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Easy A
Mean Girls by way of Nathaniel Hawthorne
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reviews containing any of these words: Foot, Fist, Simmons
The Foot Fist Way
(2008)
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| Comedy
Rated: R
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| Danny McBride plays Fred Simmons, an incompetent, strip-mall tae kwon do instructor who nonetheless has the undying devotion of his sorry students. McBride's dedication to this demented character is the movie's main attraction. Even in the face of mounting humiliations - failed tae kwon do demos in mall parking lots, his wife's unfaithfulness - Simmons strives to maintain his air of misplaced authority. There is a certain sense of self-loathing that goes into these sorts of character comedies, as if the actors are reveling in their own humiliation. Here, as Simmons' carefully cultivated world begins to unravel, the real sense of panic in McBride's eyes is almost poignant. Like Will Ferrell - who helped Foot Fist Way find distribution - McBride has created an idiot you inexplicably care about. |
Bruno
(2009)
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| Comedy
Rated: R
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With Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen holds up another mirror to American society, and if anything we’ve only gotten uglier since Borat.
Or maybe we’re just uglier when it comes to homosexuality. Borat, Cohen’s 2006 guerrilla comedy, exposed intolerance and prejudice of all kinds, but Bruno, in which Cohen masquerades as an unambiguously gay Austrian fashion celebrity, hones in on a very specific form of baseball-and-apple-pie hatred. If you can’t quite fathom why gay rights are so hard to come by in this supposed land of the free, watch this.
Cohen’s method – he’s sort of a politicized Andy Kaufman – is to adopt the guise of an outrageous character, enter the real world and coax unsuspecting bigots or regular old morons into revealing their own particular brand of outrageousness on camera (Larry Charles returns as Cohen’s director).
In Bruno, this results in an excruciatingly embarrassing sit-down interview with the Family Research Institute’s Paul Cameron. In trying to “convert” Bruno from homosexuality, Cameron reveals that his homophobia is nothing compared to his disgust for women.
Bruno is encouraged by such ambassadors of heterosexuality to immerse himself in manly activities, so at one point he attends a coed swingers’ party. The evening begins awkwardly and ends in startling violence, revealing that perversion pays no mind to sexual orientation.
Then there is the mullet-haired karate instructor – he must have been Danny McBride’s inspiration for The Foot Fist Way - who gleefully demonstrates how to defend against gay attackers. When Bruno comes at him armed with three sex toys, he doesn’t flinch.
Not all of the gambits work. Cohen verges on sexually assaulting Ron Paul in another interview, yet only manages to elicit a mild slur from the former presidential candidate. Other seemingly sure-fire scenarios – including the moment he stumbles into an anti-gay march wearing bondage gear – produce little gold. For whatever reason, Bruno’s batting average when it comes to on-camera stunts is below that of Borat.
There are other faults – the first third, which establishes Bruno’s hedonistic gay lifestyle, verges on homophobia itself – yet Bruno ultimately works as a shocking societal snapshot. During one terrifying sequence, in which Bruno and his male assistant square off in an Ultimate Fighting-style cage match and instead start making out, the outraged fans in the crowd literally begin foaming at the mouth. You can see the hatred literally dripping from their gnashing teeth. If the election of Barack Obama had you thinking America’s prejudicial barriers had been broken, Bruno offers a stark reality check. We still have a long, long way to go.
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| Observe and Report
(2009)
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| Comedy
Rated: R
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Observe and Report is an occasionally amusing, persistently disturbing comedy that at times plays like a bipolar disorder episode from the inside out. Like the Farrelly brothers’ Me, Myself & Irene, it uses broad comedy to get us into a troubled mind.
Is that a fair tactic? I suppose the answer lies in whether or not you feel the movie is on the same side as Ronnie (Seth Rogen), a mall cop whose tenuous grip on reality is entirely tied to his risible position of authority.
