A Cat in Paris (Un vie de chat)

A CAT IN PARIS (UN VIE DE CHAT) (Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli, 2010)

By day black cat Dino is the best friend of Zoe, a small child who has lost her voice since the murder of her father.  The companionship Dino provides is ever so important with Zoe’s police superintendent mother Jeanne wrapped up in the hunt for her husband’s killer, Victor Costa.  With the art treasure The Colossus of Nairobi scheduled to be moved, Jeanne expects the gangster to be flushed out.

By night Dino is the accomplice of cat burglar Nico.  No one is the wiser to the cat’s double life in A CAT IN PARIS (UN VIE DE CHAT) until one evening when Zoe slips out her bedroom window to follow him.  During this nighttime adventure she stumbles upon Costa and his hapless underlings.  Nico and Dino come to Zoe’s rescue, but her safety is temporary.  The police, now wise to the burglar’s activities because of the telltale paw prints at the crime scenes, take him away and unwittingly place the girl in the care of one of Costa’s associates.

In two of the last three years Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members have thrown a few curveballs in the Best Animated Feature category by nominating small, largely unknown films alongside the products from industry heavyweights.  A CAT IN PARIS was one of two foreign-language animated features nominated for the 84th Academy Awards.  While the fluid hand-drawn animation provides a pleasant stylistic alternative to the predominance of 3D computer animation in the marketplace, the story leaves a lot to be desired.

Deceased or absent parents are not new to children’s stories, but the casualness with which the information of Zoe’s murdered father is introduced comes across somewhat distressingly.  His death haunts Jeanne, per her nightmarish visions, and has turned Zoe mute.  A CAT IN PARIS doesn’t dwell on these details, but for such a slight film in narrative terms, it carries excessive psychological weight.

A CAT IN PARIS gets bogged down in the middle section with the bumblings and strained jokes of Costa and his goons.  Even at a lean 70 minutes, the film feels padded out and unfocused.  When the low-key vibe works, it’s during Nico’s jazz-accompanied rooftop wanderings and thefts, in part because these scenes bring grace and humor mostly lacking in the other parts.

The titular cat is granted the full range of reactions and is good for some laughs, especially when he goes on the offensive in face-hugger mode.  Meanwhile, the human characters are given simplistic personalities that aren’t helped by the energy-deficient vocal performances.  (The English-language dub of the film adds celebrity voices [Marcia Gay Harden, Anjelica Huston, Matthew Modine] with little to no benefit.)  The thin characterization is especially problematic with Nico and how his storyline develops.  Although he hints at motivations beyond mere self-enriching thievery, A CAT IN PARIS never follows up on the matter and leaves big questions with how his arc resolves.

By the end A CAT IN PARIS feels like a film split in its priorities and satisfactorily achieving none of them.  It misses as quality children’s entertainment through a self-serious, downbeat story without an engaging main character. Nods to film noir detective stories aside, the flimsy story doesn’t give adults much to latch onto either.

Grade: C

Extraterrestrial (Extraterrestre)

EXTRATERRESTRIAL (EXTRATERRESTRE) (Nacho Vigalondo, 2011)

Julio (Julián Villagrán) wakes up in an unfamiliar apartment with little memory of the wild Saturday night he apparently had.  The flat belongs to Julia (Michelle Jenner), who is eager to send him on his way.  As they try to recall the previous evening and each others’ names, Julio and Julia become aware that the world to which they’ve awakened in EXTRATERRESTRIAL (EXTRATERRESTRE) is no longer ordinary.

The downtown Madrid streets are empty.  Neither cell phones nor landlines work. The television is not picking up any signals, and internet access is unavailable.  Then they notice that a massive flying saucer is hovering above the city.  Julio and Julia are able to tune in a radio broadcast to gain some information, although the news that most people have been evacuated and stragglers should remain inside is less than reassuring.

Among those still in the city is Julia’s stalkerish neighbor Ángel (Carlos Areces), who tells them that about thirty spaceships are reported over Spain and untold numbers have appeared all over the globe.  Carlos (Raúl Cimas), Julia’s longtime boyfriend, eventually turns up as well.  He doesn’t suspect Julia and Julio of doing anything improper and believes the story she contrives about spotting Julio on the street and inviting him in.  Carlos is so trusting he insists that Julio stays with them.  Julio and Julia fear that Ángel will tell Carlos the truth about how they know one another, so they convince Carlos that Ángel is really an alien posing as a human.

Although set during an alien occupation of Earth, the science fiction trappings function as a readily apparent misdirect for staging a romantic comedy/drama. Writer-director Nacho Vigalondo’s interest lays not in little green men attacking earthlings but in the disruptive effect an outsider can have on a couple.  The problem is that the interpersonal dynamics aren’t developed sufficiently or invested with high enough stakes for what Vigalondo wants to study to matter.

If EXTRATERRESTRIAL is to explore what might be called Third Wheel Syndrome, Vigalondo needed to bring greater tension to the romantic triangle than what exists.  The mere presence of Julio, the proverbial extraterrestrial, alters the environment, but circumstances have a convenient way of mitigating his culpability. In due time Julia reveals to Julio that she has been with Carlos since she was nineteen and that their relationship was distressed before the spacecrafts appeared. The implication is that the relationship had soured before Julio’s arrival and that he need not feel guilty for whatever is transpiring between him and Julia, regardless of Ángel’s attempts to expose what he views as a tawdry secret.  Meanwhile, Carlos seems oblivious to any potential hanky-panky between Julia and Julio and then, having broken the trio’s agreement never to go anywhere alone, makes it easy for them to ask him to go away.  Despite Vigalondo presenting Julio as the suffering romantic, the emotional burden he is carrying could be shrugged off with little effort. The noble decision facing Julio packs less of a wallop because it feels unnecessary.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL’s combination of romantic comedy and genre movie elements recall SHAUN OF THE DEAD while failing to blend them nearly as well as Edgar Wright’s feature.  Having confined the action to a pocket of the world, Vigalondo’s featherweight film relies on the small but affable cast to be its saving grace, a task they are capable of handling.  With Carlos behaving as though the invasion has drawn out his purpose in life, Cimas is funny kicking into survivalist mode at the expense of all rational thought. As the third wheel supplanted by Julio, Areces adds some amusing moments in his awkward interactions with the others and his bold bids to restore his position, not the least of which involves a tennis ball cannon.  Miguel Noguera gets laughs as a resistance fighter constantly feeling demeaned by the technical ineptitude of those helping him with a UHF broadcast. Villagrán and Jenner are good in their underwritten roles, but the end of life as the characters know it doesn’t feel at risk collectively or individually in EXTRATERRESTRIAL.  Lacking a sense of cataclysmic change in civilization or a couple thus sells short what could have made for a thrilling adventure or a potent metaphor for love.

