May the Baby Jesus bless Will Ferrell for having the sack to stand up to the studios’ blind insistence that all his comedies be innocuous PG-13 rated affairs. Had he relented and produced a tamer, more easily marketed, middle-of-the-road effort like his nonetheless amusing Anchorman or Talladega Nights, his latest comedy Step Brothers would be another toothless and fleeting Sandlercastle that would merely fill audiences with empty calories until the next one. Instead, he is stepping up and saying, “Here — try this!” to those audiences who are also tired of Hollywood playing it safe by serving up bland, neutered mash in the shape of a comedy.
“The X-Files” creator Chris Carter translates his small-screen phenom to the movie house with his motion picture directorial debut, and proves that he can pull off chills and humor in The X-Files: I Want To Believe… though not always in exactly the way he intends.
The film catches up with former FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in real time, six years after the events of the TV show’s final episode. Mulder is still on the lam from the authorities, having been framed for murder; Scully is now a doctor on the staff of a Catholic hospital. When an FBI agent is kidnapped and a psychic offers the only lead promising a chance of her safe recovery, an agent on the case familiar with Mulder and Scully’s special case unit, The X-Files, seeks Mulder out, looking for his input and expertise. In exchange, the FBI promises Mulder full immunity.
What is this movie? A faux documentary made by trickster gods intent on surveying the most comically funny possible paths for human beings who then propel unsuspecting mortals down those paths to suffering and confusion? An art film with a sense of heart and a sense of humor? The unorthodox work of a promising young auteur, namely director and co-writer Joachim Trier?
There’s no way to tell for sure, but to options #2 and #3 I say Yes, and Yes; and to option #1, I say, Wouldn’t bet against it.
Christopher Nolan’s return to the Batman franchise is true to its title: it’s incredibly dark in tone. It’s certainly a revisualization both of the superhero microcosm that is Batman’s mythology, but it’s also a reinvention of the macrocosm of superhero pop culture. As the latter, it’s brilliant; visionary to a fault, an oversized allegory for today’s chaotic world stage. As the former, despite a powerhouse performance from Heath Ledger, it’s a redaction of the comic books and Warner Brothers’ original quartet of films which started with Tim Burton’s “Batman” in 1989. Had Nolan managed to better balance the two, The Dark Knight might have been the best picture of the year — nonetheless it’s a brilliant ride, a must-see summer blockbuster, and a total bargain at twelve bucks.
At several points during the screening of Mamma Mia!, I turned around in my seat to steal a peek at the other people in the audience. Admittedly, the crowd was in the target age bracket for the endearingly frivolous ABBA tribute, but still: the smiles on their faces were ear-to-ear. And in the cadence of the song “Money, Money, Money,” I could hear the box office jingle.
I’ll be honest: I wasn’t a huge fan of the Broadway show, despite its status as a worldwide smash hit, seen by more than 30 million people in 160 cities and eight languages around the world. I did find the music engaging (of course), but as a $100-per-ticket show, it left me dry.
Not so the $10-per-ticket film; the price makes all the difference. And if even half of those devout fans of the show turn up to see Meryl Streep take on the role of Donna, the emotionally-charged mom who relives her past via her daughter’s wedding celebration, the film will make over $100 million. And you know what? It deserves to. It’s by far the most fun you’ll have at the cinema this summer.
In the CGI world, Pixar is the New York Yankees, and everyone else is the Chicago Cubs. Thanks to the Disney subsidiary’s long-standing practice of setting the bar so high, however, the quality of other studios’ output is rising, as the light-hearted not-Pixar Space Chimps shows in plucky style (and, praise Zaius, without a joke about poo-flinging anywhere to be found).
The movie manages a goodly share of fun on its own merits. As far as its comic content goes, it is a step up from production house Vanguard Pictures’ 2005 snoozer Valiant and 2006’s entirely forgettable shot at Shrek, Happily N’Ever After. It features a trio of star-trekking simians named Titan (Patrick Warburton), Luna (Cheryl Hines) and Ham (Andy Samberg) making a mission out of mayhem. The character design of each of the chimps is distinctive, even if they all do look a bit too much like the cast of the original Planet Of The Apes. The human characters of the NASA-like agency that sends the trio skyward (to rescue an important space probe that’s gone through a wormhole to some galactic point very distant) are simple caricatures, and paired with the fast work by the talent who give them voices, save a lot of development.
Filed under: IN THEATERS — Robert Newton @ 7:31 am
OK, this is too cute not to share. If you’re a fan of the 1966 “Batman” TV series starring Adam West, as well as slightly disturbing wee-folk films like Bugsy Malone and Terror In Tiny Town, then kill a goodly chunk of your lunch hour (and lament about how your parents didn’t love you because they didn’t make you a working scale Batmobile) with The Adventures Of Little Batman, below, then let us know what you think:
In honor of tomorrow’s release of The Dark Knight (which you might not get to see until next weekend if you haven’t bought your tickets already), let us share with you one of the coolest fan-produced tribute movies — or “fan films” — we have seen to date: Sandy Collora’s Batman: Dead End. It’s about — well, just watch.
