Cinema Hype

Before I start writing about Whip It, the upcoming roller derby movie slash Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, you should probably all know that I’m going through a bit of a roller derby phase lately. Maybe it’s my desire to be Pamie when I grow up; maybe it’s my friend Donna, who’s down in Richmond and supplements her double life as a PBS employee and mom to a four-year-old with a third existence as a derby girl. I like the culture of it—the combination of challenge and support, of sheer bloodlust and weird sorority-style bonding. (DC does have roller derby, and don’t think I haven’t looked into it–I’m currently without a team sport. But I don’t know, you guys. I worked really hard to grow all of these teeth.)

I thought, for about a minute, that maybe a roller derby movie would be my next creative project—that with the little renaissance swelling up in American derby these days, maybe the genre’s time had come. Before I even got the thought out, Barrymore beat me to the punch. She’s like the Jesus to my Brian: SHE found a script written by, you know, an actual derby girl. SHE knew Ellen Page. SHE had money. And, like, cameras. So when you put it like that, I think I’ll take my cue. Good day, sir!

I would be so sad if the movie looked bad; maybe I should be even sadder that it looks so awesome. Because it does look awesome. I’m calling it out now: I am going to see this, and I’m going to love it, and so is everybody else, and then statistics for self-propelled mobile violence among women in this country are going to skyrocket. Take my word for it.

(On a related note: If you are even remotely interested in Drew Barrymore, or if you want to know how she pulled off Little Edie’s crazy voice in Grey Gardens, or if you just like cool interviews of any kind, you MUST listen to her Fresh Air conversation with Terry Gross, available for free here. Not kidding. You’ll be a fan forever.)

Whip It, Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, roller derby, Terry Gross, Fresh Air

In the next few weeks, the new movie (500) Days of Summer will be called a romantic comedy over and over, and each time, writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber will die a little inside. The movie they wrote is not a romantic comedy, not the way audiences are used to seeing romantic comedies. Instead, it is a comedy about romance—a fine but important distinction. First thing, the narrator warns us, “This is a story about love. It is not a love story.”

It speaks to the power of the term “romantic comedy”—a designation that, in association with this movie, I picked up from some anonymous media source and not from my own experience of either the ads or the movie itself—that, even as the climax came and went, I was not sure what to believe about the ending. The writers had warned me, had essentially shown me the future. And yet. “They said it was a romantic comedy!” I thought, around Day 488. “So maybe they’re leading me on.” They weren’t.

It’s–somewhat self-consciously–a collage of a movie, told in bits and pieces, out of order, in mixed media. Director Marc Webb comes from music videos, and it shows, but in a good way. The wide variety of vintage-y visual techniques he employs descends into self-consciousness from time to time (a total catch-22: he’s called boring if he doesn’t use them, and twee if he does), but Webb is saved by the bell—or, rather, the script. For every cutely hip moment, there’s a joke to cut the sweetness, some almost Coen-esque left hook of dialogue to remind us who we’re dealing with and where we’re ultimately going. It’s a very funny movie, full of quick humor and wry raises of the eyebrow, and for the most part it works—especially due to Gordon-Levitt and his total commitment to being an adorable sap. (In addition, for every acid joke, there’s a moment of crushing despair. This also helps to curb the sugar level a bit.)

For what it’s worth, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel make the perfect hipster couple—he is scandalously good-looking but comes off as if he doesn’t really buy it; she runs on charm, a swingy ponytail, and a killer singing voice. Eventually, the relatability question comes up: would we like Tom and Summer in real life? Would we want to go to their parties and hang out in their version of L.A.? Would we root for them? I’m not sure I would—Tom makes even his fictional friends roll their eyes with his sensitivity and also his total inability to listen to reason, while Summer makes herself clear but also leads Tom on in a way that isn’t totally attractive. But that’s one of the writers’ victories: we might not like them, exactly, but we certainly recognize them, possibly even in (hopefully younger, less mature versions of) ourselves. And in a comedy about romance, well, that’s just about the highest compliment there is.

