CURRENT RELEASES
THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH This Eddie Murphy comedy has been sitting on a studio shelf since circa the time the wheel was first invented; it cost $100 million to make; it wasn’t screened in advance for critics; and it grossed a paltry $2 million on its opening weekend. A review at this point might seem rather anti-climactic, but in the mere chance that there’s somebody out there still intrigued at the prospect of seeing the diverse likes of John Cleese, Pam Grier and Burt Young all gracing the same film, I’m here to say it ain’t worth the time, cost or deterioration of brain cells. The sad thing about this abysmal effort, set on the moon in the year 2087, isn’t that it’s terrible; it’s that it’s terrible without even being enjoyable in a bad-movie sorta way. Even the gang from the late, lamented Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have trouble finding much to riff off in this turkey, which is unremittingly dull more than anything else. Murphy plays the title character, an entrepreneur whose wildly successful moon-based nightclub becomes the focus for a shady gangster interested in muscling his way into the business. After his club gets destroyed, Nash takes it on the lam, dragging an aspiring singer (Rosario Dawson) and a horny robot (Randy Quaid, annoying but trying hard, bless his heart) along with him. Imagine if the Total Recall sets had been placed in a fire sale, and you’ll get an idea of the film’s drab visual scheme. As for the comedy quotient, I counted exactly two laughs, which breaks down to $50 million per chuckle — definitely not a sound return on investment. 
THE BANGER SISTERS Not to be outdone by daughter Kate Hudson’s Oscar-nominated turn in Almost Famous, Goldie Hawn herself turns up as a groupie in The Banger Sisters, an affable and occasionally poignant picture that unfortunately falls apart toward the end. Hawn plays Suzette, a rock & roll babe who was legendary in her day for bedding scores of rock stars (including Jim Morrison); her partner in crime was Lavinia (Susan Sarandon), and together they were known as The Banger Sisters (so named by Frank Zappa). Now, having just been fired from her long-standing job as a bartender at an LA nightclub, Suzette hits the road to look up Lavinia after a 20-year separation, but what she finds is a respectable, matronly woman who has suppressed all memories of her wild, wayward youth. Sarandon and especially Hawn are aptly cast in their respective roles, yet the picture is stolen by Geoffrey Rush as a failed writer whose tidy existence is disrupted by Suzette’s whirlwind personality — this character would seem completely extraneous were it not for Rush’s quirky performance. Yet while the film threatens to develop from a breezy comedy into a thoughtful drama about the choices that people must make as they become older and are expected to embrace more responsibilities, the transition never works because the second half is rushed and disjointed, with character transformations occurring at an absurdly accelerated rate and plot resolutions being handled in an annoyingly tidy fashion. 1/2
BARBERSHOP Despite the presence of rapper-actor Ice Cube and the occasional booty shot, it’s the PG-13 rating and the tag line “From the Producers of Soul Food and Men of Honor” that should tip viewers off that this ensemble comedy has more in common with Sunday school values than Friday film vileness. Forsaking the raunchiness of that Ice Cube hit (as well as its sequel, Next Friday), this one is mostly a sweet-natured affair, with the Cube cast as a decent bloke who, like Jimmy Stewart with the Bedford Falls Savings and Loan in It’s a Wonderful Life, has inherited a business from his kindly father that has become like an albatross around his ambitious neck. He agrees to sell the shop to a loan shark (Keith David) who plans to turn it into a strip joint, but immediately regrets his decision once he realizes how his establishment serves as a bedrock for the local black community. Ensemble comedies rise and fall not only on the strength of the humor but also on the appeal of the various characters, and in both instances, Barbershop manages only to part down the middle, with some choice wisecracks (most courtesy of Cedric the Entertainer as an opinionated, elderly barber) and amiable personalities having to wrestle screen time away from an inane subplot involving the theft of an ATM machine. It’s nice to see Ice Cube in such a relaxed mode, though, and film buffs will want to note that actor Troy Garity (as the shop’s sole white barber) is the son of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. 1/2
BLUE CRUSH This surfing flick is one of those movies that could reasonably be advertised as having “something for everyone.” Teenage girls will enjoy seeing a film populated by heroines of a like age, while teenage boys will enjoy beauteous blonde lead Kate Bosworth decked out in skimpy bikinis. Women will enjoy the movie’s “you go, girl” sensibilities, while men will enjoy beauteous blonde lead Kate Bosworth decked out in skimpy bikinis. And beach folk (my camp) will enjoy the gorgeous footage of the ocean while mountain folk will enjoy beauteous blonde lead Kate Bosworth decked out in skimpy bikinis and wonder exactly why they’re mountain folk anyway. If nothing else, Blue Crush certainly had all the makings of a late-summer guilty pleasure, but even guilty pleasures have to rise above a pedestrian script on some level, and this eye-candy never quite makes the climb. The cinematography by Don King (billed as “water camera operator”) is spectacular — viewers are placed on top of, in the middle of, and under the waves — and, as Bosworth’s best friend, Michelle Rodriguez (Girlfight) continues to impress with her gruff, take-no-prisoners attitude. But the story of a high school drop-out (Bosworth) who has to decide between following her dream by entering a big surf competition or following her fantasy by shacking up with a hunky NFL quarterback (Matthew Davis) is a narrative wipe out almost from the start.
