"Burlesque"
Richard's Review: 2 1/2 glittery stars
On a scale of 1 to Ridiculous, "Burlesque," the new film starring duelling pop divas Cher and Christina Aguilera, it's Rip Taylor. A glittery mix of "All About Eve," "Striptease" and "42nd Street" it is for people who didn't find "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" campy enough.
Xtina plays Allie, a small girl with a giant voice who leaves her Podunk Iowa town to find fame and fortune in Los Angeles. Then, in an explosion of glitter and cone bras, she lands a job as a waitress at Burlesque, a place with no windows, but the "Best View on the Sunset Strip."
It's an old school burlesque house, seemingly inhabited by the spirit of Bob Fosse, on the verge of bankruptcy, currently being run into the ground by Tess (Cher) and Sean (Stanley Tucci). Christina, and her highly articulated vocalizing come along just in time to save the club, romance a handsome bartender (Cam Gigandet) and a multimillionaire (Eric Dane) and alienate the club's reigning diva.
"Burlesque" is essentially a vehicle for Christina's vocal acrobatics. It hangs a recycled show biz story -- girl from the sticks becomes a star in Los Angeles -- on the elastic voice talents of its star. Less than five minutes into the story she's on a stage bellowing a multi-octave cover of the Etta James classic "Something's Got a Hold on Me." If that sends a shiver down your spine, then "Burlesque" is for you. If not, it's going to be a long two hours.
Only Cher and Stanley Tucci seem to understand what kind of movie this is. Only Cher could intone a line about helping a dancer when she was drunk and sick, throwing up "everything but your memories," and walk away with her career intact. Ditto Tucci. He's slumming here, but he sparks with Cher and seems to be having fun.
Which brings us to Aguilera. She can gyrate like nobody's business and looks fetching in a sparkly bowler hat, but as energetic as the performance is it never rises above the level of a gifted amateur.
"Burlesque" isn't trashy enough -- remember "Showgirls"? -- to be truly memorable. It has no story arc, no dramatic tension, just a lot of bump-and-grind. That'll be enough for people with a taste for camp but like the art form it is named after the movie is all tease and no follow through.
"Love and Other Drugs"
3 1/2 stars
"Love and Other Drugs," the new film starring Oscar nominees Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhal, isn't your standard rom com. Call it a drom com, or a romantic dramedy, but it isn't afraid to try and wring a tear or two from you while slathering on the romance.
Gyllenhal is Jamie, a good looking med school drop-out who finds his calling selling pharmaceuticals. Until meeting Maggie (Hathaway), a beautiful and talented but troubled woman, he slid through life solely on charm and his ability to get people to do anything he wants them to do. He falls in love with her but [**SPOILER**] because she has early onset Parkinson's Disease she refuses to let Jamie get too close, preferring to keep their relationship purely physical. As her sickness progresses they both find themselves with some very serious decisions to make. [**END OF SPOILERS**]
Based on Jamie Reidy's memoir "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman," the movie is a mix of broad comedy (which doesn't always work so well) and heartfelt romance (which does). Gyllenhal and Hathaway sell the romance, their huge eyes -- both these actors have soulful eyes bigger than on any sad-eyed clown painting -- and make a convincing couple.
The plot takes its lead from the standard rom com set-up but liberally mixes in sex, nudity (yes, movie lovers the two comely leads spend a great deal of time topless and bottomless!) and more genuine feeling than any 10 Katherine Heigl movies.
It's not a seamless mingling of serious romance and comedy however. Other than Maggie Jamie shares his screen time with two sidekicks, and that, frankly is one too many. Oliver Platt, as his sales mentor is a riot and underused. Josh Gad, as Jamie's porn addicted brother, the role Jack Black would have played ten years ago and Jonah Hill probably auditioned for this year, is funny-ish but wears out his welcome early on. And please Mr. Gyllenhal never do "painful erection" jokes ever again in your career.
"Love and Other Drugs" could have deepened the script by increasing the time it gives to the evils of the pharmaceutical business but instead avoids the disease-of-the-week clichés and puts the focus where it belongs, on two very likeable and watchable stars doing some very good work.
"Tangled"
Richard's Review: 3 stars (but 4 1/2 stars for the animation)
"Tangled," Disney's 50th animated feature, is a mix of Grimm's Fairy Tales and Broadway show tunes. A retelling of "Rapunzel" featuring beautiful computer animation, a Disney princess and some show-stopping tunes isn't as masterful as last year's "Princess and the Frog," but will make your eyeballs dance with its beautiful artwork.
