DVD Review: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms’ leading-man debut is a funnier movie than The Hangover Part 2. It’s smarter, too.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard, as the famous adage goes, and by extension of that same logic it’s virtually impossible to get dark comedy right. The wreckage of failed attempts includes the best and the brightest artists of every comedy era, and not a few dramatic creators as well. Dark comedy – black comedy, gallows humor, cringe humor – carries its own additional pitfalls besides the usual minefield of problems awaiting its gentler cousin. And when dark comedy fails, too often the results land with a resounding thud, victims of creative overreach or slipshod understandings of tone.

Cedar Rapids, the often pitch-dark new effort from indie mainstay Miguel Arteta, walks its dark comedy tightrope constantly in danger of falling one way or the other. Though ultimately it succeeds, the suspense of waiting for it to collapse under its own ambitious weight suffuses virtually every scene. You almost come to care about the movie itself as much as its conventional story or oddball characters, wondering when at any second its whole artifice will come crashing down. It never does, thanks largely to its cast.

A star is brown: Helms

Small-town man-child Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent by his boss (Stephen Root) at Brownstar Insurance to a regional convention after the agency’s alpha dog (Tom Lennon) dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Lippe isn’t ready for the responsibility, let alone the pressure of bringing home the convention’s “Two Diamond” award that the agency has secured several years in a row. But he goes anyway, propelled by his boss’ bullying. His wide-eyed, gawky enthusiasm, mixed with rustic suspicion for the dangers and promises of the titular “big city,” provide some of the film’s most unguarded moments.

The convention’s hotel (as uniformly cheerless, and cheerlessly uniform, as any of a million such places in America) and the people Lippe encounters there of course compel him to grow up emotionally and sexually. In particular, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of hard-partying, foul-mouthed policy “poacher” Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), comparatively straight-laced Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and the sultry, melancholy Joan (Anne Heche.) The quartet goof their way through the three-day conference while Tim readies his presentation to convention patriarch Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). Moral fortitude and honesty count for a lot in winning the “prestigious” Two Diamond trophy, and in assenting to his new friends’ temptations – including a fling with Joan – Lippe risks costing his company the award.

Artete works well within the small confines of the hotel, showing the confines of each blandly friendly space and how, especially given the inhospitable winter outside, even such slim diversions as hotel bar margaritas and overheated pools can offer a welcome distraction. It helps a lot that Phil Johnston’s script does right by its main character, shrewdly demonstrating Lippe’s fish out of water ups and downs: his new friends are a welcoming, non-judgmental bunch, a distant cry from the McJesus snobbery of his home town co-workers and neighbors – the same people, Lippe is decent enough to remember, that depend on him. Of course everything works out in the end, but not before plenty of debauchery and clean, if slightly mean-spirited, fun.

As a comic leading man, Helms’ strengths center on the same aw, shucks likability that’s served him more or less unwaveringly since his tenure on The Daily Show. Lippe is similar to The Office‘s Andy Bernard, more naive but less obtuse, with a greater vulnerability as a result. It’s tempting to thumbnail Lippe as Bernard freed of The Office‘s self-conscious repetition of character and story beats, but there’s more – a little more – to him than that. Helms makes him sympathetic but stops short of making him pitiable or charismatic.

He’s backed by, well, a dream supporting cast for this type of project. Reilly is a leading man trapped in the body of a character actor, and every one of his scenes tends to upset the tenuous balance Artete strikes between Lippe and his surroundings. In fact for much of the film’s first hour, the energy level rises palpably whenever Reilly’s motor- and foul-mouthed party animal comes onscreen. Comedies often rise or fall on the quotability of their dialogue; Reilly has most of the lines you’ll want to repeat to your friends.

The surprise performance, however, belongs to Heche as the otherwise content soccer mom who uses insurance conventions as a vacation from the staid security of her normal life. Heche is sexy, sad, and smart all at the same time, without resorting to vamping or overheated line readings to achieve said results. Her confession to Lippe about the normalcy of her life and the release of Cedar Rapids carries some of the film’s best writing, and her well-modulated delivery of the scene works as an oasis to the dark shenanigans displayed almost everywhere else. Heche’s career was swallowed years ago by the media’s provincial fascination with her sexuality; this performance earns her a shot at a larger comeback vehicle.

Making the most of smaller roles, Whitlock makes a charming straight man for the others, especially in a late scene in which he gets to spoof his role on The Wire. The prolific Root is hilarious as Lippe’s boss, and Smith brings the same imperial menace to Helgesson that he brought to all those years as That 70s Show‘s Red Foreman. Arrested Development fans may find themselves a little shocked to see Alia Shawkat, Maeby Funke herself, playing the hotel’s prostitute; the role allows her to say filthy things and look sultry, which for a career transition vehicle is possibly as good as it gets right now.

Cedar Rapids shouldn’t be confused for a great film, but it achieves its difficult ambitions while remaining entertaining, and it has the rare gift of growing in your memory after you leave the theatre. If its raunchy gags and sometimes awkward staging keep it from really developing into something approaching a classic modern dark comedy – Rushmore, to make a contemporary example, or Ruthless People - it’s trying for something riskier than the pot and potty humor that dominates too many modern “comedies” (Not least of which, obviously, The Hangover Part II.) It’s also, admittedly, refreshing to encounter a comedy that doesn’t bear Judd Apatow’s factory-pressed mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and stunted male growth.

Dying is easy, dark comedy is hardest, and ultimately Cedar Rapids is a damned funny movie with a cast full of people who should appear more than they do. Given a small release in the theatres last winter, it’s unmissable home video entertainment.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Paul

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s close encounter comedy revives the comic adventures of the 1980s.

