A Big Mistake: Knocked Up

[With Judd Apatow's Funny People hitting theaters, The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

Some children are so putrid that you come to despise not only them but also their parents. And so it is with Knocked Up. This latest effort by writer/director Judd Apatow includes everything that was wrong with its predecessor, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and none of the tenderness and heart that made the Steve Carell vehicle such a pleasant surprise. If watching Virgin you laughed hardest at the “I know you’re gay because” debate among knuckleheads, or during the hyperbolic sequence when a drunk date smashes her car down the road, or during the totally absurd moment when a heartbroken technology store employee drops his pants at work, well, Knocked Up is the movie for you. But if instead you were taken in by Carell’s charming awkwardness and sweet naiveté, don’t expect to find a smidge of that here.

Oh sure, Knocked Up pretends to have a soul once or twice. But the only way this movie has redeeming value is if you convince yourself it follows the all-too-familiar happy-ending formula of the romantic comedy. But it doesn’t. Not even close. Starring is the stunning Katherine Heigl as a budding talent at the TV network E!, who celebrates a promotion by getting trashed at a bar and going home with a goofy slob played by Seth Rogen. Actually, “goofy slob” and “Seth Rogen” are basically redundant. Rogen is naturally pudgy, hairy and slobbery. Suffice to say, he won’t be competing with Brad Pitt for roles anytime soon.

But it’s one thing to look like a goofy slob and it’s another thing to act like one. Rogen’s Ben is the epitome of a goofy slob. I’d go so far as to call him the all-time prime specimen, if not for the fact that his buddies are even goofier and slobbier than he is. If ever there existed a group of guys so pathetic that they could convince you abstinence was a good idea, this would be the one. Ben & Friends are so offensive that they warrant the eradication of the entire human species. And so it’s more than a bit perplexing when Heigl’s Alison, who is too smart and attractive to ever give these guys the time of day, meets Ben and then sleeps with him. And gets pregnant. And gives abortion not a moment’s thought. And then does the most shocking thing of all: decides to try and form a relationship with Ben, for the good of their unborn spawn.

This isn’t noble. It’s child abuse. Keep in mind that Ben is a stoner without any income whatsoever. By day, he and his friends sit around a house so contaminated with filth that it will eventually produce an outbreak of pink eye and watch R-rated movies on TV, charting at which point (down to the second) famous movie stars get naked. Their plan is to create a subscription website that will attract fellow pathetic losers like them who are too lazy to find the nude scenes on their own – losers having such busy social schedules and all. The most pitiful thing about the venture isn’t its subject or substance but the fact that other sites, like “Mr. Skin,” already provide the same service. So somehow we’re supposed to believe that these morons have figured out how to design a website but have never Googled the term “movie nudity.” Yeah. Right.

Of course, Knocked Up wouldn’t be the first piece of entertainment to star an inconsiderate fatso who winds up reformed by the love of a good woman. But it doesn’t take long to figure out that Ben’s ugly duckling is no a swan in the making. Faced with the possibility of having a meaningful relationship (or at least regular sex!) with a beautiful working woman who possesses plumper breasts than his own, Ben decides that he’d rather spend time dicking around with his buddies. This isn’t just a colossal error in judgment, akin to betting on President Bush in a pronunciation contest, it’s also unmistakable evidence that alcohol kicks the crap out of Darwinism. If Ben’s seed is sown, it will be survival of the unfittest in every respect.

So what does Alison see in Ben? Seriously, I’m asking. Ben’s good natured (if sophomoric) sense of humor stands out among his attributes, but his joviality impresses only because everything else about him is so damn depressing. I can’t decide which is more unfathomable: that Ben wouldn’t fall all over himself trying to impress Alison or that Alison could possibly be this understanding. At some point, even the village outcast would give Ben the finger. Alison just gives him second chances.

Amidst all of this is the subplot of Alison’s sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd). Debbie has two daughters that she adores, but she pretty much hates life: hates that she’s aging; hates her husband; hates that her husband isn’t more upset that she hates him. Surprisingly, though, Debbie is rather understanding of Ben, but never mind. The Debbie-Pete story doesn’t paint a flattering picture of marriage or parenthood, yet there are moments when it gives the movie some much-needed truth and even warmth. The best-written scene in the picture has Pete marveling enviously over his daughters’ utter delight with bubbles.

But these moments of sweetness, optimism and humanity are all too rare. Mostly, Apatow uses Debbie and Pete to explore the dark side of loveless marriages. When that gets old, he scrapes the bottom of the barrel searching for laughs. At one point, Apatow channels Swingers with a hastily-planned road trip to Vegas by Ben and Pete. Once they get there, Apatow has nothing for the guys to do, so they get high on mushrooms and engage in mindless banter about the oversized hotel furniture until Pete tries to stuff his fist inside his mouth. (If you ask me, gags built around outrageous antics attributable to being high are the polar opposite of anything worthy of being called comic genius.)

As stupid as that must read on paper, it’s worse on screen. The longer that Knocked Up goes – and it’s over two hours – the more desperate Apatow gets. In the end, he resorts to gratuitous shots of a crowning newborn’s head emerging from the birth canal – though whether that’s meant to make us laugh or cringe, I haven’t a clue. Were this a Farrelly Brothers movie, the crotch shots would have included copious amounts of amniotic fluid pooling on the floor, but Apatow’s staging looks surprisingly realistic. The message, I guess, is that vaginas are inherently funny. If that’s the state of comedy these days, I need to cry. Like an unwanted baby.

Awkwardly Charming: The 40-Year-Old-Virgin

[With Judd Apatow's Funny People hitting theaters, The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

It would seem at first glance that The 40-Year-Old Virgin has too many ties to last year’s exhaustingly foolish Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to have any hope of excellence. Steve Carell, who co-starred in Anchorman, assumes the titular role here, having co-written the screenplay with director Judd Apatow, who was an Anchorman producer. Meanwhile, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen and David Koechner, low-level actors who were either completely unremarkable or entirely annoying as co-stars in Anchorman, manage to resurface in supporting roles, perhaps coming at a discounted bulk rate. All that’s missing then from Anchorman is its star, Will Ferrell. Oh, and one other thing: abject stupidity.

