The problem with a good comedy — and make no mistake, The Simpsons Movie is a very good comedy — is that it’s hard for even the tightlipped among us not to want to rush out and share many of the best gags with our friends. Of course, that would ruin the surprise for everyone else planning to catch said film, so out of loyalty and respect, it’s best to keep one’s mouth shut.
But boy, are there some real winners in this animated feature, ones that will be appreciated by folks who can’t even distinguish a Marge from a Maggie, or a Flanders from a Smithers, or an Itchy from a Scratchy. Take, for instance, a brilliant bit — choreographed with all the precision of a Gene Kelly musical — that finds Bart skateboarding naked through the streets of Springfield. Or a verbal aside involving a homemade — make that Homer-made — silo used for storing pig excrement. Or a Titanic parody involving a hot band. Or a marvelous jab at the inefficiency of this nation’s so-called Homeland Security measures. Or…
You get the picture. Crafting a motion picture from a current television series that’s been around for nearly two decades is a dicey proposition (as has been pointed out, why pay for something you can get for free at home?), but The Simpsons Movie fills the larger dimensions of the theater screen quite nicely. Running the length of four combined episodes, this flick takes Homer’s weekly display of idiocy to a new level, as his bumbling disrespect for the environment leads to Springfield being blocked off from the rest of the world by a giant dome, with the town’s destruction the ultimate goal of the overzealous head of the Environmental Protection Agency (voiced by Albert Brooks, billed in the credits as “A. Brooks”). Knowing that Homer is the culprit, the town’s residents soon come a-calling with torches in hand and nooses hanging from nearby trees (baby Maggie’s rope has a little pacifier attached).
But if there’s one area in which Hollywood remains blissfully, even blessedly, optimistic, it’s in the strength of the family unit, and as long as Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie stick together, they can lick any and all odds. Yet in this outing, even that tried and true formula is put to the test, as Homer’s selfishness and cluelessness strains even the patience of Marge, perhaps the most devoted wife of a pigheaded TV character since Edith Bunker used to stand up for Archie back in the 1970s.
Marge’s romantic crisis manages to be touching, as does do-gooder Lisa’s love for the progressive new kid on the block. But The Simpsons Movie is mainly about jokes — old jokes, new jokes, topical jokes, risqué jokes, sight gags, perhaps even a non sequitor or two. So, can I ruin just one or two for you? Please?
THE AD FOR Sunshine, the latest from the genre-hopping Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions), claims that it’s a “Must-See Theatre-Going Event.” Apparently, that’s to distinguish it from another sci-fi “event,” the 1997 yarn Event Horizon.
That’s hardly enough of a distinction, since Sunshine bares some narrative similarities to that costly dud. But why stop there? Boyle and his frequent scripter, Alex Garland, certainly didn’t, as the film also brings to mind (among others) 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Solaris, Silent Running and even TV’s Space: 1999. Yet the sci-fi flick has always had a habit of feeding upon its past with more extravagant gestures than other genres, and it’s hardly a detriment when the purloined pieces fit together in such a manner as to create a work that feels original.
Set 50 years in the future, Sunshine deals with our planet as it’s on the verge of becoming a lifeless orb. The sun is dying, and unless something can be done to bring it back to its former, fiery state, then humankind is doomed. As a last ditch effort, eight men and women board the spaceship Icarus II and head upward, carrying a bomb that, once dropped into the heart of the sun, should theoretically revive it. But as they travel to complete their mission, they receive a distress signal from Icarus I, which had disappeared seven years earlier while trying to accomplish a similar mission. The octet must decide: Should they proceed directly with their assignment, or should they first alter their course to check on the other vessel?
As with last year’s The Fountain, the likewise leisurely paced Sunshine employs dazzling visual effects in the service of an ambitious and heady undertaking whose philosophical reach attempts to exceed its narrative grasp. That Boyle and Garland don’t completely follow through on presenting a spaced out odyssey is evidenced by the introduction of an additional character during the third act (no fair revealing who, what or why). This decision to take the story out of the realm of the ethereal and into the physical doesn’t damage this captivating film, but it does prevent it from achieving a cinematic state of grace.
