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The Bounty Hunter (2010)
When a woman runs out of a trunk and is chased down by a man who then tackles her and drags her back to said trunk, how would you react? Horror, right? This scenario is the opening minute of The Bounty Hunter, an abhorrent romantic comedy that fails in every regard. The opening scene is supposed to be funny because it’s two stars and we learn, via onscreen text, that the guy and gal are formerly married. Somehow this knowledge makes the scene… funny?
Because in real life no spurned ex-spouses inflict punishment on their former halves. This disastrous and bizarre opening clued me in that The Bounty Hunter was going to be one hell of a slog to sit through. It made me want to put a bounty on the filmmakers who made this mess possible.
Milo (Gerard Butler) is an ex-cop who currently pays the bills as a bounty hunter. Nicole (Jennifer Aniston) is an investigative reporter looking into a series of suicides that might not be what they seem. She’s also due in court for hitting a police horse with her car (the reveal of her actual crime is intended to be a payoff; you?re welcome for having it spoiled). Nicole gets too close to a crime conspiracy that has connections inside the New York City police force, so goons chase her down to kill her. Naturally, she misses her court date and becomes a wanted fugitive, which brings her ex back into the picture. Milo is elated that he gets to drag his ex-wife to jail and get paid for doing so. Along the way, the couple improbably rekindles their old romance while being chased by hordes of goons with guns.
First off, The Bounty Hunter is one of the more unpleasant, tone-deaf comedies I’ve seen in years. It assumes if two people, with obviously zero chemistry, will bicker long enough in shrill voices, eventually comedy will emerge. This is the comedic equivalent of the faulty scientific theory of Spontaneous Generation. The comedy just isn’t coming. I never laughed once during the entire painful 115 minutes. I failed to crack even a smile. I sat dumbfounded, looking back and forth between the screen and my then-partner’s reaction, to gauge if I was truly missing something, mainly the “comedy” part. These people are unlikable and not once do you ever believe that they are capable of even expressing a realistic human emotion. These are people that shouldn’t even exist in a crummy romantic comedy. These are the background players in a crummy romantic comedy, given starring roles and proving with every exhalation why they should have remained Angry Dinner Couple #2. Milo is a jackass who’s full of himself and Nicole is whiny and annoying and they both have massive egos. Butler and Aniston have various acting abilities, though both seem to be in rapid decline, but their hammy acting is trying to overcompensate for the film’s numerous shortcomings. They’re playing broadly, but now they’re just broad, unlikable idiots rather than unlikable idiots. The only way anybody could like these characters is imagining that they’re completely different people.
The premise itself routinely destroys any plausible sense of believability. Milo chases down his ex-wife in scene after scene, taunting her, spitefully laughing at her misfortune, harassing and threatening her. At NO POINT WHATSOEVER in the entire movie does a single person look at this ongoing relationship and cry foul. Nobody calls the police, nobody intervenes, nobody notices what explicitly looks like a woman being stalked and kidnapped by a creep. At no point does Milo flash a badge to at least provide some context or explain his actions, so scene after scene looks like a blatant kidnapping with the female captive kicking and screaming. There is nothing wacky or amusing in watching a world of apathetic rom-com extras ignoring what is obviously somebody in trouble. The fact that Milo can get away with this behavior in a gala of public venues only makes the movie, and every living being within it, infinitely dumber.
The very nature of the comedy oddly results in plenty of cruel slapstick. Nicole has an officemate, Stewart (Jason Sudeikis), who is smitten with her after a drunken bout of making out. He follows her to Atlantic City and eventually gets hijacked by the goons after Milo. There are several astonishing scenes that just involve the goons torturing Stewart. They hit him in the leg with a golf club, they inject a horse tranquilizer into his neck, and all of this is somehow supposed to be funny. It’s really just mean and rather distasteful. The fact that The Bounty Hunter thinks that this situation is a comedy goldmine speaks volumes to me. Watching a dweeby character repeatedly get injured is not funny on its face, and it’s even less funny when the film just lets it keep happening without comment. Stewart doesn’t deserve his pain and neither does the unfortunate audience watching this garbage.