Whereas the humor of Anchorman is so base that only Carell’s weatherman Brick Tamland and his 48 IQ could possibly enjoy it from start to finish, Virgin has some wit about it, and, more significant, some charm. Sure, it’s peppered with the same crassness that seasons all R-rated comedies these days – foul-mouthed old folks, humping animals and bodily-fluid-filled sight gags that are indeed gag-inducing. But amidst this nonsense is a story actually worth caring about, leading to some laughs that you don’t have to regret the next morning. These days, that’s a rare treat.

As the title implies, Virgin is about a man who has never had any day-after regrets. He is Carell’s Andy, a stockroom worker at an electronics store who after going decades without sex has stopped looking for it. Andy leads a quiet, private life collecting toys, painting action figures and playing video games. The biggest event on his social calendar involves watching Survivor with the elderly couple upstairs. Everyone who meets Andy can tell he’s a bit off-center. His neighbors theorize that he needs sex to loosen up, but his coworkers think he’s helpless. One even assumes Andy must be a serial killer. So when the truth comes out about Andy’s sexual inexperience, Andy is bombarded with lady advice from his womanizing (Romany Malco), broken-hearted (Rudd) and pot-smoking (Rogen) coworkers.

You’d think from the title and the setup that the rest of the movie will be about Andy’s quest for sex, but it isn’t. Not entirely. Yes, Andy’s friends give him tips on how to score with women, sometimes to hilarious effect. At one point, Rogen’s Cal tells Andy that women are so self-centered that when hitting on them he should only ask questions. This leads to one of the film’s cleverest scenes wherein Andy is transformed from a sweet nice-guy to an edgy tough-guy (“think David Caruso in Jade”) just by acting as if he’s on Jeopardy! Coming on to a woman at a bookstore (Elizabeth Banks’ perfectly extreme Beth), Andy responds to her comment about the store’s do-it-yourself section by asking, “Do you like to do it yourself?”

But there’s more to The 40-Year-Old Virgin than awkward come-ons and first-time fumblings. Beneath all of that there is a movie about Andy breaking out of his shell and exposing his inner self in order to become close with someone else, not just physically but emotionally. It starts out as a quest for sex and turns into a crusade of the heart. The object of Andy’s interest is Trish (a delightful Catherine Keener), who is outgoing in every way that he is not. Trish runs her own business, has three daughters and is willing to give Andy her phone number when he’s too oblivious to ask for it. Her straight-forwardness and Andy’s awkwardness appear to make them an ill-fitting match, but the thing that Virgin does best is stop short of making Andy an imbecile. The film pokes fun at his sexual inexperience, his toy collection and his naiveté, but it never implies that he isn’t a good and capable person. If anything, Virgin demonizes society at large (as represented by his coworkers) for looking down on him.

Because of the way the film dances through this tricky terrain, Virgin is, on the whole, well-written. Some of its jokes are simple, like when Andy performs a magic trick for Trish’s youngest daughter, only to be mocked for the obvious preparation involved. Others rely on Carell’s gift for understated physical comedy, like when Andy sees a model of a woman’s reproductive region and stares at it with complete foreign curiosity, like a museum-going child might observe a foot-long African beetle. Meanwhile, Virgin also makes clever use of music, borrowing from Lionel Richie, the theme from The Greatest American Hero and the musical Hair, for scenes I wouldn’t dare spoil.

Yet for all its cunning, there are times when Virgin is clumsier than its subject. Keener, Banks and Jane Lynch (who plays Andy’s sexually-aggressive boss), do well in support, but the scenes with the fellas are weak; at one point, Rudd’s David and Cal are reduced to a “Do you know how I know you’re gay?” debate. Malco’s Jay provides a little more pizzazz than his counterparts, but twice he’s involved in sequences that are all foreplay and no climax. The most notable of these comes when Andy insults Jay’s girlfriend in an effort to protect his friend’s infidelities and is inches away from being on the losing end of a beat-down until the movie inexplicably cuts away to David having an absurd pants-dropping meltdown, after which the battle between Andy and Jay’s girlfriend never resumes.

It’s for these reasons that The 40-Year-Old Virgin fails to become a superb comedy. At best, it’s better than average with a few superb moments. Still, it’s nice these days to be able to follow a character we can root for. In this current comedy climate, where the odd and the twisted are simultaneously abhorred and revered, it’s refreshing to come across a story that ultimately decides that being different is okay. The 40-Year-Old Virgin isn’t worth saving ourselves for, but it’s an experience most grown-ups can enjoy. No regrets.

The Trouble With Harry (Potter)

If you’ve liked the five previous Harry Potter installments, or even most of them, I’d be stunned to learn that you don’t like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Stunned, I say. Shocked! Flummoxed! Confounded! Like all the Harry Potter flicks, this one is packed with J.K. Rowling’s signature sweets: spells, potions, Quidditch and other funnily named things. It has a warm and weighty performance from Michael Gambon as Professor Dumbledore, and it has delightfully evil turns from the always enjoyable Alan Rickman as Professor Snape and Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. On top of all that it has David Yates, who in two stints in the director’s chair has spent less time on CGI magic tricks in order to keep the spotlight where it belongs, on Hogwarts’ trio of do-gooders, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint). For my money, Half-Blood Prince doesn’t live up to Order of the Phoenix (also helmed by Yates), but it’s as fine as the rest of the bunch. That’s the good news. The bad news is I’m bored.

I want to like the Harry Potter series, I really do. That I’ve seen all six films – two to go now – should be evidence of that. Alas, there are several obstacles prohibiting my enjoyment that I’ve never been able to overcome. Rather than provide an all too familiar review of the latest all too familiar Harry Potter flick, here are five recurrent problems with the Potter franchise (spoilers ahead):

1) The films are too loyal to the books. I know what you’re thinking: Fans of the books often argue the opposite, insisting that these movies only hint at subplots that are crucial to the narrative. I’m sure they’re right. (Full disclosure: I haven’t read so much as a page of the series.) But what the book loyalists overlook is that by hinting at such subplots, the Harry Potter flicks do too little and too much at the same time. If a character or a subplot can only get drive-by recognition, what’s the point of including it at all? The answer is that these characters and subplots exist on screen because Rowling created them on paper and people read them and the filmmakers feel they have expectations to meet. I’m sure they’re right. Alas, in staying true to Rowling’s vision, the Harry Potter films come off more like books-on-film than actual self-sufficient movies.