(500) Days of Summer, 500 Days of Summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, romantic comedy, hipster movies, summer movies, Marc Webb, Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber

“Ooh, look at John Krasinski. Who knew he could pull off the beard? Lookin’ good, Halpert.”

“He kind of looks like Dad at a young age.”

“We’re not going to talk about that, okay?”

“Okay.”

“So.”

“So.”

“Sam Mendes doing comedy. That’s healthy, right?”

“Something that doesn’t automatically make me want to bury myself alive? Sure. We’ll chalk that up for progress.”

“I wonder what a Sam Mendes funny mood looks like.”

“Probably like the American dream turning sour, only slower than usual.”

“That’s mean.”

“It’s not my fault. American Beauty AND Revolutionary Road?”

“Point taken.”

“Oh, wow. Written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida (his wife, a writer who surely gets tired of being known mostly as his wife) , you say?”

“That’s very…hip. Or, wait. Do hip people read Dave Eggers anymore, or is that over?”

“I don’t think the font is helping, either.”

“Very Wes Anderson.”

“A little derivative.”

“Borrowing other people’s pretentiousness. Awesome.”

“Does that make it bad?”

“It might make it annoying. But that’s not the same thing. It looks sweet.”

“It looks like Garden State redux.”

“I do like this song, though.”

“And aww, look, there’s Maggie Gyllenhaal.”

“And that chick from Sweet Home Alabama who had a baby! In a bar!”

“And Allison Janney, who is everything I want to be when I grow up.”

“Six feet of fabulous?”

“Exactly.”

“So it can’t be all bad.”

“I think it looks good.”

“Yes. Good. If you can wade through the one-third-life crisis fumes.”

“Yeah. That.”

“So I’ll meet you at the theater?”

“Wear your Dunder Mifflin t-shirt.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Away We Go, John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Sam Mendes, Sam Mendes comedy, Allison Janney, Melanie Lynskey, Sweet Home Alabama, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Jim Halpert, Dunder Mifflin, Wes Anderson

[A note to regular CH readers: I feel silly specifying that this post is not a work of fiction. But, well, it bears mentioning.]

Comedians like Robin Williams and Ricky Gervais have probably played some big, cold rooms in their careers. You know—places where their own jokes echo back to them, or maybe just swallow the sound completely. But their most recent venue gives new meaning to the term “dead audience”: as part of a comedy dream-team cast, they’re bringing comedy and adventure to the Smithsonian Institution in Friday’s release, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian.

The movie, which was filmed partly in the Smithsonian museums and partly in other locations, moves the Night at the Museum franchise to one of the world’s largest and most diversified museum complexes—19 museums in all—and includes a correspondingly huge cast of characters, both new and familiar from the first film.

Making a comedy about museums—places bursting with our history, our culture, and our national psychoses—clearly has its own specific set of ups and downs. For one, with culturally significant and familiar characters, there’s always something for actors to sink their teeth into, and for audiences to take away. “All of these characters are not only important; they also all symbolize big ideas,” said director Shawn Levy of historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. On the other hand, for Americans, this is…well, it’s our stuff. There’s a fine line between having fun with history and reprising Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (Lincoln: “Candygram!”). “Lincoln was hard—you want to not diminish him, but you want to be funny,” said Hank Azaria, who arrived on set to play one role and ended up with three. Levy asked him to record placeholder tracks for Abraham Lincoln and the Auguste Rodin sculpture The Thinker, intending to hire other actors later—but liked Azaria’s versions so much that they made it into the movie.

And another thing: there’s something abut comedians en masse that makes things…shall we say unpredictable? “[Comedy is] all about the team around you,” said Amy Adams, who joined the cast to play Amelia Earhart, and found herself in the middle of what one might call a pretty good team: Williams, Gervais, Azaria, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Christopher Guest, Steve Coogan, and Bill Hader all appear in the movie, along with a handful of other comedians. According to Levy, improvisation was part of the process of making the movie, as the written script meshed with the actors’ ideas in the moment. In fact, said Levy, one of the most difficult parts of putting the film together was incorporating the improvised footage into the final product without making, essentially, the kids’ version of the Ring cycle.

