May 9, 2003

Before I get started, a little preview.  It is my intention to review The Matrix Reloaded on Monday.  It will be a three-part review: Non-Spoiler, Spoiler and Projected Ideas About The Matrix Revolutions, based not on any stolen screenplay materials or anything like that, but simply on what is in The Matrix Reloaded.  It is possible that I will change my mind and hold the review a little longer, but why should I?  By the end of this weekend, we will know where the trades and the newsweeklies stand on this film. 

More to the point, I think it is incumbent on me to be one of the professionals under the age of 50 to review this film and to vocalize the reasons why the challenges of the movie mark its great success and not its failure before it is released.  Will the phone ring today from a concerned WB?  It may.  But it should not.  It is time for the celebration of this movie to begin.

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And now, on to our regularly scheduled programming…

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The next wave of mutants are arriving…

Of course, as everyone who thinks about it knows, the central value of the X-Men franchise is that about the characters which makes them human, not the cool powers that make them superhuman.  And if you have ever been stuck with more than a couple pre-schoolers with a full day to kill, you know that kids that age have another speed that humans of other ages do not. 

Even the superhero power of an infant to create incredibly smelly diapering experiences, enhanced by the dancing fountains of male youth.  But in the end, these powers are constrained, naturally, by the realtor’s lament… location, location, location.  There are only three solutions to a five-year-old with a bloodstream full of Capt’n Crunch… drugs, handcuffs or the passage of time.

Now, take a box office superstar who had a really bad year last year.  I actually heard someone questioning the choice of Eddie Murphy for this role.  But he was the perfect choice.  Tom Hanks would never have the cockiness to allow us to enjoy watching him suffer.  Tom Cruise has the cockiness, but he always seems to hold a little of that tension… even in the inevitable happy end, he would feel just a little trapped.  Unless you thought that seeing a kid thrown through a plate glass window, you could forget Russell Crowe.  Harrison Ford would have been the ultimate choice… about 10 years ago.  (No one wants to see Calista go off to work while he stays home with the 5-year-old.)  Carrey, too manic.  Gibson, too childlike himself.  Willis would serve the kids Pina Coladas.  Will Smith is too tall.  And Arnold already made this movie.

Eddie Murphy is great in this film.  Murphy has proven to be the rarest kind of superstar… one who is wiling to play the straight man to funnier characters at times.  Truth is, Murphy may be the most underappreciated comic actor of his generation.  Sure, there have been a lot of crappy films.  But what he made look easy in the Nutty Professor movies – much like Nic Cage in Adaptation – is remarkable.  Murphy has never been given the sophisticated material that he really deserves.  And he kind of ruined his own reputation by making a series of ego-driven, excessively harsh films when he decided he was a director himself.  Like so many stars, he suffers from his power, really in need of a great experience with a strong, highly talented director for a change.  And that’s not an insult to all of his recent directors.  But I mean, a great director, not a good director. 

In any case, Daddy Day Care is everything you expect in a summer hit.  It’s not very challenging.  It’s oddly familiar.  It hits most clichés you could list before you walk into the theater.  And it’s a great deal of fun that is going to engender repeat viewings and real affection. 

Watch the trailer and you know the synopsis for the movie.  But what you don’t see coming is Jeff Garlin, who grabs a fist full of laughs as The Fat Guy who is big enough to intimidate, but gentle enough to find lovingly odd solutions to all kinds of problems.  What you don’t see is The Great Secret Weapon that is Steve Zahn, who is one of the truly great supporting actors of the modern era, adding enough spice to almost any soup to raise the mundane to a higher level.  And what you don’t see is the excellent casting of the kids, who each has strengths and weaknesses as actors, but who define their parts so clearly that you remember at least half a dozen of these kids distinctly enough for jokes to be built out of character throughout the movie.

Steve Carr, who made Dr Dolittle 2 with Murphy and Next Friday with Ice Cube, is not a bad director.  He’s not a great director.  He gets it done.  He doesn’t get in the way of jokes, but there are no masterstrokes here either… unless the theme from Jaws (which may or may not have been in the script) when a kid missed the potty is your idea of directorial genius.

TV joke writer Geoff Rodkey (Lateline, Politically Incorrect) does what you would expect.  He strings together a bunch of experiential jokes and gets laughs out of most of them.  There is none of the daring of, say, Down With Love.  But there is none of the downside of risk either.  

Daddy Day Care is not a critics movie.  It is a movie that any decent director could have made and that someone a little more ambitious, like a Penny Marshall, could have maybe kicked up a notch (or sucked the fun out of).  This is the Big Momma’s House or Never Been Kissed or Dr. Dolittle or Sweet Home Alabama of this season.  Adored by some segments, hated by many critics, a perennial video store and cable TV favorite that families can watch together.

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES

1. Daddy Day Care – 3370 venues – new - $40.2 million
2. X2: X-Men United – 3748 venues – off 54 percent - $39.4 million
3. The Lizzie McGuire Movie – 2825 venues – off 43 percent - $9.9 million
4. Identity - 2618 venues – off 45 percent - $5.2 million
5. Anger Management - 2819 venues – off 49 percent - $4.3 million
6. Holes - 2452 venues – off 44 percent - $3.9 million
7. Malibu's Most Wanted - 2008 venues – off 54 percent - $1.9 million
8. Bend It Like Beckham - 563 venues – off 12 percent - $1.3 million
9. Confidence - 1188 venues – off 51 percent - $1.2 million
10. Phone Booth - 785 venues – off 50 percent - $732,000
11. It Runs in the Family - 1042 venues – off 61 percent - $640,000

READER OF THE DAY:  WILE S. COYOTE writes:  Don’t usually do this but all this blah, blah, blah about The Matrix "non review" has gotten my leather pants in a bunch.

Today's film fan's obsession with knowing every single detail about a movie before it is even filmed, let alone actually seen, defeats everything that going to the movies is all about (surprises, suspense, etc).

I can't believe that anyone would cry foul that now The Matrix Reloaded has been ruined for them.  This is all that sites like Ain't It Cool News does.  Ruining the film going experience, make believing that they are somehow connected with the film because they saw something first.  Being first doesn't matter, being the best does (I'll take just not a waste of my time.)

Except for animated films most genres have taken a downhill plunge in quality (For just about every film that has been made in the last 10 years - I can name another genre picture that was a 100 times better - just off the top of my head the only improved genre films could be - Reservoir Dogs - heist movie, Requiem for a Dream - drug movie, Glengarry Glen Ross - based on a play). 

That everyone knows what every film makes (including my senior citizen parents) is sad.  Joining the brainless masses, because it's reported that something broke a box office record (and when will that news become old hat like each successful plane landing is now) has made going to the movies a lemmings experience.

Anyway, nothing matters about a film (budget, how many screenwriters, etc...) before the movie is actually seen by you, the viewer - then you can obsessive all you want about it."

E ME:  A weekend of movies… waiting for your takes on them all…