Rock n’ Roll in the Rising Sun: Tokyo Pop

Tokyo Pop is probably an unrecognized film title to all but a handful of people, most of whom are likely rabid 80s film fans. And without the transition to the more readily accessible DVD, it remains not a great film (pacing tends to be a problem), but still an overlooked, low-budget gem in the grand universe of obscure cult films.

Centering on young and naive aspiring American and Japanese musicians, Tokyo Pop contrasts the mid-80s new wave, punk and rock influences of urban Japan with the backdrop of idyllic tradition and historical roots; an obvious criticism of commercial globalization and the “Americanization” of a once-distinct Eastern identity. Rock, pop, punk and new wave (check out an early performance of “Rauken Rauken” by Japanese goof-girl rockers, Papaya Paranoia) – it’s all image and personality. Like the old photos of youth in 1980s post-Communist countries: a carefully manufactured young “cool”.

There are essentially two leading characters who, by fate (and the script!), cross paths. Carrie Hamilton, the late daughter of comedienne Carol Burnette (she may be more recognized as one of the instigating rivals in Shag), shares the lead as Wendy Reed, a struggling singer with no hope for security and mobility in the New York City dives scene. Inspired by a postcard of a friend who boasts of success in the business following a move to Tokyo, Wendy packs up her sparing belongs and decides to join her friend. Except things don’t go as plan. Stunned not so much by culture shock, but news of her friend having already moved someplace else, she sticks it out. And, on the advice of fellow nomadic gaijins (the romanticized gringo: Americans) she,  takes up residency in a group house plastered with Disney memorabilia and, in the closest thing to paying singer she could quickly find, entertains drunken entourages of Japanese businessmen in a karaoke bar with half-hearted renditions of corny American folk songs.

Stranded in the city one night, Wendy meets Hiro (Yutaka Tadokoro, the vocalist for the Red Warriors who is probably better recognized as the director of the whiskey commercial in Lost in Translation), another young, aspiring rock musician. Obsessed with American and British pop culture, especially the musical legends like Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles, this is basically the bulk of the limited English he can communicate to Wendy. His family is the same – in one scene, his grandfather, in traditional garb, scowls at his daughter who is attempting to follow the jazzercise routines she’s watching on television as they sit around the dinner table with Hiro and his sister. A big bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken crowds the table and Hiro’s mother is ironically bewildered that her son isn’t interested in more “Japanese” things. Even Hiro’s father, a divorcee (taboo no more!) specializes in the 80s novelty of synthetic food sculptures.

Hiro and Wendy’s first encounter is eventually miffed by a misunderstanding over the sharing of a hotel room, but eventually the two hit it off, much to the delight of Hiro’s band, a rock quartet, who want the newfound blond gaijin to be in their band, certain that this is just the gimmick they need to get recognized by the country’s most famous producer, since sneaking trying to sneak him demo tapes hasn’t worked. Reluctant at first, Wendy seems unable to find any other band to meaningfully support a singing career (X of Japan briefly appear in their massive coifs, and delegate Wendy, the new band mate for about a second, the back up singer’s tambourine).

Hiro’s band is basically a cover band, churning out live performances of corny American pop songs like Three Dog Night’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” Amazingly, they do achieve major public recognition, but only through some trivial event – a photographer happened to capture a backstage spat between Wendy and someone else. Suddenly, the cover band is topping the country’s charts. And yet, both Wendy and Hiro, at the helm of  a thriving gimmick band, aren’t entirely happy with the expected definition of “success” (money and fame). In private, Hiro has performed for Wendy the songs he has written, which he sings in Japanese. Completely absent of the Western manufacture, the songs are sincere. Wendy, willing to walk away in order to get Hiro and his bandmates to abandon the gimmick, encourages Hiro to perform these songs for his audiences. In other words: art for the sake of art.

Released in 1988 and yet to be re-released, the film was co-written and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, though her 1992 directorial effort is more widely known: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tokyo Pop was a lot like the 1987 culture-clash dramedy, Living on Tokyo Time. Unfortuantely, there’s little net-recorded history on the movie, other than (surprisingly) a 2007 New York Times Review.

Imagine That! Rumors of a Mighty Boosh Movie

Okay dear anglophiles… yes, the Muvika! blog is reserved for posts about movies. But, rumors of The Mighty Boosh finally making it to the big screen in the next two years, gives license to discuss the television show here… even if the status of the movie at this point is unclear to the point of making it little more than a vague rumor.

It’s not just any show, which is why I’ll take this stretch of liberty. The Mighty Boosh is one of the funniest and most original British sitcoms in the BBC catalog in at least the last five years. And, that’s a tough claim to attempt to defend, considering that the competition these days include the wonderfully written League of Gentlemen, Spaced, Black Books, Peep Show, the inter-related Garth Merenghi’s Dark Place and IT Crowd, and even the redundant sketch comedy of Little Britain and Catherine Tate.  But, while every one of these shows (and others I haven’t mentioned) puts nearly every bit of American sitcoms of the last decade to utter shame–except for the intermittent genius in shows like Seinfeld, Arrested Development, and 30 Rock–few have attained more than cult status among American television consumers (unless introduced to wider audiences redressed as a tame American version of its more daring British source). These are the brilliant secrets that, until they ever achieve that transition into a region code suitable for DVD players in the United States, must often be enjoyed in fragmented bootlegs. To that I’ll say thank goodness for YouTube… but, damn the copyright police!

At least in the realm of network television, BBC offerings expose the limitations of American sitcoms. The BBC sitcoms aren’t “daring” just because the British allow fewer restrictions on language and sexual content. But that most American sitcoms, bound by the hollow FCC restrictions on language, indulge sexual innuendo to an overly compensatory extreme.  Maybe a writer for American television can get away with slipping in the words “dog penis” more than twice, but this is basically what has come to embody the definition of “risque.” Despite the supposed history of more daring content in American television in the last twenty or thirty years (especially anything with Bea Arthur attached), the bulk of American sitcoms today are predictable and watered down, an observation was recently made in an episode of 30 Rock. (Imagine being subject to hours of episodes of The Big Bang Theory). By contrast, the BBC has nurtured shows that experimented with the traditional notions of sitcom construction. League of Gentlemen completely destroyed the paradigm in terms of consistency of characters throughout the life of a series, and, along with Little Britain and Catherine Tate dedicated a significant part of the budget to costume and effects. Even the more familiar Extras, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant following the success of their previous sitcom, The Office, offered criticism of its own industry’s obsession with celebrity and spectacle–albeit in a sort of defeatist soapbox manner.

The brilliance of modern British sitcom has been injected into the American lineup in another form: Americanized versions. The most obvious example is The Office, although in Americanizing the show, the emphasis has shifted to its comedic ploy of heightened awareness and awkward situations taken to an extreme, while omitting the social and political commentary regarding the drudgery of the office life. HBO recently bought the BBC comedy Little Britain, pumping money into the show and now having it filmed live on location. Most recently,  NBC was to have an American version of The IT Crowd, but thankfully the project was scrapped before a pilot even aired, although the Independent Film Channel (IFC) had talked about picking up the project. And in November of 2008, MTV2 discussed the development of  a Boosh spin-off.

The Mighty Boosh originated from the stand-up performances of Noel Felding and Julian Barratt. Before the irreverent adventures of the Zooniverse aired on television for three series (British sitcoms typically run shorter terms than do American ones and are referred to as “series” rather than “seasons”) beginning in 2004, it was performed as a live stage show (and still is, touring in festivals in Europe), and later, as a BBC radio program. Described as a surrealist comedy and increasingly more so as it reached a third series, the show was something obviously targeted for younger, hipper audiences. Most of the episodes retained that theatrical look to it, especially in fantasy scenes which depended more on costume, color and lighting for effect.

More accurately, The Mighty Boosh is a surreal musical comedy. Like Cheech & Chong did in their stand-up and later, in their movies, the Boosh cast (and primarily, Barratt and Felding) wrote and performed an array of hilarious and relevant new wave tracks to highlight their situations, with the duo establishing a trademark for crimping.

At least for American viewers not really yet exposed to revolutions occurring in British sitcoms, this violated the assumption of most British sitcoms being very dated and mildly funny shows surrounding proper English folk, something influenced by the handful of shows like Are You Being Served and Keeping Up Appearances which continue to run on PBS, the poor Yanks outlet of the cultural products (outside of films) coming from the Motherland.

BBC’s uniqueness, too, is the luxury of situational comedy whereas the American sitcom settings tend to be very limiting, centering around the interactions and relationships of family and close-knit friends, the primary setting typically being someone’s home. Originally, The Mighty Boosh took place in a zoo (the Zooniverse) where the ambitious traditionalist, Howard Moon (Barratt) and his charmingly dim-witted Mod friend, Vince Noir (Felding) worked as zoo keepers. And it was usually Howard envisioning himself the revered hero of every occasion that got them both in trouble. Secondary characters include Dixon Bainbridge (originally the IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade), Bob Fossil, the wry shaman Naboo (played by Noel’s brother Michael, who was the inspiration for the show’s name), his faithful gorilla companion, Bollo, and the Hitcher, a regular, rhyming semi-nemesis. As the series aged, the setting changed to Howard and Vince sharing a flat with Naboo and Bollo in second season, and then, steered into the really surreal with Howard and Vince working in Naboo’s second-hand shop.