Grade: C

The Dark Knight Rises

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Christopher Nolan, 2012)

Picking up eight years after Batman (Christian Bale) takes the blame for district attorney Harvey Dent’s misdeeds, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES finds Gotham City free of organized crime.  Batman has vanished from the public eye.  Bruce Wayne has become a recluse in his stately manor.  

When a cat burglar posing as a server steals a pearl necklace and Bruce’s fingerprints from his supposedly uncrackable safe, he’s stirred from his self-imposed seclusion to learn more about and confront the thief named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway).  She means him no harm.  Selina is in desperate need of having her identity cleared from all records and is assured she can get it for providing Bruce’s identifying marks.

Selina warns Bruce that bad times are on the horizon for Gotham City.  Indeed. Terrorist leader Bane (Tom Hardy), a beefy brute whose face is mostly covered with what looks like a high tech ball gag, is assembling a small but loyal underground army to foment a revolution that he promises will return the city to the people.  The time has come for Batman to resume his public service.   

Whether it’s the chronological reversal in MEMENTO, the artful trickery in THE PRESTIGE, or dream layering in INCEPTION, Christopher Nolan’s films boast complicated narrative architecture yet lay out detailed blueprints to follow.  The director, who co-wrote THE DARK KNIGHT RISES with brother Jonathan Nolan, is less successful navigating the way through his final Batman trilogy entry.  Perhaps all of the dots in the first two films connect in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, but grasping the totality of Nolan’s vision is a challenge short of rewatching BATMAN BEGINS, which receives numerous key callbacks.  As these comic book films become more intertwined, whether in their own dense mythology or across a series of franchise movies, the point has been reached where it would be helpful to get a footnote-intensive fact sheet along with the ticket.   

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES isn’t left wanting for ideas and artistic relevance to current events.  The 2008 financial crisis, Occupy Wall Street, government-sponsored torture, tribunals, the surveillance state, and the war on terror are referenced and mirrored in the film’s reality, but these subjects are commented on in such a muddled manner that their inclusions primarily amount to buzzword-dropping rather than cogent commentary. Post-9/11 conflicts are addressed most thoroughly, if unexceptionally.  Where prior Nolan films have resembled elegant mathematical proofs, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES looks like trial-and-error calculations scribbled on a scratch pad.  

Nolan makes the serious miscalculation of hiding the most expressive part of the villain’s face.  Whoever was following Heath Ledger’s Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT was liable to compare poorly among Batman nemeses, but Hardy, limited to his eyes, muscular torso, and voice, doesn’t have a chance to engage in a fair fight.

Hathaway’s Catwoman fares better in that she contributes a welcome dash of humor. As butler Alfred, Michael Caine’s watchful concern for Bruce brings the depth of feeling to an emotionally chilly film.  The opening sequence aboard a CIA extraction flight gone wrong as it attempts to leave Uzbekistan delivers a flashy action setpiece that the remainder of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, encumbered with scenes of talky exposition, fails to match.  

Shortcomings and all, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES remains a fascinating film, albeit one that suffers from an excess of ambition and deficiency in unifying its objectives with clarity.  Nolan and editor Lee Smith keep the proceedings moving even when it seems as though the film is bogged down in yet another plot payload transfer.  THE DARK KNIGHT RISES builds to a rousing concluding act without the safety net typically assumed with franchise pictures.  Considering its narrative and tonal risks, it’s just disappointing for a filmmaker of Nolan’s caliber to conclude the trilogy with what plays like a bloated middle installment.
 
Grade: C+

Ice Age: Continental Drift

ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT (Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier, 2012)

Woolly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), sabre-toothed tiger Diego (Denis Leary), and sloths Sid (John Leguizamo), and Granny (Wanda Sykes) embark on an epic journey to return to the herd when Pangaea’s break-up separates them from their makeshift family. ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT sets the ragtag gang on a hunk of ice and sends them out to sea.

After surviving a violent storm, Manny and friends cross paths with an iceberg fashioned into a ship, but rather than this encounter leading to their rescue, it creates another set of problems.  Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), an ape so named for what he likes to do with his claws, demands they join his band of pirates or face the consequences.

Back on the mainland, Manny’s teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) wrestles with peer pressure.  She has a crush on Ethan (Drake) and wants to hang out with the cool crowd, but doing so means rejecting her molehog friend Louis (Josh Gad) and not being true to who she really is.

Directors Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier keep ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT moving at a steady clip and the various objects comin’ at ya for 3D viewers.  The action and jokes zip by with the speed of processors rendering the digital animation files.  The fourth film in the ICE AGE series is lighter in tone from the past couple entries and busy enough to give the impression that all this activity is a good time.  All that positive energy can’t distract from the fact that the filmmakers are treading water, though.  It’s a hollow simulation of what fun for the whole family looks and sounds like.

Neither the main characters nor the celebrity voice work have been distinguished in the ICE AGE films.  That’s no different this time around, but two newcomers liven things up a bit.  The resonance in Dinklage’s voice makes the villain especially fearsome.  Sykes adds much-needed looniness by imbuing Sid’s grandmother with the kind of sass projected onto the honey badger in internet memes.  

As in previous ICE AGE installments, the funniest parts of CONTINENTAL DRIFT belong to the non-speaking sabre-toothed squirrel Scrat.  Free from having to impart lessons about the importance of family or being true to oneself, Scrat can scamper about on his Sisyphean effort to get those elusive acorns.  While Scrat’s interstitial scenes are beginning to get stale, they still have the cartoon silliness and cleverness found wanting in the main story.

Grade: C

Take This Waltz

TAKE THIS WALTZ (Sarah Polley, 2011)

28-year-old freelance writer Margot (Michelle Williams) is happily married in TAKE THIS WALTZ, or so she’s always thought until meeting Daniel (Luke Kirby) while on an assignment in Nova Scotia.  They become briefly acquainted when he embarrasses her a little at a tourist attraction and then encounter each other again on a return flight to Toronto.  While sharing a cab on their ways home, they discover that he lives a couple doors down the street from her, although she seemingly puts an end to their flirty interactions by informing him that she has a husband.