So how, exactly, does one go about asking one of the largest museums in the world for permission to come in and play with all of their stuff? Very nicely. “For starters…you say, ‘we won’t break anything,’” said Levy. “I think it helped immensely that our first movie was well-known enough that people knew—the Smithsonian knew before I even met with them that we would treat the institution respectfully, and with humor and wit, and definite reverence, as well.”

Of course, the benefits of having the Smithsonian name on a Night at the Museum movie aren’t just for the movie; Secretary of the Smithsonian Wayne Clough is rumored to have looked positively on associating the movie with the museums as a way to attract patrons who might not have visited otherwise. And if the New York Museum of Natural History’s experience is anything typical, the Smithsonian can indeed expect to see some new faces in the coming months. “The first movie actually increased attendance at the New York museum by, I’m told, close to twenty percent,” says Levy. “I think anything that could catalyze interest in these institutions is a good thing.”

Night at the Museum 2 opens in theaters this Friday.

Night at the Museum 2, Night at the Museum, Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Shawn Levy, Ricky Gervais, Robin Williams, Hank Azaria, Wayne Clough, Smithsonian, Christopher Guest, Steve Coogan, Bill Hader

I can’t believe we haven’t talked yet about the trailer for Julie and Julia yet. It’s been out for, what, two weeks? Three weeks? Where have I been? The land of negligence, apparently. Here’s the trailer:

I really, really want to like this movie. I like the book, possibly more than it really deserves. I like the trailer, though I balk a bit at the cutesification of it, what with the pop music and the cutie husband and all (the husband in the book is what you’d probably call a mensch, but maybe not a hottie; menschhood is apparently not good enough for your everyday casting director). And I know how these things go: I’m going to chalk all of this up to the whims of the marketing department and not to writer/director Nora Ephron. Ephron’s had her share of stinkers in the past few years (Hanging Up, Bewitched), but somehow I trust her here. I have to believe that she’s working off of passion, and that we’ll see a little bit of that onscreen. (We’d better.)

I was, at one time, ambivalent about the casting of Amy Adams as Julie Powell; this trailer assuages some of my fears. To some extent, Adams will always be adorable, but here she’s not written as adorable, which is key—Powell herself is decidedly un-cutesy. The scene on the kitchen floor (”There’s STUFF ALL OVER THE FLOOR!”) indicates that all may indeed be well here; since Powell spends much of the book having freakouts of various scales and proportions, the collapsing and the moaning are pretty important. Also, the non-Disney-princess haircut doesn’t hurt.

And, to be honest, I hadn’t thought much about Meryl Streep as Julia Child; Julia is by far the lesser presence in the book (as far as direct “screentime” goes), and anyway, she’s Meryl Streep. What, you think she can’t pull of Julia Child? But now that I see her, it’s all lovely. She’s got the voice and the wonderful blowsiness of Child, but it’s more than that. From what we see here, I think she’s got a bit of Julia’s soul. I can appreciate that.

So…carry on, Julie and Julia. I’m ready when you are.

Julie and Julia, Julie/Julia, Julie Powell, Meryl Streep, Julia Child, trailers, Nora Ephron

Have you seen the trailer for the Adam Sandler/Seth Rogen movie Funny People?

It looks pretty good, if maybe a bit generic: an up-and-coming stand-up comedian (Rogen) befriends and is fostered by his own favorite veteran comedian (Sandler) , only to find out that his hero of dying of cancer. The cast is fun (I’m particularly taken by Eric Bana as the much-mocked Australian husband), and all indications point to a touching and uplifting ending to complement the obligatory raunchiness. Pure Judd Apatow.

The most interesting part of this trailer, though, isn’t even in the movie: it’s the card that reads “the third film from Judd Apatow, director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.”

