September 30, 2003

Remember that time, after the “great” period of the last 60s/early 70s, when movies were somewhere between the raw thrill of the French Connection and the effects-laden world of exponential visual growth, care of CG, that really started with Terminator 2? It wasn’t as tough and envelope-burning as the Vietnam-era stuff. Maybe I am just nostalgic for it because it represents the time of my movie adolescence. But I think of it with a certain joy.

Spielberg’s Jaws is in that category for me. It was an industry changer, especially economically. But remember that this was a $12 million movie – which was real money back then – that was marked by complications from an ever-malfunctioning mechanical shark. The Star Wars movies were also business changers. But they were still limited a certain number of effects combined with a lot of talking.

It’s not just those huge hits. It was the great comedies, like Blazing Saddles and Arthur and Silver Streak and Young Frankenstein and so many more. Back then, you really wondered whether you would believe a man could fly, not whether you would believe a man could turn into a 12 foot green monster with gentle eyes. Seeing the Starship Enterprise on a big screen was a big deal. Now, if someone doesn’t morph into some other creature, effects boredom ensues.

At the core, I am not against the CG universe in which the movie business now lives. Like sound and color, CG will eventually find a more balanced place in the industry. The possibilities are still growing and boundaries keep being shredded. But that’s okay. CG is just a tool, like any other.

Still, audiences are still interested in the human experience first. When you think of Spider-Man – if you ever think of Spider-Man – do you think of the CG web stuff and swinging through the streets or do you think of the kiss in the rain or the Peter Parker’s webbed up room or Willem Dafoe’s psychotic dialogue with himself or Peter walking away at the end of the movie? And even if you laughed to yourself and thought that the only reason that guys remember the kiss was because of the wet t-shirt contest, fine. Nipples are very human…. the sense that you are catching a glimpse of something that might be forbidden, even more so.

We’ve been floating in a bit of the late 70s/early 80s Jello through the month of September. Matchstick Men, The Rundown and Under The Tuscan Sun are all retro flicks. Lost in Translation is retro foreign. And the all-too-brief (meaning, I couldn’t get to a theater) run of Scarface got pulses throbbing, much as I expect Fox’s full re-release of Alien will at the end on October.

Putting aside budgets and actual effects, take a look at the actor/story driven films that are on their way. Mystic River, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Runaway Jury, Veronica Guerin and Radio are in October. Is there a film there – disregarding the fact that the original TCM is a 70s title – that could not or would not have been made before CG and even before high concept?

November goes a bit more high tech, but is Love Actually anything much more complex than Love British Style? … is Master & Commander channeling anyone other than David Lean?… can’t you imagine 21 Grams with Hoffman and Hackman and a 27-year-old Meryl Streep working for Friedkin or Schlesinger? …and wouldn’t you expect In America – perhaps a little slicker In America – from 70s Mike Nichols?

And in December, more wannabe Lean with The Last Samurai, the Masursky-esque Something’s Gotta Give, Mona Lisa Smile not done by George Roy Hill and House of Sand & Fog, which could have been a Polanski. I’m not sure if I want to see Spielberg’s Big Fish, so perhaps Tim Burton is so unique a talent that there is no period equivalent. And in truth, the likelihood of films like The Alamo and Cold Mountain would only be done if ironic in that post-Vietnam period.

But you get my point…

And then there are two more of the films that I saw last week…

I had so much fun seeing Elf and The School of Rock that I could barely contain myself. It was like being in a movie candy shop. It’s not to say that these are the greatest films of the year or even of the month. But they have this wonderful, delicate, very commercial thing about them that is not about blowing you out of your seat, but about making you really comfortable and happy in your seat… forgetting your cell phone… holding onto your soda instead of using the cup holder… movie nirvana.

The School of Rock comes up first and the most important thing to know about the film is that it is not really a Jack Black vanity project, as the advertising suggests. This is a fish out of water movie where the fish does actually adjust to the water. There is a certain sweetness to a roomful of 10-year-olds who are smarter than this big mouth in his 30s. But it never gets syrupy.

The kids, each of whom has an arc of his/her own, are the real center. They are the Bad News Bears to Walter Matthau’s Buttermaker. Then there is Joan Cusack, who conspires with director Richard Linklater and writer Mike White to take an inevitable caricature and to turn her uptight school principal into a living, breathing woman who knows all too well what others think of her. The only really failed character in the film is Sarah Silverman’s too-evil-to-believe bitch. Even when her story turns as expected, it is never as satisfying as it should be because she was never real.

But the film has the kind of pace and feel that makes you feel almost as though it was improvised. Yet it is clearly structured. Linklater has 17 kids to move through White’s story. And he manages to let you fall for every one of them.

You’ve seen this story a million times, but you’ve seen every story a million times. Here it is just so simple and such lovely fun that it fills you with movie love.

And then there is Elf… ah, Elf. I can just imagine in my mind, sitting down to watch Elf and looking over at my grandkids and telling them about the first time I saw their favorite Christmas movie.

Elf is a great Jerry Lewis film for the holidays. It has a big heart… a bigger heart than you can imagine. In Who-ville they knew, that a viewer’s small heart would grow three sizes each view!