CITY BY THE SEA With apologies to James Brown, Robert De Niro just might be the hardest working man in show business, but that counts for naught since he’s also turning into the dullest working man in show business. Just as the networks over the years have produced their Movie-of-the-Week, De Niro seems to have settled into churning out his own Movie-of-the-Season, sandwiching this fall release between the spring comedy Showtime and the Christmas flick Analyze That. But lately, this once-unpredictable actor has seemed capable of only two speeds, self-parodying clown and street-smart loner, and it’s the latter persona that turns up in this tedious cop flick inspired by a true story. De Niro plays Vincent LaMarca, a veteran detective working the Manhattan beat and doing his best to remain emotionally distant from everyone, including his inquisitive girlfriend (Frances McDormand). LaMarca abandoned his home turf of Long Beach, Long Island, years ago, leaving behind a fed-up ex-wife (Patti LuPone) and a neglected son (James Franco), yet he finds himself drawn back to his old stomping ground once it appears that his junkie son might be involved in a murder. An interesting premise gets completely wasted in a sluggish drama that grows less interesting as it unfolds.
THE GOOD GIRL A sterling example of the sort of “introspective cinema” that brought us the terrific Ruby In Paradise, The Good Girl is a bracingly candid study of an ordinary woman and the difficult choices she must make as she tries to figure out exactly how she wants to spend her remaining decades on this planet. Jennifer Aniston, in a smart career move that should do more for her big screen aspirations than inanities like Picture Perfect, is just right as Justine, a not especially bright 30-year-old working a dead-end job at the Retail Rodeo store and married to a house painter (John C. Reilly) who spends his free time smoking pot with his hayseed of a best friend (Tim Blake Nelson). Justine sees an opportunity for escape once she begins an affair with a passionate (and possibly disturbed) 22-year-old co-worker (Donnie Darko‘s Jake Gyllenhaal), but once her illicit activity causes numerous complications, she begins to find herself cornered and must make a series of hasty decisions that could potentially hurt rather than heal her situation. Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White (the Chuck and Buck scribe who also appears here as a religious security guard) smartly earn our empathy by bouncing humor off the situations rather than the characters (the potential for condescension is enormous but rarely taken), and the result is a movie that manages to be both charming and troubling. 1/2
LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA We consider it a quintessentially American movie plot — the underdog who rises up to vanquish his oppressors — but proving yet again that cinema is a universal language, here comes Lagaan, a vastly entertaining, 225-minute epic that copped a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination earlier this year. Built like an Indian Gone With the Wind but owing its spirit to titles like The Longest Yard and The Bad News Bears, this global hit, set in Victorian times, finds the members of an impoverished village in India agreeing to an unusual bet offered by the local British rulers. If they can beat the Brits in a cricket match, they will be spared from paying “lagaan” (tax) for three years; lose, however, and they must pay triple the tax. Combining boisterous comedy and social drama with musical numbers that come out of nowhere, Lagaan is a joyous celebration of moviemaking that receives an additional boost from Indian superstar Aamir Khan, who’s unbelievably magnetic in the leading role of the villager who rallies his countrymen in a strong showing of solidarity. Don’t worry about the film’s running time — this baby moves like lightning through butter. 1/2
ONE HOUR PHOTO The dirty secret regarding Robin Williams is that, despite his standing as an out-of-control funnyman, he’s usually most interesting when he’s playing it straight. It’s not hard to overact, as he’s done on oh-so-many occasions; what’s harder is to subtly underplay, to invest a character with meaning via hushed tones and furtive glances rather than bedpans on the feet and flubber in the pants. This dark side of the former Mork from Ork reaches full fruition in One Hour Photo, a psychological thriller that finds the actor delivering what might be the best performance of his career. Williams plays Sy Parrish, a quiet man who has spent years working behind the photo counter at the local Savmart. Lonely beyond measure, Sy treats all his customers with care, but he saves the most affection for the Yorkins (mom Connie Nielsen, dad Michael Vartan, son Dylan Smith), whose photos he has developed for years. Viewing them as the perfect family unit, this emotionally damaged individual starts to work his way into their everyday routines, a decision that reaches a frightening conclusion once Sy notices the hypocrisies that rest underneath the faux-reality projected on those 4-by-6 photos. Writer-director Mark Romanek establishes a wonderfully creepy mood throughout the whole picture, but this isn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill thriller — what’s most interesting about it is how it constantly alters our opinions of Sy Parrish, allowing this apparent madman to occasionally emerge as a sympathetic (and even oddly moral) person who earns pity as much as disgust. 1/2
