Author: Patricia Ducey

LFM Review: You Again

By Patricia Ducey. Gone with the Wind it’s not. Heck, it’s not even My Best Friend’s Wedding. But You Again is a pleasant enough production from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, with some truly funny moments – and a lot of real heart. It’s the kind of family movie that the broadcast networks used to make before TV was handed over to reality show contestants and serial killers. You Again is a chick flick perfect for a tween or teen (but maybe not the boys), or anyone who can remember the sting of high school bullies.

Director Andy Frickman casts his New York stage pal Kristen Bell as Marni, an ugly duckling outsider in high school who has grown into a successful and beautiful career woman. She handles her PR firm duties with grace and aplomb. But her hard won self-confidence starts to crumble when her Mom announces that Marni’s beloved brother Will (James Wolk) is to marry, and the bride-to-be is none other than Marni’s high school nemesis, Joanna (Odette Yustman). Joanna was the head cheerleader, the gorgeous Alpha Girl, who led the torment against acne-ridden dweeb Marni. When the wary Marni returns home for the wedding weekend, however, she finds a new Joanna -someone who may or may not remember her at all, and who may or may not have morphed into an angel. Soon Joanna reveals the cause of her life change: she lost both of her parents in a car crash, and decided to dedicate the rest of her life to something that would make them proud.

Mom Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis) and father (Victor Garber) and even the family pooch clearly adore Joanna, but Marni can’t help herself; her jealousy resurfaces once again. She tries to accept the new Joanna, but Marni still hasn’t tamed her inner loser. Ever suspicious, she eventually uncovers some evidence to justify some sweet, sweet revenge. We watch as Marni regresses, physically and emotionally, back to her high school days as her resentment overwhelms her mature career woman persona.

Kristen Bell and Odette Yustman in "You Again."

In that one improbable coincidence allowed any plot line, Joanna’s only surviving relative, Aunt Mona (Sigourney Weaver), arrives for the wedding weekend and turns out to be none other than Gail’s former high school nemesis. Gail soon learns that giving advice about jealousy is a lot easier than living it. So, on two levels, all these women will have to confront the green eyed-monsters still lurking in their hearts if they are to survive as a family. You Again is otherwise full of pratfalls and silliness, as well as drama, as it meanders toward the climactic rehearsal dinner.

You Again stands in stark contrast to the summer romantic comedy hit Easy A, which the critics loved, in that it doesn’t despise its audience. The family in You Again loves, and likes, each other. They’re human, though, and fall victim to their human foibles. These characters are surprised and disheartened by their own weaknesses – and do their best to conquer them. Sometimes they do make old grudges right, and the movie actually tells you why this is important. So if your daughter or niece wants to see a movie, steer her to You Again – not Easy A.

I chuckled when I checked the reviews of You Again—90% of the critics hated it, so I figured I would like it. The movie been called trite and sit-com-ish – and in some ways, that’s true. Marni’s family is intact, affectionate, and practically snark-free. Characters do tussle and fall into swimming pools. More than once. [By the way, Odette Yustman might just give Megan Fox a run for her money with her brunette good looks and mad rapping skills. Betty White also handles the Grandma Bunny duties well—and keep your eyes peeled for a few other cameos by ‘80s stars.] The dreaded patriarchy rears its head when Dad finally lays down the law and tells his squabbling women “enough.”  Meh. I liked it. It may seem trite to jaded movie critics – but judging from the laughter in my theater, audiences liked it too.

Posted on September 27th, 2010 at 7:19am.

LFM Review: Easy A

By Patricia Ducey. The threshold question any movie review has to answer is, should you see this movie?  [Sigh.] There are some things to like in Easy A, but I can’t give it a nod.

