
And I Would Run 26 Miles: Run Fatboy Run
April 6, 2008David Schwimmer and Simon Pegg had previously worked together in the bank caper black comedy, Big Nothing in 2006. Now Pegg takes the starring role as moppish Dennish Doyle in the romantic comedy, Run Fatboy Run (2007), which marks Schwimmer’s feature directorial debut. The screenplay, co-written by Pegg and actor Michael Ian Black, feels much more tame and by film’s end, nauseatingly standard, than familiar viewers might associate either of those penning the script.
The approach to the whole film is very simple since it revolves around contrasting characters. When not plugging for Nike, the script, too, is structured on metaphors for running. Hapless Dennis Doyle, for example, doesn’t appear bothered by his habit of dodging overwhelming conflict. The film opens to show a painfully nervous looking groom sitting by himself in a bedroom moments before his wedding. Cold feet would be an inadequate description; for some reason (not really developed), tying t
he knot with Libby (Thandie Newton), his lovely but annoyingly unimposing pregnant wife symbolizes an intense feat he can’t commit to… ever. Now, years later, he lives in a basement flat working as an out-of-shape security guard for a woman’s lingerie boutique and the stagnation doesn’t really appear to bother him since things seem to be at a comfortable distance.
Enter the wife’s new style American boyfriend, Whit, played by Hank Azaria. He is basically everything that Dennis is not - the slick corporate preppy who epitomizes both ambition and success. Naturally, he becomes competition for Dennis who later confesses his eternal regret for having left Libby at the altar. Fast-forward to several occasions of Whit showing up Dennis and Libby telling her ex-husband that she doubt he follow through on anything important, a challenge is proposed: Dennis will run in (and finish) the Nike River Run marathon that Whit is training for.
Naturally, too, his supporters seem just as unprepared as he does. Black Books genius Dylan Moran applies his scene-stealing cynicism here as Libby’s shabby, cigarette-and-alcohol-laced gambler cousin, Gordon who wagers a hefty sum that Dennis will indeed finish the marathon. American audiences, however, may instantly recognize him as arrogant and nerdy friend, David, Moran played alongside Pegg in the zombie spoof, Shaun of the Dead (2004). His other boost of support is Dennis Doyle’s portly Indian landlord, Mr. Ghoshdashtidar (Harish Patel) who at first seems like a cranky old jerk but in the end turns out to be the jolly fat man typical to romantic comedies like these. But the question remains - can Dennis put aside his breakfasts with a side of breakfast, shake off his fears and really finish what he sets out to accomplish?
Ready? Cue the music…
Although possibly the safest approach to romantic comedy (even the more supposedly vulgar moments), Pegg and Moran provide the bulk of chuckle-worthy hilarity, but not quite enough to likely keep it in the box office runnings as long as one might’ve anticipated when they heard about “the new Simon Pegg movie.” By the end of the movie, when the protagonist weighs the moment that will either make or break his desires (in this case not really getting rid of Whit, but proving himself to Libby), the writers went overboard with dramatic resolutions to the point that the last twenty minutes painfully drag on. Viewers are probably pretty certain, despite predictable, but minor red herrings that Dennis might not actually achieve his goals, that all will end well (and even Whit’s faults are finally exposed). But maybe not quite to the extent of it being so damned Capra-esque… sort of like taking the saccharine words of a greeting card poem and turning them into a climactic visual, only the results aren’t all that distractingly charming.
If ever there was need to demonstrate the most basic construction of romantic comedy formula, this would make a fine little helper.
ridiculous, climactic contest. As a Cold War-themed skateboard movie, it fuses the cheesy teen sports movie with another staple of 80s movies: over-the-top action films who’s templates of oily, muscular good guys single-handedly avenging foreign-born warlords seethed in compensatory patriotism and political propaganda. By doing so, skateboarding, which in the 1980s would reach such pivotal commercial heights, would become the tool of irreverent youth turned defenders of American
t doesn’t consume the entire movie. Oddly, Vinh’s boss–father of his girlfriend, opponent of Communism, and partner to an American weapons smuggler–curiously won’t let his daughter associate with white boys. In fact, the he Communist weary characters are actually exceedingly paranoid, and our hero Brian Kelly, skeptical of consumer culture, isn’t really being “un-American” when he says that maybe the worst possible fate of humanity is “having a 7-11 on every corner.”
simply featured its cynical star, Gus (played by Jordan Christopher Michael) brazenly posing atop the stole red vintage convertible dressed in his red jacket and curious eye patch. The title of the film above him spell out like the game cards he collects in the film… M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. But, writers beguiled prospective audiences, repackaging the film as a young love story, one in which Drew Barrymore, now featured on the DVD promos as a large, floating face in the background behind Gus, looking childishly seductive; her platinum blond hair decorated with a flower. The tagline now deceptively implies romance: “There’s only one way to win the girl of your dreams: floor it!” Obviously, the goal is to move units by promoting the most well-known star in a cast otherwise filled with b-movie cult regulars like Dick Miller and Mary Woronov. But trying to pitch a new narrative will only disappoint the audiences expending a love story involving the questionable (if not, improbable) chemistry of rugged Gus and the presumably dazzling dreamgirl. And others, who might be attracted to oddball niche comedies such as these (except where they are likewise 80s loyalists), might ignore it entirely.
anyone read in New York anymore?” she rhetorically asks surprised customers of a bookstore upon leaving), she sees an advertisement for Marks & Co., a bookstore in England that specializes in used, rare titles. And what begins in the 1940s as an overseas customer desperately searching for out-of-print books evolves into more than a thirty-year friendship between Hanff and the staff of the bookstore (especially Chief Buyer, Frank Doel who is played by the (later) uncharacteristically charismatic Anthony Hopkins).
neapolis.
introduced basic characters and abruptly shifted to suggestions of disaster, details of which remained scant. The flying, decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty could, given setting and recent memory, leave audiences with the impression that Cloverfield is a film about a terrorist invasion of New York City. The earliest previews didn’t reveal the films title, and some only hinted devastating action through on-screen and off-screen character reaction.
severely disillusioned and apathetic youth like
and on-line petitions, the same which encouraged the eventual release of
for an antidote. Except, with Skuggs’ goons, Toad and the automatic-weapons carrying Rastafarian eyeballs Eye and N. Eye on the prowl, Coogan must reluctantly accept the help of his extremely whiny #1 Fan, young Stuey Gluck (Alex Zuckerman).
Inspired by the 1974 French film,
Writer and director Guy Ritchie has gained considerable notoriety for his British cult films of ganster follies Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and its sequel, Snatch. Like American films and television shows centering on New York mafia, Ritchie’s films, too, spawned numerous British gangster cast regulars. His films also offer a refreshing humor that is rarely, if ever, present in the American gangster genre. But most importantly, the gem of these movies is the writing, and some would follow this model of both humorous and tragic ironies, such as the slick drama, 
he clay wheel attacments from disassembled skates, became its substitute. like anything that had started as a primitive youth exploit and evolved into an explosive industry (punk music being analogous here), the model flows from nature (surfing technique and the draught that made pool surfing popular) and responsive architecture (the embankments of california schoolyard playgrounds), to the engineering (development of urethene wheels and kick tails), to the publicity (the dogtown articles) and marketing.