The Family Plan: Amiable spyjinks

The Family Plan (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for comedic action violence, brief sexual candor and fleeting profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

This one couldn’t be more ridiculous.

 

But it’s an enjoyable level of “silly,” which makes all the difference: perfect for a turn-off-the-brain Friday evening.

 

It's Vegas, baby! Only Dan (Mark Wahlberg, far left) knows why he has made this road
trip with the family — from left, baby Max (Iliana Norris), Jessica (Michelle Monaghan),
Nine (Zoe Colletti) and Kyle (Van Crosby) — but they're about to find out.

David Coggeshall’s larkish script is a far cry from the horror genre that has dominated his career until now. The premise here may be cliché in the realm of spy comedies, but he develops it well, and grants us an appealing set of characters. Director Simon Cellan Jones and editor Tim Porter maintain a reasonably brisk pace, although their two-hour film would be tighter with 10 to 15 minutes shaved off.

Even so, I didn’t mind the length.

 

Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) has carved out a happy suburban life as a devoted husband and father of three children. He’s content in his career as a successful car salesman; he’s amiable and remarkably persuasive. The key word he’d use to describe his life is peaceful: no stress, no excitement, no grandiose desires.

 

The key word his family likely would use is boring. Wife Jessica (Michelle Monaghan), although happy, wouldn’t be bothered if Dan showed more ambition; teenagers Nina (Zoe Colletti) and Kyle (Van Crosby) roll their eyes at the day-to-day sameness.

 

Ten-month-old Max (Iliana Norris), cute as a button, isn’t old enough to be bothered.

 

Ah, but...

 

Sharp-eyed viewers may wonder, early on, why Dan takes such pains to avoid publicity. His caution goes up in smoke one day, thanks to a burst of unwelcome social media ... and suddenly he’s confronted by a hardened killer, while grocery shopping with Max strapped in a chest pouch.

 

This is each viewer’s make-or-break moment. If the resulting supermarket skirmish seems too silly — Dan doing his best to evade this thug, scrambling to improvise, while keeping Max out of harm’s way — then you may as well stop now. But if you’re able to roll with this cleverly choreographed fracas, what follows will be equally enjoyable.

 

(Frankly, I found it hilarious.)

 

Turns out Dan was an elite government assassin in his former life, tasked with eliminating the world’s deadliest threats. He racked up a sizeable stack of enemies in the process — most particularly the vengeful McCaffrey (Ciarán Hinds, suitably malevolent) — who now know where to find him.

 

Patriots Day: Triumph snatched from tragedy

Patriots Day (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for graphic violence, frequent profanity and some drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.13.17

It seemed too soon.

Mounting a big-screen project based on a recent real-world tragedy carries the whiff of tawdry, opportunistic network TV movies, which almost always exploit such events in pursuit of viewership ratings.

As FBI Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon, left) and Boston Police Commissioner
Ed Davis (John Goodman, right) watch hopefully, veteran policeman Tommy Saunders
(Mark Wahlberg) scrutinizes area surveillance footage, trying to anticipate which
cameras had the best chance of recording a glimpse of the bombers.

Not quite four years have passed, since the Boston Marathon bombing. Transforming that ghastly — albeit, ultimately, victoriously bonding — crisis into a high-profile mainstream drama, this quickly, couldn’t help raising eyebrows.

Ah, but I should have trusted director/co-scripter Peter Berg. He demonstrated appropriate restraint and respect, while crafting last year’s Deepwater Horizon into a solid suspense drama, and the same is true here. Although he rather shamelessly yanks our tear ducts in the final few minutes, supplying on-camera interviews with the actual people depicted in the preceding film, by that point Berg has earned enough good will to get away with it.

And besides: The interviews are cathartic, and well deserved in their own right.

Berg and his four co-scripters wisely designed their film as a straight-ahead police procedural, emphasizing dogged, ground-level detective work — and, eventually, indispensable public support — while carefully handling the actual bombings. The result is a tribute to both the impressive resources brought to bear, in the aftermath, and the stirring “Boston Strong” solidarity that united the first-responders and investigative entities.

Events begin on April 14, 2013, the day before the marathon; onscreen time and location stamps introduce a wide variety of individuals soon to be linked by circumstance. Some are immediately recognized by name and/or reputation: Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (played here by John Goodman), FBI agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), and marathon watchers Patrick Downes and Jessica Kensky (Christopher O’Shea and Rachel Brosnahan).