Margot and her cookbook-writing spouse Lou (Seth Rogen) have been married for five years and appear to be very much in love.  Nevertheless, Margot is increasingly preoccupied with her neighbor and takes extra efforts to see him leaving his place and to bump into him on the street.  Daniel welcomes Margot’s interest.  He calls her out on her actions but otherwise slow plays his seduction, letting her cozy up to him.  Daniel also makes it clear he’s available to her whenever she’s ready.  Regardless of if Margot will ever physically surrender to him, she is committing emotional infidelity.  She knows it isn’t right, yet she doesn’t want to give it up either.

Early on Margot confesses to Daniel that she is afraid of wondering if she’ll miss something.  Within the context of their conversation she’s talking about connecting flights, but her behavior indicates that her fear is rooted in insecurity in her long-term choices.  After the newness wears off anything, such as her marriage, Margot requires constant reassurance that she possesses what she wants.  She doesn’t hide her confusion--the vaguely heart-shaped birthmark on her left shoulder suggests she displays her feelings for all to see--but she fails to confront the questions troubling her. Margot is a selfish character, yet Williams’ marvelous performance generates empathy for her even as she potentially destroys a solid relationship.  The inner struggle registers on her face like wind across the water.  

TAKE THIS WALTZ vibrates with the anticipation and thrill of temptation.  In the film’s sexiest scene, Margot and Daniel are having drinks when she asks him to detail what he would do to her if they were to consummate their relationship.  They laugh off his vivid descriptions when he’s finished, but this pivotal moment confirms that something greater than a lightly considered fantasy exists between them.  That this adultery takes part in words rather than deeds cuts to the crux of Margot’s dilemma.  She is chasing the ideal of something out there that might be better without realizing how doing so is ruining an already good thing she owns.

Writer-director Sarah Polley lingers on the intimate communication between spouses, friends, and would-be lovers to fill in the broader views of the relationships.  The genuine affection between Margot and Lou comes through in their silly private moments and the most violently expressed sweet nothings since PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE.  The between-the-lines advice Margot is given by her alcoholic sister-in-law Geraldine (Sarah Silverman) addresses suspicions while avoiding accusations.  Polley excels at conveying who these people are through observation rather than exposition and sticks to that style by favoring low-key resolutions.  The emotional climax is a model of restraint, especially since it’s where other films typically deploy fireworks.  This tempered approach rings true to the individuals Williams and Rogen have fleshed out..

Having taken its title from a Leonard Cohen song, TAKE THIS WALTZ is dedicated to providing a serious look at what can lead to marital unfaithfulness.  Unlike the singer’s work, the film is afflicted with a case of being overly precious.  The amount of time devoted to Margot and Lou’s lovey-dovey play can be a bit much.  Margot pretends to have mobility issues at the airport so she can be pushed around in a wheelchair to make the connecting flights she fears missing.  Somehow Daniel earns a living as a rickshaw driver in addition to being a secret artist in his spare time.  It’s no single element that leads to twee overload but the entirety of them.  

As she demonstrated in her debut feature AWAY FROM HER and proves again with TAKE THIS WALTZ, Polley has a knack for writing about mature subjects and coaxing natural performances, which is what makes the excessive quirkiness here somewhat exasperating.  Even with it, TAKE THIS WALTZ is an achingly beautiful film in the longing its characters express and the sun-dappled Toronto cinematographer Luc Montpellier captures.

Grade: B

Goon

GOON (Michael Dowse, 2011)

A hockey team’s enforcer usually ranks among the most popular players with fans because they love the guy who pounds on opponents and isn’t afraid to leave some of his blood on the ice.  Other team sports feature their share of violent contact, but hockey stands alone in accepting fisticuffs among players as part of the game.  GOON, based on the true story of designated tough guy Doug “The Hammer” Smith, suggests that being a good fighter sometimes can be enough to make a living in hockey.  

Massachusetts bouncer Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) never aspired to lace up the skates.  In fact, he can barely stay upright on them, but that doesn’t matter to the coach who spots him one night at the rink.  Doug is attending a minor league game when a shouting match with a player in the penalty box leads to a scuffle in the stands.  Doug absorbs the hits and lays out the furious member of the visiting team.  With those well-landed blows, Doug punches his ticket for a professional hockey career.  

Doug is of little use other than as a bruiser, but his singular talent attracts the affection of the fans and the interest of a farm team in Halifax.  The organization wants a protector for its high draft pick Xavier LaFlamme (Marc-André Grondin).  Since returning from a brutal hit, the offensive wunderkind is wary on the ice and out of control off it.  

Doug has finally found his calling, but all is not perfect.  He becomes a popular guy in his new club’s locker room but is resented by Xavier.  His brother Ira (David Paetkau) and best friend Pat (Jay Baruchel) support his newfound success, but his parents (Eugene Levy and Ellen David) express disdain for Doug being celebrated for violent behavior.  He meets and falls for a Eva (Alison Pill), a pretty Canadian local who reluctantly informs him after they’ve made out that she has a boyfriend.     

Unlike most sports movies, which tend to be overly reverent about their subjects, GOON puts on no airs.  The action on the ice isn’t a metaphor for life, and the players aren’t noble warriors.  Being a hockey player is just a job, albeit one that can benefit those like Doug who excel at beating the tar out of others.  The film’s sense of humor is just as blunt.  Liberally peppered with profanities and comedic hockey-related violence, GOON finds plenty to laugh at in the coarse words and antics of athletes.

Best known as Stifler in the AMERICAN PIE films, Scott has made his name playing insincere and overbearing characters.  GOON’s Doug could have easily come from the same mold, but in an inspired choice, Scott represents the protagonist as a nice, sweet guy despite his thuggish conduct on the ice.  Even at his most dim-witted, Doug’s innate sensitivity shines through, like when he asks an upset Eva if she just watched inspirational football film RUDY.  The contrast in his personality can be most amusing in his polite proposals to adversaries to drop gloves.  The professional rough-houser’s pride in having found his role is seen in the respect he grants legendary goon Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber) and the confusion and disappointment from his parents disapproval.  Doug displays everything he thinks and feels on the surface, and Scott does solid work being funny and giving Doug emotional complexity.        

