Fame: Rather tame

Fame (2009) • View trailer for Fame
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for teen drinking, mild profanity and sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.25.09
Buy DVD: Fame• Buy Blu-Ray: Fame (Extended Dance Edition + Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]

Director Kevin Tancharoen's re-boot of Fame is a lot of fun, but it ain't magical.

In that essential respect, it's a shadow of its 1980 predecessor, which was an all-stops-out sensation, copping two Academy Awards (song and score), garnering nominations for four others — including Christopher Gore's screenplay — and leading to a TV series that ran four years, from 1983-87.

Believing herself alone in the performance hall, Denise (Naturi Naughton)
forgoes her classical piano exercise to deliver a mesmerizing rendition of
"Out Here on My Own" -- the power ballad retained from 1980's Fame -- which
is one of the few times this film truly comes alive.

One would have thought, in the wake of Disney's hugely popular High School Musical series, that the time was right to follow another generation of young talents through their four years at the New York City High School of Performing Arts; I've no doubt that's how MGM got sold on the project.

But Tancharoen's handling of this new Fame too frequently lacks the pizzazz of its predecessor, and Allison Burnett's screenplay is an oddly safe and sanitized version of Gore's much edgier storyline. Aside from trying to get a handle on their dance, music and stage skills, Gore's often troubled kids confronted gender issues, teen pregnancy and a few other real-life challenges that made them seem reasonably authentic ... and justified that film's R rating.

Burnett's PG-rated kids, in significant contrast, have been drawn from the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney "Hey, kids, let's put on a show" mold. Fox's Glee, in its fourth glorious week, is much sassier, its scripts moving into moderately "dangerous" territory that makes its characters more interesting, and the show's overall impact much more entertaining.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong with a wholesome look at singing and dancing teens ... but High School Musical owns that end of the street. If Tancharoen and Burnett truly wished to remake Fame, then they should have cut closer to the bone.

Love Happens: Rather charming

Love Happens (2009) • View trailer for Love Happens
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for brief profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.24.09
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Given the limited number of ways that two consenting adults can be thrown together in a romantic comedy, the distinction between engaging sparkle and ho-hum familiarity usually depends on the little touches: the extra bits that help define the people with whom we're about to spend an evening.

Director Brandon Camp, who also scripted Love Happens with Mike Thompson, has a nice way with those little touches. This film's characters — and their problems — are believably ordinary, as is the set-up that brings them together. Better still, the subsequent plot developments are reasonably low-key: a meet-cute encounter that blossoms quietly into a friendship that might, in turn, grow into something stronger.

Burke (Aaron Eckhart) is intrigued by the secret collection of floral message
cards that Eloise (Jennifer Aniston) copied and saved, because they touched her
in some manner: little greetings, apologies and shared sorrows that bespeak a
deep connection between giver and recipient. It's a poignant notion, and one of
many nice touches in this film.

No flash, no intrusive slapstick and very little manipulative melodrama. Love Happens often has the intimacy of a stageplay, and its script is much more accomplished than Camp and Thompson's only previous big-screen credit, 2002's hilariously overcooked Dragonfly. I'd like to think Camp and Thompson learned from that mistake, and they also clearly refined their writing chops during their one-year stint on television's John Doe.

Love Happens also marks Camp's feature film directorial debut, and he has a nice touch with character interaction, and with the emotional range demanded by his storyline. Although marketed as a romantic comedy, this film offers more than a little heartbreak, demonstrating that comedy and tragedy often are separated by a very fine line.

Dr. Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart), a self-help celebrity vaulted to public acclaim after an extremely successful book, has taken his act on the road. City by city, he leads therapy seminars that encourage participants to confront their pain — usually over the loss of a loved one — as a means of securing closure and then moving on.

The package is slick, down to a signature catch-phrase, and Burke is gangbusters on stage: the sort of charismatic therapist able to turn readers into acolytes. His pop-culture success has not escaped the attention of a media conglomerate anxious to turn Burke into a franchise; best friend and manager Lane Martin (Dan Fogler) has orchestrated a meeting while the doctor conducts a session in Seattle.

The Informant!: Tall Tale

The Informant! (2009) • View trailer for The Informant!
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.09
Buy DVD: The Informant!• Buy Blu-Ray: The Informant! [Blu-ray]

The American corporate culture is about to join Nazis and Muslim fanatics on the list of cinema's villains we love to hate, and I couldn't be more delighted.