A few others are likely to remain a mystery, at first, to all but those who followed every detail of the unfolding situation, back in 2013: MIT policeman Sean A. Collier (Jake Picking), and Chinese-American college student Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang).

These preliminary sequences are casual, even light-hearted: Patrick tries to teach his wife Jessica how to speak with a proper Boston accent; Collier flirts with a couple of university women, trying to cajole them into joining him at an upcoming concert; Meng explains the virtues of a newly designed delivery app to a potential investor.

Pixels: Game over!

Pixels (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for occasional vulgarity
By Derrick Bang

Movies emerge from all sorts of sources.

Back in the Golden Age, adaptations came exclusively from popular novels and the theater stage. As we moved into the television age, iconic network characters leaped to the big screen, and then the dam truly burst, with high-concept projects concocted from songs, comic books, board games, computer games and even theme park attractions.

With Earth under attack by rather strange invaders, our heroes — from left, Violet
(Michelle Monaghan), Brenner (Adam Sandler) and Ludlow (Josh Gad) — confront one
crazy opponent after another. And yes, that's Q*bert on the far right: apparently on the
side of the angels.

 Most of those latter efforts, it must be mentioned, didn’t amount to much. No surprise there: Novels and plays contain rich narrative material constructed by writers who devoted a great deal of care to nit-picky details like plot logic and character development. Computer games offer little more than pop-culture images. (Anybody remember enduring Super Mario Bros.? Or either of the two Mortal Kombat bombs?)

Pixels derives from a 2010 short film of the same title by French writer/director Patrick Jean. It’s readily available via YouTube, Vimeo and various other Internet sources, and I heartily recommend the experience. It’s far more satisfying, at slightly more than 2 minutes (!), than this 98-minute, big-screen exercise in brain-dead chaos.

Scripters Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling clearly borrowed heavily from the original Ghostbusters template, while acknowledging the current resurgence of interest in early-gen computer games such as Asteroids and Pac-Man. But the Ghostbusters riffs are strongest, down to our heroes’ similar uniforms and even stance, while using similar high-tech weapons to battle this story’s unlikely celestial invaders.

The presence of Dan Aykroyd, in an early scene, suggests his approval of this acknowledgment of past glories.

Trouble is, Ghostbusters was a vastly superior film, with a much better-developed storyline. Pixels is random and clumsy, its under-developed characters graceless and often left to stand about, as if wondering what to do next. The overall narrative is so poorly executed that it frequently feels as if different sets of writers contributed various scenes, leaving director Chris Columbus to stitch things together.

A task at which he failed.

I had to remind myself that Columbus helmed iconic films such as Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, the first two Harry Potter entries and the big-screen version of Rent. Then again, Columbus also brought us lesser efforts such as Bicentennial Man and I Love You, Beth Cooper, so he’s not immune to errors in judgment. Or skill.

But Pixels, without question, is the nadir of his (thus far) 30-year career.

Which is a shame, because this film’s first act shows promise. A 1982 prologue introduces us to young gamers Brenner (Anthony Ippolito) and Cooper (Jared Riley), who marvel at the delights to be found within their town’s first video game emporium. Their tag-along younger friend, Ludlow (Jacob Shinder), is content to fall in love/lust with a pixilated ninja babe dubbed Lady Lisa.

Brenner proves to be a natural, working his way up to a championship match against an arrogant young visitor named Eddie (Andrew Bambridge), who has dubbed himself “The Fire-Blaster.” The match is filmed, with the footage inserted by NASA into a deep-space probes: one of many examples, to entities Out There, of what Earth is like at that moment in time.

Flash-forward to the modern day. Cooper (now Kevin James) has, rather unexpectedly, become President of the United States. (One wonders who was inept enough to have lost that election.) He’s a meatball best known for embarrassing photo ops, but James nonetheless makes him somewhat endearing, in an oafish way.

Ludlow (Josh Gad) has become a conspiracy theory whacko (“Kennedy fired first!”) who still carries a torch for the imaginary Lady Lisa. Brenner (Adam Sandler) has blossomed into the ultimate under-achiever, as a roving tech nerd who installs home entertainment systems.

In that capacity, Brenner encounters Violet (Michelle Monaghan), a recently jilted wife, and her young son, Matty (Matt Lintz). The subsequent meet-cute connection is mutual all around, and also endearing: further proof that Sandler, when held in check, can be goofily charming while still delivering one-line zingers.