Consider what David Lean had to say about adapting a novel: “Choose what you want to do in the novel and do it proud. If necessary, cut characters. Don’t keep every character just to take a sniff of each one.” He’s right. Case in point: In the last two films there’s been a character named Nymphadora Tonks. At least, I think that’s what she’s named. Nymphadora (careful with that first vowel) seems to be some kind of purple-haired witch for the good guys. In the books, I’m sure she has a rich personality. Here, however, she’s just another anonymous wand wielder who we need to keep track of. She’s set decoration, and she’s making things messy. The same could be said of good old loveable Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane). I know that Hagrid is good and loveable because Potter book club members race to giggle at his mere appearance in each film, even though, so far as I can tell, he isn’t actually funny. If memory serves, there was a time that Hagrid was a useful character in these films, but of late he’s been nothing more than literary product placement.

2) Magic has no understood rules. Here’s what I mean: Most if not all of the Harry Potter movies involve some kind of fight sequence between individuals with magical powers, but the rules never seem to be the same. For example, my impression is that the magic tricks used, and the result of those tricks, varies from fight to fight. My impression is also that for every potentially fatal act of magic, there is another act of magic that will undo it. This latter situation occurs in Half-Blood Prince when Harry Potter strikes down Hitler’s favorite Hogwarts student, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), with a blow that appears deadly. Deadly, that is, until Professor Snape stands over Malfoy and cures his wounds in less time than it would have taken someone to clean up the blood with a ShamWow. So I ask you, what’s the point?

Until now, about the only permanent damage done has been that lightning bolt scar on Harry’s forehead. Indeed, at the conclusion of Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore suffers a death blow. But wasn’t that all too easy for his assassin? And don’t you have a sneaking suspicion that Dumbledore will be back before it’s all over? (If I’m wrong, please don’t tell me. Because that would indeed be a big surprise.) Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate that the Harry Potter films tend to be swift with their fight scenes, rather than going the way of George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, which sought to make every skirmish into an epic battle. But I’d care a lot more about these skirmishes if I had any clue whatsoever about the chances for bodily harm. Give Voldemort a sword, and I know that if he strikes Harry in the neck it will lead to a beheading. Give Voldemort a wand and I can’t tell which spells can lop off limbs and which ones only cause flesh wounds.

3) Magic is anticlimactic. One of the potential high points in Half-Blood Prince is a scene in which Harry and Dumbledore are attacked in an underground lair by some water-dwelling relatives of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings series. These creatures from the deep overwhelm Harry, who apparently doesn’t know the correct spell to ward them off, pulling the little wizard underwater. Harry is doomed. His death is imminent. And then … and then … Dumbledore waves his wand around above his head and the crisis is solved. Just like that. (Yawn.) Give credit to Yates, because the image itself is striking. But the act, as usual, is forgettable.

4) Quidditch is stupid. It just is.

5) Voldemort has gone fishing (Harry, too). At least, that’s my theory. Because otherwise, what the fuck are we waiting for? (Other than Rowling’s checks to cash, I mean.) Seriously, let’s get it on. Last I checked, Voldemort knows Harry is a threat and Harry knows that Voldemort needs to be dealt with and that he’s the guy to do it, so what’s left to do? Does Don King need to promote this thing? Do their need to be weigh-ins? Regardless, I’m as ready as I am confused. In Half-Blood Prince especially, the homeland security threat level is never made clear. One moment Dumbledore is enlisting Harry’s help to try and attack Voldemort. The next moment he seems more concerned that Harry finds a good piece of ass on campus. Seriously, which is it? It’s as if Dumbledore is doing his best George W. Bush impression, telling Harry to fear Hogwarts’ most-wanted terrorist while also instructing him to take time to go shopping. Huh? Early in the series, there was the sense that Voldemort could show up at any moment. Now it’s clear that everyone is just playing the waiting game, which is what makes Half-Blood Prince feel like it’s going through the motions. Thankfully, with only two films to go, there aren’t that many Quidditch matches left.

Modest Marvel: Moon

There are loud science-fiction films (think: J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek) and there are quiet ones. Moon is one of the quiet ones. So is 2001: A Space Odyssey. So is Solaris, either by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) or Steven Soderbergh (2002). That isn’t a coincidence. Over the first half of Duncan Jones’ debut feature film, from a screenplay by fellow newcomer Nathan Parker, Moon routinely quotes those celebrated genre ironclads – pays homage to them, riffs on them, rips them off, however you want to put it. Its influences are unmistakable. For at least 45 minutes of this 97-minute film, I knew less about the film Moon wanted to be than I did about the kind of film Moon wanted to be like. It was an imitator, a sycophant, a façade. But then an interesting thing happened. Without me noticing, Moon took a detour toward A.I. and toward, of all things, The Truman Show. And the more Moon emulated, the more its inspirations overlapped and blurred together, so that by the end Moon had managed to craft its own distinct personality.

That isn’t to suggest that Moon’s ancestors are ever forgotten, of course. Jones doesn’t want that. What first seems like lazy imitation turns out to be, in addition to a tribute, a clever bait-and-switch. Jones lulls us into complacency, allows us to develop a false sense of confidence that we know what’s ahead, and then subverts our expectations. Oh, make no mistake, Moon isn’t The Sixth Sense. There are no jaw-dropping, gravity-shifting surprises in store. Moon isn’t nearly that ambitious. It’s as small as it is quiet. And considering that the movie is about the lone man working at an energy harvesting outpost on the moon (don’t ask) whose only available two-way communication companion is GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), the HAL-9000-esque computerized outpost manager and concierge, Moon is pretty damn quiet.

This is, as much as anything, a mood picture. It is content to feel familiar. It is disinterested in redefining the genre or stretching the limits of our imaginations. (Heck, it takes place on the moon – the most accessible piece of real estate in our solar system.) Instead, Moon’s more modest mission is to hover around us, to be the kind of cinematic experience that we don’t romanticize but that we can’t quite put away. It wants to linger unobtrusively, like its namesake. And it does. The film’s allure is indeed out of reach yet persistent. I saw it a week ago and haven’t been able to shake it, nor have I managed to put my finger on exactly what I’m responding to. But I do know this: Sam Rockwell deserves the lion’s share of the credit.

