"Megamind"
Richard's Review: 3 stars
"Megamind," the new animated kid's flick starring Will Ferrell and Tiny Fey, ponders an age old question asked by super villains from Lex Luthor to Doctor Doom: What's the point of being evil is there's no one there to stop you?
Self described super genius and master of all villainy Megamind (voice of Will Ferrell) has had a lifelong rivalry with Metro Man (Brad Pitt), a hero so special he can literally walk on water. Megamind has been trying to wrestle control of Mega City from Metro Man for years, and despite his best efforts cannot defeat the ridiculously square-jawed hero. That is, until the day he breaks out of jail, kidnaps intrepid girl reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey) and finally outsmarts his nemesis.
Metro City is finally his but now that his lifelong dream has come true he finds when there is no good guy, no yin to his yang, his evil existence is an empty experience. To combat his boredom he decides to create a superhero to spice things up... of course nothing could go wrong with that plan.
"Megamind" plays like the evil stepchild of "The Incredibles" and "Monsters vs Aliens" with some pop culture references thrown in -- like a takeoff on the famous balcony scene from "Superman" and a wild spoof of Jor-El's windswept hair. It's a pleasant enough confection, with some genuine laughs sprinkled throughout, but given the talent involved -- Ferrell, Fey and David Cross -- it should be much funnier.
David Cross and Ferrell make the most out of their characters. Ferrell gives Megamind fun vocal tics -- he pronounces Metro City as one long word, Metrossoity -- but Fey, in the Lois Lane role, and Jonah Hill as the newly minted superhero, hand in bland voice work that doesn't add much to the movie. It's a shame, spunkier voice work would have wrung a few more laughs out of a script that is more a funny idea than actually funny all the way through.
Little kids probably won't get -- or care about -- the "Superman" references or Megamind's secret taste for Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You," but they will enjoy the larger than life characters, the 3D slapstick and even take away the message that there is good inside of almost everyone.
"Due Date"
Richard's Review: 3 stars
If the new Zach Galifianakis/Robert Downey Jr. comedy was a mathematical equation it might look something like this: "Trains, Planes and Automobiles" x "The Hangover" ^4√( "The Odd Couple" + "Thelma and Louise") = "Due Date." In other words it's a gross out road trip story (masturbating dogs!) about two mismatched people, with a bit of action thrown in.
Downey and Galifianakis are Peter and Ethan, the odd couple who, through circumstance, find themselves placed on a no fly list after an incident at the Atlanta airport. To make matters worse, Peter needs to be in L.A. in three days to attend the birth of his first child. And Ethan, a wannabe actor, has a meeting with an agent. Peter reluctantly agrees to share a ride with Ethan and by the time they arrive in Los Angeles they have been arrested, drank coffee made of human ashes and come close to dying.
"Due Date" is the kind of movie where you lean over to the person next to you and VERY quietly whisper, "That was funny," more often than you will actually laugh out loud. The movie is amusing, often gross and rather dark, but it doesn't have the deep belly laughs of Galifianakis and director Todd Phillips's last film "The Hangover." Its ninety minutes of strange non sequitors, socially awkward behavior and bickering. In other words it's a lot like a 2010 version of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," but we live in a more cynical and mean spirited time and the movie reflects that.
"Due Date" is missing the one element that made "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" so appealing and that's sweetness. John Candy's character -- reflected here through a fun house mirror by Galifianakis -- was annoying as all get out but underneath the annoying questions, bumbling and boorish behavior was an undeniable sweetness which Phillips has surgically removed from almost every scene of "Due Date." The characters have an edgy kind of chemistry, but charming they are not.
Ethan is a borderline head case and Peter has rage issues. That's a combo that's been played for laughs since the days of the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy but the thing that's missing is amiability.
Not that "Due Date" isn't funny. It is, it just isn't very likeable.
"Fair Game"
Richard's Review: 2 1/2 stars
"Fair Game" could be re-titled "One Hundred Minutes of Sean Penn Yelling ‘If We Don't Tell the Truth No One Will!'" The retelling of the ripped-from-the-headlines tale of Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), whose job as an undercover CIA agent was exposed by White House officials in an attempt to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson's (Penn) claim that the Bush administration had falsified information about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a different kind of spy story.
There are no guns, no gadgets, just words -- many of the yelled by Penn -- classified documents and furtive meetings on lonely park benches. It does a nice job of recreating Bush era paranoia -- "We don't want this smoking gun to turn into a mushroom cloud!" -- and exploring the chasm between truth and policy, but as a drama takes way too long to get to the meat of the story. Three quarters of the movie whips past before the central event, Plame's unceremonious unveiling as a spy, happens.