First, the good: Easy A is a teen movie without much actual sex—the kids are still for the most part as innocent as, well, real kids.The story reflects on literature, like The Scarlet Letter or author Mark Twain, as well as the late John Hughes’ (more accomplished) teen oeuvre. Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci steal every scene they are in as our teen heroine Olive’s adorably loopy parents—they leave the Focker folks in the dust. Director Will Gluck intentionally pokes fun at their obnoxious PC-ness: every time they trill “no judgment” you know they are going to indeed judge someone. The dialogue, although self-consciously snarky, at times sparkles with wit, and Gluck and his cast have mastered their comic timing. Emma Stone as Olive and Penn Badgley as Todd, the couple in romantic jeopardy, are too old by a decade for the roles, as per usual – but are affecting. That’s the first two acts.

Now, for the not-so-good: this movie is totally bereft of values or character and thus fails as a story or as a lesson. And the stock character of The Princess, a feature of most every high school movie, has now been transformed into a Christian Princess – thereby exploiting what is increasingly becoming the new “Other” in filmdom: Christians.  At least director Will Gluck has had the presence of mind to state in recent interviews that he regrets this decision.

Then why did he do it? The Pew Center reports that 78.5% of Americans identify as Christians. Why would a purportedly capitalist enterprise like a Hollywood movie studio continually insult the majority of its audience? The only answer to this seemingly contradictory impulse is ideology.

I cringe at the thought of the story meetings on this one. Here once more the Hollywood myth machine offers us its alternative to the Judeo-Christian ethic: identity politics. Look at any police procedural on TV these days, for example, and watch out for the White Christian Male. He’s probably guilty of something. In teen movies, if you are a smart kid or gay, you are good. If you are Christian, you are bad. This is your lesson for the day. [And it’s an irrelevant lesson, if we’re supposed to be avoiding stereotypes of minority groups altogether.]

Gluck could have utilized the technique employed by movies from Lawrence of Arabia to TV’s 24: vary things up. For example, do not use Muslims solely as terrorists – but include Muslim characters as counterterrorism agents or ordinary people. In Easy A’s case, why not have one of the Christian kids decide to stick up for Olive, because it’s wrong to ostracize someone? You know, she could say something like: her faith compels her to walk her talk, ‘hate the sin but love the sinner,’ etc. That way you would get a villain, and some truthfulness, that this movie has abandoned.

As the trailer above reveals, Olive agrees to fake a sexual encounter with Brandon, a gay student, so that he can gain some high school cred with the bully boys. She agrees, as a misguided teen might. Surely she will come to her senses and right this wrong and support Brandon in his quest for real acceptance by the last reel? Sadly, no. She accepts a gift card from him in “payment” for her deed. As word gets around, more boys approach her and pay her for their own fake deflowering. Why does she do it, why does she accept money for it? Her family is well off; there is no set-up explaining that she needs the money. She just takes it, like any prostitute would. There goes the parallel story with Hester Prynne, who did not ask for or accept a penny from anyone. The rest of the class gradually ostracizes her, led by the evangelical Marianne (Amanda Bynes) and her Christian club mates. And you can guess what is coming—the Christians themselves are a bunch of hypocrites! Continue reading LFM Review: Easy A

LFM Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Scott & Ramona.

By Patricia Ducey. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is an action-packed, coming of age adventure that even non-gamers – or those unfamiliar with the original graphic novel – can enjoy. Pilgrim is adapted from Canadian Brian Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels of the same name by writer/director Edgar Wright (of comedy classic Shaun of the Dead) and remains true to the visuals and the spirit of O’Malley’s story. But Wright grabs every film and cultural reference he can and brings the novel to life in a bold and raucous romp through 20-something slackerdom and redemption.

Michael Cera, of Superbad fame and present day reigning filmic geek, graduates in Pilgrim vs. the World into action hero and possibly into mature manhood. Cera plays a 22-year-old bass guitarist living in a one-room shack with best friend/gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin in a fine performance). He and his buddies are trying to break into indie rock stardom with their garage band Sex Bob-omb, while Scott manages or mismanages his complicated, feckless love life.  (The band is actually pretty good, with songs written by Beck.)

Scott lives partly in Toronto and partly in his own fevered dreams. He is a serial heartbreaker who refuses to take responsibility for the trail of tears he leaves behind when he bails. He negotiates the vagaries of a multiculti, multi-sexual limbo of 20-something slackerdom; he and his buddies are adrift, jobless, unable to commit to anything or anyone. His chaste romance with a 17-year-old (and thus unavailable) schoolgirl Knives Chau personifies that emotional paralysis.

