How to Train Your Dragon 2: Not as much spark

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for fantasy action and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.13.14

Catching dragon-discharged lightning in a bottle is hard enough just once; expecting to replicate such a feat is darn near impossible.

Although Hiccup's father wants him to assume the role of village chief, the young Viking
would much rather explore distant lands astride his beloved dragon, Toothless.
Unfortunately, one of those journeys reveals a very, very nasty villain who'd love to
destroy Hiccup and everybody else in his village.

2010’s How to Train Your Dragon was, to my taste, a perfect film: a clever and luxurious expansion of the first of Cressida Cowell’s series of children’s novels, with an engaging blend of well structured characters, rich vocal talent and — most crucially — a plot that focused quietly on a boy and his rather unusual “dog,” then built to a suspenseful, exciting and unexpectedly poignant conclusion.

One could not help being touched, as well, by the authentic behavior granted Toothless, our young hero’s rare Night Fury dragon: the ever-watchful gaze, the playful curiosity, the protective instincts and the pet-like eagerness to please. The animators did a rare and wondrous thing, by concocting an animated creature — and a mythical one, at that — far more lifelike than any others brought to the big screen, dating all the way back to the gentle woodland critters of 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

All of which gave director/scripter Dean DeBlois very large reptilian shoes to fill, with this long-awaited sequel.

We can be saddened, then — although likely not surprised — that Dragon 2 doesn’t live up to its predecessor. DeBlois screwed up the formula, and he has nobody to blame but himself.

1992’s Home Alone 2 remains the textbook case of ill-advised sophomore slump. In an astonishing example of short-sightedness, everybody assumed that the key to success lay in enhancing the slapstick nonsense involving the “wet bandits” who bedeviled little Kevin McCallister, thereby overlooking all the poignant, gently tender kid-on-his-own moments that made the original’s high-comedy final act so funny in contrast. The sequel, essentially nothing but burlesque, fell completely flat.

Successful tone and pacing derive from highs and lows: a balance between the many, many elements that combine to produce an engaging narrative. As my grandmother often warned, not even ice cream sundaes could withstand becoming a steady diet; all too quickly, they’d become bland. And even, well, boring.

That’s more or less what has happened, with Dragon 2. As for why, I’m always suspicious when a filmmaker’s colleagues get jettisoned en route to a sequel. On the first Dragon, DeBlois shared directing and scripting credit with Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, The Croods), with additional writing assists from William Davies and Adam F. Goldberg. Collaboratively, they fashioned a heartwarming tale that was long on interactions between our misfit Viking hero, Hiccup, and his gruff father, Stoick; along with Hiccup’s unlikely attraction to young Viking goddess Astrid; and of course the highs and lows that accompanied Hiccup’s efforts to win the trust of the wild, wounded Toothless.

Then, and only then, did that first film pull out all the stops for its exciting third act.

Robocop: Just a frail tin man

Robocop (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for constant and intense violence, brief profanity and some drug use
By Derrick Bang

The general rule is fundamental: A remake should surpass or, at the very least, equal its predecessor in all essential respects.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

When Alex (Joel Kinnaman, left) finally regains consciousness after the horrific attack
that left very little of his actual body, he's horrified to discover just how little remains.
Dr. Dennett (Gary Oldman) chooses his words carefully; the next few minutes will
determine how well — or badly — Alex adapts to this transformation.

Director José Padilha’s update of Robocop seems motivated more by the smell of money — Sony Pictures’ desire to revive an iconic character, in the hopes of creating a fresh franchise — than any artistic imperative. And while this film’s primary fault lies more with first-time writer Joshua Zetumer’s sloppy script than Padilha’s direction, the result is inescapable: This new Robocop doesn’t come close to matching Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original for verve, suspense or clever political satire.

Indeed, Zetumer’s vicious, hammer-handed swipes at “heartless American imperialism” are this film’s least successful element: shrill, über-liberal bleats that keep getting in the way of what should be, at its core, a thoughtful parable on the nature of humanity. Granted, this sci-fi drama’s political subtext invites debate, but Zetumer stacks the deck laughably, most visibly in the form of Samuel L. Jackson’s Pat Novak, a foaming-at-the-mouth, right-wing TV provocateur in the mold of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

Jackson’s Novak also is the first defense of a poor screenwriter: a hackneyed device who pops up every so often, to “instruct” or “remind” us poor viewers precisely how we’re supposed to react to on-screen events. Which suggests that Zetumer and Padilha don’t have much faith in their audience.

And I sure can’t figure out why they choose to conclude their film with yet another rant from Novak: a clumsy coda that makes little sense and does nothing but dilute the story’s mildly satisfying outcome.

People don’t like to be yelled at. Not in person, and certainly not at the movies.

All that aside...

The year is 2028. Uneasy military stability is maintained in Afghanistan and other terrorist-laden hot spots by the ground-level U.S. presence of EM-208 robot soldiers and larger, hyper-aggressive ED-209 sentry units. The primary goal, to avoid the loss of American lives, appears to have been achieved.