BBC Films has expressed their interest in producing a Boosh movie, but there has never been a firm date set because the order of projects for the Boosh team at this point is unclear. They intend to tour the live stage show (which has been solidly booked in venues around Eastern Europe for the last few months), but afterwards, expect to take a break and then resume with either a fourt series or the film. Whatever the next move, nothing is likely to be ready by 2010. Get started catching up on the episodes, my fellow Americans.

*Thanks to J. Rushton & Co. for introducing me to the show.

One For My Brother: A ‘Best Of’ List

(DRAFT) Anecdotes and commentary on Gilroy Drastik’s Top 10 favorite movies… (as hard as it was to limit the list to just 10)…

Jaws.

Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women!

Inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, Spielberg’s 1975 iconographic movie of the predatory Great White terrorizing the fictional northeastern Amity Island (filmed at Martha’s Vineyard) was adapted from Peter Benchley’s novel. Ironically, Benchley has said if he’d known a bit more about the behavior of Great Whites, he’d not have written the book as it was. Although, when approached by Doubleday, the writer was told that what they wanted wasn’t non-fiction. They wanted a story about a shark terrorizing a town. For once the Creature Feature was enormously successful (rated among the top 250 of IMDB) and only slightly corny (the obvious moments when on-screen actors are dealing with difficult, animatronic puppet). Despite the intensity and suspense that establishes Jaws as one of the greatest horror movies (or maybe plain old thriller is a better genre heading), it was followed by several sequels, a shitty NES game, and one incredibly ridiculous cheesy theme park ride that only nominally have anything in common with their predecessor film (they were definitely “some bad hat, harry!”).

In a nutshell, the plot centers on the newly ordained Amity Police Chief, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) who inherits a major dilemma in his initial service – a string of shark attacks during the Island tourist town’s busiest season. Initially met with stupid, yet understandable political and economic pressures bearing down on him as to whether the beaches should be shut down, a few deaths has the small town eager for a quick solution like taking row boats out and a hanging a slab of meat on a fish hook, waiting to throw a handful of dynamite in a hungry shark’s mouth. But, Brody, ever the pragmatist, solicits the help of a university-trained marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a wry traditionalist boat captain (Robert Shaw, who also starred in The Deep, another sea-side Benchley adaptation) to put an end to the town’s crippling threat – a great white shark.

Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies…

In part, the movie has survived the test of time because of the cool of its leading late actors, Roy Scheider (Brody) and Englishman Robert Shaw (Quinn). But, it also survives as an example of effective elements in suspense that went beyond the transparent thrills and scare tactics that have saturated most modern American horror. Jaws manages to bring all of its nervous development to a claustrophobic climax rigged with intense doubt – will three desperate men aboard a rather small boat managed to finally put an end to the small town’s persistent terror?

It’s been said that the beach population was significantly down in the year of Jaws’s release, something understandable where audiences were just as unfamiliar with shark behavior as the author of its source material.

Alien.

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Talk about claustrophobic settings… Alien’s tensions are brilliant invoked before the movie even begins. Just look at the isolation of the glowing egg encompassed by the black background on the promotional material.

Alien centers around the crew of a commercial spaceship returning to Earth who’s mission quickly turns into tragedy. Ordered by their corporate employers to investigate the unidentified signals coming from something like a mini-planet, they destroy parts of the ship in the process and unknowingly transport the seeds of a vicious alien.

Alien was penned by two guys who made their early career in alien-based science fiction and initially pitched it as “Jaws in space.” In all, it was shopped around nearly ten years before getting the greenlight. Dan O’Bannon was involved in the early stages of Dune (as was director Ridley Scott, who later abandoned the option to direct the project in order to work on Blade Runner) and Ronald Shusett would later work on Total Recall. British director Scott lead a fairly prominent cast for the first of the (so-far) five film Franchise. By 1986, James Cameron took over for Aliens, followed by David Fincher for Alien3.

The notoriously meticulous Scott had been trained in advertising and his early work was as a director of commercials before moving into directing episodes of various series. Alien was only his second feature film, following The Duelists, but really, his first major one, and, as a major commercial success with lasting cult popularity, he quickly earned a spot among sought out Hollywood elite. The funny history is that, in bout 10 years of shopping around the script for financing, Roger Corman’s studios nearly picked up the film. In the end, 20th Century Fox signed on.

The beauty of Alien, too, is its visuals; the chilling environment modeled on the imagination of then-obscure surreal artist, H.R. Geiger, distinguishing it as a Gothic horror film. But of course, what audiences remember most and what eventually lead to winning an Academy Award was the special effects, especially those few moments so frequently highlighted in horror homage clip show productions like the oft-spoofed (Spaceballs) alien bursting out of John Heard’s chest and the face-to-face encounter between Harry Dean Stanton and the heavily salivating alien, Mother. Outside of a few questionable haircuts and obsolete catchphrases, the film manages to avoid looking too dated (which, hopefully means, suggestions for remakes are quickly dismissed!). Though, what might it look like had Roger Corman’s team actually succeeded a contract to fund the project?

The Thing.

Noticing the trend of creature features in (eventual) isolated settings?

The Thing is a remake of the Christian Nyby’s 1951 science fiction horror of the same name, arguably a better adaption of its novella source: John Campbell, Jr.’s “Who Goes There?” Directed by John Carpenter and released in 1982, The Thing expands on the general plot of Alien: greater odds against the heroes. Here, a Norwegian helicopter carrying the seed of a predatory alien with the ability to mimic its prey is shot down in the Arctic region where a small group of American scientists are stationed. Alien was more political – the fate of the crew was in part, caused by the betrayal of their employers. On the other hand, The Thing, is stripped down to pure psychological play. Uncertain of who can be trusted when the victims can distinguish between human and alien, tensions rise and morals are tested: some prefer the survivalist credo of every man for himself.

Like Alien, the movie doesn’t bend entirely to the expectations of a neat resolution, among other genre standards (finally, the black guy doesn’t die first!) Film editor Todd Ramsay had suggested to Carpenter that the film have a “happy ending,” and an alternative ending was shot in which MacReady (Kurt Russel) is the lone victim to be rescued and, following a blood test, is shown to be human rather than the alien replica. However, this was never actually shown to test audiences in either of the two endings that were screened. Although, The Thing has appeared in “Best Of” lists (including IMDB’s user-rated Top 250 movie list) and archived in the clip-show styled homage Terror in the Aisles, the movie was hardly considered successful in the opening weekend. Carpenter had blamed this on the competing release of Spielberg’s E.T., which of course was a positive,  family-oriented view of alien visitors (and Carpenter’s 1984 romantic sci-fi Starman would be kinder, too) whereas The Thing was bleak and, for critics, the tremendously detailed special effects, were rightfully described as just being too gross (especially a scene in which the doctor has his forearms bitten off while he’s got his hands in a chest cavity).

Blade Runner.

“I am the Nexus One, yeah! I want more like, fucker I ain’t done!” White Zombie – More Human Than Human

Blade Runner is one of the best films of dystopic future (and Paul Sammon’s book gives the best history of the film from inception to release). It was never well-received and not surprisingly survives as a cult classic because it is quite technical, moody, slow, and artistic science fiction. But, the best features is that visually, it’s beautiful; a painstaking construction of what dismal, over-populated Los Angeles might look like in 2019. Director Ridley Scott’s meticulousness and close guard over the craftsmanship is evident and the product is so pristine and perfect for the high-definition home theater luxuries these days. (Scott’s meticulousness, too, is also responsible for some of the off-screen rivalries with the crew and studio).

Scott directed Blade Runner after completing Alien, although initially he was supposed to direct Dune. According to Scott, however, he needed to keep himself busy following the sudden death of his eldest brother and with production on  Initially, the next project not expected to begin for another year, he accepted the invitation to direct this.

It took a long time for Blade Runner to even get studio backing. Hampton Fancher, a book-smart, former child actor was the second to approach the eccentric Phillip K. Kick to option the rights to his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (The title Blade Runner came from a William Burroughs novel). Dick was never quite satisfied with Fancher’s screenplay version, once calling it too simple. Although, he never seemed too happy with Scott’s version, either, eventually going to lengths to publicly express his disapproval. And when the initially small production team tried to find financing for the film, studios continuously doubted there would even be a significant audience for the film. The novel, too, was always said to be hard to translate to film, anyways.

Blade Runner is a variation of Frankenstein. Man has created a destructive lifeform that ultimately must be destroyed for reasons beyond the creature’s own understanding; means beyond its control. In Blade Runner, when Earth became so over-populated and pollution, the humans looked to inhabit other planets. Replicants – nearly perfect synthetic simulations of humans built to expire in four years – were created for the colonization of other planets, first to fight in the wars, then to be used as slave labor. The movie went beyond the obsolete notion of androids – there was nothing that appeared artificial to the naked eye. Even memories were implanted. A special machine that used an iris-scan while the tester asked a series of mood-altering questions was the only way to really tell.But even this method wasn’t fool proof.

