Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Theatre) - Both

Judd Apatow is a man that can get things done – now. Back in early 2000 when he was trying to keep his television show about siblings growing up in Chippewa, Mi on the air this was not the case. Today things are vastly different, though his friends are not. With this power to get things done Apatow has had any and every film he and his friends can think of green lit and made into critically loved films. Seth Rogan put together Knocked Up (2007) and Superbad (2007) with help from Apatow and now Jason Segel is getting his Apatow-boost. These Freaks and Geeks alums aren’t alone; this August James Franco is getting his with the buddy flick The Pineapple Express (2008).
In this film Jason Segel plays a lovelorn loser that resembles his Freaks and Geeks role. He is dumped by his girlfriend of six years and decides to take a vacation to get his mind off things. The scene in which he gets dumped is particularly hilarious in that Segel is naked throughout the whole scene. He attempts to stall the breakup by not getting dressed which further humiliates him as he is then subsequently dumped while flaccid (a fact that is shown multiple times). This humiliation is not his last as Segel’s character garners many of his laughs from his degradation. The shining moment is when Segel plays a song from his incomplete Dracula musical. This scene is particularly funny and well played by Segel as a crowd looks on with confusion.
The key to most of Apatow’s projects are raunchy humor and a secret ingredient. Films like Waiting (2005) and Good Luck Chuck (2007) have raunchy humor and don’t understand this so they fail. Apatow knows that good humor is real (for lack of a better term, “it has heart”). I don’t know how else to put it. But I see it in every one of Apatow’s projects. Knocked Up had true soul searching in Rogen’s character as he struggles to quickly grow up, Superbad had a friendship that felt genuine and faced the trauma of a separation after high school, and Sarah Marshall has a breakup with real substance. The two protagonists both do things to ruin the relationship they have spent six years on and this is devastating. This film doesn’t pretend it isn’t, but it finds the humor in this devastation.
While I can’t say this is my favorite of the Apatow’s Crews’ flicks I must say they are operating on a different level than the Frat Pack of the early 2000s. And while Jason Segel isn’t a leading man – he just isn’t, I can’t help but fall for the old Andopolis charm.

7 out of 10: Segel gets humor out of real life a feat which is both hard and rewarding for the audience.

21 (Theatre)

With a keen eye and knowledge of my blog readers will notice this entry doesn’t have a who wanted to watch it and the explanation on that is that no one really wanted to watch it. We wanted to go to a film and there was nothing else on. So, Jennie, Vamsi, and I decided on this bland film that claimed the top spot for two weeks in a row (a hard feet in this movie-of-the-week world).
Early spring is a wasteland for the movie going public. Studios seem to drop films here when they didn’t pan out as ideas, or maybe they weren’t Oscary enough for an Oscar run, or they didn’t have a big name star to anchor them. Films like Daredevil (Feb. 15, 2005), Failure to Launch (March 12, 2006), Disturbia (April 13, 2007) aren’t really expected to do very much – maybe they can hold the audience over till May kicks the movie going season into full swing, maybe they can’t – who cares. But movie studios neglect the early spring. This is the only explanation for a film like Disturbia to be the only movie last year to hold the top box office spot for three weeks in a row – the only one. In that tradition I bring you 21.
This film is about a poor kid who happens to go to MIT and wants to go to Harvard medical school after he graduates, every financially handicapped kid’s dream. Kevin Spacey notices him in a class as being particularly bright, again the kid goes to MIT, and enlists him in his gang of cronies who go to Las Vegas on the weekend to make money. They aren’t doing anything illegal – just counting cards. They teach Ben, played by a forgettable Jim Sturgess, how to count cards, a talent he already seems to know, and he rises in the ranks to become head crony. One of the gang is jealous of him, one is attracted to him, and one is a stereotype Asian guy. The jealous one gets mad and then gets kicked out, the one attracted to him gets laid and befriends him, and the Asian stereotype does what stereotypes do. Kevin Spacey turns on them, then they turn on Spacey – Ben gets to go to Harvard Medical. Nothing really stands out. In the spring wasteland this movie becomes a hit, if it were released against any other competition this film would be seen by Jim Sturgess’ parents and forgotten, but in the 2.99-bin-next-to-the-gas-station-register that is spring this movie is box office gold.

4 out of 10: your two hours and three minutes could be spent doing something else, so do so.

