Safety Not Guaranteeed (***1/4)

One of the most original comedies in recent years, wherein an ad seeking a companion for time travel provokes the interest of three journalists, is also one of the funniest. The first feature for its writer (Derek Connolly) and director (Colin Trevorrow), it’s also the first lead role for Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation. If you’ve seen the actress on that NBC show, her intern character, Darius, here will seem familiar. Projecting an unusual combination of sarcasm and sincerity, she’s the mistress of deadpan humor. When a potential employer, a restaurant, asks Darius whether she’d ever gone out of her way to do a little extra at a previous job, she simply says no. She’s equally unenthusiastic about her unpaid position at Seattle magazine, but agrees to tag along when one of the staff members (Jake Johnson, of New Girl) heads to a nearby town to see if the ad is for real. Another intern (Karan Soni) is the trio’s third member, a somewhat stereotypically introverted Indian guy.

 

Mark Duplass plays Kenneth, the guy who placed the ad, who will need to be persuaded to pick someone from the team as his companion. The boss makes the first pitch, but doesn’t pass the test—including questions like “Have you faced certain death”— because he’s kind of an ass. So the intern tries her hand. When asked the crucial question, she says if she’d faced certain death she wouldn’t be there. Kenneth is meant to be off-kilter but sympathetic, and so the snarkiness of the beginning of the film (and the Darius character) gives way to something more sincere while remaining funny. A covert operation to procure supplies becomes a brief but hilarious parody of suspense films.

The ending was not what I expected, and I had mixed feelings about it, but it was in keeping with a comedy that has a cynical shell and a romantic interior.

IMDb link

viewed 6/7/12 7:30 pm [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/8–6/24/12

The Sound of My Voice (***1/4)

Some actresses complain about the dearth of good parts for women. Brit Marling writes them for herself. In Another Earth, she was an ex-offender hoping for a trip to an alternative future. In this, one of two film’s she’s written with director Zal Batmanglij, she’s a purported visitor from the future, or charlatan, maybe, preparing a cult-like group of followers to return with her to the year 2054. 

The key characters, though, are a couple (Christopher Denham, Nicole Vicius) who’ve been admitted to her circle but are actually aspiring journalists aiming to expose her as a fraud. As Another Earth used its nominally sci-fi premise as a way to explore the guilt felt by its main character, The Sound of My Voice uses its cult story to explore the issue of trust. At the same time, it functions as a tight little mystery.

IMDb link

viewed 5/9/12 7:20 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/10–11/12

Time Freak [short] (***1/2)

This brief film about a time-machine inventor is kind of a one-joke movie, and it’s a little bit like a compressed version of Groundhog Day. But the joke is pretty funny and reveals a perhaps heretofore unexplored danger of time machines, were they ever to become reality.

IMDb link

viewed 2/17/12 9:35 at Ritz Bourse [Oscar-nominated live-action shorts program] and reviewed 2/18/12

Midnight in Paris (***)

Peripatetic in old age, Woody Allen has made a romantic comedy Europe’s most fabled romantic city. But it’s the past, specifically the 1920s, that Gil (Owen Wilson) romanticizes. Engaged to a modern girl (Rachel McAdams), he’s writing a novel about a nostalgia shop, hoping to wean himself from his lucrative Hollywood screenwriting career. But his vacation becomes a very literal nostalgia trip when he’s transported, again literally, to the era of Cole Porter, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. Porter’s performance (or that of the actor playing Porter) of his own composition “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” and other clues suggest that it is 1929.

Despite the highbrow trappings, what this is really like is Woody’s version of all of those body-switching comedies that appear every so often. Gil stays in the same body, but experiences a different time. He learns, more or less, the same lessons, though. Of course, it helps to enjoy the movie if you have any affinity for the famous figures of old, and particularly if you can remember such slightly lesser lights as the filmmaker Luis Buñuel. Woody doesn’t work hard to set up the premise, and I have no idea how authentic the portrayals are. It doesn’t matter; they’re just there to be amusing celebrities, like all of the folks Tom Hanks runs into in Forrest Gump.

Forrest Gump had an emotional arc to it too, though, whereas this stays strictly on the light side. It is far less deep than Hanks’s own body-switching comedy, Big. It succeeds by virtue of a cute premise, not the paint-by-numbers execution of the premise. Even before Gil meets a sweet 1920s artist “groupie” played by Marion Cotillard—Gil’s use of the term “groupie” confuses her— it’s obvious that he and the fiancée are a lousy couple. Gil himself is an amalgamation of the ornery characters Allen used to play and the boyish ones Wilson usually does. Otherwise Allen sticks with the sort of upper-middle-class and wealthy, sometimes pompous, intellectual characters who populate most of his recent films. Allen does do one clever thing with the time-travel premise. He nicely indulges his love of early jazz in the soundtrack. And he lovingly depicts the city of Paris, especially lovely, as Gil would argue, in the rain, notably in a long, loving montage that sets the mood during the opening credits. Classy fluff, this one.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 6/22/11