A shrink at one point says that Ronnie “shows warning signs of delusion” and he himself says he’s on medication for bipolar disorder. The movie treats these details as gag opportunities, but I’m not sure that’s the same thing as laughing at its troubled main character.
One thing’s for sure – Ronnie would be incapable of laughing with. He’s devoted to his delusions, parading through the mall with his chest puffed out, issuing expletive-laden orders to his inept underlings. When a flasher starts prowling the mall, Ronnie sees the incident as a chance to prove himself by catching the pervert. But things go violently awry with the arrival of a real police investigator (Ray Liotta in psycho mode).
Rogen embraces his schlumpiness here as never before (and considering Knocked Up and Zack and Miri Make a Porno, that’s saying something). Ronnie is swollen, often sweaty and continually putting his own idiocy at the forefront. Each awkward exchange with a sweet coffee girl named Nell (Collette Wolfe) is an exercise in self-humiliation.
That’s a familiar theme for writer-director Jody Hill, whose The Foot Fist Way - in which Danny McBride played an incompetent, strip-mall tae kwon do instructor - was another self-loathing character study. Both movies center on buffoons striving to maintain their misplaced sense of authority.
As harsh as Observe and Report is, I still think the movie empathizes with Ronnie. You can sense it in the rare, tender moments: his conversations with his alcoholic mother (Celia Weston); the way Nell patiently waits for his bluster to die down; the montage that traces the healings of his bruises after a particularly violent encounter of his own making.
The picture even ends on a note of relative triumph for Ronnie. I won’t give it away, except to offer the warning that if the extended, ungainly male nudity of Borat bothered you, you might want to duck out early.
“I win,” Ronnie smirks at the conclusion of this riotous, delightfully deranged set piece. And because we’ve spent the movie in his head, we feel like we’ve won too.
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| I Love You, Man
(2009)
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| Comedy
Rated: R
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| A mellow, Zen-like vibe trickles through this otherwise raunchy buddy comedy about genial real-estate agent Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd), who suddenly realizes on the eve of his wedding that he has no real male friends. In search of a possible best man, he connects with Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), a carefree soul whose antisocial tendencies bring spark to Peter's life, and then some. Without knocking you over, this is very funny, thanks partly to a strong supporting cast (Rashida Jones, Jaime Pressly, Jon Favreau, J.K. Simmons, Andy Samberg and Thomas Lennon). A clever finale also turns the traditional, romantic-comedy wedding climax into an awkwardly emotional declaration of affection between two male friends. |
Juno
(2007)
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| Comedy
Rated: PG-13
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| Juno gets two things dead right about contemporary teenagers: the way irony and sarcasm serve as the basis for their language, and the way those elements are often used to mask the insecurity of adolescence. The most genuinely moving film of 2007, Juno focuses on the pregnant 16-year-old of the title (Ellen Page), a very funny and intentionally odd girl who at first treats her situation as another eye-rolling opportunity. As reality sinks in, though, both she and the film mine deeper, stronger emotions. Page is a marvel – she’s at once her own idiosyncratic whirlwind and exactly like every baffling teenager you’ve ever known – yet the true triumph of Juno is the script from first-timer Diablo Cody. In addition to the emotional layering, Cody offers a treasure trove of one-liners, mostly for Page but also for J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney as Juno’s parents; Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as a prospective adoptive couple; and Michael Cera, doing another variation on his uproariously awkward young man as the bewildered father-to-be. |
| The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(2007)
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| Drama
Rated: PG-13
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| Jean-Dominique Bauby, the real-life subject of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is “locked inside” his body due to a stroke, and director Julian Schnabel does an astonishing job of locking us in there with him. Bauby is paralyzed except for the ability to blink one eye, and for the first third of the film the camera only shows the world from that trapped and distressed point of view. It’s not a gimmicky technique but a transferring of creative responsibility. Whereas most biographical films about extreme disability put the weight of communication on an actor (think of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot), The Diving Bell hands that burden to the camera, and by extension to the audience. Schnabel eventually broadens his palette – he uses flashbacks, fantasy sequences and scenes of Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) from his caretakers’ perspective. Yet the true triumph of the film is that we never really leave Bauby’s head. The Diving Bell is a shattering experience from the inside out. |
Extract
(2009)
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| Comedy
Rated: R
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A curiously inert effort from writer-director Mike Judge (Office Space, Idiocracy).
