The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Something from Nothing
or
No Man is an Island of Misfit Toys 

Charlie (Logan Lerman) is starting his first year in High School as a freshman and he has a lot to learn.  He's shy, introverted, and fragile the result of some trauma we know not what going in.  He walks the corridors friendless, a punching bag for the cool kids and their posses.  His parents (Dylan McDermott and Kate Walsh) are lightly caring, and his English teacher (Paul Rudd) reassures—"If you make one friend on your first day, you'll do good."  "If my English professor is the only friend I make today, that'll be sorta depressing."

But Charlie does have one friend, writing to him about his experiences, pouring out his frustrations and observations in letter after letter about his "trying not to be a loser."  The friend is anonymous, may not even exist, or once existed, but those letters keep Charlie going and serve as his avenue of expression, rather than having his day pulled out of him at the family dinner table.   It's an uphill battle from some valley that isn't discussed, but Charlie is self-aware enough to know some perspective.  "My life is officially an after-school special," he grouses.

At a football game, he meets Patrick (Ezra Miller), a senior and the subject of some casual bullying, but Patrick has a wicked sense of humor that he throws out with no hesitancy as a shield.  Charlie gravitates to him, and meets Patrick's step-sister Sam (Emma Watson), also a Senior, but who is coming back from "having a reputation."  After the football game, the three hang out at a diner and compare notes of commonality, which involve a distinct lack of fitting in with the high school social structure, and Charlie is introduced to more of the group, who hold fast, hang out, and provide safety in numbers and a fresh perspective on the puerile benefits of normalcy.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (written and directed by Steven Chbosky  from his own novel) is a fine quirky example of a "Coming of Age" movie, that sub-set of the teen flick where lessons are learned (his life really is an after-school special) and is not so much a film about growing up, as growing out.  Growing out of the insular self-inspection, narcissism and selfishness that is comfortable and has no risk, it's dark and warm and safe in that little "black cave of the psyche."  But is it?  That cave only echoes one's own thoughts back to us, providing no perspective and no horizon to reach to or for.

Yeah, it's pretty safe in there...if there aren't any demons or other creatures of the nightmare lying in wait to strike when you're most vulnerable.  And we all have those.  And even if we don't, the echoes of our own thoughts are only phantoms and zephyrs, not sustaining, and if that's all we cling to, they become echoes of echoes, distorting, becoming less clear, and often impenetrably undecipherable—a feedback loop. 

And feedback loops, uninterrupted, can become weapons.

Charlie is scared.  And ashamed.  And that limits his choices, when he does make a choice.  Most of the time, things are just foisted on him and he has to make a decision: like this, or don't?  Comfortable or not?  Aware, or comatose?  And by the time, he makes a decision, it's usually too late, putting him a tail-spin, and another trap.   His fellow wallflowers are in traps, too (isn't that what High School is all about?), but one thing he learns is that they're not the only ones and the traps, self-made or imposed are universal.

It's a good film, with good imagery, but a neophyte director's tendency to hit things a little too square—the shot from the communion wafer to the LSD tab, please—but the performances feel real, Emma Watson is a helluva dancer, and it's a good trip down memory lane, now that it's gone and out of our lives.  "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya"

For the truth of the matter is, we all grow out.  We couldn't survive if we didn't.  Yes, "we are infinite" as the movie's tag line wants to be sure we know.  

But not individually.

And not by ourselves.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an After-school Special Matinee.

Out of the black cave and into the light

How Do You Know

"Cynicism is Sanity"
or
"The Uncertainty Principles"

James L. Brooks finds salve in a cynical world.  That he is The Godfather of "The Simpsons" and is responsible for investing that rancid cartoon with so much heart and soul is testament to the fact.

But, that is Brooks' great charm as a writer-director—finding the grace in bad situations, and charting a course through it,  providing evidence that, even with no destination in sight, life is a process.  The journey is all, and you might as well enjoy it, every bump, every neglect, every inequity, every injury...or else you won't know  the good times to be (or not to be) if you tripped over them at night.  The light that emanates from the projector of his films is his own candle in the darkness.

How Do You Know presents two professionals in life-changing positions (something we are all too liable to identify with in the country's state of affairs).  Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) is a disciplined, principled professional softball player, who also manages to be the soul of her team.  When she gets cut from the roster, she's devastated—the game is all she knows, and she finds herself adrift...hell, not even in left-field!  All of the life-strategy post-it notes on all the refrigerators in all the world can't help her through this. On the other side of the financial spectrum, George (Paul Rudd) is an investments broker, working for the firm of his Dad (Jack Nicholson), and everything is just fine, thank you, until the subpoena shows up, and he must go through the process of being disengaged from his company, fiancee, friends, apartment, belongings, essentially becoming a "non-person." As his father's lawyer informs him, "Accept the inevitable.  Accept that you will never again be the person you are."

