The Princess and the Frog

I was dead on Thursday, thus, no update on Friday, sorry.

Title: The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Director: Ron Clements, John Musker
Genre: Animation, Family
Lead Actor(s): Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos
Rating: G
97 minutes

This is the first Disney princess movie in over a decade. It takes the classic Frog Prince fairy tale and places it in New Orleans in 1926. Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is working furiously to earn enough money to buy herself a restaurant when she works a party for the richest family in New Orleans. Through a complicated series of events, she ends up kissing the prince of Maldonia who was turned into a frog and becomes a frog herself. The two are pursued by The Shadow Man (Keith David) and must work their way back to New Orleans before Mardi Gras or they may stay frogs forever.

None of the characters are the best or most entertaining. Tiana definitely has more backbone than Cinderella or Snow White, but sometimes her personality becomes grating. She puts Naveen down quite a bit. Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) is not charming and I find the development of their relationship fake. It seems to spring from nowhere. I like the idea of The Shadow Man, a voodoo practitioner, but his character becomes less sinister and more comical. The songs are written by Randy Newman. Alan Menkin’s music always seems so natural in the movies, but Newman’s songs mostly feel forced.

The characters I like best are Ray (Jim Cumming), a Cajun firefly, Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley), a trumpet playing alligator, and the La Bouffs, a rich family in New Orleans. Ray is kind of like Jiminey Cricket and the mice from Cinderella. He is desperately in love with the North Star who he says is a firefly named Evangeline. Louis is a mix between Baloo and King Louie from The Jungle Book. His only desire is to play the trumpet in a Jazz band. The La Bouffs are just ridiculous and over the top. They are some of the funniest characters in the movie.

Considering the problems with the character, Campos was the best person they could have cast for Naveen. His voice matches the aggravating personality perfect. He has the narcissism of Gaston and the ambition of The Tramp.

I love that Disney went back to hand-drawn animation. In general I prefer that over computer animation, with the exceptions of Pixar. The whole movie just feels a little forced to me. I hope they continue with the hand-drawn. I don’t know if they have anything in the works, but the movie isn’t so bad as to put me off and I will probably buy it because I buy all the Disney princess movies. It isn’t the best of the Princess movies, but it is worth a look and I can see the appeal. I think Disney tried so hard to be careful with their characterizations, that the personalities seem fake.

***** 5/10

The Other Guys

Title: The Other Guys (2010)
Director: Adam McKay
Genre: Crime, Comedy
Lead Actor(s): Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg
Rating: PG-13
107 minutes

While not a classic comedy by any means, this movie is certainly better than the majority of the “comedies” Hollywood gifted us with this summer. After two star detectives in the NYPD die, there is a hole for the new it guys. Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) very much wants that spot for him and his partner, Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell). They are both jokes around the office. Hoitz for shooting Derek Jeter and Gamble for being a “paper bitch.” After Gamble tries to make a dull arrest on a man in violation of scaffolding permits, the two stumble upon a big case and think that this could be their chance to be something other than “the other guys.”

Will Ferrell is as he almost always is. An ADD 12-year-old who just keeps poking his 16-year-old big brother. I think that if Ferrell had been a bit more reined in, the movie could have been better than it is. Most of the parts I didn’t like heavily featured him. Many of his jokes were beat to death and became “how much longer are they going to stick with this bit.” His interactions with his wife (Eva Mendes) particularly suffer due to this. There are some that last more than others. The odd attraction Gamble has to attractive women is one that actually works, but it is not a joke that last five minutes. A hot girl looks or comments at Gamble, and Hoitz is baffled. I also found the bit about Gamble in college annoying and jarring. It really drug me out of this comedy that had a good amount of satire on cop movies and made me acutely aware that I was watching a movie. Ferrell is actually pretty adept at playing dull Gamble who loses real gun privileges and gets wood gun privileges. It is when his part goes to the more extreme aspects that I lose interest in the movie.

Considering the extreme behavior of his co-star, Mark Wahlberg manages not to simply fade into the background, which would have been very easy to do. Instead he is just as visible in his flaws as Gamble. He is hated by just about everyone in New York for his shooting of Jeter during the World Series. He is the stereotypical cop who doesn’t know how to be anything but a cop and has an odd obsession with drug crimes. I don’t know if there is a single scene until maybe the end where he is not wearing his shield around his neck. He also has a really short fuse. Wahlberg manages to, for the most part, keep his character from going into the heavy-handed Scary Movie territory. It is also very interesting to compare his Detective Hoitz with his Sgt. Dignam in The Departed. There are many similarities between the characters despite being opposite styles.