Geek culture has entered the American mainstream, not from any cultural impetus or because the film and television industries realized the tremendous storytelling potential of its legions of franchises. Rather, money – the fortunes to be made in celebrating and exploiting what was once an outlying, fringe element of society – is too good to pass up. Too, it helps that some of the best comedic minds around right now proudly wave their geek cred.

That crossover continues in glorious scale, and in fact probably makes its grand arrival, with the very funny satire/homage Paul, the funniest American film since last year’s The Other Guys and a career high for several of its creative forces. Not for the faint of sensibilities and especially not for anyone humorless about their purpose driven life, it’s nevertheless bawdy, smart fun for the rest of us.

After years of anticipation, lifelong British geeks and (to quote geek tycoon Kevin Smith) hetero life-mates Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost) embark on a trip across America, beginning with a visit to the San Diego Comic-Con and continuing with a sojourn to the sites of reported extraterrestrial contact throughout the American Southwest. The two are pleasantly astonished by American excess, drinking in the oddities of the alien-themed tourist traps but mostly remaining at a safe distance within their rented RV. Clive, though, is restive after a convention meeting with their favorite science fiction author (Jeffrey Tambor) proves underwhelming.

Driving along a desolate highway at night and fleeing two bullying rednecks (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons), the two witness a black sedan fly crashing off the road. Investigating the wreck, they encounter the ET code-named Paul (voiced by Set Rogen) by his government caretakers. Paul had crashed to Earth decades before, and since then has covertly advised the U.S. military and the American entertainment industry. Now with his knowledge all but exhausted by his top-secret hosts, Paul fears vivisection at the hands of the shadowy “Big Guy” controlling his concealment. He begs for Graeme and Clive’s help in reaching an unspecified destination – “You’ll know it when you see it, guys,” he tells them - before government Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman) catches up to him.

At times evoking memories of comic book icon and movie disaster Howard The Duck, Paul is no one’s idea of an enlightened being. Quick to curse and nursing a love for cigarettes, pot, and easy living, he’s nonetheless privy to cosmic secrets that leave mere humans scratching their heads. Able to camouflage himself to his surroundings and to heal minor energies through energy transference, he’s also a stronger personality than his human cohorts, more assured by way of being confident of his place in the universe.

Stopping overnight at the Pearly Gates trailer ranch, the trio picks up an unintentional hostage in Ruth (Kristen Wiig), a creationist and devout Christian immediately at odds with Paul’s very existence. When Paul heals an eye that was damaged during childhood, she resolves to live the most debauched life she can, arguing if there’s no such thing as sin then her behavoir can’t be wrong. “I plan to fornicate a lot!” she tells a smitten Graeme.

The group inches towards their destination while eluding Zoil, Ruth’s bible-thumping father (John Carroll Lynch) and two junior agents (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio) looking to prove themselves to the Big Guy. A detour to the site of Paul’s arrival on Earth gains them another passenger, the woman (Blythe Danner) who as a girl saved him from the wreckage of the UFO. Paul regrets her involvement, and the social ostracism it caused, and wants to make amends before leaving.

Ultimately the group reaches the site of the alien rendezvous, escaping the agent’s clutches and facing down the Big Guy in a series of surprising twists. (The villain’s identity is meant to be a surprise, so I won’t spoil it here.) A neat epilogue brings the story back around to the Comic-Con, where Clive and Graeme revel in the success Paul’s inspiration has brought them.

Written by Pegg and Frost, the script under the direction of Greg Mottola plays as a more well-rounded and mature effort than the duo’s previous Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, and another accomplishment for Mottola following 2009′s deeply underrated Adventureland. Their American costars – Rogen, Wiig, Heder, Bateman – understand the deadpan glee the two bring to their stories, and adjust their performances accordingly. Wiig, probably comedy’s next great leading woman, is alternately melancholy and explosive as the newly- and happily-unsheltered Ruth; Bateman, an odd choice to play a heavy, twists Michael Bluth’s legendary sarcasm to a new pungency. Hader and Lo Truglio perform the least, though their parts are written barely above the level of stock characters.

Only once does the film seem to lose its comic footing, during an excessively violent chase sequence that sees two characters blown up and another shot in cold blood. Though Pegg and Frost have said the film is an homage to Steven Spielberg (the script is loaded with references to his 1980s films, and even includes a brief but oddly tepid phone conversation between Paul and Spielberg as himself), the influence of other comedy adventures from the decade stays readily apparent. In its occasionally unwieldy fusion of snarky comedy and special effects-driven adventure the film sometimes resembles, probably deliberately, 80s classics including Ghostbusters, Spies Like Us, and Neighbors. (We can easily imagine a 1985 version starring John Candy and Dan Ackroyd as the geeks, with Bill Murray as the voice of Paul.)

Though it’s not necessary, and indeed may only have bogged things down, for as intelligent as the film can sometimes become the absence of explanation or discussion of geek culture – its sources and enduring resistance to mainstream ridicule as well as the passage of time – remains an odd emptiness at the center of Graeme and Clive’s characters. They’re, at heart, intelligent and intrepid men, and their fascination with three-breasted alien women and samurai swords seems at cross-purposes to their capacity for daring. It’s suggested, vaguely, that a life of sci-fi fascination gave them such strengths, but only barely and not enough to resonate through the entire film. 

Still, few modern comedies even try as much at once as Paul, and if there’s not room for everything the filmmakers could have done there’s still quite a lot – including at least a dozen inspired references to all those 80s sci-fi adventures. Listen for them pepper their way through the dialogue, because they demonstrate the affection that fuels the entire movie. You don’t have to catch all of them, but you’ll probably feel closer to the characters if you do.

