WEEKEND PREVIEW

The evolution will not be televised…

I still have to decide what the fate of this column is going to be… and I’m still not decided.  Slowly turns the wheel.

Unfortunately, one of the unavoidable tasks of this moment is to inform you all about a horror worthy of a dying Brando… The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.  I love Woody Allen’s work.  Even when he’s not in full genius form, he is always intelligent and interesting.   So, I overlooked Peter Travers’ embarrassing three-month-early rave (“A Comic Gem!”) and went to the screening hoping for the best.

The opening credits seemed more reflective of What’s Up Tiger Lily? than of any other Woody Allen picture, as an animated video-produced-and-looking-like-it credit for co-producer (???)  VCL Licensing GmbH opened the film.  I guess he really must be desperate for money if he’s getting it from an Asian video distribution company.  And DreamWorks must be tightening his belt for him, even after a small financial success and a big critical success with Small Time Crooks (minor Woody, but very funny).  And it shows.

From the very beginning to the very end of The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, with the exception of production design, everything feels like a half-hearted, half-baked, uninspired mediocrity.  Even the part of production design that involves locations seemed off.   We saw a Manhattan that looked, for the first time in Allen’s career, like it could have been a Canadian location… lots of building close-ups, not a lot of scenic shooting.  Director of Photography, Zhao Fei, who did a beautiful job on Small Time Crooks, his first film with Allen, seemed to have been trying to light sections of the film like a TV show, all high intensity light from above.  Not only was this lighting enough to make Helen Hunt almost old enough to be involved with Woody Allen, it removed all the caramel beauty that we have been used to in Allen’s films.  Though Allen brought together a celebrity group to top bill the picture, mostly made of up of actors who had worked with Woody before, his supporting cast did not have the usual flair that Allen manages.  This is the man who had great performers like Tracey Ullman and Jack Warden in tiny roles in Bullets Over Broadway, selling the hell out of his throwaway lines.  Here, the closest you get to a name outside of print-ad credited types (like Wallace Shawn, whom I love, but who would normally not make it to a print ad for a Woody Allen movie) is the guy who played the guy who Forest Whitaker was loyal to in Ghost Dog.  And when the scenes sit there like day-old lox, it shows. 

But most shocking of all, Allen seems to have forgotten to do the extensive re-writing and re-configuring that he does on most of his films.  There are lines that are slightly mangled that it seems he couldn’t afford to re-shoot.  (Find a flubbed line in any other Woody Allen movie… even Take The Money & Run, when he had no money to work with.)  There are running gags that simply do not work.  (Helen Hunt’s character repeatedly describes potentially dangerous fates for Allen’s character… it barely got a laugh the first time, much less the fifth time.  And even were the idea funny, the execution rendered the comments almost incomprehensible.)   The robberies could have been hysterical, had they actually required any effort from the hypnotized burglars.  But instead, we get sleepwalking… over and over again.  Funny once, not five times.  In fact, a real switch in personalities when either hypnosis victim was under might have been funny.  But instead, we get the fairly creepy feeling that old Woody is about to get lucky thanks to a magician’s version of a Rufie. 

And don’t get me started on the shockingly sketchy editing, which included, for the first time in Allen’s work, dissolves… which seemed to be used to cover for coverage that Allen hadn’t shot… or couldn’t afford to shoot.  I’m sure that Alisa Lepselter can cut… but this film should be left off her reel. 

Mostly, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion left my mouth agape, amazed that I was watching such a mess… much as my jaw hung while watching the unmitigated genius of Crimes and Misdemeanors.   Just stunning.  I suspect that Allen can recover, though I worry that his budgets, which were once known for their economies that made it possible for him to indulge his whims, are being squeezed too tight for Allen to be Allen. 

BOX OFFICE NOT EXTRA:  The brutality of this weekend is not limited to a painfully bad Woody Allen movie.  There are seven – count `em – seven new limited releases… all of note.  (Tortilla Soup is on 202 screens, but after that, it’s two each for Maybe Baby, Happy Accidents and Together and one each for a re-release of Monterey Pop, the great documentary, Fighter and Lisa Picard Is Famous.) But more shockingly, there are five wide releases hitting the market.  Expect the market to hit some of these titles back… others will just be thrown back in for being to small, to mix-master a metaphor.

Of the five, I have only suffered through one, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.  I am looking forward to the Kevin Smith film, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which seems to be universally liked, regardless of its horny boy themes (or perhaps, because of its horny boy themes).  The scent from Ghosts of Mars and Summer Catch is not good.  And I really was hoping that Bubble Boy would be good, clean, stupid fun… but a release by Disney today… especially against its own Miramax’s division’s big late summer hope… is not encouraging.   

There is an outside chance that American Pie 2 will once again win the weekend, given the number of pictures arriving.  The films with the best shot at filling Pie’s slot are Chatty Kevin’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, with a hardcore audience just waiting to get a chance to see the film and John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, a film in a genre that is always a potential big opener… even if the ads for this particular horror thriller seem soft.   It will be interesting… in a boring way.

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES

1. Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back - 2735 venues – new - $16.8 million

2. John Carpenter's Ghosts Of Mars - 2048 venues – new - $14.7 million

3. American Pie 2 – 3150 venues – off 45 percent - $11.6 million

4. Rush Hour 2 - 3001 venues – off 53 percent - $8.9 million

5. Summer Catch - 2335 venues – new - $7.9 million

6. The Others - 2436 venues – off 30 percent - $7.6 million

7. The Princess Diaries - 2749 venues – off 35 percent - $6.2 million

8. Rat Race - 2551 venues – off 50 percent - $5.9 million

9. Bubble Boy - 1605 venues – new - $4.2 million

10. Planet Of The Apes- 1927 venues – off percent - $3.6 million

? The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion - 903 venues – new - $2.9 million

READER OF THE DAY:  Sssssssss writes:  “Reader of the day: To The Nth:  That guy is "Mr. Walkout" How did he sit through all of Baby Boy, O, Heart Breakers and Rush Hour 2? I never thought I'd find myself defending Legally Blonde but it was more entertaining then those 4 movies. Not to mention Ghost World (though the second half was not as strong as the first).  And I'm afraid Amores Perros is very overrated (almost as much as the supremely overrated The Deep End - not one surprise in that movie)

2001 so far...

BEST

Bread and Roses
Memento
Spy Kids
Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures
Sexy Beast
Keep The River On Your Right
Startup.com
Moulin Rough
Made
Hedwig and The Angry Inch
With A Friend Like Harry

Guilty Pleasures (sure they suck, but I kinda liked 'em)
The Fast and the Furious
Antitrust
15 minutes
Sugar and Spice

Worst
The Mexican
Panic
AI
Hannibal
Swordfish
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
20thousand Miles To GraceLand (whatever it was called)

E ME:  Call `em as ya see `em!!!!