Extract stars Jason Bateman as Joel, the married owner of a food-flavoring manufacturer whose attempt to cure his case of the mid-life blahs leads to a colossal mess. Infidelity, criminal activity and a conniving femme fatale (Mila Kunis) all ensue, making this something of a comic noir.
Everything is played in such a low-key chord, however, that the movie feels like its starting its engine for 90 minutes (or attempting to mimic the dramedy stylings of director Alexander Payne). Aside from a few highlights – including a hysterical bong hit by Bateman and a rant by Gene Simmons as a maniacal personal injury lawyer – this is missing the angry comic energy of Judge’s previous efforts. |
| Monsters vs. Aliens
(2009)
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| Family
Rated: PG
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Monsters vs. Aliens has a shlocky, sci-fi title that’s straight from the 1950s, and the more affection you have for that period, the more you’ll appreciate this computer-animated adventure from DreamWorks Animation Studios.
Where that leaves the kids who are the film’s target audience, I’m not sure. But I loved the references to Godzilla, Creature From the Black Lagoon and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. The first two are personal, guilty-pleasure favorites, and the latter is now on my Netflix list.
Reese Witherspoon provides the voice of Susan, a bride-to-be who grows an inch shy of 50 feet tall after being exposed to a meteorite. She’s promptly swept away by the U.S. military, renamed Ginormica and added to a team of “monsters” who are being trained to defend the world against an impending alien attack.
Far more jokey than 1999’s similarly themed (and far superior) The Iron Giant, Monsters vs. Aliens at least offers cinematic nostalgia, visual ingenuity and a quick-enough wit. Comic stand-outs among the vocal cast are Seth Rogen as a blob named Bob and Will Arnett as The Missing Link, the Creature From the Black Lagoon stand-in.
Meanwhile, two set pieces – Susan’s transformation at the wedding altar and her showdown with a giant alien robot at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge – are thrilling examples of animated action. Even better is that in some theaters you can watch it all in true 1950s kitsch style: 3-D. |
| Funny People
(2009)
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| Comedy
Rated: R
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Is self-loathing central to the psyche of a stand-up comic?
That’s the impression you get from Funny People, an endlessly fascinating exploration of existential dread from some of the most prominent minds in Hollywood. The movie has its problems, yet the fact that these people are even attempting something like this – as opposed to, say, Night at the Museum 2 - is reason to cheer.
I’m referring to writer-director Judd Apatow, the one-man production factory most personally responsible for The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and stars Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. Rogen, in particular, offers some interesting work, his second arresting performance of 2009 after his mall cop by way of Travis Bickle in Observe and Report.
In Funny People, Rogen plays Ira Wright, an unsure, insecure wallflower who nonetheless is pursuing a career as a stand-up comic. He happens to run into Sandler’s George Simmons – a comic actor in the vein of Rob Schneider, if Schneider had become wildly successful – and gets hired as George’s writer and assistant.
There is a lot of meaty, behind-the-scenes comedy business here, then melodrama enters the picture when George is diagnosed with a serious illness. Yet all this does is provide a focal point for the movie’s general air of comic bitterness.
Ira and George have very different styles – Ira is meek and self-deprecating on stage, while George overcompensates with venom and anger – yet their comedy is rooted in the same thing: deep discomfort about themselves.
This comes out in their demeanor and their material. Ira almost exclusively concentrates on the pathetic details of his own life. “Is your act designed to make sure no girl will ever sleep with you?” George asks.
