Category Archives: 2008 Movies
W. (2008)
Director Oliver Stone’s first draft at history is never boring but it’s rarely insightful. The film portrays George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) as a stubborn and simple man trying to live outside his abilities and the long shadow of his successful and emotionally distant father. George W. was not the favored son, as he is routinely reminded, and Ma and Pa Bush express their frustration. And yet the son who did not have his family’s support and acumen accomplished what no one else in the family had. He won reelection. He toppled Saddam Hussein. And then it all came crashing down. Ultimately, who was this movie made for? The detractors of Bush will view the film being too light, providing a psychological context that humanizes the man amongst his mistakes. You may even feel some sympathy as George W. repeatedly tries to earn his father’s approval. The movie is not a partisan or mean-spirited skewering. The fans of Bush will consider the film to be a cheap shot that restrings famous blunders and transplants Bush malapropisms into new settings. People may take offense at the idea of the current Iraq War being a result of unresolved daddy issues. Seriously, for a two-hour movie spanning the life and career of the most reviled modern day president, did Stone need to include the moment where Bush almost choked to death on a pretzel? Over the 2000 election debacle? Over the Air National Guard? Over 9/11?
W. lacks a strong point of view and the film’s timeline closes too soon, only going so far as January 2004, not even the halfway point for a two-term president who has only sunk lower in national approval from that moment. A miniseries would be a better medium to explore the failures and calamities and personalities of the Bush Administration. Brolin is terrific in the title role and he never dips into parody. The rest of the actors are hit-or-miss and the movie becomes somewhat of a game of identifying famous historical figures in their one-scene appearances. My biggest surprise was how much I felt emotionally connected to the first President Bush, played by James Cromwell in a performance that doesn’t even attempt to imitate the real-life figure. Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser (Wall Street) certainly don’t hide the characters they connect with (Colin Powell, often the voice of reason, is given a stirring speech calling for caution). Certain creative license is taken to provide dream sequences that can point toward the inner turmoil of Bush, like when his father admonishes him for destroying 200 years of the family’s name over the Iraq War. Overall, W. is an empathetic and sometimes dithering portrayal of the 43rd United States’ president that could have succeeded if it had more to say.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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The Duchess (2008)
I think I understand the real appeal of costume dramas. No matter what else happens, the costume drama must seem smarter. You have actors, primarily British, waltzing in elaborate costuming in realistic historical settings, each offering demure statements and looking for love and acceptance in a time of chaste expression. You could place Saw 18 in that setting and it would automatically seem smarter. I think the ye olde setting for costume dramas automatically gives these films more plot leeway, but not every film actually proves that it should have earned that leeway. Saul Dibb’s handsomely mounted period drama The Duchess offers little beyond the superficial enjoyment of well-crafted costumes.
In 1770s England, young Georgina (Keira Knightley) has been betrothed to the older Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). The newly minted 17-year-old Duchess of Devonshire is whisked away to live in a giant manor. The Duke is rather cold and seems uneasy with human interaction; he shows the most affection for his dogs. He expects Georgina to primarily bear him a son. Several daughters later, the Duke is engaged in affairs and siring illegitimate children. Georgina has become a star of the social sphere, and it is here that she befriends Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell), a woman who is trying to regain her children from her ex-husband. Things get even more complicated when the Duke takes a liking of Bess, and the two become an unofficial union. Georgina has had her only friend taken away and turned into a co-wife. The only solace for the Duchess is in her flirtatious relationship with a politician, Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). Georgina feels like a prisoner in her own home and yet she cannot desert her children. What’s an oppressed woman to do in 18th century England? That answer should be sadly obvious.
The Duchess breaks no new ground and, in fact, treads water for the majority of its second half. Georgina was an independent spirit in a time that frowned upon breaking from conformity and tradition. As a woman, she was the victim of a double standard that allowed her husband to sleep with whomever he desired but she could not find physical comfort outside her loveless marriage. Marriage was widely viewed as a means to an end for male progeny, not the culmination of romantic love. Women were pressured into delivering male heirs, despite the fact that men are the ones who determine gender. Typically marriages were family arrangements for class and land ownership, so true passion was procured through marital affairs. I get it because I’ve read Jane Austen novels and seen dozens of period movies that have made the same stilted points. The Duchess presents Georgina as a feminist before her time and then a patriarchal society crushes her spirit. During the second half, when aristocratic life keeps producing heavy obstacles for Georgina, the movie just piles it on. I was left questioning what the point of all this corseted drama actually was.
After a while with my downtime I determined whom this movie is really for – hat enthusiasts. This is a Big Hat movie that puts other hat movies to shame. There are gigantic floppy hats, hats that look like fruit displays, hats that look like eighteen-layer cakes, hats that look like they have their own hat, hats with feathers zigging and zagging in every direction, and hats that look like they are consuming their host’s heads. If you work in the haberdashery industry or have an above average interest in hats and hat-related products, then run, don’t walk to The Duchess. You will be enraptured by the orgy of towering hats that jostle for screen time. Rarely are women seen without hats, so you truly will get your hat money’s worth over the course of the film’s two hours. If there were a specific Oscar category for Hat and Hat-like Accoutrement then The Duchess would dominate. I expect it will get nominated for Costumes, and really that seems like half the point in making these powdered wig period dramas.
I think the other point of The Duchess is to channel the modern story of Princess Diana, who is actually a distant relative of Georgina. The two seem to lead somewhat similar lives since they both married young, both had their husbands prefer the mistresses, both were fashion trend setters, both were beloved by the public, and after death both had their husbands remarry the mistresses. The tagline for the film is, “There were three people in her marriage,” a paraphrased quote that Princess Di said in an interview. The Di parallels seem to be all that the filmmakers intended to do with Georgina as a character; she is the least interesting person in her marriage. The Duke and Bess are far more complex and intriguing figures. I’m sure the Georgina biography that serves as the movie’s source is rich in Georgina characterization and personal detail, but all the movie cares about is establishing her as a marital martyr. There is more to this character but she just endures disappointment and punishment; I cannot fully engage with a character when their only personal attribute is suffering. The movie fails to present any notable reason why this woman of history deserves having a feature film.
