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He
could sell you bag of dog poop: Piven in The Goods.
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Gag
You
By
John Brodeur
The
Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Directed
by Neal Brennan
Whoops! Might have spoken too soon in declaring The Hangover
the funniest movie of the summer 2009. Don’t read too much
into that—The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard isn’t the
better film. But if the point of a comedy is to pack
as many gags as possible into its running time, The Goods
has exactly that.
Ben Selleck (James Brolin) is the owner of an auto dealership
in Temecula, Calif., struggling to keep his business afloat
in the face of a pending buyout from a competing dealer (Alan
Thicke). Selleck and his ragtag band of salesmen (including
Ken Jeong, last seen doing a naked sprint in Hangover)
need a major sales boost to save the store. Enter Don Ready
(Jeremy Piven), a “mercenary” who makes a living clearing
lots wherever he’s needed. He’s unflinchingly confident and
supremely persuasive—in one scene, he convinces a stewardess
to allow him to smoke a cigarette during a flight; he later
brings a bag of Arby’s take-out to a home-cooked dinner. Ready’s
team is peopled by some equally cocky (and deeply vulgar)
individuals, played by Ving Rhames, David Koechner, and Kathryn
Hahn. Their goal is to sell every car on the Selleck lot over
July 4th weekend.
A lot about The Goods will seem familiar: The film,
produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and directed by Chappelle’s
Show co-creator Neal Brennan, has a rhythm similar to
a number of Ferrell-starred comedies. And the cast is practically
a who’s-who of middlebrow comedic talent: The Daily Show’s
Rob Riggle plays Selleck’s developmentally miscast son; Hangover’s
Ed Helms is the son of Selleck’s competitor and leader of
“man band” Big Ups!; The Office’s Craig Robinson is
the “contrarian” DJ Request. There are too many to name, really.
Therein lies one of the problems: The script follows such
a similar tack to numerous other recent comedies with colons
in their titles that it’s hard not to picture Ferrell in the
role of Ready. (Piven, in his first big-screen starring role,
is suitably smarmy.) And the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it editing—it
runs a swift 90 minutes—marginalizes the roles of some of
the film’s most gifted comedians (Wendie Malick and Kristen
Schall, specifically).
But Brennan knows his comedy, and he wisely keeps the film
on-course. Potential tangents, such as Robinson’s hints at
mental instability, are ignored—perhaps a missed opportunity.
But between the running O-Town and Bob Seger gags, the incessant
vulgarity, and the fact that a hate crime is committed within
the first 10 minutes of the picture, there’s plenty here to
chuckle about. It’s raunchy and stupid and delivers more than
its share of gut-laughs. Isn’t that what you wanted?
Finding
Midol
Ponyo
Directed
by Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo is a curious film; but not in
the ways you might expect. Previous works by the writer-director—e.g.,
Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle—have gained
critical acclaim and modest commercial success in the United
States for their dark oddity. In those earlier films, heroines
typically travel from a mundane and predictable world into
a fanciful, mysterious and potentially threatening one. In
many of Miyazaki’s works, female characters must first embrace
the incredible, then overcome the challenges and learn the
lessons contained therein to restore order and/or to win the
happy-ever-after ending.
In Ponyo, the dynamic is tweaked, and the titular heroine’s
progress requires a renunciation of the “otherworldly” magic
she already possesses.
Bruunhilde is one of the many, many daughters of the ocean
goddess and a once-human wizard, Fujimoto: in other words,
she’s a magic fish. After a chance encounter with a human
boy, Sosuke, who grants her the new name of Ponyo, she decides
she wants to leave her parents’ world for that of her new
love. She transforms herself into a human girl, and befriends
Sosuke in that form. But by escaping the quite-literal bubble
in which her father kept her, Ponyo has caused an imbalance
in the natural harmony of earth and sea: the ocean rages,
the tides climb toward the moon, satellites are pulled from
the sky.
You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to raise your brows at
this one. Though we’re told that Sosuke is 5 and Ponyo appears
to be of the same age, the depiction of a father’s fear and
confusion at his daughter’s increasing, mood-altering, lunar-linked
power has fear of menstruation written all over it.
For Ponyo to make her transition, we’re told, it is Sosuke
who must undergo a test; and he must agree to love and protect
her—in all forms, fish or flesh. There is an interesting scene
in which Ponyo offers some assistance to a breastfeeding mother,
proving symbolically, perhaps, that she herself will one day
be ready for motherhood. All this taken together sends a quite
conventional, even conservative, message about family formation
and the roles of men as responsible protectors and women as
fertile nurturers.
That being said, the important adult women in the movie are
far from stereotypical June Cleaver-esque housekeepers: Ponyo’s
mom is, after all, the goddess of the ocean, and Sosuke’s
mom is, in a word, a nut: as tempestuous, reckless and adventurous
as she is caring.
So, Ponyo must make the choice to leave magic (the magic of
pre-pubescence) behind and to enter the risky, awkward world
of adult womanhood. Once rid of her earlier power, she must
pair with a human male for protection (though Sotsuke’s mostly
absent father calls into question just how useful this will
be, in the long run).
This ambiguous and overthunk interpretation is of no relevance
to a big chunk of the likely audience, of course. For the
under 10 set, Ponyo’s lighter touch draws more immediate
laughs and fewer retreats into parental shoulders than the
earlier, darker work.
