"I can't believe you whizzed on my taco!"
Nor could I locate the moment when the title feline, standing next to a garden tool, yells, "You dirty ho!" then proceeds to insist he's only kidding while flicking his tongue in a lascivious manner at the inert object. Dramatic license? More like rampant necrophilia.
If nothing else, this bad Cat at least vindicates me for the charitable review I awarded How the Grinch Stole Christmas when it debuted three years ago. Vilified by most critics, Grinch nevertheless had the benefit of a smashing comic turn by Jim Carrey, whose live-wire act managed to take the character as far as it could go to the edge of dementia without ever becoming too insufferable for audiences to watch. After struggling through Cat, I suspect most scribes will agree that Grinch looks like It's a Wonderful Life by comparison.
Certainly, Mike Myers is no Jim Carrey. As the Cat, Myers delivers a performance that's as exhausting as any delivered by Robin Williams at his most hyperactive. In principle, it's no different than Carrey's Grinch turn -- plenty of makeup heaped upon plenty of sassy attitude -- but unlike Carrey's unapologetically edgy work, Myers' shtick is all one-note self-adulation, a feeble channeling of Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion by way of Jerry Lewis, Paul Lynde and Myers' own Austin Powers. It's a terrible performance, at once unctuous and obnoxious.
Because Dr. Seuss' delightful yet slender story, about a mischievous cat whose home invasion ensnares two kids in his property-pummeling merriment, wouldn't stretch out to feature length, the makers of this monstrosity have added a subplot in which a sleazy neighbor (Alec Baldwin) tries to woo the comely mom (Kelly Preston) of the two children (Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin, both equally annoying). There's also some business involving the mom's neat-freak boss (Sean Hayes), as well as a rave scene that's as out-of-place as the one from The Matrix Reloaded. Theodore Geisel isn't merely rolling over in his grave -- he's spinning so fast that he's splintering the coffin around him into shards appropriate for teeth-picking.
That cute goldfish from the original story is simply creepy on film, as are those twins of terror, Thing One and Thing Two. In fact, there isn't much in this crass movie that doesn't inspire feelings of revulsion. And this sense of icky surrealism even emanates beyond the auditorium: Any respectable adaptation of a Dr. Seuss classic shouldn't end with me spending time in the parking lot afterward, awkwardly trying to explain to my 12-year-old daughter the meaning of "dirty ho."
Despite its all-inclusive R rating, there's no "dirty ho" in Bad Santa, but that's only because she's been crowded out by the booze-swilling Santa Claus, the foul-mouthed dwarf, the kinky bartender, and the snot-nosed (literally) kid. In these cynical times, this is probably the type of Xmas release we should be bracing ourselves to receive on a regular basis -- but maybe that's not an entirely bad thing. Bad Santa may be rude, disgusting and offensive, but I laughed plenty of times, which is something I can't say I did during those sucky Tim Allen Santa Clause flicks.A perfectly cast Billy Bob Thornton stars as Willie T. Stokes, a lifelong loser who dons the red suit every Christmas season to play a department store Santa. It isn't that Willie likes children -- on the contrary, he can't stand them -- but he and his diminutive pal Marcus (Tony Cox), who plays elf assistant to his Santa, use the gig as a cover for their real mission, which is to rob the stores of all that holiday cash.
But this year's scheme threatens to become more complicated than usual. For starters, the store manager (the late John Ritter) and the head of security (an underused Bernie Mac) both suspect that something's not quite right about this pair. Meanwhile, Willie has entered into a relationship of sorts with a cute bartender (Lauren Graham) whose fetish involves guys in Santa suits. But perhaps most troublesome of all is the unexpected presence of a pudgy little boy (Brett Kelly) who follows Willie around like a pet, asks him an endless stream of questions ("Do you need that money to fix your sleigh?" he inquires while Willie's robbing his father's safe), and doesn't even blink whenever Willie directs a string of insults and vulgarities his way (which is often).
We know what you're thinking: This all leads to that part of the movie when The Kid (as he's listed in the credits) wins over Willie to such a degree that the pseudo-Santa chucks his life of crime, bonds with the boy, and everyone lives happily ever after with eggnog in hand. Well... not quite. A sentimental moment or two does enter the picture late in the game (and they're surprisingly effective), but for the most part, this movie carries the power of its non-PC implications right through to the very end -- a refreshing change from those supposedly hard-boiled (and truly cynical) pictures that adopt a rebel stance for most of the running time only to turn unconvincingly mushy and preachy during the final reel. This movie, on the other hand, rarely lets up with the raunch and ridicule -- it's enough to make Will Ferrell's Elf blush.