Director Andy Tennant (Hitch, Fool’s Gold) and screenwriter Sarah Thorp (Twisted) wouldn’t know comedy if it chained them to a car door. Tennant’s idea of comedy is to stretch the comedy, play things as big and as long as possible. There are plenty of moments that have a rather slipshod comedic setup (oh look, they’re chasing a guy on a golf course in a golf cart! This has to end well right?), and then the movie just keeps going and going, long after what was designed to be funny crashed, burned, and had its ashes scattered at sea. His visual style also leans on bright pastel colors that heighten the cartoonish atmosphere. The comic set-ups are along the lines of? Milo chains Nicole to bed. She crawls over him to reach for gun. Sexual dialogue about a “gun.” Milo chases a guy on stilts. Stilts! How could you resist that? And then at one point Nicole tries to make a break for it in a rickshaw. I’m already not laughing. And then the movie wants to be an action caper and lo does it fail miserably at this as well. Nicole is being chased by a bevy of goons because she knows too much. Milo is also being chased by his own bevy of goons that want to collect on his gambling debts. Then there’s a mutual friend/cop who may be dirty or might not be, but it’s just way too many extraneous characters chasing after the likes of Milo and Nicole.
Thorp lacks an ear for dialogue. She seems to have some basic grasp on the ingredients of funny, but she can’t make them come together and work. Every line alternates between being clumsy, obvious, or clumsily obvious. We’re supposed to be amused by Milo and Nicole’s banter. It’s grating, like you’re stuck in someone else’s miserable family vacation. There’s a moment in the end where Milo has distracted the bad guys and come to save his ex-wife, and then instead of bolting they sit and glumly talk about the failed state of their relationship. Could that not have waited until you were safe? The tone is decidedly uneven and the second half of the film feels like an eternity. The comedy completely gets smothered in the last half because now the movie wants to be taken seriously and we’re supposed to care about the characters getting back together, as if their reconciliation was ever in doubt. Thorp’s screenplay feels like a pastiche of 1000 different movies. There isn’t an original thought anywhere inside this movie. Even worse, there isn’t anything funny. This is the kind of movie that you say, “Well, it had its moments,” except The Bounty Hunter doesn’t even have those “moments.”
The Bounty Hunter is a colossal miscalculation on the part of everyone involved. It is neither funny nor romantic in any sense, it’s weirdly cruel and very casual about it, and the entire movie exists in some contrived, sketchy realm of reality that only exists in the furthest reaches of the rom-com universe. I find it funny (much funnier than anything in this movie) that Butler and Aniston were rumored to be dating after filming this movie. They have no screen chemistry whatsoever, though they can argue in annoying tones effectively. As the film neared its merciful end, I thought about calling somebody to round up those responsible for such an egregious waste of time and money. It’s not just that The Bounty Hunter is a bad movie; it’s a woefully clumsy and excruciating movie even considering the depths of romantic comedies. And if anybody sat through The Ugly Truth, or Over Her Dead Body, or anything with Freddie Prinze Jr. in it, then you know exactly how alarming that statement is.
Nate’s Grade: D
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She’s Out of My League (2010)
This is a fairly lackluster, flaccid, infantile comedy that aims to follow the same Judd Apatow formula of equal parts heart and raunch. Where this movie utterly fails is its choice of lead. Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder) is not a good leading man (his voice is very nasally and hard to listen to at times), but worse, his character, Kirk, is a callow, simpering, snot-nosed dolt. He has a dearth of a personality; he’s constantly berating himself or groveling for support by his oblivious family and mean ex-girlfriend. You simply don’t care. Kirk is not a guy worth watching. There’s empathy and then there’s pity. The movie wants to be a “nice guy gets the girl” story, but instead She’s Out of My League is a “guy with zero self-esteem and charisma gets the magazine cover model” story. At least in Apatow productions, the schlubby leads had personalities and redeeming qualities. I started enjoying the respites away from Kirk, time spent with his callous family members or his annoyingly juvenile friends. Anything to escape. The jokes have a pretty low ratio of hits to misses (an early ejaculation actually almost becomes an act break that keeps the couple apart), becoming subservient to a clichéd romantic comedy that wants to teach us that looks don’t matter. It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Have you heard that one before this week? If what’s on the inside is what matters, then She’s Out of My League has little to offer.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Micmacs (2010)
So what exactly does Micmacs even mean? A cursory search online brings me a few definitions: 1) a Native American Algonquian group living in Canada and upper New England, 2) the Algonquian language of the Micmac. That doesn’t exactly clear things up, especially considering that Mimacs is a French movie by the famed filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet. An interview with the director has him explaining that the title is French slang for a mixture. That seems appropriate since the film is a mélange of the director’s other works, high on inventiveness and visual whimsy. Except the one thing Jeunet strangely left out this time was a reason to care amidst the high-powered shenanigans.
