No Hard Feelings: Not so sure about that

No Hard Feelings (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, graphic nudity, brief drug use and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.23.23

Director Gene Stupnitsky’s bawdy entry can’t decide what it wants to be.

 

At times, it displays the energetic, no-holds-barred raunch typical of classics such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Bridesmaids and There’s Something About Mary. A scrappy beach fight scene here is the stuff of cinema legend.

 

After an enjoyable day at the local boardwalk, Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) is
delighted by the prize that Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) has won for her.

But at other times we’re expected to empathize with the two primary characters as authentic people, with credible feelings and angst.

It’s almost impossible to achieve both goals; the former too frequently undercuts the latter … particularly given the mean-spiritedness of Stupnitsky and John Phillips’ script. The line between funny and cruel is very thin, and this film too frequently slides onto the wrong side.

 

Maddie Barker (Jennifer Lawrence), a longtime resident of the Long Island village of Montauk, is appalled by how incoming rich jerks have transformed her community. Rising property taxes are threatening the house in which she grew up, and which holds the memory of her late mother. Maddie’s jobs as bar maid and Uber driver no longer keep up with the bills, and — as this story begins — her car is repossessed by former short-term lover Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).

 

Now reduced to getting around on roller skates, and lacking the additional Uber income, the situation rapidly becomes even more dire. Then Maddie is alerted to an unusual Craigslist job listing from wealthy helicopter parents seeking somebody to “date” their introverted 19-year-old son, and bring him out of his shell before he leaves for Princeton in the fall. The payment: a free Buick Regal.

 

The quotation marks around the word “date” are telling.

 

Although the set-up smells uncomfortably like pimping, Maddie is desperate … and pragmatic; her love life has been limited to a long string a short-timers and one-night stands. How different could this be?

 

She therefore arranges to meet Laird and Allison Becker (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti, both deadpan hilarious), who live in a cluelessly privileged world. Their son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), has no friends, rarely leaves his room, and hasn’t learned to drive; his parents worry that Princeton will eat him alive.

 

Although their ad specified a woman in her “young 20s,” Maddie argues that her 32-year-old self is guaranteed to be “more sensitive” to the situation. (Lawrence is indeed 32.) Laird and Allison accept this rationale, and caution that Percy must never know about the arrangement. (Well, no kidding.) They explain that he volunteers at a local animal shelter, and suggest that Maddie visit as a potential dog adopter.

 

At which point, this film goes off the rails for the first time (and certainly not the last).

Wonder Park: Far from it

Wonder Park (2019) • View trailer 
One star. Rated PG, despite quite scary sequences
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.15.19

This animation misfire is a total disaster.

Actually, it’s worse than that. I’ve been bored, nauseated, disgusted and repulsed by bad films over time, but only rarely do stinkers prompt the degree of hostility that swelled exponentially, as Wonder Park slogged to its conclusion.

June is delighted to discover that one of her favorite stuffed toys is a living, talking blue
bear in the parallel realm where her fantasy theme park also is real. Too bad her joy is
about to be shattered by a relentless hoard of chattering zombie monkeys...

To paraphrase the title from one of Roger Ebert’s books, I hated, hated, hated this film.

The premise is hopelessly weird, the execution deeply flawed. Mind you, we’re talking about a medium that has successfully made heroes of gourmet rats, frost-generating princesses, and dogs struggling to survive on an island of trash.

I’m surprised Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Robert Gordon are willing to acknowledge having written this clumsy, incoherent, ill-conceived mess. I can’t imagine how the initial elevator pitch would have gone. What in the world could have prompted Paramount execs to believe this notion ever could have been made into a coherent film?

We’re talkin’ irredeemable stinker, folks.

The story, such as it is:

June Bailey (voiced by Brianna Denski), a precocious young genius probably destined for an engineering career, loves amusement parks. She and her mother (Jennifer Garner) have spent years sketching out the ultimate fantastical theme park, filled with delightfully crazy rides. They call it Wonder Park, and its pretend “ambassadors” — who “put the ‘wonder’ in Wonder Park” — are June’s assortment of stuffed animals.

But here’s the thing: Every outrageous new ride that June whispers into the ear of her stuffed monkey, Peanut, is heard and instantly fabricated by a living, breathing Peanut, who — in some alternate universe — is the magical architect of an actual Wonder Park. Which is stuffed with happy human patrons, who aren’t the slightest bit fazed to be hosted by a talking monkey (Norbert Leo Butz) and counterparts of June’s other stuffed critters: Greta, a wild boar (Mila Kunis); Boomer, a narcoleptic blue bear (Ken Hudson Campbell); Steve, the porcupine safety officer (John Oliver); and beaver brothers Gus and Cooper (Kenan Thompson and Ken Jeong).

