Screenhead

Time to weep and sigh for Jackie Chan, folks, because the man’s career is not what it once was.  Even back around a year or so ago, when he was frantically telling anyone who’d listen that Chinese communism was the bee’s knees and that too much freedom is bad for people (okay, comrade, I said it–can you puh-leeese point the flamethrower AWAY from my baby’s head now?), it wasn’t doing very well except IN China.  Now, it’s even worse.

Apparently a trailer has just emerged for Jackie Chan’s upcoming slow head-shake of a role, The Spy Next Door.  Chan will be playing a secret agent stuck babysitting his neighbors’ kids for the night and at the same time fending off a horde of rival secret agents, hopefully without waking the babies.

I want to believe that this will be one of Chan’s excellent comedy / action fusions, but with a setup like that, and a career like his has been lately, I just can’t see it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

You know that old philosophical argument? The one that supposes that we’re all just tiny specks comprising the atoms and molecules of some other, much larger universe?  Possibly even a much simpler one?  I once saw one version of this that postulated that we were all actually part of Ziggy’s big toe.  Yeah, the comic strip Ziggy.  Anyway, it might surprise you to know that Dr. Seuss, in his own inimitable style, actually took that ball and ran with it.  And since we were talking The Lorax yesterday, we may as well switch gears and talk Horton today, or, fairly recent release Horton Hears A Who.

In this animated movie, an elephant with more charm than good sense (and some unkind folks would substitute “good sense” for “sanity” here) one day discovers a tiny civilization living on a speck.  A speck of DUST, I believe–and he discovers it by way of his superior elephant hearing.  This civilization, known to all and sundry as Whoville   Previously they’d survived by living in a cave in which conditions were relatively static, but now their emergence into the larger world has left them at risk.  Thus it’s left to Horton to find them a new, similar cave-like environment.

Sure, this story only makes sense to small children and the clinically insane (where does Whoville get all the minerals it so clearly needs to build all that crap they’ve got in town?  The Whoville Iron Mines? Located on the speck of dust?) but once you work around the utter impossibility of it all, you’re left with a charming, raucously comic tale.  Even better, you’ve got great voice acting in the form of Jim Carrey and Seth Rogen, among others, plus some commentaries on the nature of faith in existence.  Just because you can’t see it doesn’t necessarily follow that it isn’t there.

The Screenhead Ten Scale rewards the stalwart pachyderm with a seven out of ten.  This plot couldn’t be much more far-fetched, but it will be entertaining.

Popularity: unranked [?]

A funny thing happened on the way to the theatre this morning–and before you stop me, no, this will NOT turn into a Zero Mostel reference.  I guarantee it.  Anyway, I was on my way to catch the very first showing of a movie so I could bring it back here to you.

I wanted The Collector.

I got Aliens in the Attic.

I know, I know–it’s all about managed disappointment, folks, and ironically, that’s also what Aliens in the Attic is about: managed disappointment.

Anyway, the plot.  It’s your class-X standard family movie fare–youngest daughter is here for no other reason than to be cute, supersmart middle boy child feels alone and neglected and starts tanking his grades so he can fit in better because “no one likes a mathlete”, Dad’s trying his bumbling best to keep up, oldest daughter’s dating a guy roughly four years older than she is but no one actually knows until he actually starts telling people.  Anyway, this Seventh Heaven episode gone ever so slightly off the rails packs up for a family vacation to Middle of Nowhere, Michigan.  It’s actually something involving the word “creek” but I just didn’t care enough to pay that close attention and you won’t need to either.  When they get to the rental home where the obnoxious other half of the family is also heading, they find a little surprise waiting for them.

Zirconian commandos.

Yep, seems the Zirconian Empire wants to annex Earth, and has thus sent a self-important halfwit, a psychotic weapons expert, a female martial artist who’s clearly overcompensating and a sensitive engineer who, in earth years, acts like he’s TWELVE to pave the way for the incoming invasion force by activating a device that’s been buried underground for decades.  Oh, and did I mention that the Zirconians are only about one tenth the size of an average human?

Let me just say, up front, that unless you have kids this movie will be an utter waste of your time.  Some children’s fare–especially the good stuff–is made accessible to adults by virtue of so-called “dual layer” writing, in which jokes that work for kids also work on adults on a totally different level, using things like clever double entendres and careful wordplay.

Aliens in the Attic, meanwhile, has all the wordplay of a brick.

This is a kiddie movie, plain and simple.  Anyone under, oh, fourteen or so is going to absolutely fall in love with it.  They’re going to love the thought of using mind control on Nana and having her execute Street Fighter moves (even I was impressed by watching Doris Roberts pulling off a Shoryuken), and the thought of hijacking their sister’s jerk of a boyfriend and making him slam into his own car and confess to his girlriend’s parents that he desperately needs a new set of adult diapers.  But most grownups, meanwhile, are going to find the jokes lame and tedious, with not a whole lot of laughs available for them.  The comedy here is weak if you’ve graduated high school any time recently.

