Trolls

TROLLS (Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn, 2016)

In TROLLS the tiny title characters are joyful creatures whose days are filled with singing, dancing, and hugging. Darkness enters their celebratory existences when the much larger, monstrous Bergen find the trolls and learn that eating them is the one way they can experience happiness. The Bergen set aside one day each year for eating trolls, but when the time comes for Prince Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to taste his first troll, the scrappy little optimists escape and go undetected for twenty years.

Their safety comes to an end when Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the happiest and most positive of all the trolls, puts on a massive rave noticeable from great distances. Chef (Christine Baranski), the Bergen who was banished from town when the trolls got away, sees the party. Excited at the chance to get back in the good graces of the Bergen, she tracks down the trolls and captures some. Poppy is determined to go to Bergen Town to save her friends and eventually is joined by Branch (Justin Timberlake), a pessimistic, survivalist troll who always suspected this horrible day would come.

TROLLS is rendered in eye-searing colors and features its share of trippy visuals, making the experience of watching it akin to mainlining Junior Senior’s impossibly peppy “Move Your Feet”, which Poppy sings as part of a buoyant pop medley. These small creatures with bright, upswept hair make no apologies for being cheerful, enthusiastic, and loving because they’ve identified that happiness comes from within rather than being consumed. There’s probably a mild contradiction in that message, as the film is based on toys after all. Nevertheless, TROLLS is more committed to being insistently upbeat and gloriously weird than shamelessly pushing product.

TROLLS’ unfiltered strangeness is one of its most appealing qualities. The humor holds appeal for adults because it’s so off-the-wall yet isn’t pitched at them. It simply indulges silliness to the nth degree. A sequence in which a cloud with skinny legs requests a high five from Branch in exchange for some critical information makes for a hilarious routine in which the gray troll is cajoled to make the smallest gesture of happiness. Kendrick’s perky voicing of Poppy and Timberlake’s glum Branch make a funny contrast.

The story in TROLLS is sufficient, although the film is best when it’s riffing and letting its freak flag fly. Pop music is cleverly incorporated and brings some additional energy to this sugar rush of a film.

Grade: B-

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES (Jake Szymanski, 2016)

The Stangle brothers know how to have a good time at family gatherings, which is exactly why the rest of their family insists they bring stabilizing guests with them to their sister’s impending nuptials in MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES. Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) tend to wind one another up and indiscriminately hit on women at family functions, so the hope is that requiring them to bring dates when Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) marries Eric (Sam Richardson) will keep them from ruining the big day.

Mike and Dave love their sister and want to do right by her. They place an ad on Craigslist that goes viral and appear on a television talk show with the aim of finding the perfect women to accompany them to the destination wedding. A free trip to Hawaii attracts all sorts of eager applicants, although the brothers manage to have the good sense to realize that these particular women are probably bad choices. Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick) are wild partiers looking for an adventure and thus not the nice, steady types who are supposed to be picked. Nevertheless, they get selected after conspiring to bump into Mike and Dave under the pretense of being sweet, responsible professionals who are unaware of the island vacation that awaits those who make the best impression on the brothers.

The tables are turned on the Stangle boys, as they gradually become aware that they have brought the female versions of themselves to the wedding. While some humor is found in observing the wreckage Tatiana and Alice create in MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES, this comedy tends to equate funniness with the volume at which people are speaking. The operating principle seems to be that nearly everything is more amusing if it is being yelled. (For the record, it isn’t.)

MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES tries mightily to trade on the energy and appeal of its cast. Despite their willingness to go for broke, the film has little to offer beyond a lot of overly familiar or borrowed gags, one of which is essentially copped to on screen as being lifted from WEDDING CRASHERS. I don’t know how much was scripted and how much was improvised on set, but the recurring use of montages hint at an effort to patch together something from ad libs. MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES consists mostly of concept. The rest is dog-paddling to last long enough to capture sufficient footage to assemble.

The general laziness aside, the lack of definition to the core characters stands out as a clear weakness. The performances by the main four show the strain of trying to compensate for little to work with. Plaza emerges most unscathed, perhaps because her apathetic screen persona comes across almost like a knowing dismissal of the film from within. Kendrick is woefully underserved, in part because the film doesn’t really know who her altar-jilted party girl is. The flimsily-conceived Mike and Dave leave Devine trying to fill the void by sheer force of will while Efron gets the thankless task of playing the one learning life lessons. MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES coasts on fleet pacing and residual appreciation for the primary cast, which is another way of saying it’s running on fumes.

