Last of the great romantics
Movies from seen in latish 2004.
Originally written: October 2004
Connie and Carla
Bourne Supremacy
Girl Next Door
Dodgeball
Raising Helen
The Terminal
Life and Death of Peter Sellers
Wimbledon
The 2004 Emmys placed in stark relief everything that is wrong with awards shows - and a few things that can be all right. Starting with the latter, since they are fewer and farther between, the show scored a minor hit by the use of a couple of ordinary people, flown in without knowing why, to present the award for Best Reality Competition Show (that there was such an award was a downside). Then there were all the awards given to movie stars slumming in the odd telemovie or guest role. Al Pacino and Meryl Streep showed some class (compared with say William Shatner and Sharon Stone who won guest awards without ever showing the least acting ability). And there was the recognition of Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde-Pierce and Alison Janney and series like Angels in America and Arrested Development, which try to push the envelope in the normally bland world of television. On the downside was most of the rest, including particularly Gary Shandling's hosting, which was just embarrassing (he being the second unfunniest comedian on television - David Letterman still holds the honor) and Sarah-Jessica Parker's acceptance speech, which maintained the tradition of incredibly embarrassing best actress speeches. The other really poor aspect was the director's itchy trigger-finger, cueing the band to play music to cut off acceptance speeches far too quickly, while winners were still trying to thank their respective spice and kids. Instead of trying to limit acceptances to 30 seconds, why don't awards shows get rid of the crappy schtick given to the Neville Nobodies who present the awards and use that time to allow winners more opportunity to thank all the little people responsible.
Meanwhile, at the cineplex, we're in the spring break - between the summer blockbusters and the winter Oscar candidates - when little that is likely to challenge for awards is on offer.
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Connie and Carla is the latest product off the Nia Vardalos production line. When we add it to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, some idea of the Nia Vardalos' style emerges: the films both feature ugly-duckling romance and broad stereotypes (here gays and drags artistes replace the Greek cultural stereotypes of the first film). The films also feature stilted dialog; but are saved by the expertise of the support cast who manage to invest their boilerplate characters with some zest and attractiveness. The plot of Connie and Carla is an easy high-concept, Some Like It Hot meets Victor/Victoria, and about as original as that summary suggests. Like the Billy Wilder classic it involves 'musicians' witnessing a mob hit and being forced to flee in disguise. Only this time, instead of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, we have Vardalos and Toni Collette as two lounge singers who've never found their metier. While Lemmon and Curtis hid out in drag in an all-girl band, the girls in this movie take the Julie Andrews' path and become girls disguised as drag queens. In LA. Where they become a hit at a previously moribund nightclub by actually singing, rather than miming, the hits of the Broadway stage. There is romance for Vardalos in the form of David Duchovny (who played either Mouldy or Skulker in The X Files), as the brother of one of the genuine drag queens, but Colette gets to carry the comic load, as the more convincing of the girls playing guys playing girls. In the end, the movie becomes basically a cavalcade of musical numbers as the stage shows dominate and the story peters out, in spite of (or because of) Debbie Reynolds' guest appearance in the overly-long and not very convincing climax. Still the music carries the show and provides enough oomph, together with Toni Colette's performance, to make it a worthwhile entertainment. After two questionable scripts, however, and two dull performances, I am not so sure of Nia Vardalos' future.
Recherche de temps perdu
Some directors just haven't read their Joe Bob Briggs closely enough. They don't realise that a sequel is supposed to be the same movie made again: because, as Joe Bob argues, if it worked the first time, why change the formula? The original appearance of Jason Bourne, as an amnesiac and conflicted agent, directed by Doug Liman, was one of the better spy thrillers of recent times. Largely because of Matt Damon's performance, The Bourne Identity, was a great success. But The Bourne Supremacy, its sequel, is a sufficiently different movie to be judged as something more than a sequel. This time it's directed by Paul Greengrass who comes from a cinema verite documentary background. He is in love with the hand-held camera and overuses it in this film. Secondly, Bourne is far more proactive in this film as more of his memory returns but is still played with taciturn intensity, and effectiveness, by Damon. The film starts with Bourne being framed for the assassination of a CIA agent and with an attempt on his life. He and his girl are hiding in Goa when he sees someone who looks out of place (it's Eomer who's come to town; Bourne is suspicious because his long-blond hair and Rohirrim horse are not to be found). A chase scene occurs. This betrays the film's major fault: the action scenes are just too jerky and disjointed causing the viewer to become discomforted. In between the action scenes, however, the movie is much more successful. Bourne's intense pursuit of the truth, his duels with the CIA agents on his tail (Brian Cox and Julia Stiles reprising roles from the first movie and Joan Allen being incredibly effective as his nemesis in this one, Pamela Landy) and the slow unravelling of the plot all contribute to a good movie, highlighted by top-class performances. It follows a reasonably well-trodden thriller route from Naples to Berlin and thence to Moscow, as Bourne's memory is increasingly jogged by the surroundings in which he finds himself. The duel between Bourne and Landy is exceptionally well done, as they take each other's measure, even if the Cox character is not quite as well used in this scenario. Damon again indicates why he is succeeding as Ben Affleck fades. His Bourne is a complex character who develops in the sequel as he did in the original. And there is obviously going to be a third part of a trilogy around this character. I trust that Allen is again used as she is as convincing in this role, as she has been in many others, of which The Contender is the stand-out. But The Bourne Supremacy is spoiled by the eruption of action sequences, using hand-held cameras and extremely tight close-ups, which cause audience nausea and dislocation. A case of style surmounting substance and lessening the movie's success as a result.
