Everything Must Go

"Priced To Move"
and
"'Bye-Bye' Says the Junk in the Yard"

Job had it easy.

After being fired from his job for some sexual malfeasance that he was too drunk to remember, Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) drives home—stopping on the way to get a case and a half of PBR—and finds that all of his belongings are on the front lawn, strewn about, the flotsam and jetsam of a life that's hit a reef.  The house locks have been changed.  The garage code is different.  There's a note on his door from his wife saying she's leaving him and "Don't Call." His credit cards don't work.  His bank account has been frozen.  His cell-phone is disconnected. 

That solves the "don't call" problem.

Then, his company car gets repossessed.

What else can happen?  Well, his next-door neighbor (Stephen Root) can pass by and say "...saw this coming a mile off."

"Thanks for warning me..." says Nick, simmering.

There's a nice tone-shift to Everything Must Go.  It stars Ferrell, who goes dramatic here, but the doofus-slob-schtick that he has honed over the years serves him well as he goes through humiliation after humiliation—as a performer, he's never steered clear of making himself appear foolish.  He has, in fact, embraced it.  The physical comedy looks nicely unplanned, but still has a chortling superior sting to it.  Ferrell can be a cruel comedian but it's mostly self-imposed, the barbs on the wires facing inward like a crown of thorns.  And he has a nice explosive quality that makes you wonder when he's going to go off.  The fuse between comedy and drama is enticingly short.  There's a bit of Peter Sellers to Ferrell at his best that makes you want to laugh almost defensively.  That's in good play here.

Everything Must Go is based on Raymond Carver's short story "Why Don't You Dance?"* (you can read the whole thing here—go ahead, it'll only take five minutes) and writer-director Dan Rush has done yeoman's work taking the author's slice of a story and expanding it to feature length.  In fact, the couple that dominate the story don't even appear.  Rush has taken the bare-bones carcass of the story and reconstructed it, focussing on the pain—and the emotional journey—of the man with the rummage sale of a life, laid bare for all the world to see...and eventually, pick over.

I love Carver's writing.  He makes kernels of story that feel emotionally real, of lives tipped over and spilling, the contents of privacy exposed to the air and either flowering or rotting.  A little push and we could all go there, his situations just a happenstance, a coin-toss, away.  Would we act that way?  Do we recognize ourselves in such circumstances?  And Rush takes the premise and goes back in time and forward, filling the gaps, creating the world of the man who, at first, drunkenly, defiantly lays his past bare...and then, lets it go.

Most of Everything Must Go works.  There is a logical progression to what Rush has put together to get to the point of the Carver story, although it may seem a little bottled up with some contrivance—a side-track to a story involving Laura Dern probably wasn't necessary, but it opens the movie up a bit and it's always nice to see Dern.

But it's all Ferrell, with some nice work by Michael Peña, Rebecca Hall, and Christopher Jordan Wallace, who has the most to do (besides Ferrell), as the kid who hangs around and gets sucked in to the situation, and like others, manages to gain something from the deconstruction of a marriage.  One wonders if the comedian, fearing that he might be found out by going sentimental, doesn't hold back some effort, thereby bringing more of a sense of peace...or closure...to the character by the film's end.  But, then, maybe that hesitancy is the punch-line he wanted, walking away leaving the audience wanting more.  It's a far cry from Land of the Lost.  And admirable.

Everything Must Go is a Matinee.

Yeah.  No.  It doesn't feel like this chirpy trailer at all.

* Since writing this, I've discovered there is a short Australian film based on the story, and following Carver's story far more closely called Everything Goes. It stars Hugo Weaving and Abbie Cornish.
You can find it on the web.

Megamind

 "The Player on the Other Side"
or
"Mu-Wa-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Haaah!!!"

The news that Zack Snyder would be the director in charge of the next (Christopher Nolan-produced) "Superman" movie leaves one slightly ambivalent.  

