Friday, 3 November 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

You know how a spectrum can be seen as a big circle, and that opposite ends of the spectrum can ultimately be very close to one another... welcome to this weekend!

You have two movies on extreme ends of the spectrum. On one side, you have Charlie’s Angels, a superstar T&A festival with nothing to say, absolutely no story structure, no logic, and no charms beyond those of its stars. On the other, you have The Legend of Bagger Vance, which is an old-fashioned movie with a lot to say, but no story structure, some logic, and little charm beyond that of Will Smith and Charlize Theron's T&A. (Early in the picture -- and not the sequence they keep showing with Matt Damon and Ms. Theron -- there’s a scene in which Ms. Theron's left T makes a cameo... it's the only sequence in the film in which the director is not telling you exactly where to look.)

Put simply, Charlie’s Angels is crap. The Patrick Goldstein piece mentioned in yesterday's column got one key admission from Columbia film queen Amy Pascal -- no one person was in charge. (Ahem... that was supposed to be you, Ms. Pascal.) The first mega-mistake was handing a first-time director a project in one of the most difficult genres to pull off -- the television remake. The best example of success in the genre was The Fugitive, based on an action show, where the movie version could be extremely earnest. Ironically, the new TV version of The Fugitive owes as much to the Andy Davis movie as it does to the original show. Very few of the lighter TV remakes have worked, because tone is a real problem. Filmmakers are already aware that the audience is in on the joke, so you either have to top the original or make fun of it. Which brings up the next problem... most TV shows -- especially mega-hits -- are not driven by heightened jokes, but by personalities and timing. All in the Family: The Movie simply could not work. The time has past, and so much of that show was a relationship with Carroll O'Connor. So, the first brilliant thing about Charlie’s Angels (maybe the only one) was using actresses as iconic as Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz. With due respect to Lucy Liu, a Catherine Zeta-Jones would have been the perfect choice for a third Angel, because she would have balanced the mix in a way that Ms. Liu simply can't match.

In any case, you end up with a bunch of nonmusic videos of major movie actresses being unendingly sexy and silly for the camera after spending years and years trying to stay away from roles like these. Charlie’s Angels is the "Pam & Tommy Lee Home Video" of major motion pictures. You spend 30 minutes watching Cameron Diaz shake her butt at the camera, literally. You have 30 minutes worth of shots either of Drew Barrymore's breasts hanging out of something or of her tongue licking something. And you have 15 minutes of Lucy Liu S&M-ing it or swinging her hair around. And finally, 15 minutes of Bill Murray trying desperately to be funny, and occasionally succeeding.

Is that enough to make this mess into a hit? Yeah, probably. Does the story make any sense? No. Are the fighting sequences believable on any level? No. (And don't try to tell me that I'm being too literal. People fly in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but you believe that. I'm not talking about suspension of disbelief... I'm talking about that emotional movie feeling of satisfaction when a character you like wins a fight he or she couldn't win. They try for that here and fail.) Is there any coherence between scenes? No, not especially, although the editors tried really, really, really hard to make poorly framed and badly covered scenes work. Am I being too picky to wonder why, in one sequence, a woman can embody a male, complete with prosthetics and a suit, while in another sequence she chooses a thin, fake beard and glasses to pull off the same effect? Probably.

And that's Charlie’s Angels in a nutshell. There’s an entire generation of filmgoers that demands nothing more than short, satisfying sequences from a movie. If you give them six per film, you have them. Charlie’s Angels probably has 10. It's an absolute mess of a movie and, given the talent involved and their ability to overcome this mess, someone should be shot for not making at least a passable film out of this, which could have been a monster hit. I love good junk. Robert Zemeckis's Used Cars is a "good junk" classic. The Blues Brothers is really a "good junk" classic. The Mask of Zorro is a great "good junk" movie -- one of many that are so artfully made that it almost seems unfair to call them that (see: the Indiana Jones series). Charlie’s Angels is just junk. But that is probably enough from them to get away with it. And if they were to do a sequel... they might make a real "good junk" movie. We shall see.

