Parental Guidance (**1/2)

This family comedy put me off immediately by having the main character, Sacramento baseball announcer Artie (Billy Crystal), mock a woman’s looks in front of a stadium full of people. He’s fired after the game, not for this act of humiliation, but for not being technologically hip. In the scheme of the movie: 1) this appears to be the first time his employer has ever mentioned that this is a problem; 2) Artie has possibly never even heard of Twitter, and possibly does not have a cell phone (I assume this because otherwise a later plot point makes no sense); 3) after determining that Artie has no technological awareness, his boss would ask him who is favorite angry bird is;  4) someone (the boss), anyone, would utter the line “Everyone has a favorite angry bird.” Really?  This sort of iCarly-level level of subtlety (in writing and acting) is par for the course, at least in the first half of the movie, which then concerns Artie and his wife (Bette Midler) traveling to Atlanta as emergency babysitters for their grandkids, to whom they are not close. The story clumsily wavers between portraying the kids’ parents, but mostly the mom (Marisa Tomei), as crazy helicopter parents whose style conflicts with Artie’s way of doing things and portraying Artie as the crazy one, while trying to make both of them sympathetic. They are, mostly, but much of this feels terribly artificial.

 

At one point, the two grandparents marvel at their daughter’s ability to remember that “Book of Love” is  their favorite song. How can she remember that? She was three or four years old. It’s unexplained why she wouldn’t have heard the song after that. (The scene does provide the opportunity for Midler and Crystal to do an acapella duet of the 1958 hit.) We’re also supposed to believe Artie didn’t know his daughter had worked for ESPN for five years and didn’t know his grandson’s name, even though he’d seen them less than a year before. Artie’s daughter is supposed to never have mentioned to her husband that Artie signs off every game by saying her name. And his granddaughter fake-laughs at Artie’s joke in a way I have seen many times in sitcoms but never in real life, because in real life it would appear as obviously false to the joke teller as to everyone else.

 

If your inclination upon reading this is to say, it’s just a movie, you may view this as the “feel-good” comedy I heard one middle-aged woman describe it as upon exiting the theater. Crystal and Midler make a surprisingly believable couple, and when the film doesn’t strain for laughs—and most of the laughs are strained—it becomes a decent family drama. In the real world, of course, tension between grandparenting and parenting styles (Artie’s problem) and between attention to spouse and attention to the kids (his daughter’s) are real issues, and the movie’s attempt to address them is worthwhile. Still, the primary appeal will be to those still requiring parental guidance.

 

IMDb link

 

viewed 12/13/12 at Rave UPenn; posted 1/28/13

 

Play the Game (**1/2)

This sitcom-style comedy pairs the tired premise of the playboy finding his true love with a mildly novel one about his efforts to score a new love for his widowed grandfather. Eighty-three-year-old Andy Griffith plays eighty-four-year-old Grandpa Joe. It would be nice to report that it’s a great comeback for the Matlock star, but the script isn’t there. Paul Campbell, of the 2008 version of Knight Rider, is the playboy grandson, who also plies his slick moves as a car salesman, not unlike the car salesman/playboy Jeremy Piven played in The Goods: Live Hard * Sell Hard. This writing/directing debut by Marc Fienberg isn’t as crass as that, but it does rely too much on easy gags about old people and sex. And to show us how the playboy has bonded with his true love (Marla Sokoloff), Fienberg relies on the old standby of the stunning coincidence. (They both carry around imported-from-England Curlee Wurlee chocolate bars. Yeah, sure.)

Overall, the movie is breezy and innocuous, and watching old Joe apply his grandson’s how-to-pick-up-girls techniques on nursing-home lovelies is sometimes amusing, if also forced at times. (Decide for yourself which it is when Joe, attempting some newly learned slang, refers to himself as a “chick maggot.”) And speaking of forced, it’s got one of these endings that is so pseudo-clever that it makes the whole movie seem insincere, even if it does surprise you.

IMDB link

viewed 8/25/09 (screening at Ritz Bourse) and reviewed 8/28 and 8/31/09

Vitus (***3/4)

Like Searching for Bobby Fischer, Little Man Tate, and Shine, this is movie about a child prodigy. Fictional Vitus plays the piano, like the real-life subject of Shine, but doesn’t suffer a nervous breakdown. He plays chess, like the subject of Searching, but he’s more of an all-around genius. He has a doting mother, like Fred Tate, but also a doting father, and a loving grandfather who seems to be the only one whose affection transcends Vitus’s gifts. The Swiss import has something in common with all of these movies, but seems different nonetheless. Searching for Bobby Fischer was most concerned with how hard to push a gifted child, and that’s part of the story here. The parents here are good people, but they can’t help but see their son as an extension of themselves, and so they would like to shape his talents. When it seems as though he may not turn out to be as special as they thought, there is a palpable sense of loss. Having a son who is merely intelligent no longer seems like enough.

Little Man Tate focused primarily on the contrast between the intellectual and the emotional. There’s some of that here too. Vitus’s arrogance alienates him from others his own age. At the same time, he’s naive enough at age 12 to hope to woo a college-age girl. Yet even though he makes mistakes like that, he’s also able to have an insight into the adult world that most children lack, leading to a couple of surprising plot turns. Intelligence, like money (which intelligence can be turned into), gives you a kind of power. Already, Vitus has realized that, and the second half of the movie is more about his own desires rather than how his parents feel about him. In this the movie is somewhat distinguished from the others I’ve mentioned (excepting Shine, a full-fledged biography). It’s a warmer movie as well. On the whole, the movie views genius as a more of a gift than a problem, certainly compared to Shine or the forthcoming Joshua. If anything is lacking in the movie, it’s probably a consideration of the moral aspects of this gift.

Teo Gheorghiu, a real-life piano prodigy, plays Vitus. Also of note is Bruno Ganz, who played Adolf Hitler in Downfall, as the much more appealing grandfather. This movie only played one week here in Philadelphia, but it would make an excellent rental. When it ended, I was sorry that I wouldn’t get to see what Vitus would do as an adult.

IMDB link

reviewed 8/5/07