The End of the Tour: Authors in crisis

The End of the Tour (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.21.15

Hyper-awareness and second-guessing are the absolute death of joie de vivre; when we scrutinize every thought and deed, the inevitable results are despair and utter paralysis.

Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg, left) initially assumes that celebrated
author David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) is delighted by book tours ... because that's
the way he (Lipsky) would react to such acclaim. But Wallace is a different soul entirely,
and landing in Minneapolis for yet another mindless public appearance is far from his
idea of fun.

This is one of several lessons to be learned from The End of the Tour, a heartfelt, thoughtfully engaging depiction of writers, the writing process and the price of fame. The film is anchored by the subtle, richly nuanced performances of its two stars: most particularly Jason Segel, demonstrating a level of acting intensity that will surprise viewers who know him solely for overly broad comedies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement and television’s How I Met  Your Mother.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies’ screenplay is drawn from an actual event: the five-day “brief encounter” that Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) spent with wunderkind author David Foster Wallace (Segel) in 1996, while shadowing the conclusion of the latter’s book tour for his highly celebrated epic novel, Infinite Jest. Wallace did not wear celebrity well; Lipsky, too much in awe of a man whose talent and acclaim he coveted, likely was a poor choice for the assignment.

And yet, at the same time, he probably was the best choice. Such are the tantalizing ironies that dance throughout Margulies’ piquant script, which is based on Lipsky’s own best-selling memoir of this meeting, 2010’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

Although director James Ponsoldt’s intimate drama focuses on the interactions between these two men, as Lipsky and his ubiquitous tape recorder intrusively chronicle even the most trivial aspects of Wallace’s behavior — such as when he discards the pickle from a fast-food hamburger — this isn’t strictly a talking-heads stage experience such as 1981’s My Dinner with Andre. Sidebar characters pop into this narrative, mostly to catalyze the intensity of subsequent conversations, but also to serve as physical examples of the philosophical issues with which Wallace constantly grapples.

That said, this is a dialogue-heavy film, replete with plain-vanilla two-shots. That shouldn’t be read as an indictment; debate is dull only if the participants — and their topics — are boring. That absolutely isn’t true here; as also was the case with My Dinner with Andre, watching this film is like eavesdropping on truly fascinating people.

Contrasting people, at that. Segel’s Wallace, although constantly laboring beneath a cloud of despair so tangible that we sometimes seem to see it, nonetheless tries, at all times, to articulate his feelings and impressions with a candor that Jesse Eisenberg’s Lipsky couldn’t manage if his life depended on it.

Sex Tape: A limp noodle

Sex Tape (2014) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for nudity, strong sexual content, drug use and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang

Homemade porn (so I’ve been told) tends to reflect the amateur skills of its makers: jittery camerawork, clumsy editing, terrible performances and — needless to say — no plot.

Ironic, then, that a so-called Hollywood comedy about this phenomenon should mimic all these shortcomings.

Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel) discover that, contrary to her original request,
their rather enthusiastic sex tape remained on his master computer, from where it then
migrated to several other tablets in the possession of various friends and family members.
Worse yet, one of those individuals is threatening to post the film to the Internet...

Sex Tape arises from a premise with plenty of potential, to give scripters Kate Angelo, Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller at least that much credit. Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Segel), during their younger years relentless pursuers of recreational sex, have found that their mutual passion has chilled after 10 years of marriage and two children.

Hoping to re-ignite the flame — and with common sense dulled by too many tequila shots — they park the kids with grandma and film themselves performing every single maneuver in Alex Comfort’s groundbreaking 1972 manual, The Joy of Sex.

In a single three-hour session.

That seems ambitious, given that Comfort’s book is large and rather inventive. But we’ll let that slide.

Mission accomplished, Annie instructs Jay to erase the film (unseen? really?), but of course the amiable lunk forgets. Cue the rumble of ominous drums.

In a rather blatant example of cinematic product placement, Jay — who works in the music biz — traditionally gifts friends with old iPads, when he upgrades to newer models. But the tablets are only part of this generous act; they’re also equipped with copies of the impressive music library he has built over the years.

You know what’s coming: Thanks to Jay’s ill-advised use of an aggressive cloning app, their sex film winds up on every recently donated iPad. The recipients include Annie’s mother, the mailman, best friends Robby and Tess (Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper), and — most damningly — Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), CEO of the wholesome multinational toy company Piper Brothers, which has made a lucrative financial offer to sponsor Annie’s “modern mommy” blog.

