You know that feeling when you really, really enjoy a movie and you start to wonder whether you were just nuts or if you found the Holy Grail?  It’s particularly distracting for someone like me who sees a lot of movies very early.  Last night, I returned to Undercover Brother.  Not many people have seen it, so when I keep thinking that it’s the most fun I’ve had in a non-festival movie theater since Amelie and that it is the funniest comedy I’ve seen since… could it be… There’s Something About Mary, I had to wonder whether I just had one of those nights. 

When I got to the theater, I found out that one of my favorite people on the planet had recently gone to work with the company that was behind Undercover Brother, UrbanEntertainment.  I was glad that I already had seen the film and didn’t have to think about being kind.  As I was chatting with her, a colleague asked, jokingly, “Why are we seeing this?”  That made me think…

Then the movie started.  Undercover Brother is the funniest, most fearless, smartest comedy I’ve seen since There’s Something About Mary.  I laughed until I literally cried.  It was actually funnier the second time around, knowing all the jokes that were coming.  Like the Farrelly Brothers classic, Undercover Brother is a sexy comedy with a heart of gold.  The same is true of the Austin Powers films, but I liked U.C. better than Powers because it is far more relentless than the Powers films.  Mike Myers style of comedy is like baseball.  He and his partners set up clever ideas, twists on what we are familiar with, then they let you do the work.  Fat Bastard starts as a big joke, then tops himself by getting grosser and grosser. 

Undercover Brother is more like football.  A bunch of big gags that you may not even notice are pounding against each other while “the play,” which is where the forward-moving story is, goes downfield, ever pushing towards the goal.  Every time U.B. goes back to a character, like Conspiracy Brother, the character grows, but we also get a brand new piece of business.    It’s kind of like the best of Austin Powers, like the Jerry Springer parody or Dr. Evil and Mini-Me doing Just The Two Of Us… Undercover Brother delivers that kind of character-and-satire combo in every scene. 

Think of it like Warner Bros. cartoons.  Among my favorites are “What’s Opera, Doc?” and “Duck Amuck” because they take our friends, embrace their characters and still spin them in a new light.  For me, that’s the top of the form.  If your preferences lean towards Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff or Sylvester boxing the kangaroo – which I also love, but not quite as much – you might be more of an Austin Powers person.  (I’m regretting not mentioning Pepe LePew or the coyote and the sheepdog who punch in for work… but it’s becoming a complete digression.)   But the thing is, whichever way you lean, we’re talking about a level of comedy that is very, very high.  

Undercover Brother may actually be a great movie, with all that the sobriquet connotes.   It’s so funny that it actually made me wonder whether I could actually laugh as hard at it again the third time around.  One thing I know… this one I won’t be begging off of when the kids want to go see it.  The film has more uses of the word “shit” than any PG-13 film I can remember, but somehow it’s okay.  And no gross-out comedy… no semen earrings, no prostate massaging, no pies.  And I’ll tell you what, my about–to-be-13-year-old nephew will not laugh as hard as I will.  He’s too young to get all the jokes.  I’d say that 15 is probably the magic age on this film.  15 and 37.

IT’S A LITTLE BIT FUNNY:  When I mentioned The Fast & The Furious 2 yesterday, I got a note from young Michael Dequina (who could be old, but he just looks so young), who has a John Singleton website (http://www.johnsingletonfilms.com/ff2.html) in addition to his regular site, The Movie Report (www.movie-report.com).  On Dequina’s site, news is that Singleton will helm TF&TF2 and that he will bring along the star of Baby Boy, Tyrese Gibson, for the ride.  By Wednesday night, Variety’s Michael Fleming, the guy who most often tends to break deal news in this town, was “breaking” the news that had already appeared on Dequina’s site. 

I have mixed feeling about the Singleton news, as I have always had hopes that Singleton would become one of Hollywood’s strong voiced filmmakers and instead, he has become a guy who does sequels and remakes.  Obviously, he has the original screenplay Baby Boy in between Shaft and TF&TF2, but even that seemed to be going back to the same well.  Meanwhile, though he has stopped being commercial, Spike Lee seems to be pushing for freshness harder and harder as he gets older.  Whether you like the resulting work or not, you have to appreciate the effort.