Ohhhhh-kay. This is a stretch. Probably an impossible one, but we gotta roll with it.

(As the story proceeds, there’s a strong echo of the real-world/fantasy-world divide in The LEGO Movie, which feels a bit like copycatting.)

Rules Don't Apply: Chaos reigns

Rules Don't Apply (2016) • View trailer 
One star. Rated PG-13, for sexual candor and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Oh, my.

This may not be Warren Beatty’s worst film — Ishtar and Town & Country still arm-wrestle for that distinction — but it runs a close third.

Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins), hoping to become a Hollywood star, finds herself spending
lots of time with driver Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), who seems a poor substitute
for potential mentor Howard Huges. Initially, anyway...

Much has been made about the “sudden” appearance of this new Beatty project: the first time he has appeared on screen since 2001 (in the aforementioned Town & Country), and the first film he has written, directed, produced and starred in, since 1998’s Bulworth (also far from a classic).

Warren, you shoulda stayed retired.

Alas, too many artists cannot resist the itch to create, long after common sense should have removed them from the stage.

In fairness, even at its worst — and there’s plenty of “worst” to go around — Beatty’s new film reveals traces of the idiosyncratic sparkle that bloomed to perfection in classics such as Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait. And, at 79 years young, Beatty himself remains a master of the roguish twinkle and droll double-takes that made him such a memorable screen presence, back in the day.

But Rules Don’t Apply remains a mess.

It’s the worst sort of self-indulgent vanity project: a bloated, bewildering, pointless excuse to shovel several dozen high-profile guest stars into meaningless, ill-defined and under-developed parts. The so-called story is a muddle — Beatty sharing scripting credit with Bo Goldman — and the limply executed result commits the entertainment world’s most unpardonable sin: It’s boring.

Turgid, mind-numbingly dull, I’d-rather-endure-root-canal-surgery tedious.

It’s also superfluous. While Beatty is the right age to deliver his interpretation of Howard Hughes’ tragic final years, there’s no reason to do so. This film’s script offers no information, no character analysis, that wasn’t covered far better by Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, in 2004’s The Aviator.

On top of which, the whole Howard Hughes riff apparently is intended as mere framing device for a stuttering courtship between two young lovers caught in the eccentric industrialist’s disintegrating orbit. It’s a clumsy narrative device, and it fails utterly. Those who grimly slog through this film’s interminable 126 minutes still won’t care a whit about any of these characters.

I’m surprised that Goldman returned to this particular well, having won an Academy Award for writing 1980’s far more successful Hughes project, Melvin and Howard. Now, that was a clever, precocious, charming and thoroughly entertaining lark.

All of which are qualities sorely lacking in Beatty’s newest — and undoubtedly final — misfire.

Tower Heist: Quite a steal

Tower Heist (2011) • View trailer for Tower Heist
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity and snarky sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.4.11


I had to check my calendar, to make sure it wasn’t 1982.

There was Eddie Murphy, as fresh, feisty and funny as he was back in 48 Hrs. and Trading Places. No preening. No mugging. No vanity turns.

Josh (Ben Stiller, far left) and his unlikely crew — from left, Mr. Fitzhugh
(Matthew Broderick), Enrique (Michael Peña), Charlie (Casey Affleck) and
Slide (Eddie Murphy) — case the luxury tower condominiums across the
street, seeking a way to evade FBI agents, police officers and regular staff
members while somehow making their way to the penthouse, where they hope
to find and steal $20 million.

Honestly, Murphy hasn’t been this entertaining in a live-action film for ... well, decades. He’s been an arrogant, self-centered glory hound for so long that I’d forgotten he could be anything else.

And Tower Heist is the perfect vehicle for this vintage, everything-old-is-new-again Eddie Murphy. In many ways, director Brett Ratner’s film even feels retro, as if it might have been made back in the 1970s or ’80s, during the glory days of heist comedies such as The Hot Rock and The Thief Who Came to Dinner.

Yep, this film is that much fun.

Ratner knows this territory, having helmed After the Sunset — a nifty, under-appreciated 2004 heist flick with Pierce Brosnan — in between Rush Hour and X-Men entries. Ratner delivers just the right breezy, light-hearted tone, while granting us a despicable villain to loathe: a guy we’re begging the heroes to take down.