(Spoilers ahead) Rockwell plays Sam Bell, who is the lone human occupant of the moon’s energy mining outpost … until it gets another human occupant: a familiar looking guy named Sam Bell, who of course is also played by Rockwell. That isn’t a typo. Impossible as it may seem, there are two Sam Bells – two versions of the same man sharing the same space in the same space station. Mystery abounds. Is the original Sam, nearing the end of his three-year stint of solitude and starting to feel stir-crazy, imagining this twin? Has our moon fallen under the spell of Solaris? Something else? We’ll leave all that for later. The point right now is that Rockwell impressively carries the film as its only on-stage character (other human characters pop up briefly in recorded video messages and dream sequences) right up to the point that he even more impressively carries the film as both of its only two on-stage characters. You’ve never seen anything quite like this. And Jones knows it.

Thus, after the second Sam shows up, Moon treats us to the perfunctory Scene In Which Two Different Characters Played By One Actor Are Made To Magically Share The Same Shot. For Moon’s first special effects trick, Sam and Sam play ping-pong. Yep. Seems silly, doesn’t it? Because why on, um, earth would a space-station built for one human have (1) a ping-pong table and (2) a pair of ping-pong paddles? I would have assumed that an arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man or Asteroids would have been more appropriate, but I digress. I wanted to roll my eyes at the shamelessness of Moon’s Wet T-Shirt Contest approach to showing off its cosmetic enhancements, but here’s the thing: the sight of two Sam Bells (and thus two Sam Rockwells) playing ping-pong together didn’t look cool, it looked convincing. Real. Even rudimentary. Subconsciously I knew it was nothing more than a dog and pony show for special effects artists, but it sure didn’t feel that way. And so before the ping-pong match was over, and long before the Sams began wrestling one another, the gimmicky element of the filmmaking was forgotten. My mind wasn’t focused on how Jones managed to put two Sam Rockwells on the same screen. It was intent on puzzling out how there could be two Sam Bells.

The answer to that riddle, I won’t reveal here, despite the previous spoiler warning, in the hopes that people take a peek at this slick but not showy mindbender before it’s overlooked and forever forgotten. What I will say, however, is that Moon’s justification for the multiple Sams is plausible enough to suit the film’s purpose. Could Jones and Parker have explored it a little more? Unquestionably. But the benefit of their restraint is that the audience is encouraged to fill in the gaps, to make sense of the limited clues. Besides, I never got the impression that Moon was out to blow my mind anyway, and yet, sacrilegious as this will seem, I’m not entirely sure that its ideas are any smaller than 2001’s. Moon is just less pretentious about its themes, whereas nearly every single frame of 2001 (and there are a lot of frames) is designed to announce its Immensity and Importance.

Moon might seem like it’s trying to rival 2001, but eventually it becomes clear that those two films aren’t playing the same game. Moon shouldn’t win any awards. It shouldn’t make best-of lists. It shouldn’t become a cult classic. But it should be seen, if for no other reason than this: it’s worth thinking about. Sharply crafted and always engaging, Moon is like a maze. To navigate one mystery is to find another. In regard to the multiple Sam Bells, Moon does successfully provide a complete (enough) and satisfactory answer to the question of “What’s happening here?” As for the mystery of what will happen next, well, you tell me.

Just Absurd: Bruno

Three years ago in the comedy smash Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Sacha Baron Cohen engaged in a naked wrestling match with a much fatter and possibly hairier opponent in which the only thing obscuring our view of Cohen’s penis was a (conspicuously long) digital black box. This time around, in Bruno, Cohen leaves less to the imagination, at one point allowing “his” (or a stand-in’s) penis to be captured in a well-lit close-up of goofy genital gymnastics – an exhibition of flaccid foolishness in which to “look Cohen in the eye” would mean to stare harder. But when I tell you that Cohen exposes himself in his follow-up to Borat, I’m not referring to bouts of nudity. Instead I’m referring to the way that Cohen unzips his fly, drops his pants and reveals his true intentions as a filmmaker and performance artist. Lauded by many in the aftermath of Borat as a brilliant satirist and daring social commentator, Cohen proves to be nothing of the sort. Though Bruno, like Borat, includes moments of satire and social commentary, Cohen’s motives are simpler and less brave. His one and only mission is to shock us into laughter.

To his credit, he frequently does just that. Cohen’s brilliantly absurd antics might not be as noble as his supporters have suggested, but the penis isn’t the only area of the human anatomy with which Cohen is familiar. He’s also an expert of the funny bone. They say you can’t debate humor, but to absolutely refuse to laugh at Cohen is to be a slave to good taste, and there’s some irony in that because one of the things Cohen does with near perfect precision is to create comedy out of Americans’ strict adherence to politeness and compassion. In Borat that meant trying the patience of a car salesman, a driving instructor, a culture coach, a TV news personality, a group of feminists and an etiquette teacher, etcetera, by saying and doing things that no right-minded American would say or do. In Bruno it means tormenting a fortuneteller, a group of Southern hunters and some mid-coitus swingers, among others. In each of those cases, the ability of Cohen’s marks to remain unduly cool in the face of social taboo, outright disrespect or general annoyance, and the ability of Cohen to keep them teetering on that edge of exasperation, is as astonishing as it is hilarious. In Cohen’s best moments he is working without a net, risking entire scenes and sometimes even his entire shtick by daring to provoke his onscreen and offscreen marks (the audience) right up to the breaking point.

