Enthusiastic Apologies

A friend of mine on one of my e-mail lists sent out a message with one of those intellectual parlor games in it; “If you could host a dinner party with any ten people in history, who would you choose and why?”

I like intellectual parlor games, usually, but I hate this one. First, I don’t like dinner parties. I like intimate, romantic dinners in expensive, candelit restaurants, with my beautiful, wonderful girlfriend. Second, even if I did like dinner parties, and I invited all these famous people, stands to reason that they’d be interested in talking to each other and not to me, and I’d be the one paying for all the grub. Third, I don’t know that the people I’d invite — or the people that most people would want to invite — would be the best dinner party guests. I can just see inviting Churchill or TR and have them gripe about the brandy and hogging the conversation. If you invite Gandhi, do you serve dessert? What happens if you invite both Martin Luther and Martin Luther King? What if you invite Mother Teresa and she asks for all the leftovers to take home for the lepers? And let’s say you invite Jesus Christ? What do you serve? Say you decide to serve salmon, and He shows up, and first thing out of his mouth is “I understand you made salmon.” Does that mean you were predestined to make salmon, or did He just have foreknowledge of the fact that you were serving salmon? (If you decide that you don’t want me playing in your intellectual parlor games, that’s OK.)

But let’s change the rules a little bit.

Let’s ask a question like, “Out of the sad and sorry crop of last year’s movies, who would be the characters — not the actors — that you’d most like to hang out with (and no fair inviting Liz Hurley or Claire Forlani to dinner at Fonda San Miguel) at the Texas Chili Parlor on a Tuesday night and discuss the state of the world ?” I doubt that you’d go too far wrong in answering that question with Grady Tripp and James Leer, as portrayed by Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire in Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys.

I must admit that I slighted this movie. I didn’t see it when it made the arthouse circuit the first time, nor the slightly wider release it had later in the year for increased Oscar consideration. I heard the bare bones of the outline — a washed-up novelist / college professor / marijuana smoker tries to finish his novel and mentor a young novelist — and dismissed it as unworthy, and went and watched Little Nicky instead. I had been recently, unwillingly exposed to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and my appetite for movies about college English departments had been soured, I suppose. I also think that, for whatever reason, I didn’t see that Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) was the director, and I regret that oversight, and — Curtis to Curtis — I apologize.

At the same time, the only way I can make that apology effective is to write a really, really good review of the movie, and I can’t seem to do that. In fact, I will posit that one of the problems that Wonder Boys had in finding an audience is that it’s a movie that’s impossible to review within the rules. It’s a movie with so many effective, well-written characters and little comic surprises and plot twists that to review it is to give away the pleasures of the movie. Even mentioning the little comic touchstones of the movie — Frances McDormand’s dog, a valuable leather jacket, Douglas’s car, where Maguire’s character really lives — is to take away from them some of their luster. Worse, you can’t even talk about the characters much, and they’re the best thing about the movie. They’re human, completely three-dimensional, smart, and the best of them change and grow and evolve during the course of the action. It’s a wonderful thing to see, and the tragedy, of course, is that you don’t see that kind of thing in Hollywood much anymore. There are not that many movies whose characters you’d want to invite to dinner, that you’d want to get to know better, but this is one of them, and it’s worth your time and trouble.

When you’re a reviewer faced with this kind of movie — the kind that you really, really want people to see but you really, really don’t want to give away the plot or the characters or the situation the characters find themselves in because you want them to see it for themselves — you have two paths. One is to go ahead and give away some of the movie’s secrets anyway to lure people into the theater. The other is to smother the review in a lot of inconsequential chatter about nothing and have faith that people will see the movie by virtue of your enthusiastic recommendation. I have chosen the second course in this instance, and hope that you will see Wonder Boys, and that you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Sweet and Sour

Movies are getting better, every day, in every way, and if you want proof, look at the differences between the 1971 version of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and the 2005 Tim Burton version, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That’s not a long time for movies to change — it’s just a few years short of my own lifetime as I write this — but look how different things are!

I could go on and on about how different the Bucket house looks in Burton’s world, how the costumes are better, how the Great Glass Elevator is more impressive, stuff like that. I could even go on about how the Mixing Room — where the chocolate is mixed by waterfall, don’t you know — looks so much better than in 1971, while looking almost the same. And the Oompa-Loompas — but more about them later. I want to focus on one scene.

It is, really, the initial scene in the movie, Where Things Start, and in both movies it comes later than you might think. It is the scene where the five children enter the Wonka factory for the first time. These are, of course, five children who have gotten — by hook or by crook, or just by Providence — their Golden Tickets, with the right to tour the legendary Wonka factory, and an ultimate prize for the final Lucky Winner, whoever that may be. Nobody, we are told with utmost sincerity, has been inside the Wonka factory for years on end. No one has seen Willy Wonka, that maestro of the chocolate bar, since the factory closed. All eyes are on the iron gates of the factory, waiting for Willy Wonka to make his grand and glorious appearance.

In the 2005 movie, what happens? Well, what happens is that there is a distraction, a grand and glorious musical tribute to the greatness of Willy Wonka, performed by a chorus of clockwork puppets. (This sets up one of the great funny lines of the movie later on, watch for it.) They sing a charming little Danny Elfman ditty:

Willy Wonka
Willy Wonka
The amazing chocolatier
Willy Wonka
Willy Wonka
Everybody give a cheer

And then, once the show is over, with fireworks going off, and with the smell of singed puppet everywhere, Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp, of course) appears from behind the children, startling them, and then they enter the factory. A nice scene, and the puppets alone must have eaten into the movie’s colossal stupendous $150 million dollar budget.

Now, the 1971 version had that exact same scene, and what did it use to start off the movie? How did it introduce Willy Wonka? Did it have, in its modest $3 million budget, the means to scorch puppets? No. All that the 1971 version had going for it was acting. And that’s what happened. Gene Wilder, playing Willy Wonka, improvised a scene where he walked out of the factory’s door with a limp, leaning heavily on his cane, with all the audience watching, thinking that he had a disability or something. Then, suddenly, Wilder somersaulted right in front of the children. A tease, that Willy Wonka.

