Let's Have an Intervention

Vince Vaughn may quite possibly be the last remaining raunch-comedy superstar who hasn't acquiesed to the R rating. In an increasingly graphic climate, in which the likes of Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith have pushed well beyond the PG-13 and in many cases are inching past the formerly iron-clad limits of the R (even inappropriate PG-13 raunch king Adam Sandler has relented to the R a couple times recently), Vaughn's films have remained content to operate in a (slightly) tamer environment. In the last few years alone, The Break-Up, Four Christmases, and now Couples Retreat -- three movies that appeared destined for R territory -- have been released in a watered-down teen-friendly format. Why? Could be box office, could be fear of audience run-off, but more than any other reason, especially in the case of this new film, that it's because Vaughn has grown-up instincts but can't muster the guts to produce fully grown-up material.

Couples Retreat is a film that would have benefitted from having the freedom to be an R movie, not because it's necessary to add any bonus "dirty" material, though that almost certainly would've been one side effect, but very simply because a higher rating would have afforded the filmmakers -- most specifically writer Jon Favreau -- a license to be more honest about relationships. It's common knowledge to the point of being cliched that marriage is simultaneously the most monumental and most difficult of human enterprises, but it is the tiny intricacies, the subtle nuances that makes the experience so profound. Watching Couples Retreat, I feel confident that Favreau understands those nuances, and disappointed that he failed to communicate them in any form other than punchy cartoon.

Favreau's original script was then turned over to Vaughn and Dana Fox (who gave us last year's hellatious What Happens in Vegas), and after a certain number of tweaks, this is the film now released in theaters: a comedy about four couples, each with a variety of problems, who somehow find the time to abandon their lives at the drop of a hat and go on a special retreat, where they are forced after an hour of goofy pratfalls (many of them funny, but lacking in substance) to confront those problems and decide their fate. The actors -- among them Jason Bateman, Kristin Davis, Malin Akerman, Kristen Bell, Faizon Love, and of course, Vaughn and Favreau -- are all good, but their stories overlap to such a degree that we never really get a chance to connect with any of them. Vaughn and Akerman take center stage as the couple who appears to be totally happy and in love, and it takes 90 minutes for the movie to arrive at the decision that they really don't have any problems whatsoever. Favreau and Davis play the most interesting couple, but their story is presented with such a surface-skimming lack of complexity that the characters essentially become punchlines. All of these characters overlap each other to the point of complete disinterest, most specifically Love's bumbling divorcee with a gold-digging girlfriend, whose story might not have fit in even in a better version of this film.

Couples Retreat is the directorial debut of Peter Billingsley (ya know, from A Christmas Story), and while it was nice of Vaughn and Favreau to throw the guy a bone and give him a script to direct, the material would have been better served with Favreau behind the camera (but after finishing one grueling Iron Man picture and prepping another, the guy probably wanted a break). But in a film with this many obvious script-level issues, the director is the least of its problems. Those screenplay issues are unfortunate, because this movie does mark a move toward maturity for Vaughn, who still has great sarcastic timing but has added a nuanced straight-man quality that serves him well here. Had Vaughn and Favreau decided during the writing process to push this movie into tougher, more realistic territory, it would have been a hugely surprising film. As it currently stands, it is a funny, likable trifle of a movie. These guys are capable of more...and I look forward to seeing how they move forward next time.

The Stepfather...

...represents all that is wrong with the world. Check out my review at filmcritic.com.

Girl Power

Kick-ass. Check out my review at filmcritic.com.

Assassinated

Name-drop alert: shout-out to my buddy Luke Grimes, who does good work in the new DVD release, Assassination of a High School President. Other than that...well...just check out my review at filmcritic.com.

It Happens

Don't let the smiles fool you....   Check out my review at filmcritic.com.

The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant

Full disclosure: I know the filmmakers. In fact, they were two of my mentors in film school. But all associations aside, this is another important film from Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar. It's on HBO now...see it if you can.

Check out my review at filmcritic.com.

The only thing scary about Sorority Row...

...is that it got greenlit. Check out my review at filmcritic.com.

I Can't Wait For...

The Lovely Bones...

Chapter 1: What a Basterd

Lots to say about Inglourious Basterds...not sure how to say it, or where to start, or...

So I've decided, in the spirit of QT, to encase my feelings into a few chunks...chapters, if you will.

Chapter 1: What a Basterd
Inglourious Basterds marks Quentin Tarantino's continued progression from a creator of groundbreaking original material to a purveyor of the highest quality kitsch. Not always necessarily a bad thing -- I love Kill Bill and I really love Death Proof -- but somewhat disappointing that we may never get to see what comes next from that astoundingly clear voice we heard in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown. This new movie is, after all, a genre movie that revels in the quirks of its genre. And really, more than a "war picture," Inglourious Basterds revels in the same quirks of grindhouse cinema that Tarantino was chasing after in Kill Bill and Death Proof. It seems that, brilliantly fun as his films are, Tarantino has chosen this period of his career to use kitsch as his weapon of choice...to have "fun" with his movies...rather than dig deep enough to deliver a film on the level of his first three.

With that in mind, it is impossible to deny that even in this "lighter" stage of his career, Tarantino can make great cinema happen with the bat of an eyelash. Awesome filmmaking drips from his fingertips. It is why Kill Bill is awesome fun, why Death Proof is B-movie perfection, and why Inglourious Basterds is, really, quite a great experience. Tarantino cannot help but make great cinema happen, no matter what his material. But Tarantino has attitudes and opinions he has been holstering for more than a decade now. The dialogue is still there, the visual style has actually improved, refining itself immensely with each subsequent film...but the voice is not quite as potent. The guy who basically inspired the next two generations of imitators and wannabes is still churning out some great stuff, but a movie like Inglourious Basterds is not going to inspire anyone to do anything other than have a really good time in the theater. Maybe that's now enough for QT...but I hope someday he wants to reach his highest artistic level again, to speak comepletely from his own voice rather than using his voice sparingly to add spice to zany genre throwbacks.