Grade: C

Into the Woods

INTO THE WOODS (Rob Marshall, 2014)

Familiar Brothers Grimm characters inhabit a village at the edge of the woods, but rather than proceeding to their usual happily ever afters in the musical INTO THE WOODS, they find their lives disrupted when they get what they want. The Baker (James Corden) and the Baker’s Wife (Emily Blunt) set things in motion for a different outcome when they collect four items requested by their neighbor, the Witch (Meryl Streep), in exchange for lifting a curse on their house that has kept them childless.

Meanwhile Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) gets her wish granted to go to the three-night festival, where she catches the eye of the Prince (Chris Pine) while fleeing from him at the end of each evening. The young lad Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) reluctantly sells his beloved white cow for five magic beans. He climbs the massive beanstalk that grows from them and plunder the giants’ land atop it to provide for himself and his impoverished mother (Tracey Ullman). Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and her Granny (Annette Crosbie) get saved from the Wolf (Johnny Depp) because the Baker needs her cape to give to the Witch. Rapunzel (Makenzie Mauzy), who has been hidden in a tower by the Witch, finds the love of her own Prince (Billy Magnussen) that frees her from isolation.

Everyone seems poised for better lives when the Baker and the Baker’s Wife deliver the items to the Witch. She regains her youth and beauty. The Baker’s Wife becomes pregnant. Cinderella and Rapunzel marry their princes. Jack and his mother are wealthy. Little Red Riding Hood and her Granny are safe and sound. There’s a great disturbance in the land, however, when a second beanstalk grows from the sixth magic bean, which Cinderella dropped when the Baker’s Wife tried to give it to her in exchange for her golden slipper. With its arrival the paths in the woods become mixed up and the characters’ storylines get confused. The giant’s wife also demands Jack for the lad having slain her husband.

INTO THE WOODS pushes back against Disneyfied fairy tales, urging caution with the stories and messages therein passed along to children, so there’s some irony in Walt Disney Studios distributing the film. Director Rob Marshall and screenwriter James Lapine, adapting his own book, eventually land on the thematic point regarding what we tell to comfort ourselves, but the matter goes relatively unexamined. Instead the main challenge to to the faith placed in optimistic narratives is served up at the end with a tidy What It All Means explanation that feels disjointed from the action.

INTO THE WOODS is drenched in a hazy blue-gray to signify that fantasy land is never really all sunshine and rainbows, but the ugly visual aesthetic fails to differentiate between its dingy but comparatively brighter first half and the even murkier looking second half. In having the two halves essentially appear the same, it works against the thematic drive. Marshall’s inability to handle the tone also hampers how these literary archetypes are being played with. Amid all the gloom the humor mostly misses the mark. When it does emerge, as in the princes’ duet “Agony”, it seems at odds with the somber spirit that characterizes Marshall’s INTO THE WOODS.

Although INTO THE WOODS scatters its focus, a worthy cast and Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics do a lot to keep the film afloat. Blunt provides a realistic sense of emotional turbulence in a storybook universe. Streep plays the Witch as both villain and victim, one whose lack of niceness does not mean she isn’t justified in her actions in some regards. Pine impresses as someone used to being every young woman’s dream, which also makes it easy for him to be a cad. While the actors are up to the task, Marshall’s staging of INTO THE WOODS tends to be uninspired.


Grade: C+

What to Expect When You're Expecting

WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING (Kirk Jones, 2012)

The prenatal comedy WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING provides a snapshot of contemporary anxieties about imminent parenthood, but it may be more worthwhile as a document for future pop culture scholars to use to understand what was trendy in 2012.  Reality TV shows in the forms of a weight loss program and a celebrity dance competition, Auto-Tuned YouTube videos, and food trucks play prominent roles in the loosely intersecting plots of five pairs expecting babies.  Whether the film is analyzed for the attitudes and fears particular to this time for parents-to-be or what captured the mainstream’s attention, there are more valuable details found in the margins than in the dull and fragmented story.

The sets of expectant parents cover the spectrum.  Celebrity fitness trainer Jules Baxter (Cameron Diaz) thinks she can keep up her rigorous schedule while pregnant and doesn’t need to consider the input of Evan (Matthew Morrison), her partner in the relationship and on the TV dance contest where they met.  Holly (Jennifer Lopez) stresses over impressing adoption officials so she and her husband Alex (Rodrigo Santoro) can get a child from Ethiopia while he is wary of the major changes that may be forthcoming in their lives.  Alex is encouraged to hang out with a dad’s group that is intended to allay his fears but may reinforce them instead.

