The Lovebirds: Nothing to tweet about

The Lovebirds (2020) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for violence, crude sexual content, and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.5.20

Personality compensates for very thin material — to a modest degree — but that’s hardly enough to make this needlessly vulgar rom-com worth anybody’s time.

Having successfully evaded a killer — a second time — Leilani (Issa Rae) and Jibran
(Kumail Nanjiani) attempt to blend with a crowd of typical New Orleans tourists.

The Lovebirds is little more than a two-person stand-up routine occasionally interrupted by plot. The script — blame Aaron Abrams, Brendan Gall and Martin Gero — aspires to be a profanity-strewn update of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, but that dark comedy had a much sharper script (Joseph Minion, take a bow).

Actually, director John Landis’ Into the Night, which also arrived in 1985, covered similar territory: a white-collar couple unexpectedly enduring a night of hell when circumstances prompt them to venture into dodgy, big-city neighborhoods laden with all manner of creepy individuals.

The one fresh element here: Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani mine sharply perceptive humor from their racial heritage. Rae’s Leilani, in particular, gets a lot of comedic mileage from pointing out that white cops never would believe the increasingly convoluted mess that has ensnared them.

Granted, Rae and Nanjiani are adept at well-timed one-liners. But you won’t find much “acting” here; they essentially play themselves. Leilani is feisty, forthright and empowered; Nanjiani’s Jibran is a petulant, under-nourished milquetoast who masks his physical insecurity with higher-education haughtiness. He’s been that guy many, many times before.

The credits unspool over a meet-cute montage that turns them into a couple; after director Michael Showalter’s name appears, we leap forward three years, at which point Leilani and Jibran are inches from a spiteful separation. They’ve fallen into a rut, and sniping at each other is easier than working through it.

The bickering is quite crude and offensive, which (much too frequently) is what passes for humor these days. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if viewers bailed within the first 10 minutes of this Netflix original.

In fairness, things improve. Marginally. (Not enough.) Showalter and Nanjiani are working way beneath their talents here; their previous collaboration — 2017’s The Big Sick — is vastly superior.

Thoroughbreds: Bad breeding

Thoroughbreds (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and disturbing content
By Derrick Bang

Watching two teenage sociopaths chat their way up to a homicide isn’t my notion of a good time.

Writer/director Cory Finley obviously feels otherwise, since that dynamic is the sole raison d’être for Thoroughbreds, a thoroughly dull and unpleasant little study in girls behaving very badly.

Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy, background) feigns innocence, sweetness and light, but — as this
film progresses — we begin to wonder if she's even more twisted than her sorta-kinda
best friend Amanda (Olivia Cooke).

Not that such a topic can’t generate an absorbing or even fascinating storyline. But Finley hasn’t the skill for such an exercise; his film lacks the darkly snarky impudence of Heathers, or the alluringly warped fantasy elements of Heavenly Creatures, or the hypnotic creepiness of Stoker. All three are unsettling — and far more successful — studies of young women dabbling in murder.

Thoroughbreds is Finley’s first effort at writing or directing, and it shows. He stretches a 15-minute premise way beyond endurance — even at an otherwise economical 92 minutes — and his relentless reliance on talking-heads set-ups too frequently makes this feel like a boring stage play. Indeed, it could have been such, except for Finley’s fondness for cinematographer Lyle Vincent’s languorously long and sweeping tracking shots through the hallways and stairwells of the opulent home wherein one of our protagonists resides.

The talking heads in question belong to Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy), two insufferably spoiled white-bread bitches whose parents clearly have more money than God. As introduced, Amanda is “troubled,” while Lily is the “noble spirit doing a good deed” via tutoring lessons. But it’s not that simple, and appearances are deceiving.

Actually, they aren’t. It’s pretty obvious, from the start, that both of these girls are warped Bad News.

Amanda, at least, appears to have an excuse. She’s clinically, emotionally barren: unable to experience joy, sorrow or anything in between. She’s therefore brutally blunt and candid during casual conversation, puncturing and stepping beyond all protective levels of social decorum.

Cooke plays this role persuasively, with an intense, owl-eyed stare and vocal delivery that lacks all inflection. We’d think Amanda compromised by an excessively high drug regimen, except that her perceptive gaze misses nothing, and her seemingly detached observations are uncomfortably frank. But that shtick wears thin, as does her black, dead-eyed stare; Finley overuses both.

Cooke may be remembered for her winning turn in 2015’s under-appreciated Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; she’s also soon to star as Becky Sharp in the Amazon/ITV miniseries adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. One hopes she can put this current effort behind her as quickly as possible.

The Greatest Showman: An apt superlative

The Greatest Showman (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for bits of dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.22.17

This lavish, opulently stylish musical, based very loosely on the early life and career of Phineas Taylor Barnum, is a slice of magic realism in the style of last year’s La La Land.