And he's being nice.

George goes into a tail-spin.  Luckily, he gets a "hook-up" date with Lisa, but he's in no shape for it, unloading his angst in a vitriolic stream.  Appalled, she upbraids him:  "Jesus! Do you know I don't know you?"

And that's how it starts:  George's stock is falling, and Lisa's struck out.  But in the great balancing act of the Universe, they might be lucky in love.  Maybe.  But, the course never goes smooth, as Lisa has started a relationship with a pro-ball player Matty (Owen Wilson), who's self-absorbed and a bit dim.  And with his troubles, George isn't exactly "a real chick-magnet," as Lisa sarcastically characterizes him.  Sounds like a typical romantic-comedy, the type in which Witherspoon has specialized the past few years.

But, at its heart, it's a bit more complicated than that, and thus, may not fill the rom-com comfort food quotient.  Lisa and George are two people with no prospects who have fallen off a cliff—additionally, falling in love may only serve to create more momentum to leave a bigger crater when they hit bottom.  There's a psychiatrist who says that the only people who think they control their Universe are psychotics...or bullies (temporarily, anyway)...or deluded.  Lisa and George are surrounded by them, no doubt wondering how such manage to survive.  Are they folks who can float on the tides of fate, or just an anchor.

Probably its all too much heaviness to attribute to this film, as slight as it is, never achieving the weight of Broadcast News, or the heart of Spanglish, but considering what has passed for romantic comedy the past few years, How Do You Know could pass for Noel Coward.  It, at least, tries to do something with the genre, placing the situation in a less sure framework—How Do You Know by its very title attempts to define the undefinable, and take this type of film out of the realm of the assured, even going so far as to remove the staple of the form: the clinch at fade-out.  Instead, we are left with a negative image that informs without giving much information, providing possibilities, but no definitive answers.

I like that. 

How Do You Know is a Matinee.  

Dinner for Schmucks

"It is Such a Pleasure to Laugh at the Mis-Fortunes of Others"

Comedy is such a subjective thing.  I don't know how many times I've quoted Mel Brooks' line that "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; Comedy is when you fall down a man-hole and die."  And, as we are all individuals, one person's "Bringing Up Baby"* is another's "Dumb and Dumber."**  I know lots of fine folks who loved "Date Night"  (Steve Carell's previous live-action movie), but I wasn't among them.

My tastes in comedy are not sophisticated; a good spit-take or prat-fall will make me howl with laughter.  I like Jerry Lewis, as his movies will be gauaranteed to contain at least one instance where I laugh 'til tears come out of my eyes.  And I like good word-play, as my love for all things Marxian and Woody will attest.  What I don't laugh at is regurgitation—recycled humor that is expected to be laughed at because, hey, it was funny the last time.  Thus, the charm of Mike Myers frequently eludes me.

Now, "Dinner for Schmucks," the latest film by the "Focker" and "Austin Powers" franchiser Jay Roach—he also directed the very fine HBO film "Recount"—is based on the French film "Le Diner des Cons," so there is a French charm to it spoken with a flat American accent.  An up-and-coming executive Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) is welcomed into the higher echelon of the investment firm that employs him (run by Bruce Greenwood) by being invited to an executive dinner in which the firm's hoi-polloi bring along "idiots"—persons of a certain unique, and frequently inept, "talent" for the ridiculing entertainment of the host ("No mimes.  It's a cliche").  Whoever has the best idiot is guaranteed a certain prestige position in the company, complete with corner-window office.

The idea horrifies his gallery contractor girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) and only reinforces her instinct to refuse Tim's frequent marriage proposals.  He's just about to sacrifice his career and opt out of the dinner when Fate steps in front of his Porsche in the nerdly form of Barry Speck (Steve Carrell), an IRS drone whose hobby is to make bucolic fantasy dioramas using stuffed mouse road-kill, which he calls his "Mouse-terpieces." ***

Tim's destiny seems set, but the acquisition of the bone-head Speck turns his life upside-down in a series of "Incredible Mess" scenarios that seem to nullify everything he might gain from winning the dinner game.  The film is a self-defeating trap that could have used a more harried leading man than Rudd (or more dead-pan, in which case, hey, Ron Livingston's in the cast!) that might have had more of a comedic pay-off, or at least have produced more dramatic risk out of the situations.  As it is, everything feels a little safe, nowhere near creating the sort of comedic frisson this film so deperately needs.