And a special word about Brett Kelly, who plays The Kid. A long career in cinema is most assuredly not assured, but he's perfect in this picture. Wide-eyed and direct, he's blessedly free of the slick and cloying nature of, say, Spencer Breslin (The Cat in the Hat, Disney's The Kid), who's the sort of Hollywood phony that you'd rather see getting beat up on a street corner than polluting our movie screens.
Bad Santa is always naughty and rarely nice, meaning it's the perfect moviegoing experience for the Scrooge on your list.
In choosing his first directorial project since the raging success of A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard remembered The Alamo but eventually decided to let someone else handle the reins on that ambitious effort. Instead, Howard opted to place his clout in the service of The Missing, a curious yarn that again finds Tommy Lee Jones tracking down another person.
Doesn't this guy ever get tired of playing characters who spend most of their time mulling over trampled twigs and sniffing the air for telltale scents? After essaying this sort of role three times prior, with rapidly diminishing returns (The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals, The Hunted), it would appear that Jones would have hit rock bottom here, possibly hard enough to break a tailbone. Instead, the part of an outdoorsman in the Southwest of 1885, a loner who long ago decided to live by the code of the Apache, seems like a natural fit for this rugged actor, and his lived-in performance is one of the reasons The Missing works fairly well despite a reservoir of petty problems.
Based on Thomas Eidson's novel The Last Ride, this concerns itself with plucky frontierswoman Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) and the circumstances that transpire after her oldest daughter (Thirteen's Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by a band of renegades who ferry captured girls across the Mexican border to sell them into slavery. With her other daughter (Jenna Boyd) in tow, Maggie sets out to rescue her offspring, receiving unexpected help from her estranged father (Jones). Tracking the kidnappers proves to be fairly easy; more of a concern is the fact that the leader of these cutthroats is a murderous warrior (Eric Schweig) who just might possess mystical powers.
The Missing feels like two-thirds of a completed movie, albeit a strong two-thirds. The prickly father-daughter relationship between Jones and Blanchett is an interesting one and would have benefited from more banter between the pair. Several interesting characters -- among them a frightened photographer (Ray McKinnon) and a humorless army lieutenant (Val Kilmer) -- appear far too briefly to make enough of an impression. The sequences spent with Maggie's oldest daughter as she's held captive are the strongest in the picture, and there simply isn't enough time devoted to this portion of the movie.
Certainly, with a 130-minute running time, the film's not lacking for length, and some tighter editing in the more redundant passages (including a climax that's far too conventional to be fully effective) might have opened up some breathing room for more savory ingredients. The Missing is a decent picture and worth a marginal recommendation, but what's really missing is the proper balance to make it truly memorable.
APPARENTLY UNABLE to secure any meaty roles on the heels of her Monster's Ball win, Halle Berry instead turns up in Gothika, the sort of derivative supernatural tale that's been getting approved by studio wonks with alarming regularity ever since Haley Joel Osment saw both dead people and rich box office.
The film's absurdity begins with its title, a cutesy variation on "Gothic." Yet although the press material pleads its case that this drivel has its origins in both the same-named French architecture of the 12th century and the English literature of the 1700s, this movie ultimately feels about as Gothic as Finding Nemo.
The premise certainly holds promise, with Berry cast as Dr. Miranda Grey, a criminal psychologist employed at a psychiatric ward run by her loving husband (Charles S. Dutton). But an ill-fated ride home on that proverbial dark and stormy night places Miranda in the company of a spooky girl who suddenly bursts into flames. Cut to the next scene, in which Miranda learns that she's been accused of murdering her husband and has been locked up as a loony in her own bin. Is Miranda really crazy, or is she the victim of some mass conspiracy? Or is there credence to the third scenario, that she's possessed by some sort of supernatural entity?
It's pretty clear early on that there are paranormal forces at work, yet this dash of the fantastic provides the story's center with a glaring dilemma: How are we supposed to reconcile our sympathy regarding the plight of the ghost with our disgust at how thoroughly it's destroying the innocent Miranda's life? Then again, it seems most everything in this doltish drama needs to be accepted with a shrug, from the cheap chiller elements fostered by director Mathieu Kassovitz -- including the harmless animal that appears out of nowhere to jolt impressionable audience members -- to the idiocy of its characters. This includes a security guard who helps Miranda escape by giving her the keys to his car, solely because in those blissful days before she was deemed a murderer, she always was kind enough to inquire about his wife! Miranda's patients may indeed be not guilty by reason of insanity, but Gothika is clearly guilty by reason of stupidity.