Fed Up (***1/4)

One might track the American obesity epidemic by looking at the rise of the food documentary, which has nearly become its own subgenre in the decade since Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me. This film shares its title (minus an exclamation point) with a 2002 production that focused on the industrialization of food production in the second half of the 20th century. While director Stephanie Soechtig (whose earlier film Tapped went after the bottled-water industry) covers that turf briefly, the particular enemy here is Big Sugar, which really encompasses the entire processed food industry, since added sugar is in almost all of the packaged foods found in the modern supermarket, not to mention the candies and snacks found in the checkout aisle of stores of all types.

Countering arguments about individual responsibility and fears of an overregulating “nanny state,” Soechtig emphasizes childhood obesity, selecting a cross-section of what seem to be working-class American teens as her case studies. They help to explain how simply exercising personal choice as a way to slim is so difficult when even school purvey junk food and, as is clear from the clips, they are often led astray by misleading health claims on food labels that tout, say, lowered fat and don’t mention all the added sugar.

Katie Couric provides the narration. Soechtig also gets some of what might be called the usual suspects in the anti-corporate food war to make her case, including Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, former FDA head David Kessler, and pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig. Lustig has the role of explaining why it is not true that, as I used to believe, “a calorie is a calorie.” I’ve heard the explanation, but he does it well. Finally, former President Bill Clinton and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin speak to the power of the food industry to thwart even modest-seeming measures like keeping fast food out of schools and issuing dietary guidelines that set a recommended level for sugar.


That both of these politicians are Democrats speaks to the difficulty of the issue. As with global warming, for the obesity crisis, no plausible private-sector solution presents itself. Thus denial becomes an attractive option for those suspicious of Big Government solutions. But perhaps, with the issue increasingly apparent for all to see, added sugar really will come to be seen, like cigarettes, as the “poison” that Lustig calls it.

Like some of the other food movies, this one ends with an exhortatory message, in this case urging the viewer to cut out sugar for ten days. It’s a slightly odd one, given that the film specifically repudiates the idea that reform can come through individual action. I also suspect that the people seeing this movie will be those already quite conscious of their own diet. However, should some ordinary filmgoers happen to see this, they’ll find a pleasant, well-paced film with some fun graphics (less intrusive than Spurlock’s) and an informative rather than hectoring tone.

 

IMDb link

viewed 6/12/14 7:50 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 6/12/14

Enough Said (***1/2)

How can a divorced person trust her own judgment in romance? That’s the question asked by Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), a Los Angeles massage therapist, and by filmmaker Nicole Holofcener. Holofcener has made several well-regarded ensemble-cast comedic dramas that often focus on what people think of each other, and what they think others think of them.

This probably the most conventionally structured of her films, recognizable as a not entirely atypical romantic comedy. Eva meets Albert (James Gandolfini) at a party, and, though she’s at first put off by the extra weight he’s carrying, quickly hits it off with him. Both of them have daughters about to head off to college, but where a lesser film might use that as a shorthand to let us know that these characters belong together, Holofcener constructs a beautiful first date scene that personalizes both characters and believably, and humorously, establishes the relationship. When Albert tells her he’s divorced too, Eva asks if she could have his ex-wife’s number. “Can you imagine the time that would save?”

It’s a joke, but eventually, she begins to question herself, spurred on by one of her clients (Holofcener regular Catherine Keener), a poet who has no kind words for her ex-husband. Has she overlooked Albert’s flaws? Do bad relationships happen to flawed people, or people who are simply wrong for each other? The last hour plays out these themes as well as the one about Eva’s impending empty nest, as her daughter’s school is across the country.

A coincidence, leading to a small but important lie (a lie of omission), is at the center of the story, and the explosion of this lie provides the big climax that you’ll know is coming and that forms a similar resolution to other romantic comedies in which lies and misunderstandings must be corrected. But, regardless of the high concept, Holefcenter’s ability to create specific characters and rich dialogue remains her strength. The likeability of the two leads (in contrast to the television characters they’re best known for) makes this perhaps the most easily approachable of her films.

