The Hot Button by David Poland

The Worst of 2004
The Bottom Ten

Polar Express (2-D) - This one barely made the list, but in the end, it was a film that I know I will never, ever watch in this format again. Zemeckis is a genius, but this pudding was so rich that even a second bite was too much to take. There was something oddly disconnected about watching this film in a regular theater and even the big production numbers, which had some life to them, could not be absorbed from so far outside the story.

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The Butterfly Effect - It's a distant memory now, but the wigs, tattoos, scars and make-up on Amy Smart had the base of my hand smacking my forehead over and over and over again in this thriller that was amazingly void of personality, in spite of the ever charming Ashton Kutcher, who was playing against his charm.

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Raising Helen - The world's worst episode of Sex & The City. I wasn't charmed for a second.

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Resident Evil: Apocalypse - It didn't work in so many special ways. The film felt like it was made for TV spots first and then they did whatever else they had to do to fill the time. Not many films can manage to make a motorcycle flying through a the stained glass window of a church uninteresting… but they managed. The funny thing is, a third film in the series could be a lot of fun, as the first film was. But this one was like a kids' Halloween costume version of a real superhero costume.

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Catwoman - How do you describe a movie that thinks it is going to be soooo cool and is so completely foolish looking? I guess like that… or like a white man dancing to rap. Whatever Halle Berry had built up by riding Billy Bob Thornton like a bronco buster or slowly emerging from the ocean for Bond, James Bond is gone now. Didn't anyone tell Pitof that ripped jeans - and by extension, ripped leather - went out of fashion five years ago? Tim Burton's take on the character is probably one of the very few takes that work… very arch… very funny… very sexual… and not too self aware for its own good. And having The Penguin and Max Schreck to play off of was brilliant, since it allowed Catwoman to align to another freak and not just another good looking cop.

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De-Lovely - I was really hoping to like this film. I like Kevin Kline. I like Irwin Winkler's work well enough. And Cole Porter is one of my favorite song writers. So how did this turn into a session in the dental chair? Perhaps it is a truism that I just hadn't thought of before or maybe it will turn out to be a half-baked notion, but if you make a movie around a character who is cold and disconnected from his core emotions, you probably should make the film warm. And if you make a film around a hot character, creating an stylized icebox for them to inhabit is probably not the worst idea. Drama is conflict. Reality does not always involve conflict, but reality is not always interesting. I would almost like to see Porter's story told by a filmmaker who was willing to go the edgy gay route and to balance this façade against a guy who could not control his most carnal urges. But this movie went the opposite direction and layered one façade on top of the next until this gay man - who pushed the envelope on lyrics that in his era made Howard Stern look like a shy boy - was nothing but a wisp of a human being.

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King Arthur - This was perhaps the bottom of the swords-n-sorcery-without-actual-magic-or-gods series of films in the last year or so. For everything that was wrong with Alexander or Troy, this was the bottom of the barrel. Again, another good idea. A kind of prequel to the Camelot story... young-ish Arthur, a tough-chick Guinevere and a heroic, younger Lancelot. But, like any deconstruction, in order to work it needs to be intensely smart about the existing history. How does this prequel lead to what we know… even if it chooses to change the history of, say, how Guinevere and Arthur came together. The heart of Arthur's story is his unavoidable humanity and the telling of the story of a relatively simple man stuck in the midst of world altering history. This film just rambled from mediocre action scene to mediocre action scene. Even the great idea of cracking the ice as a way of fighting was just not as exciting as it much have been on paper.

