The Big Wedding: Should have been annulled

The Big Wedding (2013) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

Hollywood never learns.

American filmmakers simply can’t remake French comedies, much less French sex comedies. The results are almost always stiff and awkward, the actors rarely comfortable with dialogue and ribald situations that just come naturally to our cousins across the pond.

Ellie and Don (Diane Keaton and Robert De Niro, right), although divorced for years,
agree to fake being married, in order not to offend the deeply conservative Madonna
(Patricia Rae, center left) and her deceptively demure daughter, Nuria (Ana Ayora).
The thing is, Nuria isn't as chaste as her appearance would suggest, and Ellie and Don
aren't as "over" each other as they'd like to believe. One would expect hilarity from
such a premise. One would be mistaken.

We Americans simply ain’t got the necessary je ne sais quoi.

That’s certainly the case with The Big Wedding, which boasts a great cast that is all dressed up, with nowhere to go. Director Justin Zackham’s script is clumsy and under-developed, his characters behaving in ways that are insufficiently justified by woefully thin motivations. Indeed, at 90 minutes, this film feels like a savagely edited “dump job” that Lionsgate chopped up and released in the (probably vain) hope of getting at least one good weekend’s box-office take.

Zackham adapted his film from Jean-Stéphane Bron’s 2006 comedy, Mon frère se marie, which in turn borrows several plot elements from 1978’s classic La cage aux folles. Escalating sexual hijinks revolve around the wedding of a young couple, whose respective families are mismatched: one conservative and demure, the other ultra-liberal and sexually liberated.

In order not to offend the former group, the latter attempt to clean up their act. Sort of. With less than optimal results.

Cue considerable hilarity.

Or that was the plan, anyway, but Zackham too frequently stalls at the comedy gate. Yes, some moments are funny; yes, others are poignant and sweet. But far too many scenes emerge as missed opportunities, thanks in part to a sniggering, frat-boy attitude to the sexual humor: no surprise, since Zackham’s only previous feature credit is 2001’s sex-crazed frat-boy bomb, Going Greek.

Indeed, I can’t imagine why he was entrusted with this assignment. Because he also wrote 2007’s tear-jerking The Bucket List? That certainly didn’t qualify him to direct the likes of Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon ... and, based on the results, he definitely wasn’t ready for the major league.

New Year's Eve: Classic Hollywood froth

New Year's Eve (2011) • View trailer for New Year's Eve
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for fleeting profanity and some sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.9.11


New Year’s Eve is a lighthearted throwback to classic Hollywood ensemble dramas such as 1932’s Grand Hotel, with star-laden casts that played isolated clusters of characters involved with their own little dramas.

Trying to get a conventional cab on New Year's Eve is impossible, so when
Tess (Jessica Biel) suddenly must get to the hospital right now, lest she deliver
her baby on the sidewalk, husband Griffin (Seth Meyers) does the best he can,
and flags down a pedal-cab.

Additionally, New Year’s Eve is very much like last year’s Valentine’s Day, also directed by Garry Marshall and co-written by Katherine Fugate, who assumes solo scripting chores this time.

And, as was the case with Valentine’s Day, Marshall’s newest effort will be embraced as a fun date flick by folks with romantic souls, and loudly dissed by cinematic snobs who can’t get beyond the calculated pretense and contrived star turns.

A pox on the latter’s houses, and may they be alone on New Year’s Eve.

Sometimes a movie is just a movie, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Marshall knows how to craft slick Hollywood product, and Fugate deftly sketches a dozen or so mini-dramas, adding just enough backstory — in most cases — to involve us with each set of characters.

And we can’t help being impressed by a cast that includes three Oscar-winning best actors, a couple more Oscar nominees and several dozen familiar faces from both television and the big screen. A few are notorious scene-stealers, but Marshall maintains a steady hand and somehow grants everybody equal time.

That’s an impressive accomplishment with a cast this large, and a set of stories this diverse. Which only matters in an abstract sense, because our sole obligation with a film such as New Year’s Eve is to sit back and have a good time.

As the title suggests, the events take place during a single day in and around New York’s Times Square, as a massive cluster of humanity jams the streets in order to watch the big ball drop at the stroke of midnight. This year’s annual ceremony is being supervised by Claire (Hilary Swank), the newly promoted vice president of the Times Square Alliance.

She arrives early, with plenty of time to test the ball. Which — horrors! —gets stuck halfway up the massive pole, with only a few of its many lights flashing.

The Ugly Truth: Pretty amusing

The Ugly Truth (2009) • View trailer for The Ugly Truth
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for sexual candor and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.24.09
Buy DVD: The Ugly Truth• Buy Blu-Ray: The Ugly Truth [Blu-ray]

Although viewers will be 15 minutes ahead of its predictable plot at all times, The Ugly Truth unapologetically recycles overly familiar material into a crowd-pleasing date flick.

Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler have much to do with this film's pleasures; they bite enthusiastically into the sharp-tongued, often amusingly coarse dialogue as mildly erotic sparks fly between them. Chemistry is everything in a film of this nature, and if Heigl and Butler don't quite channel the likes of Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, it's not for lack of effort.

The cheerfully vulgar and chauvinistic Mike (Gerard Butler) is everything Abby
(Katherine Heigl) hates in a man, and she's everything he finds predictably
uptight in a woman. Naturally, they wind up working together; just as
naturally, romantic sparks aren't far behind.

Not that this patchwork script — credited to Nicole Eastman, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, and feeling as if it has been further "sweetened" by several additional scribes — can lay claim to the rat-a-tat screwball genius of classic 1940s Hollywood romantic comedies. This is derivative material writ large, with a mash-up of The Odd Couple and Cyrano de Bergerac supplemented by 21st century pokes at the Mars/Venus male/female divide.

Even so, Heigl and Butler are quite engaging as (respectively) the Felix and Oscar in this ribald battle of the sexes. Director Robert Luketic has a much easier time whenever his two stars are sniping at each other, and his film noticeably drags when one or the other is absent.

Heigl stars as Abby Richter, the spit-and-polish producer of A.M. Sacramento, a morning talk show struggling for dwindling ratings in the network television market. Abby is old-school; she still believes that viewers are intelligent, and that they want actual news and provocative commentary, Walter Cronkite-style, as opposed to loud-mouthed infotainment delivered in bite-size segments with words of no more than one syllable.

She's something of a control freak as well, but she gets the job done; even her boss acknowledges that. But the product simply isn't getting the necessary ratings, and something needs to spice up the mix.

Off the job, Abby maintains her uptight persona with a succession of failed dates: No surprise, since she micro-manages a restaurant menu order and even brings along pages of "talking points" designed to facilitate a conversation. One wonders how her one-time-only companions manage to last beyond the pre-dinner cocktail.

27 Dresses: Reasonably well-appointed

27 Dresses (2008) • View trailer
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity and sexual innuendo
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.25.08

27 Dresses seems tailor-made for star Katherine Heigl, who continues her meteoric ascent from television's Grey's Anatomy and last summer's Knocked Up.

After taking a nasty tumble during the waning hours of an otherwise successful
wedding, Jane (Katherine Heigl) is helped to her feet by the solicitous Kevin
(James Marsden), whose presence isn't as accidental as it seems. Even so, as
"meet cute" encounters come and go, this one's pretty good.

Her talent and temperament are perfect for director Anne Fletcher's frothy romantic comedy, and Aline Brosh McKenna's script immediately establishes its charming premise: that Heigl's Jane has become a career bridal attendant, although her own happy ending is nowhere in sight.

We hit the ground running during a harried but not-so-atypical evening, as Jane finds herself catering to two brides on the same night, gamely racing back and forth between both events while changing in the back seat of a cab (a cute bit with Michael Ziegfeld as the flustered cabbie).

Jane fulfills this function not because she runs a professional bridal business — indeed, by day she's the efficient right-hand-gal to self-made entrepreneur George (Edward Burns) — but because, well, she just likes weddings. Likes to help plan them, adores being part of them, and has become indispensable to an ever-lengthening string of friends, acquaintances and office mates whose weddings were a triumph, thanks to Jane's meticulous efficiency and cheerful accommodation to even the most bizarre bridal request.

The latter can be typified by the inevitably hideous choice of bridesmaids' gowns, but even here Jane retains a soft spot in her heart for each of these taste-challenged outfits; every one represents a happy memory.

McKenna's script is peppered with tart dialogue and a reasonably credible approach toward the modern dating scene; the lines are delivered with well-timed crispness by Heigl and a mostly solid roster of supporting players. Top marks go to Judy Greer, who very nearly steals most of her scenes as Casey, Jane's snarky best friend and colleague at George's company, the New Age-y Urban Everest. Watch Casey's expressions, as she follows Jane and George during an early scene at the office; although we're getting important expository dialogue from Heigl and Burns, it's hard to concentrate on anything except Greer.

Jane's rather unusual hobby notwithstanding, her life is complicated by a series of additional issues: She's madly in love with her boss, but only from afar. Although relying on her for everything in a professional capacity, George is oblivious to his devoted assistant's worshipful gaze.

And that situation gets worse with the arrival of Jane's trashy and superficial younger sister, Tess (Malin Akerman), who immediately swoons at the sight of George. Although having nothing in common with him — which becomes a growing issue with Jane, who cannot stand deception — Tess lies like a rug to hook and land the guy, at which point our heroine suddenly is roped into planning a wedding for her own sister ... to the man that she secretly adores.