Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 12: The Happening

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or OH MY GOD RUN AWAY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN IS MAKING EVERYBODY KILL THEMSELVES!!!

I’ve been trying to think of an appropriate way to phrase my emotions about M. Night Shyamalan’s latest “thriller” The Happening, and I’ve decided to go with my original instinct, the five words that echoed through my head through the second half of the movie, the words that followed me into the parking lot after the show, the words that I keep repeating whenever I think about it — my mantra. I can say only this, and consider it a warning: What a piece of shit.

I instantly recognized that this was probably the worst movie that I’ve ever paid money for. Worse than anything else I’ve ever seen in a theater, worse than anything I’ve ever rented, worse than anything I’ve ever even seen a one legged homeless guy selling on the street. If my life were A Clockwork Orange, and I needed to be rehabilitated for all of my sins, they’d do well to pry my eyes open and make me watch The Happening on an endless loop. It’s a form of torture that hasn’t yet shown up in our secret offshore prisons, but it will soon enough. The Happening is the new waterboarding.

When it became apparent that the reviews for the film, Shyamalan’s seventh (!) feature, were going to be far less than complimentary, the director tried to embrace the shlock value of the picture he’d made, saying he hoped the audience would feel like they’d seen “a really good B movie.” I know B movies. I love B movies. But you, sir, have not made “a really good B movie.” Troma Pictures makes films with more art and class than The Happening. And they get better performances out of their actors, too.

Example number one is Mark Wahlberg’s abysmal turn as a Philadelphia science teacher (from Philadelphia High School, as obviously a city of several million has only one high school, which is named after the city) who spends the movie running away from an unexplained phenomenon that makes everyone in its path kill themselves, and attacks “smaller and smaller populations” as time wears on. I haven’t seen this much running without a legitimate explanation since Judgment Night. Which incidentally, marks another front-runner for worst movie I’ve ever seen. Wahlberg has turned in fine performances in movies like Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, Boogie Nights, and The Departed, all of which were directed be real, professional directors like David O. Russell, P.T. Anderson, and Martin Scorsese. Those auteurs knew how to get a good performance out of Wahlberg, who was never really an actor by trade anyway. But when you see a star turn this poor from an actor with a pretty good track record, it has to be symptomatic of bad direction. Every one of Wahlberg’s line readings felt like it came from the first take, without any effort to work on the impact of his dialogue, which was intended to carry the movie and provide some sort of exposition to a plot that still remained somewhat of a mystery to the end. It didn’t help that Shyamalan had Wahlberg recite each of the steps in the scientific method. On two separate occasions.

Zooey Deschanel, who has a fine track record of her own, turned in a subpar performance, but didn’t need to do much to outshine Wahlberg. It’s a testament to how poorly this film was acted that John Leguizamo seemed like the most competent thespian on the screen. And Shyamalan killed him off halfway through. (Woops, spoiler!) Clearly, Shyamalan is not an actor’s director.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t block a shot to save his life either, and this was a plot that, despite its ridiculous turns (or dead ends, as was more often the case), was at least set up to provide some good visuals. It’s a shame that Shyamalan hasn’t ever heard of storyboarding. He seemed to take a “point and shoot” tack to most of the shots, without any planning. Look, here’s a guy getting run over by a lawnmower! Look, that driver’s gonna run right into a tree! Aim the camera over there!

The few more highly stylized sequences, like a scene where a police officer guns himself down and passers-by take turns using the officer’s weapon to do the same, are undermined by the willy-nilly nature of the scenes that surround them. The iconic image from the trailer in which several construction workers jump from a building is similarly minimized by the unnatural reactions that other characters have to the situation. Shyamalan’s misunderstanding of his characters, and of the way people actually talk and behave, ruins even his best moments.

Every time I see a trailer for a new Shyamalan movie, I always get a sense that it looks like this is the one that he’ll finally get right. And I get proven wrong time and time again. I won’t be the first to recommend that Shyamalan stick to cutting previews and leave the filmmaking to the grownups, and I certainly won’t be the last.

An added dimension to my disappointment comes from the fact that Shyamalan has become something like Philadelphia’s ambassador to Hollywood. He sets all his films in Southeastern Pennsylvania, if not in the city itself, and provides a boon to the local economy. As a native of the city, I’m continually embarrassed that the likes of Shyamalan are what passes for talent in my second-class town. While other cities are immortalized on screen in worthy, iconic films, we get Mannequin, National Treasure, and…this?