Assuming she maintains appropriate family values, of course.

(I can’t help wondering if the scripters deliberately riffed on the controversy that erupted back in the early 1970s, when Ivory Snow model Marilyn Chambers — who posed with a baby beneath the tag line “99 & 44/100% pure” — became a porn star with the release of Behind the Green Door. Needless to say, Procter & Gamble dropped her like a hot coal.)

The Five-Year Engagement: Can't commit

The Five-Year Engagement (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor and fleeting nudity 
By Derrick Bang

The engagement itself staggers along for five years, and it takes about that long to watch this film.

Or so it seems.

The morning after a delightful engagement party, which allows Violet (Emily
Blunt, left) and Tom (Jason Segel, second from left) to announce their pending
marriage, they're surprised to discover that his best friend, Alex (Chris Pratt),
and her sister, Suzie (Alison Brie), spent the night together. Truth be told,
Alex and Suzie are equally surprised by the situation.

A sweet, amusing and saucy romantic comedy is buried somewhere within the leaden mess of The Five-Year Engagement, which occasionally flickers into life and reveals The Film That Might Have Been. With the benefit of tighter editing and the objectivity needed to jettison some of the wandering narrative detours that just hang on the screen, like limp laundry, director Nicholas Stoller — who co-wrote the script, with star Jason Segel — might have delivered a decent result.

But at 124 minutes, this inexcusably self-indulgent exercise in slow torture feels interminable. The story goes on and on and on and on, until we’re ready to scream at the contrivance of yet another emotional roadblock that separates our two main characters, and thus prevents the film from finally grinding to its fitful conclusion (a wholly predictable outcome, I might add).

Stoller and Segel previously collaborated on 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, another comedy of love’s labors that adopted a similar kitchen sink approach to its core storyline. The problem, in both cases, is a lack of focus; Segel, the writer, needs to be reined in and persuaded that he’s not necessarily the best judge of what works for Segel, the actor.

We’re introduced to Tom (Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) on the happiest day of their made-for-each-other relationship, as he honors the one-year anniversary of their first “date” — actually a midnight kiss at a New Year’s Eve party, where they met — with a proposal. Actually, he intends to surprise her with a adorably elaborate setting for this proposal, but he’s not good at keeping secrets, and fumbles the approach.

Except.

There’s a world of difference between an actor fumbling dialogue, in character, and an actor merely fumbling dialogue. Pay attention to this opening scene, as Segel and Blunt navigate these first few pages of script. The line deliveries are awful, the timing equally poor; the sequence plays more like a first rehearsal — and a bad one, at that — than a take preserved for use in the finished movie.

Much of The Five-Year Engagement suffers from such clumsiness, as if Stoller abdicated his directorial responsibilities and let random set visitors vote on which take to accept. However it happened, the result is a film that repeatedly starts, stops and stalls without warning, like a junker that can’t quite make it off the used-car lot.

Jeff, Who Lives at Home: Droll search for the meaning of life

Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.23.12



I love pleasant surprises.

Ed Helms has a knack for finding indie dramedies with just the right blend of charm and offbeat quirkiness. He scored last year at about this time, with just such a project: the completely adorable Cedar Rapids. Despite its lower profile and far smaller box-office take, it was far more satisfying than his obligatory return to gross-out form a few months later, in The Hangover, Part II.

Pat (Ed Helms) is arrogant enough to assume that he can get away with parking
in a spot reserved for disabled drivers, and is ready to blame the universe when he
gets caught doing it. His brother, Jeff (Jason Segel), a believer in karma and
celestial balance, views this outcome as just desserts ... but is far too polite to
say as much. These differing views of life, the universe and everything will
prove important as these brothers navigate what turns into a most unusual day.

Folks who enjoyed Cedar Rapids will find the same delights in Jeff, Who Lives at Home ... and it isn’t even Helms’ film. Granted, he has a crucial co-starring role, but this whimsically bent effort from the writing/directing team of Jay and Mark Duplass belongs mostly to star Jason Segel.

Although ... no ... that’s not entirely correct. Helms plays an equally important role, as does co-star Susan Sarandon. And Judy Greer. And Rae Dawn Chong.

That’s the secret behind indie hits like this one: The filmmakers pay equal attention to each of the ensemble’s well-crafted characters.