First-time director Michael Gracey delivers this splashy romp with a degree of razzle-dazzle that would have delighted Barnum himself. Given Gracey’s earlier credits as a visual effects artist and supervisor, we shouldn’t be surprised by the often stunning production and dance numbers, many of them powered by Ashley Wallen’s breathtaking choreography.

When shameless promoter P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman, right) decides to gain some
respect from New York City's aristrocratic elite, he seeks out respected author and
playwright Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron). But will this writer of failed plays be willing to
descend from his lofty perch?

As is true of many musicals, some of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s original songs are Barnum-style show-stoppers; others ... sorta-kinda just hang there. The power anthems attached to the best sequences, however, will be remembered long after the lights come up: most notably the title song and “This Is Me,” the latter a triumphant statement of personal dignity, on behalf of the colorful but publicly shunned members of Barnum’s performing troupe.

The film also maintains its momentum thanks to Hugh Jackman’s vibrant performance as Barnum: a role that allows the actor to exercise the singing and dancing chops he displayed so magnificently in the stage musical The Boy from Oz (a side of his talent likely overlooked by those familiar only with various Marvel superhero movies).

Casting directors Tiffany Little Canfield and Bernard Telsey took care to avoid the mistake made in La La Land, which would have been vastly superior with two stars who actually could sing and dance. Jackman’s spellbinding performance is ably supported by a similarly adept roster of co-stars, beginning with the equally enthusiastic Zac Efron, returning to the genre that made him a star in the High School Musical trilogy.

Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon’s script plays fast and extremely loose with Barnum’s actual life, although they certainly get the tone right: a masterpiece of style over substance, with the same wink-wink-nudge-nudge hokum that the celebrated showman practiced himself.

A brief childhood prologue suggests that young Barnum’s impossible ambitions — as the only son of a poor, working-class father — get their momentum from his immediate devotion to Charity, the aristocratic girl who catches his eye, and grows up to become his wife. Their younger selves are played charmingly by Ellis Rubin and Skylar Dunn, and they share a touching ballad — “A Million Dreams” — that carries the narrative to adulthood and marriage (Michelle Williams taking over as Charity).

Now ensconced in the whirlwind of mid-19th century New York City, frustrated by a series of clerking jobs, Barnum hatches a mad scheme financed by a bald-faced bank swindle: a museum of the unusual and unseen. But it’s primarily a static waxworks show that proves of little interest to passersby.

“You need something living,” his young daughters Caroline and Helen insist (the two girls winningly played by Austyn Johnson and Cameron Seely).

Mud: An earthy, heartfelt character saga

Mud (2012) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for violence, sexual candor, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Gentle coming-of-age sagas seem an endangered species of late, all but forgotten as studios scramble to spend gazillions on fantasy epics and star-laden comedies.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan, left), his best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) and their new
acquaintance Mud (Matthew McConaughey) check their tree's upper branches, trying
to decide whether they'll be strong enough to help a daft scheme succeed. But this
unlikely engineering challenge is the least of Mud's problems; he's wanted by both the
police and a gang of vicious bounty hunters.

That’s a shame, because intimate character dramas delivery some of our strongest movie memories. We’re often touched most deeply by the way we see ourselves in others, particularly during a well-told tale that depicts a familiar struggle for understanding.

Love fuels the action in Mud, a quiet, thoughtful little drama from indie filmmaker Jeff Nichols, who deserves mainstream acclaim for this, his third project (following 2007’s Shotgun Stories and 2011’s Take Shelter). Nichols’ strongest gift is the ability to place us within the world inhabited by his characters, in this case the rapidly vanishing houseboat culture of Arkansas’ Delta region.

Although 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) attend school in the nearby small town — a moribund community characterized by scrap yards, and where hanging out at the Piggly Wiggly is the height of local action — their lives are ruled by the Mississippi River. Ellis and his father (Ray McKinnon, as Senior) spend every morning selling fresh fish to local markets and restaurants; the orphaned Neckbone similarly helps his uncle (Michael Shannon, as Galen) dive for oysters.

At other times, the boys make their own entertainment. The story begins as they head to an island on the Mississippi, where Neckbone has found an amazing thing: a boat suspended high in a tree, a remnant of an extreme flood at some point in the past. Despite its precarious appearance, the boat is wedged quite tightly, and thus appears to be the perfect kid-oriented fort.

Unfortunately, this opinion is shared by Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a gritty, unkempt but personable drifter who already is using the boat as a hideout. The instinctively wary Neckbone doesn’t trust this stranger, but Ellis — more sensitive and trusting — allows curiosity to blossom into interest.

Despite the gun jammed into Mud’s hip pocket.

That notwithstanding, Mud does seem harmless, at least to the boys, and Ellis agrees to bring back some food. The mutual bonding is tentative but deepens quickly during subsequent visits, although Mud remains evasive about the reason for his presence on the island. That changes when Ellis and his mother (Sarah Paulson) chance upon a police roadblock during a routine drive, and learn that Mud is wanted for murder.