Sing

SING (Christophe Lourdelet and Garth Jennings, 2016)

Theater-owning koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) is on the verge of losing his prized performance space. Buster puts on a singing competition as a last-ditch effort to save the theater in SING, but a mistake on the flyers promises $100,000 for the winner than the intended thousand bucks.

The purse attracts all sorts of wannabe stars to the auditions. Among those making the final cut are Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), a pig who is unfulfilled as a mother and housewife; Johnny (Taron Egerton), a gorilla who’d rather be singing than helping with his mobster clan; heartbroken rocker porcupine Ash (Scarlett Johansson); and Mike (Seth MacFarlane), a crooning mouse with gambling debts. Shy elephant Meena (Tori Kelly) really wants to participate, but her stage fright holds her back.

SING is an animated comedy for two groups: those who love hearing five- or ten-second snippets of popular songs in celebrity karaoke and those who are really invested in AMERICAN IDOL’s audition episodes and storylines. It’s not bad per se so much as it is perfunctory. SING has a good tempo and enough familiar songs--or their hooks--to seem pleasantly mediocre. As it can be cut up almost infinitely into bite-size portions to promote it, a cynical view might lead one to see its value as a product to help pad a studio’s bottom line, not as anything with aspirations of being more than content. All it needs to do is look sufficiently cute amid the clutter of advertising to take the kids to it.

Some of the voice casting choices are curious, especially McConaughey as a koala. Wouldn’t Chris Hemsworth have provided the star power and a more geographically sensible pick? But then this feels like something created and assembled by a computer algorithm than by artistically motivated people. SING is the simulation of what blockbuster children’s entertainment is supposed to look and sound like.

SING's best joke by far is that brief moment when a sheep bleats the first word of the chorus from Seal’s "Kiss from a Rose", although the animal chosen to perform seems like a missed opportunity for the type of inside joke for adults that these movies love to wink with. The hammy, German-accented pig Gunter (Nick Kroll) is sporadically amusing. Parents who want to get out of the house or distract the kids would be better served going to MOANA again than patronizing SING.

Grade: C

Hot Pursuit

HOT PURSUIT (Anne Fletcher, 2015)

In HOT PURSUIT San Antonio police officer Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) grew up riding in the back seat of her father’s patrol car, so it’s deeply disappointing for her to be reassigned to run the evidence room after an embarrassing misunderstanding while working in the field. Cooper’s chance to prove herself again arrives when she is paired with a federal marshal transporting a drug cartel’s top lieutenant and his wife to Dallas in preparation for testimony to the grand jury against kingpin Vicente Cortez (Joaquín Cosio).

Shortly after Cooper and the federal agent get to the home of Felipe and Daniella Riva (Sofia Vergara), two pairs of killers descend upon it and kill Cooper’s partner and Daniella’s husband. The women escape in the Rivas’ red vintage 1968 Cadillac convertible, but trouble soon finds them when Cooper realizes two of her colleagues were masked assassins at the crime scene and are out to clean up loose ends. They pin the deaths on Cooper and spin the story that she and Daniella are on the run. In reality the two women are reluctant travel companions, as Daniella tries to slip away every chance she gets rather than be delivered to give testimony she refuses to offer.

Buttoned-up, by-the-books Cooper and the high-spirited and volatile Daniella make a classical mismatched pair in a road comedy, but HOT PURSUIT offers little in the way of humorous possibilities for their differences to produce laughs. Director Anne Fletcher and screenwriters David Feeney and John Quaintance focus on getting Cooper and Daniella from place to place at the expense of settling in with the characters. Content to let the co-leads exist as types, neither transcends the simple character descriptions to generate any legitimate comedic combustion or agreement.

Witherspoon and Vergara are up for whatever but don’t have much to work with. Half of the intended humor seems to reside in the accents. Witherspoon’s molasses-thick take on a Texas twang is a distraction. Vergara acts as though directed to crank up her Colombian heritage in a more exaggerated version of her MODERN FAMILY character. With both actresses it’s like the vocal equivalent of flop sweat. Who can blame them, though, when they’re forced into one unfunny scenario after another?

HOT PURSUIT’s regressive portrayals of women in film is more discouraging than its lack of subtlety. Comedy often flows from incompetent actions, but neither Cooper nor Daniella are shown to be particularly capable until the plot forces them to be. The low point comes when the women pretend badly to be lesbians to distract a good ol’ boy who’s about to call the cops on them. Rather than them being funny because they’re unconvincing, the scene plays as one of a few ill-conceived, pandering moments for which embarrassment for the performers is the main reaction.