I briefly want to say how much I loved the beginning with Samuel L. Jackson as P.K. Highsmith and The Rock as Det. Danson. These are the two star cops who die in a spectacular and rather funny way. I thought the roles were cast perfectly and utterly hilarious. I also think it was a great idea to cast Ice-T as the narrator. Morgan Freeman he is not, but for this movie he was perfect.

This is one of the better buddy cop movies that has come out in recent years and elements of it are really funny. It just gets bogged down in certain points and I really think the writer needs to take to heart, “brevity is the soul of wit.” I wouldn’t pay full movie theater price to see it, but definitely suggest renting it off redbox or netflix and decide what you think about it.

***** 5/10

Evita

Title: Evita (1996)
Director: Alan Parker
Genre: Musical, Biography
Lead Actor(s): Madonna, Antonio Banderas
Rating: PG
135 minutes

This movie probably has some of the smallest amount of actual dialogue of any musical I have ever seen. According to imdb, Madonna only speaks 140 words and Antonio Banderas only 85. The movie tells the rise and fall of Eva Peron (Madonna), first lady of Argentina. Banderas plays a narrator of sorts. There are a few shots of Eva’s childhood but the majority of the film consists of the time between when she was 15 to her death.

Madonna campaigned heavily for the role. I would think she saw some comparisons between herself and the character. Both rose from the lower class. Both rose to such a position as to be both adored and reviled. It is a good thing that the majority of Madonna’s screen time is her singing. She can emote much better when singing than when straight acting. I would argue that Madonna is better as the young, hungry, reaching Eva than the politician’s wife Eva.

Banderas is supposed to be an everyman named Che. He tries to ground the ambitious Eva. There is not a lot of characterization for Che as can be expected given his role. This is both helpful and hurtful. There are times where his presence is needed and enjoyable, but there are also times that he is distracting and annoying.

This an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but it is not as ornate as Phantom or Cats. There is, of course, an insane amount of theatricality, but it is much more realistic than those two. Since Parker did not have the constraints of the stage, I would have liked to see some more inventive angles and manipulations of the camera. It is not the best or most inventive or most entertaining movie adaption of a musical, but Evita has an interesting story behind it all. Eva Peron is a unique person in history.

****** 5/10

McLintock!

Title: McLintock! (1963)
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen
Genre: Western, Comedy
Lead Actor(s): John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara
Rating: NR
127 minutes

This movie is apparently based on Taming of the Shrew. John Wayne plays G.W. McLintock, a cattle rancher who had been living like a bachelor on his huge ranch. After hiring the widow Louise Warren (Yvonne De Carlo) as a cook, his estranged wife Katherine (Maureen O’Hara) comes back demanding custody of their daughter (currently in college) and a divorce.

As I am sure everyone reading this knows, John Wayne is known for westerns and for being the baddest cowboy around. He is not strongly known for his comedic endeavors. He can be very funny. The mud hole scene in this movies proves that. His humor is very different from the humor of someone like Jimmy Stewart. Wayne’s humor is worked into his style of acting instead of coming from his style of acting. I wouldn’t say that comedy was his best style, but it is interesting to see this side of him.

I especially liked the performance of Jerry Van Dyke in the role of Matt Douglas Jr. He is the more foolish, pampered suitor of Wayne’s daughter, Becky (Stefanie Powers). I would say even more so than his brother, Jerry Van Dyke is excellent in this niche of the bumbling fool. He is more the butt of the dashing cowboy’s jokes, but he is probably the most entertaining and enjoyable character in the movie.

Given the source material, it should come as little surprise that the comedy sometimes comes at the degradation of the women characters. Both the daughter and the wife are spanked with a coal shovel by their significant others, the wife in front of the whole town. I realize the movie is set in a less progressive time, but Wayne seems to enjoy the scene where he spanks his wife far more than was necessary. I also don’t understand how that scene wins her over and suddenly she doesn’t want a divorce and will bow to his every whim. I felt like there was a scene missing.

This movie is interesting to see the difference between the harder type of character like in True Grit and this lighter, more comedic persona. I definitely think there have been reinterpretations of Taming of the Shrew. I also think that some of the scenes went too far, but if you can get past that, it is worth watching even just once.