Ponyo
isn’t dark. It’s just sensitive, right now. Shhh. Bring it
some ice cream. And don’t breathe so loud.
—John
Rodat
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Can
we rock? Yes, we can! (l-r) Hudgens and Connell in Bandslam.
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High
School, Musical
Bandslam
Directed
by Todd Graff
As difficult as it may be for some people to wrap their minds
around the fact, it’s still possible to make a smart and enjoyable
teen film that neither panders to its audience nor devolves
into scatology. And, as unlikely as it may seem at first glance,
Bandslam is one such film. Don’t let the presence of
a few Disney stars throw you—this is as much as response to
High School Musical as it is a spiritual tangent of
that franchise.
Written by Josh Cagan with director Todd Graff, Bandslam
follows curly-haired Will (Gaelan Connell), an avid music
fan who “narrates” the film via letters to his hero, David
Bowie. When his mother (Lisa Kudrow, in a rare straight role)
finds a new job, Will is moved to a new school in Lodi, N.J.
Here, Will meets Sa5m (Vanessa Hudgens, of HSM fame),
an emo-ish loner who calls Evil Dead 2 her favorite
film. She tells him about an upcoming battle of the bands,
and thanks in part to a school project, the two become close.
Soon Will is also befriended by popular blonde ex-cheerleader
Charlotte (Aly Michalka), who asks him to manage her new band—and
help them prepare for Bandslam. Both Sa5m (“the 5 is silent”)
and Will’s mom are suspicious of Charlotte’s designs on Will,
and for good reason, as she appears to be using the competition
to get back at her egotistical former bandmate/boyfriend Scott
(Ben Wheatley).
It’s all too neat, in the way that these things always are,
so the strengths are in the details. The filmmakers do a nice
job of tackling teen issues (first love, jealousy, mother-son
separation anxiety) sweetly and realistically, without coming
off as too-cute—they tease cheese, but never go full-Velveeta.
Well-worn plot movements are punctuated with some surprisingly
sharp (but not too-smart) dialogue: When a girl carrying a
cello is knocked to the ground by a careless classmate, she
explains that she won’t know if the instrument is OK until
she plays it, because “it’s not like it’s a viola.”
The musical scenes are key to the film’s success, and for
the most part they are very good. Word has it the actors were
put through a two-week musical-training intensive, and it
shows in the performances—the early band scenes shimmer with
creative energy and discovery. And the music selections are
an absolute coup: A room full of day-care kids is calmed by
“Wichita Lineman”; Will and Charlotte have a detailed discussion
on the merits of later Velvet Underground records; Bread’s
“Everything I Own” plays a pivotal role in the action, as
does ska. (What’s more high-school than ska?)
The film sputters a bit in its last quarter—when it comes
time for the titular competition, the action goes into autopilot—and
a few plotlines and characters are slighted along the way
in favor of focusing on the three mains. But on the whole
Bandslam is a darn good time, particularly for anyone
who’s ever started a band. And your parents might like it,
too.
—John
Brodeur
It’s
a Trap
The
Time Traveler’s Wife
Directed
by Robert Schwentke
Science fiction meets chick lit in The Time Traveler’s
Wife, and all I can say is that the merger is not pretty.
Research assistant Henry (Eric Bana) has the unfortunate luck
to, out of the blue, disappear into thin air, leaving a pile
of clothing behind, and resurfacing elsewhere, usually either
a prosaic field or the train tracks near an industrial part
of Chicago, buck naked. Forced to break into cars or stores
to clothe himself, he is often hunted, even arrested, but
never fear: His unusual gift affords him the opportunity of
a disappearing act, leaving law enforcement baffled.
On one of his field visits, Henry encounters a little girl,
Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams), who obligingly agrees to leave
clothes in the woods, just in case. The ick factor of a grown
man befriending a child against the backdrop of wilderness
raised my suspicions, but the filmmakers, working from the
best-selling novel by Audrey Niffenegger, make it abundantly
clear that these two are star-crossed lovers who will meet
in time, get married, and have kids. And this is what happens,
alongside oh-so-funny moments like, OMG, the bridegroom is
missing! LOL, there he is, only he looks much older!?
The worst moments of The Time Traveler’s Wife are those
in which Bana’s Henry must explain the rules of time travel,
leaving me to wonder if a committee of kindergarten boys had
a hand in scripting them, so convoluted and seemingly contradictory
are they. The time-space continuum is warped, every which
way. Henry, en route to a date with Clare, encounters his
dead mother on the subway, only she’s the same age she was
when she died. Call me confused.
Ultimately, The Time Traveler’s Wife is a not very
cleverly conceived metaphor for how men miss much of the important
rituals of everyday life, only instead of being annoyed by
or even resentful of that absence, we—in the person of Clare—just
have to accept it as one of those quirky things that makes
each of us unique. Come again? There is nothing heroic or
even vaguely interesting about Henry. In fact, he often seems
grouchy and unappealing. There is no evidence that he’s a
good friend, let alone a compassionate husband—unless you
count rigging the lottery so that your already wealthy wife
can afford a charming Victorian with a carriage house. OK,
maybe that’s not such a bad thing. But this movie truly is,
bearing as it does the dubious distinction of being the single
most difficult movie I haven’t walked out on. Would that I
had Henry’s ability to disappear, because I certainly would
have tried to channel it.
—Laura
Leon
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