"Youth in Revolt"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
"Youth in Revolt" is the new "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." It's a film about the benefits of behaving badly and like the famous 1986 John Hughes movie it is headlined by an actor who brings charm and wit to the role of the rebel.
Hoodie heartthrob Michael Cera plays fourteen-year-old Nick Twisp, a mild mannered collection of raging hormones and quirky personality traits. He loves Sinatra and foreign films. When his family relocates to a Christian trailer park he meets his dream girl, Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), a similarly anachronistic teenager with a taste for anything French and a dream of being swept off her feet by a bad boy named Francois. When circumstance steps in to keep them apart he (with the help of an imaginary friend named Francois Dillinger) reverses his goody-two-shoes image and becomes a rebel with a cause--he wants to impress her.
Cera has a corner on the awkward by coming-of-age movie, and as Twisp he doesn't do anything he didn't do in Juno or Superbad, but he's charming and easy to watch. His work takes on a different dimension, however, when he slips into alter ego mode. As the mustachioed Francois he's a refugee from a Belmondo film, equipped with a cigarette, and too tight white trousers. It's not often that an actor gets to show his range playing two characters in one film, but this is a step forward for Cera, who has been locked into the wisecracking virgin stereotype since he left the small screen's Arrested Development, grew some peach fuzz and started chasing girls on the big screen. It's not exactly his first adult part but it shows he can do something other than act like an awkward teen while delivering funny lines with pitch perfect timing.
The supporting cast, made up of reliable old pros like Jean Smart, M. Emmet Walsh, Fred Willard and Steve Buscemi, do good work, but the movie wouldn't work if Sheeni wasn't the kind of girl worth throwing your life away for, but in the excellently named Portia Doubleday Youth in Revolt finds a newcomer with charisma to burn.
"Youth in Revolt" is a funny, delightful movie but its main strengths are its actors--Cera who expands his range and Doubleday who debuts hers.
"Daybreakers"
3 1/2 stars
Like "True Blood," "Daybreakers" is set in a world where vampires live among humans, but unlike the popular HBO show these vampires don't have a blood substitute to keep them alive and friendly. In fact, in the world created by the writer / director team of the Spierig Brothers (Michael and Peter) humans are on the verge of extinction having literally been sucked dry and now the vamps must come up with a new source of food to ensure their survival.
Hematologist Ethan Hawke is charged with creating the cure for vampire hunger by his bosses at Bromley Marks, the world's leading blood handler and humans-as-food storage facility. Ethan can best be described as a reluctant vampire and knows that the "last breath of humanity in the vampires will disappear as soon as the blood does." To that end he searches for a cure and when he meets a group of human rebels a different kind of solution to the problem may be at hand.
As has become popular on "True Blood" and in movies like "Twilight" in "Daybreakers" many old vampire myths have flown the coop. For example Ethan Hawke's character smokes. Perhaps because he is eternal he doesn't have to worry about lung cancer, but since he is already dead, were does he get the breath to inhale and exhale? You never saw Dracula with a smoke in his hand...
Luckily, when the movie isn't playing fast and loose with vampire lore, it is an entertaining a vampire tale that plays up its b-movie thrills.
Ripe with cool lines--"Life's a bitch," says Hawke's world weary vampire, "and then you don't die"--cool new vampire mythology--vamps who feed on themselves become mutants--and cool ideas--blood becomes a commodity like oil--"Daybreakers" is the best night stalker film to come along since last year's "Let the Right One In." (Sorry Twi-Hards!)
Hawke, with his sunken cheeks and rough hewn good looks is well cast as Edward, the disinclined vampire, but his character becomes much more fun in the last half of the film (SPOILER ALERT) when he morphs into Ethan Hawke, Vampire Slayer.
The film, for all its effective spooky vampiric atmosphere in the first hour, builds towards a bloody climax that can only be described as juicy. People (and vampires) don't just die as much as they explode, spraying a cloud of moist viscera in every direction. This is one movie I was glad wasn't in 3-D.
"Daybreakers" doesn't have enough bite to become a modern vampire classic like "Nosferatu the Vampyre" or "Let the Right One In," it's too down and dirty for that, but it is great b-movie fun in the tradition of "Innocent Blood" or "Near Dark."
"Leap Year"
Richard's Review: 1 star
"Leap Year", a new opposites-attract-romantic-comedy, stars Amy Adams and Matthew Goode as the metaphoric oil and water. She's a perfectionist, he isn't. She pushy, he's laid back. She doesn't do quaint very well, he's... well, quaint. It's the standard rom com set up, but instead of the usual New York setting director Anand Tucker places the action in the picturesque Irish country side.
The action begins in Boston where uptight Anna (Adams) has become tired of waiting for her yuppie-scum cardiologist boyfriend of four years to propose. Taking matter into her own hands and citing an obscure Irish tradition that declares it impossible for a man to refuse a woman's proposal on Leap Day she decides to ambush him on February 29 while he is in Dublin on business. Delayed by bad weather she lands in a remote Irish village and begins the long road trip to Dublin accompanied by Declan (Goode), a rough hewn local who agrees to take her to the big city in return for enough money to save his failing pub.
Rom coms are predictable beasts. We know who is going to end up with who, because if we don't, I guess it would be a romantic suspense movie and who would pay to see that? The trick to making an effective rom com is to keep the ride interesting all the up to the final, and inevitable, loving embrace between the two leads. At this "Leap Year" is only partially successful.
Adams and Goode have the lion's share of screen time and while they are both charming, good actors, neither is doing their best work here. Where is the interesting Adams of "Sunshine Cleaning"? Or "Enchanted's" lovable Adams? For that matter as a love interest Goode was far more effective with one-tenth of the screen time in "A Single Man, " and generated way more heat as Charles Ryder in the generally restrained "Brideshead Revisited" from a couple of years ago. Both put up a good fight but are beaten by material that is beneath them. Amy Adams deserves better than to share a scene with a herd of unresponsive cows.
Worst of all, for actors of Adams and Goode's stature, neither really makes the material her or his own. I could imagine any number of actors playing these parts and for this movie to really work I shouldn't have been able to imagine that the movie would have pretty much the same if it had starred Renee Zellweger and Gerard Butler.
"Leap Year" isn't absolutely terrible, in fact for a January rom com it's a step up from "New in Town" or "27 Dresses", but it is really average; just another mildly amusing, predictable entry in a generally mindless genre that badly needs a shot in the arm. If only Quentin Tarantino would make a romantic comedy...