***** 5/10

Edge of Darkness

Since it was father’s day, I watched this movie with my dad instead of going to see Toy Story 3. I am hoping to see it sometime this week so the review should be up soon, although I am sure it is amazing.

Title: Edge of Darkness (2010)
Director: Martin Campbell
Genre: Crime, Drama
Lead Actor(s): Mel Gibson
Rating: R
117 minutes

I am not the biggest Mel Gibson fan. He is a decent actor, but I strongly believe there are better ones out there. This, however, is Gibson’s first leading role since Signs. The movie begins with his character, Thomas Craven, a Boston homicide detective, at the train station to meet his daughter, Emma, a trainee at a nuclear energy facility. She gets horrible sick during her first dinner home and as they head out the door to go to the hospital, a man yells, “Craven” and blasts her away with a shotgun. Although initially thought to be the intended victim, Craven eventually realizes that it doesn’t make sense and delves into his daughter life to find her killer.

As I said I am not a huge fan of Gibson and I have not been around too many Bostonians, but it seems like he did a good job replicating the accent, especially considering he was raised in Australia. I also have to admit the man can stare blankly. He only did it immediately following his daughter’s death, but it seemed the perfect reaction. There were times I questioned his cop personality and part of it was the actor and part of it was the director (for instance when he finds his daughter’s apartment was broken into, he immediately rummages through her stuff without gloves, not very cop-like). His reactions to certain other moments are also a bit too civilian for a veteran homicide detective. He isn’t bad, just not great.

The actor I loved in his role was Ray Winstone as Jedburgh. I can’t completely explain what the character does. He seems like a cleaner, but I can’t be sure. He has his own sense of morality and seems to thoroughly enjoy his job. He had this perfect quietness about him. I love actors that seem to hold this immense power while sitting perfectly still, sipping Brandy. I also particularly liked how he threw the line “Pills, pills, pills – not like when we were kids – it was pills, pills, pills of a very different context” to straight-laced, Catholic Craven.

I had a problem with the editing and some of the choices made by the filmmakers. There were a lot of editing missteps, in my opinion. It felt like they got rushed on time and then decided to cut the last hour of story into 30 minutes. I also feel like they pushed Craven seeing Emma after his death too much. There were also a lot of simple inconsistencies that could have easily been taken care of.

It isn’t a bad movie. It’s not particularly good, but not bad. Not for the queasy due to the particularly gory scenes. I wouldn’t own it, and wouldn’t pay to see it. It was nice to watch with my dad and grandfather for father’s day though.

***** 5/10

St. Trinian’s

Title: St. Trinian’s (2007)
Director: Oliver Parker, Barnaby Thompson
Genre: Comedy
Lead Actor(s): Rupert Everett, Talulah Riley
Rating: PG-13
97 minutes

This is a British film set at a boarding school called St. Trinian’s. Anabelle Fritton (Talulah Riley) is sent to the school by her father hoping to get a discount due to his sister being the headmistress, Camilla Fritton (Rupert Everett). Anabelle struggles to fit in to the new style of school, while the school tries to figure out how to stave off the creditors and is being investigated by the head of education, Geoffrey Thwaites (Colin Firth), who is an old flame of Camilla’s.

Rupert Everett is hilarious as Camilla Fritton. The scenes with Thwaites are especially entertaining. Camilla’s personality is modeled off of Camilla Parker Bowles and, although I cannot really comment on the accuracy, it does make for a very funny character. Everett also plays Anabelle’s father and Camilla’s brother, Carnaby Fritton. His role is equally funny and as well acted.

Talulah Riley is a little awkward in her role as Anabelle. At the beginning she is very stubbornly against the school, but with very little prodding, she eases into the unique school. Riley seems most comfortable toward the end after her St. Trinian makeover. She still feels awkward. The coolest student is head girl, Kelly, played by Gemma Arterton. She is cool, calm, and collected. She also seems to fit into any situation.

The biggest downfall of the movie is the convoluted plot. There is the Anabelle fitting in storyline; there is the romance between Camilla and Thwaites; there is the education inspection; there is the steal a painting to save the school plotline; there is the school contest to get into the art gallery plotline. It made for a lot of story in not a lot of time and none of the threads getting the resolution they needed.

The movie is a fun comedy with interesting characters, but there isn’t enough development of the personalities. I don’t know that there is any aspect that would really interest guys in this movie. I love the school song and actually bought it the night I watched it, but this is not great cinema or even that well written. All the heart of the movie comes from the actors doing the best they can with an overly complicated script.