Now, what do you think says more about the character? What do you think is the better scene? What does a better job of setting up a sense of wonder and whimsy? If you said the 1971 version, you’d be right.

Movies are better now. There is no doubt about that. But acting is the same as it has always been. In fact, what makes today’s movies so much better is that they have eliminated a lot of what used to be done just by acting. And special effects, as expensive as they are, are cheap compared to what a Type-A actor would get you in Hollywood. If you don’t have acting, you have to make do with special effects. Lots of movies do this every day, it’s just that it’s surprising that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of them.

This is not to say that Johnny Depp is a better actor than Gene Wilder. Not at all. Depp is the better actor, but in this particular situation Wilder made the better choice. And that’s significant. Wonka, as played by Depp, is supposedly (and famously) inspired by Michael Jackson. Depp denies this, but since his Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean was equally famously inspired by Keith Richards, it’s an intriguing supposition. Anyway, Depp is not being “himself” here, whatever that is. Instead, he is being a freak. (Depp does have a pair of scissors in his hand early on, cutting a ribbon at the factory gate; it’s a reference to his similarly freaky ride as Burton’s Edward Scissorhands.)

Depp’s choice of freakiness is not wrong, necessarily. It probably is exactly within the parameters of what Tim Burton was trying to do. It may be exactly how Roald Dahl pictured the character. I cannot say. But it is… I don’t know. It’s a bit off. More than that, it’s intentionally off-putting; Depp’s Wonka is always insulting and belittling the children, and taking glee in the fate of the bad little boys and girls. And while Depp and Burton are entitled to their view of how the character should be played, it’s an odd choice.

I titled this review “Sweet and Sour”, which is to say that I had Chinese food for dinner. But that’s not my point. The whole idea of a movie like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not to give into sweetness, not to let the wonderful sweetness of the chocolate (and the beautiful interiors of the factory) win out over the sour real-world aspects of the movie. But largely, that should be done through the specific vices of the childish characters (and of course their parents) and the grisly fates to which their vices lead them. Moving the Willy Wonka character from the sweet category into the sour category — not to say the indefinably freaky part of the movie — is a mistake, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory pays for it.

However, focusing on the Depp character is not only beside the point but takes the focus off the other pieces of great acting. The child actors, of course, are perfectly convincing and wonderful (especially young Jordan Fry, in his first role as Mike Teavee). The Bucket family is especially well-done. David Kelly (Waking Ned Devine) and David Morris are nothing short of splendid as the grandparents, and Noah Taylor is sweet and soulful as Charlie’s hollow-cheeked father.

And then… then there is Deep Roy, who himself is worth the price of admission. I have a terrible record of Oscar prediction, especially this early in the season, but if Deep Roy isn’t at least considered, to whatever degree, for Best Supporting Actor for playing the part of every Oompa Loompa, well, there isn’t any justice in the world. In its use of Deep Roy, if nowhere else, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shows all of the virtues of modern moviemaking. That he is able to play so many roles, so well, with absolutely zero lines, is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Danny Elfman’s settings of the original Roald Dahl songs set this movie apart, give it its magic, and a little much-needed soul.

Enemy of the Audience

Before I say anything negative about Wild Wild West, I want to take a moment and remind you that Kevin Kline can act.

Remember the scene in A Fish Called Wanda where Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Otto (Kline) are preparing to double-cross their partners and nab the look from the safe where it’s hidden? Otto cracks the safe open and… surprise… it’s empty. Kline stands up, empties his pistol into the safe, and screams:

“I’M DISAPPOINTED!!!”

Well, Wild Wild West has Kevin Kline. And Mr. Summer Movie himself, Will Smith. And Kenneth Branagh, the greatest Shakespearian actor of our time. And the babelicious Salma Hayek. And Ted Levine from The Silence of the Lambs. And It’s directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed Get Shorty, and was the cinematographer for Miller’s Crossing, one of the best movies ever.

And it’s a terrible, terrible movie.

Wild Wild West is as bad as a movie can be without actually having Richard Gere in it. It’s an action movie with no action to speak of, a comedy movie with no laughs, a buddy cop movie with no chemistry between the leads. The only person who comes out of this debacle with anything close to honor or dignity is George Clooney’s agent, who saved his client from an embarrassing debacle. A Newsweek critic called Wild Wild West this year’s Hudson Hawk, which is an insult to Hudson Hawk. (Hudson Hawk at least had Sandra Bernhard screeching maniacally and Danny Aiello and Bruce Willis singing show tunes — there’s nothing even that diverting in Wild Wild West.)

This is the part of the review where you’re supposed to recapitulate the plot, but I can’t. It’s too painful. Instead, what follows are a few brief observations:

1. Never, ever, EVER again make another movie from a Sixties TV series. The Avengers should have served as a warning to everyone in Hollywood: don’t ever do this again. Please, please, please, stay away from Hogan’s Heroes and The Prisoner and, er, I don’t know, Gomer Pyle. Placing the successes of movies like The Fugitive and Wayne’s World aside, maybe a Congressional ban on recycling TV shows might be worth looking into. (Consider that Twin Peaks, the best show of the 1980’s, was made into an indescribably wretched movie.)

2. Wild Wild West has a lot of special effects, but it comes at a time when we’re becoming more blasé about special effects. Remember how neat it was in Forrest Gump when the filmmakers used computer graphics to make Gary Sinise look as if he had no legs? Branagh’s character also has no legs, and they use the same tricks, but it’s not nearly as cool now.

3. In a summer chock-full of tasteless movies, the offensive attempts at humor in Wild Wild West really stand out. Charles Krauthammer did an excellent piece in the Washington Post about how the portrayal of Branagh’s character (who uses a steam-powered wheelchair) is insensitive to people with disabilities. The racial jokes aimed at the Will Smith character are just as bad. I don’t have any problem with casting Will Smith in the Jim West role, but the smart move would have been to ignore his race in the screenplay. Instead, we get things like lynching jokes that are so far from being funny that you’d have to stand in line for a passport to get there.

