The Spectacular Now (***)

There are basically two types of movies about high schoolers. One plays in multiplexes; it usually has a bunch of actors in their mid-20s, divides the kids into a bunch of types, usually sorted by popularity, prominently features a prom or other party as a major plot device, and can be summed up in a sentence. The other, indie-type feature is usually adapted from a novel, features more age-appropriate casting, a first love, more prominent parents, and main characters who are writers or artists. It can be summed up as a coming-of-age story. This one is a little bit of a mash-up. The main character, Sutter, is played by Miles Teller, an actor in his mid-20s who a few months earlier was in 21 & Over, in which he played a kind of obnoxious life-of-the-party type who drank too much. Here he begins as a kind of obnoxious life-of-the-party type who drinks too much and is busy trying to get his nerdier pal laid. Pretty conventional, as is the college-essay-question framing device and lengthy narration employed.

The other main character, however, is played by Shailene Woodley, whose angry-daughter role in the Descendants was as memorable as George Clooney’s lead. She’s every bit as good here in a completely different kind of role, a brainy girl who’s into genre novels and Japanese animé. She draws, too. Unfortunately, all of those characteristics are depicted in the very beginning of the movie and dropped thereafter. She is unfortunately mostly a character there so that Sutter can work out his issues. Still, in every scene she is utterly natural.

As for the story, it is kind of a first-love story (first for her — he’s getting over a breakup), in some ways a popular-guy-meets-unpopular-girl story, but also a coming-of-age story. The drinking issue is handled with subtlety. Sutter drinks too much, but he has other characteristics.

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viewed 8/21/13 7:15 at Ritz East and posted 8/21/13

21 & Over (**)

Had this been titled 18 & Under it might have been an apt tribute to the teen boys for whom this may hold the greatest appeal, and for whom this mixture of drunken revelry, potty-mouthed dialogue (“I‘m gonna fuck you with alcohol”), and sexual titillation may seem transgressive. Of course, some of these teens may need to be accompanied by their parents, who are more likely to see this as old hat.

It comes from Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the writing team responsible for The Hangover, which I kind of liked, and can be seen as a very loose rewrite, or rehash. Instead of The Hangover’s Las Vegas, the setting is that other center of collective debauchery, the college campus. Instead of four over-30 guys, there are three 20ish ones. Miles Teller  plays the obnoxious one, kind of a pimplier version of the Bradley Cooper character in The Hangover. His straitlaced counterpart is played by Skylar Astin; he makes noises during the movie about the need to grow up. Their friend Jeff Chang (Justin Chon), rather than disappearing a la The Hangover, merely spends much of his 21st birthday in a drunken stupor, just short of requiring medical attention, presumably. This jury rigs a plotline in which his pals are desperately trying to get him home in time for his morning med-school interview.

As with The Hangover, the comedic elements include a series of mishaps, recurring characters, crazy revenge-minded persons (sorority girls, a male cheerleader and his posse), a large wild animal, and, of course, the “one-crazy-night” plot. Yet The Hangover seemed, if not exactly clever, at least a little bit fresh, and if not exactly plausible, then inhabiting its own reality. It had some element of mystery, even. Mostly, this appears composed of recycled parts of teen comedies past, possibly grafted onto a discarded old John Hughes script. Jeff Chang (always referred to by both names) is the most appealing character, except for the projectile vomiting scene and the drunk-driving scene, but he doesn’t speak for much of the time. Given the odd bit of quasi-racist humor in the movie, it’s probably worth mentioning the complete absence, as far as I could tell, of black people. Otherwise it’s barely worth mentioning at all.

 

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viewed 2/26/2013 7:30 at Ritz 5 [PFS] screening and reviewed 2/27–28/2013

Wake in Fright (***1/4)

A young Sydney schoolteacher (Gary Bond), midway through a year-long stint in a small town that he can’t wait for to end, stops over in another remote town on the way back home for vacation. The local pastime, at least among the men, seems to be beer drinking and gambling; the teacher seems to hold himself above them, but in the course of a single weekend learns that he shares some of their basest instincts. This 1971 film, re-released, recalls the sort of western in which a stranger wanders into a small town, but instead of facing down a local outlaw the educated teacher must face down his own nature. It can also be seen as relating to group conformity, a fictional exposition of a psychological experiment.

