NEW RELEASES
STAGE BEAUTY Cross the artistic integrity of Shakespeare In Love with the bawdy behavior of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and you might come up with Stage Beauty, a movie that recognizes the poetry in both Shakespeare and Benny Hill. Set during the reign of King Charles II (Rupert Everett) in 17th century England, the movie continues the recent trend of mixing and matching fact and fiction, with Billy Crudup cast as Ned Kynaston, the most celebrated actor during a period in which women were forbidden from performing on the stage. Making his mark solely in female parts — his latest triumph is portraying Desdemona in Othello — Ned finds his livelihood cut out from under him when the King issues a decree stating that, effective immediately, women are now allowed to act and men can only play male roles. So while Ned wallows in self-pity and sexual confusion (he only knows how to “act” feminine), his dresser (Claire Danes), who’s long had her eye on the stage, suddenly finds herself regarded as the community’s top new talent. Director Richard Eyre and scripter Jeffrey Hatcher (adapting his own play, Compleat Female Stage Beauty) fare best when they tackle the issue of gender identification while also debating its theatrical implications (“Where’s the trick in that?” bellows Ned when learning that women will play women, hinting that the art comes from the mimicry rather than the shared experience between actor and role); they have less success in curtailing the piece’s anachronistic tendencies. 
1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
AROUND THE BEND Product placements are nothing new, but what compelled Kentucky Fried Chicken to partner with writer-director Jordan Roberts on his low-budget debut? This family drama is sooo dull and dreary that the company might want to brace itself for plummeting stocks. Michael Caine plays an old codger who drops dead 20 minutes into the film; his will stipulates that his survivors — son (Christopher Walken), grandson (Josh Charles) and great-grandson (Jonah Bobo) — will bond over KFC lunches and the spreading of his ashes over the landscape. Well-intentioned but not even remotely involving, this leaves plenty of time for either dozing or daydreaming. My moment of inspiration during my frequent mental drifts: Given the plotline, how about a KFC promotion in which their chicken is sold in a bucket that’s shaped like an urn? 1/2
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS A true-life yarn that was dubbed by Sports Illustrated as “one of the greatest sports stories of all time” has now been turned into one of the dullest sports films of recent years. Peter Berg has adapted his cousin H.G. Bissinger’s acclaimed novel but in the process stripped it of any complexity, leaving only a generic pigskin tale. Set in 1988, the story unfolds in the small Texas town of Odessa, where practically every resident is glued to the fortunes of the local high school team. An underlying theme is that this cracker town’s obsession with football is an unhealthy one, yet Berg skirts around this important issue simply so he can spend more time on motivational speeches and gridiron heroics — in other words, the same-old same-old.
THE GRUDGE Japanese director Takashi Shimizu helms the American remake of his wildly popular scarefest Ju-On: The Grudge, but even his participation isn’t enough to elevate this terror tale in any discernible manner. Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as an exchange student whose volunteer work takes her to a house that’s subject to a terrible curse, a manifestation of evil that spells doom for anybody who enters. Ju-On‘s success rested in its powerful atmosphere, the sense of dread that Shimizu instilled in virtually every frame. Yet that aura only presents itself sporadically in the Yankee Grudge, most notably when the director meticulously recreates the original film’s shock moments. The rest of the time, we’re stuck with sterile expository scenes, a repetitious framework and the spectacle of Gellar trying to emote.
I ♥ HUCKABEES Or, Being Charlie Kaufman, as writer-director David O. Russell tries to expand the parameters of mainstream cinema as much as the scripter of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yet while Russell’s movie doesn’t quite capture the freewheeling dementia of Kaufman’s output, it’s still a noteworthy effort, with enough engaging hi-jinks — not to mention a high-wattage cast — to distract us from the frequent fuzziness of its psychobabble involving a young man’s (Jason Schwartzman) search for the meaning of life. The passion with which the characters rail against their unbearable lightness of being is inspiring, and the uniformly fine cast (Dustin Hoffman, Naomi Watts, Jude Law, among others) provides shadings that otherwise might not have been there.
LADDER 49 It was probably inevitable — perhaps even desirable — for a post-9/11 movie to be made that celebrated firemen, but did it have to be as dull as this one? If there’s an original moment in this tedious (if earnest) drama, I must have been rubbing my eyes for a nanosecond and missed it; instead, director Jay Russell and writer Lewis Colick have managed to cram just about every overused melodramatic device into this one picture. In an effort to elevate these men (played by, among others, Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta) to the level of heroes, Colick has stripped them of most traits, in effect leaving us with a roomful of cardboard characters in a threadbare film so desperate for material that it actually includes a karaoke scene and at least two musical montages. 1/2
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES The seeds of social change are planted early on within Ernesto “Che” Guevara in this uncomplicated biopic that examines an early incident in the life of the iconic revolutionary. Because it focuses exclusively on a particular journey that the young Ernesto (Gael Garcia Bernal) takes across South America — whereupon he witnesses the suffering of others firsthand — the movie plays more like a humanist fable about one individual’s consciousness-raising than it does as a portrait of the controversial warrior-martyr. While this may smack some as a play-it-safe ploy by Salles, it also frees the picture from the shackles of expectation and allows it to blossom as a heartfelt paean to a formidable continent and its proud people.