Meanwhile, in casual conversation, George can’t seem to go five minutes without lamenting the diminutive size of a certain body part. Add to this his shame over his biggest hits – a Schneideresque vehicle called Merman and Re-Do, a talking baby flick reminiscent of the Wayans brothers’ Little Man - and you have a superstar disgusted with himself and those who love his crappy movies.
These guys hate themselves and their lives, yet the tragic irony is that this self loathing is what fuels their humor. And despite what you’ve heard, they are funny. There are complaints that Funny People is low on laughs, but there are actually loads of them to be found (Paul Reiser, Ray Ramono, Andy Dick, Sarah Silverman and others all play themselves in cameos). It’s only that the movie is as interested in dissecting the psychology behind the jokes as telling them.
That makes Funny People less funny like a clown, as Joe Pesci might say, and more funny hmmm… Students of comedy will greatly appreciate it. Students of Little Man, not so much.
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| Avatar
(2009)
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| Action/Adventure
Rated: PG-13
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There is a tiny detail among the bonanza of visual wonders in Avatar that convinced me the movie had achieved not only technical mastery, but something more: real artistry.
Avatar centers on an alien race called the Na’vi: blue-skinned, amber-eyed humanoids who leap among the gargantuan trees of the moon Pandora (the place looks like Endor on nuclear fertilizer). Their world – almost completely created in computers – is astonishing, yet the image that stuck with me is the way, in certain scenes, the sunlight delicately filters through the thin upper tips of the Na’vi’s ears.
There is a meticulously detailed richness to the movie’s universe that only the great science-fiction films have. Avatar is the first feature film written and directed by James Cameron since Titanic, and while the two pictures have much in common in terms of ambition, scope and budget, this time Cameron has wed his visuals with his story in a far smoother way. The record-shattering, Oscar-swallowing Titanic was an effects reel with a stiff, two-hour prologue. This is a movie.
The title refers to something most of us use every day in one form or another: a virtual representation of ourselves. For us it may be a videogame character or a Facebook profile. For Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the hero of Avatar, it’s a genetically engineered body made to look like one of the Na’vi. A mining company from Earth is stripping Pandora bare, which is making the natives restless. Sully, a former Marine who is paralyzed from the waist down, is tapped to “drive” one of these avatars in hopes of winning the locals’ hearts and minds – or, if all else fails, collecting enough intelligence to help exterminate them.
Cameron breaks no new ground when it comes to the basic plot. Sully learns compassion while among the Na’vi and even begins a romance with their version of a princess (Zoe Saldana). In other words, take Pocahontas, add a little Tron and then a dash of Dances with Wolves.
Employing computer-generated backgrounds and motion-capture technology – think Gollum – Cameron and his team of effects artists make Sully’s adventure our own. As he climbs the vines of Pandora’s “floating mountains” - massive, forested boulders that drift upward into the sky like balloons - the camera soars through the air and peers over yawning precipices. None of this may actually exist, but if you have acrophobia, you might want to avoid Avatar altogether.
Tron, of course, explored the concept of avatars long ago. What Cameron’s movie communicates, in a new way, is the thrill of having an altered and often ideal version of ourselves, as well as the moral consequences that come with employing a conscience-free alter ego.
Sully’s avatar isn’t the only one at play in the movie. His fellow security soldiers have 18-foot robots which they “wear” like giant Iron Man suits. When the soldiers punch, the robots mimic the action. Like the Predator drones our military employs in Afghanistan, the technology removes them a crucial degree from the actual violence.
On the other end of the spectrum are the Na’vi, who, in a strange way which I won’t go into, are able to form a connection with their world that gives them control over various alien creatures. These are avatars too, in a sense, yet it’s a symbiotic relationship, not an exploitative one.
For all its advanced computer power, Avatar ultimately envisions a hippie utopia that’s suspicious of the dehumanizing dangers of advanced technology. Think of it as a tree-hugging game for Nintendo Wii.
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