One or two things about the movie seem a bit forced. Does every male Australian take offense if you won’t drink beer with him? The time line seems somewhat compressed as well, making the hero’s unraveling less convincing, although we actually know little about him. Still, the economy of the storytelling has power, and the outback setting is indelibly evoked by director Ted Kotcheff, who with screenwriter Evan Jones adapted a novel by Kenneth Cook. There is apparently no new footage, but a disclaimer at the end relating to a kangaroo hunt notes that footage was taken from an actual hunt. Animal lovers, or admirers of human nature, be warned. The best-known (and most memorable) cast member is Donald Pleasence, playing an alcoholic, debauched doctor. Director, Ted Kotcheff went on to do, among other films, Weekend at Bernie’s.


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viewed 11/19/12 7:00 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/20/12

Flight (***)

As with Saving Private Ryan, Flight features a terrifyingly riveting early sequence than nearly overshadows the merely competent drama that follows. Here that involves unhappily divorced Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), who begins the most memorable day of his life by finishing off last night’s beer, saying a temporary goodbye to the much-younger flight attendant who shared his bed, perking up with a bit of cocaine, and heading for work. He’s a pilot, and will become a hero, but one with a secret. It’s better not to know exactly how; credit must go to screenwriter John Gatlin (Real Steel, Coach Carter), who has come up with a novel scenario.

The rest of the film is no thriller, but plays out a conflict that is mostly interior, with Washington in virtually every scene. Notable supporting roles belong to Kelly Reilly as a woman whose own struggles draw her to Whip, John Goodman as Whip’s personal Dr. Feelgood, Bruce Greenwood as a former colleague, and Don Cheadle as Whip’s lawyer. Goodman supplies light humor, but I’d have most wanted Cheadle’s role to be larger. Liability law as it pertains to the aviation industry may not be a box-office draw, but I might’ve have liked the story as a legal thriller. At least it would have been novel. Aside from this aspect, there’s nothing here that wasn’t done in Days of Wine and Roses, with its melancholy Henry Mancini soundtrack, or The Lost Weekend. As for Washington, he is best at projecting an implacable exterior; playing a man falling apart, he is no Jack Lemmon, but he excels at the scenes in which he’s trying to hold it together. Meanwhile, director Bob Zemeckis, better known for breezier fare like Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, keeps the story from seeming ponderous and imbues an easily anticipated outcome with some suspense.

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viewed 10/27/12 7:00 pm at Annenberg Zellerbach Theater [Philadelphia Film Festival closing night screening]   

The King of Ping Pong (***)

The title of this Swedish drama portends something a little jollier than a pudgy adolescent’s anxieties. And yet there’s also some lightness in this story about teenage Rille, the older—but more socially awkward—of two brothers. Rille craves the attention of the his intermittently attentive father, who seems to have more of an affinity to the popular Erik, despite, as it turns out, there being some question as to his paternity.

Only while playing ping pong does Rille feel a sense of competence and authority, but even that gets undermined as things develop. Cowriter-director Jens Jonsson goes for a certain quirkiness rather than emphasizing the pathos in Rille’s plight. The story meanders at first, but a well-drawn main character, good performances by the child actors (all first timers), and Jonsson’s strong use of the snowy countryside mostly make up for the deficiencies.

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viewed at Ritz East (Philadelphia Film Festival) and reviewed 4/3/09

Dangerous Parking (***1/4)

This is about a film director, and so it’s both narrated and shot as if from the view of its vulgar and sometimes-funny protaganonist. The director in the movie is played by the director of the movie, Peter Howitt, whose last two jobs were the romantic-comedy Laws of Attraction and the lame Bond-Inspector Clouseau mélange Johnny English. This is another affair altogether. Profanity-spewing and cantankerous for much of the story, he’s an unconventional movie hero whose drunken misanthropy is only partially redeemed by his self-loathing. If anything, the movie could use a few more scenes of redemption in the early going. After all, he’s supposed to be charming enough to be a ladies’ man, even if he chalks it up to his status as the enfant terrible of the British cinema. But we don’t see much of his professional life either. What we do see is binge-drinking, trip to rehab, doctor’s admonishments, and courtship of his cellist wife (Saffron Burrows), all cleverly mixed up in time in a way that becomes clearer. The movie’s about more than alcoholism and sickness. It’s about the human connection that is the only thing that can replace alcohol for its main character, who is apparently based on Stuart Browne, the writer whose novel Howitt adapted. Clearly the movie was a labor of love for Howitt; the specificity of the story’s details and the character’s personality strongly suggested to me a work of biography. These details give a power to the film, though it’s possibly too long.

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viewed and reviewed 4/6/08; screened at Philadelphia Film Festival