Thirtysomething Jeff (Segel), the eponymous character, has stalled out on the highway of life. To the enduring frustration of his mother, Sharon (Sarandon), he leads an isolated existence in her basement: trapped not by circumstance but more by choice. He’s not agoraphobic — such as the character played by Nicolas Cage in 2003’s Matchstick Men, who feared leaving his house — but merely overwhelmed.

Obsessed by a search for “meaning” in all of life’s events, even the least significant, Jeff is frozen into near-immobility by indecision. The 2002 film Signs has become his personal Bible — beleaguered real-world filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan probably welcomes this unexpected endorsement — and Jeff watches it repeatedly, struck anew each time by how the narrative wraps minutia and trivia into a Highly Significant Outcome.

Watching the film while stoned — Jeff’s state of choice — probably adds to its portent, but he’d regard even this as a lifestyle choice affecting a “big picture” that he’s never able to bring into focus.

Jeff’s brother, alternatively, seems to have adhered to the traditional American career and lifestyle path: Pat (Helms) has a stable job and is married to Linda (Greer). But their relationship is rocky at best, their once-mutual affection now smothered by Pat’s self-centered arrogance, condescension and hair-trigger temper. He is, in short, a jerk ... and a rather unpleasant one, at that. Jeff may be “useless” in the conventional sense, but at least he’s a nice guy.

Quite sweet, actually, and that’s crucial to Segel’s performance. He has a knack for projecting good-hearted gentleness from characters with glaring flaws, which makes him a far better choice for this film than, say, Owen Wilson, who often plays a similar sort of role but invariably comes off looking and sounding insufferably pompous.

We can’t help adoring Segel’s Jeff, despite his obvious shortcomings; he’s like a lost little lamb in a grizzly bear’s body.

The Muppets: Being green is fun again

The Muppets (2011) • View trailer for The Muppets
3.5 stars. Rating: PG, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang


The new Muppets film quite cleverly addresses a real-world puzzler that has vexed fans for years: Where have Kermit and all his friends been hiding?

Gary (Jason Segel, right) and Walter do everything together, as would be
expected of any two devoted brothers. But as the years have passed, Walter has
become increasingly aware that he's, ah, a bit different from Gary and their
other two-legged friends and neighbors. The solution? An unlikely road trip,
during which Walter will get to meet others of "his kind."

The colorful felt creations who ruled television with The Muppet Show from 1976 through ’81, simultaneously jumping to the big screen with an equally popular series of films, have been missing in theaters since 1999’s rather odd Muppets from Space. Occasional TV specials such as 2005’s ill-advised The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz have done little to keep the brand alive.

True, Kermit and his pals have rather mischievously — and memorably — popped up in whimsical YouTube shorts. But when it came to the movies, I’d begun to wish that Pixar’s John Lasseter would step in and exert some of his can’t-miss creative control.

Jason Segel beat him to the punch.

Yes, the Jason Segel best known for his roles in crass, numbnuts comedies such as Knocked Up and I Love You, Man, and for his ongoing run on television’s saucy How I Met Your Mother, and for rather oddly going full-frontal as the lovesick loser in 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Not exactly the first fella who springs to mind, when contemplating a revival of the Muppets.

But it turns out that Segel has been a fan, like, forever, and he currently wields enough industry clout to help make dreams come true. Which brings us to The Muppets, which at its best definitely captures the sweet, silly, family-friendly hijinks and unlikely adventures experienced (and endured) by a gentle frog, a feisty pig and their dozens and dozens of colorful cohorts in crime.

Credit also goes to (human) co-star Amy Adams, who brings her own trouper’s “enchanted” spirit to several of the deliberately corny song-and-dance numbers that populate this gaudy farce. Most of these tunes are wincingly inane — one hopes that songwriter Bret McKenzie intended them this way — and performed, particularly by Segel, with a wide-eyed earnestness that will elicit either hysterical giggles or gape-jawed stares of disbelief.

In fairness, this is a longtime element of the successful Muppet formula; the original TV series delighted in putting celebrity guests into unlikely production numbers, and the line of willing “victims” certainly never got shorter during the show’s enormously popular five-year run. Segel and his behind-the-scenes cronies try hard to echo that manic vibe, and at times they catch the magic.

Bad Teacher: Flunks out

Bad Teacher (2011) • View trailer for Bad Teacher
1.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, nudity, sexual candor and drug use
By Derrick Bang


Lest you’ve wondered recently, let me remove all doubt: America truly is the land of opportunity.

