I Want You Back: Be careful what you wish for

I Want You Back (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor, drug use and partial nudity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Director Jason Orley’s modestly entertaining little film is a rom-com spin on Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.

 

Alcohol, karaoke and bruised feelings are an unlikely backdrop as Peter (Charlie Day)
and Emma (Jenny Slate) concoct an increasingly elaborate scheme to win back
their ex-lovers.

Instead of trading murders, our two protagonists — recently abandoned by their lovers — trade the destruction of their exes’ new relationships, with the intent of subsequently winning them back.

Two problems crop up, as this story unfolds.

 

Most notably, Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger’s script is quite uneven. During quieter moments of shared hopes/goals/commiseration between various pairs of characters, the dialogue is sincere, warm and heartfelt, and persuasively delivered by the actors. It’s easy to sympathize with them, and I suspect many viewers will experience quite a few pangs of been-there-felt-that.

 

Unfortunately, such moments are wholly at odds with stretches of overly broad, slapstick-style stupidity; it feels like two entirely different films were clumsily stitched together.

 

Or perhaps what began as a gently whimsical, reasonably serious look at the extremes to which jilted lovers might go, was “smutted up” in order to secure an R rating that upper-echelon meddling hands felt would make the film more marketable.

 

Either way, the result is uneven.

 

The other problem concerns real-world empathy. If we’re expected to bond with these characters — and the actors work reasonably well to ensure that — then this scenario, by its very nature, means that somebody (several somebodies?) will wind up hurt.

 

(Even in classic screwball comedies such as 1937’s The Awful Truth, I always felt sorry for the guy — in this case, Ralph Bellamy — who gets left behind when Cary Grant and Irene Dunne kiss and make up.)

 

Emma (Jenny Slate) and Peter (Charlie Day) work in the same building, but don’t know each other; they chance to bond when both are dumped by their respective partners — Noah (Scott Eastwood) and Anne (Gina Rodriguez) — on the same weekend. After all, misery does love company.

 

But misery blossoms into indignation when, via social media, Emma and Peter discover that their exes have moved happily — and rapidly — into new relationships: Noah with Ginny (Clark Backo), Anne with Logan (Manny Jacinto). During a subsequent pity party fueled by wounded pride and too much alcohol, Emma and Peter concoct a plan to sabotage these new relationships, reasoning — rather optimistically — that Noah and Anne then will come to their senses and rush back into appropriate arms.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

Plenty, of course.

Scoob: A doggone hoot

Scoob (2020) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for mild suggestive humor and fantasy peril
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.10.20

Scooby-Doo, the nervous Great Dane with a nose for supernatural-style trouble — and a manner of “speaking” borrowed from Astro, on The Jetsons — has covered an amazing amount of territory since solving his first cast back on Sept. 13, 1969.

Our young heroes — from left, Velma, Fred, Shaggy, Daphne and Scooby-Doo — don't
know it yet, but they're about to solve their first mystery.

The character and his human sidekicks have never notbeen ubiquitous on television, thanks to well over a dozen variations on their initial 17-episode run … not to mention numerous direct-to-video films and several (mostly) live-action entries.

It’s safe to say that Scooby-Doo has eclipsed Rin Tin Tin and Lassie as the world’s most famous canine screen hero. (No accident, these days, that we refer to a crime-solving detective’s posse as a “Scooby gang.”)

Director Tony Cervone’s Scoob, debuting on HBO Max and other video-on-demand platforms, is guaranteed to keep the lovable pooch vibrant for additional years to come.

Cervone’s pacing frequently has the frantic intensity of classic Warner Bros. cartoons, and the script — credited to no fewer than six hands — definitely captures the original Scooby vibe, while inserting snarky asides and droll one-liners that’ll keep adults equally entertained. The voice talent is solid, and longtime Saturday morning cartoon fans will have fun spotting all the supporting characters borrowed from other Hanna-Barbera shows.

The film is littered with additional Hanna-Barbera “Easter eggs”; you’ll want to pay careful attention to billboards and street signs.

Scoob also serves as an origin story, of sorts, with a lengthy prolog that shows how a clumsy puppy with hilariously oversized paws chances to meet 10-year-old Shaggy Rogers at California’s Venice Beach. Of course, they bond over a shared sandwich, and thereafter become inseparable best buds.

Halloween arrives shortly thereafter, at which point Shaggy and Scoob meet up with Daphne, Velma and Fred. During a pell-mell attempt to retrieve Shaggy’s bag of Halloween candy from a supposedly haunted house — with Scoob hindering as much as helping — the quintet exposes the actual culprit behind these faux scary doings.