When the Nexus 6 androids staged a violent revolt, replicants were declared illegal on Earth. Blade Runners are the agents hired to kill them. With word that there had been a group in the desolate Los Angeles city looking for their maker – the Tyrell Corporation, Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford) a pathetic looking blade runner (who seemed even more pathetic and jaded in the book) had been forced out of retirement to track them down. With the exception of a chase sequence and the battle-to-the-death-style finale, Blade Runner isn’t really an action movie. It had long been described as noir science fiction. Deckard is a detective asked to solve a mystery with a moral dilemma. He’s on a trail of clues that will eventually lead him to the replicants he’s been hired to kill.

Deckard isn’t really as interesting as a the replicants. He’s like a very drained Sam Marlowe. But, replicants are dynamic, sympathetic creatures, particularly Deckard’s love interest, Rachel (Sean Young, who claimed, ironically,  that Harrison Ford would not speak to her much off-screen), and the ringleader Roy Batty. They merely desire a solution to their plight: stalling the clock on their limetd lifespan. While the replicants are a simulation, the question is, “what does it mean to be human?” There was a particularly heartbreaking exchange between Roy Batty and Richard Deckard during the final showdown:

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”

Cheech & Chong: Up in Smoke.

“You wanna get high man?”

Cheech & Chong were a great team; masters of the weedsploitation drama, although with the duo’s film debut, Up in Smoke, released in 1978, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong started on a high (literally and figuratively) and would gradually end on a low by the final film in the franchise. Other than Nice Dreams, few of their other films were worth much note.

The Cheech & Chong films were borne out of the duo’s stand-up comedy of the 70s and 80s. Up in Smoke was brilliant, improvised silliness and came out of the old days of riskier ventures. Given Lou Adler’s commentary on the DVD, it seemed like the film’s director and producer knew the comedy pair, or their potential, and, with a scant idea of what it should be, had the money to finance a goofy venture. But, they had trouble advertising the movie through traditional means. There was the obvious liability and public relations crisis expected when it comes to promoting a pothead movie to the mainstream… although it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem these days, given the mainstream successes of movies like Half Baked and Pineapple Express. Cheech and Chong was a novelty, too, in that they were also a musical duo, something they did in their stage shows and might have inspired the Flight of the Conchords duo. Cheech and Chong performed some of the songs on their film’s soundtracks and are seen in Up in Smoke actually performing against a handful of self-indulgent punk bands at the Battle of the Bands show. So, the film was advertised in comic strips and left on bus benches. Weirdly enough, it was successful. Released by Paramount, the movie grossed over $40 million and was the 12th highest grossing film of 1978.

There’s a wonderful scene towards the opening of the film where Anthony Stoner (Tommy Chong), hitchhiking, dresses as a woman (including the added detail of fake hooters) in order to get someone to stop and give him a ride. Pedro (Cheech), cruising the strip in his polished boat (this was really Jack Nicholson’s car), catches a glimpse of the hitchhiking woman and the brain to response connection is clear when his his widen and he cries out, “She’s hitchhiker!!. And finally, the center of attention were two non-white guys! Chong had absconded from his rich, nagging white adopted parents who basically yell at him to make something of himself. Cheech is a sort of stereotypical Mexican from the Southern California barrio. Chong befriends Cheech and joins his mariachi band as the drummer. Cheech has the idea that they should compete in the up-coming battle of the bands and in between the journey to finally score some weed and make it to the competition, the oblivious duo is always, and inadvertently two steps ahead of the bumbling drug agents and their frustrated supervising seargent (played wonderfully by Stacy Keach who has the great line: “To think of the time and money I’ve wasted on your training…”).

Nice Dreams came along in 1981, the third in the franchise. But, it somewhat continues the adventures of Up in Smoke. Bumbling drug agents are once again trying to track down the once-again oblivious Cheech and Chong’s successful, covert weed operation, “Nice Dreams.” But this time, Stacey Keach’s character, who has taken an unquestioned desk job where he basically smokes a pretty potent brand of weed, gradually transforms into an iguana. Needless to say, Nice Dreams is more of a surreal comedy (and appropriately so, given the weedsploitation context) than it’s predecessor, Up in Smoke.

The Terminator.

Intimacy. Intimacy. Ya ya ya ya….

For people of the video-cassette age (and I suppose, of the DVD age, as well, though it’s fairly newer), there is that one movie they’ve watched so often, especially as kids, that they’ve ruined the tape it came on. For my brother and I, that movie was the 1984 technophobic sci-fi, Terminator. The hyperactive kid that my brother was, this would surely set him off for invisible combat and inevitably led to us getting on our folks’ nerves and being ordered to go outside and play.

And despite the gaping plot hole (a soldier fighting in the cyber wars of the future volunteers to go back in time to protect the mother of the future hero he will eventually help conceive), the corny dialogue, and the financial glut of the movies to follow in the never-ending franchise (including a television series and theme park attraction), it will always be one of my favorite science fiction films. The first Terminator took place in gritty, punky Los Angeles, and the urban wasteland served as a proper prologue environment to the violent future predicted by Sara Conner. By the first sequel, Terminator 2, studios shelled out millions for the Hollywood polish. By comparison, the first movie was made on a surprising budget of less than $7 million (which might mean that this was not an expensive cast) and obviously, continues to gross well over the double-digit million dollar mark (it too, holds a user-rated ranking in the Top 250 films on IMDB). Gritty as the first one, though, that’s not to say it was a cheaply done production. That’s just not James Cameron’s style even with just $7 million. And the budget was probably largely allotted for special effects. There’s plenty of explosions, construction of active futuristic battleground, stop-motion Terminator animation, and the terrific scene of The Terminator chipping away at the fleshy disguise to reveal the functioning exoskeleton.

Throughout the Terminator franchise, the demise of the future is blamed on the Skynet corporation. Like Blade Runner, the artificial intelligence embodied in creepy chrome exoskeletons created by the corporations defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems, became self-aware and took over military hardware, declaring war on the humans. This plot point doesn’t really become more fully developed until the sequel, Terminator 2, when a now beefed-up Sarah Connor tracks down Skynet engineer Miles Dyson, the man behind the machines. The Terminator 2 3-D attraction at Universal Studios in Orlando introduces the movie with a brief propaganda film from Skynet and its defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems before Sarah and John Connor looking like two butch lesbians, hack into the system to override the video and warn audiences to get out of the building.

What the hell? Goddamn son of a bitch…

Like Blade Runner and a host of other 1980s technophobic science fiction films, The Terminator opens in Los Angeles. In 2029, it’s buried in rubble and destroyed by the hopeless war between Man, a resistance force led by the heroic John Connor, and Machines, who decide to assassinate him preemptively by going back in time to gritty 1984 Los Angeles and disguised as human, kill his mother, Sarah Connor. Sarah was played by director/co-writer James Cameron’s then-wife Linda Hamilton. The movie also introduced Austrian bodybuilding celebrity, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Terminator was a formidable villain because he was an indiscriminate killer, and one didn’t feel emotion. His method for finding Sarah Connor, initially, is thumbing through the phone book and killing all the Sarah Connors in the county, it didn’t matter which was the right one, as long as one was in fact the future mother of John. (Imagine how doomed the mission would be if she wasn’t listed!) The beauty of the villain was also that it was immune to pain, and the chrome skeleton under the normal wear of human flesh made regular weaponry ineffective, though the T-1000, the liquid metal villain of Terminator 2, was more challenging.

Initially, the Terminator was envisioned to be more inconspicuous rather than the intimidating build, something followed through on in the sequel when the athletic and speedy Robert Patrick was cast as the T-1000. B-movie king Lance Henriksen was considered for the role of the Terminator, but instead was cast as one of the investigating detectives alongside the late, humorously wry Paul Winfield. Michael Biehn was considered, too, but instead played played Kyle Reese, the noble resistance soldier from the future who volunteers to go back in time and protect Sarah Connor. It’s a suicide mission, since the time portal wouldn’t open again to allow him to travel back. This is where the inevitable problem of time traveling tales occur as Kyle Reese is eventually shown to be the father of John Connor, although previously, he’d never met Sarah Connor before.

Sarah Connor… mother of the future resistance leader was supposed to be a mere 19 year old at the time working a thankless job as a waitress and sharing an apartment with an iguana and a spunky roommate named Ginger. Of course, after become enlightened by Reese about the future, she undergoes a complete 180 and turns into the short-tempered, premature resistance fighter with visions of a fatal future. Of course, it’s that kind of babbling that gets her thrown into a mental institution, as seen in the beginning of Terminator 2.

Christian Bale is the latest to be cast as John Connor in the fourth installment, Terminator: Salvation, which, at least suggested by the previews, is that the movie has taken a new direction altogether. Now in the aftermath of Skynet’s nuclear Holocaust and further fighting against the machines, the movie, directed by the American television director rather pretentiously known only as “McG,” transforms into more of a combat movie than the computers-and-bytes kind of science fiction movie it first started as.