SAW In this age of cookie cutter thrillers, here’s one that, for better or worse (or a bit of both), stands apart from the pack. Two men, a doctor (Cary Elwes) and a photographer (Leigh Whannell, who co-wrote the script with director James Wan), find themselves the prisoners of a serial killer and must pool their resources if they hope to escape. As director, Wan needs to trust his instincts more — the rapid-speed camerawork and choppy editing occasionally on display prove to be pointless and distracting — and as writer, he and Whannell could have taken more care to plug up some gaping plot holes. Yet the unique setting adds some intrigue, and the twist ending should jolt the majority of moviegoers right out of their seats. 1/2
SHALL WE DANCE Dogged by a malaise that won’t go away, a lawyer (Richard Gere) is lured by the mere presence of a dance instructor (Jennifer Lopez) to sign up for ballroom dance lessons. She quickly makes it clear that she’s not romantically interested, yet it doesn’t matter because he soon realizes that it’s the hoofing — and not the fantasy of a younger woman — that has revitalized his lust for life. This is the Hollywood remake of a wonderful art-house hit from Japan, yet it turns out that the 1997 original isn’t its worst enemy. Instead, the sabotage comes from within, with Lopez so monotonous that they could have cast a blow-up doll in her role and few would have noticed. What elevates this slight film is the exemplary work by Susan Sarandon, who provides the emotional connection as Gere’s in-the-dark wife. 1/2
SHARK TALE Forget the Finding Nemo comparisons: On its own, this animated dud still only qualifies as so much cinematic chum. Will Smith provides the voice for Oscar, a hip-hopping fish whose dreams of success are realized once he’s mistaken for a courageous shark-slayer; he’s aided in his efforts at duplicity by Lenny (Jack Black), an out-of-the-closet shark running away from a mob family that doesn’t accept his alternative lifestyle. Shark Tale is all about getting jiggy with pop culture references, with much of the weak humor coming from riffs on famous products, famous songs and famous people (amazingly, today’s two biggest media whores aren’t on hand under the monikers Larry King Mackerel and Stingray Leno). A few clever sight gags pop up now and then, but for the most part, this one smells fishy from the start.
SHAUN OF THE DEAD No mere splatterfest, this cheeky UK import turns out to be a horror film, a romantic comedy, and a social satire all rolled into one. Shaun (played by co-scripter Simon Pegg), normally found getting drunk at the pub, snaps into action when a zombie epidemic suddenly hits town. If George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was able to draw a correlation between modern suburbanites and the post-apocalyptic zombies — both of whom spend their time mindlessly wandering through malls — then Shaun equals that feat by presenting its humans as zombies-in-training, aimless people who shuffle through life with no ambitions, no skills and no awareness of the world around them. The film includes the expected in-jokes, yet the comedy quotient makes this more accessible to general audiences than most zombie flicks.
SURVIVING CHRISTMAS Last year, we got Bad Santa; this year, we get Bad Movie. Unlike the Billy Bob Thornton hit, which for the most part kept its dark heart pumping bile right through to the end, this misguided Yuletide farce tries to have it both ways by dribbling watery drops of black comedy into the more familiar foundation of eggnog-sweet sentimentality. The film gets into trouble the moment its feeble plotline is introduced: Wealthy Drew Latham (Ben Affleck) doesn’t want to spend Christmas alone, so he offers a suburban family $250,000 if they’ll just pretend to be his family for the holidays. Affleck’s character is so unbelievably obnoxious throughout the movie that when he’s made his miraculous transformation by the end, it’s hard to tell exactly how, when or why he had been redeemed. 1/2
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone attempt to offend everyone with this film that’s cast entirely with marionettes. The title outfit — super-macho warriors willing to destroy the world in order to stop the terrorist threat (there goes the Eiffel Tower; there go the pyramids) — is a Republican president’s wet dream, as is the notion of depicting liberal Hollywood actors like Tim Robbins and Alec Baldwin as anti-American stooges who suffer gruesome deaths for opposing our valiant heroes. Juvenile? Sure. Funny? Certainly — though not nearly as often as one might reasonably expect from these guys. The comic highlights are punched across at regular intervals, but once the novelty of the puppets wears off, the movie has trouble sustaining its length — or its level of outrageousness. 1/2
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2004.