- Michael Kabel

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Sour Christmas, Part Two

Continuing our list of a dozen movies and TV shows to help you skip the holiday cheer.

“So bolt the door and hit the floor…”

Christmas is just three days away, and we’re still not feeling it.  Just the same, or maybe because of it, here’s the rest of the dozen movies and gone-too-soon television shows that we recommend as smart, funny, honest, and wickedly creative – in other words, everything the holiday season is not.  They’re all available on DVD, and they all make perfect ways to escape from holiday celebrations into something that better fits a sour mood

A couple of days ago we published the first half of the list here, but the total listing remains (as always) in no particular order of importance. Where possible, we’ve included video that was available on YouTube when we looked for it.

Thank You For Smoking (2005) – Smug, blithely amoral tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhardt, never better) juggles raising his tween son (Cameron Bright) with romancing a journalist (Katie Holmes) and pitching cigarette product placement into Hollywood films. Opposing him are a yokely U.S. Senator (William H. Macy) and… well, pretty much the entire world.

Writer-director Jason Reitman (Up In The Air) adapts Christopher Buckley’s novel with fierce comic wit and timing, and the leads get a giant boost from a supporting cast full of ringers – Macy, the great J.K. Simmons, Maria Bello, David Koechner, among others. It’s the kind of film that at first you think you shouldn’t laugh at, then admit you can’t help yourself.

The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – Struggling, bottom-feeding New York press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) lives at the beck and call of cynical, world-loathing newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). Hunsecker, who despises Falco and the whole world besides, can make or break Falco’s clients – and, by extension, Falco too. Hunsecker offers him the chance to get his clients real publicity, but only if Falco will sabotage the jazz guitarist (Martin Milner) currently romancing his sister (Susan Harrison).

By and large, the mainstream films of the 1950s aren’t known for their character depth or social commentary, but like Elia Kazan’s A Face In The Crowd (released the same year) Alexander Mackendrick’s film has dozens of barbed comments to make on the media, public image, and moral hypocrisy; consider it Mad Men from the time of Mad Men.

Gone Baby Gone (2007) – Ben Affleck’s directing debut adapts Dennis Lehane’s novel about a pair of romantically attached detectives (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) pulled into helping the search for a young girl kidnapped from a poor neighborhood. But the investigation ends unhappily, and the couple drifts apart. Months later, a second kidnapping raises nagging questions about the first, complicated by police treachery and the girl’s own conniving, possibly complicit mother (the superb Amy Ryan, in an Oscar-nominated performance.)

This was one of the first films SBR reviewed, and it still holds a warm, if dark, place in our film memory. Read our complete review here.

 

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) – A film lover’s dream movie, George Roy Hill’s loose, self-assured take on the two real-life train robbers still sets the bar for all things masculine cool. Pursued by a crack team of investigators to the remote hills of Bolivia, Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) continue their life of crime even though the stakes are higher and the authorities deadlier. Times’s running out for the two gentlemen bandits, largely because their era of frontier freedom is ending.

In the meantime the pacing is sharp and the performances perfect, as in this following scene where Butch confronts a mutinous member of his Hole In The Wall Gang (Ted Cassidy.)

Point Blank (1967) – You always hear about how the 1960s was a decade of change yet Lee Marvin remained the biggest badass on the planet throughout, as this John Boorman (Deliverance) pseudo-homage to French New Wave proves again and again. Here he’s cast as Walker, a thief and enforcer double-crossed and left for dead by both his partner (John Vernon) and wife (Sharon Acker).

But he recovers, and with help from a mysterious benefactor (Keenan Wynn) begins to take apart the criminal syndicate that his ex-partner now represents. Walker wants revenge and no more, no less than the $93,000 that was his take of their last heist. He’s helped, in her kitten-with-a-whip Sixties way, by his wife’s sister (Angie Dickinson). If any of this sounds familiar, Mel Gibson remade the film with 1999′s much weaker Payback.

Arrested Development (2003) – We’re still parsing out how good this dark comedy actually was, seven years after its debut.  A labyrinth of in-jokes, meta-humor, recurring gags and brilliant character beats formed the structure of the Bluth family’s saga in Orange County, as storylines of infidelity, coming of age, treason, and so much else moved them from episode to interconnected episode.

The show nominally centered on straight-laced son Michael (Jason Bateman, kicking off his career comeback) but included more than a dozen regular and recurring performers including Portia de Rossi, Jeffrey Tambor, Will Arnett, Michael Cera and David Cross. All three seasons are on DVD, and lately IFC has put reruns heavily into its nightly schedule.

Happy holidays. We’ll return once next week, to close out the year with its last installment of Miscellaneous Debris. Be safe on the roads and take care.

-  Michael Kabel  

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Miscellaneous Debris, August 2010 Edition

Our monthly roundup of news that caught our eye and what we have to say about it. 

We’ve complained about it for months, so here’s our last word on the subject: this was the Summer of Disappointment, with little in the way of surprise but plenty in the way of letdown. Even the surprises were themselves born of relief, with films like Despicable Me and The A-Team offering more than we expected; when the best you can say is that some films weren’t as terrible as you feared,  it’s a bad time for film and a bad time to be a movie fan. This month there’s been precious little to lure us into multiplexes, aside from the occasional goofy pleasure like The Expendables and The Other Guys, and even those weren’t quite alluring enough. 

All of this is to apologize for the comparative dearth of reviews posted over the last several weeks. We’re working on it. Anyway, once a month or so we get together all the news items of the previous four weeks and offer commentary on what they mean for the entertainment industry and the audience alike. The opinions are purely those of SBR. Thanks for sticking with us. 