The Omen and The Exorcist.

If I had to pick between Richard Donner’s The Omen (released in 1976) or William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (released in 1973 and adapted from William Blatty’s 1971 novel) in terms of movies about demonic children, I would prefer The Exorcist. (I discuss both films here because of the similar theme). My brother has long been a fan of both films (though surprisingly, not of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby). I’ve always found The Omen to be excessively cheesy in parts, using the glassy effects and dramatic strings music (not Jerry Goldsmith’s “Ave Satan”, the one it’s most famous for) in the saccharine portrayal of the American couple played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick welcoming their first child in contrast, of course, to the devilish threat he’d become. (Liev Schreiber’s remake, released in 2006, was only slightly better since it avoided doing that. But, while visually stunning, it substituted cheesy for bland).

On the other hand, while Linda Blair’s character, Regan, in The Exorcist was a complete nerd, Friedkin manages to mostly stick to the point – the transformation of the darling nerd into the vessel of Satan. (Blair was far from desired for the role of Regan, and one person seriously considered for the part was Denise Nickerson, who is better remembered as Violet in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, since her parents pulled her from the production because of the vulgarity of the material). But then again, there’s a unique regional difference between the two films: The Omen is very English; The Exorcist is an American production. While The Omen was fairly simple, The Exorcist was a little more complex. The film begins with an archeological excavation, and along with this, integrates the story of Father Damien (Jason Miller) who doubts his faith, and the actress mother who needs more than medical help for the disturbing and mysterious symptoms showing in her pre-teen daughter in Georgetown.

The bulk of the movie was filmed on and around the Georgetown University campus. The building that housed the graduate schools of business, public policy, and my former graduate program buttress the infamous steep stairs that in the film, were an instrument in the demise of a priest. Runners tend to make two or three incredible laps up and down that thing. Passerbys have scrawled on the wall things like “the power of Christ compels you” and so-and-so “conquered the Exorcist stairs.

The Omen anniversary DVDs released recently contain the 2005 documentary regarding the weird occurrences during production like lightning hitting planes, lions devouring crew, and dobermans attacking the trainers, not that The Exorcist was without its own rumors of strange occurrences during production, though I wonder how many had to do with William Friedkin’s method directing. The Exorcist carries a lot of possibly dubious reports about how audiences reacted when they first saw it in the theater, vomiting and being dramatic. The movie certainly was stark enough, and sometimes vulgar enough to get some kind of reaction to audiences not yet jaded by horror films like today. The Exorcist was also one of the highest grossing horror films of all time and earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress (Burstyn), Best Supporting Actress (Blair, who really wasn’t supporting at all, though I suspect “supporting” is sometimes a limitation made on the basis of age), Best Supporting Actor (Jason Miller), Best Director (even though he was chosen to direct only after the success of The French Connection), and Best Picture.

Unfortunately, both were followed by a few sequels that never made much note. Damien was followed into adulthood (oops, spoilers!) and Regan became like the spokesman for chronic demonic possession.

Dead Calm.

Dead Calm is a rather obscure, three-character thriller released in 1989. It was a great little suspense film, winding up on cable every once in a while and more recently, on Netflix’s Instant Demand. Based on Charles Williams’s thriller novel of a bi-polar shipwreck survivor who terrorizes a young couple that invite him aboard their boat, it was actually the second time the book was attempted to be translated into film. Orson Wells never finished his film, The Deep, filmed between 1967 and 1969 but abandoned when the film’s star, Laurence Harvey, died. (There were rumors that Wells’s widow was trying to get the incomplete film cut and released in 1997). Australian director, Phillip Noyce, directed the 1989 version, which was a dramatically pared down version of the novel – it only centered on three of the characters: John (Sam Neill) and Rae (Nicole Kidman) Ingram and their tormenting visitor, Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane).

In the novel, Hugie’s wife and the surviving half of another couple aboard their yacht–the husband–were central to John’s survival when, doubting Hughie’s version of what happened to the other crew aboard the sinking vessel, swims over to investigate. We learn that Hughie was a good-looking young guy, in his early 20s. He’d been an aspiring painter and the financing for his work often came from rich women who selfishly sought his company more than admired the brilliance of his work. He’d become habitually spoiled and always flirted with the women who never denied him what he wanted. It’s speculated in the book that, when Hughie and the wife of the other couple are swimming and accidentally left behind, he drowned her in an effort to save himself. When Hughie’s wife an the husband finally figure out that they’ve left their passengers behind, return two hours later to find only one has survived – Hughie, who in a panic, claims that the wife died of a shark attack. When the boat begun going down, already in disrepair and being navigated by an inexperienced crew, Hughie’s wife and the husband of the other couple were locked in the cabin. Hughie had left to save himself, climbing aboard the Ingram’s boat with a story that the rest of the crew had died of food poisoning.

In the novel, John and Rae Ingram are honeymooning. Rae seems like more shrewd character, more outspoken and meets John when he is first suspect to having stolen her yacht, but then, because of the former naval officer’s nautical expertise, helps the widow track down the boat. Had the movie been made closer to the book, it would’ve called for someone a little older than the milky white Nicole Kidman. Maybe Angelica Houston. Or Joanna Cassidy. But when the backstory changed to an instant tragedy explaining the couple’s voyage – a therapeutic trip following the death of their toddler son – Kidman’s cherubic appearance fit.

In both the novel and movie, John swims over to check the condition of the boat and the holes in Hughie’s story of what happened to the other passengers, when Hughie, in retaliation, leaves with the Ingram’s boat, and Rae still on board. John is stuck on a sinking ship and Rae can’t easily convince Hughie to turn back and rescue him.  Billy Zane was perfect for the role of the villain – the baby-faced young man who was a total weirdo, abruptly shifting between empty good moods and a violent temper, much to the confusion and frustration of Rae (Kidman) who in the end, had to figure out how, if not by herself, then with Hughie’s cooperation, she was going to get back to John before time ran out. Luckily, neither Rae nor John were dumb characters. One of the great tactics here was pacing: the never really slows, and with it, neither does the suspense. Stripping down the number of characters and the details of Hughie’s past (not to mention the author Williams’s reliance on too much nautical terminology) obviously makes it much easier for the filmmaker to translate the nail-biting tension into a 96 minute movie.

Jurassic Park.

In the summer of 1993, the year of Jurassic Park’s release, I had spent several weekends seeing the movie with my brother. Admission was a dollar, so this was easy to do. It was one of the rare moments that a film should run more than a month, and that it should still serve packed audiences after weeks of being there. Priority movies were shown on one of two of the theater’s largest screens. As weeks progressed, and the audience size waned, they moved the movies down the hall, to smaller and smaller theaters. We watched the movie in several.

March of the Indie Kids: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist generated buzzing interest prior to its theatrical release in early October. But, as a film where most all of the positive reviews could offer little more than descriptions as a “sweet little movie,” it’s destined for cult status upon DVD release.

The failure to make much of an impression isn’t all that surprising. Adapted from Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s pop novel, the anti-climatic plot centers on a handful of bland, interconnected teenage indie music fans who spend a Friday night traversing Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Village to fend off obnoxious ex’s, flesh out potential new relationships, track down a missing drunk friend, and find clues to a secret show hosted by their favorite band. All of it is very reminiscent of young, night-out vignette relationship comedies like 200 Cigarettes and Detroit Rock City. But where Nick & Norah lures admirers with innocent charm, it becomes persistently (and annoyingly) unimposing. This is “indie” personified.

With playful lettering doting about the opening credits, or the casting of Michael Cera as the leading character, Nick, or filling the soundtrack with popular indie bands, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist might elicit expectations that this is something obsessed with being quirky like Juno or willing to trump substance entirely for the sake of novelty like Napoleon Dynamite. Aside from Nick’s unique mode of transportation – one of the last functioning Hugos, a queer-core band called The Jerk Offs, and a running gag involving chewing gum, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist gives its characters and settings a genuine and sincere focus, but to the extent that it becomes about as “slice of life” as you can get… well, except for Norah’s family ties to the music industry.

The movie begins with the typical exaggerated teenage dramas. Heartbroken Nick (portrayed in Michael Cera’s typical soft-spoken, down-to-earth manner) takes the day off from school to busy himself with making a mix CD for the insensitive Tris (Alexis Denzia, who makes a more believable as a Romanian Olympic gymnast than a high school student), the girl who broke up with him on his birthday. His friends, with whom he plays in The Jerk Offs, encourage their depressed mate to get out of the house and join them for the gig they’re playing in the city (curiously, they’re headlining for Bishop Allen).

Elsewhere at a posh private school, Tris tells a gaggle of gossipy classmates that she’s glad she and Nick finally broke up as she tosses into the trash yet another mix CD he’d given her. It’s the typical situation of the decent guy temporarily clouded by the insincere girl. Norah (Kat Dennings) rescues the CD from the trash, as she’s done before. She’s Tris’s classmate and also her opposite. She doesn’t know Nick, but she’s a fan of his mix CDs, noting that he doesn’t just carefully select a playlist, but creates the artwork for the sleeve, too. Obviously, Tris just never “got it”.