That Cohen sometimes goes too far is inevitable. Going too far is a recurring theme in comedy. Without crossing the line of acceptability, you never learn where the line is, nor do you ever create the chance for the line to be erased and redrawn. Without subsequent entertainers pushing the envelope, Don Rickles would still be considered edgy. That said, it could be that Cohen is paving the way for a new brand of no-feelings-spared comedy in which we learn to forget the ugliness of the slaughterhouse in order to enjoy without reservation the juicy comedy burger that the assembly line produces. It’s more likely, however, that Cohen, like Andrew Dice Clay or Tom Green before him, will cease to be relevant once the comedy pack catches up with him or once he pushes the audience so far out of its comfort zone that it refuses to follow him. One thing’s for sure, a future comedian will one day make Cohen’s antics as unshocking as those of quintessential shock-jock Howard Stern. But for now, Cohen may have reached his limit. The moment he decided to wave his schlong on camera (and just wait until you see that in Blu-ray!), Cohen announced that he had reached the Pacific Ocean of his creative vision. There is no more New World for him to explore. The fertile ground lies behind him, and in this case there’s no going back. (As the swingers scene proves, the black boxes of MPAA censorship actually increase the humor. Yet once you’ve bared all, you can’t reinvent yourself as a tease.)

That’s the trouble with creating an act based on shock value. At some point we begin to expect the unexpected, and then that portion of the thrill is gone. Bruno, for all its outlandishness, doesn’t throw off our equilibrium the way Borat did. It can’t. But there are methods of Cohen’s comedy that are somewhat timeless. Undoubtedly the most brilliant moment of the picture occurs when Cohen’s titular Bruno, a hugely over-the-top homosexual celebrity wannabe from Austria, sits around a campsite with three red state (and perhaps even redneck) hunters. Having already tormented them with his outlandishly gay shenanigans – even though, per the plot, Bruno is pretending to be heterosexual – Bruno looks up at the night sky and declares that the stars make him think of all the men in the world. What follows is maybe 10 seconds of fantastically awkward silence in which the hunters refuse to make eye contact with anyone and Bruno flashes his gaze around at his companions, a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile momentarily slipping across Cohen’s face, marking the only time he seems to break character. What’s funny about this scene has nothing to do with satire or social politics. What’s funny is feeling – and it’s truly visceral – the hunters’ bewilderment. Trapped in a situation in which there is no established course of social etiquette, they have no choice but to quietly endure. And so that’s what they do.

No one gets hurt in that scene, nor is anyone actually in danger of getting hurt, and that makes it about as universally funny as Bruno gets. This film isn’t set up for innocent laughs the way that Borat is because Cohen’s star characters work in different ways. Borat, above all else, is a naïve foreigner. To all those who encounter him in the film, even those who are offended by him, his behavior is perceived as being without malice. Bruno, on the other hand, while also foreign, isn’t such an ignoramus. In fact there’s at least one situation in which Bruno is decidedly smarter than the people he’s talking to – a scene in which only Bruno seems to know that there are two Rs in Darfur. No, in contrast to Borat, Bruno first and foremost is an annoyance. He offends not because he’s foreign, eccentric or homosexual but because he’s irritating. By changing the nature of the character, Cohen alters the nature of the response. While the truly naïve are granted almost endless patience, the jerk is afforded only limited tolerance. That’s why Bruno’s worst scene, a confrontation with one-time presidential hopeful Ron Paul, falls flat. See, there is a proper response when encountered with an unwanted (and, within the context of the scene, entirely unprofessional) sexual advance, and when Paul provides that proper response there is no reason for laughter (beyond giggles of discomfort, I suppose). The scene feels like nothing but a violation, because that’s all that it is. (A lackluster punchline related to RuPaul doesn’t help.)

Cohen’s ambushing of Paul and his dick-swinging display earlier in the picture smack of desperation, and the only people who will take pleasure in that sensation are those who believe Cohen is heartless, predatory, even a (comedy) terrorist. The thing is, while Bruno does undermine the notion that Cohen is doing anything short of striving for laughs by any means necessary, it hardly validates the accusation that Cohen’s brand of performance art is notably hateful. No one with half a brain could interpret Borat as an accurate representation of Kazakh culture, for example, nor could they see Bruno as representative of the homosexual population; we know that just by looking at him, the same way we know that Superman isn’t representative of Caucasian men. To call out Cohen for turning Average Joe into a punchline is to ignore the numerous other comedians who prey upon marks. (Heck, G-rated Jay Leno’s most famous bit, "Jaywalking," uses almost identical tactics to create laughs at the expense of the Less Than Average American.) To claim that Cohen is especially vicious is to ignore that his stunts make his character the butt of the joke more often than not. And beyond all of that, to suggest that what Cohen is doing is so significantly groundbreaking is to give him far too much credit. And that’s been the problem with discussions of Cohen all along.

Subtle as a Rock: The Stoning of Soraya M.

Based on a best-selling novel about an all too true story, The Stoning of Soraya M. lives up to its title, and down to it. Indeed, the film concludes as promised, with the ghastly and drawn-out execution of a beautiful brown skinned woman who is dressed in white, bound with rope, buried waist-deep in the ground and then reduced to a bloody pulp, one stone at a time. It’s a gruesome experience; the execution “scene” (more like an act) is as visceral as anything of its ilk, trumping the notorious scourging sequence from 2004’s The Passion of the Christ. Like that film, Soraya M. has a performance from Jim Caviezel, a John Debney score and a dusty Middle Eastern setting, but beyond these peripheral accoutrements it has less in common with Mel Gibson’s flawed though arresting martyrdom flick than with something out of the Saw franchise. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh, who adapted the screenplay with his wife Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, may have avoided crafting a piece of so-called “torture porn,” but this picture has such tunnel vision for its grotesque conclusion that, like the Saw movies, it is reduced to the vulgarity of its horrors.

Soraya M. unfolds with the single-mindedness of a lioness on the hunt. Its aim, best case scenario, is to demonstrate the helplessness of women in radical Islamic societies, and to that end it treats Mozhan Marno’s titular Soraya like a crash test dummy. Every single moment of this film points directly toward its inevitable conclusion – there is no subtlety, no nuance, no depth, no suspense, no character development. Soraya is less a martyr than a prop. She is wronged, then wronged again and then wronged some more, until it becomes clear that her life itself is cruel and unusual punishment for a crime she never committed. By those terms, Soraya’s eventual death sentence might have seemed merciful if not for its brutality, and thus Nowrasteh paints himself into a corner. Soraya’s execution drags out well over 15 minutes – perhaps closer to 25, depending on when you start counting – in order that the true crime of this story proves more unsettling than the victim’s previous punishment. Nowrasteh’s hope, it seems, is that each stone, each scream of anguish and each geyser of blood erupting from Soraya’s forehead will fan the flames of anger in our belly, inspiring us to be crusaders against injustice. Alas, long before the village children scatter across the streets to gather the primitive weaponry that will bring this story toward its prolonged conclusion, we have been battered already.