Knightley seems to spend half her film life in corsets. I’m still undecided upon whether she possesses innate acting ability; to me she too often comes across as a pin-up with great cheekbones. That said her eyebrows do a great bit of acting in The Duchess. She has the habit of cocking one ever so slightly and imbuing a scene with a hint of sexual allure or mystique. They’re pretty thick eyebrows too. Knightley does acquit herself well with the material and I doubt this will be the last time I see her in a tremendous silk gown and a humongous hairdo. The most interesting actor is Fiennes because his character is so reserved and awkward in his own skin, so much must be said through the use of gestures, body language, and the perfect execution of line delivery. His character seems just as ill in his setting as Georgina. Atwell is given the most complex character to play. To say that Bess has conflicted loyalties is an understatement. She betrays Georgina but romancing the Duke can ensure that she sees her children once again. Bess should have been the centerpiece of the movie because, as presented, she is far more interesting with more dramatic conflicts and turmoil other than being wronged.
The Duchess is no more and no less than every other costumer period piece you’ve seen before. It starts well but then falls into boring and repetitious plotting (Georgina wants something, she’s denied, she wants something, she’s denied; rather, rinse, repeat, end). The Duchess will delight those in search of yet another unrequited period romance, but I feel that moviegoers should expect more from their entertainment that mechanically fulfilling the period-y checklist. The technical merits like the production art and the costumes, especially the hats, are first rate. There’s little feeling beneath all the fabulous fussing about. It’s too bad the actual drama couldn’t at least be as interesting as the hats.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Burn After Reading (2008)
The Coen brothers tend to follow serious works with silly, and now that they have a heap of Oscars from 2007’s No Country for Old Men audiences can expect extreme silliness. Burn After Reading is a farce in the best sense of the word; it’s a send-up of the spy thriller where morons inhabit every role. The incompetent characters repeatedly act impulsive and the whole movie’s tone is cranked to outlandish heights. The score by Carter Burwell is like a continuous thundercloud that underscores the ridiculous and faux ominous atmosphere. The Coens have been accused of ridiculing their characters and being too detached and clinical as screenwriters. I do not believe this for a moment. Anyone who watches Burn After Reading can tell that the Coens love their characters, especially Brad Pitt’s ebullient personal trainer. Pitt is a comic joy and brings fresh life to his fun character, a highly cheerful doofus who can’t stay still. Even the funky way Pitt walks is worth a giggle. Burn After Reading takes some surprising twists and turns and could have been much longer than 96 total minutes. The Coens go to such terrific lengths establishing great oddball characters and great comedic scenarios, and then the whole movie just comes to a close when it feels like it’s hitting another gear. Still, Burn After Reading may be no masterpiece but its yet another unconventional and mostly entertaining comedy from the reliably quirky Coen brothers.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Over Her Dead Body (2008)
This is abysmal comedy from beginning to end. It peaks in the second minute when Eva Longoria’s shrewish character is killed by a large angelic ice sculpture. It’s all down hill from there, my friends. Longoria stars as a deceased bride who won’t let her still-living fiancé (Paul Rudd) find happiness. The bland comedy could have more accurately been retitled, “Cockblock from Beyond the Grave” (it was at one time titled Ghost Bitch). I have no idea why Rudd is apart of this travesty and seeing him do his trademark smirk and shoulder shrug just made me weep. The comedy is nails-on-the-chalkboard obvious. There is nothing smart, clever, or interesting within any of this movie’s 95 minutes. Writer Jeff Lowell (John Tucker Must Die) felt the need to direct as well because surely there was no one else on this planet that could handle this. Longoria is powerfully obnoxious and egotistical until her last-minute personal epiphany that others deserve to be happy too. What did Rudd ever see in this ghost bitch?
Nate’s Grade: D
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Seed (2008)
Uwe Boll had some things he wanted to say with his low-rent horror flick, Seed. Like much of Boll’s output it’s based upon a video game. However, Boll opens the flick with a warning that footage of animal abuse and disturbing images will be incorporated into the movie. Seed gets the ball rolling with a two-minute montage of animals being cruelly beaten and mutilated before the title ever finds its place on screen. Boll’s opening text says that he decided to use this disturbing snuff footage because he “wanted to make a statement about humanity.” Yeah, sure Boll. Isn’t it a bit trite and easy to castigate the human condition for evil when you just roll out visceral real-life footage of cruelty? By highlighting the real stuff Boll is calling into question the significance of his whole stupid slasher movie. It opens with real-life cruelty and then plays out 90 minutes of fake cruelty, so what’s the point? I don’t think Seed has any interest in the subtext that can elevate horror movies. I think Boll just wanted to make his own torture-heavy horror film and found some animal abuse footage on the cheap (PETA probably gave it to him free of charge). The opening smacks of exploitation and opportunism and has zero thematic connection to the flaccid and empty-headed horror movie that follows. If I sound angry that’s because I don’t need to see animals having their skulls crushed in to get it.
Seed (William Sanderson) is a killer of astounding proficiency (for further details: see below). Matt Bishop (Boll BFF, Michael Paré) is the detective that’s been tracking Seed all these years. You can tell he’s a haunted cop because he has a drinking problem and hears the cries of dead babies. Eventually, Bishop tracks down Seed’s hideout and he arrests the murderous fiend. Seed is sentenced to die by the electric chair. The problem is that the prison doesn’t have a pristine electric chair, and the law says that if a man survives three jolts of juice then he’s free to go (for further details: see below). The warden (Ralf Moeller) decides to take command. He and a group of prison employees bury Seed alive and tell the world he died on the faulty electric chair. Of course Seed comes back and rekindles that old killing feeling.
If Sanctimony was Boll’s attempt to manufacture the clever Saw-esque serial killer, a higher scale of serial killers, then Seed is at the opposite end of the serial killer equation. This is a dull slasher movie and Seed is about as dull as killers can be. His main attributes are that he’s a huge guy with a sack on his head, which is kind of similar to about 1000 different slasher movies. He looks particularly close to Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I guess the slasher recipe is add one obscure mask plus one set of overalls plus dirt = killer. The guy has zero personality and is merely a silent killing machine that, in typical slasher fashion, always roams around at a deliberately slow pace. Sanderson (star of SEVEN Boll films) is unrecognizable as Seed and this is mostly because he wears a sack on his head and says maybe one thing for the entire 90-minute running time. I don’t recall Sanderson being as bulky either. Boll’s attempt at a horror movie wallows in exploitation and prolonged torture. As always, he’s late to the party.