Nick and Norah: innocuously adorable smart kids with a musical kinship who are clearly perfect for each other.

The young cast of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist are are unsupervised, vintage-clad, self-conscious, occassionally profound, and randomly adventurous. And they share a Friday night we’ve all had at that age: vague plans with friends and no particular need to remain stationary. Hell, the aimless wandering and haphazzard interaction still occurs for the unsettled drinking-age crowd living in the city. And for the curiously nomadic, the possibilities are endless in New York City. Though, it’s funny how much gas these particular friends blow driving all over Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Village, or how they always manage to find a parking space right in front of their destination.

But, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist deserves praise for reviving a seemingly dead sub-genre of teen films: music as a quintissential role in youth socialization (not to sound so academic about it). This is a sub-genre distinct from the urban teen movies that have emerged in the last ten years, as the vicarious thrill of breakdancing showdowns or the epic drum cadence take on music in a more concrete, rather than abstract political and expressive form or, more simply, that understanding of “better living through music.”

Early on, it was rock n’ roll (American Grafitti, I Wanna Hold Your Hand) that embodied the youngster’s principals, ambitions and rebellion and, for most teen films (exceptions being movies like House Party), it has been variations of rock n’ roll ever since (Quadrophenia, American Pop, Suburbia, Empire Records, 200 Cigarettes). Indie music is the latest epoch of rock music (derivative as it is), one guided by a new generation of music-makers and fans quite different from the cigarettes-and-leather generations before them. It may seem tamer by comparison, but indie music embraces themes of the inward and emotional, the sentiment (even Juno did the same, with it’s Moldy Peaches/Kimya Dawson-filled soundtrack). Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’s own playlist includes the likes of the more well-known: Band of Horses, Ratatat, We Are Scientists, Tapes N’ Tapes, The Ravonettes, Vampire Weekend, Modest Mouse, and Bishop Allen, who also make a cameo appearance, among others.

Indie, in its somber form, shares a devotion to the internal with the last major epoch of rock: Grunge (although only to some extent, since Grunge itself still had ties to the politics of punk). But, where indie does avoid indulging quirky novelty, it seems to remain so dreadfully subtle. The marching feet fade into whimpers.

Cigarettes, Dirty Laundry, and Mangled Manifestos: Reality Bites

There seems to be a puzzling trend lately of non-fiction authors in their 40s publishing defenses of “The Greatest Generation.” But, contrary to the presumption that this title refers to those of the World War II era, as it commonly has before, the new (self-)decried honor instead refers to Gen Xers, although these authors frequently lament over the validity of the title, or any title at all. These defenses are similar in their reporting of the history: Baby Boomers are a selfish lot, incessantly urging credit for influencing some kind of revolution. But that by the 1980s, this wave of liberalism was instead replaced by the one-track capitalist ambition of the Yuppie. The “revolutionaries” getting their pictures in the paper for their part in a protest are now driving the kids to soccer practice in a minivan. But the demand for credit never ceased, and continually intrude to remind or altogether impose their values and ideas on the generations of youth to follow.

By the 1990s, with college graduates facing one of the most hopeless periods in the job market, the overhyped myths of the Boomers fell on deaf ears in a way that mirrored the brief punk boom in the late 1970s, with its snarling recognition (and acceptance) of a cultural, social and economic apocalypse. (Compare Leggs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s oral history of punk, Please Kill Me to Michael Azzerand’s Our Band Could Be Your Life). The Gen Xers penning these books proclaim their generation to be the smartest and the most creative (spawning a major transformation with YouTube, MySpace and Google). Although, puzzling enough, the examples always stem from a limiting and definitive Holy Trinity: director Richard Linklater (Slacker), author Douglas Coupeland (Generation X), and Nirvana. The Generation X histories remind their audience that the lifespan of Gen X was brief, and their contributions are frequently masked by the Boomers who refuse to acknowledge their irrelevance. Ironically, these histories also skip over any mention of a Generation Y to chastise the Millenials as a worrisome return to everything the Gen Xers had declared as wrong: self-absorption, obsession with celebrity, mass obedience, and worst of all, insatiable material pursuit.

This shaping of Gen X’s mark on humanity was already told years ago during its brief existence, although in the medium of film, the Gen X biographies were frequently shaped by Hollywood Hands, no matter how attractive it was to call something a product of the Alternative or Grunge Era. In particular, there were three histories that survive memory. One was writer/director Cameron Crowe’s 1992 romance dramedy, Singles. The second is Linklater’s improvised vignettes, Slacker, a favorite in the cult circuit released in 1991. And the third is, Reality Bites, marking Ben Stiller’s directorial debut (written by Helen Childress), followed two years later.

While Singles served as a time capsule of the Gen X lifestyle, it is really only ancillary to it’s primary focus on the romantic relationships of its various characters. It was something of a bust at the box office. Slacker has dominated the discussion when it comes to Gen X films, but Reality Bites deserves some spotlight in the analysis of life as a twenty-something in the early 90s – fresh out of college, full of ambition, jaded, and about to cement their cynicism. (“The script was initially turned down by all the Hollywood studios because it tried to capture the Generation X market like Singles and that film was not a box office success.” 1)

It is worth noting that the application of generational titles, although always marked by some range of birth dates, is that it’s usually not all inclusive of it. There’s always the unspoken distinction in demographic, or socio-economic status, or some other variable. Though Generation X is said to refer to anyone born between 1965 and 1981, its histories really tend to be dominated by whites that met this criteria. And more specifically, college educated whites. For those outside of that demographic, but born within that time, does Generation X even have the same meaning? Does it even apply?

Reality Bites frames Gen Xers in the same way as the Gen X histories do today (though it’s more first-hand than the material coming out now), doing so through a variety of themes: romantic relationships (obviously), commercialism of art, contempt for parental values, overeducated and underemployed graduates, AIDS, homosexuality, and so forth. The movie centers on the dynamics of four college friends (three having just graduated and one having dropped out) sharing a house in Texas. Lelaina (Winona Ryder), one of the film’s major characters, works a thankless job as a production assistant for an arrogant morning talkshow host (John Mahoney). The documentary filmmaker assumes her art will be her escape, though it never seems likely to get off the ground until she befriends an entertainment executive (Ben Stiller). Troy (Ethan Hawke), the other central character, is extremely smart, jaded, and both frequently unemployed and aloof. (The real Troy Dyer is reported to be a financial planner these days). The witty Vicky (Janeane Garofolo), rarely finding herself in positions of responsibility in her career and relationships, starts to turn this around. And the least seen, Michael (Steven Zahn), is a homosexual who eventually, though anti-climatically, comes out to his friends.

The linear history of Reality Bites is nearly identical to the celebratory histories released of late, even opening with the impetus for the principals of Generation X. Valedictorian Lelaina (Winona Ryder), addressing her graduating peers, has no advice about their post-college futures, as even she is uncertain what direction is best. But one thing she is adamant about: criticizing their parents’ promise of revolution, but despicably trading it for material ambition. The claims of perfect families and perfect lives that really weren’t, a statement supported by quick cut scenes from Lelaina’s documentary which features clips of her friends describing their parents. Divorces for some and indifferent marriages for parents of Lelaina’s friends that did stay together. Which leads to the construction of their ultimate dogma: avoid everything your parents did. For that reason, Reality Bites, whether just in retrospect or even when it was released, makes the Generation X crowd seem like the bubbly hippies they criticize.

The self-proclomations of the generational revolution, like those before it, once again settled as an embraceable myth. But, although the recent biographies of Generation X doesn’t just claim this to be the Generation’s defining principal, but it’s most admirable one (at least where it worked out without much flaw in retrospect), this blanket rebellion seems naively inflexible, fruitless, and excessive. Something, in other words, to hail at a young age, until reality kicks in after enduring the more difficult trials and error of life. The philosophy is embodied in particular in someone like the stereotypical Troy (Ethan Hawke), often simply characterized as the rebel philosopher, one with equal parts intelligence and cynicism coupled with zero motivation. Says Lelaina to Troy in one scene: “I have to work around here, and unfortunately Troy, you are a master at the art of time suckage.” Lelaina’s staunch refusal to let her artistic integrity be compromised is another example. She is appalled that her documentary is given a demeaning Mtv revamp once executives get a hold of it, illustrating the great fear of Generation X culture was the dreaded act of selling out.

While it is urged by some not to be taken as a serious portrait of the early 90s, though it should not be entirely dismissed as a falsehood of the times. Just like a lot of movies about the rise through adulthood (Lelaina: “I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23″), whether the it’s twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings (The Last Kiss is a recent example), there’s this eventual realization that the difficulties that started with adolescence never conclude just because you leave your teens. The confusion of growing up is consistent.