While GOON hails the underdog, it doesn’t oversell Doug’s abilities.  Take away his enforcer assignment and his contribution on the ice vanishes.  Essentially he’s a boxer on skates.  In seeing these players for what they are and avoiding sentimentality, GOON earns bigger laughs and likely provides a truer glimpse inside the sport than the reporters and screenwriters whose flowery prose tries to make these competitors respectable.    

Grade: B-

That's My Boy

THAT’S MY BOY (Sean Anders, 2012)

At this point it’s tempting to wonder if Adam Sandler is screwing with us.  He’s made plenty of unfunny, mean-spirited, juvenile films that the majority of critics have thrashed. In a filmography overflowing with bad reviews, his last effort, JACK AND JILL, could be his most panned.  (Although I am a consistent detractor, I actually thought it was halfway decent by his low standards.) With THAT’S MY BOY it’s as though he’s taken up the gauntlet to be as terrible as many think he is.

Like many boys on the cusp of adolescence, seventh grader Donny Berger (Justin Weaver) has a crush on one of his instructors.  He lusts for his young, pretty math teacher Mary McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino) and goes out of his way to flirt with her. The difference in Donny’s situation is that the educator of his affection is similarly smitten.  Donny and Mary have sex at various spots around the school until they’re discovered in flagrante delicto at a building-wide assembly.

Scoring with the teacher earns the hearty respect and approval of male classmates and faculty members.  It even makes him a national celebrity.  The law, however, takes a different view of the matter.  Mary, who is pregnant with Donny’s son, receives a lengthy prison sentence for the underage affair.  Donny is given full custody and cashes in on his fame by publishing a book and selling the TV movie rights to his story.

The adult Donny (Sandler) is adrift trying to relive his glory years.  He tools around town in a rusty old Fiero with Rush’s starman logo on the hood and wiles away his days drinking, gambling, and hanging out at a strip club.  His son, who he named Han Solo, left home upon turning eighteen and has avoided staying in contact.  

Donny is desperate to end their estrangement when he is informed he owes the IRS $43,000.  The only way he can raise the money quickly enough and avoid jail himself is to arrange a prison reunion with his boy and Mary (Susan Sarandon) for a television talk show.  With a bit of luck he learns that Han Solo is now a hedge fund manager named Todd (Andy Samberg).  He’s at his boss’s oceanfront home on Cape Cod preparing for his wedding to Jamie (Leighton Meester) when Donny crashes the festivities posing as Todd’s best friend.  Rather than being upfront with Todd about his dilemma, a tactic likely doomed to failure, Donny tries to persuade him to visit his mother with a story of her being deathly ill.

There’s no getting around the fact that THAT’S MY BOY is a comedy hinging on how cool and hilarious statutory rape is.  Young Donny is to be admired for fulfilling the schoolboy fantasy that’s the stuff of a Van Halen video.  High five, bro!  The film takes every opportunity to dismiss objections because Donny doesn’t feel he was abused and professes his love for her from 1984 through the present day.  The easy out would have been to make Donny a high school senior and thus minimize the skeeviness of this whole ordeal.  That it didn’t is kind of stunning.  

Obviously there’s a cultural double standard at work here.  If the genders were reversed, the likelihood is virtually nil that this scenario would be played for laughs and winking endorsements. That’s not to suggest the topic is off-limits in comedy but that it would take someone exercising more than locker room outrageousness.  The Farrelly brothers are better attuned to breaking taboos while retaining humanity, and I could envision Lars von Trier trying to pull off something like this with pitch-black humor.

Or maybe John Waters should have been given a swing at THAT’S MY BOY.  The film toys with transgressive humor and celebrating sketchy people on the margins.  It positions Donny as the coolest guy around.  Everyone but super-lame Todd loves his Masshole-accented, raging alcoholic dad.  Good grief, THAT’S MY BOY is somewhat of a comedic redemption for entertainment industry has-beens Vanilla Ice and Todd Bridges, who turn in surprisingly funny supporting performances.  

Of course, Sandler isn’t bold enough to let his character and the film be as unrepentantly nasty as they want to be.  How could he allow it when THAT’S MY BOY gives in to his sickly sweet sentimental streak and testifies to how awesome he is?  THAT’S MY BOY amplifies the raunch in Sandler’s usual routine, and the misogyny is as pronounced as ever in his films.  (Give credit to Meester for going above and beyond the call of duty in a monstrously written role.)  It just doesn’t have the conviction to own up to its ugliness without ample reminders that its star is a misunderstood sweetheart.

Director Sean Anders brings a level of formal competence that Sandler’s Happy Madison productions often lack.  The comedian seems more energized on screen this time around.  Chances are THAT’S MY BOY isn’t a contemptuous stunt to see what Sandler can get away with and what audiences will accept; it just seems like one.

Grade: D-  

On the occasion of 400 episodes

I’m not certain of the exact date, but I’m guessing it was March 18 or 19, 1997 (or 11th or 12th) when my co-producer and co-host Paul Markoff and I recorded our first episode of NOW PLAYING.  Improbably enough the show began with an hour-long edition mostly dedicated to Academy Awards discussion.  At the end we provided token Top 10 lists for 1996, although it’s safe to say that neither of us had seen anywhere close to the number of films we view now when taking a year’s best offerings into account.

Fifteen years later we’re still here and have shot more than 400 episodes.  (The milestone program was shot March 8th.  Episode #407 tapes Wednesday.)  Honestly, it’s hard to believe.  I didn’t have any formal training in film appreciation and evaluation when I started.  I still don’t, as far as that goes, although the thousands of movies I’ve seen in the course of doing this program should compensate for my lack of academic credentials regarding the art of the cinema.  I’d never produced an episode of television, let alone created a TV show from whole cloth.  The seed for NOW PLAYING began as a friendly discussion under football bleachers during pre-production down time before a high school game.  Look at what it is now:  more than 200 hours of recorded television.

After beginning with what amounted to a special edition episode, one that we since have split into two annual shows (an Academy Awards preview and the Best and Worst of the previous year), we settled into a format not terribly different from what you see now.  It goes without saying, although I’ll state it anyway, that the obvious template and influence is SISKEL & EBERT.  