But there’s no time to explore romantic possibilities, thanks to a crisis that erupts halfway around the world, as a U.S. military base is attacked by free-flying whatzits that emit laser-like bursts which transform everything — buildings, people, the landscape — into small, multi-colored cubes of various sizes.

The assault is accompanied by a weird musical fanfare that Cooper immediately recognizes, when he views footage of the event. He summons Brenner to be sure, and they agree: Earth has just been attacked by the fictitious entities of the early 1980s computer game Galaga.

Ludlow supplies the next essential bit of information, rather mysteriously inserted into an old VHS tape he’d been watching. (No cable or satellite channels in his house; that’s how the government monitors people!) Apparently, that 1982 NASA tape was intercepted by an alien race that viewed the gaming footage as an act of war, and has created warriors based on those games, and sent them to Earth. The “rules” are spelled out by re-created video manifestations of characters from early 1980s TV shows.

It’s a duel to potential planetary destruction, with Earth granted three “lives,” as in classic arcade games. We’ve already lost the first life, and of course we lose the second after an assault in India, nobody having believed our heroes.

Then, finally acknowledging the inevitable, the first fair-fight clash takes place in England’s Hyde Park, with our newly jump-suited “Arcaders” taking on the rapidly descending Centipede. And, oh yes, it proves a fair fight thanks to weapons hastily devised by the tech wizards at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where — imagine the coincidence! — Violet happens to be a lieutenant colonel.

The old “gang” is fully assembled with the arrival of the smarmy and larcenous Eddie (Peter Dinklage), rescued from a long prison stretch and promised various things if he’ll help.

Which is right about the point that Columbus loses any semblance of control over this whacked-out storyline. The second act is bonkers, but at least visually impressive; effects supervisor Matthew Butler enthusiastically embraced the challenge of bringing all these 1980s video games into our real world. He and production designer Peter Wenham definitely hold our attention, even as things become progressively sillier.

The third act, however, defies description.

By this point, Herlihy and Dowling have abandoned any effort at coherence; they just toss stuff into the mix, like spaghetti hurled against a wall, to see if anything will stick.

Brian Cox and Sean Bean wander aimlessly through a few scenes, as a belligerent American admiral and an equally confrontational British SAS officer. The DARPA tech team includes a glass-brained android (Tom McCarthy) who’s just sorta taken for granted, as if such a breakthrough were commonplace.

Ludlow naturally comes face to face with an evil electronic personification of his beloved Lady Lisa (Ashley Benson), but what happens next is eye-rolling even by this numb-nuts film’s standards. An inappropriately chatty Q*bert, presented to our heroes as a “trophy,” seems oddly benevolent, given that he (it?) is a typical (?) denizen of this marauding alien race.

And if you expect any answers, after the final climactic battle, forget it; Herlihy and Dowling don’t even try to wrap things up. The final half hour is simply a mess.

Sandler holds things together as well as possible, and his calm, decent-guy charisma is a welcome counterpoint to — as the most obvious example — Gad’s overly shrill, shrieking handling of Ludlow. Eddie’s vulgar tendencies are wholly out of place in this dumb but mostly good-natured fantasy, with Dinklage’s earthy dialogue solely responsible for the otherwise harmless script’s PG-13 elements. The character simply doesn’t work, nor can Dinklage save him.

Lintz, also refreshingly serene, shares several engaging scenes with Sandler. Jack Fulton gets a hearty laugh as a young British lad who uncorks a choice one-liner. Jane Krakowski is completely wasted as Cooper’s wife, and thus the U.S. First Lady; Lainie Kazan has an equally useless role as Ludlow’s grandmother. Serena Williams and Martha Stewart appears as themselves. (Don’t ask.)

And — could it really be? — yes, Matt Frewer gets another shot at his own bit of 1980s pop-culture glory.

I’m intrigued by this film’s proximity to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph, which also gave fresh life to characters from long-dormant games such as BurgerTime, Paperboy, Dig Dug and, yes, Q*bert. Indeed, little Q*bert is more easily recognized today, than he was three decades ago. Nostalgia sure takes us in strange directions.

A condensed and more intelligently scripted version of these events would have made a great 45-minute episode of the recent TV series Warehouse 13. But at more than twice that length, Columbus’ film loses its way — and its audience — long before its looney-tunes denouement. This is brain-dead, flashy Hollywood trash at its worst: every bit as mindless as the phosphor-dot spaceships that marched down the screen during a round of Space Invaders.