Soraya M. is more didactic than 2004’s Crash, yet it’s not as artful or even as intellectual. If you find the characters from Paul Haggis’ controversial Best Picture winner to be too archetypal, wait until you get a load of this crew. Soraya, conveniently the most beautiful person on screen, is the model of dignity and purity; not just innocent, but almost saintly. Her husband, Ali (Navid Negahban), who hatches a plot that will lead to a wrongful (and fatal) adultery charge, is so cartoonishly sinister that he should have traded in his beard in favor of Snidely Whiplash’s mustache. Opposed to him is Soraya’s aunt, Zahara, who spends the entire movie defiantly speaking the truth to deaf ears, grandstanding with feminist spunk and righteousness until she becomes the Iranian version of Dixie Carter’s character on Designing Women. Zahara is played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who picked up an Academy Award nomination for 2003’s House of Sand and Fog, and here she seems intent on making every scene, nay, every gesture (from a minor adjustment of her headscarf to a melodramatic and ill-advised Scarlett O’Hara pledge to the heavens) worthy of insertion into an Oscar night clip reel. It’s exhausting.

Yet even more disturbing than these main characters are the minor ones. Beyond Caviezel, as journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, who appears in unnecessary bookend scenes, there are three supporting players of note: Ali Pourtash plays the devious town mullah, a wolf in noble clothing, who helps Ali carry out his plot; Parviz Sayyad is the sad and dimwitted Hashem, who gets coerced into accusing Soraya of adultery; and David Diaan is Ebrahim, the supposedly thoughtful town councilman who asks God to send him a sign if Soraya’s death sentence is unjust and then thinks nothing of it when – just before the first stone is thrown – a circus troupe rolls into the stoning square. Seriously. These three men, along with Negahban’s Ali, make up the lynch mob that executes Soraya without hesitation while the rest of the town gathers round, pumps their fists in the air and chants “Allahu Akbar!” To take the film at face value is to assume that the Muslim world is filled with criminals, imbeciles and bloodthirsty monsters, with a few innocent women tossed in.

Of course, we shouldn’t take such films at face value, but that’s the trouble with Soraya M. It assumes its audience is knowledgeable enough to put these depictions of Islamic extremism into context (a risky assumption in this country) while at the same time it highlights every injustice suffered by Soraya in all caps, as if its audience is ignorant or slow. When Soraya is accused of adultery, for example, Ebrahim explains that a man doesn’t need to provide evidence to support his case whereas a woman bears the burden of proof if accusing a man of the same crime. Ostensibly, Ebrahim is educating Soraya about her rights, but he might as well break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience; the Nowrastehs’ intent is that transparent. Thus, the film lets down both the educated and the uninformed. The educated get talked down to. The uninformed leave believing that this episode from 1986 reflects the entire Islamic world today. Everybody loses. If the purpose of this film was to alert the Western world to the brutality of Islamic extremism, they could have stopped at the title.

Maturing Nicely: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[Reviews of current flicks coming soon. Meantime, with the latest Harry Potter film packing the multiplexes and a certain blogger still unpacking from a refreshing computer-free vacation, The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

It’s one thing to grow old, but it’s another thing to grow up. The latest Harry Potter film is the second in the series to receive a PG-13 ranking (up from PG) but it’s the first one to feel truly teenaged. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, we’re past the days when buying school supplies (wands, owls, etc.) was cause for excitement, and when success in gym class made for schoolyard heroes (bye-bye Quidditch). Now at Hogwarts, school itself takes a backseat to typical teenage preoccupations: hormones, gossip and the realization that some teachers are simply full of crap.

It’s a natural evolution for a series that is growing in step with its characters. The thematic shift creates a loss, I suppose, for the 8-year-old who is ready to discover the saga at a time when the material has become too dark and edgy (comparatively, at least) for that younger audience. But that’s what DVDs are for. A bigger downfall would be to stunt the characters’ maturation in an effort to hang on to the golly-gee jolliness that, let’s be honest, even the most cheerful of us grow out of (or at least grow tired of) at some point. After years of spinning gleefully on the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups, Harry and friends are itching for the more frightful Matterhorn. And who are we to hold them back?

Besides, Order of the Phoenix shows that Harry and chums Ron and Hermione are aging quite nicely. Nabbing Daniel Radcliffe to play sweet, innocent Harry was a slam dunk before Sorcerer’s Stone got the series under way in 2001, but who could have predicted that Radcliffe would be an even better fit for the teenage magical wonder? His English skin tones, slight stature and those trademark round glasses continue to keep him the boyish 98-pound-everyman. But over the years he’s developed a strong jaw, broad shoulders and a look of determination that screams “The Chosen One.” This is a hero we can rally behind.

And in Order of the Phoenix, that’s precisely what happens. But not without conflict. Over the course of the first hour Harry is attacked by Dementors, threatened with expulsion for performing magic off school grounds, accused of spreading false rumors about the return of “He Who Shall Not Be Named” and challenged by a new teacher who wants to see Hogwarts run like a Nazi state. Oh, and he’s haunted by nightmares of his face-to-noseless-face meeting with Lord Voldemort from the end of The Goblet of Fire. It ain’t easy being Harry, and he’s got the anguish to prove it.

Yet even though the transitory essence of adolescence is usually highlighted by awkwardness, the Harry Potter series has never seemed so sure of itself. Five movies into an eventual seven-film saga, Order of the Phoenix has every reason to bore us. Spell-casting? Seen it. Quidditch? Seen it far too often. Sorting hat? Please, that’s so 2001! The previous Harry Potter chapter, Goblet of Fire, got a well-timed mid-series boost from the debut of Voldemort, but that leaves Order of the Phoenix like a rookie comedian trying to follow the headliner. With Voldemort out of the bag and the inevitable climactic clash still two films away, this movie has to step carefully. Stay too far removed from Voldemort and all of Harry’s obstacles will feel like trifles by comparison. Give us too much Voldemort and the finale will be doomed to feel like the same-old, same-old.