To paraphrase Roger Ebert (and the countless others who’ve paraphrased him), I hated hated hated this movie. I hate that the director decided to break his own formula of “twist endings” by shooting a movie that doesn’t have an ending at all. I hate that Shyamalan has forever ruined my impressions of Deschanel and Wahlberg, whom I’ve always liked in the past. I hate that he had the balls to refer to a movie with this kind of budget and distribution as a “B movie” just because he knew he’d made a piece of shit. I even hate the fact that this piece of shit made me laugh more than any other movie this year.

These were not the kind of laughs I ever want to have; these were evil laughs. Every part of this movie was deadly serious.

Mostly I hate that I had to watch the whole thing as part of this cruel summer science experiment I’ve created for myself. Maybe M. Night can remind me about the scientific method again.

If anyone has his e-mail address, forward this to him. If he reads enough bad clips maybe he’ll finally quit. That is, if he doesn’t keep making movies as a big “fuck you” to everyone. Which is what this feels like.

At any rate, M. Night Shyamalan movies are heretofore exempted from any future Summer Movie Suicide Missions. There’s no way I’m giving this motherfucker any more of my money.

Film: The Happening
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, small crowd; standard projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 19%
My Grade (Out of 10): 0 (Congratulations, fuckface. You’re worse than Made of Honor.)

Next Up: Get Smart 

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 11: The Love Guru

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or cotton candy that’s shaped like facial hair.

From one late period SNL star vehicle to the next. Mike Myers applies the Austin Powers formula to a new character, an American-born, Indian-educated romance expert named Guru Pitka. In The Love Guru, Myers’s title character is charged with reuniting hockey player Romany Malco with his girlfriend, without whom Malco is unable to perform on the ice. Myers must pry Malco’s girlfriend away from rival hockey player Justin Timberlake (as Jacques “Le Coq” Grande; guess what part of his anatomy provides the humor), whose Los Angeles Kings will shortly be playing Malco’s Toronto Maple Leafs (coached by Verne Troyer and owned by Jessica Alba, Myers’s love interest) for the Stanley Cup. If Myers can seal the deal, he’ll get the Oprah appearance he’s been longing for; if not, his place on the show will go to Deepak Chopra, who plays himself.

I saw The Love Guru at an advance screening at the Ritz East in Philadelphia, which, besides being one of my favorite theaters, also enabled me to take the Suicide Mission across state lines. It also provided an atmosphere unlike any I’ve experienced yet, being a packed house full of people who got to see a movie for free. No matter what, I wasn’t going to be cheated on this one. The crowd was treated pregame to some Myers-related trivia courtesy of Philadelphia’s WMMR-FM (sample question: “What country is Mike Myers from?” A real challenge, for sure. Judging from this film, I certainly wouldn’t have guessed India, as Myers’s accent is patently ridiculous).

Of course the big question about The Love Guru is whether it would be racist, as one Indian group had heavily protested the film. I didn’t find that to be the case. The Guru Pitka character was so silly as to make such complaints easily dismissible. The film doesn’t make light of any religious traditions or icons. Not that mainstream America really knows enough about the Hindu faith to observe any racism anyway; one gentleman behind me seemed to think the Guru’s Ashram was a play on the words “ass ram.” It’s really just a stupid guise, a silly costume for the star to wear. The real complaints should have come from people with dwarfism, as Myers reaches deep into his bag of midget jokes at Troyer’s expense.

In that sense, at least, some of the comedy was certainly in bad taste. There were also a number of jokes that involved people being hit in the balls, which should really offend anyone with a good sense of humor. Sure a cleverly placed family jewels gag can be hysterical (as can a cleverly placed fart gag), but you’ve got to pick your spots. Myers just throws them around indiscriminately.

That all being said, The Love Guru did have some good belly laughs in it, a disproportionate amount coming from Timberlake’s French-Canadian caricature, and a supremely funny Bollywood fantasy sequence. But the audience did get a glimpse in this film at Myers’s legendary megalomania. He brought together some great comedic minds like Malco, Stephen Colbert, Jim Gaffigan and John Oliver, but doesn’t really give them any jokes. I think this is the first time someone has managed to make Colbert unfunny. Myers need for face time, and his constant camera mugging (which spelled big laughs when it was fresh in Wayne’s World and Austin Powers), works to his film’s detriment this time around. Say what you will about stars like Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell, but they always give their supporting cast a chance to shine. Whether the co-stars make the jokes work or not is up to them, but at least they get the opportunity. Myers’s ego makes him put the whole film on his shoulders. While some of his jokes work in Guru, more often than not they fall flat. If he were a little more democratic, his film might have been much better.