1. The Emmy awards ceremony this past Sunday night was virtually surprise free, with Mad Men getting Best Drama and show creator Matt Weiner also winning for best writing. Bryan Cranston won best dramatic actor for Breaking Bad and Kyra Sedgewick won best actress for The Closer. On the other hand, Modern Family was something of a welcome surprise to win in the Best Comedy category; we’d guessed voters would just hand it to 30 Rock (I show whose appeal is lost to us) once again. 

Kudos to Mad Men, but we’re curious to see how this year’s kick-’em-when-they’re-down fourth season will fare at next year’s awards. Don Draper and company are in some murky waters just now, and it wouldn’t surprise us if the show’s winter of discontent translated into a chilling factor among Emmy voters. 

2. A couple of weeks ago we posted how The Sorcerer’s Apprentice represents something of a dying breed among films – the star-driven, big budget summer vehicle. Add to the pile of flops mentioned in that review the Jennifer Aniston tanker The Switch, which debuted in seventh place at the box office a couple of weeks ago and has since grossed only about sixteen million dollars. 

There are lots of reasons for the film’s failure and why it won’t derail Anniston’s career, as indieWire’s excellent analysis provides, but we think it’s unfair to blame Jason Bateman’s unproven leading man bankability. The simultaneously cloying yet distasteful television ads, omnipresent for weeks leading up to the premiere, surely had something to do with the public’s indifference. The public may also (finally) be growing tired of Aniston playing yet another variation of Rachel Green. 

3. TV Guide’s assertion that the Hawaii Five-O reboot is “fall’s hottest new show” despite its premiere remaining three weeks away would normally make us wonder if the fix was in. In this case, however, they’re probably right. Stars Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan are overdue to break through with the right vehicle (this is O’Loughlin’s third show on CBS) and co-stars Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim will likely draw curious fans from, respectively, Battlestar Galactica and Lost. 

It gets a plum timeslot, too, inheriting the Monday at 10/9 Central berth that CSI: Miami has enjoyed since its premiere eight years ago. (That show moves to the same time on Sundays.) 

4. Joel and Ethan Coen are probably few people’s idea of theological teachers, but religion journalist Catherine Falsani makes an oft-compelling case for the brothers as  spiritual guides in her breezy 2009 book The Dude Abides. Examining each of their fourteen films, from Blood Simple to A Serious Man, Falsani illuminates the moral and philosophical issues the brothers subtly raise (if not always address) in each film, analyzing plots and themes as well as characters from an allegorical perspective. She reaches a bit in molding her thesis to the films of their middle career – Intolerable Cruelty lacks text, let alone subtext – but her readings of major works including Raising Arizona and of course The Big Lebowski are articulate and convincing. A fun read for the brothers’ fans or anyone looking for a spiritual treat. 

Kramer's 1959 melodrama about nuclear fallout

 5. On the subject of reading material, Saul Austerlitz’s online essay calling for a re-thinking of the career of director Stanley Kramer (Judgment At Nuremberg, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner) is both fearless and illuminating, bucking a lot of conventional wisdom of the last forty years while extending the maligned director some fresh respect. 

Without meaning to sound disparaging, Kramer made films that if produced today would be released in December and considered unabashed Oscar-bait. All the same, as Austerlitz contends there’s plenty of rewarding material both in Kramer’s pragmatic camera eye and in his approach to his subject matter, and his body of work remains laudably diverse. In fact, you’ve probably seen one of his films without realizing it. 

6. Ever see a preview for something and think it’s going to either be spectacular or go spectacularly wrong? The trailer for Martin Scorsese’s pilot to the HBO series Boardwalk Empire gives us that sense of optimistic dread. On the plus side, there’s a fantastic cast in a sprawling and lavish retelling of the early days of prohibition. On the other hand, it’s been a long time since Scorsese really impressed us, especially when dealing with organized crime (The Departed, Casino, and Gangs of New York were all variously near and wide misses), and this level of ambition rarely pans out when produced for television. At any rate the cast is intriguing: we’ll watch Steve Buscemi, Kelly MacDonald and Gretchen Mol in anything. 

 

7. The comic book movie genre has reached its tipping point, and it’s likely that 2010 will likely be remembered as the year everything started to fall apart. Following the box office disappointments of The Losers, Jonah Hex, Kick Ass, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, it’s likely that studios will become increasingly cagey about which comic-inspired projects are greenlit. Meanwhile the Green Lantern and The Avengers projects seem increasingly problematic: Green Lantern for its inauthentic-looking CGI costume, and The Avengers for its slowly deflating scope and scale. 

Time Out magazine recently posted its list of 50 essential comic book movies. That there are fifty at all boggles the mind.

8. Finally, the handsome previews for Ben Affleck’s upcoming The Town made us realize it’s about time again to re-watch Heat, Michael Mann’s 1995 similar exploration of conscience-plagued thieves and the relentless cops who pursue them.

Besides the three stars in the poster, Heat features Ashley Judd,  Jon Voight, Diane Venora, Dennis Haysbert, Amy Brenneman, Nathalie Portman, and William Fichtner. Not an entirely perfect movie, but for its kind it comes as close as any film ever did. The trailer below basically implies that if you don’t see it, you don’t deserve to go to the movies.

We’ll be back later this week. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Up In The Air

Jason Reitman’s almost flawless, award-winning third film arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray today.

