January 9, 2003

The tree at The Grove is coming down… you can see the branches that were painted green… most of the ornaments have been packed away… a surprisingly small number have been broken… and the movie theater, recently bought by Pacific Theaters from the mall owners, have started charging for parking – minimum $1 with validation – for the first time.  Is that the first self-destructive movie move of the new year?  Could be.  Probably not.  After all, people have been back to work for three whole days already.

The first truly crap movie of the new year is… drumroll, please… Just Married!  Want a pull quote?  “Just Awful!”

Yeah, it is an obvious and too easy joke.  But imagine the TV spots… lots of energy in the announcer voice… “Ebert & Roeper give it three thumbs down!  Elvis Mitchell says ‘It makes me feel sorry for white people!’  If you loved the bowel movement jokes in Two Weeks Notice, you’ll LOVE the old woman who farts on the stairs!!!  Earl Dittman calls it a ‘masterpiece of subtlety and grace reminiscent of the best work of Tati.’ Come see the movie that critics are calling, “JUST Awwwwwful!!” 

The way things are these days, no one would notice, so long as the announcer made it sound positive. 

Thing is, Just Married would pass into movie history - and not getting pilloried by me -  were it not this year’s breakthrough crap.  Director Shawn Levy’s last film, Big Fat Liar, had the great advantage of not being seen by anyone over the age of 13…. other than critics, irrelevant to marketing a kids movie.

This time out, they are chasing a slightly older audience… but that doesn’t keep the film from aggressively pushing the least funny slapstick you’ll see this year.  It’s really so pathetic it’s almost beyond the effort of the shredding.

The framing on shot after shot is horrible.  The film must have been shot in Vancouver because there are loads of unknown supporting actors who – and I’m not suggesting that this is true of all Canadian actors – have the personality of cork board.  Role after role that would obviously be filled with a familiar American character actor is filled with a stiff. 

The script is a mess, but you get the distinct feeling that there was a 2-hour movie that was whittled down to exactly 90 minutes, with credits.  There are shots aplenty that seem to roll on for 10 seconds longer than any editor would allow.  Basically, the entire first act is missing.  They “meet cute,” he kills her dog, they get married… all in the first 15 minutes or so.  Or so it seemed to me.  Apparently, they were living together for nine months before getting married.  But the idea that they really don’t know each other at all when they go on their honeymoon would seem kind of silly if they had lived together for nine months… or at least the potential disconnects would have to be far better defined than they are in this film.  (Ironically, the one vestige of their “living together” is the mistaken dog murder - already done a lot lately – but also a plot on an episode of That 70’s Show, where the lead guy kills the redhead’s cat by mistake and lies about it… the 24 minute version had more depth than this entire film.)

Perhaps the weirdest thing about this film is how little Levy gets out of his two stars.  For one thing, the duo - who were not doing the horizontal mambo during the shoot -  have no sexual chemistry.  She bats her eyes and he looks adoringly stupid and that’s about it.  It doesn’t help that their heads are a foot away from one another when they are standing.  But it’s not just that.  After the brief set-up, they are a couple who gets through a… 3 day?… 4 day?… honeymoon without having sex.  But it’s not that Gable/Colbert non-sex with all kinds of tension underneath.  (Did I just mention It Happened One Night in the same column as this piece of junk?!?!?!)  It’s just two boring people who have no emotional connection at all.   Something had to draw them together.  If the gag is going to be that they were all about sex and circumstances get in their way here and that exposes the lack of much more, okay… I could deal with that.  But it’s not dramatized.  If it’s real love and they are separated by wealth, okay… I could deal with that.  But it’s not dramatized.  If they are suggesting that Ms. Murphy is a sophisticate, they hired the wrong actress.  Worse, they developed her family as obviously and obnoxiously nouveau  riche, so her attraction to a bootstrap guy makes sense… even if the filmmakers didn’t get the subtext the screenwriter was probably very aware of. 

The film has the feel of something shot in order, as Ashton Kutcher’s performance gets more and more reliant on schtick.  He just gets louder and louder and louder.  And it works for the audience.  It has nothing to do with the movie, really.  But it was like watching a comic dying on stage until he shouts a gag in a certain way.   (Quiet… “My girlfriend dumped me…” then, screaming insanely… “so I killed her whole family with a shovel!!!!!”  That would be a sure laugh…. for nothing much more than performance.) 

There was one gag I really laughed at in the entire film.  It was the only joke I didn’t see coming.  And if this is the only joke, then this is a spoiler, so look away… no, no new paragraph… it’s pretty lame.  They check into a terrible hotel and it’s so bad that the bed isn’t even made as they are shown the room… I laughed.  Of course, the clever topper would be that he doesn’t see it as a problem, since this is a character that clearly does not make his bed every morning.  Then again, the idea that the filmmakers understood that much about the character would be a surprise to me. 

It gets worse.  There is the Ken-like, nub-for-a-schlong former love interest, played by the spectacularly uncharismatic Christian Kane, whose resume already includes Summer Catch and Life Or Something Like It, where I assume he was hired to be more good looking but less interesting than Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Ed Burns… not an easy gig!   There is the “5 star hotel” whose entire electrical wiring is burnt out by one American appliance plugged into a European outlet.  There is the “breath through your mouth,” “I just crapped out my Mexican food” gag in the airplane lavatory gag cycle, followed by the old foot in the toilet gag, followed by the “break the stewardess’ nose” joke.  And there is the completely nonsensical ending that could only be set up by every character refusing to talk to every other character.