On our first regular 30-minute show we discussed just four films: THE SAINT, DOUBLE TEAM, INVENTING THE ABBOTTS, and KOLYA (KOLJA).  I suspect I would no longer stand by some, if not all, of the grades I dropped on those films (THE SAINT: B; DOUBLE TEAM: D+; INVENTING THE ABBOTTS: C-; KOLYA: A+).  I had a lot to learn.

For instance, having already talked in length about the films before the taping, we discovered that we didn’t have as much to say as we might if we hadn’t already said our pieces off camera.  For a few years, we tried to go onto the set not having talked at all about our reactions to or grades for the films.  At some point we abandoned the idealistic but ultimately silly notion that talking about the to-be-reviewed movies prior to taping was detrimental to NOW PLAYING.

Through the years there have been tweaks to the biweekly program, such as the inclusion of short commentary pieces on film-related topics, endorsed video picks set aside at the local library, and the rare news package, like a report on Cinerama screenings at Dayton’s New Neon Movies, or interviews with filmmakers who visit Columbus.  What started as four films reviewed per show ballooned to eight (a crazy amount of content for a half-hour, now that I think about it) and currently stands at five most of the time.

I’ve been lucky enough to work on the show as part of my fulltime job.  (Contrary to what some may believe, the movie review show does not account for the primary portion of the job.)  I know how busy it keeps me, so I can only imagine how much time it must take out of Paul’s limited free time.  Still, despite seeing more bad films than I’d like to count and spending more hours than I care to calculate, doing the show continues to be worth it, even when I’m pressing near the deadline to finish writing what I must get into the script and TelePrompter.  I’m fortunate to have the freedom to do with NOW PLAYING as I please and get it into people’s homes through the cable system and, within the last year couple years, the internet.  While Paul and I are responsible for the show’s content, it couldn’t happen without the students and co-workers who have manned the crews the four hundred-plus times we’ve sat down to record another episode.

When we shot the first episode I couldn’t have expected NOW PLAYING would last this long.  Will it be in production another fifteen years?  Who knows?  Whether or not the show continues for whatever arbitrary amount of time you want to name, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to indulge my love for the movies.  

Thanks to those who let NOW PLAYING get on TV in the first place.  Thanks to those who have helped and continue to assist with recording new shows.  Thanks most of all to my co-host, a great friend who makes doing the show possible.  

Rock of Ages

ROCK OF AGES (Adam Shankman, 2012)

When you’re young, the kind of music and particular bands you like can play a big role in asserting your identity.  Expressing a preference for this group and that genre is not merely the method of discovering and sharing your tastes but making a statement about Who You Are.  It’s about deciding what is cool and, perhaps just as critically, what isn’t. Time, though, has a way of breaking down the barriers erected in the battle lines.  Sure, personal tastes may change, but nostalgia can exert its powerful influence to the point that solo artists and groups once banished to the land of the uncool are reevaluated and unconditionally accepted.

I cast my lot with the modern rock/alternative bands as I went through high school and college, and I remember eventually becoming dismissive of the acts that dominated mainstream rock radio despite having listened to those stations and liking many of the songs they played.  I considered “arena rock” to be a handy put-down for popular bands of the 1970s and ‘80s.  I didn’t own albums by the artists whose music is featured in ROCK OF AGES, yet within the last year I’ve found myself buying some of their greatest hits collections.  I no longer have a use for putting up a front regarding what I like, whether it’s perceived as being cool or not, and object to the concept of guilty pleasures. If that means admitting to enjoying some hits by Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Journey, and Scorpions, so be it.  (OK, fine, I’m still struggling to cop to appreciating some Poison tunes.)

What’s cool and what’s not intersect in the jukebox musical turned feature film ROCK OF AGES.  ‘80s hard rock and hair metal with a pop sensibility and Broadway appear to be a most unnatural pairing, if not diametrically opposed.  (It seems doubtful my high school classmates wearing LES MISÉRABLES t-shirts also rocked out to Guns N’ Roses’ APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION and vice versa.)  However, ROCK OF AGES finds common ground in the emphasis on showmanship and brings fist-pumping energy to rockers and power ballads functioning as showtunes.

The skeleton of a plot flits among three stories set in 1987.  In the foreground are two young lovers with mutual aspirations of becoming professional singers.  Sherrie (Julianne Hough) leaves Tulsa, Oklahoma for Hollywood with big dreams and stars in her eyes.  Although she’s mugged shortly after arriving on The Strip, Drew (Diego Boneta) comes to her aid and helps get her a waitressing job at his workplace, the legendary nightclub The Bourbon Room. 

Meanwhile, The Bourbon Room’s owner Dennis (Alec Baldwin) and his trusted assistant Lonny (Russell Brand) fret over the bar’s financial problems.  Dennis owes considerable back taxes.  The crusading Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones), wife of Los Angeles mayor Mike Whitmore (Bryan Cranston), identifies The Bourbon Room’s weakness as a means of shutting down a business she despises and improving her husband’s standing with major developers in an election year.

Dennis is counting on the revenue from the final performance by Arsenal to save his club, but he and the packed house wait for the scheduled concert at the whims of erratic front man and soon-to-be solo artist Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise).  Paul Gill (Paul Giamatti), Stacee’s manager, has his hands full with a star who’s lost in a haze of groupies and scotch and keeps a baboon in his posse.  Controlling Stacee’s image becomes more difficult when Rolling Stone reporter Constance Sack (Malin Akerman) conducts an interview with the disillusioned and possibly delusional rocker.

What carries the scent of danger in pop culture, at least to impressionable young listeners,  gradually gets commodified and repackaged for safe consumption.  In the case of bands whose music is featured in the film, think Twisted Sister, once a target of the Parents Music Resource Center, rather than Foreigner, Quarterflash, or, well, anyone else.  So it goes with the ROCK OF AGES songbook.  The sweaty soundtrack blaring from Camaros and the boomboxes at construction sites is made even slicker and more respectable for theatergoers visiting the stage and screen.  (Having read a brief overview of the play, some rougher plot points have also been altered and smoothed in the adaptation to film.)  The sex and suggestiveness is PG-13 friendly.  The studded leather wristbands and jackets are less signifiers of rebellion than bygone fashion statements.
 
In other words ROCK OF AGES filters rock and roll through AMERICAN IDOL and SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE.  Instead of the latest batch of unknown hopefuls from across rural, suburban, and urban America belting out the hits and strutting their stuff, up-and-comers and certified stars take their turns at glorified karaoke accompanied by a few steps.  Director Adam Shankman and choreographer Mia Michaels, both of whom have served as SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE judges and choreographers, keep things safely within the actors’ ranges.  This can translate to editing of song performances that hack them to pieces, but the democratic spirit of the venture helps cover for the sometimes excessive division of labor.  