The reason they’re pointing this out is that Apatow’s name has, for better or for worse, become synonymous with a certain brand of comedy—raunchy geek humor, usually about boys (overgrown or otherwise), usually involving Rogen or Jonah Hill or both. Funny People is Apatow’s third time directing, but his seventh writing and fifteenth producing credit in the last five years (not including TV projects and awards shows). Some of the movies he’s produced have been good, and some of them have been bad, but they all came out in a short period of time and they all had his name on them; at this point, he seems to take the blame even for copycat movies that he didn’t even make. In this trailer, somebody is trying to indicate that this is one of the good Apatow movies. We’re not talking Step Brothers, here.

There’s always been speculation about whether Apatow’s success will last, at least at this kind of breakneck pace. The guy’s got to sleep sometime, right? At this point, it’s probably fair to say that, were he never to make another movie, his influence is here to stay—enough imitators have cropped up to make the Apatow-style comedy a mark of the times. But the fact that somebody felt the need to point out that Funny People isn’t “just another Apatow movie” isn’t totally toothless; while he’s clearly working hard and enjoying his own success (i.e. being famous and making more movies), there’s also a sense that being “just another Apatow movie” might be a bad thing. Are we getting sick of him? Should he have been more selective with the movies he put his name on? Or is he wise to associate himself with as many people and projects in Hollywood as possible?

Readers, what do you think?

Judd Apatow, Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Funny People, Jonah Hill, Eric Bana, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Step Brothers

Who knew, ten years ago, that amusement-park location films would be anything even resembling a profitable genre? In fact, who knew they’d be a genre at all? The meeting can only have gone something like this: “…so, how’d you like our pitch for this character-driven coming-of-age comedy?” “Actually, we were thinking….rides. Can you do that for us?” (If this freaks you out, consider this: it seems like the next great frontier for this kind of thing is classic board games, with films of Monopoly and Candyland and a re-make of Clue all in the works.)

And yet, following in the extremely lucrative footsteps of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and the less-profitable Haunted Mansion, this week marks the release of Adventureland, a film that doesn’t actually take place anywhere near the Indiana Jones ride (or Disneyland, period), but will forever be included in the ranks of Movies About Crowded Places in Disneyland just by virtue of its title.

This seems like the kind of movie that could go either way, but leans in a promising direction. The cast is a strange one: take one rising indie star (Jesse Eisenberg of The Squid and the Whale and The Education of Charlie Banks fame), one actress who’s certain to be running from the Twilight movies for the rest of her life, two Saturday Night Live cast members—both just about ready to make the break for the big screen—and a random assortment of character actors, and stick them all on film together, and you’ve got Adventureland. Preliminary buzz is mostly positive, and the movie was written by Greg Mottola, best known for having written Superbad. So we’ll see. If all else fails, the real Adventureland will surely never fail us, right? Right.

Adventureland, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Bill Mader, Kristen Wiig, Greg Mottola, Superbad, Pirates of the Caribbean, Monopoly, Clue, Candyland, Disneyland, board game movies

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a Coen-brothers comedy in the theater. Since the general panning of 2004’s The Ladykillers, the Coens have honing their dramatic voices, and won Oscars for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture for their trouble. Apparently, four years and one utterly chilling serial-killer movie is apparently just enough time for the world to forget the yin and yang of hilarity and brutality that is the Coens’ signature. Thankfully(?), their newest release, Burn After Reading, is a reminder that’s hard to ignore.

Most—all?— of the Coens’ comedies are decidedly of the black-hearted variety, and let’s just say this is the Coens doing what they do best. Burn After Reading is vintage Coen: dialogue rooted somewhere in the 1940s, a surprisingly simple comic style, and an emphasis on the mean and the stupid, all punctuated with the occasional sharp kick to the gut. It didn’t have to be this way; in the hands of other filmmakers, Burn After Reading might have been a mild comedy about gym employees and political intel, and the wacky hijinks that ensue. It could have been far less disturbing. It also could have been far less funny and far less distinctive in the hands of people less willing to explore the underbelly of human nature and of the universe itself. And I, for one, always prefer more funny and distinctive to less.

