New Releases
THE HONEYMOONERS The classic 1950s TV sitcom gets refitted for a 21st century big-screen excursion, but unfortunately, it’s the audience who gets it right in the kisser. This film has so few connective threads with the original that it’s clear Paramount simply awarded the title to the highest bidder – for all we know, the makers of other recent Paramount releases like Sahara, Coach Carter and The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie might have wanted to call their film The Honeymooners but couldn’t raise enough cash to secure the rights. We do get an irascible bus driver named Ralph Kramden and his dim-witted friend Ed Norton, played here by Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps. The plot centers around their efforts to raise enough money to place a down payment on a duplex coveted by their wives (Gabrielle Union and Regina Hall); to make that dream a reality, Ralph invests their savings in dubious schemes involving an abandoned train car and an abandoned mutt. One character makes a crack about The WB, which in all honesty is where this soggy film belongs. Nothing about it screams “motion picture”; instead, its feeble jokes and rudimentary acting would make it at home smack in the middle of a primetime sit-com line-up. On the plus side, John Leguizamo is a hoot as a motor-mouthed hustler, and there’s one funny line about the “Shah of Argentina.” On the puzzling side, there’s a curious bit in which people keep mistaking our African-American protagonists for Chinese musicians (say what?). Forget Gleason’s “To the moon, Alice” catchphrase: “To the video bargain bin” is more like it.
1/2
MR. AND MRS. SMITH Based on the countless scenes in which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie strip down to their underwear, it’s obvious there isn’t an ounce of flab on either of those beautiful bodies – it’s just too bad the same can’t be said about the film itself. Sorry, Ms. Aniston, but Brad and Angelina make a hot on-screen couple, and they gleefully throw themselves into this chaotic action flick in which the sharp dialogue is too often drowned out by the incessant explosions and automatic weapons fire. The People Magazine perennials play John and Jane Smith, a suburban couple who’ve grown bored with each other over the six years they’ve been married. But what they don’t realize is that they’re both skilled assassins working for competing agencies; once this tidbit of information becomes known to both parties, each is suddenly forced to try to kill the other. Mr. and Mrs. Smith begins promisingly, with Simon Kinberg contributing a script full of wry observations about the level of secrecy inherent in most marriages, and how the stakes might be raised exponentially when the spousal subterfuge occurs between people who kill for a living. But the movie’s pacing is damaged by Doug Liman’s lackadaisical direction, and once the emphasis shifts from the characters to the hardware they employ, it becomes just another noisy spectacle that cops out with a crowd-friendly ending (instead of the more downbeat finale that would logically follow the climactic set piece).
1/2
Current Releases
CINDERELLA MAN No filmmaker in his right mind would want his boxing picture to be released a scant few months after Million Dollar Baby, but Cinderella Man is so structurally and tonally different from Clint Eastwood’s masterwork that it might as well be about jai alai. Almost every summer has one tony Oscar-bait production geared toward older audiences, and Cinderella Man, which relates the real-life story of pugilist James J. Braddock, adequately fills the role. Russell Crowe’s touching portrayal is instrumental in recruiting the audience’s sympathies from the get-go, and director Ron Howard and his A Beautiful Mind writer Akiva Goldsman take care to spend as much time detailing the ravages of the Depression as they do Braddock’s exploits in the ring. This film may not break new ground, but in its ability to provide old-fashioned entertainment, the gloves come flying off.
HIGH TENSION In this dismal French import badly dubbed into English, a filthy guy (Philippe Nahon) in mechanic’s garb murders a married couple and their little boy before setting about raping the daughter (Maiwenn). But unbeknownst to the killer, the girl has a pal (Cecile De France) who tries to figure out a way to rescue her friend from the clutches of this madman. There are slivers of genuine style to be found in writer-director Alexandre Aja’s approach – here’s a man who, for better or worse, is trying to deliver a no-holds-barred exercise in grueling horror, and he has the technical savvy to back him up. But any semblance of psychological complexity remains a no-show until an absurd final twist: The film isn’t scary, suspenseful, thought-provoking or – heck – even remotely entertaining, and the murderer goes through the motions as mechanically as the slashers in the Friday the 13th and Halloween franchises.
LAYER CAKE Until now, Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn had made his mark as the producer of Guy Ritchie’s crime pics Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Yet here he goes and beats Ritchie at his own game by relying less on the crutch of flashy yet empty theatrics to punch across his film’s entertainment value. Daniel Craig plays a dapper, low-key member of the London underworld, a cocaine distributor who plans to retire from this sordid business. But before he can make his great escape, he’s handed two dubious assignments that may end up costing him his life. Craig, a frontrunner to take over the James Bond franchise, is coolly efficient in the central role. I still think the actor’s too slight and pasty to portray 007 – given the number of oceanside assignments, shouldn’t Bond always sport a beautiful bronze tan? – but for other upcoming projects, this newfound charisma indicates that Daniel Craig has officially been handed a licence to thrill.