***** 5/10

Whip It

Title: Whip It (2009)
Director: Drew Barrymore
Genre: Comedy, Sport
Lead Actor(s): Ellen Page
Rating: PG-13
111 minutes

This is Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. The movie is based on a book called Derby Girl and follows a teenager, Bliss (Ellen Page), discovering the sport of roller derby. She lives in a hick town in Texas called Bodeen and drives into Austin one night to see her first derby match. She falls in love with the sport, lies about her age, and tries out for a team called the Hurl Scouts. She is reborn as Babe Ruthless and becomes a great jammer for the team. They are in a league with five other teams. Their enemy team is the Holy Rollers who have a bitch as a team captain. Bliss lies to her parents who want her to compete in pageants. The movie culminates in a match between the Holy Rollers and the Hurl Scouts.

Ellen Page does quite well as the girl stuck in a nowhere town dying to get away from the close-minded inhabitants in her town. She also seems to truly enjoy the scenes in the derby arena. Page is 5 years older than her character in the movie, but she has the kind of face where until she is 50 she will be able to play characters much younger than herself. I found her performance and evolution very believable and natural.

There are several wonderful supporting characters. Alia Shawkat, best known as Maeby from Arrested Development, is her best friend and the only one who understands Bliss. Marcia Gay Harden is Bliss’s uptight, ex-pageant queen mom. Harden is a wonderful actress and this performance is no different, although it is not the hardest role she has ever taken on. Drew Barrymore plays a stoner roller girl named Smashlee Simpson and has a fun time doing it. She, however, does not appear in every scene like some other actor/directors. Finally, how has Juliette Lewis, who plays villain Iron Maven, not been in a roller derby movie yet? She has the perfect angry energy for it.

The two actress that impress me the most though are definitely Kristen Wiig and Zoe Bell. Normally I can’t stand the overdone nature of Wiig’s characters, but despite the easy possibility to overdo a roller derby girl, Wiig is refined and natural in her role as Maggie Mayhem. If anything Wiig is the most withdrawn of the girls on the team. I love Zoe Bell. She started working in Hollywood as a stunt woman, but has since branched out into acting. She has a wonderful energy in everything I see her in and she has a tendency to steal the scenes she is in. She brings that same wonderful energy to her role as Bloody Holly. I really expect to see her in more roles, although probably not any dramatic roles.

Drew Barrymore does a decent though unremarkable job in her first job as director. It is not surprising that she has picked up some knowledge given how long she has been in the business, but I would like to see her tackle some harder material before I make in judgments on her ability as a director.

This is obviously not a high brow film, but it is a fun movie to watch with friends that doesn’t revolve around a desperate woman trying to get an unrealistic man. I will probably buy it at some point, but it is not something I feel a need to buy immediately. I recommend seeing it if you are a woman, enjoy the sport, or just want a completely different kind of chick flick.

***** 5/10

Bend it Like Beckham

It is finals week for me so all of my reviews this week are probably going to be pretty short. Sorry.

Title: Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Genre: Comedy, Sport
Lead Actor(s): Parminder Nagra
Rating: PG-13
112 minutes

This is a decent chick-flick. The story centers around Jesminder “Jess” Bharma’s (Nagra) conflict with her desire to play soccer and her traditional Indian family’s expectations. Jess meets Juliette “Jules” (Kiera Knightley) who is a member of a all-women soccer team and Jess joins the team, but hides her passion from her family.

Parminder Nagra is particularly good in the movie. She actually seems torn between the two loves of her life. She does not completely despise her family despite their conservative ways. I like her performance well enough. It isn’t the stuff of legend, but in the role it is decent enough.

No aspect of the movie is particularly wonderful or particularly awful. I also was oddly able to guess the plot developments. It is a fun mindless movie to watch, but it is nothing magnificent.

***** 5/10

Watchmen

Title: Watchmen (2009)
Director: Zack Snyder
Genre: Comic Book, Drama
Lead Actor(s): Jackie Earle Haley
Rating: R
162 minutes

I love the graphic novel, but the movie is rather disappointing. After a government mandate, former superheroes are told to hang up their capes/masks. Some have turned their previous career into a new one capitalizing on their past. Some quietly faded into the background and one refused to stop. Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) was a scientist who became trapped in an intrinsic field subtractor and disintegrates without dying. He builds himself a new body and obtains physics-related powers. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) is the most mysterious and the one who continues to fight crime. Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) retires from the life quietly. Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) also retires fairly quietly. Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) has parlayed his past career into current business success. After some of the older ex-heroes die, Rorschach believes that someone is targeting them and tries to find the truth.

