Easy A (2010)

Tags

Alyson Michalka, Amanda Bynes, Comedy, Dan Byrd, Easy A, Emma Stone, Lisa Kudrow, Movie, Patricia Clarkson, Penn Badgley, Romance, Stanley Tucci, Thomas Haden Church

look, honey, we're not always going to be there to carry the movie. at some point you're going to have to find some other interesting characters to hang out with...

PG-13

Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Dan Byrd, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Alyson Michalka, Lisa Kudrow

Random Guy: Hey Olive, how’s it going?
Olive: I’m swell…guy I’ve never talked to before.  Thanks for asking.

Olive (Stone) makes up a story about losing her virginity in order to shut up a friend who’s asking about it, not realizing that somebody else was listening to their conversation.  When this rumor spreads like wildfire, Olive embraces her new image as school tramp and even finds a way to make some money out of it.  Of course, things start to go too far, get out of control, etc, etc.

Okay, I have several problems with this movie.  Some are minor, nit-picky things, and others are larger, more important issues.

I’ll start with a couple nit-picky things.  First, if Olive is so invisible (which I find hard to believe in the first place) at school (as she states in the opening voice over), how is it that this rumor about her spreads so quickly to everyone?  I know if a similar thing had happened to me in school, most people’s reaction would be “who is this person, and why do I give a crap about their sex life??”  Yet, we see this rumor spreading around to people like they just found out Justin Bieber(yeah, I went there) is going to start attending their school.  It’s a California high school, nobody would care.  Maybe if it was middle school, then it would be more understandable, but…well…that would be a whole different kind of movie.

Second nit-picky thing: eighth grade Olive looks nothing like high school Olive.  How hard is it to find an actress that at least looks somewhat like Emma Stone?  Nobody shapeshifts that much between eighth grade and high school.

Now on to the bigger issues.  Why is it that the adult characters are so much more interesting than the high school kids.  Only Olive has any sort of intelligent dialogue written for her.  Everybody else is just a stereotype.  The dumb jocks, the ditzy blond, the nutty Christian kids, the put-upon gay character, and on and on.  Nothing nuanced here.

As I mentioned, though, the adult characters, specifically Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as Olive’s parents, shine much brighter than anything else in this movie.  Every time they were on screen, my interest picked up.  I could have watched an entire movie about them and it would have been much much better than this one.

The other big issue:  I just didn’t find it that funny.

I like Emma Stone, and I think she can definitely carry a movie, but she deserves better than this.  There are a few funny moments outside of the scenes with the parents, but for the most part it’s just another shallow teen comedy going for easy laughs via cliches and low-brow humor (gee, a scene where two people go into a room and loudly pretend to have sex in order to trick people…how novel).

Check that all the stalls are empty before you start confessing things (whether true or not) in the bathroom.

10 – 2 for so many poorly written characters – 1 for too many unbelievable plot aspects – 1.5 because it’s just not that funny + .2 for Tucci and Clarkson = 5.7

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Whatever Works (2009)

Tags

Comedy, Evan Rachel Wood, Larry David, Movie, Patricia Clarkson, Whatever Works

so wait...your last BOYfriend's name was Marilyn? I don't understand...

PG-13

Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson

Randy: I dreamt about you last night.
Melodie: Don’t use that line, because Boris said that he dreamt about me last night, and I really doubt it’s mathematically possible for me to be in two dreams at one time.

Boris Yellnikof (David) is a bitter, angry genius who sees other people as simpletons.  He suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, and he generally keeps to himself ever since his wife left him.  Boris meets a young homeless girl, Melodie (Wood), and gives her a place to stay.  She develops a crush on him and he develops a tolerance of her, and more, as he realizes how easily she takes on his own beliefs.

Since watching this movie, I’ve been trying to get a firm grasp on just where it’s coming from.  What message is it trying to get across?  First of all, I have to admit something though.  I’ve never seen an entire Woody Allen movie.  Any time I’ve seen part of one, he annoys me so much that I can’t keep watching.  Thankfully, he’s not in this movie, and Larry David takes over the role I assume Woody would normally play.

I do know that some things about the movie bugged me, though I’m wondering if the movie was going for irony at times.  But, I can’t really assume that, so I’ll go from the angle that the movie really was making fun of backwards, repressed, idiot southerners.  I thought that whole aspect of it was sort of insulting.  Not that I really take things like that very personally, but it’s just so stereotypical and over done.  The dumb southerners come up to New York and are enlightened by the sophisticated northerners.  They realize their religious beliefs are all bogus, that they should start experimenting with sex and drugs, their artistic sides are suddenly free to blossom, etc.  I’d like to think that the movie is making fun of these stereotypes, but I didn’t get that impression.

I have to say, it’s pretty funny at times, and Evan Rachel Wood is very enjoyable as Melodie.  In fact, she’s probably the bright spot of the movie.  Patricia Clarkson is good, as always, but her character bugged me and was part of the whole insulting dumb southerner part of it.  For some reason I can tolerate Larry David.  I liked him well enough on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but his character is more annoying in this movie.  Yet, he’s still tolerable.

Overall, the laughs just didn’t quite balance out the annoying aspects of the movie, in my opinion.  In the end, a movie that seems to want to say that anything you do is okay with it ends up looking surprisingly intolerable towards beliefs and lifestyles it doesn’t agree with.  To me, a more appropriate title would have been “Whatever Works (As Long as I Don’t Think It’s Stupid)”.