Taking Woodstock

Coming out of Cannes this year, the buzz was pretty negative about Ang Lee's Woodstock opus. Coming out of my screening yesterday, two things became clear: 1) this movie's not really an "opus," and 2) the advance buzz, unfortunately, was accurate.

Check out my review at filmcritic.com

I Can't Wait For....

Starting a new feature here at Cinema Squared: "I Can't Wait For...", a series of trailers of the year's most anticipated movies. The inaugural entry...

Why Funny People will be the least successful Judd Apatow film

Because it has ambitions beyond dick jokes and sex humor. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of dick jokes -- in fact, with a near two-and-a-half-hour running time, there may well be more dick jokes in Funny People than on any other Apatow opus. But for the first time, it seems like the current Dean of Movie Comedy wants to dig deeper than just that, to find the sadness behind the humor. The effort is much better than most responses would indicate.

The film, in theory, would obviously be that film in any celebrated director's oeuvre that is set out to be slaughtered among the critical mass -- the movie that typically comes at the height of a popular director’s fame, where the director in question attempts to skew his/her perspective, overreach his/her grasp, and deliver a big, unfortunate dud. Funny People falls directly into that vein, and yet Apatow sidesteps the pitfalls and delivers what is obviously his most personal film to date, but beyond that, he delivers his first film that truly feels like it was burning inside of him. It was not merely the “personal movie”; it was the story that Apatow deeply needed to tell.

Yes, the movie is long. I would disagree with the arguments that the film is overlong, but they are understandable. In truth, however, the film is much more appropriately long than Knocked Up, which ran only about 15 minutes shorter than this opus, felt like it ran 15 minutes longer, and played like the DVD Director’s Cut version, which included bits that viewers usually acknowledge were rightfully cut from the theatrical cut. Funny People is appropriately long, mostly because it takes time for Apatow’s full vision to unfold. The only problem, in my view, is the short section in the third act when it seems like Apatow is actually rushing the drama to keep the film from going even longer…if anything, the movie could have benefitted from better pacing in the late going, even if that meant the running time extending an extra 5 or 10 minutes. This story is worth the care and attention.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the story: this is the introspective Apatow movie, a comedy about a huge jerk-off star who learns he has terminal cancer. Right off the bat, you know the movie will NOT be a huge success, and you also know that most reviews will chide the film for being selfish, insular, and pretentious. And you know, it is those three things, only I don’t necessarily consider them to be pejorative terms. Whatever happened to “the more personal the story, the more universal the message”? Sure, this is a movie about very particular people, but more than being “The Apatow Cancer Movie,” this is a movie about human nature, about self-discovery after a lifetime of being lost in a haze. It is, if possible, much more nebulous and introspective than even the trailer makes it seem, which simultaneously confirms its place as the most interesting film of the Apatow Era, and solidifies the fact that it will be the least monetarily successful of same.

I have given a lot of praise and a lot of criticism to Apatow since his instantaneous ascent after 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but Funny People marks a big turning point in the filmmaker’s career. It is sprawling, it is dark, and it allows the filmmaker himself an opportunity to reflect on both the positive and negative sides to the success of his earlier work. It also allows him to cast Adam Sandler in a role that basically exposes Sandler’s easy, stupid comedy films as the mindless, money-making frauds they are. It is a remarkable feat of self-actualization for both men.

Apatow is clearly stretching to explore new territory -- as well as the darker, unexplored sides of similar territory -- and nearly everything works. The acting is fabulous. Sandler is as good as he’s ever been, at the very top of his game in both the dramatic and comedic realms. Seth Rogen continues to play new, interesting characters, for the first time here playing the nice guy, the innocent -- and, as the character from whose perspective this story takes place, he is sort of the lead. He never misses a beat. Eric Bana pops up late in the game and plays a difficult comedic role with ease, with a relaxed humor he has never before exhibited in film. And in an alternate universe where the movie were better received, Leslie Mann would score an Oscar nomination for her work as Sandler’s long lost love, who has truly grown into her place as an adult while Sandler’s character is only an adult in age and appearance. Beyond the acting, Apatow’s writing is as acutely aware of the human condition that it ever has been, and his visual sense has leapt forward about ten steps of evolution from where it was previously. Nabbing the incredible Janusz Kaminski as his D.P. surely aided the progression, but Apatow clearly set out to learn how to make a real movie this time out, and the results are the best directing he has ever done.

I’ve gone on and on, and yet I haven’t fully discussed where this work’s power truly lies -- its structure. It would be very easy to make the movie about the “Lost Soul Finds Out He’s Dying, Discovers He’s A Jerk, and Dedicates His Life to Regaining His Goodness.” It would be easy to create the new, charming world in which the dying protagonist re-evaluates himself, finds his old flame, and lives happily ever after…until he succumbs to the disease, of course, while smiling at his newfound peace. That would be very easy, indeed…but it is not what Apatow is chasing. The fraudulence of that sweet story is merely his first act, and Funny People then becomes not simply the story of what happens when one discovers that death is on the horizon, but what happens when one discovers that before death, there is life to be lived. Death, Apatow seems to be saying, is easy; living is harder. That is the challenge of Funny People. It is the reason the film will not be viewed as “successful,” and also why it is the most truly successful film of Judd Apatow’s career.