Education the hard way
One way of passing the time in foreign parts is by visiting the local cineplex and essaying the currently popular cinematic offerings. I've had a chance to do this in both Perth and Townsville and watched movies I might normally not have seen otherwise. Girl Next Door was the choice in Perth. A movie of teenage angst and discovery in which an under-experienced over-achieving senior high schooler meets his match in the title character, a teenage porn star trying to distance herself from her career. The surprise of this movie is that, despite the triteness of the establishing plot and the scantness in the establishment of most of the characters, it is largely a watchable and entertaining movie, and one with some things to say about life; far better than it has any right to be. Basically, Matthew Kidman (Emile Hirsh, so good as the 'villain' in The Emperor's Club) is trying to earn a scholarship that will enable him to get to college. He is portrayed as every parent's ideal: an A-student with commitment to bettering society who wants to achieve his aim through politics. On the downside, he is a swot and excluded from the mainstream of student social activities. His only mates are another couple of outsiders, one a movie-fan. Then Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert, somewhat recovered from her travails in 24, 48, 72 etc) moves next door into her aunt's home and discovers her neighbor's avid interest in her. The developing romance is handled well, as is the gradual complication of the appearance in town of Kelly, her 'manager/producer', who is trying to ensure her continued involvement in the making of movies. Her presence (and that of Timothy Olyphant's Kelly - maybe the most interesting character in the movie) makes Matthew more cool and accepted but also starts steering him off the straight and narrow and down some less salubrious side streets, towards (of all things) maturity. The journey has many dark turns, as well as some comic ones, and leads to a somewhat surprising denouement. This is not your average teen movie and it is something more than a variation on the Risky Business trope (of the young hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold helping the high school kid out) or another American Pie-sex initiation variation. There is some genuinely risky business involved here: Hollywood-based producers and scriptwriters not sticking to the road usually taken but beating out a new path in a film about teenage sexual awakenings. Worth a look.
Ben there, dodge that
The movie seen in Townsville was even more off-the-wall: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. This is a broad comedy and a swingeing satire of sports films of the Rocky/National Velvet type. Its major drawback is in the characters of, and the standard of acting in, its two lead roles. It features Ben Stiller in one of those roles. Worse, Stiller plays a cartoonish (and I use the term pejoratively) villain, White Goodman, founder-owner of Globo Gym, with a Snidely Whiplash moustache and an Oil Can Harry voice. While this broad-brush portrayal starts out as amusing enough, it wears out its welcome very quickly and becomes painful. His antagonists are the slobs and ne'er-do-wells at Average Joe's Gym, across the street. The owner thereof, played by Vince Vaughn, is a lazy ladies' man whose business is going down the drain. Vaughn sleepwalks through the role. Fortunately the movie is saved, somewhat, by the supporting cast and by the slapstick humor of some of its action. For those unaware, the eponymous sport apparently originated among sadistic high-school "gym teachers" (what we'd more properly call PE teachers) as a way of punishing the slow and the weak by permitting organised assaults on them by teams of bullies. A team-sport version of 'brandings', using a larger ball than the tennis ball we used to use in the more anarchic playground version at school. Basically you get hit by a ball and you're out; you catch a ball on the full and you can bring back one of your eliminated team mates. When the Average Joes decide to enter a Dodgeball tournament, and acquire an ex-legend of the game to coach them, White also enters a team to thwart them. The first half of the movie - the set-up and the training - is not too bad, although it's handicapped by a romance developing between Vaughn and his bank's lawyer, played by Stiller's wife, Christine Taylor, and highlighted by Rip Torn's over-the-top ex-legend, who coaches the Average Joes with the five Ds of Dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive and ... er ... dodge. (During this part of the movie there is a novel plot dump - to let the audience know the history and rules of dodgeball - in the form of a pastiche of one of those 1950s' 16mm "educational" films that were the mainstay of teaching for many years.) The second half, the tournament suffers from your knowledge, gleaned from earlier movies, that Joes and Globo are bound to meet in the final and also suffers from some less-than-average humor from the television commentators (Gary Cole and Jason Bateman are the guilty parties, particularly the latter) who provide the voice-over. But some of the character actors come into their own: including Justin Long and Missi Pyle, who both had bit-parts in Galaxy Quest, and Alan Tudyk, lately the body model and voice of Sonny in I, Robot, who makes Steve the Pirate the most sympathetic of the characters. Every sign indicated that this movie would be abysmal; I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't bad at all - the drawbacks noted above excepted. In fact, it set a new standard for low-brow Hollywood comedies by actually having funny gags that were not given away in the trailer. There was sufficient in here to keep me amused, especially in the send-ups of all those crappy sports films.
