NEW RELEASES
THE LIZZIE MCGUIRE MOVIE
The appeal of the Disney Channel’s top-rated kids’ show Lizzie McGuire can doubtless be traced right to its star, 15-year-old Hilary Duff. Duff plays Lizzie as part Lucille Ball, part Britney Spears (minus the sleaze factor) and part Julie Andrews, serving up a squeaky clean teen whose only flaw seems to be her excessive use of makeup. Perhaps inevitably, we now get the big-screen spin-off, yet while the movie should prove to be manna from sit-com heaven for the show’s fan base of kids ages 6-14, there’s not much here to excite accompanying parents. Like one of those two-part Brady Bunch or Happy Days episodes that were invariably shown during sweeps weeks, this rounds up the cast of TV regulars and transports them to a foreign setting — in this case, Italy, which is where a class trip takes Lizzie, best friend Gordo (Adam Lamberg) and her other classmates. This sets the stage for a lame mistaken identity romp (Duff plays both Lizzie and an Italian pop star), yet Duff’s vast appeal renders it harmless to the senses. Rating for its target audience: four stars. Rating for the rest of us: 
30 YEARS TO LIFE
Don’t let the title fool you into dismissing this as another Steven Seagal action snooze; on the contrary, this debut feature from writer-director Vanessa Middleton follows in the tradition of the lovely Soul Food as a winning look at well-to-do African-Americans struggling with careers and relationships. Here, the unifying theme among its central characters is that they’re all 29 and will be celebrating their 30th birthdays over the course of the film. For most of them, this milestone brings up feelings of anxiety: Natalie (Melissa De Sousa) is a beautiful, brainy career woman who can’t understand why she’s unlucky in love; Troy (Tracy Morgan) is a stand-up comedian wondering if his breakthrough will ever arrive; Joy (Erika Alexander) and Leland (T.E. Russell) have been together for four years, with visions of matrimony in her eyes but not his; Stephanie (Paula Jai Parker) is an overweight woman who decides to remake herself; and Malik (Allen Payne) is an incurable womanizer who tries his hand at a modeling career. Besides ably tapping into that well of insecurity that invariably accompanies the aging process (and providing several big laughs along the way), Middleton exhibits her skills as a storyteller by making sure each interconnected episode is as engaging as the one that preceded it and also by resisting the urge to neatly tie up every story strand — in fact, I can already see the sequel: What? 40 Already?!
CURRENT RELEASES
ANGER MANAGEMENT
After delivering subtle, shaded performances in The Pledge and About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson reverts back to his familiar “wild and crazy guy” persona in Anger Management — and that’s actually not a bad thing. Nicholson gamely gets into the swing of the satire as Buddy Rydell, an unorthodox therapist whose methods threaten to completely unnerve his latest patient, a meek businessman (Adam Sandler) railroaded into subjecting himself to the good doctor’s anger management program. It’s doubtful we’ll ever see Sandler tackling Hamlet or Willy Loman (and would we want to?), but both last fall’s Punch-Drunk Love and now Anger Management demonstrate that he can be an engaging presence when he drags himself away from projects aimed squarely at mentally deficient frat boys. Even if some of the situations seem overly familiar (the Yankee Stadium climax) or needlessly protracted (ditto), the movie zips by on the strength of some big laughs, sharply cast supporting roles (notably John Turturro and an unbilled Heather Graham) and the two well-matched stars at its core.
BETTER LUCK TOMORROW
Just as the recent City of God seemed to transfer the GoodFellas formula to the Brazilian slums, here’s a strong effort from writer-director Justin Lin that places Asian-American high school students in a similar scenario. Lin starts with the stereotype of the Asian-American kid as clean-cut, hard-working and industrious and turns it on its head. At their California school, Ben (Perry Shen) and his three buddies are straight-A students with a laundry list of extra-curricular activities (sports, school newspaper, charity events, you name it) and their pick of Ivy League universities to attend after their impending graduation. But perhaps precisely because they’re pegged as harmless, these teens decide that breaking the law should be their next extra-curricular assignment — they start off small, by selling cheat sheets to other kids, but eventually find themselves trafficking in drugs and even packing pistols. Apparently aiming for the histrionic heights of GoodFellas and Boogie Nights, Lin and his co-scripters carry their story too far — I didn’t believe the reasons and circumstances surrounding a third-act murder for one second — but they capture teen anxiety beautifully, with a strong cast of unknowns aiding them in their effort.