Pressed Against the Looking Glass: Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading arrived in theaters this month with tremendous skepticism. Could Joel and Ethan Coen follow with another film to match their 2007 Best Picture adaptation, No Country for Old Men? One review immediately suggested that the writing and directing team made their first mistake by reverting back to their “default” genre: comedy.

The Coen brothers didn’t fail audiences with reversion to a comfortable genre, one in which, with their trademark fashioning of humorously idiosyncratic settings and characters has already proven successful. Were critics going to suggest that, because of the strength of No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers should basically make the same movie again. That is… until of course, getting backlash from critics that they’re being redundant? (The brothers alternated between penning the scripts for this and No Country. This is their first original screenplay since their 1990 film, Miller’s Crossing).

More specifically, the Coen brothers return to write and direct a black comedy. And it’s always been a suitable genre, considering their choice of subjects – the persistent theme of Karma’s watchful eye. Although, comedies or not, it is common in most all of their films. In fact, Burn After Reading is like a funny take on Stanley Kubrick’s classic noir, The Killing (and maybe the draw on classic noir was a conscious one, given the retro style of the promotional materials). There is a dramatic shortage of redeeming characters on screen, and since this is a mainstream American production, their fate is pretty clear.

Set in Washington, DC (some of the movie was filmed in New York, and most in Brooklyn Heights, although there are several apparent scenes shot around the Georgetown University neighborhood), the film opens with the demotion of a high-strung, aging CIA Agent (John Malkovich, for whom the part was initially written for) who struggles to resist the fact that basically, in both professional and personal life, he is now irrelevant. His wife (played emotionally elusively by Tilda Swinton), impatient with her husband’s transition to shiftless layabout, weighs divorce. Her lawyer suggests that, while the two should try to reconcile, a picture of his future financial prospects should be a relevant factor in the ultimate decision. Crass as it may sound, marriage seems like a mere necessity for security, considering she’s having an affair with their friend’s husband (George Clooney) who himself is a hobbiest of womanizing.

The bone to pick about the movie is really execution. The initial unraveling of the tale begins with what feels like a disconnected vignette, that for a little too long, remains unexplained in its relevance to the rest of this narrative playing out among the vile, upper class narcissists (although we find no class exception to anyone’s self-involvement).

So begins a scene in which a dim-witted, self-conscious fitness gym employee (Frances McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife) is being consulted by a doctor about various nip-and-tuck procedures to hide some of her aging body. It is, she claims, necessary to her job and her ticket out of the single life. Denied by her insurance company coverage for cosmetic surgery, her silver lining comes along when her dufus Hardbodies coworker (Brad Pitt, perhaps in his loosest form for a change) thinks a CD discovered at the gym has some valuable top secret information. And after a little digging, they figure out who it belongs to and so begins a blackmail scheme that was trouble from the start. Despite the initial disconnect between the stories, eventually linked by the discovery of that CD, it is clear that the first part was just much too serious. This pair of idiotic, scheming Hardbodies coworkers are just the kind of odd-ball comic relief the audience needs. It’s this kind of idiocy and assumptions, fueled by unrelenting personal desire, that feeds comedies like these (see Guy Ritchies gangster follies, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch).

But of course, the Coen Brothers, even in comedy, never offer pure cartoonish humor. There is violence and there are body counts. And this is no different, and to a more graphic extent this time around. These handful of characters are eventually confined to a narrower playground, and once they are, their interaction becomes a concentration of self-destruction that barely poses much lasting impact on the rest of the world when all is said and done, which makes things in the end seem even more alienated because, the self-involvement lasts beyond just these characters that seek our attention. The more disturbing feeling, however, springs from a sense that the nihilism is far from fiction.

Burn After Reading is a sharp look at stupidity. Despite some initial poor reviews, Coen brother fans shouldn’t be too disappointed with the results. It is probably not likely to gain the cult following of their earlier comedies like Raising Arizona, O! Brother Where Art Thou? or The Big Lebowski, but it’s probably also not likely to fall into complete obscurity like Intolerable Cruelty).

Closing this review with a nugget of trivia: the contraption that Clooney’s character builds in his basement was inspired by both an invention of a key grip and something out of the Museum of Sex in New York City.

Infantania: Baby Mama

(Warning: this post contains spoilers).

On the Internet Movie Databse, one commentato’r’s review title suggests that Baby Mama (2008 ) is the perfect Anti-Apatow movie. That’s not quite an accurate description. Even at the end of Knocked Up, once-reluctant parents drive off with baby at their side, ready to welcome the challenges and pleasures of parenthood (and cue the music!)

But, the difference between the two movies is that in Baby Mama, it’s there from the start. Tina Fey plays Kate Holbrook. A 37 year-old, single, corporate success who tries desperately to obey the slowing tick of her biological clock. She’s succumbed to an obsession where everything reminds her of babies. But, she learns that her physiology may prevent her from getting pregnant, and this leads to alternatives like in vitro fertilization, sperm donors, and adoption before finally settling on a surrogate mother service run by a women (Sigourney Weaver) who can’t seem to stop having babies.

Assured that the service’s screening process is rigorous enough to find the perfect surrogate mother in every way, Kate instead finds herself contractually bound to a clean version of Philly’s answer to white trash. Fellow Saturday Night Live veteran Amy Poehler plays Angie Ostrowiski, the ostentatious candidate, although as the female co-star of a moralistic semi-drama, she’s obligated to be less crude, and eventually more aware that her idiotic common law husband, Carl, played by Dax Shepard. When Angie breaks up with Carl, she winds up moving in with paranoid and prim future mom, Kate, making the new roommates the female odd couple.

Eventually, the two have to learn to adjust to each other, despite Kate’s attempts to quickly reform irresponsible Angie to her liking such as forcing her to purge her poor eating habits. Although, Angie too, tries to get Kate to simply ease her own conservative stubbornness, for example, by taking her clubbing. Aww… they’re just like sisters!

With their increasing compatibility, Kate Holbrook might finally get what she desires most – the joy of raising a child. But of course, viewers should be raising their too-good-to-be-true flags even in a Rob Reiner-esque Perfect White World like this. Something is going to go wrong.

In a scheme hatched by Carl, he and Angie pretend that she’ pregnant in order to collect on checks. But karma comes back to bite them, and Angie is in for a big surprise herself.

Oh yeah… more babies!

The criticisms of this film have a common thread among them – casting the “envelop-pushing” Fey and Poehler in the leading roles attached an expectation that Baby Mama would be a display of similarly outrageous satire. It wasn’t. In fact this movie seemed more suitable for the likes of Cameron Diaz and Kate Hudson.

Saturday Night Live writer, Michael McCullers, steered painstakingly towards conventional romantic comedy and even coalesces on moral grounds. To begin with, Angie and Carl are, with few exceptions, innocuously trashy. And of course, everyone finds redemption in… you guessed it… parenthood. Sure Kate may have jumped into bed with the charming neighborhood juice bar owner (Greg Kinnear) on the first date, but it’s okay, because not only will she eventually discover she is, at last, pregnant(!), and of course, there’s hint that it’s going to be legitimated with a ring. Her love interest too, a former corporate lawyer, is father to a 12 year old he visits on the weekend. Meanwhile, Angie and Carl will be forced towards the path of at least some responsibility when Angie learns that in fact, she’s pregnant too. And the doorman to Kate’s luxury apartment building (the token black character here), who once explaining the meaning of “Baby Mama,” drawing on his own experience of having two, also eventually embraces perfect parenting. It is not surprising then to end the movie like Ron Howard’s saccharine and pastel perfect Parenthood ending, where it’s babies abound.

Honestly, are women just getting pregnant from the water?

Even Judd Apatow’s version of the rites of passage tolerated certain perpetual parental doubt and fear and above all, limited it’s baby count. Apatow isn’t really an opposite extreme, but if anything, it drains the overzealous realities of Baby Mama.

Now to go finish my copy of Alternadad.

Strange New World – Wristcutters: A Love Story

“Miracles only happen when they don’t matter.”

The hook of Wristcutters: A Love Story, adapted from Etgar Keret’s short story, “Kneller’s Happy Campers” is most certainly its premise. A contribution to the surrealistic road trip genre, it centers on an entirely different afterlife. The place where people exist after they “off themselves.” Our main character, somewhat, is Zia (Patrick Fugit). He was once a happy man, until somehow the relationship with his beautiful blond girlfriend, Desiree ended. And that’s when Zia decides to kill himself.

Welcome to this strange kind of post-suicidal universe, it looks to have been shot along the desert-lined highways out West, it looks as though these are perfectly regular locations, but given the coloring (often bleached or grayed) and appearance of the surroundings, there is something hopelessly depressing. Allowed closer inspection, it is clearly a depleted version of the world they’d once known. (Says the lead character, Zia: “I thought about suicide again, but I’m afraid I’ll just wind up someplace worse than this.”) Buildings are mostly junked abandons. People (who’s method of suicide is sometimes apparent) can’t even smile. The female companion on this roadtrip, Mikal is on a mission to find the “leaders” and explain that her arrival was an accident: “Are you joking? Do you guys like it here? Who the hell likes being stuck in a place where you can’t even smile? It’s hot as balls, everybody’s an asshole. I just wanna go home. ” There’s elements of the former world as well, such as the enforcement of vandalism laws. Or having to get a job and pay rent. It’s also kind of futuristic (in that post-apocalyptic sense) and this universe even has it’s charms and magic, so it’s not completely undesirable. People are reminded of suicide here, their own and others, but do they ever regret it? The characters simple seem so matter-of-fact about it’s occurrence.