More crucially, Ratner and his four writers — Ted Griffin, Jeff Nathanson, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage — pay careful attention to every member of an engaging ensemble of characters. And, in the grand tradition of such storylines, they’re the most unlikely “burglars” since Dick Van Dyke oversaw an aristocratic household of larcenous servants in 1967’s Fitzwilly.

The vintage atmosphere notwithstanding, the setting is completely contemporary: a luxury New York Central Park condominium complex dubbed The Tower, where manager Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller) commutes from Queens — rising at 4:30 a.m. each day — in order to ensure that every last little detail is perfect for each tenant.

That’s every detail, whether dog-sitting an elderly woman’s pampered pooch, warning a philandering husband that his wife has returned three days early from an overseas trip, or running interference as bank officials try to evict destitute former Wall Street broker Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick).

Josh also enjoys matching wits during chess games played via the Internet with investment titan Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), who lives in the penthouse, where his many pleasures include a daily swim in the rooftop pool.

Much as the tenants depend on Josh, he also is respected by his own staff: the beloved elderly doorman, Lester (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who shares old jokes with anybody who will listen; a feisty maid, Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe, well remembered from Precious), who takes guff from nobody; the evasive Miss Iovenko (Nina Arianda), clandestinely studying for the bar while insisting she’s doing no such thing; and newly hired Enrique Dev’Reaux (Michael Peña), a bellhop/elevator operator-in-training delighted to have traded up from his former position at Burger King.

Oh, yes: and Charlie (Casey Affleck), Josh’s brother-in-law, who works as The Tower’s concierge and isn’t nearly as savvy as he imagines himself.

The Tale of Despereaux: Sizable odds

The Tale of Despereaux (2008) • View trailer for The Tale of Despereaux
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: G, despite some quite grim sequences
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.19.08
Buy DVD: The Tale of Despereaux • Buy Blu-Ray: The Tale of Despereaux [Blu-ray]

Directors Sam Fell and Rob Stevenhagen's adaptation of Kate DiCamillo's beloved book, The Tale of Despereaux, is a gorgeous visual experience: a sumptuous animated fable — in a wholly unique style, reminiscent of Flemish painters such as Vermeer and Brueghel — that employs an impeccably selected voice cast to deliver a clever fairy tale filled with colorful characters, and punctuated by several gently delivered morals.

The diminutive Despereaux, right, who always behaves like a perfect gentleman,
breaks all the rules of his Mouse World homeland when he dares speak to the
Princess Pea, center. Their lives subsequently take several unexpected — and
dangerous — turns, thanks to the arrival of Roscuro, a rat visiting from
another land.

It's also deliberately paced to the point of being sluggish, and — if a recent, family-laden Sacramento preview audience is any indication — a total snooze to the younger viewers who represent the film's target audience.

I'm all for respecting old-fashioned storytelling techniques, but not to the point of boring people. Scripters Gary Ross, Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi are to be commended for a smart, heartfelt screenplay that avoids the vibrant, joke-laden style that characterizes (for example) a Pixar animated film; such a "busy" approach would not have suited DiCamillo's delicate tale.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers may have gone too far in the other direction. Their handling of Despereaux comes complete with Sigourney Weaver's off-camera narration, intentionally employed to give the strong sense that we're all snuggled under the covers and listening to a beloved parent read the story aloud to us.

Not a bad approach, but the pacing is just ... well ... off.

Those not familiar with the book can be forgiven for wondering why it takes so long to even meet our hero; and even after he's introduced, he seems little more than a bit player in his own story. It's a tragic irony: Our little mouse protagonist — whose diminutive size, DiCamillo's book assures its readers, in no way diminishes his courage and fortitude — is utterly overwhelmed by nearly a dozen more interesting supporting characters.

And a lot of rats.

That's also a problem.

It wasn't an issue in 2003, when DeCamillo's book came out, but since then the animated, rat-oriented Flushed Away and Pixar's Ratatouille have reached movie screens, and one can't help comparing the rats-and-cooking focus of Despereaux with the latter.

Reaching back a bit further, I also note that the primary ratty villain of Despereaux — voiced by Ciaran Hinds — looks, sounds and acts a lot like Vincent Price's evil Ratigan in 1986's The Great Mouse Detective.

Despite what you may have heard, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. It's just ... disappointing.