The cast of Burn After Reading is divided between the professionally strange (Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich, who, now that we think of it, might really make a perfect couple) and the professionally flawless (George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who already are a perfect couple), with Frances McDormand sitting squarely in the middle. Pitt, somehow making only his first appearance in the Coen canon, is the standout here, without question. It’s not that he’s doing anything extraordinary, or anything we haven’t seen from him before. It’s just that the confluence of his comic sensibility and the Coens’ characterization is so perfectly organic. As the likeable but misguided gym employee Chad, he is convincingly enthusiastic and wonderfully thoughtless—the kind of guy you might have seen at your gym, and absolutely the kind of guy who might semi-accidentally become the center of an international intelligence race. The only problem here is the lack of interaction with Clooney; a few scenes between them can only have been golden, and to say any more would constitute a major spoilage. Forget I said anything.

A lot of people won’t like Burn After Reading, especially if they’re going solely by the happy-go-lucky trailer circulating on TV. They’ll be surprised by its violence and by its generally bleak thesis, even if they enjoy the silly spy plot. But that dichotomy is the Coens’ reason for writing—they are equally skilled with both elements, and mix them deliberately. And that is what makes their films, including Burn After Reading, worth watching. They’re black comedians at the top of their game, and anything else would just be gray.

So, it’s official: I will watch Robert Downey Jr. in basically anything. Romantic comedy with ensemble cast of displaced spirits romping around San Francisco? Check. Obnoxiously good post-modern noir mystery? Check. Big-budget comic-book adaptation with sardonic, crime-fighting playboy in metal suit? Check. Vietnam War/Hollywood metafilm comedy, in blackface? Double check. (Ally McBeal? Check. Oh, Larry Paul, you and your melancholy snowman! [...I know. Sorry about that.])

It’s really too bad about Tropic Thunder, though. It’s too bad the risk of it didn’t fully pay off, too bad Ben Stiller still hasn’t totally recovered his mojo, and especially too bad that so many funny moments are sprinkled in among such long stretches of boring crap. This was supposed to be Stiller’s redemption after the string of not-great movies over the past five years or so, especially since he directed and co-wrote it (along with Justin Theroux, who doesn’t appear in the movie but probably should)—proof that a truly funny and possibly incisive comedy came out of his brain might have strengthened a lot of people’s wavering enthusiasm for him, including my own. And it’s frustrating, because the comedy is definitely there…when it’s there. Other times? Less so, and anyway, even the funny parts might have fallen flat in the hands of a less ridiculously talented cast.

Ah, the cast. Thank goodness for all that talent. The most obvious winner here is my man Downey, who plays a white Australian playing a black American, and pulls it off like he’s not even trying. Even better is—POSSIBLY SURPRISING CASTING SPOILER AHEAD!—Tom Cruise, whose bald, foul-mouthed, bespectacled, hip-hop-loving performance should earn him at least a 16% rise in the (theoretical Hollywood) approval ratings. Remember when Tom had a sense of humor about, well, anything? (To be fair: Did those days actually exist, or is this just a fabricated memory?) It’s good to know he’s both able and willing to appear onscreen in anything less than epic, and to know that he still takes roles that give him something to do. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but: Kudos, Tom. You make the movie, kind of. And then there’s Nick Nolte, who for all we know is just playing himself; Matthew McConaughey, who tore himself away from Kate Hudson and her star-breaking habits to actually be funny; and Stiller himself, who actually does a pretty good job. The only disappointing moment here, casting-wise, is Jack Black, who does a fine job with what he has, but is sorely underrepresented.

I think Tropic Thunder was supposed to be the new Zoolander (high praise at CHHQ; we love our gasoline fights), but somehow missed the mark by not having enough: enough plot, enough interesting characters, enough funny stuff, even though the existing funny stuff is really funny. It should have been better. Note to self: Next time, see Hamlet 2 instead.