Grade: C-

Wild

WILD (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2014)

In WILD Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) sets out to walk the Pacific Crest Trail as a means of self-renewal after hitting bottom in her personal life. Consumed by her immense grief for the death of her 45-year-old mother Bobbi (Laura Dern), Cheryl turned to casual sex with strangers and heroin use, which destroyed her seven-year marriage to Paul (Thomas Sadoski). The thousand-mile solo hike from the Mexican to Canadian border is what she feels she must do to regain control of her life.

Upon her divorce Cheryl assumed the new last name Strayed as though taking on a scarlet letter to announce her waywardness to the world. Her self-punishing streak is also evident as she embarks on her journey in search of inner peace and redemption. She carries an enormous, heavy pack others dub The Monster because of its impractical weight and size. It’s as though her emotional baggage is manifested in the supplies she struggles to tote along. Having brought the wrong fuel for her stove and ill-fitting boots, Cheryl is not fully prepared for the trek. Those who’ve trained and planned extensively about how to complete the trail discover themselves pushed to their limits, and here’s Cheryl making it harder than it needs to be.

Cheryl’s great feat in WILD then turns out to be accepting her history as what has made her who she is now and forgiving herself for the mistakes that have brought her to this personal crossroads. Witherspoon plays Cheryl so that she is exposed but never pitiable. With much of the character’s struggle taking place internally while alone, Witherspoon often doesn’ t have other actors or dialogue to assist with conveying how Cheryl is processing her experiences. While flashbacks clarify what has brought her to these points, WILD relies on Witherspoon to create the character through showing how she’s thinking and reacting. Whether a prospective student body president in ELECTION or an underestimated aspiring lawyer in LEGALLY BLONDE, Witherspoon has excelled at playing strivers. As Cheryl she couples that quality with self-questioning to pursue the answers she requires.

WILD is felt most immediately when it captures the vigilance necessary for a woman traveling by herself. As with the wild animals she encounters, Cheryl must step cautiously around men she comes upon. Some are potential threats while others aren’t, but the need to have her antennas attuned to the situations and her surroundings never dissipates. Her cautiousness in the wilderness and civilization highlight the additional risk and courage involved with her quest.

Rather than revealing Cheryl’s troubled past from the outset, director Jean-Marc Vallée and screenwriter Nick Hornby use flashbacks to dole out pieces of Cheryl’s backstory as she makes her way north. Sometimes it interrupts the sense of solitude important to the trip, but the technique succeeds in allowing us to discover the character as she assesses her life.

Grade: B-

This Means War

THIS MEANS WAR (McG, 2012)

CIA operatives and best friends Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine) discover that they’re both dating the same woman in THIS MEANS WAR, so the competition is on to see who can be the first to win her heart or at least make her break it off with the other.

Both men utilize the full resources of their employer to gain intelligence on indecisive consumer product tester Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) and to thwart the other’s romantic advances.  Lauren’s none the wiser to their spying or their friendship, leaving her free to enjoy being lavished with her suitors’ intense attention.  Encouraging her to string both men along for as long as possible is her married friend Trish (Chelsea Handler), who lives vicariously through Lauren’s suddenly active love life.

Love is a battlefield in THIS MEANS WAR, and the three likable leads are the casualties.  Witherspoon has served her duty logging time in romantic comedies, but she deserves better than one that requires her to play a character who doesn’t seem likely to behave in a duplicitous manner or ignore what her beaus pulled on her.  That she has to follow the advice of a thoroughly unappealing Handler, who never declines an opportunity to make a smutty comment, is all the more indignity.  Hardy is left to look like a noble, wounded service dog as he respectfully appeals for Lauren’s affection, excepting that whole invasion of privacy thing.  Pine settles easily into the lady-killer role, even if he’s a bad boy to be redeemed, at least according to this film’s confused perspective.

Of course, the huge unspoken problem with THIS MEANS WAR is the aggressive eavesdropping on and monitoring of Lauren.  It’s hard to feel a rooting interest for Tuck or FDR when their courtship of her hinges on recording and reviewing her every word and is motivated by the pettiest masculine rivalry.  Never mind that much of what they might learn about Lauren could come from simply asking her about her interests rather than treating her as if she were in a terrorist cell.  That wouldn’t allow director McG to trick out THIS MEANS WAR with a bunch of high tech gadgetry and action scenes.

I often feel like the people making romantic comedies don’t actually like the genre. THIS MEANS WAR never attempts to create an air of romance.  The creepy vibe permeating the love triangle doesn’t allow it all to be played off as a light contrivance either.  Although Pine, Hardy, and Witherspoon are squandered, they offer a game effort at making this dubious material work.   Ultimately, though, THIS MEANS WAR is a pronouncement of aggression on the very audience that wants to see a funny love story.

Grade: C-