Movie Reviews, April 20

Disney Sucks, Smoking Does Not (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
Cinema

In the past three weeks, I’ve sat through not one, but two totally lame computer-animated movies.
 
It’s starting to piss me off. I don’t have time for this crap.
 
Actually, I’ll just skip to the point of all this: I’m no longer watching computer-animated movies unless they have Pixar plastered somewhere on the poster. Apparently, the guys at Pixar are the only ones who get it.
 
Oh, Shrek was okay, but the sequel sucked.
 
It seems to me studios think that people will flock to movies simply because they are computer animated. They think that’s what happened with Toy Story. And initially, that might have been true. Part of the fascination with Toy Story was that it was computer animated.
 
But if that had been all there was to it, people would’ve written it off as a curiosity, a pretty experiment. Obviously there was more.
 
Toy Story is a good movie by any measure. Good story, good “acting,” good direction, excellent production values . . . actually, a great movie.
 
Traditional animated movies went in the tank. Partially because they became too expensive to make, partially because the people who made them perhaps never understood how or why they did or didn’t work.
 
It’s like studios automatically think anything animated is automatically a “kids” movie and thus must be dumbed down for kids to understand. Thing is, kids aren’t dumb. They don’t need to be pandered to. You don’t need to spell stuff out for them. Concentrate on telling a good story about stuff kids are interested in and they’ll follow you like you’re the Pied Piper.
 
Do it well enough, they’ll want to see it again. With their friends. Ka-ching.
 
Do it wrong, well, you’ve got no one buying tickets. A dumb, bad kids’ movie? Who’s going to see that? No one. The court of public opinion is merciless. And kids are the most extreme of the bunch. Kids pull no punches about this kind of thing.
 
Then again, their expectations aren’t that high because they generally don’t have much “good” entertainment to choose from.
 
Because, you know, kids are dumb.
 
Whatever.
 
Let’s just get on with it. Here’s my take on The Wild.
 
Nature Calls
 
First off, it sucks. Don’t go watch it.
 
Samson (Kiefer Sutherland) and his son Ryan (Greg Cipes) are lions living at the New York Zoo. Samson spends his days regaling his cub with tales of life in the wild. In these tales, Samson battles wildebeests and, ah, thwarts other wild animal plots with his thunderous roar.
 
Samson’s trying to teach Ryan to roar, but it’s not happening. Ryan’s acutely aware of how much he is not living up to his father’s legacy.
 
But here’s the thing. Samson never actually lived in the wild. He’s always been in captivity. But he doesn’t want anyone to know. Not his son or his best friends, which happen to be a squirrel named Benny (James Belushi), a giraffe named Bridget (Janeane Garofalo), a snake named Larry (Richard Kind) and a koala named Nigel (Eddie Izzard).
 
Ryan ends up stowing away in a green container bound for Africa and the gang has to go after him, having adventures and learning about themselves along the way.
 
Ain’t movie life swell for computer-animated zoo animals?
 
I won’t say the movie isn’t funny. There are some really good lines. I won’t say the characters aren’t likeable. A couple of them are.
 
One that isn’t is Larry the snake. Nothing funny or endearing about him. He’s actually just kind of annoying. He’s supposed to be kind of dim-witted, I think. I could never quite figure out what his schtick was. The squirrel I got. He was the quirky sidekick. The giraffe was just there as the love interest for the squirrel. The koala?
 
Why the hell am I trying to rationalize this? That’d be giving the movie more credit than it deserves.
 
While I’d call it more entertaining than Ice Age 2, I wouldn’t call it actually, you know, entertaining. Ice Age 2 was just boring. This one, while not as boring, wasn’t as funny, which is sad.
 
Parts of the movie are just painful to watch. I have this thing, and it’s weird, but here it is anyway . . . I get embarrassed for people.
 
For instance, at the end of the film when the writers are slamming home the ABC After School Special message with all the subtlety of a hammer on an anvil, Samson has some truly awful lines. I was embarrassed for Kiefer having to stand in some soundbooth and read them.
 
These days when I’m subjected to truly bad cinema, I find myself more and more wanting to yell at the screen. Perhaps fling a tomato or two. Or leave. It’s happened twice in the past three weeks. First with Ice Age 2, now with The Wild.
 
So, I’ve had it. No mas! Unless a computer-animated movie has Pixar on the label, I’m not going. I’ll probably have to revisit that when I finally have kids of my own, but until then, no more. They’re not worth the ink and certainly not worth my time and money.
 
Up With Smoke
 
Fortunately, the weekend wasn’t a total wash.
 
I saw Thank You For Smoking and it was awesome.
 
Like, totally. Dude.
 
The day Thank You For Smoking drops on DVD, I’m buying. I’ll pay full price, let Best Buy screw me for $24.99. I don’t care. I haven’t seen a satire as intelligent or funny in . . . well, ever.
 
Honestly, if I could, I’d just do the whole review with lines of dialogue from the film. I’d just set up the scene and then let you read the dialogue, just like you were reading the script.
 
Here’s an example:
 
Nick Naylor’s boss, BR, is addressing his staff during a meeting and says:
BR: We dont sell Tic Tacs, we sell cigarettes. And theyre cool, available and addictive. The job is almost done for us.
 
In the next scene, Nick Naylor is addressing his son’s elementary school class. He’s telling them about what he does, which is put a positive spin on cigarettes and smoking. A kid in the class tries to disrupt him:
 
Kid #3: My Mommy says smoking is bad for you

Nick Naylor: Oh, is your Mommy a doctor?

Kid #3: No.

Nick Naylor: A scientific researcher of some kind?

Kid #3: No.

Nick Naylor: Well then shes hardly a credible expert, is she?
 
  It’d be one thing if these were two islands of funny in an otherwise pedestrian movie. But they’re not. They’re not even the funniest lines in the flick.
 
  You interested yet?
 
  Here’s the “story.” Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) spends his days and nights talking about the greatness of cigarettes. He’s a tobacco lobbyist and he’s very good at what he does.
 
  He believes in the power of the argument. To wit: whoever wins an argument is right.
 
  You can’t help but like the guy. He’s the protagonist, after all.
 
  But even if you like him, no one else in America does. He’s the antichrist.
 
  Nick hangs out with the M.O.D. (Merchants of Death) Squad. Polly (Maria Bello) lobbies for alcohol and Bobby (David Koechner) for firearms. They meet frequently to talk shop, compare body counts and commiserate, even though they don’t think of it as commiserating.
 
  Nick also has a son, Joey (Cameron Bright), whom he’s trying to both corrupt and not corrupt.
 
  So the movie is kind of about that. And it’s kind of about all the things wrong with our country.
 
  And it’s awesome.
 
  Did I mention that?
 
  Oh, and no one smokes in the entire movie. There are cigarette packages and ash trays, but no actual smoking. That would be irony, kids. And that’s the point of the thing, after all.
 
  It’s a movie with a message. It uses satire and humor to get its message across. It counts on you being smart enough to actually get the message.
 
  I haven’t laughed that much in a movie in a long, long time. It was end-to-end funny. And we’re not talking mere chuckles here. We’re talking belly laughs. It was almost like seeing a comic do her monologue.
 
  I could keep typing about Thank You For Smoking, but it’d turn into so much hyperbole I’d disgust myself. So, let’s sum it up one more time, just to be sure I was clear.
 
  Thank You For Smoking = awesome.
 
  That is all.
 
  See you next week.