I’ll grant that what I’m describing likely sounds excruciating to some reading this, and I’ll make no claim that this approximates great cinema. Rather than comparing it to other movies, ROCK OF AGES most closely resembles the concession stand’s box of nachos slathered in plasticky melted cheese.  Of course it’s junk.  Still, ROCK OF AGES is so unpretentious about its aims and the performers are so game for what they surely knew would be this ridiculous that it’s hard to resist entirely.  

Cruise wears a devil’s head with protruding tongue codpiece that ranks among the most absurd accessories anyone’s ever worn.  He plays Stacee Jaxx with much darker tones than this glossy film is prepared to handle, yet he’s fascinating in embodying a superstar so removed from society that the ordinary rules of behavior are seemingly revoked.  In his single scene playing a Rolling Stone receptionist, T.J. Miller is very funny mirroring the audience’s amusement at how weird this film and Cruise’s character can be. Akerman demonstrates a fearless willingness to do anything for a laugh.

Defensible or not, the album-oriented rock standards are often a lot of fun to hear as they advance the meager plot.  In one of the funniest scenes REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” is deployed to advance a relationship.  Mary J. Blige, who plays strip club owner Justice Charlier, tears through “Any Way You Want It”.  Overall the songs used feature strong melodies and are often creatively, if obviously, joined, such as when protesting churchgoers and rock fans alternate between “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “We Built This City”.  In that respect this jukebox musical might be more accurately labeled a cafeteria musical in that it takes power chords, verses, and choruses from various songs to build medleys instead of leaving the originals intact.  Using such judicious selectivity is probably the best way to approach ROCK OF AGES too.  Take what’s pleasurable and never mind the rest.    
 
Grade: B-

Gorp

GORP (Joseph Ruben, 1980)

Gorp, better known as trail mix, contains a little bit of everything to provide an energy boost and maintain it.  The raunchy camp comedy GORP, the last film released by American International Pictures, features almost all of the ingredients in Samuel Z. Arkoff’s formula but is empty in cinematic nutritional value.

GORP transplants ANIMAL HOUSE to a Jewish summer camp that seems incredibly overstaffed, especially with penny-pinching Wallman (David Huddleston) overseeing its operation.  He’s hired enough college men as waiters to the pre-teen campers that he could staff a major city hotel’s ballroom.  Perhaps that’s why he’s constantly seeking ways to reclaim their wages through fines.

The guys have no responsibilities beyond hustling food to the kids at designated mealtimes, so there’s plenty of trouble for them to find at Camp Oskemo.  The senior waiters, who have the advantage of having the military-obsessed and heavily stockpiled Mad Grossman (Dennis Quaid) on their side, plot full-scale battle against the junior waiters.  They gamble with the eccentric kitchen staff, occasionally wander into town to hang out at a biker gang’s bar, and pull pranks on Wallman.

The coeds, who serve as Counselors-in-Training, are the biggest distractions of all. Kavell (Michael Lembeck) and Bergman (Philip Casnoff) compete to be the first to get with the virtuous Vicki (Lisa Shure).  Not that it deters them, but she rejects their advances as definitively as possible.  They also mix it up with the sexually adventurous Evie (Fran Drescher), who may be more than they can handle.  In one of her first movie appearances, Rosanna Arquette shows up as a wealthy girl who angers her parents by falling for a Puerto Rican boy.

The characters in GORP want to stick it to each other in a variety of ways, if you catch my drift, but they reserve the most harmful jabs for Huddleston as a proto-Big Lebowski. Whether it’s getting barnyard animals to soil his bedroom or ruining Parents’ Weekend by putting speed in the food and switching out the evening’s entertainment with a black-and-white stag film, the youth never let The Man forget who’s really running the show.

Directed by Joseph Ruben, GORP is technically competent and energetically paced and performed, which is a nice way of saying this is a bad movie whose faults are ordinary. There’s no plot to speak of, just loosely connected scenes of manic shenanigans. The characters never become desirable audience surrogates.  (In an attempt to win a bet with Evie, who’s tasked to seduce the rabbi, Kavell and Bergman attempt to sedate and rape the fat nurse, although the matter is never characterized in such severe terminology.)  Simply put, nothing about GORP is funny, not the swishy chef’s assistant, requisite food fight, or jokes about pimple-popping and masturbation.  Chances are everything seen here has been done better before, even in duds.

Grade: F

Revenge of the Nerds

REVENGE OF THE NERDS (Jeff Kanew, 1984)

The eternal war between the athletically and academically inclined rages on in REVENGE OF THE NERDS with jocks asserting their superiority until the brainiacs fight back.  The unlikely leaders in this turn of events are entering freshmen Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowell (Anthony Edwards), best friends who are eager to get started at Adams College.  The school’s computer science program is among the best in the nation, and the female-to-male enrollment ratio holds the promise that they might engage in some extracurricular studying of anatomy as well.

Lewis and Gilbert’s initial enthusiasm is doused when the upperclassmen of Alpha Beta accidentally burn their own house to the ground and claim the freshmen dormitory as their new home.  The administration addresses the problem by allowing homeless new students to join fraternities and move into Greek housing.  Unfortunately Lewis, Gilbert, and a handful of other social outcasts--violinist Arnold Poindexter (Timothy Busfield); nose-picking, self-declared rebel Dudley “Booger” Dawson (Curtis Armstrong); openly gay Lamar Latrell (Larry B. Scott); Japanese student Toshiro Takashi (Brian Tochi); and twelve-year-old Harold Wormser (Andrew Cassesse)-- fail to be accepted anywhere and must continue to be lodged in half of the gymnasium.  

Lewis’s relentless optimism and resourcefulness leads them to a battered house available for rent.  They tidy it up, and all seems well except they continue to be harassed.  Campus security and the Greek Council, led by one of their main Alpha Beta tormentors Stan Gable (Ted McGinley), refuse to intervene since they are not an officially recognized group.   

Using a close reading of a historically African-American fraternity’s bylaws, they secure probationary approval to become a chapter of Lambda Lambda Lambda, although it remains to be seen if they’ll muster the support to make it permanent.  Finally, it looks like they’ve found their niche, but the Alpha Betas and women of Pi Delta Pi humiliate them yet again.  Enough is enough.  The nerds must have revenge.