AS FAR AS culinary treats go, patrons can’t do better this summer than Ratatouille. But whereas that Pixar gem is the filmic equivalent of an entree, think of this pleasant time-filler as a particularly palatable side dish.
Movie-star wattage counts for a lot in No Reservations, and both Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart burn brightly, both individually and in their shared scenes. She’s Kate, a workaholic chef whose life gets upturned when her sister’s fatal car crash leaves her in charge of her precocious niece Zoe (Little Miss Sunshine‘s Abigail Breslin). He’s Nick, a sous chef who takes a position under Kate at a posh restaurant and quickly finds himself drawn to this tempestuous woman who considers herself the finest chef in all of New York and physically confronts customers who dare complain about her dishes.
A frothy confection on the surface, No Reservations, based on the 2001 German film Mostly Martha, spends a great deal of time on the painful loss experienced by Zoe as she comes to grips with the death of her mother. Mostly, though, the movie functions as a charming romantic comedy, one bolstered by the crisp camerawork by Stuart Dryburgh (The Piano) and especially the richly textured music by Philip Glass (The Hours), whose score is so grandiose and award-worthy that it occasionally threatens to overwhelm the small picture it’s serving.
WITH APOLOGIES TO William Shakespeare, when acclaimed director Werner Herzog makes a movie, there generally isn’t a method to his madness; instead, there’s madness in his method, a go-for-broke intensity that has informed most of this German maverick’s pictures, from his classics Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo to his recent (and excellent) documentary Grizzly Man. That aggressive (insane?) edge is nowhere to be found in Rescue Dawn, a fairly conventional if technically accomplished drama inspired by a true story.
Herzog already tackled the tale of Dieter Dengler in his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, yet here he provides it with a more fictional sheen. Dieter (played by Christian Bale) is a gung-ho U.S. navy pilot who, early in this country’s involvement in the Vietnam War, is shot down over Laos and held in a makeshift POW camp along with two other Americans (Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies, the latter basically revisiting his Solaris performance). Dieter couldn’t care less that no one has ever escaped from this prison, or that the jungle beyond the compound walls represents the real prison; he’s hell-bent on getting out of there, and he begins working on an elaborate scheme that he hopes will allow him to do just that.
Rescue Dawn is a movie that’s stripped to the bone in every facet. There are no political allegories or points of view, no fancy special effects, and, except during a curiously flat conclusion, no sentimentality. This is simply a picture about a man at odds with his surroundings, and in that respect, it fits nicely into the Herzog oeuvre. What doesn’t fit so neatly is the feeling that, while Herzog has hardly sold out, he has tamed his inner filmmaking demons long enough to make a respectable movie that won’t ruffle any feathers during the summer film season.
ADAM SANDLER COMEDIES frequently offer sequences that qualify as case studies in homophobia, so here comes I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry to serve as the popular comedian’s mea culpa, his belated realization that, hey, gays are people, too. That’s a worthy sentiment, and there’s much in the screenplay by Barry Fanaro (TV’s The Golden Girls) and the Oscar-winning team of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Sideways) that examines that notion rather than just paying lip service to a PC attitude.
In other words, there’s a good movie to be found in the premise of two firemen (Sandler and Kevin James) pretending to be life partners for financial purposes, but it’s repeatedly sabotaged by the desire to placate typical Sandler fans who, God forbid, wouldn’t want their boy to get too, you know, fruity on them. Thus, the movie opens with the promise of an open-mouth kiss between buxom twin sisters, peaks with the sight of Jessica Biel in a Catwoman outfit, and ends with the protagonists happily paired off in hetero unions. In addition to this confirmation of the movie’s straight-man cred, there are also the usual frat-boy gags involving flatulence, obesity and racial stereotypes (Rob Schneider as a Japanese minister!), as well as the added treat of Dan Aykroyd (as the fire chief) discussing his prostate, his sole remaining testicle and his diapered grandmother.
That’s probably too much crassness for one seemingly noble-minded comedy to survive, and this one goes down swinging. But in its best moments, it reveals that the 40-year-old Sandler might finally be growing up. Give him another four decades, and who knows what mature piece he might produce on his way to the cemetery.
This article appears in Aug 1-7, 2007.
Don’t waste your money on this PC movie. Adam Sandler is a sell-out and the movie is boring as hell as a result.