Food truck operator Rosie (Anna Kendrick) is upset  to discover that she got pregnant from a one night stand with Marco (Chace Crawford), a rival cook she knows from high school.  He commits to being there for her, but they struggle with a relationship started out of a sense of duty.  Baby store owner and children’s book author Wendy Cooper (Elizabeth Banks) and husband Gary (Ben Falcone) have been trying hard to get pregnant and are elated when it happens, but the nine months aren’t as smooth as they would hope.  It’s all the more aggravating for them because Gary’s young stepmother Skyler (Brooklyn Decker) and his dad Ramsey (Dennis Quaid) are regularly one-upping them with the ease of her pregnancy.

Based on a pregnancy guide, WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING ticks off boxes on the checklists of things to be aware of as parents anticipate the arrival of their babies.  The four stories set in Atlanta and single one based in Los Angeles reflect the diversity of experiences but play out as perfunctorily told, mostly meaninglessly connected tales.  All but one of the subplots come straight off the romantic comedy assembly line, reducing this major life event to strings of wacky hijinks and dodged conversations by people who seem as though they’d be challenged bringing a puppy into their homes, let alone a newborn child.  The scenarios didn’t need the gravity of educational role playing, just more emotional heft, especially in Kendrick and Crawford’s unusually featherweight section, and less broadly contrived nonsense.

The one thread that feels the most honest centers on Banks learning that being armed with information and the best laid plans doesn’t mean everything will happen easily or perfectly.  Her scenes, particularly a conference presentation, touch upon the range of emotions and complexity of the challenges during pregnancy that the rest of the film tends to gloss over.  

Grade: D

Up in the Air

UP IN THE AIR (Jason Reitman, 2009)

In UP IN THE AIR George Clooney's Ryan Bingham is one of the guys companies call in when they're going to fire many employees but don't want to handle the delicate process internally. Ryan's job is to transition people from their stable existences to uncertain futures, which he promises them is an opportunity to springboard to better times. Is that true? Does he mean it? It doesn't matter. His purpose is to break the news, not to break their falls after he's left town.

Although his employer is based out of Omaha, Ryan's home is flying the friendly skies and sleeping in whatever nice hotel his expense report provides for. The single, perpetually traveling Ryan has virtually no commitments, and that's how he likes it.

When ambitious up-and-comer Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) convinces Ryan's boss that they could be more efficient and save enormous amounts of money by conducting firings remotely over webcam chats, Ryan finds his way of life threatened. He is charged with showing Natalie how things work in the field but with the understanding that this is the last time he'll be hitting the road.

With THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and JUNO, writer-director Jason Reitman demonstrated an ability to craft solid films anchored by compelling performances. Reitman isn't a director who relies on flashy technique. Rather, he's a skilled storyteller with a knack for entertaining. He's done it again with UP IN THE AIR, his best film to date.

The film has been lauded for being very of the moment in its treatment of massive corporate layoffs, but where it truly shines--and what will give it more staying power through the years--is how it details the importance of a personal touch. Dismissal by internet teleconference or a relationship break-up via text message may be more efficient and easier on those severing ties, but such methods deny the humanity of those being cut off.

Clooney's character may be delivering harsh news and telling a beautiful lie about what awaits on the other side of losing a job, but simply being in the same room and treating each person as an individual, even when following a template, gives them dignity.

UP IN THE AIR features a heartbreaking scene in which Natalie tests the technology to can a man sitting in the next room. The difference in empathy provided in a serious face-to-face encounter versus this chilly axing is palpable. While this may appear to be a fine line of etiquette that society is still defining, it's one that merits genuine consideration.

In retrospect it's somewhat astonishing how appealing Clooney is as an unlikable character in UP IN THE AIR. Ryan Bingham values a life unattached to any people or place and selfishly guards what he withdraws from others so effortlessly. Before this lone wolf awakens to the reality of the life he has built and becomes more sympathetic, Clooney turns on the old Hollywood charm that makes the character so effective and him one of the most persuasive actors currently working.

Although Kendrick's character looks to implement the cold technological solution, she serves as the film's conscience. Full of unbridled energy and youthful naїveté, Kendrick's performance unlocks the central question of how to live. As Clooney's lover and female reflection, Vera Farmiga brings a sense of accepted resignation to the choices she's made. Despite the sad heart beating underneath UP IN THE AIR, it's a funny and ultimately warm film.

Grade: B+