His hesitant heart explodes, though, when he spies the beautiful and aloof Ramona Flowers, a woman his own age, whose disinterest proves the headiest of aphrodisiacs. After one date, he discovers the roots of her melancholy withdrawal—a string of mean ex-boyfriends who have wounded her, she fears, for good. To win her, he must first defeat these 7 jealous ex-boyfriends, now allies in the nefarious League of Evil Exes (Axis of Evil?) and release her from the past.  Scott easily vanquishes first ex Mathew Patel, an Indian-Canadian hipster, who then breaks into a Bollywood danceoff accompanied by his demon chick backup dancers. After defeating an angry lesbian and a vegan rock star, Scott approaches the last level and last ex, Evil Exes ringleader Gideon, the one who still holds sway over Ramona’s affections. In a nod to the classic Rushmore, Gideon is played by the grandfather of all lovelorn nerd heroes, a now grown up Jason Schwartzman.

Canadian O’Malley’s Toronto, filmed in lovely tones of winter black and white, proves a lovely palate cleanser when sequences of dazzling special effects and primary-colored graphics threaten to overwhelm.  Wright borrows visuals from PacMan to Wii, the original TV show Batman, manga, comic book split screen close-ups, and even inserts of O’Malley’s original pen and ink drawings from his Scott Pilgrim novel series.

Pilgrim has been described as the first movie for the joystick generation, and it may well be the first ‘post-liberal’ film, as well. The characters exist in the fullness of well-developed character, not as motes in some polemicist’s eye. Wallace’s sexuality is but one facet of his character: he is neither Magical Gay nor Victim Gay. The racial identity of Knives Chau or Mathew Patel is as important to the narrative as Scott’s — which is to say, not at all. Pilgrim also merrily and mercilessly jabs at a few PC targets like vegans, in a laugh-out-loud sequence involving one of Ramona’s exes.

Pilgrim vs. the World at almost two hours may be a couple of villainous exes too long — O’Malley claims they structured the story like a game, with confrontations that lead to higher levels or to doom — but its heart and its values redeem it all in the end. Pilgrim is probably safe for teenagers, with a few sexual references and excesses, but Scott and his buddies learn a few lessons about responsibility and empathy, and the world rights itself.

Kudos to Wright for keeping it PG and exploiting fully the dispensation from cynicism that Hollywood grants to Young Adult fare; for all its techno razzle-dazzle, Pilgrim v. World honors a very traditional narrative that respects its ‘message’ and its young viewers both.

Posted on August 24th, 2010 at 3:29pm.

Review: Cairo Time

By Patricia Ducey. Time in Cairo is slow. Very slow. Glances are exchanged. Background concertos are heard. Sparks, however, are not ignited, ever, between Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), an American magazine editor and Tareq (Alexander Siddig of Syriana), her supposed Romeo in Cairo Time.

This is not Shakespeare, or even English Patient (a great weepy if ever there was one). This is one nuanced love affair.

Juliette and Tareq represent archetypes of the East and West, yet they are actually more alike than different: both inhabit internationalist circles – Tareq just recently retired from the U.N., where he came to know Juliet’s husband (a UN operative in Gaza), and Juliet herself a feminist women’s magazine editor. Not much of a culture clash here. At a few points in the film Tareq lightly (and rightly) scolds Juliet for her easy outrage over a few social problems in Egypt. This hints at further story is to come, perhaps a real discussion of custom and culture, but nothing develops. (The Last King of Scotland, by contrast, brilliantly portrayed the deadly consequences of feckless liberalism in its main character.)

Juliette arrives in Cairo to await her husband’s arrival from Gaza so they can enjoy a long dreamed of vacation together. He is delayed, though, by trouble in the refugee camp he manages – so he asks his old friend Tareq to see after his wife until he can join her. Juliette seems anxious, tentative and tongue-tied from the start – odd behavior for a successful magazine editor. We wonder why – middle age crisis, bad marriage, illness? – but we never find out. She loves her husband, children, and her job. Tareq tries to draw her out but she rebuffs him. Later, though, she mystifyingly shows up at his men-only coffeehouse to visit him – not once but twice.