For a movie specializing in cruel humor, it lobs only soft-balls, whether it's at the clutch of crazies at the dinner, a nastily predatory ex-girlfriend of Tim's (Lucy Punch), or the what-comes-around come-uppance of the stuffy execs.  Everything should be more manic, more crazy, and have a few more bit-mnarks that actually draw blood.

Points, though, for filling the cast with an array of good comedic talent including Kristen Schaal and Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords" (series and group, respectively), Zach Galifianakis, the afore-mentioned Livingston, and Larry Willmore.  The improvisational power of the cast is formidable, and (like "Date Night") it feels a little too improvised at times as there are so many scenes that are barely gelled.  However, a business lunch that is the definition of "awkward" is a highlight, as is a conversation between Speck and Clement's self-absorbed satyr-like artiste ("There are only two things that matter in life: wonderful, visceral sexy sex...and Death"), that benefits from the two comedians' off-kilter rhythms to big pay-offs.  Such moments are few and far between.

"Dinner for Schmucks" is a Rental.  


* ...which I love.

** ...at which I didn't crack a smile.

*** The most charming part of the film is the title sequence, set to The Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill," of Speck putting the finishing touches on an out-sized version of his hobby.

Monsters Vs. Aliens (3-D)

"The Ginormica Monologues"

It's the perfect wedding day for Sally Murphy (voice of Reese Witherspoon, cracked on the boil): she has the perfect dress, the perfect church, and the perfect groom in fat-headed weatherman Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd). But it's all in the timing. Just after a little pre-nuptial spat about honeymooning in Paris or Fresno, the bride-to-be gets squashed by a meteorite. At the altar, everyone comments that she's positively glowing...but...glowing green! And she goes from meteoric to all metaphoric, by growing enormously, dwarfing her puny groom and scientifically smashing the church to splinters. I kept waiting for the parents to say "our little girl's grown up!" but no such luck.* Pretty soon, the Army led by General W.R. Monger (a gruff Kiefer Sutherland, having fun) fires hypodermics in her butt and Gulliver her to the ground, where she awakens in one of those cavernous U.S. installations we only wish we had with a bunch of other monsters Monger's captured since the atomic testing days of the 50's. There's the Missing Link (Will Arnett), a Blob named B.O.B. (Seth Rogen in a bit of typecasting), and the insane Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), as well as a giant Japanese moth creature called Insectizoid. Kept prisoners by the government, they are finally called out as a last resort when Aliens, led by the evil Galaxhar (Rainn Wilson, like you've never heard him) attack the U.S. ("...they only seem to ever attack here,"** intones a Brokawed-paletted news anchor) after humiliating the President (Stephen Colbert...typecasting again).

Dreamworks and the directors (Conrad Vernon andRob Letterman of "Shrek 2" and "Shark Tale," respectively) do a nice job of plumbing the envelope of the monster-crowd giving us versions of the Mothra, the Fly, the Blob, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and the 50 ft. Woman, and instilling the politically correct message that these aren't monsters but "special" people...er, things...entities (whetever). Indeed, the entire movie plays like a therapy session for Sally to embrace her empowerment and not to see her change as an accident of Nature, so much as...a happy accident of Nature. Hey, empowerment is empowerment even if you do go up 30 dress-sizes.

The animation? Extraordinarily simplistic in a weird way. Sally looks like one of those big-eyed Keane children, and most of the men seem to be variations of Nixon (except for Derek, who looks uncannily like Conan O'Brien). The monsters are varying body-types and primary colors, so you can tell who's who when they're flitting across the screen (which they do a lot). Still, there is good planning going on, so one is never at a loss for where one is, and where the danger lies. In a totally made-up universe that can be a problem. And the 3-D effects are impressive, starting with a Dreamworks logo gag (heh), and a gratuitous paddle-ball sequence, although the 3-D-ness, sometimes comes off as having the dimensions of a pop-up book. Still, the process has come a long way, and is frequently, deliberately eye-popping. It's not enough to recommend seeing it in theaters, though, ao hopefully when it comes to DVD, they'll include the 3-D version, with glasses.

"Monsters vs. Aliens" is a Rental

* ...and I'll bet the attendess threw puffed rice, (badum-bump!)

** Personally, I think it has to do with our Immigration Policy. "Okay, you can destroy the Golden Gate Bridge...once, but promise you'll never do it again and we'll consider granting you amnesty."