5. Salma Hayek is given nothing to do in this movie but stand around and look pretty. This might have been OK if she had gotten a fair amount of screen time, but she doesn’t even get that.

6. Kevin Kline imitates the President at one point in the movie, which he did in Dave. (Dave is a lot better movie.) I think Robert Conrad was rumored to want the President Grant part, but a kind fate intervened and saved him from embarrassment.

7. The black-white buddy-cop thing has officially been done to death now. So has the bit about the villain falling to his death from a high place. Wild Wild West doesn’t have a car chase, thankfully, but it has a train chase that’s not all that interesting. (One could wish that the filmmakers had seen Narrow Margin for hints on how to do a train chase, or even the Under Siege sequel… and yes, it says something about the quality of Wild Wild West when I can compare it unfavorably to a Steven Seagal movie.)

8. Another note about the casting: One can’t help but wonder if the movie could have been better if Kevin Kline were the villain and Kenneth Branagh were the Artemus Gordon character. Kline makes no impression whatsoever as Artemus Gordon: he’s shallow, fussy, vain and condescending. And Branagh just mucks the supervillain thing up awfully, really, it’s pathetic for an actor of his skills. Kline would be a much better choice for the villain: he’d bring a certain class to the role that’s completely missing from Branagh’s performance. And Branagh could do the Artemus Gordon part in his sleep.

9. Even if the casting switch wouldn’t have worked, it certainly couldn’t have made things worse. There’s no way of making things worse in the Wild Wild West short of bringing in a giant army of Ewoks to trip over the giant metal tarantula or something godawful like that.

I could go on, of course, but slinging invective makes my arm tired. Don’t go see the Wild Wild West, but if you do, don’t be surprised if you hear people walking out of the theater yelling, “I’M DISAPPOINTED!!!” Don’t be surprised if you’re one of them, either. 

Subversive, Substandard Subtext

The great and good Ben Stein (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) once suggested that Hollywood make a movie about the civil rights movement. The movie would show the pervasive and invidious discrimination against African-Americans, the marches, the victories in courts and legislatures, and the sheer moral courage of everyone from Rosa Parks and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Freedom Riders on down. It would be a wonderful movie about hope and leadership and vision and the progress made by society in the last forty years.

“Nah,” Stein said. “Let’s make another movie about how racist and evil and bigoted we are, instead.”

Well, the latest in that string of movies is Bryan Singer’s X-Men, a dim-witted political fable dressed up as an expensive, special effects-laden summer movie. X-Men tells the tale of America’s latest oppressed minority group; mutants. Apparently, in the not-so-distant future, the cosmic forces have aligned in such a way that a chosen few have received mutant superhero powers. (Expect the Human Genome Project to announce, any day now, that they’ve found the gene for ice breath or for weather control.)

Some of these mutants have the altruistic courageous superhero gene, others have the evil gene. (The evil gene has very powerful side effects, such as poor planning, megalomania, stilted dialogue, and a need to surround oneself with incompetent henchmen.)

There is no earthly reason why X-Men couldn’t have been a perfectly good movie about the battle between the good and evil mutants. However, the real villain of X-Men isn’t a mutant but a Senate backbencher. Bruce Davison, best known for his role in… um… um… just a minute… Seinfeld? Hunter? (I actually thought, for some reason, that Bruce Greenwood had this part; he would have been much better.) Anyway, he plays Senator Kelly, who picks up the mantle of Martin Dies, Joe McCarthy, and Dan Burton and starts campaigning for a Mutant Registration Bill. (We’re never told what’s in the bill, presumably, it’ll add another line to the Census long form or something.) Anyway, Senator Kelly represents all of the poor misguided racist bigots out there who don’t believe in civil rights for mutants, and we see a few extras here and there carrying signs and screaming slogans, representing the mass of the rest of us who just aren’t enlightened enough about the confidentiality of genetic testing.

With the right screenplay, the subtext could have been handled cleverly and more obliquely. Instead, the political subtext ends up subverting what could have been an entertaining action thriller, turning it instead into a jarringly bad waste of time.

Our villain is Magneto, a Holocaust survivor with the mutant power of controlling metal. Like all evil mutants, he has an evil plan, and the meat of the movie is the question of whether the X-Men will be able to squash it in time or not.

The evil plan is the centerpiece of certain types of action movies, and it’s had a bad decline in recent years (everywhere except for the Pinky and the Brain cartoons). The rise of the bad evil plan happened sometime between the last good anti-Communist movie, The Hunt for Red October, and The Fugitive, which revolved around FDA approval for a new cardiac drug. In between, we had such outrages as a James Bond movie about the routing of an oil pipeline in Turkey, another pharmacutical caper in Mission Impossible: 2, the revival of the U.S. Postal Service in The Postman, the multiple asteroid attacks from the summer before last, Godzilla, and other silly plans for world domination too numerous to name. Not to mention, as exemplia gratia, the fake invasion of Albania in Wag the Dog that led (sort of) to a bombing of a aspirin plant in Sudan to distract attention away from a real-life presidential sex scandal, or the horribly impenetrable machinations of the Trade Federation in the new Star Wars movie.

X-Men has one of the worst evil plans in the past decade, and that’s saying something. Magneto, you see, has built a machine that can turn ordinary mortals into powerful mutants. His plan is to use this machine in a giant consciousness-raising exercise. Apparently, there’s a big multi-nation world summit on Ellis Island, and Magneto intends to turn all of the world’s leaders into mutants. Presumably, this is a Bad Thing, although we’re never told why. Think of the possibilities. Think about what a Secretary of Agriculture or the President of Morocco could do with the power to control the weather. Think about how Tony Blair would look with giant green antennae. Think about what would happen if the Chairman of the Federal Reserve could control interest rates with his mind. (OK, maybe you don’t have to think about that last one too hard.)