The darling of last year’s critic’s awards (if not the Academy), Jason Reitman’s Up In The Air is a hard film not to love for its many intelligent and well crafted components, all of which work to entertain you and make you feel as if you’re seeing something substantial – as most of the time you are. It’s full of charming and relaxed performances from veteran and emerging talent, a carefully structured plot with easily identifiable situations and – and! – it boasts a script with that rarest of Hollywood spectacles: a refusal to treat its audience as if we’re irretrievably stupid. So if the film never quite works out all the ideas it puts forward, you may not entirely mind.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a “termination facilitator” who’s all too happy to jet around the country laying off downsized employees on behalf of their chicken-hearted bosses. It’s dirty work but he doesn’t mind, because the lifestyle of easy, superficial comforts provided by business hotels and frequent flyer amenities allow him freedom from the “baggage” of emotional involvement. He even has a sideline gig as a motivational speaker, giving talks in business-class hotel conference rooms about how to free your “backpack” from what’s weighing you down.

Bingham’s life of happily superficial solitude goes sideways in three directions at once: he begins a casual, no-strings-attached affair with fellow road warrior Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), one based on sex, mutual company, and their enthusiasm for luxury without consequences. Jovial and privileged, they’re both validated by what they feel entitled to, including each other. At work, he finds his way of life threatened by upstart new employee Nathalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a recent college grad who’s sold their boss (Jason Bateman) on converting the layoff business towards video conferencing – effectively firing people over the Internet. Back home, the sister “he barely knows” is getting married, compelling his return to a family that almost doesn’t register on his emotional radar (Reitman’s and collaborator Sheldon Turner’s adaptation of Walter Kirn’s novel wears its travel metaphors on its sleeve.)

Bingham copes by taking Keener with him on the road, to show her the benefits of the personal touch when firing lifelong employees. The clash between Bingham the pragmatic, ageing Gen X’er and Keener’s self-confident, vaguely hipsterish youth gives much of the film its dramatic weight but also its humor. When Keener’s fiancé dumps her via text message, her emotional meltdown in a sunny hotel lobby puts the generational contrast into hilarious, if wrenching, detail as Bingham and Goran try to gently persuade her to get used to disappointment in life. It’s a wonderful scene, perfectly played all around and devastating in its accuracy. If you don’t wince and nod at least once watching it, you probably haven’t turned 35 yet.

Only in the last third, when the time comes to both ratchet up the dramatic tension and resolve some of its ideas, do Reitman and the film start to lose their footing. For as little about herself as she puts forth, Goran still isn’t quite what she seems, while Keener may be made of sterner stuff than Bingham first appreciates. Still, neither entirely emerges as characters as fully rounded as Bingham, flaws owing more to the script and screen time than the actors’ performances. The ending and dénouement, where everything rotates back to more or less where it was in the beginning, both works and doesn’t. It works in that giving Bingham or anyone else a pat ending would insult the rest of us struggling with shaky livelihoods. It doesn’t because the ambivalence makes the rest of the film struggle for coherence. You expect the story to lead somewhere, and it does, but exactly where is implied best by the film’s title.

Such problems are smoothed out by fine performances. As suggested in other reviews, Clooney is probably the only actor around who could make us care about a complacently careless jerk like Bingham, giving him anxiety and depth that roil under the glib slick suit exterior. The palpable chemistry between he and Farmiga builds on its own warmth and the characters’ mutual fascination, an odd contrast to the impersonal comfort surrounding them. Kenrdick is confident in her part without being showy, making her tyro character sympathetic while not pitiable or – potentially much worse – cute. Reitman also wisely casts veteran collaborators Bateman and J.K. Simmons in key parts, and elsewhere uses real people to describe their firing experiences.

Smart and mature, as melancholy as a jobless Monday morning, don’t be surprised if Up In The Air is considered a minor classic in the years to come. But don’t wait until then to see it.

- Michael Kabel

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(Note: An earlier version of this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

DVD Review: Couples Retreat

Underachieving ensemble comedy arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow.

One of the most frequently heard gripes about American cinema the last couple of years is that adult movies – films made for grown-ups, about grown-up issues or at least matters relevant to audiences over 30 years old – are on the wane. It’s wondered if people who aren’t in college, or better yet high school, haven’t got the time to trek to a movie theatre and sit still for two hours. (Note to Hollywood: these days most of us are working too hard.) Films made for this demographic, the occasional romcom aside, don’t do as well as the superhero and vampire fluff that have become the studios’ meat and potatoes.

Certainly, marriage and parenthood are relevant, if not crucial, topics for “older” audiences, as are such ideas as romance and keeping some sense of youth and spontaneity alive once the day-to-day living takes on a limitless routine. Life goes on, like the man said, long after the thrill of living is gone. Hollywood has a proud tradition of films that confront such quiet crises: The Big Chill, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Two For The Road, The Ice Storm, and quite a few others all tackled its dangers. Notice that all of those films are dramas, however. Not one saw the lighter side of marital ennui and pre-midlife regret.

Just here to get lei'ed: the cast.

Couples Retreat could have been a smarter movie, a more mature film, and a sharper examination of the same topics if it tried harder than it does. But instead its script (co-written by stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau) too often panders to its presumed audience without ever really getting beneath the skin of the problems that lurk, like the lemon sharks of its lone suspense sequence, just beneath its surface. As with far too many major studio releases these days, the film takes pains to make sure the audience isn’t provoked into reflection, or into questioning the issues the characters only passingly mention they have. In lieu of that approach there’s too many lazy jokes, too much easy humor, too many cutesy-cute sitcommish gags about precious kids. It’s a safe film, from top to bottom and every frame between.

Uptight couple Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) have hit a rough spot in their marriage, largely from their inability to have a child. Strapped for cash and desperate to make their marriage work, they approach five of their friends – two other couples and a recently-divorced male (Favreau and Kristin Davis, Vaughn and Malin Ackerman, Faizon Love) – with a group-rate package vacation to Eden, a tropical resort that doubles as therapeutic boot camp for troubled marriages. The couples agree, with Love’s hapless Shane bringing along his party-hardy 20-year old girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk). Once at the resort the couples’ plans for a vacation are foiled by resort regulations that demand they engage in therapy and communication skill-building sessions.