REVENGE OF THE NERDS has some laughs at the expense of its awkward heroes but typically holds them in high regard, especially in comparison to the brutes and snobs who pick on them.  While the film trots out some unflattering stereotypes--Lamar is a floppy-wristed queen, and Toshiro substitutes his l’s and r’s--the tone is not exactly mean-spirited.  The fellow nerds accept one another unconditionally regardless of what makes each of them social pariahs.  For example, Lamar’s friends develop a javelin that compensates for his limp wrists.  The redesigned equipment lets him excel in one of the Greek homecoming games essential to the Tri-Lambdas survival.  This hardly qualifies Lamar as an enlightened or respectful portrayal of a homosexual, yet overall the film doesn’t make him a target of derision.  It’s not a lot, but it’ll do in this context.

Surprisingly, the nerds perpetuate a nasty streak of behavior toward women that violates the film’s general live-and-let-live attitude, and it stains what is otherwise intended as raunchy but lighthearted fun.  Revenge on Pi Delta Pi comes in the guise of a panty raid that distracts from the nerds rigging the sorority’s bathrooms with multiple cameras that transmit live feeds back to the Tri-Lambs.  Even allowing that a film such as REVENGE OF THE NERDS exists for a little titillation, the scenes of the Lambda Lambda Lambda guys sitting in their living room watching for hours as the women undress and bathe are very tawdry.  From the leering comments they make to the pornographic-like presentation of the nude women, the cruelness underlying these moments exceeds causing mere embarrassment over being seen naked.  In fact, most of the women are unaware they’ve had their privacy invaded.

That’s not the worst of it.  Lewis fixates on head Pi, and Stan’s girlfriend, Betty Childs (Julie Montgomery) and deceives her into having sex with him when she believes he’s her boyfriend.  A point of view shot behind his mask reads more like a horror film stalker sizing up his prey even though it’s intended to play up the supposed hilarity of the situation.  Rather than being horrified upon discovering what has transpired between them (or to her), Betty praises Lewis’s lovemaking skills.  Never mind that as this is going on his brothers are doing brisk business at a booth selling whipped cream pies on plates bearing a topless photograph of her.  Incredibly, Betty tosses aside her brawny lad for some geek love in the end.  REVENGE OF THE NERDS laughs off these shenanigans as boys just being boys, but it’s far too creepy to be considered amusing in the least.

Setting aside the unsavory elements, REVENGE OF THE NERDS is dumb entertainment executed in mediocre fashion.  Rather than getting familiar with the seven nerd protagonists, none of whom are drawn beyond caricatures, the narrative keeps an intense focus on the predestined outcome in the competition between Alphas and Lambdas.  The lone bright spot in their battle for control of the Greek Council features the nerds offering a rare display of ingenuity as they impress with their musical talents. The rest of the time it’s a series of tame, thinly conceived gags.  The belching contest, seemingly a centerpoint for a film like this, is comprised of two combatants letting it rip once each.  How far mainstream Hollywood movies have come since 1984.

Grade: C-

(Side note:  Although not of any consequence to the film, keep an eye out for John Goodman, in one of his first movie roles, as the football coach and James Cromwell, billed as Jamie, as Lewis’s equally nerdy dad.)

Rampart

RAMPART (Oren Moverman, 2011)

With the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division already mired in scandal, the actions of 24-year veteran officer Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) add more black marks on a station noted for its corruption.  Set in 1999, approximately a year after a real-life investigative task force was formed to scrutinize the division, RAMPART follows Dave as he abuses his power and refuses to adapt to changing times.

Twelve years earlier he was suspected of killing an alleged serial date rapist.  While no charges against him stuck, the nickname Date Rape Dave did.  He employs highly questionable but effective methods to fight crime and doesn’t believe his behavior leaves anything to apologize for.  

One day while on patrol a civilian driver plows into Dave’s car.  The offender flees when Dave confronts him.  Dave chases him down and delivers an excessive beating that a bystander catches on tape.  Ever so quick to mount a defense, Dave claims he was responding to being assaulted with a deadly weapon.  Whether he or anyone of his superiors really believes this justification is likely irrelevant.  Dave will continue to operate as usual until he no longer carries a badge.  With pressure increasing on the LAPD to get rogue cops under control, that time may arrive sooner than he thinks.

Director/co-writer Oren Moverman and co-writer James Ellroy examine the corrupt law enforcement culture by occupying the headspace of a damaged officer on a downward spiral.  Although the character study doesn’t leave Dave’s side, the narrative style is rarely direct.  Instead, like police work, RAMPART requires paying attention to details and inferring the scale of the division’s scandal and Dave’s rocky personal life from careful viewing and honing in on stray dialogue tidbits.  The oblique storytelling technique rewards with the economical way it fills in the background without piling on excessive backstory or psychological portraiture, but it can confuse by needlessly obscuring relevant information.

While Moverman wishes to keep character and plot specifics inconspicuous, he tends to use the camera in a distracting manner.  Showy motion, like a 360-degree revolving camera during a meeting with district attorney Bill Blago (Steve Buscemi), and unconventional angles reveal a director trying too hard.  Since Dave believes the department has set up and targeted him to remove focus from their problems, Moverman wants to convey paranoia and uncertainty through his framings and movements.  More often than not he attracts undue awareness of what the camera is doing.

Ultimately RAMPART is Harrelson’s showcase, and he takes full advantage of fleshing out a complex role.  Harrelson shows Dave as being good at his job, in large part because of his misanthropy and cleverness.  He wears disdain and smarts like other weapons on his belt, which gives him an unpredictable nature that intimidates colleagues and criminals alike. Those qualities are just as likely to get him in trouble, especially when he’s off duty.  He interrogates eldest daughter Helen (Brie Larson) about a confrontational art project and thus puts more of a chill in an already cool relationship.  In good cop mode he propositions his ex-wives, sisters Barbara (Cynthia Nixon) and Catherine (Anne Heche), but lacks sincerity.  Fueled by cigarettes, pills, and booze--others regularly remark about how he never eats--Dave is an instant gratification machine unaware of increasing malfunctions.  Harrelson plays him not as a monster but a self-destructive relic.  Either way, the damage is done.