My point is, to the extent that I have one, that this is a pretty shallow evil plan. For one thing, it represents identity politics at its worst. For another thing, what, exactly, does Magneto think this will accomplish? You would think that a mutant President would veto a Mutant Registration Act, but that’s no guarantee that it wouldn’t be overridden. Besides, Magneto and his cohorts don’t seem like the law-abiding type, anyway, and its hard to see how a Mutant Registration Act would cramp their style. (When they outlaw mutant powers, all the powerful mutants would be outlaws.) Plus, all of the mutants seem to have unlimited cashflow; why couldn’t Magneto just make some campaign contributions?

(Note: The last two comic-book movies I completely enjoyed were Blade — which features the hero stealing Rolexes from dead vampires for funding — and Men in Black, where the MiB agency “invents” Velcro and microwave ovens to stay in business.)

I am overanalyzing here. Clearly, X-Men doesn’t want or expect anyone to explore these areas of illogic. When X-Men focuses on what it ought to be about — the origin and actions of its heroes — it’s perfectly all right. Patrick Stewart, for one, is perfectly cast as Professor Charles Xavier, the psychic leader of the X-Men. Hugh Jackman is crisp and smart and lethal as the tough-but-tender Wolverine, and Famke Janssen and James Marsden adapt themselves nicely to the characters of Jean Grey and Cyclops. Anna Paquin is a charming bundle of teen angst as Rogue, who drains the life force out of anyone whose skin she touches; despite the worst Southern accent of anyone since Keanu Reeves in Devil’s Advocate. Only Halle Berry feels tacked-on as Storm, who can control the weather.

The evil mutants are much less fun. Wrestler Tyler Mane is monosyllabic as Sabretooth, the heavy. Supermodel Rebecca Romijn-Stamos all but disappears behind her blue body paint as shape-shifter Mystique, and martial arts expert Ray Park does yeoman’s work as the disgusting Toad. However, they’re there primarily to get punched around, which they do in a rock ‘em sock ‘em battle in the Statue of Liberty gift shop.

X-Men answers the question; what’s dumber than a dumb summer movie? Answer: a dumb summer movie that pretends that it’s smarter than it is. With a better evil plan and less attention to the political subtext, X-Men could have been the best movie of the summer. As it is, it’s substandard fare that only rises past the level of the ordinary in the rare fight scene. Hopefully, the inevitable sequel will pay more attention to action, romance and adventure and less attention to the politics of mutation.

(P.S. So far, I haven’t referenced the X-Men comic books in my review, the same way that I didn’t mention “Scientology” in my review of Battlefield Earth, or “horrible waste of time” in my review of Shaft. Suffice it to say, that after reading one X-Men review too
many complaining that some character or another from the comic wasn’t in the movie, or referencing comic-book inside jokes having to do with yellow spandex, I decided to write this review completely independently from its graphic-novel origins. I am not a comic-book reader; never have been. If you loved the X-Men movie based on your appreciation for the comic books, well and good. If you hated the X-Men movie based on its failure to live up to those selfsame comic books, well and good. Either way, if you want to comment about this review in the context of the comic book, you might as well keep it to yourself, because I’m not going to know what the hell it is you’re talking about. Thank you for your support.

Comic Book Catechism

In anticipation of the second X-Men movie, I pointed out to a fan of the comic book what I thought was the major flaw of the first movie. “It was all about this Mutant Registration Act,” I complained. “Big deal. Who’s going to make them register? I used to be a bureaucrat; I’m not going up to some mutant with ice breath or laser vision and make them sign some stupid form. I’m not a complete idiot. So they don’t sign the registration form. So what?”

“Well, you see, in the comic book, they came after the mutants with giant robots.”

“Oh, well then. That’s different. But it’s the Mutant Registration Act. It’s not the Chase the Mutants Down With Giant Robots Act. That would be different. I wouldn’t support that.”

This elementary little comment got about the respect it deserved; none. But I think my point is still valid. Let’s say you’re a mutant; somewhere in your DNA the gene for ice breath or personal magnetism has been switched on. Your power is far beyond that of mortal men. Yet, your main concern is not fighting crime or avenging injustice, but instead the passage of a law in Congress that narrowly affects your civil rights.

In the masterful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon points out that why a superhero does what he does is as important as what he can do:

“All right then, so he can fly.” Sammy looked at Joe. “Joe?”
Joe glanced up briefly from his work. “Why?”
“Why?”
Sammy nodded. “Why can he fly? Why does he want to? And how come he uses his power of flight to fight crime? Why doesn’t he just became the world’s best second-story man?”
Davy rolled his eyes. “What is this, comic book catechism? I don’t know.”
“Take one thing at a time. How does he do it… a rocket pack? Antigravity boots? An auto-gyro hat? Mythological powers of the winds? Interstellar dust? Blood transfusion from a bee? Hydrogen in his veins?”
“Slow down, slow down,” Davy said.
“Okay, it’s a fluid. An antigravity fluid in his veins, he has this little machine he wears on his chest that pumps the stuff into his blood.”

There’s more to it than that, of course, but that’s the basics. The X-Men have strange and wonderful mutant powers, but there has to be a reason why they use them, for good or for evil. The text of the movie is the action; the subtext is the why.

In both X-Men and X2, the subtext is the same; the mass of normal human society hates and fears mutants, and seeks to pass strict laws to control them. In the first movie, the subtext struggled with the text, trying to take mastery. In X2, the subtext conquers everything, to the point that it becomes the text itself. X2 begins and ends not on the battleground of good against evil, but in Washington, on the battleground of pro-mutant against anti-mutant politics. For at least part of the movie, the X-Men are primarily a lobbying group, the same as the American Association of Retired Persons or the Sierra Club, but with different, er, means of getting access to the powers that be in Washington.