Seed is credited as bring solely written by Boll, and the man screws it all up within minutes. When it comes to horror movies there will always need to be a somewhat healthy suspension of disbelief but only up to a point. Every movie no matter the genre or internal logic will have a breaking point. Seed cruises through that breaking point alarmingly early. Through the use of newspaper clippings, Boll introduces us to the backstory of Mr. Seed (he uses newspaper clippings for 90 percent of all exposition, meaning someone at the police department has a big thing for scrapbooking). We are told that from 1973-1979, Seed killed an astounding, and numerologically convenient, 666 people in those six years. Just take a second and think that figure over. One person in a ratty cloth mask and overalls killed 666 people. Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacey weren’t even anywhere near that figure and they are highly prolific serial killers. Boll wanted to make his serial killer scary but he totally overcompensates and destroys any credibility the film could possibly attain. Why 666? There’s no way it’s a coincidence considering the pull of that number in our pop culture. Was that a target quota for Seed? Did he make a chart to know when he was falling behind?
The sheer magnitude of that number obliterates the facade of “reality” Boll wants to create in his movie. These cops have to be the worst investigative unit in history. Seriously, could they not tabulate any clues or patterns or habits of Seed after 665 murders? I think the FBI would have stepped in hundreds of unsolved murders ago. And yet Boll then shows again how staggeringly inept these local cops are. They find out Seed’s home, which is of course a dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere. This naturally begs the question that Seed would have to venture out long distances to find so many victims, and yet no witnesses of any sort? But Boll ignores this and steamrolls ahead. What showcases the utter stupidity of these boys in blue is that they ride out in the middle of the night, into the middle of the woods, and decide to raid Seed’s house with only six officers. I’m sorry, but if any man killed 666 people with his own hands then you don’t plan on taking him down with a small unit of cops who have already proven to be inept. You bring in tanks.
The premise itself is deeply flawed and begging for mockery. Seed proposes that there is a law on the books that somehow mandates prisoners must be set free if you can’t kill them after three jolts from the electric chair. We’re talking 45 second long jolts of 15,000 volts of electricity frying your brain. Your heart will eventually explode with all that electricity. So how does this law truly work? Surely no one would actually abide by it or fear that the government would punish them for breaking this law? Seed never specifies where it takes place, though the vibe I get is more southern, and they love to kill people in the South, especially Texas. Did the electric company propose this three-strikes-and-you’re-alive policy as an incentive to inmates? Do low-income prisons have a higher turnaround rate? Does this law cover firing squads and hangings as well? A judge and jury have found Seed guilty and sentenced him to be executed. That judicial ruling is not absolved because an inmate could withstand a high degree of voltage. The premise turns an execution into a contest.
Most slasher movies involve a near superhuman antagonist, and Seed follows suit. He can attack and kill four prison guards who try to gang rape him in his cell (what part of 666 kills says, “please expose your penis near me”?). He can step on a prison guard’s forearm and crush it so that it looks like a swaying doll part. He can bust out of a coffin and dig himself out of a grave. Now I did some quick math and a 6 feet by 6 feet by 3 feet grave is 108 total cubic feet. The lightest dirt will weigh is 42 pounds per cubic foot. That means that Seed had 4536 pounds of force weighing down on him in that grave. Yet he was able to free himself and go on his rampage. If Seed is this indestructible force then it’s ridiculous that Pare could kick him a few times and the man went down during the police capture. Which is the worse screenwriting sin? Having Seed wiggle out of 4500 pounds of force or the fact that the prison guards did a lousy job of BURYING ALIVE a man who killed 666 people! Why would you ever bury this maniac alive?! That seems hardly definitive. Common sense begs cutting off the man’s head just to be certain.
When it comes to horror movies, building an atmosphere is essential but there’s a notable difference between building dread and simply killing time. Boll does not know this difference. Seed doesn’t even get placed on the electric chair until 46 minutes in. The first 33 minutes of the movie is pointless because it retells Seed’s capture via a flashback while he sits on death row. Watching Seed finally get captured isn’t really important to the story, and a good half of that misspent time is simply gross and grainy home videos. Seed sends videotapes to the police to taunt them. The tapes are shot in a dungeon-like location and involve living creatures rotting thanks to the miracles of time-lapse photography. Naturally this raises two quibbles: 1) No one had personal video recording devices in the mid 1970s, let alone a maniac living in the middle of nowhere, and 2) watching dogs and babies die of dehydration and then decompose to ash means that these video projects took many weeks to accomplish. That’s a lot of time. Boll spends five plus minutes of screen time just showing these grainy snuff videos with the police recoiling. Perhaps the extent of their investigation was watching these gross videos and making faces. How many videos do the police have from Seed? It seems like Seed’s version of the fruit of the month club.
But getting back to misspent time, Boll thinks just holding onto a shot and not cutting makes it scary or tense. It doesn’t. I don’t need nearly two minutes uninterrupted of watching guards fiddle with Seed’s chains as they try and latch him into the electric chair. I don’t need almost a minute of one shot panning around a boat departing the prison isle. I don’t need nearly two uninterrupted minutes of watching the prison doctor’s bedtime rituals before he eventually gets murdered. I especially don’t need over five uninterrupted minutes of watching Seed hit a woman in the head with a mallet. I’m not being facetious when I tell you that he literally hits her 40 times until her head is purified into a bloody stump of a neck. Seed literally paints the walls with this old woman’s blood (how did this genius not get caught?). The soundtrack soars to laughable heights and the scene just goes on and on, figuratively bludgeoning the audience as well. Boll believes that just holding onto a moment of depravity makes it sinister. It doesn’t when there’s no audience connection whatsoever to the tired material. Boll does craft one nicely tense sequence where Pare and the cops capture Seed. There’s a moment when one officer is tiptoeing through the basement of Seed’s home and the only source of light is the flicker of the police siren. It’s visually appealing and works to create tension as well. But this moment is short-lived. I’ll never know how a burly guy can see through a cloth mask in the dark and sneak around in a dilapidated home filled with crap covered in tetanus.
It may be hard to notice for some, but Uwe Boll is actually improving as a filmmaker, at least from a technical standard. Seed looks like an actual movie. Seed is grisly and nihilistic and futile. The killer is a bore and the story is poorly structured, taking far too long to get Seed in the ground and wrecking havoc. Boll’s screenwriting shortcomings are fully evident as he strings together genre clichés and ridiculous plot points that obliterate credibility. He grasps at making statements about the human capacity for cruelty. Well I didn’t need a Uwe Boll movie to educate me on man’s inhumanity to man, especially one this shoddy and empty. This movie isn’t even entertaining; it’s a chore to sit through. This is the first Boll movie that I sat just waiting for it to be over. There is no reason to watch this thing. During the extended scenes of video watching by the police, one of the cops watches a baby decompose and replies, “Sick bastard.” I think Boll was projecting here. And I didn’t need footage of animals being slaughtered to reach that conclusion either.