Grade: B-

Bernie

BERNIE (Richard Linklater, 2011)

Assistant funeral director Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), subject of the true-crime comedy BERNIE, is one of the most popular people in the small east Texas town of Carthage.  He’s good at his job and goes beyond the call of duty in following up with new widows to see that they’re getting along OK.  He’s active in church, community theater, and civic organizations.  He’s generous in giving time, money, and knowledge to those requiring help.  

Bernie is so beloved that townsfolk refuse to believe he’s guilty of shooting Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) four times in the back, storing her corpse in a deep freeze, and lying about her whereabouts for months even after he confesses.  If he did do it, she probably had it coming anyway.  Despite the evidence against Bernie, district attorney Danny Buck Davidson (Matthew McConaughey) is at a loss how he can get a conviction.

Why would the local populace consider Bernie blameless?  In addition to being the richest woman in town, Marjorie was probably the most disliked.  She had not been on speaking terms for a long time with a sister who lived in Carthage.  She communicated with her son on rare occasions.  People in the area had the impression that she thought she was better than everyone else.
       
Bernie and Marjorie were already the talk of the town before the 81-year-old widow’s death at her 39-year-old companion’s hands.  Although he was no stranger to visiting women who’d lost their husbands, Bernie showed extra attention to Marjorie.  She repaid him with gifts far more lavish than anyone thought her capable of giving.  Gossips speculated on who was seducing who.  Before long Bernie and Marjorie were going on trips to New York City and international destinations.  She gave him access to her finances and made him the sole heir to her vast estate.  For all of this Bernie was subject to Marjorie’s beck and call.

With facts that are stranger than fiction and a story surrounding a murder that is often played as dark comedy, BERNIE exists somewhere between an Errol Morris documentary and FARGO.  In lesser hands the resulting film might be terribly offensive, but director Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Skip Hollandsworth, walks a fine line that observes the absurdity around the crime without making light of its consequences.  Nothing’s funny about an old woman getting killed.  Plenty is about the community that gleefully speculates about what happened but willfully ignores what is known.

Linklater mixes the fictionalized recreation of events with documentary-like interviews of town residents to create a version of the story through their eyes.  Whether it’s their homespun stereotyping of parts of the state or judgments leapt to from rumors about personal actions, their perception of reality is so ingrained that nothing can persuade them that the truth is otherwise.  Since the people are sympathetic toward Bernie, the film tends to be as well.  Still, for all of the information that is on the record, the two individuals in the middle of all the chatter remain mysteries.

Black dials down his usual routine and turns in one of his best performances.  The part is a perfect fit in which he can play off his everyman likability and musical talents to build someone who enchants everyone with whom he comes in contact.  From what we’re permitted to see Bernie is not a complex character and purposefully so since he’s constructed from how everyone regards him.  To his credit, Black’s expert portrayal of this friendly naïf makes it hard to dislike Bernie even after he kills Marjorie.  Maybe Bernie is a virtuoso con man--one of his community theater roles is Harold Hill in THE MUSIC MAN--but the impulse is to want to give him some benefit of the doubt.      

McConaughey is a hoot as the showboating DA who provides the voice of reason amid the media carnival.  Wearing glasses, a cowboy hat, and a tie he sometimes uses to wipe his mouth, he plays up his salt of the earth credibility to cast suspicion on Bernie’s cultured ways.

Typically Linklater’s films find him operating in a philosophical mode that encourages contemplating why and how we know what we know.  With BERNIE he humorously explores what happens when those questions aren’t asked.  In the movies it’s funny when empirical belief becomes so rigid that first impressions can’t be altered.  It isn’t when justice is at stake.

Grade: B+

Men in Black 3

MEN IN BLACK 3 (Barry Sonnenfeld, 2012)

Agent J (Will Smith) must time-jump to the summer of 1969 to save his partner and the planet in MEN IN BLACK 3.  He’s in pursuit of Boris The Animal (Jemaine Clement), a notorious alien killer who escapes from a maximum security prison on the moon and is hellbent on visiting the past so he can eliminate Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones in the present-day scenes, Josh Brolin in 1969).

Boris succeeds, which wipes K from the memories of everyone at Men in Black headquarters except for J.  This historical revision means that K was never able to put a safety shield around Earth, thus making it susceptible to invasion from Boris’s warmongering race, the Boglodites.  New chief Agent O (Emma Thompson) figures out that time travel has been involved and dispatches J to restore order by time-jumping to a day before his gruff associate’s death at the Apollo 11 launch and stopping Boris.

MEN IN BLACK 3 arrives fifteen years after the original and a decade after the franchise’s first sequel.  Consider this installment a reunion in which Smith is in charge of assuring everyone that it will be a good time and Jones makes a token appearance because he’s obligated to do so.  Inevitably someone has work done to maintain a youthful appearance at these get-togethers.  To keep up with the times it is rendered in 3D. 

MEN IN BLACK 3 can be a pleasant reminder of goofy, special effects-laden summer blockbusters of old that weren’t preoccupied with origin stories, world-building, and their own importance and seriousness.  Director Barry Sonnenfeld’s sci-fi comedy maintains a breezy tone that keeps it agreeable even when the lightness feels more forced than natural.  The good jokes in MEN IN BLACK 3 don’t nudge the needle much on the laugh-o-meter while the unsuccessful ones land softly instead of hitting with a thud.  

The millions lavished on creature designs and action scenes are meant to impress, yet the filmmakers are less concerned with drawing attention to the expense than delighting in the absurdity of how the aliens look and the craziness of the scenarios.  Despite the huge budget, MEN IN BLACK 3 is comfortable as a B movie and isn’t trying to prove itself as anything else.

Brolin’s impersonation is so good it wouldn’t be a shock to learn that the performance is actually achieved through CGI wizardry de-aging the crusty Jones instead of a younger colleague imitating him.  In supporting roles Michael Stuhlbarg adds genuine sweetness as Griffin, an alien who can envision the multiple conclusions of every scenario, and Bill Hader gets laughs with his zany spin on Andy Warhol.

MEN IN BLACK 3’s modest charms aren’t plentiful.  The mild laughs come sporadically.  It delivers what is expected, more or less, and doesn’t strain in the effort. The eager-to-please attitude and sleek sets provide relief from the somber mood and environments in vogue in tentpole films.  As far as unnecessary sequels are concerned, MEN IN BLACK 3 is a serviceable addition to the series.  

Grade: C+