Mom is the word
Garry Marshall makes a lot of very routine romantic comedies (Pretty Woman is the apotheosis of his directorial career). Raising Helen is another one which I have had to sit through twice now on long air-flights. Kate Hudson (Goldie Hawn's daughter who was so good in Almost Famous) becomes the guardian of her late sister's children. She loses her glamorous job and finds herself failing as a substitute mother. Her sister (Joan Cusack) who is the 'perfect mother' (even though she is portrayed as humourless and a fussbudget) has to save her arse. Eventually Kate wins the kids over and becomes the mom we all knew she could be. It's as trite - and generally as unamusing - as that. John Corbett ('Chris in the Morning' on Northern Exposure) having survived marrying Nia Vardalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding is now given the thankless task of being Helen's pastor boyfriend. This is bog ordinary fare and hardly worth a trip to a DVD renter, let alone the cineplex. This being a Garry Marshall movie, Hector Elizondo appears in a cameo, this time as the owner of a used-car yard. He, and occasionally Joan Cusack, are the only redeeming features.
Lost in the emotion
The premise and development of The Terminal are excellent, as are the characterisations and the general story arc. I cannot fault the production design, nor the set decoration. I was amused by the dialog and thought the acting of a uniformly high standard. And still I came away disappointed. And I know who to blame. It's that villain I'd hoped we'd seen the last of: the overly sentimental Steven Spielberg. The one who didn't know how to end movies except by excessive doses of schmaltz and by devices which seemed to contradict all which had come before. Endings have been the major failing of most of Spielberg's fantasy films but, after Catch Me If You Can and, especially, Minority Report, I thought he'd put that behind him. The Terminal is here to indicate that perhaps they were the aberration and the fault remains. In The Terminal Tom Hanks is Victor Navorski, a visitor to New York from a former Soviet republic which suffers a coup while he was on his way to JFK Airport. As his documents now have no validity, the overly officious immigration man Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) confiscates them, confining Victor to the airport's transit lounge. In this, the story borrows heavily from the fate of an Iranian who has been resident in Charles de Gaulle Airport for many years. The story, apparently largely written by Andrew Nicoll (writer of Gattaca and The Truman Story, amongst others), has a number of interesting touches. As well introducing a love interest (Amelia, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, who appears to have undergone unnecessary and damaging plastic surgery) who actually moves the plot along, and containing a number of sub-plots involving a coterie of terminal employees who interact with Victor, the scenario has other fascinating aspects: including the quite significant period in which Victor is in the terminal (nine months!) and the complexity of the background to Victor's visit to New York. (The scene where Hanks explains this McGuffin, relatively late in the movie, is one of the more moving scenes in recent times.) For most of the movie it works well, particularly the interaction of Victor with Frank, and then with Amelia, and his dealings with the other supporting characters. I was particularly taken with Hanks' characterisation: despite an accent so thick that it would win any year's Streepstakes, his Victor is funny and touching, with just the right modicum of pathos. Then, just as you think you can see your way through to the end, up swells the John Williams' effusion of strings, and the movie tilts over into Spielbergian excess as Victor exits the terminal into New York. What could have been a really great movie is still a very good one, for all the reasons noted above. Until Spielberg learns that excessively emotional audience manipulation can be as much a turn-off as a way to succeed and that the emotional appeal of the characters and story should have their own effect on the viewer, without the need for artificial pumping up by means of music and excesses not arising logically from the scenario, he'll continue to disappoint me by his failure to finish off that which he has started.