Like I said, folks, it’s all about “managed disappointment”, which is just what Aliens in the Attic is.  There’s some fun here, and some interesting moments, but there’s also a whole lot of kids-only stuff in between the interesting moments, a whole lot more than you’d want to personally hazard unless you’re taking the kids out to the movies.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale issues it a five out of ten for doing its job and doing it well, but not doing much more than the minimum.  Some great moments for grownups here can’t distract from the fact that this is, first, foremost, and mostly, a kid’s movie.

Popularity: 1% [?]

You know, after looking back over the last five years and seeing nearly half a dozen Harry Potter movies come out (this one will make half a dozen), I’m amazed that there haven’t been more knockoffs.  Seriously, it seems like no one in Hollywood is even taking a crack at the boy wizard subgenre…until now.

It’s called The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens, and you’ll be able to find this lump on your video store shelves in just under two weeks, July 21st.

See, Billy Owens lives in one of the oldest towns in the East Coast, Spirit River.  And seeing that he’s about to turn eleven–on November eleventh, no less, in easily the biggest example of overforeshadowing I’ve seen in some time.  More on that later, but first, the rest of the plot. Harry–I mean,  Billy, on his eleventh birthday, is about to discover an unusual item up for sale in a local second-hand shop, one that’s likely going to save both himself and the entire town of Spirit River.  Harry–I mean, Billy, in case you hadn’t already figured it out from the opening paragraph, is going to discover that he’s a boy wizard.

No, seriously.

And this isn’t where the similarities end either–merely where they begin!  Billy has two friends, an underachiever named Devon and a clearly pedantic know-it-all named Mandy.  There’s even a school bully who relentlessly pursues Billy, with his two toadies.  Imagine how loud and long I laughed when I realized that the school bully had his own Krabbe and Goyle.

The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens is, let’s be honest, a bad movie.  The effects are weak even for low-budget, relying on computer graphics, and fairly low-quality CG at that.  This by itself would mean little, really, if it weren’t for the sheer aggressive awfulness of the script.  Mandy’s know-it-all persona is strenuously overexaggerated–she will bust out lines starting with “did you know…” with alarming frequency.  Worse, they’ve put the voice-over narration in Mandy’s hands, and she reads like, well, like a ten year old in class, blasting through lines with little regard for dramatic tension.  I understand she’s just a kid, but folks, she’s no Morgan Freeman.

You may think I’m being too harsh on a bunch of kids, but rest assure, the hackneyed acting isn’t just limited to them.  The adults can’t swing a whole lot of weight either, and that really doesn’t help matters.  The script too, as I said, is a morass of poor writing and terrifyingly bad plot elements.  Immortal dragons, mysterious vines, the “death of the river”…frankly, this is just downright horrible stuff on a narrative level.  The first time I saw a person sufficiently horrified that the town was being “invaded by vines”, all I could think was: “Does no one in Spirit River own a pair of hedge clippers?”

It’s bad enough that The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens is a Harry Potter knockoff, it’s even worse that it’s an aggressively BAD Harry Potter knockoff.  It’d be one thing if this were just a lousy movie, or a boy-wizard movie, but to be a lousy boy-wizard movie is a kick in the junk on literally several levels.  A movie that’s both wildly unoriginal AND poorly done can only be called a bad movie, and sadly, no amount of magic is going to change that.

Popularity: 1% [?]

"Firelies In The Garden"

In ” Fireflies In The Garden”,  Academy Award-winning filmmaker Dennis Lee guides a major ensemble in this unforgettable family drama of reconciliation. Oscar-winner Julia Roberts is the focus of the story playing a badgered family matriarch who has put the needs and desires of her family, particularly her cold, demanding husband (Oscar-nominee Willem Dafoe), above her own. Roberts’ unexpected death brings her entire family together and sets off a series of flashbacks that reveal how the seeds of unhappiness were planted years earlier.

“Fireflies in the Garden” reveals that, while family is hard to live with, it is impossible to live without. Starring Julia Roberts, Willam DaFoe, Emily Watson, Ryan Reynolds and Hayden Panetierre. Currently showing the the UK but rumors say after a long wait, the movie will now be released to US audience on June 19, 2009 on a limited engagement.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I have to admit, there’s a certain sort of strange appeal to the recent release Hotel for Dogs, which makes me wonder why it got relegated to the depths of a January release.  But then, it IS sort of a niche appeal, that I have to admit.

See, this is a movie that’s about pretty much what it says on the box—a couple of foster kids who’ve been shuttled around from house to house, and the current couple they’re with is a part of jackass wannabe rockers (one of whom, for some reason, is Lisa Kudrow).  Anyway, about the only joy in their otherwise sad lives is their dog Friday, who they’ve been keeping hidden for three years.  Bruce, the little brother, is something of a mechanical genius whilst big sister Andi keeps a close eye on him.  They’re minor-league grifters on the side, in an effort to keep their forbidden dog fed from foster parents that actually keep their pantry locked against unauthorized feedings.