X2 is written from, and written to further, a certain political point of view. Its message is that tolerance and diversity are to be respected and defended. Which is dandy. But it also holds that there are some individuals in positions of power (belonging to, say, a political party that is represented by an elephant), who tend to be narrow-minded and unsympathetic towards anyone who is different, and that these are individuals whom one should naturally oppose with all of one’s powers, mutant or otherwise.

This is slanderous, of course, but the Republicans in the audience will doubtless take it in stride. (The next pro-Republican movie Hollywood makes will be its first.) A little reflexive anti-conservatism never hurt anyone’s box office, and complaining about the knee-jerk liberalism of movies and movie makers is about as useful as trying to nail peach jelly to the wall. What is problematic is that in X2, the conflict switches from good mutant versus evil mutant to good and evil mutants versus Republicans. Republicans in the audience (we buy tickets, too, you know) may feel as though they are being ganged up on, and rightly so.

My real complaint is not so much political as it is aesthetic. X2 goes to the trouble to cast Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Kelly Hu, and Anna Paquin as mutants, and then turns the movie into a left-wing political statement. This is like hiring Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon, and John Stockton to be in your movie and then making it about clockmaking.

X2 has probably the best female ensemble of any movie this year, and then doesn’t do much with it. Paquin is almost totally cheated; she has to stay in the car during the big action scenes, and then only gets to use her powers once. Hu plays the evil mutant Deathstrike, who gets the big signature fight with Wolverine, but she’s mostly a menacing presence. Romijn-Stamos spends half the movie playing white guys, shape-shifting into whatever fills plot holes; we don’t get to see her luscious form nearly enough, and when we do, it’s covered with weird blue scales.

Janssen has the showiest role as Jean Grey, psychic mutant, and is at the center of a lame romantic triangle between Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Cyclops (James Marsden). When the X-Men get separated after a Waco-style assault against the school of Professor X (Patrick Stewart), she has to take on the leadership role, and she’s quite good and efficient in that. But there isn’t a great deal of chemistry with either of the other mutants, and she’s not as effective as she could be. (We learn, by the way, that Cyclops drives a nondescript Mazda sedan, and is a fan of N’Sync, and that tells you all you need to know about Cyclops.)

The oddest problem with X2, however, is its treatment of Halle Berry. The UA Midtown ran a promo for the Die Antother Day DVD before my showing of X2, and it showed the famous Ursula Andress scene where Berry is rising from the ocean in a mango-colored bikini. Yowza. That one scene, seen for five seconds before the trailers, has more spice and personality than Berry’s whole performance in either movie. Her mutant character, Storm, is serene and detatched, which is fine, but not a good use of Halle Berry. It doesn’t show her personality, or her physique, to good effect, or anything close to it.

The actresses are probably the most short-changed of the bunch, but X2 is such an ensemble cast that a lot of the other mutant characters are given short shrift. We don’t see all that much of one of the new mutants, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, who spends a good time as an indistinct blue fog anyway. Brian Cox, America’s Busiest Actor, is the bad guy, but we don’t see enough of him, and he doesn’t do much but bluster anyway.

The actors who are shown to their best advantage are Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellan. Jackman is Wolverine, the spiritual leader of the X-Men, and the character that’s the most fun. Outside of a wild-and-wooly hairdo, Jackman’s fighting prowess and his sneer are just what the film needs. McKellan provides the style points and has a higher level of acting chops than the rest of the cast. (The only other master thespian on board, Patrick Stewart, plays most of the movie in a hypnotic trance as his Professor X character comes under a bad influence.)

(By the way, McKellan reprises one of the great acting moments, one not seen since Jimmy Stewart ignored a buxom Grace Kelly in his lap in Rear Window. McKellan does have, er, an advantage Stewart didn’t have, but his scene where he ignores a paint-clad Rebecca Romijn-Stamos to focus on a weedy young mutant is a masterpiece of concentration, all the more so because he gets off one of the movie’s signature lines. It’s also more than a little creepy.)

There’s nothing too terribly wrong with X2, other than it tries to do too much and forces too many characters into a limited timespan. If you can ignore the anti-Republican sentiment — which shouldn’t be too hard for some of you — it’s a servicable action flick, and it uses the powers of its characters imaginitively. But in a world that changed, dramatically, between the first and second X-Men flicks, it’s odd and disturbing that the X-Men themselves aren’t engaged in battle against another set of evildoers, one that have done real and lasting damage to the cause of liberty and democracy. X2 feels like a relic of the September 10th era; there’s no real realization that there are threats to mutants — and the rest of us — that don’t come from the Grand Old Party. One wishes that Bryan Singer would have taken a moment, in writing the sequel, to ask why, to review the comic book catechism once again.

Pack of Thieves

In his book Executive Orders, Tom Clancy faces the nation with a biological-warfare attack. In a White House briefing, Clancy helpfully has a character point out that the entire budget for the Dustin Hoffman movie Outbreak is greater than the entire national budget for biological warfare research. The lesson was clear: making entertainment a priority over public safety is a big mistake.

I have no idea what the budget for The Yards is, or for that matter, the budget for vocational training in penal institutions. However, if the former number is greater than the latter number, I suggest that a shift in national priorities is in order. The Yards begins with Leo (Mark Wahlberg) being paroled from prison without much in the way of skills. His Uncle Frank (James Caan) runs a large repair and maintenance yard for the New York City subway system, but he can’t seem to find any work for Leo. He suggests that Leo enroll in a job training program, build some skills as a machinist, and come back when he’s trained. Leo’s other option is to hang out with his best friend Willie (Joaquin Phoenix) who does all of Uncle Frank’s dirty work; it pays better despite an increased chance of getting into trouble.

Well, they don’t make movies about young ex-cons going to trade school, and Leo wastes no time in getting his hands dirty working for Willie. Willie acts as Frank’s concierge; providing Knicks tickets and fur coats and campaign contributions and envelopes full of small, unmarked bills for the powers-that-be in local New York politics. Frank’s company is tied hand and foot to the city, and every contract that goes to a competitor or a minority contractor is a thorn in his side. Willie is there to make sure that the contracts keep coming, and if that means vandalizing the competition or strong-arming the transit cops — or getting Leo into trouble — so be it.