It’s just a little predictable, maybe, that each couple is in a different phase of disintegration: Favreau and Davis’ Joey and Lucy tolerate each other only until their teen daughter leaves for college; Vaughn and Ackerman’s Dave and Ronnie are just beginning to hit the skids; Shane and Trudy barely know each other. So far, so good, except each actor takes their character’s problem and amplifies it to ten. Part of the problem is that with so many characters, respective characterization gets lost in the shuffle: how can the audience keep up with everyone, unless they stand out? But it’s annoying nonetheless that each character has to go loud to be heard, and everyone’s behavior inevitably becomes childish and plot-focused. There’s very little sense these people know each other, past some laborious exposition dropped into a belabored first act.

Director Peter Billingsley keeps the plot moving, and again with so many characters there’s a lot to juggle. But individual scenes suffer as a result, with episodes trailing off and getting whisked from the viewer’s attention before they’ve reached their dramatic or comedic payoff. The result is an uneven middle and a too-tidy resolution that relies on too much convention, at least one out-of-left-field plot contrivance, and more than a little schlock. A film about adults in marital trouble doesn’t need one gag about a child using a sales floor demo toilet. The story in which two such jokes are necessary doesn’t exist.

Sitcommish: the cast

The cast, by and large, brings exactly what you’ve come to expect from them in other performances. Bateman and Bell are charming in their sunny respectability; Vaughn and Favreau are smart-assed and cranky. Davis is Charlotte York, once again. Ackerman is charming and pretty, and seems vastly more comfortable than she appeared in Watchmen earlier this year. Love isn’t a bad actor, but watching his sad sack performance I couldn’t help but wish, and not for the first time, that Bernie Mac was still with us. Of the other cast members, Jean Reno is amusing as the resort’s spacey therapy guru, while Peter Serafinowicz does an effective Jonathan Pryce impression as the resort’s maitre ‘d.

Ultimately, it’s hard not to imagine this film as a better choice for a January or February home video release than something worth a trip to the theatre, no matter what your age. Its quality notwithstanding, all the sun and surf lovingly displayed will no doubt offer a welcome escape now that winter is at its heaviest around the nation. You don’t have to be snowbound to enjoy Couples Retreat, but it’ll definitely help.

- Michael Kabel

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(Note: An earlier version of this review was originally published for the film’s theatrical release.)

Review: Couples Retreat

An overloaded cast can’t work through the issues of a flabby script and scattershot direction.

One of the most frequently heard gripes about American cinema is that adult movies – films made for grown-ups, about grown-up issues or at least matters relevant to audiences over 30 years old – are on the wane. It’s wondered if people who aren’t in college, or better yet high school, haven’t got the time to trek to a movie theatre and sit still for two hours. (Note to Hollywood: these days most of us are working too hard.) Films made for this demographic, the occasional romcom aside, don’t do as well as the superhero and vampire fluff that have become the studios’ meat and potatoes.

Certainly, marriage and parenthood are relevant, if not crucial, topics for “older” audiences, as are such ideas as romance and keeping some sense of youth and spontaneity alive once day-to-day living takes on a limitless routine. Life goes on, like the man said, long after the thrill of living is gone. Hollywood has a proud tradition of films addressing such quiet crises: The Big Chill, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Two For The Road, The Ice Storm, and quite a few others all tackled its dangers. Notice that all of those films are dramas, however. Not one saw the lighter side of marital ennui and pre-midlife regret.

Just here to get lei'ed: the cast.

Couples Retreat could have been a smarter movie, a more mature film, and a sharper examination of the same topics if it tried harder than it does. But instead its script (co-written by stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau) too often panders to its presumed audience without ever really getting beneath the skin of the problems that lurk, like the lemon sharks of its lone suspense sequence, just beneath its surface. As with far too many major studio releases these days, the film takes pains to make sure the audience isn’t provoked into reflection, or into questioning the issues the characters only passingly mention they have. In lieu of that approach there’s too many lazy jokes, too much easy humor, too many cutesy-cute sitcommish gags about precious kids. It’s a safe film, from top to bottom and every frame between.

Uptight couple Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) have hit a rough spot in their marriage, stemming largely from their inability to have a child. Strapped for cash and desperate to make their marriage work, they approach five of their friends – two other couples and a recently-divorced male (Favreau and Kristin Davis, Vaughn and Malin Ackerman, Faizon Love) – with a group-rate package vacation to Eden, a tropical resort that doubles as therapeutic boot camp for troubled marriages. The couples agree, with Love’s hapless Shane bringing along his party-hardy 20-year old girlfriend Trudy (Kali Hawk). Once at the resort the couples’ plans for a vacation are foiled by resort regulations that demand they engage in therapy and communication skill-building sessions.

It’s only a little predictable, maybe, that each couple is in a different phase of disintegration: Favreau and Davis’ Joey and Lucy tolerate each other only until their teen daughter leaves for college; Vaughn and Ackerman’s Dave and Ronnie have just begun to hit the skids; Shane and Trudy barely know each other. So far, so good, except each character takes their respective problem and amplifies it to ten. Part of the problem is that with so many characters, respective characterization gets lost in the shuffle: how can the audience keep up with everyone, unless they stand out? But it’s annoying nonetheless that each character has to go loud to be heard, and everyone’s behavior inevitably becomes childish and plot-focused. There’s very little sense that these people know each other, past some laborious exposition dropped into a belabored first act.

There's more here for the guys to like...