(That’s key; classic Scooby-Doo adventures always seemed to involve dire supernatural events, ultimately revealed — after all manner of pratfalls and red herrings — to be the work of decidedly Earthbound human baddies.)

Annihilation: Slow death

Annihilation (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, profanity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.23.18

Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.

Author/editor/literary critic Jeff VanderMeer apparently prefers cellular madness.

After narrowly surviving an encounter with an unexpectedly oversized alligator, cellular
biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) is disturbed to find that its mouth contains far too
many rows of teeth.

His Nebula Award-winning 2014 novel, Annihilation, is — to say the least — a challenging but thoroughly fascinating read.

Director/scripter Alex Garland’s big-screen adaptation is thoughtful, absorbing, unsettling and even scary. For a time.

Unfortunately, he lets everything go to hell in the third act. And I don’t mean that in a positive way.

Certain science fiction films suffer from this problem: a terrific premise and suspenseful development, with — ultimately — nowhere to go. Garland’s take on Annihilation reminds me strongly of 1974’s Phase IV, a low-budget little flick that began with a similarly captivating premise but concluded with a nonsensically metaphysical climax (literally) that only could have been concocted by somebody on mind-altering substances.

The major problem here is that Garland was hell-bent on delivering a resolution that’s wholly at odds with VanderMeer’s novel ... which is only the first book in a trilogy. Garland’s “solution” to this dilemma isn’t merely unsatisfying; it makes total hash of what takes place during the first two acts.

Garland is best known as the writer/director behind 2014’s brilliant Ex Machina, a deliciously unsettling sci-fi saga that holds together superbly, up to a disturbing final scene that perfectly enhances everything that has come before. Too bad he couldn’t bring that rigorous logic and plot coherence to this one.

Former soldier-turned-cellular biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) has mourned the loss of her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), for a full year. Flashbacks and passing remarks reveal that he’s active military, subject to abrupt special-ops missions that he’s not able to share with his wife. Now long missing after having deployed on ... something ... Lena reluctantly believes him dead.

Until he turns up in their bedroom one day, disoriented and with no apparent memory of how he got there, or where he has been, or who he was with, or ... anything.

Deepwater Horizon: An honorable, action-packed tribute

Deepwater Horizon (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Actor-turned-filmmaker Peter Berg has run hot and cold during his directing career, from well-received inspirational drama (2004’s Friday Night Lights) to laughable popcorn dreck (2012’s Battleship).

Having learned that a crucial performance and safety check was skipped after the
installation of a fresh cement seal, Deepwater Horizon's offshore installation manager,
"Mr. Jimmy" (Kurt Russell, foreground), orders a supplemental pressure test, as equally
concerned members of his crew — from left, Curtis (Jason Pine), Clark (Ronald Weaver)
and Anderson (Ethan Suplee) — watch with apprehension.

He also has a fondness for wartime drama, although his gung-ho, America-first sensibilities sometimes slide into uncomfortable xenophobia, as with 2007’s deplorable The Kingdom.

But Berg’s skill as an old-school action director cannot be denied; even when the story leaves something to be desired, he exhibits a muscular filmmaking style that evokes the likes of John Sturges, Robert Aldrich and even John Ford. Berg simply needs to choose his projects more carefully, and resist the temptation to shove his politics down our throats.

Under optimal circumstances, the results can be both exciting and deeply moving, and that’s definitely the case with Deepwater Horizon: without question, Berg’s best film since Friday Night Lights.

This calamitous real-world event remains recent enough to resonate uncomfortably with viewers, who may recoil from being reminded that just shy of a dozen men died on April 20, 2010, under circumstances that absolutely were preventable. And, yes, at times Berg’s persuasive reconstruction of these events is grimly realistic and very, very hard to watch.

But the tone is never exploitative; indeed, scripters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand — drawing their material from a New York Times article by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul — take an honorable and even heroic approach. Berg’s film celebrates bravery and courage, and serves as a deeply moving memorial to the 11 men who lost their lives, each of whom is cited by name and photo, just prior to the end credits.

Try not to choke up during that montage.

On top of which, as a meticulous account of recent history — allowing for some climactic exaggeration, for dramatic impact — this film stands quite nobly as a lingering indictment of the corporate bastards at British Petroleum (BP), who placed penny-pinching shortcuts ahead of human lives. In that respect, Berg has done us an incalculable public service.

It’s an old and sadly familiar story, brought to the big screen in numerous variations: mine workers exploited by callous supervisors; shop workers harassed by cruel owners; field laborers all but imprisoned on company farms. Hard-working “little people” at the mercy of smiling, condescending, immaculately dressed — and often indifferently ignorant — administrators.