I like several of the actors as the characters in the movie. I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a wonderful job as The Comedian, an older ex-hero. He is a cynical, brutal asshole. Morgan plays The Comedian with an eerie ease and seems perfectly natural setting fire to soldiers in Vietnam. He really does an excellent job of depicting a difficult character. Jackie Earle Haley is also great as Rorschach. A big part or Rorschach’s personality is his ability to blend in when not masked and his inner monologues. Haley also has the difficulty of not being able to use facial expressions as Rorschach because his mask completely obscures his face. Despite these limitations Rorschach’s overly developed morality is obvious, and the nuances of his demented personality are delicately portrayed. Although I think the emotionless Dr. Manhattan would be rather easy to depict, Billy Crudup does a fine job at staying emotionless and contrasting Manhattan with his previous incarnation, Jon Osterman. I even didn’t mind Matthew Goode as the annoying child prodigy grown up, Ozymandias.

While neither are horrific, I am not a fan of Malin Akerman’s or Patrick Wilson’s performances. Nite Owl II is kind of a loser. Wilson is rather awkward in the role. There are ways of being a loser without appearing so uncomfortable. Malin Akerman also does not seem to really understand her character. I would argue that Silk Spectre II is one of the more developed characters, but Akerman is very one-dimensional in her portrayal.

Given my praise for the majority of the actors, it would seem that this movie would be good. Unfortunately the director kills the movie. For much of the movie, he tries to be so faithful to the book that the film seems stilted. The ending, however, is radically different from the book, and I loved the ending of the book. Snyder has a tendency to overuse slow motion in his movies and this is no exception. The direction makes elements of the movie seem horrifically unnatural and uncomfortable.

The source material is fantastic, but unfortunately the movie does not live up to its origin. While much of the character depiction is faithful and well done, the direction kills the movie. It makes the 2 hour and 42 minute movie seem longer and uncomfortable to watch. While I understand that the material is long, complex, and formidable, it is my opinion that if a good job cannot be done, find someone else to do it.

***** 5/10

2010

Title: 2010 (The Year We Made Contact) (1984)
Director: Peter Hyams
Genre: Sci-Fi
Lead Actor(s): Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren
Rating: PG
116 minutes

I am currently taking an awesome class called Astrobiology in Pop Culture. Basically we sit around and watch movies involving aliens. We first watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and then we watched its sequel. This.

This is not on the same level as 2001, no where near close. Dr. Heywood Floyd (Scheider), Dr. Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), and Dr. R. Chandra all meet up with a Soviet space shuttle orbiting Jupiter to investigate the failed Discovery mission (from 2001). The Soviet Union and the US are inches away from nuclear war. They find the Discovery ship and Dr. Chandra restarts HAL. Obviously things go weird from there.

The sequel is as ridiculous as the original is meticulous. Floyd has a pet dolphin. He actually has a pet dolphin. He lives in a house that looks like an 80’s Barbie beach house. There is no real change when they go into space.

None of the acting is so phenomenal or pitiful to really remark upon with the exception of Keir Dullea’s return as Dr. Dave Bowman. He is really creepy, but he is supposed to be. He is also different than his original incarnation. The new Dave Bowman is eerily calm. He seems almost like a ghost, but he isn’t one. He is only in the film for like seven minutes, but he is the most memorable and striking character.

The film has many of the stereotypes of sci-fi. There is a no gravity moment. There are some cool motion sequences in space. The coolest effect is at the end and I am going to spoil it because it isn’t the last or final surprise. The black monoliths from 2001 return and multiply and eventually turn Jupiter into a star. I don’t know how sound the science of that is. I am a psychology student not a physics, but it did make for a pretty cool sequence.

I would not recommend seeing this unless you really like sci-fi, really want to see the sequel to 2001, are in a class studying astrobiology in pop culture, or you are bored and it is on tv. It isn’t the worst movie in the world, but none of it is really memorable. Dave Bowman and the Jupiter implosion are the only elements that are positively striking. The pet dolphin is memorable because of the absurdity of it.

***** 5/10

Someone should leave me a comment of a movie or a type of movie for me to review tomorrow. That would be awesome.