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The Day After Tomorrow - It's so bad, it comes up just short of being hysterical camp. Really, you could make this into a 30 minute movie experience and people would have a great time and never have to see the rest of the dreck that tries and fails utterly to come together as an actual movie. This is a movie that spends an insane amount of time in the first act explaining why the second and third acts can't happen. There are wolves that escape when all other animals don't. There are cold snaps that actually chase characters and stop right before they catch the god guys. There is a pay phone that works when the cell phones don't and that still works as the water rises and covers the phone. There is the trek from Washington to New York that takes way too little time, but that is doable by helicopter before our heroes even get to New York… where they do nothing significant except arrive. There is the destruction (?) of Los Angeles by tornadoes, yet L.A. and other places south of the middle of the country seems to be where everyone is headed… though the 250 million people who are not stuck in the NY library - where books burn and furniture remains safe - seem utterly irrelevant to Mr. Emmerich and company. And of course, the scariest thing about the film is that it made so much damned money!

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Beyond The Sea - I have always been willing to admit to a classic screenwriter's trick… if you have something going on in your story that defies a reality that the audience will buy, call attention to it… be brash. Kevin Spacey uses that trick out until it's got a hole worn into its foundation. It was almost like daring critics to call him on his age or his hair or his dancing or the schmaltzy reverie he shows for Bobby Darin. Well, I can't help but to take the bait, because he is too old and his hair is too thin and his dancing is too much like it came from a bad 60s variety show. But most of all, the film signals its edge all over the place, but in the end has none. What did Bobby Darin really want from Sandra Dee? The romance starts out as a guy who is all wrong for Gidget conniving in every way to get under her petticoats. He wanted to conquer and control the goddess. Why isn't that - or whatever Spacey believes to be true - in the film? Did he fall for her hopelessly and lose himself? Did he resent her? The Academy Awards fight is well done, but it is one of those extreme moments where people say things they regret… where is the real stuff? Did Darin know Sinatra? How did they compete? How did he write all those songs he wrote? What was the process? In short, why was this guy special? The film assumes we just agree and sorry… to me Bobby Darin is still a talented guy who got famous based on novelty records, which includes the speeded up version of "Mack The Knife" that obliterates any meaning in the original lyric.

In the meanwhile, there is the yellow suit and the Lancelot virgin speech and Mr. Spacey's lack of butchness and The Kid, who is a device and not the metaphor he needs to be in order to be of real value, etc, etc, etc, that make this one a laugher, in so many ways the opposite number to that ultimate classic, Showgirls. (Oh, what I would give for a Sandra & Bobby In The Pool scene or Great Scacchi finding just the right pointy bra so virginal Sandra Dee could still tease teenage boys into pulling a Diner-esque move with the date and the popcorn or even Bobby realizing that his treasured object of desire was icy cold and that he needed to get his cabaret star jollies elsewhere. Oh to have Joe Pesci as Bobby Darin!)

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Spanglish - How can a man who has delivered so many smart, funny, sweet and bittersweet moments make a movie as bitter and self-aggrandizing and supremely insensitive to people who aren't in his tax bracket as Spanglish?

Whether Brooks was in a horrible marriage and wanted to pork the lusty Latina nanny is none of my business and none of my interest. All I get to take away from the theater is this movie. And it is both a mess and an insult to my intelligence in so many areas.

From the very start, Brooks wants to have it every which way with the Paz Vega character. By using the child as the voice that frames the story, it allows Brooks to avoid the first major question… what kind of guy leaves Paz Vega and/or what is wrong with Ms. Vega's character that lead to her being left. It could be that she went for a flashy guy and he was always one foot out the door and she learned from her mistake. It could be that she was too ambitious and he just wanted to stay in a small town in Mexico. It could be anything… but it has to be something!

This leads shortly to the comedy line, "Let's just say that our transportation to the United States was economy class." The line comes over the site of Ms. Vega and her little child crossing the border illegally. It gets a laugh… but is it funny?

Then, following the opening notion that Ms. Vega's character leaves Mexico essentially because of her relationship with a man ending, the motivation for her character - who is so anxious to keep hold of the Mexican culture even after moving to Los Angeles - goes to work in Bel Air because a boy makes a move on her daughter. Everything this character does is motivated by men… or the threat of men. And the idea that she takes this job so she could keep a closer eye on her daughter, now an hour or more away by bus every day, she would have hours less a day in proximity to her daughter.