Smart People (Theatre) - Jennie

Noam Murro hasn’t directed before, Mark Poirer hasn’t written any other film – according to IMDB this film is the fledgling ship for both of these artists. So, why does this film feel so familiar? In the landscape of Hollywood today most films can be categorized pretty easily: big budget blockbuster, chick flick, raunchy comedy, and charming “indie” just to name a few. This falls so squarely in the latter’s category that I know I have watched this film before. The struggling college professor who must raise his children despite having no clue how to, the hip child who doesn’t know how hip she is, and the icing on this cake of déjà vu – Thomas Haden Church playing an overgrown child who bares his ass for laughs. Didn’t he play this same exact character in Sideways sans the middle school mustache? Despite this being a fairly entertaining film I found myself disappointed by its lack of flavor. I laughed at most of Church’s Man-Child antics, Dennis Quaid sold me on his beleaguered father shtick, hell, even Ellen Page’s rightwing incestuous student seemed fleshed out and real. I’m not sure what I was expecting. This was exactly the film anyone could have guessed would come out of this premise, but for a first film, how can this seem so rehashed?
I also have problems with the idea that all professors of English are depressed while maintaining a delightfully introspective hermit quality. Examples abound: The Squid and the Whale (2005), Wonder Boys (2000), even Sideways (2004) contained an English teacher who couldn’t get his career off the ground. This theme runs rampant in literature as well – John Irving comes to mind. Were all our English professors in college mollycoddled sourpusses? Mine certainly wasn’t. Though, as I think about it now I can understand the impetuous for such characters. I don’t know many English majors who focus on writing and want to become English teachers. No, they want to become writers. Thus becoming a teacher is settling, and writing about how they settled is more interesting than anything else that has happened in their life thus far. Well, I guess I changed my mind. But I still have a problem with it. Can these people only write about their life experiences?
Anyways, back to the film (warning: big spoiler here), the end completely pissed me off. For some odd reason they had Dennis Quaid impregnate Sarah Jessica Parker’s character – this was an annoying plot device in the first place. The two wanted to work with this development and so they get back together in the closing seconds of the film… uh… yeah. The most confusing and thus annoying thing about this was they showed shots of Quaid happily handling a child in the closing credit – ok. But, then, in the last shot they showed him cradling two children, one a baby girl, one a baby boy… she had twins! Yup, after a relatively well written albeit unoriginal film they end with a sitcom quality twist, maybe in real life that is what happened and as we all know English professor can’t write about anything but what they know.

6 out of 10: a humorous film for those that enjoy beards, butts, and books though it was bleakly bland.

Leatherheads (Theatre) - Both

George Clooney creates yet another love letter to the golden age of film in this simple story. With slapstick gags, miscommunication with humorous results, and a feisty relationship between to female and male protagonists I half expected this film to be set in black and white with stalk cards providing the dialog. I’m sure some enjoyed it, but to me, Clooney is loosing his charm. I hate to admit that. He seems cocky not confident, pushy not charming, I no longer want what he is selling. Clooney wants to sell me on the idea that a woman is only good if she can make it in a man’s world as a woman with a man’s attitude. He wants me to believe that fooling the police by dressing like a policeman is funny. It isn’t. It isn’t even entertaining really. These jokes don’t work anymore for a reason. We aren’t watching moving pictures for the novelty. Charlie Chaplin don’t cut it in my book. This is what I feel Clooney misunderstands or if he does understand it he wants to lead the charge back to making these things funny. Clooney and Soderbergh make yet another misstep in predicting that Clooney’s charm is limitless and can hold anything together.

4 out of 10: John Krasinski gives a worthwhile performance in this Clooney smarmfest though it isn’t nearly enough to be worth it.

The Ruins (Theatre) - Jennie

Horror movies recently have lost their identity. The torture-core of the last couple of years is dying down as are the Japanese imports. Every once in a while we will get one or the other, but overall horror movies are a drift in a sea of PG-13 schlock. Take the future release Prom Date; it seems to be about a very nondescript stalker who terrifies a young girl on prom night. Nothing pulls me in – and it is rated PG-13, how can horror movie be rated PG-13? In a year or two there will be a movie that reignites the genre, but for now I feel we are to be satisfied with remakes and weak fair that will please the public at large with their low rating.
The Ruins feels like a simple attempt to do something – certainly not reignite the genre –but something. Much like Turistas (2006) this film starts with a semi-attractive group of college-aged kids who ventured to the southern Americas in search of spring break fun. They meet a German who informs them that his brother knows of a temple that is not marked on the maps and that they could join him in a hike to this temple if they wanted to see something special. They oblige him and make their way to the temple. The temple turns out to hide a secret… Man Eating Plants! This does sound silly, I know. In fact, if I had to stop and think about the film, while I was watching it, I might have had less fun, but that was the monster – a plant that ate humans. Luckily this film doesn’t really give you time to stop and think about the preposterous nature of this fact. It keeps a brisk pace and throws up distractions such as an amputation without anesthetic and a search for a cell phone that is hidden in the dark recesses of the temple. The plants also have the ability to mimic speech, which, at the time, seemed like a perfectly normal thing for a man-eating plant to do, but now that I am writing this I feel somewhat stupid to be ok with it. They even gave an explanation that satisfied me (something about the plant being able to vibrate its flowers to a pitch that sounded like a human’s voice). Now, don’t get all persnickety with me and judge my ability to loose myself in a movie. Though, I am doing that as I write this. I dare you to watch this and not believe that a plant can fool humans into thinking that a cell phone is ringing with its flowers. Curse, even my defense sounds bad. Well, let me get out of this with some dignity and say that though this film's premise was laughably impossible the writer and director do a good job at throwing diversions at the audience to keep them from thinking to much about the situation.

5 out of 10: successful on some level – in that, I was entertained, but if you can’t turn off your mind for an hour and a half don’t bother.