Bazil (Danny Boon) is a bit down on his luck. A landmine killed his father when Bazil was a child. He drifted through life, got a job at a video store, and then got a bullet in his brain thanks to a drive-by shootout. The doctors decided to leave the stray bullet inside or else Bazil will become catatonic. Bazil eventually is adopted by a batch of homeless misfits living in a junkyard. They accept Bazil and encourage him to seek vengeance against the warring arms dealers responsible for the land mind and stray bullet. Bazil and his colorful new family plot to antagonize the arms company CEOs. They come up with crazy schemes to then frame on the rival CEOs to escalate tensions. Bazil and crew intend to expose these men and their corporate crimes to the world.
Micmacs succeeds where Rian Johnson’s Brother’s Bloom dangerously came close, and by that I mean that Micmacs overdoses on whimsy and I pronounced it clinically dead about an hour in. It’s too much; it’s just too much. Jeunet has always created movies that existed in rich, idiosyncratic worlds but those worlds always felt lush and lively and bursting with wonder. What saves a movie from whimsy is an emotional connection to the proceedings. 2001’s Amelie is a perfect example of cinematic “magic realism” but it’s also a moving and emotionally rewarding love story that transcends the plucky heroine. 2004’s A Very Long Engagement was a rapturous, old-fashioned love story with flights of fancy. Now, after a long six-year absence, Jeunet seems to have lost touch with the heart. There is no real emotional entry point for Micmacs. The protagonist is pretty much a blank. Yeah, you want him to get justice and you pull for the underdogs, but at no point did I care whatsoever for any character. Most of the junkyard characters are just ideas, walking-talking heist components (the human cannonball, the girl whose brain is good at math, the toy maker). Several characters barely exist except for their specific roles in Bazil’s schemes. There’s a romantic angle with the female contortionist (Julie Ferrier) and Bazil, but that comes off as less a function of the narrative and more of a desperate “Well, who else is gonna get together?” necessity. Jeunet has put together a movie that is all surface and no polish. Sure, the movie is intermittently entertaining and has plenty of imagination, but Micmacs is without a doubt the least involving and least accomplished film from a man responsible for a fantastic output.
The tone of the film seems to hew to something like a silent movie, which might explain why all the older members in my audience were constantly giggling while I just occasionally snickered under my breath. The comedy never rises above the chuckle level. There’s plenty of controlled wackiness, nothing gets too out of hand or edgy despite the fact that the plot revolves around getting vengeance on arms dealers. I was expecting something a little darker than the cutesy oddballs that I got. The best and darkest moment in the film is when we see that one of the arms dealers collects body parts of dead celebrities (Marilyn Monroe’s molar, Mussolini’s eyeball). It’s an interesting quirk that actually reveals something about the dark heart of the antagonist. There should be more moments like this. The bullet in Bazil’s brain is barely referenced. I have no issues with whimsy when it doesn’t overwhelm the narrative, and that’s the problem with Micmacs. The story is merely the vehicle for the inventive hijinks. The story is suffocated by whimsy and visual energy, therefore there’s no room for character development. All that inventiveness takes center stage. If playfulness is all you seek in a movie, then Micmacs will likely satisfy. Jeunet still makes movies that nobody else does, but he’s fallen fall short of his own lofty standards.
The movie moves along so quickly that it seems like every character just naturally intuits what must be done next, like they all have the screenplay in hand just off camera. Bazil is so quickly adopted by the junkyard gang. He so quickly discovers who is responsible for his life’s troubles. The schemes are so quickly thrown together. They aren’t even that complicated, mostly distracting and framing. The movie just feels like a spinning plate that has to keep moving or else everything will just break. I suppose Jeunet and his longtime co-writing collaborator Guillaume Laurant are trying to keep things busy so people won’t notice that they don’t genuinely care what happens.
This being a Jeunet film, of course it’s spectacular from a technical standpoint. Every frame of a Jeunet film can be used as a mural. His compositions delight the eye and the colorful cinematography by Tetsuo Negata (Splice) makes Paris seem like a dream city. The production design looks like it was taken directly from the Steampunk Architectural Digest magazine. You’ll never have to worry about the visual aesthetics or ingenuity of a Jeunet film. But there are plenty of artists that can master technical craft (you can find them in the world of commercials) but it takes something much more to marry technical precision in the service story and character. Micmacs is a strange film not because of plot, character, tone, or energy, but because Jeunet spent six years in absence and returned with a film that’s got plenty of style but no heart inside all that artifice.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Get Him to the Greek (2010)
How many scene-stealers get spin-offs? That sounds like something you’d more likely find in the realm of TV, but it does happen occasionally in cinema. In 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, comedian Russell Brand played British rock star Aldous Snow. He stole Sarah Marshall and he also stole the movie. Now the stringy Brit with the crazy hair gets is own movie, Get Him to the Greek, a semi-sequel to Sarah Marshall.