Then there is the idea that a near-anorexic blonde having a mid-life crisis because she lost her job (never mentioned after the first 15 minutes) would hire a curvaceous Hispanic hottie to be in the house with her husband, who works at night, all day long. (Here Brooks uses the aforementioned gag, having Ms. Leoni's character call Ms. Vega "gorgeous" with intensity so we all know that she is not oblivious.) Of course, Ms. Leoni's character is never lucid enough to be concerned about the threat inside the house… which no one else gets upset about either, since Ms. Vega and Mr. Sandler are angels not to be questioned.

This is just the first 10 minutes.

Let's not get into too much detail about the revealing outfits that Brooks has Ms. Vega in throughout the film. The scene in which she gets enraged by two men hitting on her when she is out with her daughter works in principle. But does it? She is wearing a low-cut, see-through outfit that would draw blood to the tip of a penis from across most rooms. Of course I'm not saying, "she asked for it." But after recently watching the very mediocre The Other Side Of The Bed on cable for the first time since seeing it in Toronto a few years ago, in which Ms. Vega strips down to all skin repeatedly, I have to say that she is less provocatively dressed in the musical sex farce than as a housekeeper in Spanglish.

Then there are the many story points that feel like fixes so obvious that you can almost smell the new colored pages stuck in the screenplay. How exactly was the screenplay structured so that in the same sequence in which Ms. Leoni's character is vilified for taking a little girl out for a day on the town, Mr. Sandler's character turns out to be just fine after giving the same little girl the same amount her mother earns in a week for finding rocks at the beach. This is all topped by the undermining of the poignancy of this young girl spending hours on the beach searching for rocks that meant money while Mr. Sandler's character's kids didn't bother to spend five minutes looking. But every time anyone in the anglo family who isn't Ms. Leoni does something shameful, Brooks finds an excuse.

Of course, when the character you like the most cups his hysterical wife's breast and says, "jigga jigga jigga," somehow thinking that it is an appropriate response, and is not forever marked as a braying ass, you know just how hateful the woman whose breast he has shaken must be to the audience.

And there are just bits of sloppy writing. When the young anglo daughter circles around through a speech so she can use the word "rouse" to hurt her mother… or when Sandler insists that Ms. Vega gets back into the car to go literally five feet… especially when we have established that the bus stop is not where he stops… or unexplainedly bringing home an entire box of pastries to her daughter when there is no indication of a sweet tooth or the need for a bribe… there is Sandler waiting until mid-morning to look at the New York Times review of his restaurant when any idiot with a computer can and would have the review on line at 9p pst the night before…. and the grand eye-roller is Ms. Leachman's sudden sobriety just before she's about to give advice that the audience is supposed to take seriously.

But mostly, it is the subtle contempt the film shows for the characters it claims (dramatically) to most respect. It is a film that is remarkably disconnected from its ideas. How does a woman get to the point where she starts foreplay and achieves orgasm within minutes with almost no involvement by her male partner. It's not unheard of. But there is a reason why this person became so self-satisfying. And without exploring that, it is nothing but a cheap, ugly gag.

There really isn't anything wrong with any of the actors. In my opinion, Ms. Leoni did what she always does…she serves her director without restraint. This may be what has kept her career from taking off as it has long been expected to do. Outside of Flirting With Disaster and now, this film, her directors have been second tier or lower. She needs a great director to take her on if her fearlessness is ever going to pay off. And, unfortunately, the broadness of performances like this… which make perfect sense based on the script… are probably scaring some of them away.

Watching the film, it seems there is a real flaw to be pointed out in almost every moment of the film. There are some great lines. There are some wonderful images. The performances are fine and sometimes better. But the movie is, all-in-all, a horror… more so than something like Beyond The Sea or The Day After Tomorrow because it achieves what it seems to be its intent… and that intent is just plain unpleasant.