Another of Paramount sub-licensor Legend Films’ long-lost ’80s gems (see also our review of Student Bodies), 1982’s Jekyll & Hyde…Together Again is finally out on DVD, and man, is it a whole lot of fun.
The movie was a great showcase for comedian Mark Blankfield, the “Fridays” star who could have upstaged any of the pre-Eddie Murphy era cast members of ABC’s rivals on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Blankfield, whom comedy fans will also know as the blind Blinkin from Mel Brooks’s 1993 spoof Robin Hood: Men In Tights, plays dual roles in this loosely based adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. (There’s actually a scene at the very end where the famous author actually rolls over in his grave.) While the mild-mannered man of medicine, Dr. Jekyll (Blankfield), is engaged to a pretty rich girl named Mary (Bess Armstrong) and lives meekly, Mr. Hyde (Blankfield), the result of a lab experiment exploring man’s survival instinct, is a sex-crazed, drug-addicted wild man (and provides most of the movie’s many laughs).
Co-written and directed by the late TV veteran Jerry Belson, Jekyll & Hyde…Together Again mirrors the fast-living attitude of the early ’80s, and is sure to click with fans of Cheech & Chong who haven’t discovered it already. The role was a perfect one for the hyperkinetic Blankfield, who performed the same sort of hard-edged comedy on the short-lived “Fridays” (which actually beat out the coughing-up-blood “SNL” in the ratings at one time). The movie actually features a brief and memorable role (hubba hubba!) by Cassandra Peterson, who is best known as the busty horror hostesss, Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark (she’s the one with the big red lips painted on her surgical mask). All of Belson’s trademark physical and slapstick is in full effect here, from Hyde’s antics to the scene in which the fey plastic surgeon Dr. Knute Lanyon (comedian Tim Thomerson) overinflates a female patient’s breast implants to ridiculous effect.
There are no special features of which to speak, but fans will attest that having such a clean-looking print of a forgotten treat from over a quarter-century ago is special enough.•••
Long the ’80s cable staple, this highly-sought 1981 horror spoof makes its way to DVD for the first time courtesy of Paramount sub-licensor Legend Films, which also just released 1982 riotous Jekyll & Hyde…Together Again. Over a dozen years before Scream parodied the genre, this one, by former Woody Allen co-scribe Mickey Rose, sent up the slasher flicks of its day like Halloween, When A Stranger Calls and Friday The 13th in rapid-fire, relentlessly funny style, and without the need for graphic violence, sex or language. In fact, it had so little of all those things that an announcer interrupts the film and points out that in order to receive the then-desirable “R” rating that a film had to contain an aggressive form of the f-bomb, upon which he tells the audience, “F*** you.”
The story concerns a string of murders at Houston’s Lamab High (nothing clever in the name, just the production designers not wanting to change out all the letters in Houston’s actual “Lamar High”). When a virgin named Toby (Kristen Riter) tries to solve the murders of her sex-crazed classmates, she becomes a suspect, though the audience knows that the killer is The Breather, a hilarious, asthmatic, galoshes-wearing chatterbox. Beyond him, the shop teacher obsessed with horse head bookends, the freakishly gangly janitor Mr. Malvert and the running, on-screen body count and suspect tracker all keep the laughs moving as fast as a half-naked co-ed running scared through the bramble.
The Breather was played by Richard Brando. He was no relation to the late, Oscar-refusing titan, because he was actually comedian Richard Belzer. It would seem that when late producer and co-director Michael Ritchie, whose career would top out with The Warriors (1983) and Fletch (1985), opted for the moniker of shame “Allen Smithee,” The Belz followed suit. It’s really too bad, because the role is a hilarious one, and helps make this otherwise minor horror-comedy memorable and worthy of being the centerpiece of your next party.•••
STEP BROTHERS [R]
THE X-FILES:
REPRISE
THE DARK KNIGHT
MAMMA MIA!
JEKYLL & HYDE… TOGETHER AGAIN
The movie was a great showcase for comedian Mark Blankfield, the “Fridays” star who could have upstaged any of the pre-Eddie Murphy era cast members of ABC’s rivals on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Blankfield, whom comedy fans will also know as the blind Blinkin from Mel Brooks’s 1993 spoof Robin Hood: Men In Tights, plays dual roles in this loosely based adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. (There’s actually a scene at the very end where the famous author actually rolls over in his grave.) While the mild-mannered man of medicine, Dr. Jekyll (Blankfield), is engaged to a pretty rich girl named Mary (Bess Armstrong) and lives meekly, Mr. Hyde (Blankfield), the result of a lab experiment exploring man’s survival instinct, is a sex-crazed, drug-addicted wild man (and provides most of the movie’s many laughs).
STUDENT BODIES