Current Releases
CLERKS II The sequel to the 1994 film that placed Smith on the indie map in the first place, this Jersey hurl is pretty much what you’d expect from this often crude, often insightful filmmaker, only with too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Twelve years down the road, wishy-washy Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and foul-mouthed Randal (Jeff Anderson) are still minimum wage earners, here flipping burgers for the Mooby’s fast food chain. Randal isn’t happy that his buddy will be abandoning him for marriage and Florida; neither is Becky (Rosario Dawson, quite delightful here), the Mooby’s manager who enjoys her easygoing relationship with Dante. That’s more than enough plot for a Kevin Smith feature, since with him, the wordplay’s the thing. But the verbal exchanges aren’t as clever as in past flicks, and while the romance and the raunch coexisted easily in the wonderful Chasing Amy (still his best film), here they’re often at odds. Even those reliable cutups Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) aren’t allowed to live up to their potential. **
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA Meryl Streep deserves all the accolades she can stomach for her poison-dipped performance in this satisfying screen version of Lauren Weisberger’s best-selling novel. As Miranda Priestley, the ice-cold and rock-hard editor of the fashion magazine Runway, Streep delivers a terrific comic performance, as rich as the ones she gave in Postcards from the Edge and the otherwise unwatchable She-Devil. But let’s not undervalue the contribution of Anne Hathaway, who’s just fine as Andy Sachs, a college grad whose cluelessness about the fashion industry proves to be a drawback in her stint as Miranda’s worked-to-the-bone assistant. (Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, as Andy’s cynical coworkers, likewise deserve kudos.) The film’s peeks into the fashion world are amusing, and the script makes some salient points about the lengths to which a person will allow themselves to be humiliated simply to hold onto a job. Once the focus turns to Andy’s crisis of conscience, the picture loses some of its bite. But not Meryl, whose ferocious work continues to take a sizable chunk out of the couture culture. ***
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH The cacophonous naysaying has already begun (largely by those who haven’t seen the movie, natch), but this absorbing documentary about global warming gently pushes a message that all Americans of sound mind and good conscience can embrace: Let’s work together to make the world a better place. It’s a tall order, but the beauty of the film is that it inspires audience members to actually believe they can be a part of something important — as Gore notes, all the resources are already available for combating global warming, and the only thing that’s missing is “political will.” Personal anecdotes, charts, slide shows and even cartoons are employed to allow the information to be easily digested by almost anyone. As for Gore, he’s far more personable and animated than he ever was on the campaign trail — what remains unchanged is his blazing intelligence, a far cry from the monosyllabic chimp presently sitting in the White House. As has been the case with Jimmy Carter, getting ousted from office might end up being the best way for Gore to serve his country. ***1/2
LADY IN THE WATER With each subsequent picture, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs) has exposed himself as a filmmaker of limited means; if this pattern of diminishing returns continues, he may soon be reduced to trying to revive the long dormant Police Academy series. For now, though, we’re stuck with this dud about an apartment complex superintendent (Paul Giamatti) who tries to protect a Narf (sea nymph) from a Scrunt (wolf) until she can make contact with the Great Eatlon (eagle), all the while keeping one eye peeled for the Tartutic (killer monkeys). This was originally conceived by the auteur as a bedtime story for his daughters, and in that context, it probably worked fine. But as a motion picture aimed at adult audiences, it’s a mess, at once ridiculous and risible. Requiring characters to behave in illogical ways and making up the rules of the game as it goes along, this eventually reaches such high levels of absurdity that by the end you can’t help but wonder if it was all a put-on, Shyamalan’s “screw you” to the critics, studio suits and audience members who abandoned him with The Village. *1/2
LITTLE MAN When an unsuspecting couple (Shawn Wayans and Kerry Washington) end up in possession of a stolen diamond, criminal dwarf Calvin Sims (Marlon Wayans) disguises himself as a baby in order to infiltrate their home and retrieve the priceless bauble. A robustly performed sequence involving a rectal thermometer is amusing (or maybe I just felt compelled to laugh at something), but the rest is slapdash and bare, despite Marlon’s Herculean efforts to turn Calvin into a notable comic creation. The incessant barrage of just-under-the-MPAA-radar crudity leaves the impression that director Keenen Ivory Wayans felt constrained by a PG-13 rating when he really had an R in mind. I’m not saying an R rating would have necessarily made Little Man a better movie, but at least it would have made it a more honest one. *1/2
MONSTER HOUSE Young DJ realizes that something’s not right with the creepy house directly across the street; suspecting it’s possessed by an evil spirit, he sets out to uncover its secrets. At its best, this animated adventure harkens back to the fantasy flicks of the 1980s, movies in which innocent children leading sheltered suburban existences often had to cope with the supernatural terrors that lurked around every corner and often even under the bed — it’s no coincidence that the era’s leading practitioners of this sort of unpretentious fun, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, are executive producers on this new film. As with many of the 80s titles, there’s more here than meets the eye, as what initially appears to be a straightforward haunted house tale morphs into a haunting tale about love, retribution and acceptance, complete with a back story that’s as affecting as it is unexpected. ***
MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND Like those superheroes who hide their costumes under street clothes in order to protect their identities, this likewise masks its intriguing subtext under the surface charms of a romantic comedy. Luke Wilson plays a mild-mannered guy who learns that his new girlfriend (Uma Thurman) is also the superheroine G-Girl; once he sees how needy, possessive and jealous she can get, he foolishly attempts to break up with her. Superhero yarns often center on the personal travails of their protagonists and how difficult it is to balance saving the world with establishing meaningful relationships. This takes that notion to more realized extremes, detailing how the awesome responsibility of perpetually being expected to make things right can weigh heavily on a hero’s psyche, turning them into an edgy, paranoid and lonely individual. Thurman locates the inner angst in this character, and while she’s effective in full-on comic mode, she’s even better when we can see the madness peeking out from behind the super-facade. ***
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST Those expecting amazing feats of derring-do won’t be disappointed by this sequel to the 2003 smash. The effects-driven action scenes are clearly the picture’s highlights, and they alone make this worth the price of admission. But while the first Pirates felt like both a self-contained movie and the theme park attraction on which it was based, this one just feels like a roller coaster ride, full of momentary thrills but leaving little in its wake except a sudden desire to rest for a minute. It isn’t breathless as much as it grows tiresome, and it’s especially depressing to see how little the characters have been allowed to evolve. The central thrust finds Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) tangling with the ghostly Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) in an effort to save his own soul from eternal damnation; it’s possible that his scheme will require sacrificing his friends (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley), but that’s a compromise the self-serving Jack can accept. The best fantasy tales are often the ones in which the special effects are subservient to the characters, not the other way around; still, this moves quick enough to keep most customers satisfied. **1/2
A SCANNER DARKLY Once again employing the rotoscoping process that he used in 2001’s Waking Life (basically, filming in live-action and then tracing over the images), writer-director Richard Linklater this time unleashes the technique on Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel — a match made in hallucinatory heaven. Seven years from now, 20 percent of the population will be comprised of junkies, and the US government is trying its best to break the nation of its habit. It sends an agent known only as Fred (Keanu Reeves) into the field to track down the suppliers of a deadly drug called Substance D. Posing as a slacker named Bob Arctor, he forges relationships with several dopers (Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane), but as his own use of Substance D continues to fry his brain, he finds it increasingly difficult to ascertain what’s real and what’s imagined. Even with its animated overlay, A Scanner Darkly is far more restrained in its storytelling methods than other notable “drug flicks” (Requiem for a Dream, Naked Lunch), though the uniqueness of its visual style (that “scramble suit” is a wow!) nevertheless insures that there’s always something eye-catching on view. ***
STRANGERS WITH CANDY A riff on the popular Comedy Central show of the same name, Strangers With Candy is a mess as a movie: crudely shot, flatly staged and lazily plotted. Even the laughs — and there are a handful of notable ones — don’t always come easily. Yet when compared to recent sourballs like You, Me and Dupree and Little Man, this is bleedin’ Young Frankenstein. The key to its modest success is the manic work of Amy Sedaris, who plays 40-something junkie-whore Jerri Blank. Recently released from prison, Jerri decides to straighten out her life by picking up where she left off when she ran away from home as a teenager: She goes back to high school. The central plot thrust — Jerri hopes to win a science competition — is so formulaic that even as spoof material, it never jibes with the quirkiness that defines the rest of the picture. But while the film doesn’t appear to have much going for it, it’s admittedly one of the few recent gross-out comedies that manages to serve up some nyuks to go along with the yucks. **1/2
SUPERMAN RETURNS A viewer would have to go back 28 years to find the motion picture that still ranks as the finest superhero movie ever made. The 1978 version of Superman still holds up beautifully, with dazzling special effects, plenty of heart and spunk, and career performances by Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder as Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Director Bryan Singer (X-Men and X2) has a great affinity for that film, and he pays his respects with a new picture that’s neither a remake nor a direct repudiation; instead, he imagines Superman Returns as a continuation of the original saga, a chance to advance the story without radically altering it. Like Christopher Nolan with Batman Begins, Singer has elected to add dramatic heft to a deceptively simple comic-book framework, by spending as much screen time on the characters’ mental battles as on the gee-whiz theatrics of Superman’s crime-fighting prowess. The script’s mixture of melodrama and mirth seems just right, and newcomer Brandon Routh is effective as the Man of Steel and his bumbling alter ego. ***1/2
YOU, ME AND DUPREE Inflicting pain — both on its characters and on hapless audiences — seems to be the play of the day as far as this cesspool of a movie is concerned. Owen Wilson plays Dupree, a slacker who’s invited to stay with his best friend Carl (Matt Dillon) and Carl’s new wife Molly (Kate Hudson). It takes about 10 seconds before he makes himself a nuisance — stopping up the toilet, masturbating into Carl’s socks and nearly setting the house on fire. This torturous comedy serves as the ultimate litmus test when it comes to one’s tolerance of Wilson’s patented surfer-boy routine: Effective when used in the service of a likable character, it’s endlessly irritating when attached to a role as obnoxious as Dupree. A black-comedy specialist like Danny DeVito might have wrung some wicked laughs out of this material, but the amateurs in charge here rachet up the unpleasantness but fail to leaven it with any compensating humor. *
OPENS FRIDAY, AUGUST 4:
BARNYARD: Animated.
THE DESCENT: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza.
THE NIGHT LISTENER: Robin Williams, Toni Collette.
TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2006.