Sure, Snyder can do comic-book movies competently (as he did with 300 and Watchmen), but when you look at the mess he made of the flying scenes in Legend of the Guardians,* you begin to have some doubts whether he can make you believe a man can fly...or even make you recognize it as so when he does. 

I hope he takes a look at the other Superman films, and while he's at it takes a look at Dreamworks' new Megamind (in 3-D or no), which takes on major super-themes, while being something the "official" franchise films don't seem to have the super-vision to risk—a fresh take on the concept.

Megamind (directed by Tom McGrath takes a look at the story from the point-of-view of "the player on the other side," the villain, the arch-rival, the one best matched to take on the hero.**  Megamind (voiced effetely by Will Ferrell, and looking like a cross between Conan O'Brian and Neil Patrick Harris) has his rival (for everything) in the majestic form of Metro Man (Brad Pitt at his most arch), the protector of Metro City (or as Megs calls it "Metrocity," same emphasis as "atrocity").  Both are rocketed from doomed planets, making them eternally star-crossed, and then thrown together in marked contrast as children, setting them both on the parallel pathways of Good and E-vill.  At the unveiling of the gaudy Metroman Museum—it, like the rest of Metro City, seems to have been designed by The Fountainead's Adam Roarke—Titans Clash, and Megamind manages to (dare I say it?) KILL Metro Man, stunning the city, which he then takes over as Overlord.  

Well, that's different.  And it is there that the movie gets interesting, rather than merely amusing (which it is...a lot).  Faced with an existence of pure unchallenged evil, Megamind grows dissatisfied, and schemes to create a new hero to battle, while also wooing (in holographic disguise) comely reporter Roxanne Richi (Tina Fey), all forehead and eyes, who cracks wise about getting her "frequent hostage" card stamped.   That Megamind's new hero, Titan (Jonah Hill)—who, not being the brightest yellow sun in the star-cluster, spells it
"Tighten" (heh)—also has the hots for Roxanne, sets them at odds and the former villain must come to grips with being a force for Good...and Niceness.

This is good stuff, providing nice plot and character arcs that exposes the creative kryptonite that vexes most writers of superhero movies (especially Superman superhero movies)—that the hero must remain crashingly good and the villain relentlessly (to the point of absurdism) bad; it's no wonder so many of them run to the old "camp" trail.

In the meantime, the movie does some good things making fun of the tropes of these diversions (and the Superman franchise, in particular***) while finding its own path to making the idea fresh, funny, and..."jeepers, Mr. Kent"...even worth doing.

Megamind is a Matinee.  You might even wanna spring for the glasses (maybe).

* The review for which will be featured Saturday.  Why wait?  Well, we do "Take Out the Trash" days on Saturday, that should tell you something...

** When one has an indomitable hero, authors often succumb to creating an Anti-Christ figure who is everything the hero is not, while maintaining related ties between the two: Sherlock Holmes has his Moriarty, Bond has Blofeld, Superman has Lex Luthor (which Megamind hues closest to), Batman, agent of Order has the Joker, agent of Chaos, etc. anti-etc.   The nicest "take" on this concept comes from M. Night Shyamalan, whose Unbreakable is a lovely little summation of the concept, while also providing a nicely realistic Superman-type origin story.

*** Check out Titan's mush-mouthed holographic "father," for instance, and in the subtlest of instances, at one point Metro Man floats down to walk on his museum's reflecting pool...the surface of the reflecting pool, which, of course, a man who defies gravity could do, but also references the tendency of Superman writers to hitch it to "Christ" allegories.  That illicited a thought-response that happened frequently during Megamind: "Why don't the REAL "Superman" movies do stuff like this?"

Bewitched

"Bewitched" (Nora Ephron, 2005) The all-star movie version of the TV classic "Bewitched" left me bothered and bewildered.

Yeah, yeah. Cute line and all that, but essentially true; How on God's green Earth could Ephron and her sister-conspirator in this crime have screwed up a sure thing like "Bewitched?"