But the crowd pretty much ate it up. I was surprised to see that it made so little in its opening weekend, finishing in fourth place. It was definitely worth my price of admission anyway. Was it worth my time? I think so. I enjoyed it much more than I expected, given that I expected not to enjoy it at all. I’ve talked about the way that expectations can effect the moviegoing experience, and The Love Guru qualifies reservedly as a pleasant surprise. I saw enough in it to believe that Myers can still be a good performer; despite all the problems here, he has a captivating screen presence that can work if his instincts can be toned down a notch. He just has to get out of his own head first.

Film: The Love Guru
Director: Marco Schnabel
Stars: Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Romany Malco, Justin Timberlake, Verne Troyer, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Jim Gaffigan, Ben Kingsley

Viewing Situation: Advance screening, weeknight, full house; standard projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 15%
My Grade (Out of 10): 5

Next Up: The Happening 

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 10: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or Jewfros.

I was surprised when I left my matinee screening of You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, the latest shlockfest from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production house, that there was still an Israeli-Palestinian conflict going on. I thought if anyone could end that centuries-old madness in the Middle East, it would be Sandler. Sadly, I was wrong.

It’s not like Sandler and his co-screenwriters Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel didn’t try. It’s just that hairdressing and hackysack might not the ideal arenas in which to exemplify such a camaraderie.

Zohan is certainly the most satirical picture Sandler has made since he became a top box office draw after his Saturday Night Live stint. And it was a well-meaning effort indeed, masked as it is in a steady diet of dick jokes. Sandler’s title character is a top Israeli commando, who becomes disillusioned with the militaristic life and the trappings of a never ending conflict where both sides refuse to give any ground. So he escapes to New York City to follow his dream of becoming a hairdresser. There he begins to exercise his trade, falls for the Palestinian woman who owns his shop (newcomer Emmanuelle Chiriqui), and is hunted down by his nemesis from the old country (John Turturro). When Sandler comes to realize that an evil real estate tycoon (played by famed boxing announcer Michael Buffer) is using the deep-seeded resentment in a mixed Muslim/Jewish neighborhood to get the locals to default on their properties so Buffer can build a new mini-mall, Sandler unites the groups against a common enemy, proving that we can all just get along, after all. Especially when a plastic-faced Mariah Carey shows up to help.

That was a mouthful, but inside my run-on sentences lies a pretty straightforward and earnest plot full of dick jokes, fart jokes and gay jokes. Lots and lots of gay jokes. But I laughed a whole bunch. Out loud even, in spite of myself. 

There are probably hundreds of stupid comedies that are released every year, and I only ever see a handful of them. But from that sample, what I notice is that a great deal of the laughs (or intended laughs, anyway) are mean spirited, petty, and easy. Sandler’s comedy functions pretty well here because the jokes are mostly in good spirits. Whether this film carries any satirical weight is up for dispute, but I can’t deny that the writers truly mean well. The mean humor here is intended for the characters who really deserve it. Sandler’s affable personality allows his films that measure of good nature, even when some of the jokes fall flat. Juvenile as it may be, at least it’s all in fun. (I understand, and agree, that I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry can be seen as a huge exception to this rule, but even in that film Sandler’s character operated as an example of how not to behave.)

Sandler, like a lot of prominent comedians with a flurry of star vehicles to their credit, knows who his audience is. For the most part, he chooses to play to their ideals, and not their baser instincts.

Good on ya, Adam. I may not love your movies, but I can at least give you that.

A Note on Assholes

On a side note, I saw You Don’t Mess With the Zohan at a late Friday matinee that was sparsely attended. There were a few couples, a group of college age students, and what looked like a large family on an after school outing.

To that family, if you’re reading this you know how to read, please, when you go to the movies, act like you’ve fucking been there before. Adults, shut up. There is no excuse for talking through a movie. If you must talk (and god knows I understand that sometimes during a film, we simply must make a sarcastic comment to our neighbor), do it in a whisper. You are setting a bad example for your children, who will never learn proper theater etiquette with you around.

Also, four buckets of popcorn constitute an excessive amount of food for a six person party. Enjoy your type two diabetes.

Film: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
Director: Dennis Dugan
Stars: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chiriqui, Rob Schneider, Michael Buffer, Nick Swardson

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, few attendees, assholes; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 34%
My Grade (Out of 10): 6

Next Up: The Love Guru 

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 9: Kung Fu Panda

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or Dragon Scrolls that say nothing on them but show a reflection of your face so that you understand that the power, the secret, has really been with you all along.