CONFIDENCE
If The Good Thief represents the Old School brand of heist flicks, then Confidence serves as its New School equivalent, a picture carrying the torch for Mamet and Tarantino in its love of rapid-fire dialogue, roving camerawork and multiple plot twists. As such, it’s one of the better examples of late (it easily overshadows Gene Hackman’s Heist and Robert De Niro’s The Score), even if it does run out of steam (and originality) before the end. The prime-cut cast is its strongest asset, with Ed Burns oozing charisma as a wily con artist, Paul Giamatti a welcome presence as a straight-talking member of his team, and, in a startling bit of casting, Dustin Hoffman as a venal small-time kingpin with a quick temper and a fondness for both the ladies and the gents. You also get Rachel Weisz as the requisite femme fatale and reliable Luis Guzman as a corrupt cop, but by the time Andy Garcia gets thrown into the mix late in the game as a shady government agent, it becomes clear that director James Foley (who orchestrated similar rat-tat-tat patter in Glengarry Glen Ross) and scripter Doug Jung have overstuffed their plates — in this case, less probably would have been more. 1/2
THE GOOD THIEF
A smart, sophisticated drama for grownups, Neil Jordan’s jazzy new flick may be a remake of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1955 Bob Le Flambeur, but its central player, a boozy American expatriate who’s equal parts idealist and cynic, stirs memories of Bogart’s Casablanca character… provided Rick Blaine had been a heroin addict. In a staggeringly good performance, Nick Nolte plays this magnificent mess of a man, a burn-out whose rough lifestyle (heroin and gambling) never once tempers the joie de vivre spirit that informs his every move. After cleaning up his act, he decides to take part in a casino heist while also serving as a father figure to a 17-year-old prostitute (Nutsa Kukhianidze). The twist ending is nice, though I’m still not convinced that everything falls into place from a narrative standpoint; ultimately, though, this is a heist movie that’s infinitely more interested in exploring its players than in impressing (or annoying) the audience with its cleverness, and therein lies its appeal. Kukhianidze brings a refreshing matter-of-fact directness to her role, while Tcheky Karyo is warmly inviting as a sympathetic cop. Yet it’s Nolte who dominates the picture: Watching the actor invest himself so thoroughly in the part, it’s easy to believe that this remarkable talent is purging his real-life demons through his film work.
HOLES
Louis Sachar’s award-winning children’s book might be a “must-read” among students and teachers, but the widely circulated trailer made the new screen version look like a “must-avoid.” Luckily, the finished product is far more engaging than the clumsy preview would lead anyone to believe — in fact, it’s good enough to be enjoyed equally by kids and their attendant parents. Sachar himself wrote the script, which focuses on the plight of hapless teen Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf of the Disney Channel’s Even Stevens), who’s wrongly convicted of robbery and sent to Camp Green Lake, a boys’ correctional facility located in the middle of a desert. There, he and the other guys are subjected to the demands of the warden (Sigourney Weaver) and her two sidekicks (Tim Blake Nelson and a hilariously over-the-top Jon Voight), who order the boys to spend every day digging holes. Sachar and director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) have crafted a fresh comedy-drama that nicely weaves the present-day story together with related flashbacks set in the Old West (Patricia Arquette stars in this section of the film); while the ending may tie everything up a bit too tidily, there’s no denying that there’s real imagination at work here.