The show, which debuted on ABC in the early 60's was fairly inspired for the first four years, then ran on auto-broom for the rest of its run, largely on the spell of star Elizabeth Montgomery's spunkiness, and an ever-decreasing number (due to age and death) of eccentric co-stars.  It may seem like stretching the social point a bit, but "Bewitched" was a flighty, goofy examination of the trials of a "mixed" marriage...without risking the wrath of any of the Southern States!*  And on top of that, despite piggish (more like ape-ish) husband Darrin's constant attempts to repress her heritage, house-witch Samantha Stevens always managed to display female empowerment, while being blithely supportive of her wage-slave husband.  Like she couldn't "twitch" herself a mink coat whenever she wanted.  I know an awful lot of women, who, as little girls, looked up to Samantha as a symbol of power under wise restraint, superior in all things man-world, and only able to be "super-mom" because she had what all mom's have...a touch of magic.  These girls wanted to be Samantha: charming, but flinty, capable of holding all the power in the world, but only when necessary—holding the Power, but dispensing it with Wisdom.

So, with all that going for it, why did the Ephron sisters have the effrontery to completely ignore what worked about "Bewitched," and toss it in favor of a complicated scenario in which a real-live witch (Nicole Kidman, playing her second witch after "Practical Magic") wants to live in the "muggle" world, free of witchcraft (rebelling, in other words), and, despite this, manages to get herself cast in a real-life return to television of a "Bewitched" TV show (live action, with an audience?  With all those effects?!!), which stars two perfectly awful co-stars (Will Farrell and Shirley MacLaine, playing, respectively, "the guy who plays Darrin" and "the old bat who plays Endora"), with conjured-up egos who are stark contrasts to Kidman's magical neophyte actress.  Of course, the lead actors are fire and brimstone, but somehow manage to "fall in deep" with each other, thus scraping the edge off Ferrell's blow-hard, and completely nullifying any respect the audience might have been feeling for Kidman's good little witch.  The scenario, frankly, makes her look like a moron, nose-twitch or no.**

The movie is off-balanced anyway, with more attention payed to Ferrell's actor than to Kidman's character.***  And the revelations about certain characters are too easy and too pat.  Some hipster-cred is afforded by the casting of "The Daily Show's" two Steve's: Stephen Colbert as a too-full-of-himself tv scripter, and Steve Carell as a hyper-intense Uncle Arthur (played on the series by Paul Lynde)—a part that feels like a desperation-move.

It is only at the end, when art-imitating-life-imitating art comes full-circle and begins chomping on it's own lizard-tail, and witch and human settle in for wedded bliss in the backlot house from the series, that the potential nears the target, aided immeasurably by the casting of Richard Kind and Amy Sedaris as the prying neighbors, the Kravitz's, that the movie seems comfortably familiar...and funny.  You know, like, if you're going to remake a TV show, why not actually re-make the TV show—only better?  This movie is such a mis-fire one wonders if bumbling Aunt Clara (played by the perpetually befuddled Marion Lorne) had a hand in conjuring.

Rather than being released, this one should have been torched in the village square.

"Sam, is there some sorta hex you can put on that movie?"
"We-ell..."

*Actually, it did.  ABC was wary of how elements of the "occult" would go down in the Bible Belt.  Fortunately, they had on their side the very religiously conservative Agnes Moorehead, who had no problems playing a satanic mother-in-law of a witch...to the hilt of her broom-handle.

** Kidman practiced the Samantha nose-twitch until she was expert at it.  The secret?  Montgomery never twitched her nose—she twitched her upper lip.

*** Why?  The script was extensively re-written to court the actor considered to be a natural Darrin, Jim Carrey.  But despite beefing up the character's worth, and providing a transformative character arc from man-child to human adult—the only substantial character arc in the movie—Carrey passed.  Smart move on his part.  Bad move on the producer's part, then, to keep the Carrey part as written and shoe-horn Farrell into it.  They should have just rewritten the script and returned the focus to witchcraft rather than the making of a television show.  Total mis-calculation.