Aldous Snow (Brand) has had his career hit a bit of a snag. His latest album, and lead single, “African Child” has been met with a tidal wave of bad press. Critics are calling it the worst thing to strike Africa after famine, war, and apartheid. His longtime girlfriend and fellow recording artist, Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), has dumped him and gotten full custody of their son. His life, and he, has gone off the wagon. Music exec Sergio (Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs) is desperate for ideas to help make money for his company. Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) suggests to the boss man that it will be the 10-year anniversary of Snow rocking out at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, a seminal concert event. The boss tasks Hill with traveling to London, retrieving Snow, getting him to a Today Show performance in New York and then to the Greek in L.A. for an anniversary concert. Of course babysitting a drug-addled rock star and getting him places on time is easier said than done.
Get Him to the Greek is ultimately a buddy movie. Brand and Hill play off each other so well. In fact, I might say that Hill’s character is a tad too dull when he’s not around the hyperactive and impulsive Snow. You sort of feel for the guy and you’d like life to turn out well for him and his girlfriend, but you’re not completely committed to the character. However, when he’s bouncing off Brand, the movie transforms into a wild comedy with many funny moments and a few that miss the mark. Green has been entrusted to handle his high-maintenance rock star and this presents a few stellar comic setups. Green has to make sure that his star is not impaired when he performs on the Today Show, so he steals Snow’s flask of booze and joint and downs them both to protect his star. The resulting appearance on the Today Show then flips the script, having the flaky star be the straight man to the highly impaired handler. The funniest sequence for my taste involves a drawn-out drug trip in a Vegas hotel. Things spiral out of control and involve furry wall groping, mass amounts of property destruction, and Snow stabbing Green in the chest with an adrenaline needle, then being chased by an incensed Sergio who will not be stopped even after being hit by a car. It’s an exhilarating, madcap sequence that picks up comedy momentum and plows ahead. You may not be able to relate to either character, but when you put them together the movie comes alive with comic mischief and misfortune.
Being a Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad) production, Get Him to the Greek has got to bring the heart with the raunch. Even though we spend the majority of the running time with two characters, the film is less character-based than other Apatow-produced products. The sentiment slips in at the end. Obviously, given the setup, you expect Green to become more aggressive motivated, Snow to become more mellow and conscientious, and we’re all better for it in the end. The two characters do begin to bond in their unusual way, which elicits much of the film’s enjoyment. I enjoyed spending time with these two guys, especially when they were together. That likeability factor got the film through some of its rough patches. As far as supporting casts, a hallmark of an Apatow-produced film, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs is the movie’s scene-stealer, mostly through sheer force of will. He’s not the funniest guy but man does he chew scenery with gusto. He’s so loud and crazed that he practically scares you into laughing as a defensive impulse.
Brand is a terrific comedy discovery. He has such an electric energy and his wild-eyed hijinks and deadpan delivery had me in stitches. I was worried that a full movie for Aldous Snow would wear thin, but Stoller and Brand have deepened the character. It would be extremely easy, and almost understandable, for Snow to just be this caricature of the rock and roll lifestyle, an easy send-up for easy jokes. But just like with Sarah Marshall, the more time you spend with Snow the more you start to like him. He’s genuinely charming. His onstage persona evokes memories of Mick Jagger, Led Zeppelin, and Freddie Mercury. He’s self-destructive and egotistical but he’s not as shallow as he may appear to be (his vocabulary is a notch above, too). He’s unpredictable but he’s not stupid. He’s fairly vulnerable with some real feelings, lamenting his failed relationship with Jackie Q and yearning to be the father for a son that may not even be his. His life is filled with hangers-on and leeches, including his own parents. Brand can be good at being ridiculous but he can also be very good at being miserable. His vulnerability and attempts to be something more than the sum of his lifestyle allows for some tender moments between the babes and booze.