This Is the End: Out with a whimper

This Is the End (2013) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: R, and quite generously, for pervasive profanity and drug use, violence, gore, relentless crude and sexual content, and impressively graphic nudity (not all of it human)
By Derrick Bang

The devoutly religious are certain to disagree, but this tiresome vanity production is too stupid to be blasphemous.

After Emma Watson re-thinks her ill-advised decision to place her safety in the hands of
half a dozen self-centered horn dogs, she mounts an escape with the help of a handy
axe. Unfortunately, this may be a classic case of leaping from the frying pan and
directly into the fire...

It’s relentlessly vulgar, however, in the arrested adolescent manner that we’ve come to expect when Seth Rogen, James Franco and their homies assemble for “something fun.” In this case, the “fun” comes from playing themselves — no stretch there, since most have been doing that all along — and behaving badly when God proves that the Book of Revelations wasn’t mere biblical filler.

Like so many of today’s limp-noodle, man-boy comedies, This Is the End stretches a mildly amusing concept far beyond the average viewer’s patience. Actually, we know this to be true, since this film is “expanded” from a 9-minute 2007 short titled Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse. Honestly, beefing up the cast and adding another 98 minutes (!) did nothing to improve the material.

Although Rogen and Evan Goldberg uncork an impressively apocalyptic third act — they collaboratively wrote and directed this case study in wasted celluloid — one must wade through nearly an hour of tedious, contrived and self-indulgent “banter” in order to get there.

Riffing the stoner culture may have been novel and slightly daring when Cheech & Chong made Up in Smoke way back in 1978, but I’d like to think film comedy has progressed a bit since then. Rogen and Goldberg apparently didn’t get that message, since they clearly believe that merely showing a baggie of weed is enough to prompt a belly laugh.

By the same toke(n), it’s time to declare a moratorium on the faux homoeroticism that seems to pass for “cool” among some of today’s Hollywood types. When Rogen and his fellow “reality stars” aren’t chortling over how blasted they’ve gotten, they trade barbed comments apparently intended to demonstrate their hip, quasi-gayness, while nonetheless retreating to safer hetero territory whenever the tone threatens to become emasculating.

“Safer territory,” in turn, emerges in strained one-liners that make sport of bodily functions: the sort of lowest-common-denominator crudeness that once remained the province of little boys trading bad words behind the woodshed, but now has become something of a badge of pride among today’s lazy comedy writers. It’s apparently shorthand for rugged manhood.

This overworked 21st century cliché hits low ebb here during an ejaculation exchange — merely verbal, I’m happy to report — between James Franco and Danny McBride, which goes on and on and on and on. Constant Companion and I exchanged glances, and the unspoken message was obvious: Seriously? This is what film comedy has descended to?

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Hocus-pocus, little focus

The Sorcere's Apprentice (2010) • View trailer for The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for fantasy violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.15.10
Buy DVD: The Sorcerer's Apprentice • Buy Blu-Ray: The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Three-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo+Digital Copy)

Taking note of the Disney logo embellishing the title credits, a fellow film critic at last week's preview screening idly wondered aloud if this new, live-action Sorcerer's Apprentice would in any way reference the famous Mickey Mouse sequence in 1940's Fantasia. 

Surely not, I protested, although the thought — along with my knowledge of the Mouse House's willingness to strip-mine its own heritage in misbegotten projects such as 2003's The Haunted Mansion — left me uneasy. 

At first, Dave (Jay Baruchel, right) finds it difficult to take Balthazar's
(Nicolas Cage) mystical pronouncements all that seriously, but the
college student's doubts vanish after he's nearly eaten by a huge
dragon, then nearly blasted into unconsciousness by a nasty
magician bent on destroying the world. Dave may be slow, but he
ain't stupid...

Then, horror of horrors, as young Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) eyed the mess left in his ludicrously opulent underground laboratory, and happened to glance in the direction of a mop, our worst fears were realized. Cue the familiar fanfare from composer Paul Dukas' "L'Apprenti Sorcier," and the mop came to life, along with every other scrubbing and cleaning utensil in evidence. 

That was pretty much the point at which this Sorcerer's Apprentice lost its way. 

Mind you, the road had been rocky even before this point. Light-hearted adventure films run the risk of becoming too frivolous, at which point malevolent villains lose most of their edge. Alfred Molina deserves considerable credit, throughout this somewhat scattered story, for maintaining his nasty side as the dread Maxim Horvath, but the script — credited to five (!) hands — undermines his performance at every opportunity. 

This Sorcerer's Apprentice is the sort of product that Disney concocts with considerable flair: a family-friendly romp that moves rapidly, looks pretty cool most of the time, and conceals its narrative deficiencies with engaging characters never at a loss for witty repartee. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Jon Turteltaub and star Nicolas Cage are veterans of the National Treasure franchise; they know how to deliver a reasonably good time. 

But this narrative attempts to cover a lot of territory, with some highly visible missteps. Like Dave himself, a young man who suffers a ragged childhood as a result of his first encounter with Balthazar Blake (Cage), this film doesn't quite know what to be, when it grows up. Young children will be diverted by all the flash and bang, but teen and adult companions are apt to exchange glances laden with skeptically raised eyebrows.