The Other Guys

"Did That Go the Way You Thought It Was Gonna Go? Nope."
or
"Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used...(what's the rest?)" "As a Flotation Device..."

More comedy, and this one's even very funny for its first half, but then, once one scene goes sideways and doesn't work, the whole thing falls apart like a hostage situation gone wrong.  And the audience is the hostage, waiting for it to kick back in...but it never does.

Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are two New York City detectives working in the considerable shadow of detectives Danson and Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson in nice parodies of their "serious" screen-work), a team of glory-hounds for whom property damage is all in a day's conflagration, but who refuse to do the paperwork.  Gamble is self-described as "an accountant for law-and-order," and Hoitz is riding a desk-job after a shooting that goes wrong.*  Gamble loves the mundane filing, but his partner Hoitz, itches to be "in the field."  "I'm a peacock!" he is fond of remonstrating.  "You've got to let me fly!"   At which point, he is reminded that peacocks do not fly.**

Unperturbed, and when advancement in the ranks becomes possible, the two glom onto a white-collar crime that Gamble has discovered that has connections to a series of high-profile robberies.  The mis-matched pair (Hoitz is volatile, Gamble is eerily up-beat) are completely street-dumb and their investigation is constantly being dis-railed (sometimes literally) by distractions and their lack of ability to resist the charms of their high-rolling suspect's lifestyle.  Their increasing frustration with the case and each other (as well as Hoitz's relationship problems, in contrast with the milquetoast Gamble's inexplicable attractiveness to women) is fertile ground for situations that explode in conflict.

It works and works gang-busters for the first hour.  The combination of loose script and improvisation is beefed up by all the actors (especially Ferrell and Michael Keaton,*** who does quick-silver wonders with the cliche "harried Captain" role), especially when the story is building and we're getting to know the characters.  The "left-field" surprises come fast and loose, and the timing by the actors (and the editing) is crack.  One senses trouble early on when Anne Heche (uncredited, by the way) is given a thankless role in which she's really not allowed to do anything funny...or much of anything.  But Ferrell, for the most part, is at the top of his game playing the contrary stiff in a room full of crazies, and Wahlberg who, depending on the material, can be brilliant, plays pathetic frustration hilariously.  Even Eva Mendes acquits herself well in the mix, milking laughs out of the role of Gamble's absurdly perfect wife—Gamble's sexual magnetism makes for a great series of running gags throughout the movie.

But, right at the point where Bob, the union rep, gets dissed and leaves the room, the entire movie goes flat.****  Maybe the improv was getting too expensive and they decided to "coast."  Maybe the assurance of an "action-filled" finale made them scrimp on the script.  Maybe the irrelevant story-line getting in the way changed the tone.  Maybe everyone got tired.  But, for whatever reason, "The Other Guys" is two movies..."Good Cop" comedy and "Bad Cop" comedy.

Interestingly, the most useful part of the movie is the end credits where the increasing disparity between the incomes of the top 1% earners and the rest of us is presented in chilling graphic detail.

"Wilhelm" Alert @ 1:30

"The Other Guys" is a Rental.

* Hint:  He's called "The Yankee Clipper" around the squad-room.

** What can I say?  It's New York, and the Bronx Zoo is the closest they come to a peacock.  Peacocks do indeed fly, but it's a brief, clumsy, scary thing to watch—which I think was the point of bringing it up in the movie.

*** Yeah, yeah, I know, it won't happen and it would be recast with Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington in the roles, but I'd love to see Keaton and James Woods go head-to-head with each other...in anything.  It would be dizzying...and probably only discernible at half-speed.

**** It's funny I can pinpoint it, because that's where the movie became NOT funny, and I thought to myself..."Well, THAT didn't work..." and watched to my amazement as very little worked after.