The build-up is filled with nice details, like Scooter Libby's (David Andrews) self satisfied smirk when he puts the plan to get revenge on Plame and her husband in motion, and the insight into the life of a spy who juggles a home life with international intrigue, but it feels padded. Also, director Doug Liman has made some very strange and almost unwatchable choices in regard to the camera work. His camera is a little too restless, constantly roaming, which, I suppose, is meant to give us a "you-are-there" feeling, but instead induces motion sickness, particularly in the boardroom scenes.
Performance wise, however, the movie is top notch. Watt works as Plame, and Penn is passionate, crafting a performance so big it has it's own gravitational pull that asks whether Wilson was really a truth seeker or simply a self aggrandizing opportunist.
"Fair Game" is a mostly interesting look at our recent past, too bad director Liman takes too long to develop the important part of the story.
"For Colored Girls"
Richard's Review: 2 stars
Tyler Perry is a wildly successful actor, director, producer and all round mogul whose movies make oodles of money but so far have received very little love from the award gods. His latest film, "For Colored Girls"—an adaptation of the Tony Award nominated Broadway play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" -- is his most ambitious film to date but will it be enough to elevate Perry from the ranks of money maker to award winner?
Directing a sprawling ensemble cast Perry (who adapted Ntozake Shange's original script) weaves together the stories of eight African-American women as they deal with personal issues like the search for love, rape, emotional abandonment, infidelity, sexual repression and abortion. Perry retains the play's poetic approach, mixing naturalistic dialogue and stark real-life drama with free, impressionistic verse.
"For Colored Girls" is Perry's most accomplished and ambitious movie to date. It's risky material, from the dire situations most of these women find themselves in (may I suggest group therapy for the cast?) to the style of language, which is likely to confound and confuse many viewers, and while he has stayed true to the tone of the play, I couldn't help but think that this type of material would work better on stage. Much of the poetic language is beautiful or evocative -- a car is described as "smelling of alcohol and ladies in heat" -- but despite good performances from the cast the writing often seems too delicate to be blown up for the big screen.
Couple that with Perry's melodramatic touch and "For Colored Girls" loses much of its importance of message to overwrought scenes and clichés. The play was a series of monologues and the movie does not improve on the form by intertwining them or creating worlds for the characters to exist in. The choppy segues from character to character feel contrived and as a result, so do the situations that frame the monologues. Individually the stories may have power but as hard as it may be to believe after a while the viewer gets immune to the endless and continuous misery inflicted on these characters.
"For Colored Girls" earns points for ambition and good performances from the cast, particularly Thandie Newton as a troubled sex addict, Macy Gray as the movie's Acid Queen and Phylicia Rashad as the wise Gilda, but as bold a step as this may be in Perry's career it isn't nuanced or interesting enough to gather much steam come awards time.
"Monsters"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
Big monsters are back. Movies like "The Host" and "Cloverfield" have reintroduced audiences to that rarest, but biggest of beasts, the giant out-of-control monster. Who needs vampires and zombies when you could have a 90-foot-tall squid with a bad attitude and a Christmas bulb for a head?
The latest addition to the big monster genre is "Monsters," an indie movie that reportedly only cost $15,000. Part road trip, part romance and all atmosphere, the story of Andrew (Scoot McNairy), an opportunistic photojournalist, who must escort his boss's daughter, Sam (Whitney Able), back to the U.S. border through the treacherous quarantine area inhabited by… you guessed it, giant creatures left there when a NASA spacecraft carrying samples of extraterrestrial life crashed.
It's a pure b-movie premise and for the first fifteen minutes or so promises to be little more than a Roger Corman film with better CGI. Then something happens. The movie becomes about the relationship between total opposites Andrew and Sam as they bond over their trip's hardships and the strangeness of their surroundings. It's a giant monster movie that focuses on the characters and despite some wild plot contrivances, it works.
The character study is a slow burn that leads up to the big reveal, the unveiling of the creatures. For most of the film they are seen and not heard but director Gareth Edwards paces the film carefully building up suspense through use of sound effects to climax with a wild mating dance between two of the Lovecraftian beasts. It's a strangely beautiful and eerie sequence that brings the movie to a close.
"Monsters" isn't as effective as "District 9" or "Cloverfield," two other recent movies that introduced us to new creatures, but it is a complex film with timely messages about immigration (the U.S. is protected by a giant fence to keep the monsters out) and our reactions in times of danger.