BUNNY POST-MORTEM:  Okay, now that another Sarah Silverman show has been cancelled, the entertainment universe begs the question… when is she going to get her break out opportunity?  She’s been floating around celebrity for almost a decade now, tall, sexy and perhaps a little too edgy for her own good.  Like Judy Greer, she has all the talent needed, is clearly recognized by smart directors out there, but seems to be typed.  Ms. Greer is typed as a mouse with a secret while Ms. Silverman seems to be typed as a ball buster.  Her hard-R stand-up style can’t be helping matters.  While comparable actresses like Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts became stars as “nice girls with a little edge,” Ms-es. Silverman & Greer suffer career-wise for being too unique.  It’s our loss.  Silverman ought to write herself an episode of Sex & the City in which she becomes a new friend, replacing one of the quartet when a baby or some fling or something removes on of the girls from the group.  It would, of course, have to end badly.  But it would be the kind of stunt that could win her an Emmy and move her career into full gear.  Alternately, a slot on an ensemble drama, like ER or The West Wing could do wonders.  And to see Silverman going head-to-head with Vincent D’Onofrio on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (my favorite show on TV right now) could be a lot of fun.

SILLY STRING:  Last weekend, Fox played off of the Spider-Man logotype to sell Star Wars’ summer action hero, Yoda.  This week, Sony is using Spidey-isms to sell their next wall-crawler… Mr. Deeds.  And Fox TV is using Spidey references to sell a showing of Anacrophobia, which is used as a reference point for Warner Bros.’ upcoming Eight Legged Freaks (as in, “Eight Legged Freaks is the movie that Anacraphobia wanted to be.”)  Still waiting to happen: a new non Spidey/Clones breakout that has people talking enough to be used as a commercial reference point for other new releases.  It might not happen this summer.

SHARON THE WEALTH:  There is an exceptionally well done story by the New York Times’ Bill Carter on the deal to sign The Osbornes for a second season.  If you don’t have your free NYT online subscription already, get your act together and then click here.

AHHHHHH, LIPPMAN: Anyone who has read this column more than a few times knows how I feel about the staff at the Wall Street Journal… greatness with an excremental side dish of Tom King, who was described to me last week by and industry exec who doesn’t read me as “the worst writer in the business… he’s a joke.”  John Lippman is one of the reporters who give the WSJ the best industry coverage of any paper.  How does a really good reporter deal with internet buzz?  In a story on The Sum of All Fears, Lippman writes:

“The (test) screenings showed that 90% of viewers considered the film "good to excellent," a studio executive said. But on Internet movie sites, volunteer reviews from those who attended the screenings show reaction to the film is more mixed.”

Perfect.  Complete.  He acknowledges the conflict between the studio’s test score reportage and what he’s seen on the web in a case where Paramount has played the movie openly and aggressively on college campuses for the last month. 

The overall story is also solid.  It’s about Paramount choosing to show the Act Two nuclear blast in the film so people would not feel that they were mislead into seeing something that might make them uncomfortable in light of 9/11.   And it is ironic.  Jeff Wells was kept from seeing The Sum of All Fears before Tuesday because he had gone early with a positive review of Changing Lanes, which Jeff says he ran early because the studio was misleading the public with its ad campaign. 

Anyway, if you happen to have an online subscription to the Journal, you can click here to read Lippman’s story. 

READER OF THE DAY:  Brain sent this in:  “Dave, As a THB reader of several years familiar with your writing style and compositional proclivities, I recognize the occasional but not unexpected critical riff that brings out the breast in David Poland. With a nice, self-deprecating touch (and as you did again recently), you have acknowledged without apology you do refer to women's breast with some regularity.

I thought you would like some hard data on this point: In the approximately 1189 pages posted at The Hot Button site, with material published online since 1997, you have made exactly 147 references to the word "breast." (The data analysis does not reveal any gender distinction, as such, but given your critical orientation I believe it is reasonable to assume all the references are to females.)  What does this tell us? On average, Dave refers to women's breast 29.4 times a year, i.e., 2.5 times per month or about once every two weeks. Year in, year out.

There is a fascinating collateral statistical anomaly in this analysis. It reveals that since 1997 you have referred to a woman's "areola" only three times: once in 1999 and twice in 2002. The 1999 reference is a general one set in a comment about how television standards are pushing the sexual envelope. You then went two years without any further areola reference until this year, when you brought your critical observation to bear on Kirsten Dunst's areolas, which you have referred to twice, i.e., on separate occasions. Your extant online oeuvre reveals no areola criticism of any other emerging or established actresses. Clearly, Ms. Dunst's perkiness is a special case for you.

Knowledge is power, Dave. Keep up the good work.”

E ME:  Too funny.  And the reason that Kirsten stands out… that I point her out… that she sticks in my mind… is that she really is unique.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an actress who seems so hard to be showing us her goods without just going ahead and showing us her goods.  And I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen an advertiser used expensive CG to “Maxim-ize” an actress in their commercials either.  But my main reaction is that it is amazing how one can develop a reputation based on 30 references a year… especially when one does 250 columns a year. 

What would you use Spider-Man or Attack of the Clones to advertise… besides Ms. Dunst’s busom?