Nate’s Grade: D-
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Disaster Movie (2008)
Writers/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer couldn’t leave well enough alone. I had become accustomed to these two tainting the beginning of a new year with their deeply unfunny “spoof” movies. In February 2006, they released Date Movie, in January 2007, they released Epic Movie, and in January 2008, they released Meet the Spartans. One cinematic blight wasn’t enough for these two and so, on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking the Gulf Coast, these sultans of suck have unleashed the appropriately titled Disaster Movie.
I won’t even dignify this movie with a plot synopsis. To do so would acknowledge there was at any point a script. They even make fun of Oscar-winning Juno scribe Diablo Cody’s writing. That’s like George W. Bush mocking Barack Obama’s eloquence.
By pacing their horrible comedies a year apart, Friedberg and Seltzer at least have time to gauge what movies have become popular and what pop culture events have stuck in the public consciousness. But Disaster Movie was put on the fast track and was in production before many of the movies it deems worthy of attack were even released. As a result, it seems that the fail twins were watching trailers for upcoming movies and hedging their bets on what would be popular. This explains why they mention movies that made no cultural impact and flopped at the box-office, like Speed Racer and The Love Guru. Seriously, a “funny” reference to a bad Mike Myers movie months after it has opened and closed is, in itself, kind of humorous in how ridiculous and embarrassing this all is. Once again, Friedberg and Seltzer have assembled a highly disposable pop-culture yearbook except this time they took bets on what would be meaningful. Is anyone going to even get a reference to Jumper? How about in a few more months? Yet again Friedberg and Seltzer have assembled a movie that has a built-in expiration date.
As expected, Friedberg and Seltzer apply their shallow level of comedy to the movies caught in their crosshairs. These guys simply don’t understand the difference between reference and parody, and once again they deluge an audience with cheap references to other movies and the reference is designed to be the joke. Just having a character appear as the Hulk isn’t funny. Having a character appear as the Amy Adams character from Enchanted isn’t funny. Friedberg and Seltzer don’t even mock the disaster movies befitting its title, like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, or the more recent Day After Tomorrow. The only partially relevant movie they make reference to is Twister because it affords them the opportunity to drop cows on characters (if it’s not funny once, it’s not funny the thousandth time). Disaster Movie cycles through a mix of movies from the fall of 2007 to last summer, including Juno, 10,000 B.C. (a film worthy of parody by smarter people), No Country for Old Men, Sex and the City, Superbad, Beowulf, Wanted, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Prince Caspian (another movie that faded quickly), and others. Friedberg and Seltzer mix in attacks on pop culture figures like Jessica Simpson and Amy Winehouse, simplifying each to a one-joke premise (Amy Winehouse is drunk, never heard that one before). But wait; to prove how in touch they are, Friedberg and Seltzer have used their SECOND SPOOF MOVIE OF THIS YEAR to include jokes about Michael Jackson being a pedophile. Oh my good graces, how do these guys come up with such cutting-edge and timely material in the year 2008?
You want to know how truly terrible Friedberg and Seltzer are as filmmakers? Disaster Movie is the film debut of socialite and tabloid queen Kim Kardashian. This woman is known for one thing and that thing is her thang, namely her posterior. Friedberg and Seltzer fail to make even a single joke about Kardashian’s notable assets. Not only that, from a pure exploitation angle, they even fail to take advantage of Kardashian as a sex object.
To honor Friedberg and Seltzer recycling the same garbage and calling it by a different name, I will stop writing about their newest example of cinematic ineptitude and simply copy and paste sections of my review for this year’s Meet the Spartans. Enjoy my attempt at Mad Libs style film criticism.
“Writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are, and I do not say this lightly, the worst filmmakers of all time. They are worse than Ed Wood, they are worse than Uwe Boll, they are worse than Harold P. Warren, who wrote and directed the worst movie of all time, Manos: The Hands of Fate, because of a bet that he couldn’t make a movie (I’m fairly certain he still lost). Friedberg and Seltzer are the antithesis to funny. They mock funny, they spit at funny. [DISASTER MOVIE] is their [FOURTH] spoof in three years, or, as I see it, their [FOURTH] miscarriage of comedy.
[DISASTER MOVIE] would be hard-pressed to fit the definition of a movie, no matter how generous you are with the term. True, it is a collection of moving pictures, but surely we must have greater stipulations for our movie going entertainment. The actual flick is only [75] minutes long, barely a little over an hour, and then it’s crammed with 15 minutes of outtakes and needless extra scenes to be strewn over the credits [INCLUDING AN ALREADY PAINFULLY DATED PARODY OF SARAH SILVERMAN’S SONG “I’M F***ING MATT DMAON,” ALTERED TO PG-13 FRIENDLY LYRICS ABOUT “DATING” MATT DAMON]. I should be more upset by the total transparent laziness to even construct a film of suitable length, but every minute I was spared more of this junk was an act of divine mercy.
Friedberg and Seltzer are not filmmakers but regurgiatators, wildly lampooning anything that they feel approaches their young teen male demographic. [DISASTER MOVIE], like Epic Movie and Date Movie, cannot be classified as a “spoof” because all the film is doing is setting up references and the references are supposed to be the joke. The film is like a meaningless and random scrapbook for the year in pop culture; the film’s only function to pacify total idiots with attention-deprivation issues.
And yet, astoundingly, the movie still feels like it needs to set up its dumb, obvious gags. The film has one [PERSON] point off screen and say, “Look, it’s [HANNAH MONTANA],” and then we cut to [HANNAH MONTANA CRUSHED BY A ROCK]. Why did Friedberg and Seltzer feel the need to name check? It happens again when [A CHARACTER POINTS AND SAYS, “HEY, IT’S ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS”]. I don’t need a handicap for non-obscure pop culture bon mots.
From a production standpoint, this movie looks really cheap. The sets and costumes and props look horrible, like something a high school production would ditch. Just because it reuses the same camera setups as [ANY MOVIE] doesn’t mean it gets any closer to parody. For God’s sake, they couldn’t even come up with puns on character names.
The actors all seem mildly embarrassed and they do nothing with their roles. It’s not their fault the material sucks so deeply, however, it is Electra’s fault for appearing in her [FOURTH!] straight Friedberg-Seltzer spoof fest. The key to a good spoof is to play the damn thing straight. It’s annoying and redundant if the film keeps winking back at the audience.