In something of desperation for a place to keep their dog hidden, they end up in an abandoned hotel that, through Bruce’s unusual mechanical skill, is converted into a doggie paradise, complete with toilet facilities specifically adapted to dogs.  Of course, the good times don’t last long, and soon enough, new problems arise.  Can they be beaten?  Can the dogs find permanent homes that don’t require trespassing?

I’ll admit to personal bias on this one—one of my favorite things in a movie is amateur mechanical engineering, the jury-rigging of disparate parts to make cohesive wholes that accomplish all manner of bizarre tasks.  This movie is literally STUFFED with amateur mechanical engineering—a doggy-functional elevator, a machine that throws sticks for fetching and can be reloaded, primed AND launched by the dogs themselves, the list just goes on and on.  One particularly fun scene involves the jackass rockers getting a filthy comeuppance via the doggy toilet’s exit chute.

Okay, granted, the plot is based on a children’s book and weaker than wet Kleenex.  But the visuals are pretty solid and there’s an undeniable sort of feel-good feeling to this movie.  PETA itself might well have commissioned this as a commentary on caring for strays of all type, be they dog or human child.  And of course, a nice commentary on the nature of the deeply flawed system that services both stray dogs AND stray human children.  It’s a movie packed to the gills with cute dog, and tons of messages.  Schmaltzy beyond all reason, and packed with plot holes (who owns this hotel property, anyway?  Why did they leave several thousand dollars’ worth of furniture and assorted whatnot buried within to be used as parts?  Dare I ask?  Dare I even CARE?  I think I’m supposed to just forget about these massive plot holes.), but it’s a cuddly little package nonetheless.

If you’re a dog lover, if you can’t get enough of jury-rigged mechanical doodads (guilty as charged—this is why I loved Saw II), and if you’re willing to ignore MASSIVE plot holes that will almost insult your intelligence, then you’re going to love Hotel for Dogs.  They’re not promising anything they didn’t deliver—it’s just up to you if that’s what you want delivered.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Up is an ingenious comedy adventure about 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Frederickson, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America.

He discovers all too late that his biggest trepidation has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic 9-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Is it just me, or do all Adam Sandler movies seem vaguely similar?  I mean, come on–Adam Sandler plays a plucky young fellow who may or may not be a total jerk but usually has a heart of gold either out in the open or hidden under that jerkish exterior, and he’s going to have to take on some butt-kissing weenie before he can get what he wants, which is generally a hot chick.  Look at it—Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Mr. Deeds, Little Nicky, even Eight Crazy Nights to a lesser extent.  All guys with hearts of gold, well-buried beneath cynicism or excess in some cases but there nonetheless, all out to get what they were after, but having to go through someone else to get it.

This, interestingly enough, will continue on with Happy Madison’s newest venture, the recently released to DVD film Bedtime Stories.

In this one, Sandler plays Skeeter Bronson, a young man who’s not exactly getting the happy ending his father’s old bedtime stories used to offer.  His father owned a small motel, and Skeeter helped his father out in its operation and even in its improvement, offering up a nifty idea at one point that hotel rooms should come with a complimentary pair of socks as most travelers failed to bring sufficient pairs for their trip.  So it seemed Skeeter would be just the type to take over for his father, but that all changed when his father sold the hotel, and Skeeter wound up the new handyman.  Fast forward a few years, and Skeeter’s left taking care of his sister’s kids for the week while she goes job hunting due to the closing of the school where she’s principal.  Unsure of what to do, Skeeter falls back on a reliable standby, telling the kids bedtime stories.  But when the kids chip in a few ideas for the stories, they seem to have a strange way of coming true…in a roundabout fashion.

As much as I want to lay into Sandler for doing the same stupid movie over and over and over again until I want to either beat him with a shovel or hit MYSELF over the head with it instead just to make the pointlessness stop, I have to admit, Sandler’s got a good one this time around.  Yes, it’s the same as most of his other ones, but when he brought the little kids into the mix, he stopped being some braying cretin designed to entertain brain-damaged teenagers and instead became a softer, almost clownish figure that makes the kids laugh with simple and unalloyed joy.

This was unexpected.  I found myself joining in the laughs because of their simple, gentle clarity.  This wasn’t Sandler’s usual brand of “hurr he got kicked in the balls hurr durr”….no, this was a simpler “hey that guinea pig’s got really goofy eyes” kind of funny.  It’s no less simple than the groin kick, but at the same time, it’s actually less crass.  And that’s kind of interesting coming from Sandler, who’s been trying to soften his image into a more family-friendly sort of concept.  With this kind of movie he’s actually well on his way.

The stories, meanwhile, are solid enough if a bit childish, but considering they’re geared for children, that’s understandable.  Longtime Sandler fans won’t be left out in the cold as a terribly familiar dog shows up, and Rob Schneider will also show up for his obligatory three-minute cameo and variation on “You can doo eet!” line.

All things considered, you could do a lot worse than Bedtime Stories, with or without the kids in tow to see it.  It’s great if you want something simple, with some good laughs, that’ll represent a nice time at the movies.

Popularity: 1% [?]