Director Peter Billingsley keeps the plot moving, and again with so many characters there’s a lot to juggle. Individual scenes suffer as a direct result, with episodes trailing off and getting whisked from the viewer’s attention before they’ve reached their dramatic or comedic payoff. The result is an uneven middle and an too-tidy resolution that relies on too much convention, at least one out-of-left-field plot contrivance, and more than a little schlock. A film about adults in marital trouble doesn’t need one gag about a child using a sales floor demo toilet. The story in which two such jokes are necessary doesn’t exist.

... than there is for the ladies.

The cast, by and large, brings exactly what you’ve already come to expect from them in other performances. Bateman and Bell are charming in their sunny respectability; Vaughn and Favreau are smart-assed and cranky. Davis is Charlotte York. Ackerman is charming and pretty, and seems vastly more comfortable here than she appeared in Watchmen. Love isn’t a bad actor, but watching his sad sack performance I couldn’t help but wish, and not for the first time, that Bernie Mac was still with us. Of the other cast members, Jean Reno is amusing as the resort’s spacey therapy guru, while Peter Serafinowicz  does an effective Jonathan Pryce impression as the resort’s maitre ‘d.

Ultimately, it’s hard not to imagine this film as a better choice for a January or February release. Its quality notwithstanding, all the sun and surf lovingly displayed will no doubt offer a welcome escape when winter is at its heaviest. That’s actually about the time the DVD should hit store shelves, so audiences with anything less than a compelling interest in the film would do well to wait until then.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Extract

Mike Judge’s new workplace comedy could use some more flavor.

Extract, the new comedy by Office Space and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge, isn’t a bad film, though it’s not a great one, either. A sweet-natured ensemble piece until almost its very end, full of the wry observational humor at which Judge has always excelled, it’s a work that’s almost impossible to have strong feelings about one way or the other. That’s either faint praise or damning criticism, depending on your point of view. Maybe the biggest gripe will also be the one most repeated: “It’s not Office Space.” Given the cultural reverence that earlier film enjoys, it almost couldn’t be, at least not immediately.

The premise, at least, is promising enough: Joel (Jason Bateman) co-owns a flavored extract factory, a small business he and partner Brian (J.K. Simmons) built up  themselves. Joel’s prosperous and content with his work but not at home: his sex life with wife Suzie (Kirsten Wiig) has fizzled, leaving him bemoaning his celibacy to buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), the bartender at a local sports bar. “We’re gonna be one of those brother and sister couples,” Joel complains.

Meanwhile a freak, hilariously-staged accident at the factory renders veteran employee Step (Clifton Collins, Jr.) the victim of a painful testicular injury and entitled to a huge insurance payout. A newspaper story about the incident catches the attention of local “criminal drifter” Cindy (Mila Kunis), who begins temping at the factory while romancing Step as a means of convincing him to sue, the better to milk him for cash. She also flirts with Joel, leading him to ponder his chances of stepping out on Suzie. Dean suggests Joel hire a gigolo friend of his to seduce Suzie, so that Joel can enjoy his fling with Cindy without guilt. Hazy from some ketamine Dean offered him, Joel agrees. Suzie and the gigolo begin an affair that continues long after the one-time-only proposition Joel envisioned, pushing him further towards Cindy.

Much of the film’s long and winding second act covers the buckshotting plots and subplots as they only occasionally overlap. As with Office Space, Judge places his scenes in a world that feels real and lived-in, full of sports bars, anonymous business hotels, and suburban myopia; that he overpopulates this near-world becomes the film’s biggest obstacle. There are a lot of characters, and the many subplots all jockey for time, resulting in a story that never settles on one plotline long enough to build momentum or depth. In that sense it’s much more similar to the nuances of Judge’s long-underrated King of the Hill than his barbed farce Idiocracy. But bereft of an explicit point to make (corporate America eats the soul, the world is getting stupider), Extract often doesn’t seem to go anywhere fast. At least one set piece, a long and tepid interlude in which Joel does bong hits in a shitty apartment, feels almost completely needless.

To his credit as a director, Judge has the sense to trust his actors to handle his naturalist, free-flowing dialogue. Such an approach almost always works, except in cases where the actors can’t quite get a grip on their characters: though an interesting stunt casting, Affleck seems unmotivated in playing the spacey Dean, while a hustling lawyer played by Gene Simmons never really comes across. On the positive side, Bateman is charming in the role of the decent guy slowly coming if not unglued then very nonplussed. Kunis and Wiig both shine as, rspectively, the woman Joel wants but shouldn’t have and the woman he should have but can’t seem to close the distance between them. In what must be compliance with some weird federal regulation, the ubiquitous David Koechner shows up as Nathan, Joel and Suzie’s pestering neighbor. His part is largely superfluous, though with a pair of thick-lens eyeglasses he bears a striking resemblance to Hank Hill.

Actually, Nathan plays a big part in the film’s conclusion and a resolution to one of the central plotlines, albeit in a grim manner that stands in stark contrast to the earlier scenes’ froth. It’s a weird ending, one that reaches for a note of hope and renewal but instead plays clumsy and random. Some credits-accompanying postscripts feel added as an afterthought, an attempt to compensate for the downer just preceding them.

One telling comment about Judge’s attention to detail that might reveal some of his priorities: watch the exterior shots of the Reynolds Extract building. Based on an actual former extract factory in Austin, TX, it’s typical of the kind of sturdy mid-century business architecture that still exists in the older parts of so many American cities, not yet replaced by a glass box or aluminum shed. If only the rest of the movie were so clearly envisioned.

- Michael Kabel

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Preview: The Invention of Lying

Ricky Gervais leads a sprawling ensemble cast in a high-concept comedy about truth.

We couldn't find an image of the actual poster. Honestly.