[DISASTER MOVIE] is pop culture vomit. No, this is worse, this is cinematic diarrhea. It’s watery pop culture discharge masquerading as entertainment. This movie if offensive to anyone that appreciates laughter. This film and its ilk are offensive to mankind. And plus, it’s just not funny people, not in the slightest. There’s no wit here, no comedic payoffs, no running gags (besides gay jokes [AND COWS FALLING ON PEOPLE, HE HE HE]), no thought or upheaval of convention; instead, this movie is a lazy, cheap catalogue of pop culture events. Even at [90] minutes (really it’s [75]) this thing drags and feels exhausted long before it bows out. Just as I said in my review of Epic Movie, Friedberg and Seltzer must be stopped at all costs if comedy is to survive.”
In short, don’t see it and punch anyone in the face that ever thinks of seeing Disaster Movie.
Nate’s Grade: F
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Hamlet 2 (2008)
Believe it or not, there actually is a sequel out there about William Shakespeare’s most famous play concerning family dysfunction. Author David Bergantino surely doesn’t feel that he can improve upon the Bard’s classic Hamlet, but Bergantino is a writer who doesn’t cower from a challenge, like where to go next when all the main characters are dead. That’s why Bergantino took it upon himself to write Hamlet II: Ophelia’s Revenge (no joke). Apparently modern students at Globe University are playing out a family squabble very similar to anyone that has taken a high school literature class. The synopsis over at Amazon.com says it better than I could ever hope:
“When he unexpectedly inherits a creepy old castle in Denmark, Cameron tries to put his worries behind him, inviting his girlfriend and college buddies along on an overseas trip to check out the gloomy fortress. The plan is to get some serious partying done. Too bad nobody counted on the ghost of a drowned girl rising from her watery grave with vengeance on her mind! Now the only question is: to die or not to die?”
In the wake of Hamlet 2, a popular comedy at the Sundance Film Festival, I pity Bergantino. The man is going to be the Leif Ericson of pointless Shakespeare sequels: forgotten by history at the original pioneer. The film Hamlet 2 follows the miserable life of Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan). He teaches drama at a Tucson, Arizona public school and barely gets paid. His wife (Catherine Keener) is anxious to get pregnant and convinced Dana is shooting blanks. The couple is so poor that they have to rent out their home to a boarder (David Arquette). His drama class has two very WASP-y pupils (Phoebe Strole and Skyler Astin), but the rest are disinterested Hispanic students bused in from another school district. The school’s theater critic chides Dana’s laughable productions of Hollywood movies, like Mississippi Burning and Erin Brocovich. Then comes the news that drama has been slashed from the school budget. The pint-sized theater critic tells Dana to try something original to save the drama department. The answer? Hamlet 2. Thanks to a time machine, and Hamlet’s new best buddy Jesus Christ, the pair can go back and save everyone who previously perished.
Hamlet 2 is Coogan’s show and the British comic makes his character endearing sad-sack. His character is pathetic and subject to all sorts of personal humiliations, and yet Dana is so earnest that it makes it hard not to empathize with his exploits. Coogan has a wild leer to him that gives the character a manic edge of desperation. He’s a gifted comic but he’s used to playing smug, droll characters, and Dana Marschz is the exact opposite of that mold. Coogan’s many breakdowns and bouncy spirit give the material an extra lift. He works hard for every laugh. It’s a shame, though, that he sort of disappears into the background during the staging of his infamous play.
So what is the comedic point of view with Hamlet 2? Are we to laugh at Dana and find him a buffoon? Well if that’s the case, then why serve up a musical finale that’s actually worthwhile and completely hilarious? The production values are pretty extravagant given the money limitations on the characters. Not only that, it’s so bonkers that I wanted to just watch Hamlet 2 on stage and not cut back to life outside. I wanted to luxuriate in the inspired craziness of a musical that involves time travel, Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, the song “Raped in the Face,” the devil, the Gay Men’s Chorus, lots of father issues, and Jesus moonwalking over water. That’s way more interesting than the ho-hum characters interacting backstage. In truth, the play’s the thing and it’s way too short for my liking. The performance serves as the film’s payoff, so I wanted to get every crazy kernel of shameless joy. The “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” song is irresistible and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head for days. It’s so bouncy and fun and melodic. I’ll be walking along and then I’ll start humming the damn thing. I doubt that I will come across a catchier original song in movie this year. Hopefully those bigwigs in the Academy will realize the tune’s musical merits and give it a nomination it rightfully deserves.
Then is Hamlet 2 a parody of all those treacly teacher inspiration movies, the kind that seem to always be populated by tough minority kids who just need someone to take the time and break through to them? Well Dana constantly refers to Hollywood movies like they’re documentaries, and even a whole class lecture concerns Dangerous Minds. When he accidentally injures a student, Dana jumps at his students being alert and offers in summation, “Yes it was stupid but it was theater.” The movie takes some shots against the likes of Dead Poet’s Society and Mr. Holland’s Opus, but ultimately Hamlet 2 becomes yet another inspirational teacher movie. Dana is able to rally his students to the cause of theater, prejudices are broken down, and certain students take charge of their young lives. It’s all so predictable, and predictability blunts edginess and can destroy comedy. The only true genre tweak seems to come when standoffish Octavio’s background comes to light. He’s not the underprivileged wannabe gangster but a bright kid whose been admitted to an Ivy League school early. And his parents don’t object to the play because of “ethnic narrow-mindness” but because they think it’s poorly written.
Like Dana’s students, the film never seems to match its potential. The concept is great and so is having a main character who is inspired by theater but profoundly inept at teaching it. Dana lacks talent but can it be made up for with such big-hearted enthusiasm? There is plenty of ripe material there, but Hamlet 2 doesn’t seem to fully realize the comedic possibilities. Watching Dana fight administration officials in the name of the arts is worthwhile conflict but it’s rarely funny. Keener seems wasted as Dana’s passive-aggressive wife. An ACLU lawyer (Amy Poehler) is a great political target, especially as she fights in the name of bad art, but she appears too late in the film to be really capitalized. The climactic staging of Dana’s masterwork is another example of not fully thinking out the comic potential of a situation.