And not nearly as much fun.

Source Code: Tick ... tick ... tick

Source Code (2011) • View trailer for Source Code
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.1.11


Some stories are gangbusters on the printed page, but far less successful on the big screen. The mediums are distinct, each with advantages and disadvantages; what can feel elegant, lyrical and intriguing as prose can wind up clumsy, tiresome and contrived as a film. There's no getting around the fact that we imagine certain concepts better in our minds, while reading; being confronted by a visual adaptation in real time winds up less satisfying.

Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) hasn't the faintest idea how he wound up
traveling on this particular train, nor does he understand why Christina
(Michelle Monaghan) flirtatiously chats him up with such familiarity; she's a
complete stranger to him. But she — and everybody else on this Chicago-bound
train — are about to become very important, as Stevens gradually understands
and accepts the responsibility of a most unusual mission.

Source Code is somewhat unsatisfying, which is a shame; Ben Ripley's original screenplay is fascinating — if rather derivative — and director Duncan Jones does his best to minimize its built-in weaknesses.

The premise is classic sci-fi, the setting uneasily contemporary: A man on a Chicago-bound train (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes with a start from what feels like an unsettling dream. The woman sitting opposite (Michelle Monaghan, as Christina) obviously knows him, and chats animatedly; he hasn't the faintest idea who she is. The routine stuff of travel with a large group of strangers plays out — spilled coffee, punched tickets, impatient and oblivious passengers — while our bewildered protagonist attempts to process his disorientation. They stop once, at an outlying station, then resume their journey.

Minutes later, not far from the city, a massive explosion destroys the entire train, killing everybody on board.

Our hero comes to his senses in what looks like a simulator capsule, now suffering a similar type of dislocation. Gradually, a "handler" communicating via a monitor screen (Vera Farmiga, as Goodwin) talks him back to his own self. Military training takes hold: He's Colter Stevens, apparently participating in some sort of test, or something. Goodwin is vague about details; a fussy scientist type in the background (Jeffrey Wright, as Rutledge) orders her to "send him back."

And poof! Stevens is back on the train, resuming the ride from the same waking point, re-living the same events, although experiencing them differently, because he remembers everything from the first time around. But the outcome is the same: Eight minutes later, the bomb goes off and everybody dies ... at which point, he regains consciousness back in the simulator. Or whatever it really is.

Stevens gradually learns — as do we — that he's part of a military/scientific emergency operation that has been mobilized in the wake of the aforementioned catastrophe. Somebody has blown up the train, whether terrorists or a lone loony, and has threatened to explode an even larger device in the heart of Chicago. Through means we really don't need to obsess about, Stevens' consciousness can be "projected" into one of the train passenger's minds, shortly before the catastrophe, in effect taking over that person's body and soul. Because of the nature of the explosion, deductive logic suggests that the bombmaker is within viewing range of the train, perhaps initially as one of the passengers. Stevens' assignment is to figure out who is responsible, and then convey this information back to HQ, so that the impending larger attack can be stopped.

Eagle Eye: Flying blind

Eagle Eye (2008) • View trailer for Eagle Eye
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for brief profanity and relentless, vicious violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.26.08
Buy DVD: Eagle Eye • Buy Blu-Ray: Eagle Eye [Blu-ray]

This one requires a serious suspension of disbelief.

All momentum, very little logic and even less common sense, Eagle Eye is one long chase scene occasionally interrupted by reluctant dollops of exposition. It's pure 21st century Hollywood escapism: frantic, noisy and obsessed far more with the destruction of as much real estate as possible, rather than trifling details such as character development.

Rachel (Michelle Monaghan, left) and Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) can't imagine how
they'll get a mysterious suitcause — with contents that shouldn't be taken onto
a plane — through airport security. Little do they realize that assistance will
come from a very hidden ally...

It is, therefore, a serious comedown for director D.J. Caruso, who previously teamed with star Shia LaBeouf for the clever and well-plotted thriller Disturbia. That film took its time and allowed us to bond with its young protagonists, while also setting up some unsettling what's-he-really-doing tension with the mysterious guy who lived next door; by the time we hit the exciting third act, we genuinely cared about out heroes.

Not so with any of the stick figures in Eagle Eye, all of whom have less substance than off-market tissue paper. The only character liable to win our hearts and minds is young Sam Holloman (Cameron Boyce), and that's solely because he's an incredibly cute little guy. We like him for the same reason that we're instinctively drawn to puppies and kittens.

Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf), a serial slacker with no intention of embracing the career path proposed by his parents, has aimlessly traveled the world and kept himself going with odd jobs. His current address is a low-rent apartment in Chicago, his current paycheck earned as a counter clerk at a local copy shop.

He's brought back to the disapproving atmosphere of his family home by a senseless vehicular accident that killed his identical twin, Ethan, an Air Force public relations officer and pride of the family. After the funeral and a bitter confrontation with his father (William Sadler) — a truly clumsy, trite and utterly unbelievable exchange between LaBeouf and Sadler — Jerry returns home and finds that his bank account is $750,000 richer ... and that his apartment is stuffed with do-it-yourself terrorist supplies.

His cell phone rings; a woman's voice instructs him to leave the apartment, or he'll be arrested in 30 seconds. Jerry fails to leave, and is promptly — and none too gently — arrested by FBI agents. Supervisor Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton) conducts the subsequent interview, which of course goes nowhere; Jerry doesn't know anything. (Or does he, we begin to wonder, at this stage.)

Meanwhile...

Overly stressed single mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) is even more jittery than usual, due to 8-year-old Sam's first big trip away from home: a train journey to Washington, D.C., where he'll play trumpet with his school band, as the kids perform at the Kennedy Center.

That evening, after a particularly emotional farewell — punctuated by the brief arrival of her deadbeat ex- husband, another useless character we never see again (detect a pattern here?) — Rachel receives a similar phone call from what we recognize is the same woman. Rachel is ordered to find a particular vehicle and drive it to a pre-determined spot, with the warning that failure to comply will result in her son's death by train derailment.

Made of Honor: Nuptial follies

Made of Honor (2008) • View trailer for Made of Honor
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.8.08
Buy DVD: Made of Honor • Buy Blu-Ray: Made of Honor (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]

For an insubstantial trifle, Made of Honor is reasonably entertaining.

Continuing the respectable jump to big-screen leading man that he established with Enchanted, Patrick Dempsey works his charm to impressive effect in this gender-reversing twist on My Best Friend's Wedding.

After badly missing his best gal pal while she's away on a lengthy business
trip, Tom (Patrick Dempsey, right) eagerly anticipates telling her that he'd like
to turn their long-standing friendship into something much deeper. Imagine
his chagrin, then, when Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) returns from Scotland
with both a ring and a fiancé (Kevin McKidd) in tow.

And that's no mean feat, considering the degree to which Dempsey's self-centered character could be considered unpalatable. I can't imagine why any woman would remain interested in a confirmed bachelor with more one-night stands than Baskin-Robbins has flavors — not to mention a series of asinine rules to keep these willing cuties in their place, such as no "back-to-back" date on consecutive nights — but, hey, that's Hollywood.

In stories like these, there's never any shortage of nubile, half-dressed lovelies willing to throw themselves at the leading man.

But OK, once we get past the fact that Dempsey's Tom is an unrepentant horndog, he's rather adorable. And yes, he's cute, and Dempsey certainly makes the most of the God-given good looks that help keep his star alive on TV's Grey's Anatomy.

Tom's less desirable qualities are kept in check by longtime gal pal Hannah (Michelle Monaghan, Mission: Impossible III and Gone Baby Gone), who refused to sleep with him at a crucial moment and, as a result, has remained his best friend ever since. Tom actually has the perfect life: He's rich — this film makes him the inventor of the "coffee cup jacket," which prevents people from burning their fingers — and sleeps around to his heart's content, and then spends actual quality time with Hannah.

All those one-night stands apparently satisfy only a physical itch; when it comes to actually bonding with a woman, Tom always turns to Hannah. He knows her desires, habits and idiosyncrasies inside-out, and she knows him just as well.

Obviously, they're meant for each other.

Just as obviously, Tom's never gonna do anything about it ... and we can tell, from Hannah's occasionally melancholy glance, that she wishes otherwise.

Business takes Hannah to Scotland for six weeks, during which Tom — never having been without her company for so long — misses her terribly. The penny having dropped, he decides to do something about it. But the opportunity seems to have passed, because when Hannah returns to New York, she's wearing an engagement ring and accompanied by a gallant and ruggedly handsome Scotsman named Colin (Kevin McKidd), who couldn't be more perfect if he'd been created by a Harlequin Romance novelist.