SERVING SARA Just as Jennifer Aniston is receiving glowing reviews for her subtle performance in the critical darling The Good Girl, here’s her Friends co-star Matthew Perry forced to mug his way through a sputtering comedy that, in one scene, requires him to stick his arm deep into an impotent bull’s butt and massage its prostate so that the animal will start delivering its seed into a plastic decoy cow (with Friends like these, who needs enemas?). Perry does himself no favors by appearing in this slapdash effort, which finds him playing a process server who, after being ordered to deliver divorce papers to the British wife (Elizabeth Hurley) of a loutish Texas millionaire (Bruce Campbell), teams up with the betrayed woman to serve her husband the papers first, thereby insuring she’ll have a bigger cut of their accumulated fortune. Serving Sara wallows in the sort of ribald putdowns and ethnic slurs not seen since the heyday of comics like Don Rickles, but most of it is desperate rather than funny (phrases like “Eat me” are what passes for innovative wit in this feature). Hurley has been amusing in other comedies but here she seems adrift, and she and Perry seem about as believable a romantic couple as would a lion and a lemur. 1/2
SIGNS There’s been much discussion about how the unofficial cinematic theme of the summer has been father-son relations (Road to Perdition, Minority Report, Austin Powers In Goldmember), but it seems to me that the unofficial theme of the entire year has been the ability of deceased wives to reach out from beyond the grave to offer guidance to their emotionally floundering spouses. Like The Mothman Prophecies and Dragonfly, the latest yarn from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) is at heart a story about a man, in this case a former reverend (Mel Gibson), whose faith is tested after the loss of his wife but who slowly comes around once he opens his mind to the possibilities of supernatural intervention. Yet since that plotline won’t have ’em lining up at the box office, Shyamalan wraps his metaphysical musings around a rickety story about how the crop markings in Gibson’s corn fields might be early clues that an extra-terrestrial invasion might be imminent. As long as Shyamalan keeps his film swathed in shadows, it achieves its goal, with the director’s understated style and Gibson’s strong performance working nicely in tandem with the overall air of ambiguity. But once matters are spelled out in the second half (think Independence Day without a budget), the movies loses its potency, limping its way toward a contrived finale that’s supposed to tie everything neatly together but instead merely comes off as Shyamalan’s latest desperate attempt to one-up the twist ending of The Sixth Sense. 1/2
SUNSHINE STATE Every time it seems as if writer-director John Sayles can’t possibly come up with a premise even more brazenly non-commercial than his previous efforts — this is, after all, the guy who gave us striking coal miners in Matewan and impoverished Latin American villagers in Men With Guns — he manages to surprise us with a topic that won’t interest anyone obsessed with goldmembers but will serve as nourishment to folks desiring some substance in their cinematic diet. In the sprawling manner of City of Hope (one of Sayles’ more underrated films), Sunshine State is a multi-character piece that takes a hard look at the people and the politics surrounding a stretch of land in Florida. The fictional Plantation Island is the setting, made up of modest beachfront communities that find themselves at risk of disappearing once developers show up with their eye on turning the valuable property into resorts for wealthy Northerners. Among those involved in the proceedings are a motel owner (Edie Falco) whose exhaustion makes it hard for her to decide whether to fight or sell; an amiable architect (Timothy Hutton) who ends up forming a bond with the motel owner; a failed actress (Angela Bassett) who left town when she was 15 and pregnant and is only now returning for a visit; and a doctor (Bill Cobbs) who’s outraged that the historical significance of his African-American community will be wiped out forever once the bulldozers start tearing everything apart. Had all of the vignettes been of equal quality, this might have ranked with Sayles’ very best films, but there’s still much to admire here, including the uniformly fine performances as well as Sayles’ insistence on letting all sides have their say.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2002.