Here’s a perfect example: Elisabeth Shue appears in the film as herself, actress Elisabeth Shue. She’s quit the acting business and taken residence as a nurse in Tucson. What exactly is the joke here? Is it that Hollywood has the habit of spitting out aging actresses? Dana’s students have no idea who Shue is. Is it self-parody? If it was self-parody then the filmmakers needed to give Shue more of a personality. She’s appears infrequently and beams a nice smile but that seems like the only demand, though I must admit always in her nurse outfit, a nice visual gag. If Hamlet 2 had spent more time in revision it would utilize the comic possibilities of integrating a real-life actress playing herself in such a remote city.
Ultimately, I don’t know what to make out of Hamlet 2. It’s a marginally funny and entertaining venture that celebrates the power of the arts, which is a noble cause. Coogan straps the production on his back and carries it as far as he can go. There are some decent laughs and the closing 15 minutes is a giddy blast. However, the movie often feels flat and simply odd, missing potential punchlines and settling for second-rate comedic situations. The crafty premise afforded better material then what eventually comes across onscreen. The whole thing also feels like a mild retread of Waiting for Guffman. But take heart, because Bergantino is not about to lose the spotlight just yet. He also has written A Midsummer Night’s Scream: Hamlet II (I have no idea where the two stories connect but that’s the genius of it). It’s only a penny at Amazon.com. Get it while you can. Or don’t. Preferably, don’t.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Pineapple Express (2008)
There’s something to be said about a comedy that requires an audience to puff illegal substances in order to fully be entertained. Somewhere along the line the Judd Apatow comedy unit went down a wayward track with the stoner comedy, Pineapple Express, an amiable goof of a comedy at best. The premise is solid, two stoners (Seth Rogen and James Franco) witnessing a murder and on the run. Rogen and Franco have a great rapport with one another that translates to plenty of good vibes and humor (Danny McBride steals the show as a seemingly indestructible low-rent drug dealer). But the movie veers off into action territory with bloody violence that really harshes your mellow, man. Pineapple Express never really settles on a consistent tone, so when the movie fully transforms into a strained guns-a-blazin’ action caper, the comedy has totally vanished. The realistic violence is intended to get the laughs. When people get shot, it’s ugly, and when ear lobes get blown off it’s just plain gross. There’s no room for humor in the third act and the action is lazy and uninspired. If Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg (who scripted the much funnier Superbad) were aiming to create an action parody, then they didn’t push nearly hard enough. After the movie ended, I thought back to last year’s superior action parody, Hot Fuzz, which had a consistent tone and packed jokes as hard as punches. As a sober moviegoer who has never inhaled any such wacky tobaccy, Pineapple Express just kept eluding me. The movie is too slipshod, too misshapen, and it completely goes up in smoke by the end.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Tropic Thunder (2008)
Ben Stiller has been kicking around the idea for Tropic Thunder for nearly 20 years. It took a lot of time to get the script in fighting shape, but the time was well worth it. Tropic Thunder is tasteless and occasionally appalling but it is also wickedly, deliriously funny.
Set inside modern-day Vietnam, Hollywood is filming another epic war movie but this one’s in trouble. It’s over budget, behind schedule, and the first-time director (Steve Coogan) can’t control his actors. Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is a fading action star looking for another hit. Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is a crass comedian who’s after some real acting credibility. He’s also addicted to heroin and worries that people will only ever see him as a funny man who farts. Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) is a five-time Oscar-winning actor who, thanks to makeup and a lot of hubris, is playing the film’s African-American sergeant. Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) is a rapper breaking into acting and is steamed that the Hollywood producers gave the sizeable black role to a white guy.
The director is at his wit’s end and being bullied by producers back in America. He is advised by “Four Leaf” Tayback (Nick Nolte), the Vietnam vet whose story the film is based upon. Tayback says to get real emotion and real fear that the actors should be stranded in the jungle without their precious handlers and demands. So the director takes Speedman, Portnoy, Lazarus, Alpa, and newcomer Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) in a helicopter and out into the wild. Trouble is, the actors have been left in the middle of an actual drug war, except they think it’s all apart of the script.
Tropic Thunder is all things to all comedies. It could be tagged as being a bit incoherent but that’s because the movie has so much going on. It’s a sharp satire of Hollywood moviemaking and the raging egos of actors, it’s a send-up of Vietnam war movies and their bloody clichés, it’s a fairly worthwhile action film, and it’s a stupendously politically incorrect comedy with plenty of crude humor mixed side-by-side with genuine wit. It’s a comedy that has the potential to leave you aching from slapstick humor one second and biting satire the next. This feels like a complete comedy and not merely a series of sketches. Every character has an arc, some great moments, and each actor brings something different and something wonderful to the fray. This is clearly Stiller’s greatest achievement as a director.
The focus of Tropic Thunder is all over the place, and no one is safe from Stiller and his co-writers Etan Cohen and actor Justin Theroux. This is a brutal insider satire that plays it broad and loud. There are great jokes that ridicule the pomposity of the entire movie industry and the pitfalls of celebrity as a whole. I loved the jabs at celebrities going overseas and adopting children like they’re souvenirs. The movie has caught flak from disability groups that are mad about the movie’s liberal use of the term “retard.” I don’t want to say these people are missing the point of satire, or the fact that an R-rated comedy should offend on some level, but the joke is clearly on Hollywood and how movies exploit those with mental handicaps under the guise of telling their harrowing and inspiring stories. Movies have long been chronicling the adventurous lives of those with disabilities, which also has the side effect of making these people seem less like, well, just people. In the film, Speedman stared in a movie called “Simple Jack” about a mentally challenged boy who thinks he can talk with animals. Then the character has to pop up later in the film, complete with hysterical dialogue that blows apart just how exploitative these movies are (“I’ll see you in my head movies, but this is one head movie that makes my eyes rain”). It’s performed in just the right tone to make you laugh at the industry and the individual and not because of any disability.
The way the film establishes character back-story is genius. Tropic Thunder introduces all four major characters through fake commercials and trailers, like Grindhouse. The trailers are hilarious and a great way to kick off the movie. Stiller stars in a sinking action franchise where the world keeps being overtaken by fire (“Now, the one man who saved the world five straight times — will have to do it again”). The action franchise’s idea is to just reverse the scenario and, as sequels do, make everything bigger. Black’s trailer revolves around an obese family of super flatulent idiots all played by Black. The sequence is constant farting but it’s so over-the-top and pumped with contempt for lame-brained Hollywood comedies. The best trailer is the one that gives us Downey Jr.’s character, the esteemed Kirk Lazarus. Set in an Augustine monastery around the Middle Ages, Downey plays a monk who finds that he must conceal his inflamed passions for another man of the cloth (a figure I won’t spoil). Think of it as a 12th century Brokeback Mountain, and Stiller and company know exactly where to hammer Hollywood: the go-go eye stares, the hesitant naughtiness, and the ridiculous marketing angles – the title is inexplicably Satan’s Alley. The opening collection of fake trailers serves as perfect comedy bon mots for the feast that is to follow. They whet your appetite and may be the greatest opening 10 minutes of any comedy in memory.
