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August 25, 2006

School for Scoundrels will be the 16th film release by The Weinstein Bros post-Miramax, whether distributed by TWC or Dimension or MGM. And it shouldn't be lost on anyone that 16 is a year of memorialized maturity.

The one big hit for the Weinsteins was a Dimension sequel, Scary Movie 4, which grossed $91 million. Hoodwinked was their biggest original (albeit picked up), with $51 million grossed domestically.

School for Scoundrels should land somewhere between those two grosses.

I guess it is odd for me to start reviewing this film with an economics lesson, but this movie feel like a naturally commercial movie. It's Todd Phillips' fourth fictional feature. All three of the others have been comedies also. And they have grossed between $68 million and $88 million. All three have been strong DVD sellers.

This time, like the first time, he is more out on his own with actors who are well known, but not sure box office draws. But in Billy Bob Thornton, he has one of the great comedy actors working right now and in Jon Heder he has an actor who is all the great things about Napoleon Dynamite but much, much more. Heder is instantly likeable in pretty much every role he's played. He is in this film too.

The story is based loosely on the 1960 Terry Thomas classic of the same name. That film was of a genre that included How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and A Guide To The Married Man. (In fact, there is a sub-title for the original School For Scoundrels, "How To Win Without Actually Cheating!")

This new film keeps the basics intact. Heder is the loser who can't even talk to the object of his affection without hurting himself. After a number of very funny, inventive humiliations, he gets turned onto "Dr. P's" class to turn wimps into macho skirt-chasing men. And just as he's about ready to conquer his object of passion, the bar is raised higher than he can imagine by Dr. P himself.

Basically, it's a funky combination of Dodgeball, Fight Club, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. You have the embarrassingly geeky guys trying desperately to get with the program with Michael Clarke Duncan threatening them through their paces. You have the underdog fighting an insurmountable foe. And you have two men chasing one woman who can never know that she is the object of a competition.

The weak point of the film is that object of affection, the ever lovely and sadly bland Jacinda Barrett, who just doesn't carry any weight as "The Girl" in any of the movies in which she plays it… which seem to be arriving in a bunch lately. She's niiiiice, but doesn't have the subtextual sexiness that other Todd Phillips "The Girls" have had, like Amy Smart, Ellen Pompeo, or Rachel Blanchard. Also, she suffers from the movie memory of Glenne Headly, who was a perfect foil to Martin & Caine in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, playing a farm girl who turned out to be smarter than the two men combined. No such luck here.

That said, the duet between Thornton and Heder is well worth the ticket price in and of itself. They are both just plain funny. Very different styles, but they've both got that thing.

And Todd Phillips is getting better and better as a director. From Road Trip on, he has been so good with the actors and letting them have room to work that his directorial limitations have barely registered with audiences. But there is progress here. He has a better sense of how to frame and build gags. There is a bit with a moving vehicle and three characters that could have easily gone wrong, but Phillips makes it work just right.

Phillips works with Scot Armstrong to write all of his films and here they get it as right as they ever have. There are plenty of strong cameos, including the forever PMSing Sarah Silverman, the always to-his-own-beat David Cross, Todd Louiso, Luis Guzman, Horatio Sanz, and of course, Ben Stiller, who is off on his own little Farrell-in-Wedding-Crashers raft.

It ain't Shakespeare, but it's a fun, very likeable film. And, I suspect, one of The Weinstein Company's first bona fide hits.

IDLEWILD is like bad sex with the girl of your dreams.

I saw a TV spot with a quote whore quote while watching Letterman tonight, but the funny thing was, I couldn't argue with most of it. "A magical experience… unlike anything you've ever seen… it's fresh, hip, and imaginative. Outkast are musical and visual geniuses."

Yes.

And it is an unmitigated mess of a movie.

I mean, it is downright impossible to hate a movie in which the hero has a wall full of cuckoo clocks over his bed that have CGed birds and Hummel-style figures come out and serenade him and dance when they hit the hour? How can you not like a movie that makes Macy Grey work effectively as an actress and singer while also turning Paula Patton's skin into pure visual honey while honoring motherhood by making Paula Jai Parker into the embodiment of motherhood? And how refreshing is it to see a movie where, when you finally see a white face, it is surprising, since you have been so immersed in the film's all Black universe without that ever calling attention to itself?

On the other hand….

How can you love a movie that is so busy showing off the clever digital and in-camera effects that its director can pull so effective out of his rectum that it often forgets its obligation to tell a story? How can you be thrilled by seeing Ben Vereen and Patti LaBelle in a movie musical where neither ever performs? Can you get through this film without realizing that Oscar nominee Terrence Howard was probably giving his last lazy for-the-check performance that we'll see for at least a decade? And, most of all, how can you take a character as exuberant as Andre 3000 and have him play a dour young man, only letting him loose to perform with joy over credits?

Idlewild is really one of those movies that a movie lover has to see just to get an eyeful of all the imaginative gimmicks that writer/director Bryan Barber brings to the table. And you have to bring a syringe of insulin because all the candy holds zero nutritional value and if you don't get that shot, you could go into a diabetic coma before the 90 cut-to-the-quick minutes run out.

Good luck and good weekend.

E Me.

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