Here is my plea… to Fox… find someone else to direct the American version of Fever Pitch.  Nick Hornby has suffered some bad remakes.  But there has also been greatness.  It’s true, the Weitz Bros.  made a big leap as directors with About  A Boy.  But as silly as American Pie was, it was not a mess, directorially.  Shots matched.  The actors were obviously given direction.  They never had to resort to cheesy montage with “fun” music because the scenes didn’t work.  (Didn’t anyone notice that Brittany was mouthing line after line of dialogue in her close-ups that were covered by music?)

Fox has a long history of being loyal to directors who can’t direct.  Raja Gosnell fortunately went on to sludge through Scooby Doo and didn’t have a chance to ruin The Fantastic Four.  Andy Tennant rode Reese Witherspoon’s coattails, as he once did Drew Barrymore’s, to another poorly directed hit that would have been even bigger if the direction wasn’t a mess.  And now, Shawn Levy.  Don’t make another Anna & The King before you get wise to this guy.   I’m sure he’s a great guy and he is probably a terrific TV director.  But you’re better off with a guy like Ron Underwood, who has shown he can do it, even if he’s had a bad streak lately, than someone who just doesn’t have the skills.  Either way, the film will not be much better than the script.  But Underwood at least has some history of getting strong performances. 

DAVID NOTE:  This piece went long and the look at 2003 is going longer, so this is it for today (except for the MCN Oscar column).  Tomorrow, the entirety of 2003.

READER OF THE DAY:  CHICAGO JOE writes:  “I don't want to take anything away from what Andy Serkis did in TTT and really, I know I can't.  The Smeagol vs. Gollum debate in TTT was astonishing.  Wow.  What a performance, and what times we live in.  But I don't like the idea of his being nominated.  That may turn out to be a road paved with good intentions. 

I'm a little uneasy about actors having to compete with CGI characters for awards or work or anything else.  Before any new precedent is rushed to I'd like the issue debated a little (or raised even).  By all means create another category, and I'm all for the Academy handing Serkis and the WETA team a special, non-competitive Oscar this year.  But any wariness the actors' branch may be feeling about handing him the Supporting Actor award is probably well founded.”

And this from SSSSsssss brings up an interesting perspective, even if I don’t really agree:  “Saw "Chicago" over the weekend. I have a few criticisms that I would like to put out there:

1) After watching the trailer for the movie numerous times over the past month, the main opinion I had was-looks entertaining, but the actors do not appear to have powerful, bring down the house voices that I feel you need for a musical. The example I keep going back to is the movie "Cabaret." One of the reasons why it is a tremendous movie is that Liza Minnelli has a powerful, bring down the house voice that is superb.

I enjoyed several of the songs, and the actors give it their best effort, but if you don't have a world-class voice there's nothing that can be done.

2) Is it just me or is murder, specifically females murdering males, celebrated in this movie? (I realize the movie is based on the Broadway musical, but for our purposes I am talking about the movie.) The main character murders her lover who is a jerk and liar, but he is leaving when she shoots him and he hasn't beaten her and her life is in no way threatened. She perjures herself in a court of law, is acquitted, and at the end appears to achieve some level of success, and is seemingly celebrated as a character.

In addition, five women each sing a song about killing their lovers, husbands, and or husband's mistresses. The reasons for the killings are as minor as a persons petty physical annoyances. If five men each sang a song about killing their female lovers, I don't think anyone outside of O.J. Simpson would be entertained by it. Maybe I am being righteous on these topics, but I am not easily offended by art, and those who are to be sanctimonious.”

DAVID NOTE:  It is of interest that Renee Zellweger’s performance in the recently-cut, closing credit single for the film is infinitely better than any of her other singing in the movie.  Having a great voice is not everything.  I would say that Catherine Zeta-Jones’ vocal range is small, but she really knows how to sing.  Zellweger and Gere do not… or did not.  If she only knew then what she seems to know now.

And THE BUYER has a very different take on Minority Report than I:  “At a moment when you probably required a bit more oxygen to the brain, you  said of Steven Spielberg's MINORITY REPORT, quote, "I haven’t seen any  better work from a director this year.  Really, not close."

Sorry, had to wipe the breakfast cereal that just guffawed out of my  nostrils off my keyboard.

Let's see, it's the year 2054-or-something, and Tom Cruise's character drugs up and watches holographic video scenes of his son with reproduction quality so ridiculously piss-poor crude that they defy belief. Common sense, not to mention repeated behavior and observation, informs us that consumers never -- NEVER -- buy or use garbage technology. As a medium for communicating information, Spielberg's holographic technology in the year 2054 is basically inferior to Edison's grammaphone or grandpa's old Korean War boat anchor shortwave radio. Just like Star Wars, we are expected to believe that characters in a sci-fi film will watch substandard image reproduction, just because *oooooh* it's three-dimensional; but unlike Star Wars, a galaxy far away in a time long ago, Minority Report takes place in the near-future of the United States. Once again, Spielberg resorts to little conceits and silly tricks that draw attention to themselves as the central focus of the framed image and defy simple logic, to say nothing of suspended belief.

There are other scenes Spielberg needlessly draws attention to that are equally bogus, like the embarrassing "burger-frying" scene. Classic, right..? I could go on, but the film simply doesn't have the merit to waste time discussing it. It wasn't the year's biggest disappointment, but it was dreadfully dull and incredibly boring. If it had been up to me to draft a marketing campaign, I would have shouted "Better than Attack of the Clones!!" Which is to say, it wasn't a train wreck. Not totally. But the hype on this movie, like your blow job for Spielberg above, is seriously misguided.”

E ME:  You say “micro,” I say “macro.”  What are you looking forward to in 2003?