Hot Tub Time Machine (**1/2)

It’s back to the year after Back to the Future came out (1986) in this should-be winner of a truth-in-titling award. No awards for originality, though. It superficially reproduces the foursome in The Hangover: the regular guy (John Cusack), who’s been dumped by his girlfriend; the wild-and-crazy one (Rob Corddry), who’s also a possibly suicidal alcoholic; the pussy-whipped husband (Craig Robinson), who we know is pussy-whipped solely because—horrors!—he’s taken his wife’s last name; and the socially inept one, who’s also the regular guy’s young nephew. The vibe the movie has is more like that of Wild Hogs, though—middle-aged dudes trying to recapture their fading youth as a bunch of crazy shit happens. The nephew character maybe helps with the teen demographic.

But obviously the movie that this most directly lifts from is Back to the Future, even to the point of having that film’s dad, Crispin Glover, play a surly bellhop whose loss of an arm becomes the subject of a running gag. (The setting is a ski lodge.) And there’s a bit where one character is sarcastically called “McFly.” So let us compare. First things is, BTtF uses a crazy inventor’s machine to transport Marty McFly back to a particular day in 1955, and precisely follows its own logic in getting him back to 1985. The time-travel premise here’s more sloppily executed. The three grown men turn into their younger selves (but we see the same actors, except when they look in mirrors), so it makes no sense that the nephew looks the same. Presumably they have thus already altered the future, so their efforts to reenact the night as it originally happened (so as not to do so) are doomed. And neither the faulty hot tub, the beverage that spills on it, nor the nonsensical Chevy Chase cameo in any way explain why they go back in time, or why to that day, except that the plot requires it.

Look, I know it’s a comedy, not a sci-fi film, and a certain amount of suspension-of-disbelief is warranted. But still, one suspects the title predated the entire script, and that little time was spent on how the hot tub would actually be a time machine. And a comedy should be allowed to violate the rules of physics, but BttF is brilliant because it doesn’t violate the rules it sets up for itself. As with the nephew staying the same age, this movie does it several times. Internal logic makes every thing else about BttF seem cleverer.

Though sometimes funny, this isn’t so clever and has too many jokes about (and sights of) bodily fluids and homosexual panic (the modern substitute for jokes about actual homosexuals). A little better are the inevitable ones about being able to predict the future, themselves predictable but fun. And when, just like Marty McFly, the nephew gets to meet his own parents, his discovery that his mom was a woman of…easy virtue is nearly inspired. Also just like Marty, the husband plays in a band and introduces folks to the sounds of the future—more successfully, but less humorously.

If you're the right age, the sights and sounds of overproduced music and questionable fashion choices should bring a tinge of nostalgia. Otherwise, this would suffice as a lightweight time-waster should it happen to appear on cable one day.

IMDB link

viewed 3/2/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/26/10

Star Trek (***)

They used to just have sequels, and then they had prequels, and now they have “reboots,” attempts to financially, and maybe artistically, resuscitate a movie series that had seemed to play itself out. New actors are cast, a new writer and director are hired, and the story returns to its origins. In this case, it returns to an even earlier period, though that happens to be over 200 years in the future. Beginning with the birth of future starship captain James T. Kirk, it ends more or less at the starting point of the original 1967–1969 series. The director is J. J. Abrams, creator of TV’s Alias and Lost.

I tend to like origin stories, but to be honest the childhood stuff is pretty perfunctory. Kirk (Chris Pine) reveals his brash nature and impulsivity via that hoariest of clichés, a bar fight. (He’s trying to pick up his future shipmate Uhura, who gets to be a love interest in this version.) Meanwhile, on planet Vulcan, Spock (Zachary Quinto) gets teased for being half-human, behavior that seems odd, and not at all alien, for such a logical race. But the series, and this movie, always seemed to have as a core theme that trying to be logical makes no sense. Hence, Spock is always the secondary hero to Kirk, who believes every battle can be won and reflects creator Gene Roddenberry‘s optimistic view of humanity.

Genocide and revenge are themes here too, but it’s not the humans but the alien Romulans who threaten both. This plot, too, is unremarkable, but provides the framework for the main characters to reveal their personalities, and for the special-effects crew to show up those 1960s TV folks and most of the earlier films based on their exploits. You don’t need to know anything about any of that to follow the film, but it probably makes it more enjoyable. Even if the story is new, it’s careful about hitting as many of the familiar touchstones as possible, from Spock’s “Live Long and Prosper” to “Bones” McCoy’s “I’m just a doctor!” schtick to the “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise” voiceover, moved from the intro to the coda. The actors, too, definitely aim to preserve some of the mannerisms of the old cast. Pine’s Kirk, especially, has more than a hint of Shatner in his movements, though there’s less of his oft-parodied halting vocal style.