Blades of Glory

"Blades of Glory" (Josh Gordan and Will Speck, 2007) Will Farrell and Jon Heder play two polar-opposite figure skaters (the "Hawk and Dove" of the skate world) in style and personality, who are banned from competing for life and entreated by Coach Craig T. Nelson (sounds familiar), to go back into the sport as the world's first same-sex doubles competitors. Farrell and Heder are both hilarious as are their main competitors, the Van Waldenburg brother-sister team, played incestuously by real-life husband and wife Will Arnett and Amy Poehler (Arnett almost salchows away with the movie) The filmakers find many outrageous ways to knock the sport in additon to finding many opportunities to exploit Farrell's customary odd-ball vocal tangents. Toss in some of the skating world's elite who are only too willing to send up their images for a laugh (Bravo and a bouquet to Scott Hamilton, Nancy Kerrigan, Dorothy Hamill, THE Brian Boitano, Peggy Fleming, and a big one to Sasha Cohen!) and you've got a raucous movie that does delivers a lot...a LOT...of laughs.

Semi-Pro

Shooting from the Bottom of the Key

Okay, Will Ferrell has made movies about kid's soccer, NASCAR, Professional Skating, and now...Minor League Basketball. What's next for Summer, 2008? Chess? Javelin?

Being a fan of Ferrell's*--appreciating that odd mix of sasquatch-physical-presence, Divine-like willingness to do anything on-screen, and surreal improvisational skill--one wonders when the light will start to dim. Well, "Semi-Pro" is getting a little dark, a little desperate, but still maintains a good portion of laughs, even while it's something you don't want to take the kids to.

Not only is the thing rated R for what the MPAA calls "pervasive language," but they also won't get some of the more arcane jokes as the creators not only take free-throws at the excesses of minor league basketball, but at that barn's broad-side of a subject--70's couture. Lots of research was done as far as dress and decor, and the film is shot like an urban crime drama, complete with Owen Roizman-like grainy photography. It revolves around the underdog Flint, Michigan Tropics (Team Motto: "Let's Get Tropical!"--'70's, remember?), and the team is desperately trying to become one of the 4 teams merging into the NBA, rather than disappearing without a trace. The team's owner/coach/star-player is Jackie Moon (Ferrell), who acquired the team after scoring big with the funk-single "Love Me Sexy," and is having trouble filling the seats and winning games. Desperate for a chance at joining the NBA, he trades in the team's washing machine for washed-up NBA vet Monix (Woody Harrelson--playing it semi-straight, which works). Along for the ride on this one are Andre Benjamin, and such Ferrell-movie vets as Andy Richter, Will Arnett, and Rob Corddry, with Maura Tierney drawing the short straw for this movie's "girlfriend with confused motivations played by a television vet." Jackie Earle Haley appears as a truly frightening fan--he'll make a great "Rorschach."

K. enjoyed it some, but noticed a sink in quality from "Blades of Glory."

"Semi-Pro" is only semi-good, with all the subtlety of a semi-truck. Bargain Rental.

*Is it time to declare him one of the two bona-fide movie-stars to come out of the vast talent pool of Saturday Night Live that can sustain a film beyond a ten-minute skit, much less maintain a string of hits? Sure, the Chase's, Belushi and Ackroyd's, Eddie Murphy's and Adam Sandler's could sustain movies (and sometimes Mike Myers), but their careers are quality roller-coasters and few of them are capable of being the tent-pole driving a film. Only Ferrell and Bill Murray can be point-men for a movie and have it consistently open well. I blame it on "Coneheads."

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

"Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby" (Adam McKay, 2006) It's a movie as dumb as a stump, but in its own way it's a little miracle with the majority of performers ad-libbing their lines; One of the joys of the DVD presentation is watching Will Farrell, John C. Reilly, Sasha Cohen, and the other actors trying out new lines and new interpretations at the spur of the moment. It's truly a movie built on a wing (or a spoiler) and a prayer and shaped in the editing room. I guess when you're recording on Hi-Def Video rather than film you can do as many takes as you want without stopping. It's a testament to the actors and behind-the-camera folks that they could make this jigsaw puzzle work as well as it does. It may be sporadic, but it does generate belly-laughs.