Imagine a world where no one ever lies and where everyone is always completely candid and trusting, until one man learns to use the power of bullshitting for his own gain. That’s the setup for Ricky Gervais’ (Ghost Town) September-released farce, which looks to be the kind of sprawling, high-concept piece that Woody Allen could have made in the 1970s and Garry Shandling might have tried a decade ago. Though Gervais (who also co-directs and co-wrote the script with Matthew Robinson) is probably capable of making more of the premise than most other actors, he’s got great backup in a huge ensemble supporting cast that includes at least one legend and a platoon of  hip co-stars.

Gervais plays Mark, a film executive in a world so completely honest that its culture doesn’t even include fiction: performers simply tell true stories based on facts from history. With his career bottoming out and a romance with the object of his affection Jennifer (Jennifer Garner) going nowhere fast, he has a brainstorm: lie about how much money he wants to withdraw from a bank. The teller believes him (apparently it’s also a world without ATM’s), and his lying career is off and running. The film goes on to show the consequences of bearing false witness and, we imagine, the redemptive power of honesty.

Probably the first film that comes to mind here, at least after watching the pretty standard trailer, is 1997′s Liar, Liar. The twist is that instead of Jim Carrey only telling the truth, the plot has one guy telling lies while everyone around him is utterly forthcoming. Gervais’ previous film, last year’s Ghost Town, was about a hapless schmoe given the unwanted gift of communication with dead people. That film eventually sank into the usual Hollywood cliches but was buoyed by Gervais’ and co-star Greg Kinnear’s impossible-to-dislike screen presences. Likewise, there’s little to suggest this film is going to be anything too unpredictable: Gervais-as-movie star remains an emerging marketable brand for audience over 35, as do co-stars Garner, Jason Bateman, and Tina Fey.

Joining them are Rob Lowe as Mark’s nemesis and Louis CK as his buddy, while Christopher Guest, Patrick Stewart and Jeffrey Tambor all show up in various roles, too. That sounds promising enough, but big ensemble groups rarely pay off for comedy: Shandling’s Town & Country (2001) had a colossal amount of talent but ended up the biggest money-loser in motion picture history, a failure caused somewhat by its inability to meet expectations. Yet that comparison is probably unfair. While The Invention of Lying doesn’t share that earlier film’s production problems and budget overruns, it also lacks its pedigree.

Ultimately, it’s somewhat hip to like Gervais, and the film will find an audience among its target demographic while possibly luring a few college kids thanks to the inclusion of Jonah Hill (Superbad). Which is probably all it wants: to find a nice corner of the multiplex and settle in for a pleasant enough and profitable run. Its working title was The Other Side of Truth, but may we suggest Universal Pictures follow the example of its premise and rename the film Adult Ensemble High Concept Comedy for Autumn 2009? Truth in advertising, and all that.

The Invention of Lying opens nationwide September 25th.

- Michael Kabel

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Preview: Extract

Mike Judge’s new comedy puts Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis in a sex-charged workplace comedy.

Arriving as something like a gourmet dessert after a summer more loaded with junk food than usual, September’s Extract returns animation guru Mike Judge to the big screen for the first time since the whip-smart genius of 2006′s Idiocracy. Judge’s films, such as that one and the now-classic Office Space, have a tendency to run a bit ahead of their time, only getting their due recognition once the rest of our culture catches up to their subversive wit. If five years from now we all remember Extract as a classic, remember you heard about it here first.

Recalling Office Space‘s hapless Peter Gibbons, the new film follows a well-meaning everyman as his life goes through some professional and personal rejuvenation. Joel (Jason Bateman) owns a factory that makes and bottles flavor extract for cooking, a job that’s every bit as exciting as it sounds. Bored with his job, his life, and especially his marriage, he spends a lot of time complaining to laid-back bartender pal Dean (Ben Affleck) and trying to woo his wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig) into bed. Suzie’s lost interest in herself and her marriage, it seems, leaving Joel shut off from getting any despite earnest efforts to play by her romantic rules. 

Things change after a freak chain-reaction mishap leaves a male factory employee hurt in a bad place and on the hook for a giant insurance settlement.  The injured worker’s replacement, a sexy temp named Cindy, gets Bateman worked up enough to start pondering a potential affair.

Though none of that sounds like groundbreaking comedic material, remember how Office Space used the same plot contrivance as Superman III to potent comic effect.  Judge has never shared the killer instinct that fellow animation auteurs Seth MacFarlane, Trey Parker and Matt Stone frequently exhibit, and while that means his humor is often more nuanced it’s also likely cost him a degree of edginess. His films are more about performance and observational satire more than invention, not poking fun so much as holding the already ridiculous up to light and letting it speak for itself. King of the Hill has served as the SCTV to Family Guy‘s more aggressive early years-Saturday Night Live for years now.

In that regard Extract is a perfect vehicle for Bateman, who’s been honing his John Ritter-esque ordinary guy charm in films like Hancock and The Break-Up. Likewise Kunis, who apparently plays the same tempting sweetheart she was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Seeing as she didn’t get the attention she deserved for that performance, we can’t really fault her taking another stab at perfecting her luminescent romcom potential. The film also stars the mighty J.K. Simmons as Bateman’s partner, continuing the wily comic snark that let him steal all his scenes in darker comedies like Burn After Reading and Thank You For Smoking.

Judge himself has described the film as a flip side to Office Space, this time making the boss the nice guy and the owners the troublemakers. Given the hip star power of his tight ensemble cast, which also includes Clifton Collins, Jr. (Sunshine Cleaning) and the ubiquitous David Koechner (Anchorman), maybe this new film will escape the unfair fates that befell his previous efforts.

Extract opens in limited release September 4.

-Michael Kabel
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