mercenary effort. That said, the artists who have contributed to this version of The Lion King have transcended how The Lion King 2019 came to exist by delivering a resonant and lovely take on this grand material. They have brought the music into a modern context and stayed true to the remarkable themes of the original story and delivered a compelling, humorous romantic and touching film. 

Movie Review: The Lincoln Lawyer

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) 

Directed by Brad Furman

Written by John Romano 

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, Josh Lucas, John Leguizamo, Michael Pena 

Release Date March 18th, 2011

Published March 17th, 2011 

The Lincoln Lawyer” is fabulous pop entertainment. The story of a slippery L.A lawyer, played by the slick and stylish Matthew McConaughey, “The Lincoln Lawyer unfolds a clever mystery populated with colorful characters and the kinds of twists and turns that one wants from a mainstream pop thriller. The story is well told with unexpected twists, funny asides, and the mild danger of a Hollywood popcorn thriller. 

Mick Haller (McConaughey) doesn’t chase ambulances, he has a chauffeur to do the chasing for him. Most of Mick’s clients however, aren’t the injured more often he is defending the one delivering the injury. His latest case however, is a little different. Instead of some thug or druggie, Mick is called on to defend a privileged twit named Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe) who is accused of having assaulted a prostitute.

At first Mick thinks he may have one of those rare clients, one who is actually innocent. There is evidence to suggest that the sex worker, on whom the charges hinge, could have targeted the rich punk and set him up for a payday. But, with a little snooping by Mick’s pal Frank (William H. Macy), evidence emerges that not only rocks Mick’s notion of Louis’s innocence but also the reason why this spoiled rich kid sought out a lawyer like him.

Matthew McConaughey should only play lawyers in movies. McConaughey has mastered the glad-handing, underhandedness of a low rent shyster, all oily charm and dirty tricks. He can be forgiven for cheating a little because he is so damned handsome and fun to talk to. He has that lean in and look deeply into your eyes thing of a classic pick up artist, only he doesn’t use it on just the ladies, he’s seducing whoever is in front of him, especially us in the audience.

When McConaughey isn’t playing a lawyer his vapid, fratboy-ness tends to come out and his acting becomes gratingly nonchalant. For some reason, the law inspires a little passion in this immensely laid back star. Such was the case with his break out role as another slick lawyer in “A Time to Kill” where McConaughey turned the phrase ‘now imagine she’s white’ into a gut punch finale to a closing argument.

Yes, “A Time to Kill” was showy and often mawkish but McConaughey’s performance was an undeniable grabber. The passion in his eyes and the feeling in his voice, it was a combination of Paul Newman’s good looks and Robert Redford’s integrity. McConaughey has never matched that performance and likely never will.

“The Lincoln Lawyer” is inferior to “A Time to Kill” but it does share a pop entertainment sensibility with that John Grisham adaptation, likely because it too is an adaptation of a legal thriller, this one by Michael Connelly. Light on the legalese and heavy on the charm, The Lincoln Lawyer has a familiar, comforting rhythm like “A Time to Kill” and a better sense of humor, it only lacks the deeper emotional appeal.

And then there is the mystery which unfolds with a strong logic with an unexpected twist here and there. I’m sure if you lean a little too hard on “The Lincoln Lawyer” the plot might just crumble but McConaughey’s charm acts like varnish over the cracks in the film’s plausibility. If you love well made pop entertainment, legal thrillers or Matthew McConaughey, you will be endlessly entertained by “The Lincoln Lawyer.”