Impressively, you’d never detect that Order of the Phoenix is under such strain. Nor would you guess that screenwriter Michael Goldenberg managed to squeeze J.K. Rowling’s sprawling 870 page novel into the shortest Harry Potter film yet: 138 minutes. Devotees of Rowling’s books will spot all the changes and omissions, but Order of the Phoenix stands up remarkably well for those of us who know Harry only in celluloid form. The story is lean and focused, investing much of its time on Dolores Umbridge’s efforts to take over Hogwarts and get Harry to shut up about Voldemort, yet it manages to keep the larger plot moving, too.

In a strange way, Rowling may have done this film a service by nearing the 900-page mark. Coming from a story so vast that it had no hope of being condensed as a whole, Order of the Phoenix was forced to streamline. From the very beginning, the biggest fault of these Harry Potter films has been their allegiance to Rowling’s written word. In their worst moments, Harry Potter movies feel like photo albums of adventures rather than adventures themselves. Often, characters or situations will produce instant, knowing reactions from readers in the audience while the rest of us are left to feel like outsiders. It’s obvious, for example, that Hagrid is a highlight of the books, but in movie form he’s yet to endear himself. In Order of the Phoenix, Hagrid’s part is so small that it should have been excised completely.

But that would have incited a riot. As it is, Ron and Hermione take distant back seats in this film, and we learn woefully little about the witchy Bellatrix Lestrange, who provides for a delightfully ghastly Helena Bonham Carter little more than a cameo. Meanwhile, I never could figure out why possession of the crystal ball of proclamation by either Harry or Voldemort would change the nature of its decree. But, hey, you can’t have everything. Order of the Phoenix is a pleasure because of all that remains, mostly some terrific acting. There’s the surprising Radcliffe, the delightfully dependable Ralph Fiennes (as Voldemort) and Alan Rickman (as the scene-stealing Severus Snape), plus the getting-better-too Emma Watson (a still spunky Hermione) and Rupert Grint (a more confident Ron).

But the performance to note is that of Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge. Staunton, you might remember, dazzled with her 2004 performance in Vera Drake, but as unforgettable as that heartbreaking turn was I spent the entirety of this picture failing to attach the actress to the character in front of me. Umbridge is scheming, cruel and possibly downright evil. But she’s unwaveringly pleasant, too. It’s a juicy character, and Staunton clearly relishes the role without chewing the scenery. You might call that good acting. Perhaps you could call it magic.

The Conversations: Errol Morris

I am happy to announce that the sixth edition of The Conversations series is live at The House Next Door. In this installment, Ed Howard and I discuss the eight documentary feature films of Errol Morris: Gates of Heaven (1978), Vernon, Florida (1981), The Thin Blue Line (1988), A Brief History of Time (1991), Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997), Mr. Death (1999), The Fog of War (2003) and Standard Operating Procedure (2008). If you read our previous discussion of Werner Herzog, which included considerable debate about documentary filmmaking, you might view this as an appropriate segue – or another tedious slog through the “nonfiction” genre. Hopefully the former.

As always, Ed and I hope that our conversation at The House Next Door is the starting point for a larger discussion. So please check it out and add to the conversation by leaving comments at The House Next Door.

Previous Editions of The Conversations:

David Fincher (January 2009)
Mulholland Dr. (February 2009)
Overlooked - Part I: Undertow (March 2009)
Overlooked - Part II: Solaris (March 2009)
Star Trek (May 2009)
Werner Herzog (May 2009)

Notebook: Poop, Puke & Pop

A Familiar Odor
I haven’t seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and I won’t. Life is too short, and after suffering through the 144-minute original it seems backwards that the Transformers franchise should get to take “revenge” on me. But amidst a busy schedule that has me too far behind on blogging, I have carved out some time in recent weeks to read several reviews. For the most part, reactions to Transformers 2 haven’t been pretty. I’ve seen it called “a literal tsunami of shit” made by “an asshole” or “a jerk of the most obnoxious and insecure order,” and I’ve seen director Michael Bay slammed as a “fucking tool.” Having only enjoyed The Rock among Bay’s films, I can’t say I disagree with the general spirit of those assessments (I might have expressed my displeasure differently), but at the same time I’m puzzled by the timing of this eruption of anti-Bay vitriol.

Could Revenge of the Fallen be that much different than the original? Where was this anger in 2007? For example, here is Roger Ebert on Revenge of the Fallen: “The battle scenes are bewildering. A Bot makes no visual sense anyway, but two or three tangled up together create an incomprehensible confusion. I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with...fists. Like I say, dumber than a box of staples.” And now here is Ebert on 2007’s Transformers: “How can a pickup truck contain enough mass to unfold into a towering machine? I say if Ringling Brothers can get 15 clowns into a Volkswagen, anything is possible.”

I’m not here to pick on Ebert, but I fail to understand why the original was considered “goofy fun with a lot of stuff that blows up real good,” and yet Revenge of the Fallen is something else. Really? Here’s Ebert again: “The mechanical battle goes on and on and on and on, with robots banging into each other and crashing into buildings, and buildings falling into the street, and the military firing, and jets sweeping overhead, and Megatron and the good hero, Optimus Prime, duking it out, and the soundtrack sawing away at thrilling music, and enough is enough. Just because CGI makes such endless sequences possible doesn't make them necessary. They should be choreographed to reflect a strategy and not simply reflect shapeless, random violence.” That’s a good slam of Revenge of the Fallen, right? Wrong! It’s a passage from Ebert’s three-star review of Transformers.

The point is this: Revenge of the Fallen isn’t new crap; it’s the same old crap. How did people not see this coming? Out to prove that he doesn’t like everything, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone suggests that “Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade.” Fair enough, so long as Transformers 1 is in the running, too. After all, I agree with Travers that “when Hasbro invented those Transformers toys, the intention was for kids to use their imagination about what those bots would morph into” and that “Bay crushes that imagination with his own crude interpretations that seem untouched by human hands and spirit.” But Bay’s crime against imagination didn’t begin with the sequel.

