Movie Reviews - Week of March 16-22

Hollywood, We Have a Problem (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
Failure to Launch is just that.

At its best, film can be a transcendental experience. A good film can engage your mind and inspire you to look at your world in a different way. It can immerse you in another reality, taking you out of yours for a time.

Good films make you smile, think, laugh, frown, cry and sometimes, clap.

The point is the good ones get a reaction. They get something. Even the ones that are fantastically terrible get a reaction. You talk about just how much you hated them. I know I do. Nothing’s more fun to write than a review of a bad movie. Seriously. It’s great fun.

It’s the mediocre ones that feel like a waste of time. If you’re going to walk out of a movie theatre, shrug your shoulders and say, “eh,” then what was the point of going?

For me these days, it’s all about the high and the low. I don’t want that middle ground. I don’t want ambivalence.

I will spit you out.

I want something I can remember. Something that makes an impression for good or bad. Screw indifference.

So by that rationale, when I say something like, “I’m really starting to loathe romantic comedies,” what I’m saying is that if they’re not going to be Notting Hill or Shakespeare in Love, then I want them to completely suck. I want them to be so loaded with clichés that Ebert could add the entire movie to Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie Glossary. One of my friends got that for me a couple years back. It’s awesome.

Don’t get me wrong. I still resent having to attend a bad movie. Time is my most valuable asset. It’s irreplaceable. I go to a bad movie, I’ll never get that time back . . .

Get your time back. Now that would be the ultimate customer service promise. Satisfaction guaranteed or your time back.

Screw the ticket price. Give me back my 90 minutes. And since they can’t do that, maybe they could give us back double our money.

So then, back to the matter at hand. The films, the high and the low. We’ll do the high second just to give me something to look forward to.

Failure

Well, at least they got that part of the title right.

I can’t stand being talked down to. I can’t stand the thought that Hollywood thinks these trite pieces of garbage--romantic comedies--are what we want. We want predictability?

Don’t answer that.

I think maybe I’m mad about Failure to Launch and all that it represents because, like I said a month ago, I don’t mind watching romantic comedies. I think it has something to do with a lonely adolescence; I remember that lame longing feeling.

Okay, here’s the real reason. Everyone likes romantic comedies because they have happy endings and happy endings give everyone a heap-full of happy endorphins. Like it or not, we’re all addicted to the happy endorphins. Or should be.

We want the couple to get together. We want them to find a way to work it out.

What can I say? We’ve been trained well. Repetition of stimuli. Pavlov. The Dogs.

Ding.

Here’s the set-up for the latest masterpiece: Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) still lives at home. He’s 35 years old and has no intentions of moving out. Or so it would seem.

His parents are nice enough, but they coddle him. His mom still cleans his room and fixes his breakfast. His dad just puts up with it.

They want him out. It’s gone on long enough. So they hire Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker); she specializes in this kind of deal. She takes on a client, makes them fall for her, then has them out of their parents house in no time. She’s good at what she does, even if her gig is about as plausible as Hitch’s.

So of course, when she starts working on Tripp, she also fairly quickly develops feelings for him, which complicates things.

It wouldn’t be a romantic comedy if things didn’t get complicated before they worked out. There’s always some crisis that must be averted or dealt with prior to the couple living happily ever after.

This time, the crisis is Tripp finding out Paula is being paid to date him by his parents. C’mon. I didn’t ruin it for you. You can see it coming a mile away.

And along the journey, you’ll encounter quite possibly every romantic comedy cliché there is.

It’s the big suck.

I like McConaughey. He’s a charismatic guy who just makes really bad decisions on scripts. Seems to me he should be our reigning king of Hollywood action flicks. Instead, he makes dumb romantic comedies that don’t tax his weed-addled brain. Okay, I might be exaggerating with the weed part. I mean, he’s only been caught naked on his front porch playing the bongos once. He was probably sober then.

And what’s up with those teeth? Between him and Parker, it’s like a 90-minute commercial for high-end dental work.

Pieces of Failure to Launch work, but in the end, it’s just damn stupid. They did one thing, which I won’t mention here, that was so cheesy and dumb, I actually started booing the screen (in a quiet way so as to not disturb the other film patrons).

I’m going suggest failing to attend Failure to Launch might be in your best interest.

Next up, a documentary.

Why We Fight, as opposed to the last film I spent entirely too many words talking about, is one of the great reasons to be a movie reviewer. It was a pleasure to watch, put probably because it leans my way politically.

There’s some irony in the title. Many of you out there may be thinking that the title sounds familiar. You’ve heard it somewhere before.

Chances are you have. Why We Fight was also the name of a series of propagandist documentaries produced by Frank Capra before during and around World War II. Those films were carefully constructed to stoke the fires of patriotism and to get a country involved in the war effort.

This Why We Fight, on the other hand, carefully illustrates the state of the country, the state of the military-industrial complex and outlines the consequences of America’s current foreign/war policy.

Basically, it maps out a timeline from World War II to today’s political environment and this administration’s stance on pre-emptive acts of war.

Why We Fight illustrates just that. It pulls the pants down on the “defending freedom” company line the government keeps selling us, and instead shows how we got from a country that defends ideals to one that starts wars to justify the size of its army.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you the film is balanced. Well, okay, it’s balanced in the same way Fox News is balanced, which is to say, not at all.

Once you understand that a documentary has an agenda and you figure out what that agenda is, you can appreciate the craftsmanship of the film and consider the ideas it is presenting to you. Good documentary illuminates and stimulates dialogue. It gives you no choice but to think.

Why We Fight does this very well. It made me ashamed in places to watch the film. Ashamed for my country. And a bit fearful, though not in the same way I’ve been told to fear the terrorists in the days and weeks and months and years since 9/11.

My dad just volunteered to go to the “sand.” He shipped out from California just this past weekend. He didn’t tell me why he volunteered. My mom told me he believed it was his duty. Not sure I agree with him on that one. I think a guy in his 50s has probably already done his duty for the country.

But watching Why We Fight sort of made me angry, as though the government is using patriots like him and others to pursue interests other than the furthering of democracy and freedom.

The question it left me with is this: Are we still fighting the “good” fight? I don’t think we are.

Go check this one out.

And that’s that. See ya next week.