This fog of ambiguity never clears, and slows the movie down to a crawl. Juliette wanders the streets alone, inexplicably tossing aside her husband’s warnings about women traveling alone. Naïve, self-destructive? One can only ponder. This behavior does reveal the only people who seem to know who they are, sadly: the bands of leering men on the Cairo streets who consider her, a Western woman alone on the street, as something south of “available.”

Juliette finally takes action after her husband is delayed again and again. She hops a bus to the border and to Gaza to find him, but the Egyptian police stop the bus and send her back to the hotel; they realize the situation in Gaza is dangerous.  As Juliette follows the police, her seatmate – a young Egyptian woman – stuffs an envelope into Juliette’s hands and implores her to deliver it to her lover back in Cairo. Again, hints at a story: tension, mixed up in politics, danger – but this too goes nowhere. She gives the letter to the young woman’s lover.

Non-doomed lovers.

The narrative of any melodrama demands some rupture of the moral code. English Patient’s doomed love story was played out on the canvas of a World War, when the old world order was collapsing in England and the Middle East. The lovers in English Patient violated every norm of class, race, gender and sexual orientation and died in agony for their transgressions. Patricia Clarkson’s protagonist, on the other hand, is a modern Western woman and thus is left with no moral code to rupture whatsoever. What will she lose if she betrays her husband, what would happen if she did betray him with Tareq? Not much. Tareq is an Egyptian Muslim who is kind of secular, kind of not. We are not quite sure what his moral code is either, or if he has one. Perhaps this is why the greatest doomed love stories take place at least pre-1950.

Canadian writer/director Ruba Nadda has underwritten both the characters and the story. The characters’ physicality – walking, talking, eye gazing, walking, talking – as well as their sparse dialogue reveal little. Clarkson and Siddig do their best but have little to work with.

My inner writer asks, what do these characters want? Apparently not each other. Or at least not very much. Perhaps Juliette will remain faithful to her husband, perhaps not, but it is of no real import to a woman in the grips of such anomie. Tareq was content pre-Juliette and is content post-Juliette.  I am not asking for these characters to outrun a fireball or gun down CIA assassins – I just want to know why their lives and loves matter.

Posted on August 10th, 2010 at 9:36am.

LFM Reviews: Kisses

Kelly O'Neill & Shane Curry from "Kisses."

By Patricia Ducey. Kisses, a 2008 Irish film and favorite at many important festivals, is now in wider release throughout the US this summer.  [See the trailer below.]  Writer/director Lance Daly spins a tale of two abused Irish kids from the unfashionable outskirts of Dublin who run away from home to find freedom from family strife. No leprechauns or legends in this Ireland – the film takes place in a modern, industrialized Ireland, chockablock with rusting warehouses, traffic jams, and pop culture references. Daly, after a few preview screenings in the US, has wisely provided subtitles to aid the American ear in decoding the Irish patois. [I implore other filmmakers whose films are not in spoken American English to do the same. I’m talking to you, Sarah Gavron.]

The Irish Film Board, Bord Scannán na hÉireann, which has been financing and promoting the national cinema of Ireland since the 1990s, helped finance Kisses. What is the “national” cinema of Ireland, though, in actuality? Films written or produced by Irish persons, or films about Ireland? Or some permutation of both? Irish filmmakers have borrowed from early American films, like the docudrama Man of Aran or the romanticized The Quiet Man, and vice versa.  I spent some time in Ireland in the ’90s, when the Board first starting supporting these films – I was researching my thesis on this subject – and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a purely national cinema. But times were good in Ireland then, and the Board plowed ahead. Irish moviegoers, though, voted with their feet and many of these board-supported films ended up, oddly, being shown in art houses in Ireland – while the likes of Mrs. Doubtfire drew the crowds near Grafton Street.  Whether it is smart for any government to support the arts is debatable – just look at the bidding war over tax incentives for movie production here in the US – but such a debate has begun in Ireland due to the now faltering Irish economy.