Hill has graduated from supporting player to “regular dude” lead in the Apatow Academy. He’s presented almost as a brazenly average everyman, albeit one who appears to be dangerously overweight (seriously, Hill has ballooned like a blowfish and I worry for the guy). This role allows Hill to showcase the most range he ever has yet. He believes in the power of music and has a personal stake in what goes down at the Greek. He sells his dramatic parts better than expected. He and his girlfriend, Daphne (Elizabeth Moss from TV’s Mad Men), make for an unconventional couple via Hollywood’s superficial standards. It’s an interesting match and somewhat refreshing that Hill isn’t dating some knock-out (Moss is quite fetching, don’t get me wrong).
Greek doesn’t measure up to Sarah Marshall and part of that is because the story is a bit too shaggy, housing gags but lacking a stronger driving plot. Many of the scenes don’t connect so much as independently exist. Also, writer/director Nicholas Stoller (who also directed Sarah Marshall) sometimes doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. The drug-addled sequences tend to get a little tedious after the third or fourth time. Granted, drugs and alcohol are all apart of the modern rock and roll experience, but watching people act weird on drugs can get tiresome unless given a different context to work with. Some of the comic setups are a tad lazy but are saved by the efforts of Brand and Hill. When Aldous orders his lackey to smuggle heroin in his rectum, it feels strained even by the standards of wacky comedies. It feels like one episode that doesn’t lead to anything other than a quick, almost absurd, comedy dead-end. And for a movie with a ticking clock constantly running down the hours before Snow needs to be at the Today Show and then the Greek Theater, there sure is a strong lack of urgency. When they run late or miss planes, you don’t really care because you know it’s a matter that will be easily solved.
A fact I really enjoyed with Sarah Marshall was that the girls were given something to do — they were allowed to be more than the joke, they could be in on the joke. Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell’s characters were allowed to be nuanced, mature yet able to make mistakes, and both were funny while being central to the story. With Greek, the female characters are mostly one-note and then given a little polish. Jackie Q is all brash sexuality and Daphne is prim and constantly exhausted. They’re extremes made for easy laughs. When Jackie Q tries to get serious, we don’t really buy it because she seemed rather pleased to soak up the unhealthy riches of fame. Her behavior is inconsistent. With Daphne, her wet blanket personality is supposed to be the joke, and then when she cuts loose toward the end, requesting a three-way between her, Green, and rock star Aldous Snow, it feels wrong for her character and weirdly reminiscent of Chasing Amy. I know Get Him to the Greek is primarily a boys movie, but it lacks the same generosity of character that aided Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Get Him to the Greek is a solid comedy helped by two strong lead performances. It’s a nice addition to Apatow’s family of character-based comedies even if it doesn’t live up to its ambitions. The movie is consistently funny throughout, which is integral to being a comedy. The character dynamics lead to some entertaining comic set-ups and sometimes some lazy ones, but the troupe of actors makes it all work. Brand and Hill are a fine team and the movie has plenty of surprises and cameos to keep things fresh when a gag misfires. I wouldn’t mind seeing the further exploits of Aldous Snow, or even listening to some of his recordings (his Sarah Marshall tune “Inside You” was criminally left off the Oscar nominees in 2008). But this movie just made me realize how much more I appreciate Sarah Marshall, and how that movie has grown on me over time. I suppose like Hill’s character, it took an extended detour with Aldous Snow to make me realize what I truly appreciate in life.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Sex and the City 2 (2010)
Sex and the City is a cultural phenomenon that women around the globe celebrate. When the show first premiered on HBO in the late 90s, it chronicled the lives of professional women that wanted to have it all, and they wouldn’t apologize for their sexual appetites or fashion splurges. The successful show then launched a very successful movie in 2008, but the movie tied up everyone’s storylines in fairly nice little bows. So now where to? For the fans, it hardly matters. Sex and the City is a cause of celebration, a girl’s night out with cosmo in hand. The content of the movie seems almost like an afterthought. Fans aren’t going to be too picky but there is a lot to pick at with Sex and the City 2.