Nowhere else could Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg have been paid — and quite well, by the standards of us ordinary working stiffs — for their script to this dreadful excuse for a movie.

While showing support for the faculty band's performance at a local bar, the
bored Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz, center), present only because she's hot for one
of the musicians, rather cruelly encourages the timid Lynn (Phyllis Smith) to
pick up a guy across the room, as Russell (Jason Segel) expresses silent but
obvious disapproval.

Nowhere else could a major film studio — Columbia, fercryinoutloud! — have believed, even for a moment, that this misbegotten project was worth green-lighting. What are those people smoking down there?

Nowhere else could director Jake Kasdan have drawn an even larger salary for making absolutely no effort to cajole convincing performances from his cast members. Indeed, one gets the impression that Kasdan spent the entire production shoot much like this flick’s title character: eyes closed and totally zonked, having stayed up too late the previous evening, and now paying not the slightest bit of attention to what happens each day in front of the camera.

Really, it doesn’t look like he even tried. The actors here move stiffly and awkwardly from one scene to the next — most of which have no continuity — and deliver their lines flatly and without the slightest trace of emotional connection, while standing uncomfortably about, as if waiting for a school bus.

With few exceptions, their “performances” look and sound like cold line-readings. And since we’ve seen most of these people do much better work elsewhere, the blame falls squarely on Kasdan’s shoulders.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised, since Kasdan most recently brought us the 2007 train wreck, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. He’s yet another member of the Judd Apatow repertory company, having served his apprenticeship on television’s Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, followed by a reasonably respectable big-screen debut with 2002’s Orange County. But Kasdan never fulfilled those early suggestions of promise; if his next feature — 2006’s The TV Set — even achieved big-screen release, I never heard about it.

Being part of the Apatow crew, even a lesser part, means larding one’s films with requisite dollops of vulgarity and crude, boorish behavior. And profanity: plenty of profanity. But that style only works — which is to say, only becomes funny — when starting with a competent script that delivers characters whose behavior is somehow shaped or defined by their exaggerated impropriety.

Under no circumstances could Stupnitsky and Eisenberg’s random typing here be called a script, let alone competent.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Mildly memorable

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) • View trailer for Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, nudity and sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.17.08
Buy DVD: Forgetting Sarah Marshall • Buy Blu-Ray: Forgetting Sarah Marshall [Blu-ray]

As guilty pleasures go, this one's pretty funny.

Occasionally tasteless and frequently vulgar, but undeniably funny.

The resort isn't that large, so this result was inevitable: Peter (Jason Segel,
center) and new companion Rachel (Mila Kunis, left) arrive at the hotel
restaurant at the same time as Peter's ex-girlfriend, Sarah (Kristen Bell) and her
new boyfriend, Aldous (Russell Brand). Worse yet, only one table is
available. And if the women are looking daggers at each other, that, too, is
inevitable...

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is another scattershot burlesque from Judd Apatow and Shauna Robertson (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad), the producers who seem determined to build an empire on romantic disaster comedies, the way John Hughes cornered the sensitive teen market back in the 1980s.

I'm not sure this is a particularly lofty goal, but it seems to be working for them; one cannot argue with box-office results.

And, truth be told, Apatow and Robertson's films, for all their crassness, boast several key elements wholly absent from the similar oeuvre of, say, the Farrelly brothers (who most recently uncorked their gawdawful remake of The Heartbreak Kid). Apatow's suffering male protagonists always remain sympathetic, despite their lesser qualities, and they try to do right by the women in their lives (even while frequently screwing things up).

Most important, though, the women in Apatow/Robertson comedies aren't mere sex toys, nor are they crippled by belittling and offensive character traits. They're just as sensitive and sympathetic, if equally inclined to make a bad situation worse. (Honestly, watching a Farrelly brothers relationship train wreck, I always get the impression the filmmakers hate the fair sex.)

Recall the hilarious, often misplaced dignity that Steve Carell brought to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and you'll have a good sense of what to expect in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

The star this time is Jason Segel, one of Apatow's familiar repertory players, going all the way back to TV's Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Segel also wrote the script, which he clearly fashioned to his own strengths.

He plays Peter Bretter, a conflicted musician who has made the most of a six-year relationship with way-famous Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell, late of the still lamented Veronica Mars), star of a successful TV series titled Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime.

The occasional glimpses we get of this obvious riff on the CSI franchise, as Bell and on-camera co-star William Baldwin wisecrack their way through various ghastly murder investigations, are a stitch.