Young Shane Curry in "Kisses."

The truth is that film and narrative have always been ‘globalized’ and Kisses is no exception. The two runaways, Kylie and Dylan, live in a neighborhood Antoine Doinel would feel at home in. The runaways cadge a ride down the canal ala Huck Finn, courtesy of a Russian émigré boatman who introduces the kids to Dylan’s namesake – Jewish/Christian American folk rocker Bob Dylan – with his impromptu rendition of “Shelter From the Storm.”  And later Dylan learns a lesson about the give and take of love from a Jamaican prostitute eking out a living in Dublin.

Dylan and Kylie’s world, though, is a drab working class Ireland. The two families live in comfortable enough homes, but Dylan’s father, a handsome guy, drinks and bullies, while Kylie’s uncle fools everyone in the family except her – she knows from bitter experience what he really is.  Both Dylan and Kylie reach the end of their respective ropes on Christmas Day; one battle royale, one unwanted advance too many, and they are off, with Kylie egging Dylan on to make a run for it. They hop a river barge to the city, and the adventure begins – for good and ill.

The cinematography is lovely. Daly shoots the opening scenes of the housing development in bleak black and white, and lets the color slowly seep into the frame as the kids and the boatman get farther and farther away from home (a nod to The Wizard of Oz? Again, the cross-pollination of film). The two child stars, real Dublin kids Kelly O’Neill as Kylie (a Drew Barrymore look-alike) and Shane Curry as Dylan, shine as newcomers. Daly draws joyous and heartbreaking performances from both of them, without the wise-assery or precociousness we see in so many preteen stories. I wished that perhaps Kylie was a little less heroic a heroine, but that’s a minor quibble.

If you liked a recent Irish film Once, you will like Kisses. Kisses is the anti-Inception. It is small and slight but you won’t forget it – just like your first kiss.


Posted on July 26th, 2010 at 12:45pm.

New French Competition for Pixar? LFM Reviews Despicable Me

Gru, the not-so-villainous villain of "Despicable Me."

[Editor’s Note: “Despicable Me” dominated the weekend box office, taking in over $60 million.]

By Patricia Ducey. Gru’s archvillain mojo is beginning to fade – even his mom (Julie Andrews) calls to needle him when another, better, villain steals the Great Pyramid of Egypt. Even Gru’s usual evil misdeeds, like scaring his suburban neighbors, aren’t as much fun as they used to be. Somehow he has to concoct an even bigger heist to take back his title, so to speak – and gain his mother’s love?

In its first release, Universal’s family unit Illumination scores a solid hit with Despicable Me (directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud). Full of wit and heart and remarkably free of left-leaning messages (no cynicism, environmentalism or US bashing here), Despicable is actually quite lovable. (I quickly forgave the one stereotype of people from Alabama in an early scene, when they skewered Keith Olbermann in the next.) At 95 minutes, it’s just right for kids.

Gru (ably voiced by Steve Carell) decides to steal the Moon, using a Shrink Ray gun, but he needs venture capital to get the project, literally, off the ground. Aided by Dr. Nefario, in a hilarious turn by Russell Brand – and hundreds of tiny yellow, perhaps robot, minions (Grunions?) – he hatches a plan. Gru rallies his minions a la Steve Jobs, in a very funny scene only the adults will get.

At the “Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Brothers),” though, loan officer Mr. Perkins is not impressed. Perkins dismisses Gru with a curt: “We’re going with somebody younger.” Later we learn that Perkins is actually funding his son Victor, now ‘Vector,’ as top villain after his triumphant swiping of the Pyramid.

A not-so-master criminal.

If Gru can’t build a Shrink Ray, he will steal a Shrink Ray. After all, he is a villain. Gru decides to adopt three orphan girls who have managed to gain access to Vector’s lair by selling Vector his favorite cookies. But the best laid plans sometime go awry, and Gru finds himself falling for the delightful little girls instead. Continue reading New French Competition for Pixar? LFM Reviews Despicable Me