Mother's Day: Holiday fatigue

Mother's Day (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather pointlessly, for fleeting profanity and mildly suggestive content
By Derrick Bang

Veteran director Garry Marshall began what could be termed his “holiday merry-go-round” series with 2010’s Valentine’s Day, which blended an impressively diverse ensemble cast with a reasonably clever series of interlocking stories from scripters Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein.

When Sandy (Jennifer Aniston, left) brings her sons (Caleb Brown and Brandon Spink)
for their regularly scheduled weekend with their father Henry (Timothy Olyphant), she's
dismayed by his new young wife Tina's (Shay Mitchell) barely there clothing, and by the
lengths she has gone to curry favor with the boys.

It was popular enough to generate a sequel, 2011’s New Year’s Eve, which included a few casting carryovers and a script credited solely to Fugate. Alas, the result wasn’t nearly as satisfying; the intertwining stories weren’t as clever, their outcomes far more predictable.

Despite this, Marshall has gone to the well a third time, with further diminishing returns. Perhaps hoping that new blood would invigorate the premise, Marshall turned this time to scripters Tom Hines, Lily Hollander, Anya Kochoff and Matthew Walker. Frankly, it feels like they worked independently, rather than collaboratively; the episodic narratives link up clumsily, if at all, and Mother’s Day too frequently feels like an average episode of TV’s Love Boat or Fantasy Island.

Which isn’t necessarily bad, I suppose, although that sets the bar rather low.

Yes, some of the arch one-liners will elicit giggles, and it’s still fun to see so many familiar faces in a single project. But the slapstick elements are TV-sitcom stupid, and the core storyline involving racist, insensitive parents churns out a candy-coated happy resolution with ludicrous swiftness (hence the Fantasy Island reference).

So, get your scorecards out...

Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) and Henry (Timothy Olyphant), amicably divorced, have been sharing custody of two young sons (Caleb Brown and Brandon Spink). But the situation’s harmony is shattered when Henry announces his surprise marriage to a much younger hotsy-totsy named Tina (Shay Mitchell). Cutting remarks about cradle-robbing aside, Sandy fears that she’ll be downgraded to “other mother” status: of particular concern, with the impending arrival of Mother’s Day.

At the same time, Sandy hopes to enhance her career as a clothing and set designer by landing an interview with TV shopping network diva Miranda Collins (Julia Roberts), represented by longtime agent and friend Lance Wallace (Marshall perennial Hector Elizondo).

Million Dollar Arm: Bunt to shortshop

Million Dollar Arm (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

Underdog sports stories are irresistible. Fish-out-of-water stories are irresistible.

You’d therefore think that a film combining both elements would be can’t-miss.

You’d think.

Newly arrived in the United States, Dinesh (Madhur Mittal, far left) and Rinku (Suraj
Sharma, center left) are delighted by their first visit to an American baseball field. The
event is recorded for posterity by Amit (Pitobash, far right), while J.B. (Jon Hamm)
looks on with pleasure. Unfortunately, and rather cruelly, he's about to abandon his
new charges, naively believing them capable of carrying on from this point forward.

In fairness, Million Dollar Arm has a lot going for it, starting with a fact-based premise that is buoyed further by several thoroughly charming performances. Unfortunately, these virtues are offset by director Craig Gillespie’s protracted approach — his film is both too slow and, at slightly more than two hours, too long — and a casting decision that doesn’t work as everybody undoubtedly hoped.

Thomas McCarthy’s screenplay takes a gentle, light-comedy approach to real-world sports agent J.B. Bernstein’s gimmick-laden visit to India in 2007, when he staged a reality show-type competition in order to uncover untapped baseball talent. J.B. felt, not unreasonably, that in a nation obsessed with cricket, surely a few “bowlers” could be groomed into Major League pitchers.