THE LONGEST YARD Faithfulness to director Robert Aldrich’s hard-hitting 1974 film, in which a former football star leads a ragtag group of convicts in a match against the sadistic guards, isn’t the problem: Major plot points are kept intact, snatches of dialogue find themselves lifted wholesale, and characters’ fates remain the same. But when this version does deviate from its source material, the results are disastrous – and kill any chance the film has in maintaining its modest pleasures. The leading character (Burt Reynolds in the R-rated original, Adam Sandler in this PG-13 piffle) has been softened considerably, while the rampaging homophobia is astonishing (and annoying). Insult comedy can be uproarious in the right hands, but here it’s merely witless, the cinematic equivalent of the school bully giving a weaker classmate a wedgie and then declaring himself the epitome of fine-honed drollery.
LORDS OF DOGTOWN The excellent 2002 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, which chronicles the rise of the Venice, CA, teens who almost single-handedly revived skateboarding as a national phenomenon during the 1970s, has now been given the fictionalized Hollywood treatment, yet the resultant film fails to capture anything beyond random surface pleasures. Initially, the choice of Catherine Hardwicke as director seemed inspired, but the ample party scenes that drove her gritty film Thirteen seem extraneous here and take the focus away from the real story. Lords of Dogtown is well acted (especially by Heath Ledger as the group’s stoner-mentor), and Hardwicke ably recreates a specific time and place. Yet the movie rarely conveys the import of what these lower-income kids accomplished: As depicted here, their cultural revolution seems no more noteworthy than a day spent at the mall.
MADAGASCAR Unlike the banal Robots and Shark Tale, this animated delight strikes an appropriate balance: It’s hip without being obnoxious, and it’s sentimental without being cloying. Through a wild chain of events, four animal pals from a New York zoo – lion (Ben Stiller), zebra (Chris Rock), hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and giraffe (David Schwimmer) – find themselves stranded on the title island. Despite the ingratiating leads (Rock, for one, has never been better), despite the eye-popping animation, and despite the presence of other scene-stealers (check out the lemurs), the main reason to see this is to catch the penguins, four no-nonsense types who plan to dig their way to Antarctica but instead end up hijacking a ship. First Opus, then Sparky, now these guys – the lion may be comfortably ensconced as king of the jungle, but when it comes to the thick brier of popular culture, it’s the penguin who reigns supreme.
1/2
MOOLAADE The Charlotte Film Society, which previously brought 82-year-old Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene’s 2001 effort Faat Kine to town, now does likewise with Moolaade, which earned an award at Cannes and placed on over two dozen critics’ “10 Best” lists for 2004. Moolaade centers on a grotesque tradition still practiced in many African villages: the genital mutilation of little girls so they won’t feel sexual pleasure when they eventually marry. When six small girls turn to her for sanctuary (“Moolaade”), Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly) decides that enough’s enough and does her best to stop the madness. Like past Sembene titles, this one’s about the surge of human compassion above all else, and the writer-director manages to share his yarn in the tradition of a great storyteller sitting by the fire, adding plenty of color and detail to keep the audience captive.
1/2
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS Ann Brashares’ best-selling book (at least among female readers) has been transformed into a luminescent motion picture for anyone interested in an emotional high. As they prepare to go their separate ways for the summer, four high school friends (winningly played by America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel, Blake Lively and Amber Tamblyn) stumble across a pair of jeans that miraculously fits all of them. They quickly decide that the pants will be passed among them throughout the summer, as a way of staying in touch over long distances. Statutory rape, parental abandonment, the death of a child – these are heavy issues for any movie, let alone one aimed at young girls. Yet while Sisterhood occasionally skirts around the full import of these hot-button items, it’s still honest enough to acknowledge the perils of adolescence as well as the pleasures.
STAR WARS: EPISODE III – REVENGE OF THE SITH Better than their overall critical standing would have one believe, the new Star Wars flicks have nevertheless registered as disappointments to those of us for whom the original trilogy felt like a coming-of-age rite of passage. The Phantom Menace was a mixed bag, while Attack of the Clones (by a hair the best of the newbies) only occasionally managed to recapture the spirit and flavor of the original three-pack. This last chapter follows suit, a cinematic seesaw in which the good bits are packed into the second half. The movie gets off to a dreadful start, stuffed with chaotic chases, ill-defined new characters and the rapid elimination of a worthy foe. And then something inspiring occurs: The mythology takes over, and the latter sequences – directly connecting to events first recorded in the original Star Wars film back in 1977 – resonate beyond the screen, fueled as much by our own nostalgic twinges as by George Lucas’ ability to send the series off in style.
1/2
OPENS WEDNESDAY:
BATMAN BEGINS: Christian Bale, Michael Caine.
OPENS FRIDAY:
HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE: Animated.
THE PERFECT MAN: Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear.
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2005.