Leo, of course, does get into trouble. However, any further recitation of the dismal and dreary facts of the movie’s denouement would be beside the point. The Yards is a grim, gritty, cynical look at a pack of thieves, none of whom have anything close to a redeeming characteristic, none of whom provide us with any reason to care. Wahlberg isn’t able to summon up any emotion other than inmate sincerity, Phoenix has zero range as a wannabe wiseguy, and Caan is too busy looking world-weary and distracted to provide any veteran acting muscle. The only actor in the movie who turns in a career performance is Steve Lawrence. Think about that.

Actually, the real acting talent in The Yards is from its actresses, but you’d never know it. Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway play the family matriarchs, but they’re mostly adjuncts to the macho posturing. Burstyn, in particular, isn’t given anything to do other than lie in bed and act disappointed for much of the movie. Charlize Theron is also in this movie, but she all but disappears behind a bad Queens accent and a worse hair and makeup job.

Perhaps the worst thing about The Yards is the pacing, the whole thing just… well… inches along, if you know what I mean. It’s a slow, dank, depressing movie, and as remorseless to the audience as it is to the characters. While it’s not a bad movie, per se, there isn’t anything good about it. The normally reliable Wahlberg and the normally glamorous Theron are put to no good use, and the veterans are all too clearly thinking about the paycheck. There’s no evidence of any thought that’s been given to the script — in fact, if there wasn’t TV coverage of the goings-on, you could swear this was a Cagney movie from the Thirties, the movie is so cliched. Outside of drawing attention to the shocking lack of vocational training in our prison system, The Yards is a complete waste of time and celluloid.

P.S. for Joaquin Phoenix: I will have my vengeance, whether in this world, or the next.

Bigger, Longer and Unreviewable

The action in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, starts with a movie-within-a-movie featuring two poorly animated Canadian “comics”. “Terrence and Phillip” sit on a couch, insult each other with outlandish vulgarities, laugh at each other’s flatulence, and sing an amazingly offensive song. The adult audience gets up and walks away in disbelief. The only people left in the theater are the children, sitting on the front row, gorging themselves on popcorn and candy, and laughing themselves silly.

Reviewing the South Park movie is a pointless exercise, like nailing Jell-O to a wall. There’s not an intelligent criticism you can make that can’t be countered by the movie’s fans, those metaphorical kids in the front row. Say that the animation is crude, and they’ll tell you that it’s supposed to be that way. Say that the movie is irredeemably vulgar, they’ll argue that they would have been disappointed if the movie was any less vulgar. Say that the movie intentionally seeks to deliver a body blow to decency and culture, and they’ll say, “That’s kinda the point.” Criticism is even more pointless because the movie itself preemptively strikes out against its critics, labeling them as censorious, intolerant boobs.

While the movie can’t be criticized in any normal way, its message invites analysis. Surprisingly, the two main themes of South Park are, respectively, conservative and libertarian in nature. First, the movie stands for the noble proposition that it is up to parents to discipline their children. When the South Park kids emerge from their fart movie, they sling around foul-mouthed invective like sailors on a particularly tough golf course. Their dimwitted parents immediately jump to the conclusion that their children’s actions are due to the evil influence of our neighbors to the north who created the “Terrence and Phillip” movie, and launch a war to the theme of the Oscar-nominated “Blame Canada”. Fortunately, due to the well-timed intervention of Satan and Saddam Hussein (I never said the movie made sense, just that it had themes), the parents discover the error of their ways, realize they should spend more time listening to their kids, and end the war.

At the same time, South Park enunciates the greatest of all libertarian themes: Leave Us Alone. South Park endlessly satirizes censors and censorship alike. Its main argument is that its opponents are hypocrites for criticizing a silly, pointless cartoon when there is so much else in popular culture — televised violence, emergency room blood and gore, political nattering, Conan O’Brien — that is more deleterious.

But South Park can’t have it both ways. South Park’s creators can’t logically assign moral responsibility to parents while refusing to accept any responsibility itself. (It can’t logically assume a homosexual relationship between Satan and Saddam Hussein, either, but that doesn’t stop it from doing so.) It’s narrow-minded to blame the entertainment industry (or the computer-game industry, or the tobacco industry, or the junk-food industry) for the decline of American manners and morals, but it’s just as narrow-minded for the entertainment industry to wash its hands of responsibility for its own actions and pretend that it doesn’t have any role in the coarsening of our moral fabric. The problem with South Park is not that it is vulgar, but that it is cheerfully unrepentant in its vulgarity. Compare South Park to The Simpsons, whose vulgar characters are at least aware of their vulgarity and intermittently regretful over it.

South Park falls behind The Simpsons in one other key area: it’s not that funny. I admit that South Park is almost insanely clever in spots, primarily in its sharp, edgy, unprintable songs. A couple of the pieces of satire are funny enough to make a cat laugh. At one point, a “V-chip” is inserted into the brain of unregenerate loudmouthed brat Eric Cartman, which shocks him whenever he curses. It’s profoundly stupid, but awfully funny (the first ten times it happens, that is, after which it gets a little tiresome).

But, as I said before, reviewing South Park is an exercise in futility. If you are one of the kids in the front row who think the whole movie is screamingly funny, you are more than welcome to it. If you’re one of those who finds the whole concept breathtakingly appalling, you will be breathlessly appalled. I am in the latter group, myself, but acknowledge that any movie that features the bloody death of Alec Baldwin can’t be all bad.