As shaped by McCarthy, J.B. (Jon Hamm) and his partner and best friend Aash (Aasif Mandvi) are treading dire financial waters. The dream of fronting their own agency is about to go under for the third and final time, salvation resting entirely on a potential deal with an extravagantly fickle football star (Rey Maualuga).

Things don’t work out, leaving J.B. to clutch at the flimsiest of straws, after some late-night TV flipping between a cricket match and Susan Boyle’s stunning performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent (an event that took place in April 2009, but hey, who pays attention to such niggly little details?).

J.B. hatches an improbable scheme, manages to secure financial backing from a taciturn investor named Mr. Chang (Tzi Ma), and soon finds himself in India.

Gillespie is on firm ground during this sequence, evoking portraits of various Indian locales that are by turns exotic and amusing. J.B. liaises with a “fixer” (Darshan Jariwala) and quickly picks up a protégé of sorts: Amit (rising Indian film star Pitobash, in a thoroughly delightful American debut), an eager-beaver volunteer, gopher, translator, right-hand man and die-hard baseball fan.

They’re also joined by Ray Poitevint (Alan Arkin), a cantankerous retired baseball scout who doesn’t need to watch for potential; he can hear the sound of a proper fastball. (Didn’t Clint Eastwood’s Gus Lobel rely on that skill, in 2012’s Trouble with the Curve? And does Arkin ever play anything but cantankerous?)

The Internship: Not worth hiring

The Internship (2013) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, and somewhat generously, for profanity, sexual content and considerable crude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.7.13

Fans hoping that a reunion with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson means another hilarious raunch-fest — along the lines of Wedding Crashers — are in for a major disappointment.

Having forsaken IQ-busting challenges for one evening, Billy and Nick (Vince Vaughn
and Owen Wilson, far right) take their young colleagues — from left, Yo-Yo (Tobit
Raphael), Stuart (Dylan O'Brien), Lyle (Josh Brener) and Marielena (Jessica Szohr) —
out for an evening of merriment at (where else?) a local strip club. But because this
is a PG-13 film, nobody actually strips...

The Internship is a sweet, gooey, insubstantial and totally forgettable little fairy tale ... with just enough coarse humor to stretch the boundaries of its PG-13 rating, while also compromising the story’s otherwise fluffy tone. Director Shawn Levy clearly doesn’t know how to approach this project; he’s obviously much more comfortable with overly broad slapstick such as Night at the Museum and Date Night.

Levy flails amid this film’s mostly gentle tone, and he further exacerbates the clumsy pacing by s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g this minor giggle far beyond what the material can support. Seriously, two hours? Since when do lightweight comedies need anything beyond 95 minutes?

Yes, Vaughn and Wilson riff each other reasonably well, although I frequently had the impression — glancing at their eyes, and how their lips seemed primed to twitch — that they desperately wanted more profane dialogue. They deliver well-timed rat-a-tat exchanges, although the script — credited to Vaughn and Jared Stern — is both unimaginative and quite redundant.

Indeed, this story delivers at least two “Let’s win this one, kids!” speeches too many.

Additionally — and this is a major problem with many such films — Levy & Co. beat their thin material into submission, vainly trying to turn minor chuckles (at best) into major belly-laughs. All concerned seem to believe that if a scene lingers another minute, or two, or three, that we dense audience members finally will “get” the joke and laugh harder.

Doesn’t work that way. As the old saying goes, Levy and his cast repeatedly flog a dead horse. And, frequently, one that’s already smelling very, very bad.

We meet Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) — glib, silver-tongued salesmen who could offload sand on desert sheikhs — just as they learn that their company has folded. Out of work, and for some reason unable (unwilling?) to investigate other sales jobs, they ponder their fate as dinosaurs in an environment where even whip-smart college grads aren’t guaranteed employment.

Nick gets minor sympathy from his sister; Billy gets none from a wife/girlfriend who lingers onscreen only long enough to dump him. Neither actress is seen again, leading us to wonder why we met them at all.