When Zia runs into a familiar face (don’t it just seem like everyone is committing suicide after a while… time to revive Big Fun!), he learns that Desiree, distraught over her boyfriend’s death, killed herself too, and that she is somewhere to be found in his world now. He solicits the companionship of his friend, Eugene (Shea Whigham, a Florida doing a good job playing a Russian), a guy who’s whole immediately family wound up there with him, and Eugene, who has the car, agrees to embark “Eastish” in search of this girl. He is somewhat his wisdom, somewhat his source of confusion, especially with Eugene’s philosophies tied to his nature of trying to always be the Man’s man.

As the road trip genre obligates, they’re journey intersects with a lot of strange characters and one more for the trip: Mikhal (Shannyn Sossamon), the one who claims she got there by accident and is hitchhiking her way around in search of the leaders to explain that it was a mistake, something that might convince the reader they’re about to head into something more like liabilities as a result of typos (Brazil). Croatian writer and director Goran Dukic, who’s film credits mostly include shorts, did a lot of adding to Keret’s short story. Like the black hole in the car, for example, to emphasize the surrealism of the after-life, though larger ambitions were restricted by the shooting budget and an inflexible 30-day shooting schedule at 17 locations. And while Dukic was working with several well known actors, including Will Arnett who seems like he’d be totally out of his expected element if this weren’t black comedy, Patrick Fugit, John Hawkes, and Tom Waits, it’s funny to hear what inspired his cast selection: he really thought they were good in movies that pretty much everyone has seen. And Tom Waits? “I’d been listening to him since I was a little kid.” Which might hint that they worked for incredibly little money to appear in this movie, which seems inevitable for a movie with such intense low-budget quirk.

Thankfully, despite that low-budget quirk, it’s spared the typical “quirky indie” paint with childish block lettering and bold colors and excessive irony. Instead, Wristcutters is fairly steady black comedy (fairly stead because there’s this weird experiment involving Will Arnett’s guru-type character) that brings it closer to surreal road trip movies (a mishmash of activity and points of focus) and it even has a happy ending. Add to that a soundtrack dominated by rock singers who had committed suicide at one time, and the modern gypsy-punk of Golgol Bordello (the lead singer of which, Eugene Hutz, is modeled upon for the character, Eugene), the movie rarely seeks convention and for that reason, can take it’s viewers just about anyone it wants in this strange new world.

Oh the horror!: Remaking the Monster Squad

Last year marked the 20th anniversary for the 1987 B-grade cult horror comedy, The Monster Squad, and and included dozens of appearances by Andre Gower (Shawn), Ryan Lambert (Rudy), Ashley Bank (Pheobe) and director Fred Dekkar, a reunion tour which began a the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas (and included an interview with Montag) and culminated — FINALLY! — into studios getting their acts together to sort out confusion over who held the rights to the film and released it to a two-disc DVD (under Lionsgate), with a fairly commendable package that unfortunately, didn’t seem to include much of the other cast (the other youngsters of the film either having passed like Brent Chalem who played Horace (aka “Fat Kid”) or simply couldn’t be located like Robby Kiger who played Patrick). More unfortunate is the fact that the noise that fans helped to generate in the last two years has lead to a rather startling announcement: preparations for a remake.

The horror!

For those who weren’t yet born in the 80s, at least early enough to fall in love with a movie that is still largely unknown to those outside the cult fan circuit, The Monster Squad is writer/director Fred Dekkar’s second cult classic — the first being Night of the Creeps (slithering alien lifeforms invade a college campus ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers). It’s not a bad way to end up considering Dekkar’s short list of career television and film credits. (The film’s full synopsis can be found at RetroJunk.com).

Flashback to the days of creepy castles invaded by angry mobs with pitchforks and you’ll find Van Helsing, the German vampire hunter battling a Liberaci-like Dracula (Duncan Regher) for control over the amulet that basically maintains the balance between eternal good and evil. Needless to say, the stakes are high. And well… somehow, he blew it. Fastforward to 1987, a regular middle class suburban neighborhood and Dracula and his band of classic Universal Studios monsters: Wolfman (played by a then-unknown Jon Gries (credited as “Desperate Man”) who is now better known as Napoleon Dynamite’s Uncle Rico), the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and, the more benevolent Frankenstien. While evil lurks in the backyard of unaware Americans everywhere, it’s the handful of elementary school kids and one chain-smoking, leather-bound junior high bad-ass (Lambert) who believe in monsters — hence, The Monster Squad — that retaliate on this invasion of classic movie monsters. Of course, it drew immediate criticism as a knock-off of the 1985 adventure, The Goonies (indeed Mary Ellen Trainor who plays Shawn’s mother in The Monster Squad was also Mikey’s mom in The Goonies), but beyond the comparisons of a group of kids embarking on their own crusade and staving off danger, it holds it’s own. Hell, it’s just a simple, fairly corny adventure.

So what’s the draw? Most certainly, it’s the young cast, though the most lasting in memory may be Lambert, who co-starred on several seasons of Disney’s Kids Incorporated and not surprisingly, wound up in L.A. years later fronting rock bands, most recently of which appears to be the locally-successful Elephone. And, as always showing up in movies throughout the 1980s, Jason Hervey, most recognizable as obnoxious Wayne Arnold on The Wonder Years, has a bit part as obnoxious schoolyard bully, E.J. And, perhaps most forgotten, is little Michael Faustino (brother of Married With Children’s David Faustino) who plays Eugene. The rest of the young cast bounced around on TV and movies, but not many. Though, Gower, who had left showbusiness to attend college in North Carolina (where he played basketball), and Bank, who had recently graduated from NYU, seem to be returning to the business, though from behind the scenes as producers.

The other draw may be, as it was is in The Goonies that, although the movie tends to get corny, these are real kids that cuss and smoke and spy on girls who seem to spend an eternity undressing in front of an open window. Even the parents were (kind of) real (nothing like a battle with monsters to save a marriage teetering on the edge of a messy divorce). Plus, there’s a thousand minor gems (quotes like “Wolfman’s got nards!”, referential t-shirt slogans like “Stephen King Rules” and hard-to-find songs like Michael Sembello’s montage tune, “Rock Until You Drop”) that establish a film’s cult following – not too many know about it. The Monster Squad’s most loyal fans are probably people who were age-appropriate (meaning young) they saw, that piece of pulp culture that, like any other number of salient 80s movie titles (especially obscure ones) linked to something in their childhood — the movie they had on a tape they watched so often, to the point of wearing it out. It has all the right elements for it, especially as an 80s cult flick – which usually demands that its characters be a bit younger, a bit hipper.

Those loyal viewers found a romanticism in the 1987 horror comedy and that made the movie what it is. But beyond the vicarious revisiting of childhood references, The Monster Squad is (and was) a low-budget kid’s movie. There was nothing really spectacular about, beyond it’s lasting status as a cult film (something Dekkar expressed great surprise about when the trend of current loyalists became evident at these reunion appearances). Which is why a remake sounds like a terrible idea (not to mention they only just released the original last October and with that, only just re-introduced it to public memory). But it’s one that, Rob Cohen (who directed the Michael Jackson-Diana Ross Wizard of Oz musical, The Wiz) , the film’s original executive producer, appears to be pushing forward with now that Paramount Pictures has the rights, according to recent interviews with horror movie websites. Though, keep in mind, it’s something that, at least for now, is still in the planning stages. And hopefully someone has the sense enough to abandon the project, especially where Cohen doesn’t seem to be offering anything new: I really think highly of that that film…I mean, how great is it with The Mummy, the Wolfman, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein they all were in it! It would be a prime remake!” and from his recounting of favorite things in the movie (“The Wolfmans got Nards! What a great line“) just sounds like a guy who liked the first movie. Which makes motivations for a remake currently a public mystery.

Weedsploitation With A Body Count: Pineapple Express

The movie, it seemed, to generate nearly as much attention as the latest Batman installment during the summer Blockbuster season, was the 2008 stoner comedy, Pineapple Express. Although this week it’s changed: Tropic Thunder appropriately bumped Batman from the number one box office rankings. The writing team of course includes Judd Apatow (who also produces), Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg–with a script actually being shopped seven years ago–and this gave director David Gordon Green a chance to move from his typically solemn, low-budget indie films to one of the pinnacles of the mainstream summer movie fare: outrageous idiocy.

