80 for Brady: Score!

80 for Brady (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for suggestive references, drug content and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.3.23 

This is a nice surprise.

 

Although director Kyle Marvin’s cheerful romp is the silly little comedy one would expect from its premise and publicity, it’s also a delightful showcase for its Hollywood veterans.

 

Four rabid football fans "of a certain age" — from left, Trish (Jane Fonda), Betty
(Sally Field), Lou (Lily Tomlin) and Maura (Rita Moreno) — can't believe they've actually
made it to the Super Bowl.

Scripters Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins shrewdly play to their stars’ strengths, and you’ll likely be surprised by the degree to which you become invested in this story’s outcome.

Add the fact that these events are set against the historic Super Bowl LI, and the result is a “silly comedy” that builds to an exhilarating climax.

 

The setting is Massachusetts in 2017, where longtime friends Lou (Lily Tomlin), Trish (Jane Fonda), Maura (Rita Moreno) and Betty (Sally Field) gather in front of the TV every game day to don team jerseys and watch their beloved Patriots … and, most particularly, quarterback Tom Brady. 

 

This routine has continued for years, ever since getting involved with football helped Lou defeat a bout with cancer. In a nod to sports voodoo — as with baseball players who never change their socks once a streak is established — these four gals diligently mimic their actions prior to a long-ago upset victory: where they were sitting or standing, and what they were saying and doing, down to spilling a bowl of potato chips at a precise moment.

 

Lou is the gutsy ringleader, who insists on the replication of all these details. Trish is glam and feisty; Maura is adventurous and tireless. Betty is smart and down-to-earth: the gang’s pragmatic conscience.

 

Each woman comes with a bit of emotional baggage. Maura hasn’t recovered from the loss of her husband, and — rather than live alone in their home — she has sorta-kinda moved into an assisted living facility, in order to be surrounded by other people.

 

Trish falls in love too quickly, and repeatedly gets her heart broken; Lou constantly worries that her cancer might recur. The precise and practical Betty, although a whiz with math and stats, can’t figure out what to do with her hapless husband (Bob Balaban, as Mark), whose absent-mindedness has become a trial. 

 

Once the game concludes, on this particular afternoon, Lou impulsively decides that they all should attend the upcoming Super Bowl, at Houston’s NRG Stadium.

 

But that’s an impossible proposition. They all live (albeit comfortably) on fixed incomes; obtaining tickets is prohibitively expensive, to say nothing of travel and lodging. 

The Monuments Men: An unfinished sculpture

The Monuments Men (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for relatively mild war violence, and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.7.14

What a disappointment.

Despite the considerable charm of George Clooney and his fellow scene-stealers, this is a flat and uninvolving film.

Knowing that time is running out, Stokes (George Clooney, foreground) and Granger
(Matt Damon, right) scramble to protectively wrap artworks prior to moving them to
safety. They're assisted by, background from left, Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas), Garfield
(John Goodman) and Savitz (Bob Balaban).

The fault lies with the graceless script, which leaves the impression that we’re watching the Reader’s Digest condensed version of a much longer miniseries. This two-hour film dips only briefly into a dozen or so potentially fascinating incidents, any one of which could have been expanded into a taut, exciting narrative; as it is, we get only the “calm” bits, leaving the impression that all exciting scenes were confiscated and dumped elsewhere.

Clooney deserves the blame; aside from starring and producing, he also directed and co-wrote the script with longtime colleague Grant Heslov. They’ve done a poor job of adapting the 2010 nonfiction book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter: The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.

Edsel also co-produced the 2006 documentary, The Rape of Europa, which covered the same territory in a vastly more satisfying manner.

Part of the problem is Clooney’s apparent desire to transplant the droll Ocean’s Eleven vibe into this grim World War II setting, while also conveying the barbaric behavior of Nazis who cheerfully practiced human and cultural genocide. It’s a bit jarring to smile at some witty banter between Bill Murray and Bob Balaban at one moment, and then, in the next, be confronted by barrels containing gold fillings extracted from the teeth of thousands of holocaust victims.

Mostly, though, I lament the utter absence of suspense. This is a fascinating, fact-based story that should have kept us at the edge of our seats. Clooney’s film, however, is a jokey affair that meanders throughout Western Europe: more travelogue than drama.

The saga begins in 1943, when Harvard art historian Frank Stokes (Clooney) briefs President Roosevelt on the pressing need for the Allies to avoid destroying European civilization, in their efforts to save it. By this, Stokes means that more care must be taken to preserve the cultural heritage of these various countries: their art and museums; their churches, cathedrals and synagogues; their architectural marvels.

As Edsel mentions, in the press notes, the Allies very nearly destroyed, entirely by accident, da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” in August 1943.