With Shatner represented in spirit, Leonard Nimoy shows up in the flesh, shoehorned into a couple of scenes via a time-travel plot that Spock himself might call “highly illogical.” Again, plot is not the strong point, but with that exception the script Transformers writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have crafted is a sturdy vehicle for the action scenes (I liked the one with a wild animal) and the rivalry-cum-friendship of Kirk and Spock. Reboot successful, more or less.

IMDB link

viewed 5/26/09 at Moorestown; reviewed 5/26 and 5/29/09

Meet the Robinsons (***1/4)

? An animated Disney film about a orphaned science geek who dreams of finding out about his past but gets side-tracked by the future. Based on the book A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce.
+ Visual invention and conceptual imagination are all over the place. The plot hinges on the boy’s attempt to invent a device to look back in time, and while that’s a fanciful idea, it’s appealing too. Futuristic flying machines, a talking bowler hat that’s smarter than its wearer (the nominal villain), and genetically altered, singing frogs are all part of the story. Thematically, the message of the movie is to follow your inner goofball.
- So much is happening all at once that some people mind find all the zaniness overwhelming, and the youngest kids will probably get lost in all of the Back to the Future type contradictions.
= ***1/4 On the whole, a lot of fun.

IMDB link

reviewed 4/6/07

Click (*1/4)

This Adam Sandler film begins as a silly comedy, ends as a sappy drama about a workaholic, and completely wastes the good premise of having a remote control for real life.

Imagine you’re given a remote control that can make your whole life like watching a video. You can fast forward, rewind, freeze frame, or even watch the ballgame in a little window. Imagine this for two hours and you will surely come up with something more fun and more original that this movie. Michael (Adam Sandler) is the lucky recipient of such a gadget (given to him by mad scientist Christopher Walken). The best use he can think of is to make the dog quieter and give himself a tan. But mostly he uses the fast-forward button to explore the overworked theme of the overworked dad. (See the remakes of The Shaggy Dog, Cheaper by the Dozen and Yours, Mine and Ours.)

Two of the writers on this film wrote Bruce Almighty, another gimmick movie in which a man given great power learns valuable lessons. That was a much funnier, cleverer movie than Click, so perhaps the third writer, Sandler, is to blame. While the beginning concentrates on silly stuff, such as a running gag about the dog humping a stuffed animal, the last half exhibits Sandler’s tendency to gooey sentimentality, as Michael gets to look at one version (the boring one) of his future. This was the rare movie that I didn’t like right from the very beginning. What can you say about a movie where David Hasselhoff gives the most entertaining performance? Granted, I’m not a big fan of most Sandler films (unless you count Spanglish and Punch-Drunk Love), but 50 First Dates was pretty good, and even The Longest Yard remake had a few laughs. This effort, besides the tired or unfunny gags, takes an excellent premise, sets it up weakly, and executes it poorly. For example, why, when Michael fast-forwards through sex, does it seem quick to his wife as well, when in no other case does the remote work that way? All in all, Click just doesn’t, not remotely.

IMDb link

posted and slightly revised wording 8/14/13

Lake House (***)

A melancholy romance that feels more like a drama, this pretty-good remake of a Korean hit reunites Speed costars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves as would-be lovers linked by a mailbox but separated by two years.

A mailbox provides a bridge between an architect (Keanu Reeves) and a doctor (Sandra Bullock) living two years apart. The mushy-yet-effective Somewhere in Time would be the obvious antecedent, but in fact it’s a newer version of a well-regarded South Korean hit (English title: Il Mare) that was never released here. Keanu’s previous romancer was the goopy misfire Sweet November, doomed by a premise far sillier than the one here. But the producers did get screenwriter David Auburn, of 2005’s underappreciated Proof, to transplant the remake to Chicago, so there was some hope. (The director is the Argentine Alejandro Agresti, who made a charmer called Valentín a few years ago.) If Lake House is a romance, it’s well apart from the Nicholas Sparks school of schmaltz (seen in such films as Message in a Bottle and The Notebook), or even something more subdued like The Bridges of Madison County. 

It’s not so much about how these two characters relate to each other, but how their epistolary link brings other aspects of their lives into relief. Auburn’s script incorporates family and work issues and uses the time gap to illustrate loss and change. Clever editing shows the literary exchange as if it were real conversation. Understated isn’t really either star’s forte, but each gives a relatively restrained performance that suits the melancholy feel of the film. Some people will find this movie slow, I think, and, as I’ve suggested, it really works better as a drama than as passionate romance. It isn’t precisely a time-travel movie, yet presents some of the same logical difficulties. Via the information she passes to the world of two years ago, Bullock’s character can essentially alter the past and thus her current reality. And she does. The movie deals with these contradictions wisely, by ignoring them. Since this isn’t a sci-fi movie, I could too.

IMDb link

posted 8/14/13