It’s two years after the events in the first film. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her husband, John James “Mr. Big” Preston (Chris Noth), are settling into married life. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) feels mistreated and unappreciated by her boss because she’s a woman. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has her hands full with two young children, and motherhood in reality isn’t at glamorized as she thought. She’s also worried that her husband (Evan Handler) might cheat with their busty Irish nanny (Alice Eve, the “10” from She’s Out of My League). They girls dub her “Erin Go-bra-less,” I think as a weird wordplay on Erin Brockovich. Your guess is as good as mine. And then there’s Samantha (Kim Cattrall) who is 52 and desperately fighting to look and feel young again. She has a regiment of hormone pills and creams she uses daily to keep the encroaching effects of menopause at bay. To give the girls an excuse to get away, a rich middle Eastern sheik wants to persuade Samantha to do some PR work for his hotel, so he invites the foursome on a fabulous all-expenses-paid trip to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
I know coming from my non-demographic perspective that I’m going to have some difficulty relating to these main characters, but these gals are so self-absorbed in their petty, rich people problems, I question who could really relate to much of this drama. Charlotte is being driven mad by the toll of motherhood, which is relatable, except her toll involves staying at home in a rich apartment, never having to worry about money, and handing off her screaming kids to the nanny. Not relatable. Carrie’s dilemma is the most forced and therefore the worst of the bunch. After having her storyline tied up in the first film, where can she go? She has got the guy, she got her wedding, she has a luxurious apartment, and her man wants to spend time with her. She’s in her mid-to-late 40s at this point and wants to still go out every night on the town. She complains that they stay in TWO NIGHTS a week. When Big gets her a thoughtful anniversary gift, a flat-screen TV in the bedroom so that they can watch old romantic movies TOGETHER, she pouts and says, “Jewelry would have been nice.” Her main problem is that her guy, the one she married, wants to spend time with his wife in their comfy abode and relax TOGETHER. When Carrie asks for two days leave so she can get some work done on an article, Big allows her the time off and then wonders if that apply to their marriage: each takes a day or two off to concentrate on work, relax, catch up with friends, etc. It’s her idea, but when he voices it suddenly it becomes threatening and again all about Carrie. She responds, “Is this because I’m a bitch wife who nags you?” Well, at least she cuts to the chase. These are the problems that people have when they don’t actually have any real problems.
There is one, count ’em, one great scene in the movie and it doesn’t involve Carrie or the ever increasingly cartoonish Samantha. Charlotte and Miranda are by themselves sipping from cocktails and confessing about the hardships of motherhood. Both take sips and then admit a guilty secret. One says she feels like a failure at being a mother. Another admits that being a stay-at-home mom just isn’t enough for her in life. They both admit that they love their children dearly, but have enjoyed the time away from them. The scene feels genuine, with some heartfelt laughs derived from the situation. Charlotte bashfully admits that her first thoughts following the idea that her husband might cheat with the nanny were, “No, I can’t lose that nanny,” and it feels honest and right for her character, plus it’s funny. And then they admit something that the audience had fortuitously forgotten in that moment — they do all this with help. Charlotte has a nanny and Miranda has her grandmother-in-law living with them to help raise the kids. A really nicely written and acted moment that peels away to showcase the complexities of the modern mother is dashed. Even the universal concerns we can all relate to (infidelity, doubt, settling, getting older) take a backseat to the overly manufactured melodrama.
The rampant consumerism hasn’t slowed down despite the economic meltdown of 2008. Carrie makes a quick comment about how it “wasn’t a good time to sell her apartment,” and so she keeps her spacious apartment along with the multi-million dollar one she lives with Big. The sheer celebration of consumerism has turned into blind worship; it’s all about the stuff. The characters have long since burrowed into their types (the fussy one, the career-minded one, the sexually voracious one, and the self-involved one), and those types have become entrenched, and the men have become just another accessory for a large closet of goods. The real star of this movie is the outlandish, sometimes garish, fashion, and there is heaps of it. One outing into the Arabic desert makes use of three separate costume changes. The name-dropping and product placement are aggressive. For the first film I wrote: “‘I’m not going to charge the film with setting back feminism or anything but why do the main characters have to be so shallow, brand-conscious, and live to splurge? The emphasis on buy, buy, buy to make yourself feel good is a rather sad and empty message.” The Sex and the City movies have morphed into consumerist, female wish-fulfillment fantasies, enabling Carrie’s princess indulgences and superficial demands. The girls are all panicked towards the end about he possibility of, gasp, flying coach, you know, like the rest of us. These women haven’t lived in anything resembling reality for some time. It’s a shame that in these cost-conscious times, the Sex and the City universe seems unaffected. I would have enjoyed seeing how these high-powered women dealt with the repercussions of an economic recession (not to mention Carrie dealing with the death of print publishing). Yes, I know, it’s designed to be escapism, and that’s all well and good, but I wanted to escape from these characters and their lifestyles.