IMDb link

viewed 9/23/13 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and posted 9/27/13

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (***1/4)

A small film that got a lot of attention after getting noticed at the Sundance Film Festival, this turns out to have a straightforward story whose novelty lies in the scarcity of movies about people like Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), an obese 11^th grader living with her mother in a Harlem apartment, in 1987. It is worth seeing, in part, for that novelty and the good performances, especially by Sidibe and Mo'Nique, as her mother. (Mariah Carey is a pleasant surprise as a social worker, too.) Precious, who is essentially illiterate, has just been placed in an “alternative” education program after getting pregnant, for the second time, by her mother’s boyfriend. The mother character has, essentially, no redeeming features; she is a walking (but mostly sitting and watching television) argument for welfare reform, ordering Precious around like a servant, reacting to her daughter’s rape-induced pregnancy by blaming Precious for stealing her man.

You can watch this movie and get extremely depressed. Precious has nothing good in her life; she has fantasies, but few aspirations and little hope. Or you can watch her, placed with a caring teacher (Paula Patton), and see it as a an inspirational story showing that anyone can be redeemed. (The voiceovers, taking the place of the first-person narrative in the novel, suggest that, at least the illiteracy will be remedied.)

IMDB link

viewed 12/28/13 on Netflix DVD; posted 1/10/14

Why Did I Get Married? (***)

Four and a half couples head for a remote Colorado lodge for a winter retreat in writer-director-actor Tyler Perry’s latest, adapted from his play. The half represents the “friend” one husband’s brought along on the flight, leaving his wife (Jill Scott) to drive there alone. (She’s obese, and the airline was going to charge her for two seats.) With this movie, Perry further establishes himself as the most mainstream chronicler of the black professional (or at least aspirational) class in America. He’s getting better at it too. Madea’s Family Reunion, his last film to date to feature his female title character, relied on borderline stereotyped outrageousness, and Perry’s cross dressing, for a comedy that seemed to exist side-by-side with a soapy melodrama. Daddy’s Little Girls, the one between that and this, leaned more to the latter. But here, the comic and the dramatic seem to ebb and flow naturally.

Naturally, given the title, all of the marriages here need work, and one seems a lost cause. That would be the one involving Scott’s philandered-upon character, whose future is pretty much telegraphed when she winds up lost (metaphorically and actually) in the office of the town sheriff, who lo and behold happens to be black. R&B star Scott brings as much emotionality to her performance as to her singing (which, surprisingly, is absent from the neo-soul-oriented soundtrack). Perry himself plays one of the husbands, a doctor married to a lawyer who’s too busy with her career. Even though he hasn’t had sex for months, he admonishes one of the other men about having cheated. I could sympathize with the other man, though, since his wife is the obvious shrew among the group, bickering with, berating, and embarrassing him (and others) for most of the movie, while providing the film with many of the laughs. One couple seems most idyllic (Janet Jackson plays the wife, a successful author), but a problem lies beneath the surface.

And so, the men talk about the women, the women talk about the men, the women talk to the men, and then everyone talks at once as all of the domestic issues come out in the open. It’s like a Dr. Phil episode dramatized, although, thankfully, without the doctor on hand. There’s not much subtlety here, unless you count the euphemism one of the cheaters uses for the venereal disease he caught. Perry’s tendency to want to wrap everything up cleanly results in pat, forced resolutions to most of the stories. It’s a wishful thinking sort of movie; maybe Perry wants to counteract the prevalent images of black people in cinema as, among other things, in dysfunctional relationships. Although for the most part Perry isn’t didactic, family values are on conscious display here. The couples are all married, of course, and more than one person makes casual references to God and Jesus in conversation. Notably, the women here are strong and independent, even, in a couple of cases, more successful, career-wise, than their men. Still, the men let them do all of the cooking.