Personally, I’m more of the mind of Anthony Lane, who called 2007’s Transformers Bay’s “first truly honest work of art” because the director “summoned the courage to admit that he has an exclusive crush on machines.” For better or usually worse, Bay makes one kind of movie, and he’s box office gold. I suspect that both Transformers films share the same thrills (excessive CGI and explosions, mindless entertainment and Megan Fox in skimpy outfits) and have the same turnoffs (excessive CGI and explosions and mindless entertainment). If Transformers 2 is trash, so was the original.

As I noted in my own 2007 review of Transformers, which is hardly worth reprinting in full, Bay’s CGI spectacular subverts the famous “More than meets the eye” marketing tagline for the Hasbro toys: “With Bay’s Transformers there’s what meets the eye and nothing else. Unless you count the noise that meets the ear, which is good enough for a splitting headache lasting well over three hours.” I wasn’t being figurative.



Misadventures in Moviegoing
Last weekend, Hokahey of Little Worlds was in town for his annual visit to our nation’s capital. As usual, we looked for opportunities to go to the movies, and, as usual, Hokahey managed to arrive on a weekend when there wasn’t much worth seeing. (Last year it was The Happening, for example.) And so it was that on the Friday of his visit we decided to take in Year One, because neither of us had seen it, and Hokahey likes Jack Black and I like Michael Cera and we were both in need of foolish entertainment.

As soon as the movie started, I detected a problem: alternately, the sound was coming through all of the speakers or only one speaker in the front left corner of the theater. Mindless comedy doesn’t work well when you’re straining to hear it – there’s a reason your local comedy club does its best to rupture your eardrums – but I could have settled for the one-speaker version. It was the sound coming in and out that was disorienting. So, after about 10 minutes, I appointed myself The Guy Who Would Need to Leave the Theater to Complain. And so I did. Of course Year One just had to be playing at the theater farthest from the lobby, so I walked quickly, made my complaint and turned around to head back.

On my way back, I saw a guy in his early 30s go stumbling across the hall. He looked disoriented and had his hand up to his mouth. We locked eyes for a moment and he gave me a look that said, “Help! I need to vomit, and I can’t vomit here, but I can’t make it to the bathroom, what should I do?” Being the jerk that I am, I pretended I didn’t notice this look of desperation and instead averted my eyes and tried to walk past him. Before I could slip by, however, homeboy bent over and tossed his cookies all over the floor in the middle of the hallway. (Dude! How about aiming for the trashcan!) At this moment, a motherly woman appeared and asked the cookie tosser if he was OK, thus saving me the responsibility of doing the same. Eyes straight ahead, I walked by the puke and headed back toward Year One, but not without turning my head to see which movie the puker had stumbled out of: The Proposal. Need I say more?



Remembering the King of Pop
I had no profound reaction to Michael Jackson’s death June 25. Immediately it struck me another tragic episode in a largely tragic life. Thus, Jackson’s passing seemed to be fitting and perhaps also a blessing; I just can’t imagine that he loved his life anymore, if he ever did. Over the past week I’ve read some remembrances of Jackson, but even those have failed to move me in any significant way, even though Jackson was one of the most influential musicians and pop icons of my childhood, even though Thriller was one of the first cassettes I ever owned (purchased on the same day as Van Halen’s 1984), even though I remember kids in the neighborhood waiting for scheduled airings of the epic “Thriller” video and even though I was still mesmerized by Jackson in his Bad stage, and bought his Dangerous album in high school and was enthused to buy his HIStory double-album in college, both for its new tunes and for its nostalgic qualities. It didn’t take Jackson dying to get me to appreciate his music or to remember that “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” never fails to put me in a good mood.

But in the days since Jackson’s death, as I have wrestled with how to remember a man whose music never ceased to be inviting but whose personal life was as tempting as poison ivy, I have been unable to shake two thoughts:

The first is that our reactions to and jokes about Jackson’s alleged sexual misconduct might say more about us than about Jackson. Here’s what I mean: A year ago, at an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, I saw a photo taken at the infamous Neverland estate that showed Jackson standing beneath two huge painted statues of children wearing boy scout-type uniforms, their outstretched arms creating an arch over the door to Jackson’s bedroom. The photo struck me as creepy in every way, and without ever thinking about it I added it to the circumstantial evidence file against Jackson. But a few days later, I thought about the photo again and had second thoughts. After all, what did it really show? Not evidence of a crime, certainly. Instead, the photo merely provided further evidence of how Jackson obliviously defied social norms. But often our social norms are nothing to be proud of. (Ahem, have you seen how well Transformers 2 is doing at the box office?)

Our society tends to be uncomfortable with effeminate males and adults who cling to childhood pleasures. Jackson was both. But that doesn't make him a pedophile. Sure, it’s unusual that Jackson liked to invite children into his bed – as in, “not usual” by our societal standards. And perhaps rightfully so. But, just for a moment, compare your mental picture of Jackson sitting in a bed surrounded by children to the image of, say, Julie Andrews sitting in a bed surrounded by children. Different feeling, isn't it?

I’m not here to say Jackson was innocent of his alleged crimes (though he was never convicted in a court, it should be noted). Instead I’m here to suggest that many of us, certainly including me, were often guilty of convicting Jackson in the court of public opinion simply because it was easier to exile him than to try to understand him.

Then again, my second post-death thought about Jackson goes like this: While Jackson’s reclusiveness was one of his many oddities that made him difficult to get close to, it was also his saving grace. To see his ghastly appearance in recent years was to be thankful that he wasn’t doing the late night talk show circuit. On the whole, considering his status as a global icon, Jackson had remarkable control of his image and remained out of the public eye, particularly in his later years as he seemed to grow increasingly peculiar. And so with tabloids obsessing over Britney and Paris, Brad and Angelina, it’s easier for us to remember Jackson as he was, back when he was a somewhat public public-figure, back when he seemed more like a colorful original than a deformed monster. Who was Jackson really? I doubt anyone knows.


Etcetera
I think the concept of pointing out plot holes in a movie about transforming robots is hilarious in and of itself. Nonetheless, this is a fun link. … Blogging buddy Ed Howard has created a site dedicated to listing blogathons and other such online fests. If you’re planning to host an event, be sure to add it to The Film Blog Calendar.