Sometimes I like to imagine myself as a big shot studio executive. It would be kind of like Entourage, except I’d be the guy who kept Vinny Chase from getting work, since its obvious in the subtext that he’s really a terrible actor (Also, Adrian Grenier is a terrible actor himself). I’d drive something outlandish, like an Aston Martin, and give the green light to projects with titles like Fast and Furious, the third (and creatively titled) sequel in the Fast and the Furious franchise. I’d knock around town in my expensive tailored suits, and wear yellow sunglasses all the time like Peter Fonda. I’d roll down Sunset with a smirk on my face, equal parts giddy and self-satisfied, safe in the knowledge that the American people are dumbshits, and I’m gonna make a killing off them.

But I never would have bought a pitch about Jack Black as the voice of a giant panda who trains to be a kung fu master. That’s for damn sure.

Luckily, in my fantasies I’m kind of a failure, and in real life, this one actually got made. Kung Fu Panda is a refined and beautifully framed picture that delivers plenty of laughs–and kid-friendly ones at that–but never once panders to its audience with cheap contemporary musical numbers or pop culture references. By my count, this is the first time a movie from Dreamworks Animation has been able to make that claim. Computer animated films with dignity are really Pixar’s domain. It looks like the rival has finally learned something.

Kung Fu Panda opens with a striking anime fantasy sequence in two dimensional shades of red and yellow, with lead character Po the panda (Jack Black) dreaming about being the Dragon Warrior, a long prophesized figure who would preside over the security of the small Chinese village Po lives in. When Po awakens, we see the full landscape of the film, and it is no less stunning by comparison. Eventually an accident leads to Po being named the Dragon Warrior, and he enters the tutelage of Shifu, a kung fu master voiced by Dustin Hoffman, where he is joined by the Furious Five, a Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross) and Viper (Lucy Liu), who begrudgingly accept the young panda. Together they save the town from evil leopard Tai Lung (Deadwood’s Ian McShane), and everybody learns something about themselves.

But the plot is really neither here nor there. It’s engaging enough, but we’ve seen this kind of bildungsroman over and over again; it’s the dominant storytelling apparatus in children’s films, and rightfully so, as the audience is literally growing up as it watches them. What made this film so engrossing is what it did not do. As a filmmaker, restraint is important (See Speed Racer for every wrong lesson to this effect). Kung Fu Panda is set in 17th or 18th century China, and it really stays there. The filmmakers never go the the Shrek well and release a barrage of contemporary references that make no sense within the physical setting of the story. And they use no contemporary music (save for a playful cover of “Kung Fu Fighting” over the end credits), just an understated orchestral score by Hans Zimmer. I liked this film almost as much as last year’s Ratatouille, which was the best and most refined animated film I can remember seeing outside of Walt Disney’s heyday.

The most important point, though, is that the kids in the audience seemed to love every minute of it. And if the target audience can get into a film without all the hokey bells and whistles, simply sharp visuals and storytelling, why do so many animated films feel the need to go there? Dreamworks has finally taken a step in the right direction. This one feels like a Pixar film, which is the highest compliment I can give them.

Film: Kung Fu Panda
Directors: Marc Osbourne, John Stevenson
Stars: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Lucy Liu, Ian McShane

Viewing Situation: Weekend matinee, crowded theater, lots of kids; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 88%
My Grade (Out of 10): 8 

Next Up: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

>>Fast and Furious (2009) [IMDB]

 

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 8: The Strangers

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or screaming Liv Tylers.

I’ve said before that I’m not a film critic, and that’s been sort of a credo of mine while approaching the summer movie project. But I sure do love reading movie reviews. On Fridays, I read every review on several publications, regardless of whether I have even the remotest interest or knowledge of the film under consideration. One of my ground rules for the Suicide Mission was that I’d be free to read reviews of the movies I plan to see; I added this provision because, though I’d like to keep an open mind about everything, I just didn’t think I could overcome my addiction. The problem is that sometimes a critical analysis can certainly color one’s perception. In the interest of disclosure, I believe that the A.V. Club’s surprisingly positive review of The Strangers presents such a case.

Ahead of the release date, I knew almost nothing about this film. Had I let it stay that way, I likely would have been pleasantly surprised by The Strangers, a deliberate and suspenseful slasher flick with little in the way of overarching narrative, but a series of frightening plot turns. Instead, Scott Tobias’s review had me entering the theater expecting a pleasant surprise (if you could call a film like this “pleasant” in any capacity), but, while i thought it was a fine piece of understated filmmaking, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. I appreciated Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman’s performances, and the slow, methodical pace with which the story was executed, but I found myself nitpicking about silly things like the rote orchestral horror score, which only swelled when imminent danger was afoot, just like in every pedestrian thriller you’ll ever see. Director Bryan Bertino shouldn’t have had to resort to these stupid conventions, when his camera was doing all the work beautifully, hiding the titular “strangers” in the back of the frame, where the audience was ever unsure when they would pounce. But these are details I surely would have overlooked if my expectations had not been raised.