One of the things that’s so remarkable about the film is how really simple it is. David Berenbaum’s script and Jon Favreau’s direction are not fancy. Set-up, punch… set-up, punch. But they rarely miss, in no small part due to their how-can-this-make-sense cast of James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenbergen, Ed Asner, Bob Newhart, Faizon Love and a kid named Daniel Tay who makes a tough role work better than it deserves to work. But at the center is Will Ferrell, who brings a relentless sweetness reminiscent of the great comedians.

What seems to fuel Farrell is this central gentility - on display here as a naturally kind elf - even as a drunken buffoon in a movie like Old School. His characters want to be loved and have no fear of being caught in their neediness.

Here, from the opening frames that pay homage to the 70s Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas animations, we know that we are going somewhere we 30somethings really want to go. Bob Newhart takes over as Narrator and Unit Production Elf… more simple goodness. And then off we go with the story you know from the trailer and commercials. Farrell is a 6’ 3” elf.

After mining every possible gag out of that at the North Pole, Buddy The Elf is sent on his way to the big city, where the disconnect gets even bigger. Again, the takes are raised as high as they can go. And then the search for his real father…

It’s not a traditional three-act structure really, since when Buddy ends up in James Caan’s world, Caan and his kin have to go through a three-act transition of their own. And then there is the lovely, unexpected performance by Zooey Deschanel, who evolves from sprite-like to being an elfin spirit as the movie progresses.

Elf is a movie that takes the time to allow someone to sing a song the entire way through.

Elf is a movie that can make racial and other “ism” gags that are so sweet that no one could get his or her political correctness manual out quickly enough to complain.

Elf is a movie about all kinds of families and all kinds of love.

Elf is a movie that’s satisfied to take its big jokes and to let them go, moving on to the next gag.

Elf shoots right at your heart and like its star, will beg for love unabashedly.

Simple, simple, simple.

Richard Linklater is 43. Jon Favreau is 37. Both filmmakers are going to be taking major steps towards bankability with these films. But the thing that they have most in common is that they grew up on simpler films. They both made films that are stripped down… clean… joyous…

It is odd to see Elf and Texas Chainsaw Massacre on New Line’s slate this year, since they both feel like what many in this town would call “Classic Mike DeLuca projects.” Directors early in their careers, working on genre material, succeeding beyond expectations. Elf will not do as much business that Shrek did , but it has that Shrek feel and it will be a holiday perennial, if such a thing exists anymore. (If I were at TNT or Comedy Central or particularly at The WB, I would be fighting to make a 6-showing, uncut, annual, exclusive Nov/Dec deal as soon as possible, treating this film with all the love that The Wizard of Oz used to get on CBS for decades. If you built it, they will come. Premiere on those nets next holiday season before going to the pay cable window. STARZ doesn’t deserve the Holiday 2004 bonanza all by themselves.) If Elf can hold its screens, it will play strong all through November and December this year.

In the meanwhile, Miramax has turned its ad campaign for Kill Bill upside down, dumping the “Quentin Tarantino’s 4th Movie” tag from the front of the TV spots, mentioning “a film by Quentin Tarantino” only at the end of spots over credits. Why is this significant? Well, perhaps Miramax has realized – as a number of studio marketing types have mentioned to me in the last couple weeks – that Tarantino only has so big a core constituency and that they are already pre-sold. No one outside of that core group really cares that it’s his fourth film, anymore than they care that School of Rock is Richard Linkater’s 8th film… though ironically, they have very similar core constituencies. You have to sell the movie unless you have a real, down-n-dirty movie star. And even if you do, you can still end up with a Hollywood Homicide or The Majestic.

Irony is out. Simplicity is in. Enjoy the ride.

READER OF THE DAY: AL & MO agree: Al wrote “Most likely the entire cast of GREASE. Stockard Channing as a high school senior... sorry, not buying it.

If I didn't like the movie so much I'd be angry about how they blew it, but it really doesn't bother me. But there's no way any of those kids looked like they were in high school.”

And Mo added, “As much as the film is fun, GREASE has to be one of the worst examples of adults playing teens. Good lord, not one of them looks a day under 35 in that film.”

But JOHN E has stats!: “Most Unconvincing Non-Teens As high school seniors: 30-year-old Olivia Newton-John in Grease. 34-year-old Stockard Channing in Grease. 26-year-old James Spader in Pretty in Pink.

THE GUN tramples on sacred ground: “I'm sorry but I absolutely loathed Scarlett Johanssen in Lost In Translation. Anyone can "recite" lines, but it takes talent to act and deliver a line in a truthful manner. She lost me at the words "My husband". I swear when those words came out of her mouth, I rolled my eyes, and it took every ounce of strength in my body for me not to say "Give me a fucking break" to the screen.”

And AND BURN writes: “The worst casting of teenagers has to be in Porky's 2. I can see reuniting the cast from the first one but putting them back in the same grade? The guy who played Meat had to be 36 and was lumpy. The other kids had to be in their early 30's. Even Pee Wee looked middle aged.”

E ME: What’s your holiday 2003 dark horse choice?