Downey Jr. gives an unforgettable performance comprised of sheer brilliant comedic bliss. I loved every second he was onscreen and I fully expect the man to get an Oscar nomination for his work here. Now, the role of a Method actor playing a black actor naturally presents a tightrope that needs to be walked just the right manner to maintain a satiric tone that doesn’t turn ugly. Let me state clearly that blackface is never funny. It is repugnant and Hollywood has a rather depressing history with the unsavory practice (Gene Kelly and even Bing Crosby sadly did it). Tropic Thunder is not a Stepin Fetchit-style minstrel show where Downey makes eye-rolling racist stereotypes. The joke is not that Downey is playing a black man, the joke is that he is such an arrogant and egotistical actor that he thinks he can play anyone. Besides, Jackson chides him throughout the film for his unorthodox portrayal, which tells you where the filmmakers stand. Downey elevates every scene he steps into and gives a performance, like the film, that is densely layered with comedy. He never breaks character even when the cameras aren’t filming and even when he’s alone. He’s two steps removed; channeling a performance as a heralded Australian actor playing his idea of a 1970s black male. When Alpa derogatorily drops the N-word, Lazarus slaps him and then begins a speech with, “For over 400 years they have been using that word to keep us down,” and ends it reciting the lyrics to the theme song from The Jefferson’s. In that span of time, Downey takes you along on every stop in the dense, hilarious mind of Lazarus.
While the rest of the actors don’t ascend to Downey’s heights (years ago this would have doubled as a drug reference), the ensemble of Tropic Thunder works together smoothly and they help make the film so much more enjoyable. Black is great when he’s trying to be seen as a “serious” actor when they are filming. I love his rushed and hushed line deliveries. But he’s even funnier after going through the wringer of heroin withdrawal. A sight gag involving Black digging through his speedo had me in stitches. Stiller is playing his usual dimwitted blowhard but propels the plot forward. He knows exactly how to oversell for laughs, like when he’s being riddled with bullets in dramatic slow-mo or when he’s playing Simple Jack. Baruchel is a nice counter foil to the uncheck bravado and craziness of the other actors. Jackson has fun voicing his mounting vexation with Lazarus. Coogan and Nolte provide good small moments, and Danny McBride steals his scenes as a pyrotechnic special effects expert that wants to “make Mother Nature piss her pants.”
By now you’ve likely heard all about Tom Cruise’s small role in the movie as an irate, bald, fat, extremely hairy studio executive. It’s nice and amusing but I could have done with something different. Downey is unrecognizable in both physical appearance and through his speech; he fully inhabits a character that fully inhabits characters. Cruise, on the other hand, is instantly recognizable even with glasses, a paunch, and a shiny dome. It’s Tom Cruise playing a profane asshole but the joke wears thin. Cruise either needed to do something different or just be seen less, including his hip hop dance moves. And yet, Tropic Thunder has a running joke about Hollywood taking its beautiful A-listers and thinking that, through the power of makeup and superficial physicality, they can play any role. We’ve had a streak of Best Actress Oscar winners that have won accolades by stripping away their beauty and packing on the pounds (check out Charlize Theron in Monster). It seems like even the pretty girls are getting the ugly girl roles now; what’s a homely actress to do nowadays? So, in a way, Tropic Thunder is making fun of this line of thinking, that fat suits and some makeup are the great equalizer, but then it has Tom Cruise more or less falling into the same trap. He puts on a fat suit, a bald cap, but it’s still him and you hear Tom Cruise in every utterance. Maybe it would have been funnier if Cruise were playing a parody of himself since he is a studio executive at United Artists.
Tropic Thunder is a wildly funny movie that takes no prisoners when it comes to its sprawling satire. Stiller and company cut down the self-absorbed lifestyle and mentality inside the film industry and insecure actors. The film really shares the spotlight and each actor provides something different and welcome, and there isn’t a weak link in the bunch. Downey Jr. gives a brilliant comedic performance that will be long remembered. The movie is rude, crude, stupid, smart, and all over the place thanks to such a broad comic canvass. It took many years for Stiller to finally get Tropic Thunder off the ground but the wait was worth it. This is a rare comedy that eels loose, hits hard, and may warrant multiple viewings just to catch all the jokes-within-jokes. This is a movie with plenty on its mind, perhaps too much, but I wish more comedies were as well executed and skillful in their gags about gas passing.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Postal (2008)
I feel very strange at this moment. I may need to consult a physician. I’m undergoing an altogether new and confusing sensation. You see, I’m hesitant, almost embarrassed to admit this, but I finally found a Uwe Boll movie that I, well, don’t hate. In fact, I was laughing with Postal and not derisively at it. I would never have guessed that a social satire co-written and directed by Boll, which begins with hijackers flying a plane into a large skyscraper, is actually intentionally funny. That’s not to say that the outrageous, violent, and messy film is verifiably good, but for the first time I feel like Boll is genuinely progressing as a filmmaker and may prove that he can craft a competently entertaining movie in the future. And if you know anything about Boll, that statement is akin to going from crawling to flying an F-14 fighter jet blindfolded while constructing a birdhouse out of Popsicle sticks.
The slapdash plot takes place in the small town of Paradise, Arizona. Postal Dude (Zack Ward, TV’s Titus, Bloodrayne II) is a guy who gets pushed around by life. His fat wife is cheating on him constantly, he’s bullied by rednecks that live in the neighborhood trailer park, and he can’t find a job to escape. He’s looking for any way out. His uncle Dave (Dave Foley) has started a doomsday religious cult of disenfranchised hippies. The IRS is currently targeting him and needs a quick money fix. Uncle Dave and Postal Dude scheme to steal the lone shipment of “Krotchy” dolls, a doll that resembles male testicles that is highly in demand (the Chinese shipment capsized and the crew all died, but luckily the dolls were saved). Also looking to snatch the dolls is a terrorist cell that includes Osama bin Laden (played by Jewish actor Larry Thomas, best known as the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld). The plot isn’t important per se, but you will find yourself openly questioning why respected actors like J.K. Simmons and Seymour Cassel are doing in this mess.