But what will get the most attention is the extensively long escapade in the Middle East, like Sex and the City is planning to solve global politics. Obviously, there is something wrong with how women are treated in several majority Muslim countries, from the demands to cover themselves in heavy garments so as not to tempt men, to the void of rights, to honor killings and stonings, and murdering women just because they went to school. This is a serious matter. These countries are behind the times and women deserve an equal footing and an equal say, and several contemporary movies have dealt with these issues in a thoughtful manner. Sex and the City 2, on the other hand, takes a patronizing approach that is culturally insensitive at best and downright racially insulting at worst. These ambassadors of modern feminist thinking basically show themselves to the Arab world as the quintessential ugly Americans; the ladies of Sex and the City are exactly what radicals think about when they order women to cover up or else. These women are self-indulgent, materialistic, vapid, and riding high on Western self-righteousness. I am in no way apologizing for how large portions of the Muslim world treat women, but Carrie and company are quite possible the worst ambassadors to argue the case for feminine equality. And remember, they complain about their pity-party problems while on an all-expenses-paid vacation to a lifestyle of lavish luxury in the Middle East. They reduce the problem of Muslim women into simplistic, indignant quips. It’s more than a little insulting to have somebody wearing clownish outfits telling women in other countries how to dress. This foursome is brash and in-your-face with their strong sense of cultural superiority, practically baiting the locals into making a scene. At one point, Samantha is jailed and shocked that the authorities might be upset that she was caught having sex on their beach. Don’t these women understand culture clash? In the end the women are chased out of town and you almost (I repeat — almost) feel for the other side.
This is considered fashionable?
Even worse than the ethically dubious moralizing is the fact that this extended portion of the movie (about 100 minutes) grinds the plot to a halt. Most of the storylines are set up before the trip, and then they are all tied up somehow when the women return, though the time in Abu Dhabi seems to have had no effect. Miranda’s conflict with her boss is resolved before the gals ever get on a plane, so she becomes essentially tour guide and confidant for the trip. Samantha is denied her plethora of pills at the airport, so she becomes the slapstick comic relief trying to stave off menopause. Her pun-heavy dialogue is full of groaners like, “Lawrence of my labia.” Her sex kitten act is getting as tiresome as her futile attempts to keep Mother Nature at bay. Samantha is the same from the beginning of the movie to the end, and fans will probably rejoice at this lack of character development. The entire misadventure in Abu Dhabi feels like a Hope & Crosby road picture, or, worse, one of those lame TV-movie gimmicks from sitcoms (luckily Carrie is spared the curse of the tiki idol).
But whatever I say will be regarded with shrugs by the legions of Sex and the City fans. They’ve grown with these characters over 12 years, so I understand the attachment fans feel. Like I said before, the movie medium is not the ideal place for these ladies. In half hour doses their quirks and problems seem cute, but when stretched to a bloated running time they come across as vapid and whiny. The conflicts don’t seem too relatable and the humor is once again tied to slapstick and leaden puns. The problem is that after six seasons and one 145-minute movie, the characters feel tapped out. They’ve been through plenty and now the crew is just coming up with whatever excuse they can have to reunite the cast on the big screen (stay tuned for Sex and the City 3 … in Space!).
Nate’s Grade: C
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Valentine’s Day (2010)
Imagine every romantic comedy cliché and sappy platitude about love stirred together into one giant gelatinous conglomeration of hollow sentiment. That’s Valentine’s Day. Regardless of your thoughts on the holiday, this movie, which aims to celebrate our national day of love, might have the opposite effect. This movie makes He’s Just Not That Into You look like When Harry Met Sally. It?s a fairly large ensemble with plenty of mega-watt stars, but it’s too bad that nobody knows what to do. Jessica Alba’s character literally runs her course an hour into the film and yet she still makes meaningless appearances. This overstuffed Hallmark card has ridiculously safe, candy-coated storylines sanded so that there is no hint of edge or wit (Anne Hathaway is the most ludicrous PG-13 phone sex operator you will ever find). The resolutions of most of these storylines will be predictable to anybody who has ever read a greeting card. Jamie Foxx is supposed to be a bitter TV reporter popping up everywhere reporting about the ills of V-Day. Think he’ll have a change of heart by the film’s end? The cast does offer their small pleasures (there are SIX Oscar nominees/winners in this movie!), except for the kid who has a crush on his teacher (Jennifer Garner). He was insufferably annoying. So was his movie.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
This movie was a big letdown given the cast, the strange true origins of this fantastic tale, and even with the title. This odd little film feels tonally off. The material feels mishandled, mixing broad humor and with military satire and the dark realities of the war in Iraq. The premise is solid — a Pentagon program training psychic soldiers, men convinced they could run through walls or terminate goats through the power of thought. Why then does the movie feel so misguided and rudderless and, ultimately, boring? Never has such an outlandish concept, based on true events, felt so devoid of edge. The satire picks safe targets and the comedy remains farcically broad. I think the film’s downfall can ultimately be traced to the decision to turn this material into a fictional narrative. I would have preferred an actual documentary detailing the men, women, and goats involved in the real Pentagon program. If truth can be stranger than fiction, why dress it up and then dull it through fiction?