People from the south are idiots.

10 – 2.5 for the whole dumb, repressed southerners angle – 1.1 for some annoying characters – .5 for all the times Larry David talks to the camera…I hate that = 5.9

Pieces of April (2003)

Tags

Alison Pill, Comedy, Derek Luke, Drama, John Gallagher Jr., Katie Holmes, Movie, Oliver Platt, Patricia Clarkson, Pieces of April

ok, I have a sensible wardrobe and I live in a nice neighborhood...what more does my family want??

PG-13

Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Derek Luke, Alison Pill, John Gallagher Jr.

April: We had these when I was a kid.  The one time Joy let me hold them she said, “Be careful, they’re worth more than you are.”
Bobby: Well, that’s terrible.
April:  Next year they were gone.
Bobby: So, what happened?
April: A hammer I was holding fell on them.

April (Holmes) is the black sheep of the Burns family.  The “first pancake” as she says, meaning the one that’s always messed up and you’re supposed to throw out.  In order to try to reconcile with them, she has invited them all to her apartment in New York for a Thanksgiving dinner.  April’s mother, Joy (Clarkson) has cancer and may not be around for much longer.  The drive is difficult for her physically and emotionally, and the family considers turning back multiple times.  Meanwhile, April is struggling to find a working oven in her building that she can use to cook the turkey.

This is a mostly typical feel-good movie, despite all the angry and sad feelings, but it’s done quite well and features several fine performances along the way.  It looks good, despite the limited locations (apartment, car…apartment…hallway…car), and the writing is witty and believable, for the most part.  Some of the characters say and do things just for the sake of creating drama, but not to the extent that it gets annoying.

Even though the ending is a little too over the top with sentimentality and sudden changes of heart, I still thought it was touching and well done.  Katie Holmes carries the film well and is likable beyond just the pretty eyes.  In fact, it kind of left me wondering why the family dislikes her so much, but I guess we’re seeing her after she’s jettisoned many of the bad influences in her life.  Her family refuses to believe that she could ever change into somebody they could be proud of, so this dinner is her one big chance to prove to them otherwise.

While it’s not a particularly important film and could have been tightened up a bit here and there, I still liked it.  I enjoyed the writing, the acting, the cinematography, and the music.  Didn’t love it all, but liked it.  Enough that I’d watch it again.  In fact, it’d make a good Thanksgiving Day movie…despite all the cancer talk.

Make sure your oven is functioning well before you need to use it to fix a big dinner.

10 – .8 for having a few lulls here and there – 1 for some character behavior that was obviously there just to drive the plot and create drama – .8 for overdoing the sentimentality at the end = 7.4

Married Life (2007)

Tags

Chris Cooper, Drama, Married Life, Movie, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdams, Suspense

yes, I know who you are...but my answer is still Sean Connery...

PG-13

Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdams, Patricia Clarkson

Kay: I only had him for about 3 years, but I really don’t regret a moment.
Richard: You’re lucky.
Kay: Why?  Do you regret anything?
Richard: Lots…and much more to come…

Harry (Cooper) is a middle aged, married man who has fallen in love with a younger woman, Kay (McAdams).  Harry introduces Kay to his best friend, Richard (Brosnan), who is also instantly interested in Kay.  While Richard plots to steal Kay away from his friend, Harry decides that the only way to leave his wife without leaving her devastated emotionally is to kill her.

As any loyal reader of mine knows, I’m a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, and always enjoy seeing his influence in a movie, or even just a movie that has that Hitchcock feel.  This movie has that, and even contains some references to ol’ Alfred as well.  The phrase “the trouble with Harry” is uttered at one point, which is the title of a Hitchcock film.  Then there’s another scene where Harry is walking up some stairs, bringing a tray of food to his wife that is taken straight out of the movie Suspicion.  There were probably other references, but I didn’t catch them.

Director Ira Sachs also pulls off another Hitchcock-like trick, and that is to make the viewer say “oh no!” when they think Harry might be caught trying to poison his wife.  That is until you realize, oh yeah, I should be rooting against the guy trying to kill his perfectly nice wife.  Though, I shouldn’t say perfectly nice because his wife, Pat (Clarkson), has some secrets of her own.

It’s a credit to the actors that the characters all come off as likable, even though they’re all up to some truly deceitful and cruel activity.  McAdams and Cooper are particularly good, though Brosnan, while likable, seems oddly non-energetic.  He narrates the movie and is a key player, but when he disappears for about 10 to 15 minutes at one point, I barely noticed he was gone.

This was not a great movie (a good one, for sure), but it’s kind of a throwback to those good old days of movies that relied on dialogue, emotions, and character development to build tension and suspense, rather than violence and an over-stylistic approach.  Being set in 1949 probably helped that a bit too, but it just as easily could have been set in modern day.  My only real problem with it is that it seemed to pull its punch at the end.  I won’t say much more about the ending, other than it seemed like all the tension that was built up just petered out rather than really hitting the viewer hard.  It wasn’t a bad ending, but it felt like it let some of the characters off the hook in a way.

Still, I enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind a character driven suspense movie that relies more on dialogue than shock value.

Don’t trust your best friend around your girlfriend…especially if he looks just like James Bond.

10 – 1.4 for a few dull/repetitive moments – 1.2 for an ending that didn’t seem to entirely fit with the rest of the movie + .3 for some good performances = 7.7