I think Boll has finally found a genre best suited for his cinematic interests. Setting Postal in the wacky comedy world has a freeing effect for Boll: he doesn’t have to adhere to any form of logic. His other movies usually suffered through continual lapses in thought and deed. With Postal, Boll can be as silly as he wants and not have to worry about disrupting his narrative. It should be no surprise then that Postal contains the best acting ever seen in a Boll movie. The good German has always had a seemingly inability to control his actors or provide any helpful direction, but finally he has found a genre that will work with actors giving unrestrained performances that are figuratively all over the thespian map. Shockingly, Ward and Foley both give quite good straight-laced comedic performances (nothing can prepare you for Foley’s generous dose of full-frontal nudity).
Boll stuffs a lot of extreme elements into his movie, including Islamic terrorists, Osama bin Laden frolicking hand-in-hand with President Bush, inbred rednecks with garish teeth, sex scenes with the morbidly obese, crass racial stereotypes, sexual abuse gags, the media’s opportunism in response to tragedy, an ending that takes a page from Dr. Strangelove, a mentally handicapped martyr, and much more. The movie’s aim is to offend and it has many targets. Boll is no insightful political satirist but even he finds humor in the absurd. The movie is blunt and belittles everyone. Postal skewers religious fundamentalism/apocalyptic yearnings on all sides. There is one sequence where Ward is pinned down by rednecks, Islamic terrorists, and crazy cult followers. He tries appealing to their hearts and establishing common ground. “Well,” one of the terrorists says, “We all hate the Jews,” and then everyone nods solemnly. That’s funny. It’s not deep or biting but it is funny in setup and delivery. I give credit where it’s due. Postal takes some seriously demented detours that take advantage of the wacky, anything-goes atmosphere.
The movie’s jokes hit high and low but some of them definitely stick. The concept of our main character caught in a shootout at the welfare office is given a wicked twist when he crawls along the incapacitated victims looking to trade up a better waiting number. There are comedic riffs hat actually work. Postal isn’t clever or scathing, and is hardly subtle or nuanced, but I could honestly see Postal developing a small cult following, one removed from the cult following already built around bashing Boll.
Here is a list of moments that made me actually laugh: using a man in a vegetative state bound in wheelchair as a stepping stone to help climb a chain-link fence, Foley and Ward arguing decimal placements, watching Mini-Me actor Verne Troyer pushing a suitcase bigger than himself across a long shot, the fact that Osama bin Laden casually walks around in broad daylight to underscore the nagging fact that the man is still at large, the concept of using a cat as a silencer for a gun (fear not animal lovers, the cat lives), a “God shelter” in case of rapture, Osama attending a workshop on leadership styles and having his credit card declined, a character’s dying attempt to discover if he’s gay or merely bisexual, and the insane religious prophecy involving Troyer and 1000 horny monkeys. That last one is almost inspired in its sheer lunacy. The best part for many will be when Uwe Boll appears onscreen as himself. He admits he finances his crummy movies via Nazi gold and then, no kidding, the actual creator of the Postal video game appears and shoots Boll in the groin. For many, this is a vicarious moment to be savored.
Postal could have worked even better had Boll had a more consistent tone. Simply put, being offensive and shocking and wallowing in bad taste does not guarantee being funny. Watching a truck run over a baby carriage isn’t funny because it’s shocking. Without greater context or setup, it’s the equivalent of a tired and morose “dead baby” joke: tasteless but lacking any humor. And yet here are more missed comedic opportunities that Boll fails to capitalize upon. The missed comedic opportunities mount (Islamic terrorists eventually descend upon a redneck trailer park and … nothing?). Some jokes teeter but then hit a wrong note and become uncomfortable. Watching a black police officer (Chris Spencer, Bloodrayne II) brutally murder an Asian driver is not funny. Seeing a montage of children being massacred by stray gunfire is not funny and has no hope of being funny. When the movie utilizes realistic violence, it must walk a very delicate tone to spring laughs from darker territory. Realistic violence by itself is not funny because brutality is hard to milk for laughs.
Boll will drift and lose his comedy momentum. The highly publicized opening sequence is actually kind of funny. Two terrorists have hijacked a plane but then have second thoughts after they realize there are discrepancies about the number of post-martyrdom virgins. They begin to then analyze the gaps in theology and decide to turn the plane around and head to the Bahamas instead. With this segment Boll has taken a politically sensitive subject and given it a twist. Where the segment goes wrong is not when the passengers storm the cockpit and cause the plane to crash, this serves as irony. Where the segment goes wrong is when it cuts to a window washer atop a skyscraper and we watch the plane come closer and crash into a fiery blaze. The view doesn’t serve as any comedic punchline and places the viewer in an uncomfortable position of not only reliving 9/11 but also reliving it from a hapless victim’s perspective. It’s one example of a misstep that ruins the joke. By the film’s end it has turned into an incoherent bloodbath.
Not to kill Uwe Boll with praise, but Postal is also his best looking movie to date. The shot compositions are framed well, there is actual camerawork that gives off a slight Coen brothers’ vibe, and the cinematography by Boll staple Mathias Nuemann is crisp and clean. This is a good-looking movie that works within its limited budget and locations.
Postal wasn’t given much of a chance out of the gate. It has been sitting on a shelf for over a year, it was dumped into a small number of theaters opening the same weekend opposite the slightly higher profile Indiana Jones sequel. Boll arranged a free screening of the film and a majority walked out after the opening segment involving the hijackers. Postal is a bizarre and distasteful movie that relies too heavily on shock tactics and the idea that offensive equates humor. There are holes, inconsistencies, shallow satire, and many missed comedic opportunities, and yet, in spite of everything, I laughed at several points. This is Boll’s most intentionally entertaining movie to date. While it may sound like heresy, I would rather watch Postal again than the much more commercial and critically lauded Pineapple Express.
It feels like Boll is actually progressing as a filmmaker, however, I make this statement under the caveat that the confines of the wacky comedy genre forgive lapses in content. But I may not be alone. Boll submitted his flick to the Hoboken International Film Festival and actually won. Boll was named Best Director and the film was awarded Best of the Festival, which is a category based upon audience votes. Perhaps it’s just my lowered expectations with any Boll production, but Postal almost works; not quite but almost. And that’s a tremendous leap forward for a man whose movies have made me retire synonyms for “stupid.”
Nate’s Grade: C
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