The story begins with the kidnapping of Princess Rapunzel, a magical child whose glowing hair has the ability to restore youth. Nabbed by Mother Gothel, an old crone desperate to regain and maintain her youth, she is locked away in a tower completely shut off from the outside world. Her only knowledge of the world comes from through a tiny window, where, once a year, on her birthday, she sees a beautiful festival of floating lights from the nearby kingdom. On her eighteenth birthday she asks to leave the tower and see the lights up close. Of course her "mother" refuses but she gets her chance when a thief named Flynn Rider breaks into her tower looking for a hideout after stealing the crown jewels. At first he literally wants to get out of her hair, but soon, of course, romance blooms.
The first thing you'll notice about "Tangled" is the beautiful animation. The characters are still of that big-eyed Disney variety but the attention to detail is incredible. Rapunzel's long locks look amazing. CG hair is notoriously difficult to get right but here the animators have created the best looking hair since Vidal Sassoon retired, complete with split ends and fly-aways. Ditto for the water. Again, animators have had a hard time recreating water with CG but here, in one sequence on a lake, the incredible recreated water almost steals the whole scene.
The rest of the film has all the usual Disney trademarks, humor, romance, a cute animal sidekick and a great Cruella DeVill-ainess but for me, the movie falls down in the music department. With the exception of two numbers Mama Knows Best and the Dreamer's Song -- sung by a roomful of thugs and containing lines like "though I like breaking femurs, you can count me as a dreamer" -- both of which are pure Broadway showstoppers, but the songs sung by the Princess have a generic feel to them.
On the plus side the movie is filled with wonderful set pieces and at least one character who could be spun off to his own movie. Even though he doesn't have a single line, Maximus the palace horse is one of Disney's best creations in years. His exaggerated facial expressions seem to be borrowed from a Looney Tunes cartoon but a showdown between the horse and Ryder is pure Disney and purely delightful.
"Tangled" isn't destined to become a Disney classic but is a great diversion for the whole family this year.
"Faster"
Richard's Review: 2 stars
The dialogue, the car chases, even the music in "Faster," the violent new revenge flick starring Dwayne Johnson, is as pumped up as the former wrestler's bicep and tricep muscles. It's just too bad he doesn't get to flex his acting muscles as much as his aforementioned arm muscles.
Johnson plays an ex-con bent on getting revenge on the people who set-up and murdered his brother following a daring bank robbery. On his tail, as he one-by-one dispatches his enemies, are two very determined cops (Billy Bob Thornton and Carla Gugino) and an eccentric assassin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen).
I've deliberately kept the synopsis of "Faster" brief and to-the-point because it doesn't really hold up to a great deal of scrutiny. That's OK, revenge movie fans aren't going to see this movie for the plot, they're going to see the chases, the kills and the action, and while all those elements are in place there is something not very satisfying about the movie.
The first thing that doesn't seem right is that Johnson's character could walk around, out in the open, blowing people away. He's six-foot-a-hundred, heavily tattooed, looks a lot like a wrestler named The Rock and yet seems to be invisible to the police as he careens around Southern California gun in hand. I know it's a movie, but things still have to make some sort of sense.
He's no ninja, that's for sure but he is an imposing presence. After trying comedy and kids movies Johnson has settled back in comfortably where he belongs, in action roles. Here he plays a stoic loner -- he has so few lines he makes Marcel Marceau look like a chatterbox -- who doesn't have much to do except growl, grunt and glare, although in one scene he sheds a tear. It's a basic performance that doesn't require him to do anything he hasn't done in the ring. Perhaps this is what people expect of him but it's disappointing because after seeing his good work in other movies there seems to be a distinct lack of nuance here.
There's also not a lot of nuance in the way he kills his victims. Revenge movies are all about the set-up and the satisfying release of seeing the bad guys get what they've got coming, but like Johnson's performance, the kills are basic. In "Kill Bill" Tarantino made each and every assassination unique. Here director George Tillman Jr. usually just has Johnson point and pull the trigger. Like I said. Basic.
"Faster" is stylish and atmospheric, and even has a tense climax, but I'd take a little less muscle flexing and a bit more acting flexing.