The Legend of Bagger Vance has a whole different set of problems. This movie is earnest and well intentioned. Except for the one T shot (no pun intended) mentioned above, there is no sex, only love. There is no action, only the thrill of a ball going into a cup. And there is no junk, only a legend. But, like Charlie’s Angels, Bagger Vance is missing that which is critical to almost all good storytelling... a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's not that Bagger Vance has none of these... it’s just that they are bent out of shape beyond all reason. Somewhere in the second act, Redford's intention going into this production becomes clear. Man returns from war, defeated. (Prologue.) Angelic presence and the love of a good woman get him on his feet. (First act.) Man recovers, but his hubris defeats him again. (Second act.) Man overcomes his past and himself to become whole again. (Third act.) The end.

Seems simple, doesn't it? And with this cast, it could have worked just fine. But the first act is more than an hour. The second act, at 30 minutes, still manages to meander. And the third act, where it starts to become clear, is a scant 20 minutes or so. Like a golfer who can't find his swing, Bagger Vance is a movie off balance.

The clearest single example of what went wrong with this movie is this: they set up the golf tournament, the center of the film, as a four-round event. Now, it may be factually accurate that this would take four rounds. But it's bad movie-making. I hate to be anal, but three acts are three acts. Charlie Kaufman can bust that structure, but not many other screenwriters can without falling on their faces. (Ironically, John August succeeded in doing that with Go, but he fails to make Charlie’s Angels work.) As you watch Bagger Vance, you wonder why there are four rounds... because the first two are one big blur and the difference between three and four is a bit murky because they are like the first two rounds -- they occur on the same day -- and the transitions in the life of Matt Damon's character [Rannulph Junuh] have to take place between rounds, in the clubhouse, or on the course in the middle of holes. And it just doesn't work.

Oh well...

For latest screen counts and my weekend guesstimates, check out BOE.

THE GOOD: I caught The Emperor's New Groove this week, fearing the worst. There had been some pretty bad buzz about the film earlier in the year, suggesting that Disney might even take it off the schedule and send it straight to video. Forget that. In the animated realm of Hercules and The Road to El Dorado, The Emperor's New Groove is the first that really works. In mentioning the two earlier films, you can almost hear the transition. Hercules cut back on songs, but used a Greek chorus to supply some music. El Dorado had three numbers; it was clear that they had intended to have more, but that they just didn’t work. And in The Emperor’s New Groove, there is only one song, sung by "The Movie-Theme Guy" (aka Tom Jones), at the top of the movie. You can almost hear murmurs of "It's not a feature if it doesn't have a lot of music," but someone must have missed Toy Story.

The Emperor's New Groove works because Disney took a new tack (or an old one from Aladdin) and let the stars loose. David Spade is The Emperor and is allowed to swing just the way he does in his live-action work. He's cynical, self-important, cowardly, and childlike, all, it seems, at the same time. He is teamed up with John Goodman's character, a peasant named Pacha, who embodies Goodman's blue-collar, work-out-the-logic-slowly-but-honestly personality. On the other side are two of Disney's most memorable bad guys, Yzma and Kronk, voiced by Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton. Yzma is the Cruella DeVil of the new millennium, with a head that seems just barely covered by skin and a slinky body occasionally punctuated by a slight hip curve or tiny triangles where breasts once might have been. Warburton's Kronk may become one of Disney's most beloved creations ever. He works for a bad woman, so he does what he's told, but he's really just a big, dumb, lovable kid with a torso like an upside-down pyramid... and almost as huge.

If anything is missing from The Emperor's New Groove, it's one really memorable musical number (oh, that again!). Toy Story had "You’ve Got a Friend in Me" and, while Sting's single from The Emperor’s New Groove may be a hit, it's not actually in the movie. But the film zips along its simple little story with such pace and a sense of humor that no one's going to notice. Kids will sit through this one over and over and over again, laughing at the same gags. Mom and dad won't suffer too much, though Spade's shtick, when alone on screen, may get tired after a few dozen viewings. And the film has one very fast, very funny comedy/action sequence that is a true, all-time classic, worthy of the best of Chuck Jones, Walter Lantz, and Disney himself. When an audience can get ahead of a sequence, giggle in anticipation of a beat, and then get surprised by how it plays out -- all in 30 seconds or so -- great stuff.

Don't let my enthusiasm give you the wrong impression... The Emperor's New Groove is not going into the pantheon with The Lion King, Toy Story, and Bambi. But it is, for me, the best American animated movie of the year. (Improving on last year's Iron Giant/South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut/Toy Story 2 trio would be tough.)

PAGE 2: WAH!2K, Counter Revolution & Charlie's Pull Quotes