The Apatow-Rogen movies are a niche that, as Rogen once put, was meant to center around characters that were more like people like them: imperfect. And, in the case of Superbad, for example, it cheered for the socially awkward and turned the well-meaning loser into a desirable hero. Rogen’s declaration of purpose came as an appropriate reaction to the lumping of both his films and shows like Beverley Hills: 90210 into similar genres. “No part of me watched 90210 and thought, ‘Yeah! that’s what my life is like!’ It seemed like a different planet. I mean, I like shitty movies as much as the next guy, I’m not a snob, but things like that had no guys like us in it – that was the point.” Unfortunately, it has also created a world in which these heroes have very little variation. Seth Rogen’s characters — usually the leading character — is always Seth Rogen the same way Hugh Grant is always the same Hugh Grant and Adam Sandler is always the same Adam Sandler in pretty much every role they appear. And, when it wasn’t Rogen playing these main characters, guys like Michael Cera and Jonah Hill were playing those limited-dimension characters: misunderstood nice guys. And it’s always guys at the forefront who become reluctantly intertwined in the outrageous epic, which would make it interesting should someone decide to take this further and give females the leading role. The misunderstood nice guy is one thing to root for, but the hapless girl (and not in the creepy Welcome to the Dollhouse sense of it, either)?

Rogen plays moppish, easy-going process server Dale Denton. And, abandoning his typical clean-cut and straight-laced characters of late, James Franco, plays his eternally stoned and happy-go-lucky dealer, Saul Silver, who offers to Dale, the most potent and extremely rare marijuana ever known: Pineapple Express. Says Saul of the wonder weed: “It’s like, if you took that Blue Oyster shit I gave you last week, and then that crazy Afghan Kush I had that one time.. and they had a baby. And then meanwhile, that crazy Northern Lights shit I had, and that Red Espresso Snowflake shit I had, made a baby. And by some crazy miracle, those two babies met, and fucked… this would be it!” While actually a meteorological term, the title phrase refers to an abandoned experiment by the US military in 1937 to study the effects of marijuana. Unhappy with the results at the underground lab out West, an irate commander picks up the phone to notify his superiors that marijuana has been ruled… “Illegal!”

While attempting to serve papers to the last person on his list that same evening, he witnesses an execution-style murder involving a powerful “drug lord” (the maliciousness of the term mitigated by the sense that Jones comes off more like an indifferent California billionaire type), a crooked cop (Rosie Perez), and possibly a rival drug dealer. He may been able to flee the scene without anyone ever knowing Dale was there. But, panicked, he tosses his weed out the window, throws the car in gear, and takes considerable time even pulling away from the curb, ramming the cars in front and behind him. While the executioner pair see the car abscond into the night before they could make out who was driving, it is the rare Pineapple Express that is the scent the hounds follow.

For some reason, freaked-out Dale can only think of going back to Saul and, in explaining what he saw, Saul makes the connection that not only is Dale in deep shit, but so is he. Not many degrees of separation from drug lord Ted Jones, Saul is the only one privileged by his own supplier to sell Pineapple Express. Already busying themselves with trying to rid the Asian competition (which includes a cameo by stand-up comedian, Bobby Lee, who should’ve been given a more substantial part), Ted Jones and the policewoman now have to deal with getting rid of Dale and Saul.

Thus, the chase begins…

Other stoner comedy teams who are inadvertently implicated in chases with either cops (Cheech & Chong’s Up In Smoke and Nice Dreams) or drug dealers (Half Baked) exist in a setting of cartoonish violence. Pineapple Express, on the other hand, attempts to fuse its situational comedy (with a zillion great one-liners) with true action elements (especially with a 3 minute fight scene between Dale, Saul and Red (Danny McBride) that is likely to get an MTV Video Awards “Best Fight” nomination), and this is evident from the promotional poster itself with the trio of stoners and dealers (the one in the neckbrace being the impenetrable Red, who is Saul’s supplier) looking dubious but well armed. Most assuredly: this is weedsploitation comedy with a body count.

With a movie that struggles to get off the ground in the beginning (reminding the sober audience just how painfully boring and juvenile a 5-minute conversation between sufficiently stoned friends can be), it manages to keep a satisfying pace throughout until the epic finale, when the drive to be the grand action film showdown trumps — with plenty of blood, guts and snot — to the point of being overdone, if not just short on enough material to accommodate the time alloted. The writing team also consumed itself with mockery of the Buddy genre, equipped with an abundance of pretty blunt gay jokes (Red to Saul and Dale: “I want to be inside you, homes!”) that culminates into a reflexive recapping by the ailing heroes in a diner.

Ignoring the flaws, Rogen, Goldberg, Apatow score an expected hit riddled with hilarious idiotic characters and crude comedy (even Ed Beagly, Jr. gets to let loose as the short-fused father of Dale’s teenage girlfriend), enough to get even the more skeptical viewer rolling in the floor especially for the sheer odd choice of dialog like Red admitting that he shaved his armpits in order to be more aerodynamic in a fight, or the fueding henchman (perhaps the best secondary character is Craig Robinson’s 80s throwback, Matheson) who mourns the lost of his partner’s ferociousness. He knows this… he’s “Seen’t it!” And as Rogen and Franco reunite, they portray characters very reminiscent (but much more happy-go-lucky) of the McKinley High School students Ken Miller and Daniel Desario — The Freaks — in Appatow’s (and other’s) 1990 television dramedy, Freaks & Geeks. If Rogen’s character were as pleasantly distracted as Saul (Dale has some annoying moments because he’s too level-headed about some things), they’d be a duo worth matching other purely outrageous weedsploitation comedies like Cheech & Chong and the guys from Half Baked. And in that event, maybe a duo worthy of episodic adventure.

The Kid Stays in the Picture: Son of Rambow

Dweebcentric apologizes in advance for any lack of coherence in this post… I’m trying to post very old drafts and write them while getting distracted at a conference…

The English (along with the Australians) are Masters of the feel-good comedy, keen to tolerable amounts of family-palatable material and evasive of the over-compensatory crudeness relied on by American filmmakers. The opening sequence of Son of Rambow (2007)–which marks a change in the typically grim selections of distributor Paramount’s Vantage Films–follows pre-teen misfit Lee Carter (played remarkably naturally by Will Poulter) racing down the roads of his early 1980s English countryside neighborhood with a backpack containing freshly recorded bootlegs of First Blood (1982). The accompanying music and comical additives (Carter throws something over a hedge at a man standing on a ladder in his yard) might entice American audiences into that Rob Reiner-esque conditioning of near-impeccable adolescence input near-impeccable families and near-impeccable suburban homes. You could almost see adorable Mason Gamble peddling his training wheels-supported bike and loud, rattling red wagon attachment in the beginning of Dennis the Menace (1993). But then the English suddenly remind us, as Lee Carter films his bootleg in the dark theater with a cigarette in his free hand, that these are, to a certain extent (well… it is still a world established by the imagination of filmmakers and production hogs), real kids. They neither need look perfect nor behave perfectly. The carefully cut previews hint at their epic adventures that eventually consume the whole town and if the circumstances are right, the empathetic viewer.

At the center of writer/director Garth Jennings‘ Son of Rambow (look for connections to the Spaced (1999) crew) are the mismatched pairing of eventual friends. At one extreme is Lee Carter (Will Poulter) who shares a his estranged step-father’s lavish home attached to a nursing home with his obnoxious, materialistic older brother Lawrence. Carter is witty, cynical and best of all, daring, all of which may be natural consequences of indulging a childhood with minimal parental supervision. And, it’s quite different from his newfound friend, Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), the typically awkward, bashful and imaginative loner, alienated from the other schoolchildren because of his strict religious upbringing. For some reason, the English and the Irish can’t seem to avoid this impetus in tales of unlikely young friends. Previous examples being ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ in which a soccer enthusaist’s placement on an official girl’s team was frowned upon by her overprotective parents, who worried of its impact on their Hindi identity. Will and Lee embody that kind of loveable young mischief in making their movie, and in a sense it is an epic unfolding as the boys (but mostly Will, who becomes a sort of celebrity) recruit and pique the interest of other students in their school–though tarnishing Lee’s original vision for their movie–and the fact that his mother (Jessica Hynes, who plays roommate Daisy in Spaced) and the curious instigator/parental ally Brother Joshua (Neil Dudgeon) interfere are quite unreasonable. ’Son of Rambow’ is a celebration of harmless, unrestrained adolescence, something that seems to have gotten lost in American films; their subjects seem to lack any kind of real authenticity. They are portrayed in extremes – either impecably wholesome, incredibly dumb, or, purely apathetic (and I’d like to take issue with Gus Van Sant’s recent slew of teen-themed movies at some point in this blog) In a review of the 1987 film, The Monster Squad, Missy, of RetroJunk.com begins the introduction by correctly noting that it had what kids movies aren’t allowed to have these days… cursing, political incorrectness, smoking, and Scary German Guys. ‘Son of Rambow’ manages to maintain the authenticity, even in Will, who’s mother seemed to suggest that childhood is a moral fray that one must eventually abandon. How frustrating to believe that this abandon is necessary for a wholesome life. Audiences seemed to revel in the most delight when the young characters were fully permitted to be exactly that – children.

And I Would Run 26 Miles: Run Fatboy Run

David 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 the 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.