IDENTITY
As a longtime fan of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, this new thriller, which works from the same template, completely had me in its grip for the first hour. Eleven people, including a former cop (John Cusack), an active cop (Ray Liotta), a hooker (Amanda Peet) and a has-been actress (Rebecca DeMornay), all find themselves stranded at a desolate hotel during a massive rain storm, whereupon they start getting murdered one by one. With this cast lending prestige and a competent director (James Mangold of Girl, Interrupted) emphasizing mounting suspense over cheap scares, Identity works like gangbusters until it reveals Major Plot Twist #1 with about 20 minutes to go (Major Plot Twist #2 concerns the killer’s identity during the final minutes, but this one’s easy to figure out for those familiar with the ground rules of the genre). Without giving too much away, this sudden reversal of circumstances might catch most audiences off guard and certainly takes the film into a new direction, but that’s not necessarily a plus, as this shift largely negates everything that preceded it and ends up reducing its initially intriguing characters to nothing more than paper dolls. It’s a real shame: Perhaps the Director’s Cut on DVD will shuck the entire final third and add a better resolution, but let’s not hold our breath.
IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY
The Douglas clan’s answer to the Fondas’ On Golden Pond might easily have been called On Golden Turkey, as a wretched beginning initially hints that this might end up as one of the year’s worst films. Fortunately for all involved (and none more so than the audience), this schizophrenic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-and-we’re-even-considering-that melodrama rights itself enough to ascend to the level of a rampaging mediocrity. Kirk Douglas, a welcome presence who nevertheless is only onscreen to toss off one-liners, plays Mitchell Gromberg, the crusty patriarch of a New York family, with real-life family members cast as his wife (Diana Douglas, in reality his former spouse), his son (Michael Douglas), and his grandson (Cameron Douglas). Along with the other members of the Gromberg household (Bernadette Peters as Michael’s wife and Rory Culkin as their youngest son), they must cope with petty squabbles, potential affairs, underachieving offspring, flatulent relatives, and other factors that prevent them from becoming as cozy a clan as the Waltons. This overreaching Family affair, numbly directed by Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees of Separation), was clearly a labor of love for Kirk and Michael, who had never appeared together on screen before this — it’s a lovely sentiment, but hardly worth the price of admission.
OPENS FRIDAY:
DADDY DAY CARE: Eddie Murphy, Anjelica Huston.
A MIGHTY WIND: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy.
30 YEARS TO LIFE: Melissa De Sousa, Tracy Morgan.
HOME THEATER
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
From its snazzy opening credits to John Williams’ infectious, Oscar-nominated score, Steven Spielberg’s most recent hit feels like nothing so much as pure old-fashioned escapism, with the director in an especially playful mood. Inspired by a true story, this stars Leonardo DiCaprio (in a smooth, charismatic performance) as a brainy teenager who manages to successfully impersonate a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer and a teacher while staying a few steps ahead of a persistent FBI agent (Tom Hanks, very good). Because this is a Spielberg project, you can bet that some poignant subtext involving splintered family units will come into play (Oscar nominee Christopher Walken does a nice job as DiCaprio’s perpetually weary dad), but for the most part, this is engaging, stress-free entertainment — just kick back and enjoy. Extras on the imaginatively designed, two-disc DVD include a making-of piece and features on the cast and score.
EQUILIBRIUM
Fahrenheit 451 plus 1984 divided by THX-1138 multiplied by The Matrix squared by Blade Runner and rounded off to Logan’s Run — but subtracting much in the way of compelling developments — equals Equilibrium, a futuristic yarn in which anyone who expresses any feelings — especially toward art, literature and puppy dogs — is immediately terminated, leaving only a bunch of pill-popping drones to populate the planet. Naturally, a few folks decide to rebel. Some nifty (if absurd) fight sequences and an appropriately iron-jawed turn by Christian Bale provide this otherwise forgettable yarn with its own sense of equilibrium. DVD features include commentary by director Kurt Wimmer and a making-of feature.
— Matt Brunson
This article appears in May 7-13, 2003.