Catch As Catch Can

I know exactly what Wes Anderson is doing, but I can’t say that I approve, or at least not anymore. I am not saying that he is not brilliant, or innovative, or that his latest work, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, isn’t extraordinarily well-done. I am just saying that I don’t approve of it anymore, that I think he’s going in the wrong direction.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is, like all of Anderson’s films, something of a mirror to its main character. This is especially true of the sublime Rushmore, which is every bit as strange, geeky, and brilliant as its subject, but it’s true of his other works, as well. It’s especially true of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but to understand that, you need to understand Steve Zissou, to the extent that’s even possible.

Steve Zissou is the leader of Team Zissou and the head of the Zissou Society, but more on that in a moment. Zissou is an intrepid but underfunded marine biologist (albiet one who doesn’t know the Latin names of the fish he researches). He commands the oceangoing rustbucket known as the “Belafonte” — a play on Jacques Cousteau’s “Calypso” — along with his crew, which includes a fugitive financier, a former high-school substitute teacher turned moviemaker, a Brazilian “safety expert” who sings the David Bowie discography, translated to Portuguese, a team of student researchers from the University of North Alaska, and Robyn Cohen, who has an ill-defined role that somehow requires her to spend most of her time onscreen with her top off, not that I’m complaining.

Zissou is played by Bill Murray, who is doing the thing that Bill Murray is trying to do now that he’s a Serious Actor. That involves playing things subdued, and except for the occasional spasm or two of stress, Zissou is as subdued as you’d ever want him to be. So, too, is the movie; despite its universe of pastel Speedoes and bright red ski tocques and yellow submarines, what actually happens is subdued almost to the point of narcolepsy. But, since it’s Bill Murray, the whole quirkiness thing has to pop in every now and then, and Steve Zissou and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou are as quirky as you’d ever want them to be.

But Murray at this stage of his career — ever since Rushmore, and that’s probably not a coincidence — isn’t just subdued and quirky, he’s depressed and sad. And, so, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou has to reflect that, as well. In this respect, it is much like the acclaimed (by everyone but me) Lost in Translation, which also reflects the depressive side of the modern Murray character. However, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is much, much better, because it has Filipino pirates, helicopters, kidnapped financial managers, and the mysterious “jaguar shark”, all of which are infinitely more entertaining than karaoke or pachinko or even the sultry curves of Scarlett Johanssen’s butt.

(Note: For whatever reason, I get a ton of hits on my Lost in Translation review for the search phrase “Scarlet Johanssen butt” than I do for almost anything else other than “Angelina Jolie breasts”, which tells me two things: 1. You people don’t have enough to keep you occupied, and 2. This review ought to get lots of hits. Not that I’m complaining or anything.)

So The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is interesting, in its way, and arguably brilliant, but it’s also subdued, and slow, and depressed and depressing at times. It is blessed with excellent cinematography, a very impressive cross-section set for the “Belafonte”, an endless array of “Team Zissou” and “Air Kentucky” sight gags, Cate Blanchette looking like a bronze goddess, and impressive scene-stealers like Jeff Goldblum and Anjelica Huston and Willem Dafoe keeping things interesting. All of this is good, and valuable, and fans of Wes Anderson’s films ought not to miss it.

I just think he’s going in the wrong direction. This is why.

First of all, there’s a sense of aloofness over the whole proceeding — not just the constant inside jokes in another too-cool-for-school holiday picture, Ocean’s 12, but a whole universe of emotional detatchment. We see this a lot in the relationship between Zissou and the young man who could be his son (an unusually subdued Owen Wilson), which is prickly and painful throughout. We see it in Zissou’s relationship with his wife (Huston), who he tries to keep at bay, all too successfully, as it turns out. And that’s fine for Zissou, that’s how he is… but it’s another (and dangerous) thing entirely for Anderson to keep his audience at arm’s length.

Then there’s the nature of the script, which is just… weird. Anderson is a masterful writer, but everything that’s said between characters has a sense of improvisation, as though they’re just making it up as they go along. The whole plot has the same feeling, for what that’s worth, at times, it’s as adrift as the “Belafonte” itself. The spine of the movie is the search for the jaguar shark, which most reviewers have interpreted as being something like Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab on Zanax, maybe. The audience has forgotten all about the jaguar shark by the time it appears (although it is very very cool once it shows up), and there’s evidence that Zissou has too. The whole enterprise seems disoriented and distraught — and even though that’s exactly how Zissou himself feels, it’s not adequate for the task at hand.

On top of that, you have the problem with the tone of the movie. It shouldn’t be surprising that there isn’t a consistent tone to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou — it isn’t a comedy or a tragedy or anything you can pigeonhole; if it were something you could pigeonhole, it wouldn’t be a Wes Anderson film. But all the same, there is death in the movie, and how that death is treated just doesn’t coexist well with the rest of the movie.

Wes Anderson is a genius, and he makes great movies, and the movies that he makes are great largely because they’re not mainstream, they’re not easily accessible to everyone. You have to think about them, you have to spend the time understanding what he’s trying to pull off. That’s wonderful, but at the same time, there’s a balance that has to be respected, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou falls squarely on the debit side of that balance.

Still, having any Wes Anderson movie is better than nothing, and the next one should be better for the experience. Until then, it’s catch as catch can, as it usually is.

Dashing and Dangerous

The title begs the question: Why the mask of Zorro? Zorro would have been a perfectly good title, save that this movie has actually two Zorros — Anthony Hopkins as the legendary bandit and Antonio Banderas as his young protege. The Sword of Zorro would have been all right as a title — there is enough swordplay to delight the heart of the most avid Errol Flynn fan. The Horse of Zorro would have been a cool title, too — Zorro’s black stallion Tornado is a source of occasional slapstick. For those more interested in the physique of Banderas, you could have The Pants of Zorro — or, contrariwise, The Plunging Neckline of Catherine Zeta-Jones — both of which get ample screen time.

But, no, it’s the mask that’s most important. The mask allows Zorro to do the dashing and dangerous things that he does, while still allowing him access to the society of Old California. But like everything else, in life, the mask isn’t so simple. All the main characters in The Mask of Zorro wear masks of one sort or another — save the lovely Ms. Zeta-Jones, for whom a mask would only hide her sensuous beauty. It’s the masks that give The Mask of Zorro a little bit of psychologial resonance and lift it above its origins as a costume swashbuckler.