If we can't find a way to toss rapacious corporate thugs into jail and throw away the keys, then at least we can anticipate the vicarious thrill of seeing them humiliated on the big screen.

FBI agents Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula, left) and Bob Herndon (Joel McHale,
center) become increasingly puzzled by the behavior of corporate whistle-blower
Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), who genuinely believes that his own company
will hail him as a hero after he exposes a massive price-fixing scheme
orchestrated by his bosses. Could anybody really be that naive?

Director Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! adopts a gleefully wicked tone for its depiction of a recent corporate crime, with screenwriter Scott Z. Burns taking pains to exaggerate the best elements of Kurt Eichenwald's book — The Informant (A True Story) — in the service of what emerges as a sharp-edged satire on truth, justice and the American (business) way.

Soderbergh always gets great work from both cast and crew, but special mention must be made of Burns, star Matt Damon and soundtrack composer Marvin Hamlisch, all of whom perform above and beyond the call of duty. Damon's performance is mesmerizing, and he bites off Burns' marvelously arch dialogue with considerable brio; Hamlisch's whimsically retro themes, evoking everything from 1960s TV shows to James Bond scores, masterfully counterpoints the increasingly erratic behavior of these frazzled characters.

Soderbergh also deserves praise for two additional elements: a series of the best-timed double-takes and slow burns ever caught on film; and the cleverest use of voice-over I've heard in years, in the form of Damon's interior monologues. Pay close attention to the latter, because they're not nearly as random as they appear at first blush.

And while it might be useful to be familiar with what actually went down at the agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland in the 1990s, you'll have a much better time if this saga's mid-point reverse catches you by surprise. Assumptions and expectations are rent asunder, and you'll suddenly need to watch the film's first half again, to better judge its plot points against all this new information.

That's cunning writing and shrewd directing — not to mention richly layered acting — and all concerned should take a bow.

Jennifer's Body: A total nottie

Jennifer's Body (2009) • View trailer for Jennifer's Body
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, gore, profanity and teen sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.09
Buy DVD: Jennifer's Body• Buy Blu-Ray: Jennifer's Body (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]

Absent the involvement of an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Jennifer's Body would be just another easily ignored, late-summer teen fright flick dumped with the expectation of two weeks on the big screen, prior to fitful video afterlife a few months down the road.

But expectations are raised when the credits include Diablo Cody, who took a well-deserved Oscar for her original screenplay for Juno, and charmed both the industry audience and home viewers with a particularly exuberant acceptance speech. Cody's clever and whimsically snarky script for Juno demonstrated a sensitivity for teens in general, and misfit girls in particular; fans therefore were more than a little intrigued when she selected a gal-centered horror entry as her next project.

Despite having a loyal girlfriend -- even if she has gotten a bit strange lately --
Chip (Johnny Simmons) quite foolishly allows himself to be seduced by
Jennifer (Megan Fox) on the night of the high school prom. Little does he
know that this encounter is about to move up the hill, into the sort of
dilapidated, shrubbery-infested indoor swimming pool that exists only in
horror movies ... where Jennifer's appetite will prove more cannibalistic
than carnal.

Surely, we hoped, Cody could bring a fresh perspective to a genre dominated by male writers and directors far too willing to demean, debase and disembowel women.

It didn't work out that way.

To be sure, most of the on-camera victims in Jennifer's Body are guys, but they're not exactly misogynistic jerks whose fates would be greeted with vicarious delight; indeed, the one granted the most attention is just the sort of disenfranchised nice guy who would have been one of Juno's best friends. Of course, that could be the point: Cody builds this character into a well-defined individual, rather than a disposable, two-dimensional nonentity. His eventual fate hurts a bit.

The most gruesome demise, however, still is reserved for a female character, and hack director Karyn Kusama — most notorious for the sci-fi bomb Aeon Flux, with Charlize Theron — lingers on this sequence just as exploitatively as the genre usually demands.

Actually, Kusama doesn't bring much to this party. She and cinematographer M. David Mullen orchestrate only one really great shot: an eerie, late-night tableau that shows the next victim, just barely seen waaaay at the end of a deserted street, as his silhouette moves toward the house where he'll meet his eventual fate. It's a wonderfully moody image, and there ain't nothin' else like it in the rest of this humdrum and utterly predictable film.

That's the most disappointing part: Jennifer's Body is nothing fresh, and has no surprises. It's not fun in the manner of TV's Buffy, the Vampire Slayer or the more recent Being Human; it's actually rather depressing.