While Perry still has room for improvement, he knows how to entertain, and it’s a credit to him that I didn’t have trouble keeping all of these characters straight. Maybe next time he won’t be afraid to screen his movie for critics.

IMDB link

reviewed 10/15/07

Norbit (*1/2)

? A meek man (Eddie Murphy) marries a bossy fat woman (Eddie Murphy) whose brothers are secretly scheming to buy the restaurant/orphanage where he grew up from its elderly Chinese owner (Eddie Murphy) and turn it into a “titty bar.” Thandie Newton plays the major character not played by Murphy, a skinny childhood sweetheart who reenters his life along with her new fiancée (Cuba Gooding Jr.).
+ The lengthy, silly prologue, set in the orphanage, sets you up for a series of lame pratfalls that, thankfully, never come. Norbit is actually a reasonably appealing character, although you wonder how he acquired the quasi-lisp Murphy’s given him, since it’s not apparent in the childhood scenes. He’s something like Forrest Gump if he were a little smarter and the movie he was in was a lot dumber. Murphy’s mimicry skills serve him well when he plays the racist yet kindly Mr. Wong, who provokes very occasional snickers.
- Who would have thought that Eddie Murphy would have looked at Martin Lawrence and gotten jealous of his fat suit? This will only be hilarious if you think Lawrence’s Big Momma movies needed more fat jokes. Momma, and Murphy’s rotund Nutty Professor, were essentially positive characters, but “Rasputia” is a pure villain, and the main figure of fun as well. Rasputia can’t fit behind the wheel of the car, Rasputia’s passionate lovemaking style breaks the bed until it’s reinforced with concrete, Rasputia’s rolls of fat hang so low you can’t see if her bikini has a bottom, etc. You’ll get the idea very quickly. Everything else is nearly worthy of a second-rate sitcom.
= *1/2 Not quite the worst movie to open in the first two months of 2007, but not funny by a long shot. Take the kids if you want them to learn to mock fat people, call women “bitches,” and think of pimps as someone to seek out as friends. Give me The Adventures of Pluto Nash (Murphy’s 2002 megaflop) any day. Seriously.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/16/07

Big Momma’s House 2 (**1/2)

Martin Lawrence puts on a fat suit and goes undercover again, this time as caretaker to three rich kids. Nothing brilliant here, but it's no worse than the original Momma and funnier than either recent Martin Lawrence comedies or the sorry batch of last year’s family comedies.

The nice thing about the two Momma movies are that you don’t really see much of their star, Martin Lawrence. If you’re a fan of movies like National Security and Black Knight, you probably want to discount this review. I’m not, but Martin is a pretty good mimic. For this sequel, he once again dons a fat suit to solve a crime undercover. In this case Momma finagles a job as nanny to three children of neglectful parents. Thus the hallmarks of Martin’s usual comic persona, race-baiting and misogyny, are, if not absent, then subdued. Certainly, watching an elderly woman attempt to contain her lust for half-dressed woman is funnier than watching Martin openly leer at them. Calling it subtle would be going much too far. After all, the movie’s centerpiece is an on-the-beach chase scene meant to highlight the realistic rolls of fat enveloping Martin’s legs. Surely, the Academy cannot snub the make-up and effects artists again. Momma 2 has the same setup as The Pacifier, which isn’t a good thing, but there’s less toilet humor, and at least Martin/Momma doesn’t make the kids go through military drills like Vin Diesel (or Dennis Quaid in Yours Mine and Ours). Each of the kids has a problem. The youngest, for example, doesn’t speak and likes to take flying leaps from high places. (This last part garnered some of the louder laughs from the large audience I saw this with.) The oldest is a surly clone of the teenage girl from The Pacifier. Naturally, Momma has fixed the kids, taught the parents a lesson or two, and (spoiler alert!) solved the crime by the time he returns to his own family, whom he’s been lying to. Now if only Momma could straighten Martin out.

IMDb link

posted 9/17/13