Rush in sellers' market
The biopic is making a comeback. 'Biopic' is of course a portmanteau word that conflates the two abbreviations for 'biographical picture'. In most cases, a biopic bears little or no resemblance to life of the person portrayed. Classic biopics include a number of musical films about writers of musicals (like Night and Day, which deals with Cole Porter, who is also subject to a new filmed biopic, De-lovely, starring Kevin Kline as the composer) and less musical films about scientists and politicians (such as Madame Curie, The Emile Zola Story and Young Abe Lincoln). In these films, the line between reality and the scenario is an evanescent one and you should not regard the biopic as fact about the life portrayed, any more than you can rely on a filmed history to teach you what happened in the past. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a case in point. The film provides a meaty part for Geoffrey Rush in the eponymous role, and plenty of opportunity for the sort of acting that attracts Oscar nominations, and some very funny moments, particularly when Rush is recreating some of Sellers' more famous characters, such as Inspector Clouseau. It also provides an episodic potted history of Sellers as movie star, husband, father and human being. Starting with the post-war radio success of Sellers as a part of the highly steamed Goon Show, the film hits the highpoints of his more famous characterisations from Hercules Grytpype-Thynne and Bluebottle through Melvin Muffley and Dr Strangelove, Clouseau and various nerds from the Indian subcontinent to his apotheosis as Chance the gardener in Being There. More interestingly it essays a look at the actor's relationships with his parents, his first two wives, his psychic 'guru' and his two most famous directors (Blake Edwards and Stanley Kubrick). The film's thesis is that Peter Sellers was a man without his own personality needing the script to provide him with one or those around him to guide him as to who he is. The acting is uniformly good. In addition to Rush, there are great performances from Emily Watson and Charlize Theron as the wives, John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci as the directors, Stephen Fry as the psychic and Miriam Margoyles as his domineering mum. More interesting is the conceit used through the film where Rush impersonates Sellers impersonating each of the other lead characters as they leave his life, and the framing narrative which has Rush as Sellers reviewing his own life. These post-modern touches add some piquancy to the standard biopic fare. The acting and the set up work a treat. If the film still doesn't quite reach the heights that it should we should blame the inherent problem in the biopic that it usually encompasses only one canonical version of the life under review and the sad fact that many of the episodes in the film are not entertaining enough. In a sense, we miss the intervening years and their impact on Sellers' life. Still, this is a fascinating attempt to adapt the biopic to a more modern approach and is a film for admirers of great acting to have their fill. Recommended.
Tennis is the winner
Working Title pictures have recently plumbed the depth of credibility. First there was the idea of a Pommy bookshop owner matching up with a glamorzoid Hollywood star; then the idea of a fat girl (well, size 12 or maybe, shock, horror, size 14 - so huge) finding her Mr Darcy and getting a job in television; not to mention a Pom PM who stands up to a US President and finds true love with a girl young enough to be his niece. But all those are believable when compared to the McGuffin of the latest entry from the UK romantic comedy production line: it posits the idea of an English tennis player reaching the final at Wimbledon. I am often willing to suspend my disbelief willingly in the cause of a good movie but that's quite a stretch. The movie, a unique combination of romantic comedy and sports movie of National Velvet type, is, unsurprisingly, called Wimbledon and stars two of the better emerging talents in Anglophone cinema, Paul Bettany (who parleyed Chaucer in A Knight's Tale into Russell Crowe's imaginary best friend in A Beautiful Mind and then Russ's actual real best friend in Master and Commander) and Kirsten Dunst, whose talent was spotted in Interview with a Vampire and who has reinforced that impression in countless later roles, including the Spiderman movies. Peter Colt is an ageing Pom who was once ranked 11th and has slipped down to 118 and whose last tournament this is; Lizzie Bradbury is the newly emerging American female superbrat. They meet cute when he is mistakenly given the key to her hotel room wherein she is showering. The romance soon blossoms as does his game as he starts knocking off a few seeds and heads towards the final. The spaniard in the works is her father, a tennis dad, played with not enough menace by Sam Neill. (Why the sheep-enjoyer formerly known as Nigel is cast as the tough American father I cannot say: he doesn't really fit the role.) So naturally there are just enough complications to ensure that the lovers are separated and the final hangs in the balance, but the resolution is fairly predictable, given the movie's premises. However, there is fun along the way from the two leads who are very good and from Colt's family (he comes from relative affluence, with the family property near Brighton, and his eccentric parents are Theoden and Margaret Spencer - the former Wimpey's waitress on whom Stanley Moon wasted seven wishes in Bedazzled). There are a number of other nice touches: the use of Colt's internal dialogs which echo a similar device in Bull Durham; the commentary on the final provided by two John McEnroe and Chris Evert (who fails to note her own similarity to Lizzie, given that, when young, she met and married a British never-wasser John Lloyd); and the symbolism of the comet seen in the skies through the tournament, an astronomical reference with all kinds of concatenations in literature and history. The tennis scenes are relatively well done: the actors look like they can play although the CGI ball is occasionally not quite right during the final. The biggest blooper is that Colt's semi-final (and all his other games except the final) is played on an outside court. At Wimbledon any Pom who survives the first round is automatic centre-court material. An enjoyable piece of fluff.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]