Despite all that, The Strangers is remarkable in its execution, perfectly arranging lapses in the action and picking its spots carefully when the real frights came. With its shoestring budget, its lack of a true plot, and the not too small matter of being completely derivative of the golden age of 70s low budget slasher films, it needed to get all the little pieces right. To his credit, Bertino does a fine job.

Of course, its rare for a genre picture like this to get a major release at this time of year. By all rights this should have been a mid-October movie. With The Strangers, the real pleasant surprise is that a film like this is able to survive in this marketplace. It made double its budget in the opening weekend, so let’s hope this presages more diverse Summer movie seasons to come.

Film: The Savages
Director: Bryan Bertino
Stars: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, small audience; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 42% 
My Grade (Out of 10): 7

Next Up: Kung Fu Panda

>> Summer Movie Suicide Mission: An Introduction [mentos and manatees]
>> The Strangers [A.V. Club]

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 7: Sex and the City

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or estrogen osmosis.

I could be exposing a personal bias here, but it has always seemed to me that cult media phenomena present an overwhelmingly gendered terrain. That is to say that individuals who tend to throw all of their passion into one particular media artifact are typically male. This perception could be part of an overall media representation of fandom as the realm of socially maladjusted young men, as in Trekkies and countless other films and television shows about nerdy individuals and their curiosities. From my perspective, the cult around Sex and the City is unexpected and exceptional for that reason alone.

I thought about this as I sat in a huge auditorium awaiting a showing of the film version of Sex and the City, where an informal tally revealed that male moviegoers represented a scant 5-10% of the near-sellout audience.

Sex and the City, the television show, is one that I’ve always enjoyed, though with certain reservations. I never had a problem with the unrealistic or mindlessly aspirational elements of the show, since entertainment is meant to be escapist and I won’t make judgments on a program for that rationale alone. The problem for me has always been that, while a great deal of the comedy is sharp, clever, and pretty risky even for pay television, the storylines always seemed pandering and mildly anti-feminist. At first glance, the four main characters are strong and remarkable women unafraid to break any expectations about what women should be, what they should discuss, and what they should do with their lives, both in their careers and in love. But if you watch long enough, the stories fall into the rom-com trap. It’s exemplified more in Sarah Jessica Parker’s narration than anywhere else, but the themes of the show tend to be simplistically and reductively romantic. With the exception of the Samantha character, whose selfishness and promiscuity are a vault of comedy, the women of Sex and the City codify their happiness based on two things: their friendship with each other (which I certainly have no beef with), and ultimately, their need to find the right man to fall in love with. In this sense, I have the same problem with Sex and the City as I had with Made of Honor and many other romantic comedies. There is only one real goal, without which a woman can never be happy.

The thing that separates Sex and the City from other rom-coms, though, is that it’s actually comedic. And the movie was no exception. The story plays like a mini-marathon of TV episodes, and it is shot as such. Nothing too special here except for the giant screen. The filmmakers did have to resolve the fact that the series had wrapped up all the loose ends, but those loose ends came untied again early in the film. Two and a half hours later, everything was fixed again, after some good laughs, some silly though exorbitantly expensive outfits, some groan-inducing narration, and a totally misplaced Jennifer Hudson supporting role. (Side note: Jennifer Hudson — worst Academy Award winner ever? Discuss.)

To me, the film itself was inconsequential when compared to the atmosphere in which I saw it. I overheard myriad comments about designer shoes; I saw young women in “I’m with Mr. Big” t-shirts; I heard women heckle Carrie’s wedding dress; I heard resounding applause before the credits rolled. As an interactive experience, this was kind of like seeing Star Wars on opening night. On estrogen. 

To the cult, my criticism is meaningless. I’m a guy anyway, so what do I know? When it comes down to it, this cult is obsessed with a story about hanging out with your friends and falling in love. It’s kind of sweet. No matter what my reservations, I can’t really argue with that.

Film: Sex and the City
Director: Michael Patrick King
Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, Jennifer Hudson

Viewing Atmosphere: Weekend evening, crowd full o’ ladies; standard projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 54%
My Grade (Out of 10): 6

Next Up: The Strangers