Nate’s Grade: C
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The Informant! (2009)
Stephen Soderbergh’s comic farce is highly amusing from start to finish. I even watched it twice and still found myself shaking my head and chuckling in bafflement. That’s the best way to describe the tone of the film — baffled laughter. Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitaker, a corporate whistleblower whose grasp on the truth is tenuous at best. Damon’s character is a cut-up and his delusions of being a spy plus his scatter-brained narration are as fascinating as they are hilarious. This guy thinks he’s James Bond. And yet the film, while deeply comic, never comes across as snide or condescending even if most of the laughs come from Whitaker’s disconnect from reality. The film has a deliberately ironic tongue-in-cheek vibe, from the silly yet undeniably jaunty kazoo-aided score by Marvin Hamlisch to even the amber-colored cinematography (like the film was shot through the prism of a honey jar), the movie is an entertaining series of blunders and revelations. Damon is charismatic and deeply funny and Whitaker makes for such an interesting main character exactly because he is so unpredictable and unreliable. He doles out the truth in pieces like a kid caught. The Informant! is light and breezy but with some well-honed psychology of rationalization and self-deception. I don’t know how true this supposed true-life tale really is, but it’s a hell of a fun tale.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Not nearly as clever as the brilliant title may suggest, Hot Tub Time Machine is a fairly silly yet sloppy comedic enterprise. The purposely moronic nature of it leads to some raunchy enjoyment, and the premise involving a time-traveling Jacuzzi allows for some fun comedic situations. The trouble is that the movie shadows our foursome of dudes (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke) too closely. The movie presents intriguing comedic setups but spends inordinate amounts of time dealing with the fractious falling out between the dudes. We spend more time talking about old friendships than we do the sheer possibilities brought about through time travel. The pacing has some turgid moments; it takes too long to reach the magic hot tub. There’s some good humor at first when the guys believe they must follow the exact path they tread before, lest the butterfly effect destroy the future. Then they decide to walk a different path, taking advantage of their knowledge of the future. The movie doesn’t fully take advantage of its own comedic possibilities and settles for lame payoffs, like an end credits sequence inserting Corddry into a Motley Crue video (it’s not funny). There are a few Farrelly Brother-level gross-out gags, but most of the comedy happens around these guys, not because of their characters. They themselves are not exasperatingly funny, so it’s disappointing when Hot Tub Time Machine flirts with fun comic scenarios (an outlandish bet on a sporting game, performing a modern song, the mystery of how the bellhop loses his arm, Duke making sure he will be conceived in the past) only to give up and spend more time with the guys hashing out their years-old squabbles. Enough with the personal growth and reflection. Get back to messing around with the space-time continuum.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Black Dynamite (2009)
This surprising little gem could have been the third feature in Grindhouse, and it would have been the best movie of the three. This pitch-perfect comedy both celebrates and satirizes blaxploitation movies, but it does so with a raised eyebrow and its tongue-in-cheek, not the wacky spoof antics of I’m Gonna Git you Sucka. Michael Jai White, who also co-wrote the script, is the titular crime fighting, lady-loving, soul brother looking to find some righteous justice and help some orphan kids too. The attention to detail is impressive, from the saturated film stock, to the bare locations, to the choppy edits and film errors, but the film just nails the tone better than Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez managed in their odes to schlock cinema. The movie is consistently hilarious without being too self-conscious with its humor, and White makes a terrific straight man to the proceedings. The music is authentic, jazzy, and hilarious in its own right. There’s one point where the score even narrates what’s happening. Amusing from its first second to its last, with a nunchuk-baring kung-fu Richard Nixon. Black Dynamite is deliberately silly, highly quotable, and terrific entertainment.
Nate’s Grade: A
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