July 20, 2005

Mark Waters just keeps getting better.

Last night, Dreamworks decided to offer up his latest film to everyone, two months before release. You don't get any less careful than that.

But they will win this one.

Just Like Heaven is the film that 30 Going On 13 aspired to being. It struck me from early on, oddly, as the kind of film that Bewitched should have been.

I hadn't paid attention to who made the film, but within minutes, it was clear that it was either Waters or Luketic - or someone of that generation - had made it and that they had made a significant leap forward in directing skills. It's not showy or anything. He is not going into the pantheon of great directors. The aspiration is not to be great art. But the work here is simple, clean, and nearly flawless, which is to say "without flaws." This is no small thing. Romantic comedies as of late have had style, but big holes in simple things like matching shots or moving effectively between close-ups and shots with multiple characters. Except for one overdone sequence in third act, which I am guessing was an attempt to make up for a script flaw, Waters delivers.

The script, written by a trio of big-buck veterans from the Marc Levy novel, starts strong and struggles a bit in the late second and third act. It doesn't get completely lost and it doesn't devolve into silliness. But it suffers a bit from the central gimmick of the film, which is that Mark Ruffalo is being haunted by Reese Witherspoon and neither one really understands why.

Beware the IMDb logline, since it gives away too much for my tastes, having enjoyed the march of confusion that leads to the second act reveal - which is not impossible to guess - that drives the rest of the film.

With a gimmick that is so clearly a gimmick, you need to move the film along with a strong pace and you really need memorable set pieces every 10 minutes or so. Think of Midnight Run… the idea is simple… DeNiro needs to get Grodin from N.Y. to L.A. and can't just get on a plane… add gangsters… add cops… add a competing bounty hunter…the set pieces just keep coming.

There are some very nice moments in the second half of the film and much of the audience will be perfectly thrilled with this film. But it could have been one of the great romantic comedies... it could have been Brooks or Crowe. And it's not quite that.

Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but the "bad moment" I mentioned above is a speeding car, which is out of character for the film and which just doesn't work. Waters & Co. showed great taste by hiring Ruffalo and then Donal Logue as his best friend/confidante/therapist… and the two together are better than any speeding van.

Likewise, the movie hits a home run with Jon Heder's first post-Napoleon Dynamite role. Heder hits some of the same notes, but he also establishes that he could be the next Jack Black or Steve Buscemi. He is not a surprise, but he is spectacularly likeable and watchable. Anyone casting a 20something buddy movie has to fight to hire this guy at any price. He is gold. And he is underused here. You even get the feeling that they may have added more of him as they went along, as they got the vibe… or even after they saw how audiences went for him.

Witherspoon is, as always, a big swinger. She just makes it look easy. And she is just plain a movie star. This is one of her least character-y performances… she has the least tricks to use, even if she is a spirit that walks through walls. Ironically, it is her relaxation with that and other elements of her part of the story makes her undeniable… as usual. Now, having worked with Mira Nair and the emerging Water back to back, it is critical that she keeps working with better and better directors.

One can kind of imagine how much more relaxed Team Dreamworks would be if this was on the schedule this Friday and The Island was on hold until late September. Regardless of how The Island plays, Just Like Heaven would have been a great mid-summer movie for daters. Of course, Ms. Witherspoon's one $100 million film, Sweet Home Alabama, was released in late September. I wouldn't be surprised if Just Like Heaven was her second.

BLACKBERRIES, & CUSTOMER SERVICE & MONEY… OH MY!

My Blackberry mysteriously disappeared on Monday. Not good.

I still have hope that it will turn up somewhere, but less and less. Needing a cell phone that worked in the meanwhile, I suspended the service on the Blackberry and hoped to restart the service on my beat-up, but not very old Blackberry that I retired last Christmas. I called Cingular, they told me that I just needed to buy a new SIM card and I would be in business. I had to go to a Cingular sales office. Okay.

The office has someone permanently in place to put names on a waiting list. "20 minutes," he said. An hour later, I was called. An hour of my life. And I am playing for this service. My three wireless expenditures - the cell, the Blackberry and the wireless card for the computer - make me a $3000-plus annual customer. That ain't nothing. To spend that on movies, I would have to go to the theater twice and buy two DVDs every week of the year.

Alas, after waiting for an hour to get service, they didn't have the SIM card I needed, since my old Blackberry was an AT&T, which Cingular bought, after which they made the equipment worthless… not to mention a decade of my customer loyalty in a business that has an insane churn rate.

But wait… they have the card! But wait… it won't work.

So I have to buy a new Blackberry at full retail, since after being an AT&T customer forever, I have been a Cingular customer for only 6 months.

My response was to decommission my Blackberry and to reduce my cell phone service to the absolute minimum. The loss to Cingular Wireless? More than $1500 a year.

Why does this story remain rare? Because when I went to Verizon Wrelesss with only an hour before the screening in Westwood, they couldn't even get me to a salesperson in a reasonable time for me to complete my angrily impulsive buy of a new Blackberry and service from them.

All three major providers offer horribly unhelpful customer service, even when the individuals working these stores are good people. They all cost about the same. So the consumer is nothing but frustrated… except for when their phone is working and they just aren't thinking about t he cost or the service that could have been better.

And why am I telling you this story, outside of endless personal indulgence?

I see an analogous sensibility in the film business. It is far too easy to look at the customers for films as a massive yard full of sheep. This is the mindset that obsesses on the overall box office number for the year or market share.

But in the film business, you are looking a an audience that has a lot more options than people looking to sign up for cell service.

I am, for a cell company, an optimal individual customer. I spend a lot, I pay my bill, I don't use all of my paid-for minutes, I am willing to pay a premium for special services like Blackberry and for early-adapter wireless internet access, and I am loyal. Letting my customer loyalty (and dollars) fly out the door just to try to get a few extra bucks out of me in the short run is just stupid.

People who go to movie theaters are the key customers for the film business. They are willing to spend a lot for entertainment. And they are buying in other mediums as well.

Don't make it too hard for them to get to the movies. Don't behave in ways that make them feel that the industry takes them for granted. And if you sense real discontent, don't assume you'll make that money up some other way.

Business is business.

E-ME.