Hopkins appears first as Zorro, mask and all. To its credit, The Mask of Zorro figures that we already know who Zorro is — there’s no explication of his origin, how he came to wear the mask, or any of that stuff. There’s just a great action sequence (it would be the climax of a lesser movie) which sets up the legend and the relationship between Zorro and chief baddie Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson). However, no mask is perfect. Hopkins is unmasked, his wife is killed, and his daughter kidnapped by Montero.

The action restarts 20 years later, as Montero returns to California with Zorro’s daughter (the aforementioned luscious Zeta-Jones) at his side. Wilson has to wear a mask, too — he has adopted Zeta-Jones as his daughter, and must hide his dark, scheming heart behind a veneer of courtliness and gentility. Wilson is much better than this than, say, Alan Rickman in Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood movie. It’s a quality performance in a quality movie.

The titular mask, though, belongs to Banderas, and he wears it nobly. We first see Banderas as an unlettered Mexican bandito,
picked by Hopkins to be his instrument of revenge. We see a training sequence where Banderas learns to fence and tumble, and there’s a gloriously goofy comic sequence where he tries to steal a horse and fails miserably. But the bandit’s mask isn’t all Banderas has to wear. He has to impersonate a Spanish don so that he may get intelligence from Don Rafael — and not incidentally, dance a passionate tango with the beauteous Zeta-Jones. (We are spared a lot of the Eliza Doolittle business that must have gone on between the elder and younger Zorros — who wanted to see Hopkins dancing with Banderas, anyway?)

While all this is going on, Hopkins has to wear yet another mask — as the humble servant to Banderas’s ersatz don, which leads to a couple of very touching scenes. All of the masks everyone wears gives the movie a strong psychological dimension that would be lacking if this was a straight action movie. Not that the action isn’t great — it’s just fine, with some great swashbuckling scenes — but the real action is of the mind and the heart. The Mask of Zorro succeeds because it’s driven by good performances and a good story. It’s clearly a sword slash above this summer’s mindless action films.

You’re So Vain

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:11 (KJV)

Ben Stiller’s Zoolander is a vanity project, and we are taught that vanity is a sin. It has always been so in the movie business. Hollywood is full of many besetting sins, of course - too many to enumerate here - but vanity has always been the worst. It was vanity that made Kevin Costner don the uniform of the United States Postal Service in The Postman. It was vanity that made John Travolta wear those stiletto jackboots in Battlefield Earth. It was vanity that made Bruce Willis brave enough to sing duets with Danny Aiello in Hudson Hawk. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, and - at least in the movie business - there is no profit under the sun.

(Despite these cautionary examples, though, there seems to be no end to the steady stream of vanity movies. Zoolander is the second vanity release in as many weeks, behind Mariah Carey’s Glitter. It’s also the second comic spoof on vanity movies, the other being Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.)

Ben Stiller is smart enough to know that Zoolander is a vanity movie, and he acknowledges this by making his character incredibly vain. “Vain, dumb, and incredibly self-centered,” is one character’s description of Derek Zoolander, America’s leading male model. He’s also one of the dumbest male models out there, which puts him in contention for the dumbest man on earth. Male models, we learn, are as a rule dumb to the point of Darwinian selection. Zoolander is one of the dimmest bulbs in town, and Stiller makes him the butt of countless jokes. (It says something that the smartest character in the movie is a blonde, played by Stiller’s wife Christine Taylor.)

One of the running gags in Zoolander is the trademark Derek Zoolander “look”, called “blue steel”, which involves him pursing his cheeks in a pointed pout. That’s on display occasionally, but the main Zoolander look displayed in the movie could be appropriately called “deer in the headlights”; Zoolander knits his brow and looks completely befuddled at any display of intelligence. It’s a look that is used a lot. The whole movie, at times, seems to be Zoolander reaction shots.

There are only so many jokes you can get out of stupidity and shallowness (and this summer’s Legally Blonde used up most of them), and Zoolander goes to the well once too often. Zoolander is a movie that is terribly uneven, with some very inspired and funny moments sprinkled here and there amidst long stretches of boredom. (Worse, the trailer gives away the funniest moments in the movie.) Some of the running jokes - the ingratiating helpfulness of Taylor’s assistant, the composition of Owen Wilson’s entourage - are very funny in a sly way. But there’s not enough of this kind of humor, and there’s too much reliance on Derek Zoolander’s wide-eyed earnest stupidity to carry the movie.

The nice thing about Zoolander is that, for a vanity project, it manages to be a generous movie. Stiller is obviously having a lot of fun playing Derek Zoolander, so much so that he’s willing to give away much of the movie’s humor to other characters. In the best vanity project tradition, Stiller employs his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, as well as wife Christine Taylor, all in unmemorable parts. There are any number of cameo appearances, too many really to list. The best of these are David Bowie (who really ought to be given a shot at playing a James Bond villain one of these days) and David Duchovny as a paranoid hand model, and Garry Shandling, for no apparent reason.

The best addition to the cast is Owen Wilson, playing a descendant of his dim-bulb character from Shanghai Noon. Wilson’s character is a rival male model, and his existential cowboy cool does more for the movie than any of Stiller’s pouts. (”Sting is a hero of mine,” he says, “I don’t listen to his music, but I respect that he’s out there making it.”) The rest of the cast is nothing special, with Milla Jovovich doing her Natasha Fatale impression as the villainess, and Will Farrell reprising his SNL “Dog Show” character, but with worse hair and an uglier dog. (Farrell might just have a career in vanity projects; he appears in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back as well.)

If Zoolander has any merit at all it is that it is better than other vanity projects out there. This is not any kind of recommendation, just a realization that there are worse things available. Zoolander is a dumb movie that’s not nearly as funny as it ought to be. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity, and Zoolander is just too vain for its own good.