Ice Age: Collision Course — Thawed too soon

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

In theory, a 94-minute animated feature paced with the manic intensity of a 7-minute Warner Bros. cartoon must’ve seemed like a great idea.

In practice ... not so much.

The gang's all here: clockwise from left, Julian, Peaches, Ellie, Manny, Shira, Diego,
Granny, Sid, Crash and Eddie. As for what they're all staring at ... well, that would be
giving away too much!

This fifth (!) entry in the popular Ice Age series is relentless: a never-ending succession of hyper-paced slapstick, sight gags and one-liners, all of which overwhelm the gentle family-unity message that struggles to be heard amid the chaos. Watching this film rapidly becomes an endurance test, after which one is utterly overwhelmed and exhausted.

Additionally, the four credited writers — Aubrey Solomon, Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg and Yoni Brenner — have augmented the already enormous ensemble cast with a wealth of new characters. The result is total overload, to the detriment of several regular players, most notably Diego, the sabertooth voiced by Denis Leary. He contributes absolutely nothing to the narrative, and his recently acquired gal pal Shira (Jennifer Lopez) fares even worse.

It’s all too much. As the third act introduced yet another set of blissed-out newcomers, shepherded by the fortune cookie-tongued Shangri Llama (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), Constant Companion and I glanced at each other and mouthed, Seriously?

If all concerned — co-directors Galen T. Chu and Mike Thurmeier, and the aforementioned writers — are looking to kill this once-charming franchise, I can think of no better way. The tenderness and wit have been lost.

Everybody involved with 2002’s original Ice Age understood the importance of balance. The bulk of the story was fairly serious — disparate prehistoric creatures banding together for the common good — with the occasional silly one-liners limited to the slovenly Sid, the sloth (John Leguizamo). Machine-gun slapstick was the sole province of the frantic, twitchy Scrat, whose rodent quest for precious acorns served as brief madcap “bumpers” between the core story’s various acts.

This fifth entry is nothing but madcap bumpers. It’s soulless.

Ice Age: Continental Drift — Warm, witty and quite amusing

Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for action peril and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.13.12

Chris Wedge deserves a great deal of credit.

During the decade since he co-directed Ice Age, back in 2002 , the series has generated three sequels, each of which has been as fresh, funny and visually enchanting as the first film.

Manny, right, watches in horror as he drifts farther away from his
family, with no hope of rejoining them. Diego, left, shares his large
friend's concern; even the usually frivolous Sid understands the
gravity of their situation. Sooner or later, their ice floe will start
to melt...

DreamWorks’ Shrek series (as one other example) hasn’t been nearly as consistent, with the same number of installments; Wedge, his Blue Sky Studios colleagues and their “sub-zero heroes” have scored runs with every turn at bat.

In no small measure, this is because Wedge and his rotating teams of scripters understand the importance of story. Each new film doesn’t feel like a box office-driven remake of the same basic plot elements, as often happens with lesser sequels; the “Ice Age” entries build on each other, forming distinct chapters of a much broader narrative whose limits have yet to be reached.

Plus, Blue Sky’s films are funny. Very funny.

And more than a little subversive.

Way back in the day, Disney’s animated features and cartoon shorts were acclaimed for their lush, painterly animation; backdrops and characters were beautiful, gentle and well-rounded, like a live-action sequence shot with a soft-focus lens. Disney animated scripts, as well, were gentle and family-friendly.

Warner Bros. cartoon shorts, in marked contrast, relied more on jagged lines and harsh angles, which contributed to a more daring tone that complemented the equally edgy and snarky scripts. You’d never find a cross-dressing character in a Disney cartoon, but if it suited a gag to have Bugs Bunny in drag, then the carrot-chomping rabbit would don a dress.

I view the stylistic difference between Pixar and Blue Sky in somewhat the same light. Both companies recognize the all-important blend of strong scripting and eye-pleasing visuals, but approach this recipe with different attitudes. Pixar films, like classic Disney films, are gorgeous to the point of looking frameable, with storylines that are similarly mainstream.

Blue Sky, alternatively, often relies on the same sort of exaggerated sight gags that Warner Bros. employed every time Wile E. Coyote got trapped by one of his own roadrunner-catching gadgets. The best and funniest ongoing example: the many torments and body-disfiguring catastrophes endured by poor Scrat, in his endless search for the next best acorn.

Joyful Noise: An irritating din

Joyful Noise (2012) • View trailer
2.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, and too harshly, for brief profanity and a vague sexual reference
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.13.12


It must be January; Hollywood is serving holiday leftovers again.

Despite having its heart in the right place, this film is a mess: too long, too slow, too clumsily melodramatic and too old-school, with respect to its too many songs. Remember the worst 1960s and ’70s musicals, when the story simply stopped every 10 minutes, so that some other cast member could warble a tune?

The Pacashau Sacred Divinity Choir — featuring G.G. Sparrow (Dolly Parton,
center left), Olivia Hill (Keke Palmer, center) and her mother, Vi Rose (Queen
Latifah) — gets plenty of respect in their home town, but the competition is
much tougher during the annual Joyful Noise choir competition.

That’s what we have here: a total throwback. And not in a good sense.

Todd Graf definitely loves the let’s-put-on-a-show genre, having turned writer/director with 2003’s sweet and quite entertaining Camp, which translated the young folks’ performance school template from Fame to a summer camp setting. Graf waited six years before modifying the formula slightly for 2009’s equally appealing Bandslam — new kid in town assembles fledgling rock band, accompanied by his school’s two hottest chicks — and suffered the indignity of copycat bad timing, since TV’s Glee had debuted that same year.

Which brings us to Joyful Noise, wherein Graf has layered the same concept — with less success — onto a church choir setting in the tiny community of Pacashau, Ga.

Unfortunately, Glee has raised the bar on all such performer-wannabe musicals. And that’s the major problem here: An average 42-minute episodes of Glee delivers far more credible angst, integrated much more smoothly with the obligatory songs, than this lumbering, 118-minute behemoth.

Matters aren’t helped by Graf’s kitchen-sink script, which doesn’t overlook a single opportunity for tragedy or misery. He opens his film with a sudden death — an eyeblink cameo by guest Kris Kristofferson — and it’s all downhill from there. Resentful, abandoned wife? Check. With a son who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome? Check. And a daughter suddenly attracted to the newly arrived “bad boy” in town? Check. The small-town setting, with desperate residents losing homes and businesses left and right, due to the lousy economy? Check, check and check.

This is supposed to be a light-hearted, feel-good musical?

Indeed, that’s a serious problem: Graf can’t decide what he wants his film to be. These morose characters are bad enough; far worse are the occasional attempts at comic relief, as when one poor woman — Angela Grovey, as Earla — has a rather disastrous night of passion with a fellow choir member. I can’t imagine what Graf was thinking, with this subplot.

The Secret Life of Bees: Strong buzz

The Secret Life of Bees (2008) • View trailer for The Secret Life of Bees
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.17.08
Buy DVD: The Secret Life of Bees • Buy Blu-Ray: The Secret Life of Bees [Blu-ray]

Certain historical flashpoints remain popular subjects for stories, because savvy authors recognize that we bring cultural awareness to the relationship between artist and audience: If the fictitious characters are constructed persuasively enough to co-exist with real-world events, the drama becomes even more intense.

August (Queen Latifah, left) is surprised to discover that Lily (Dakota Fanning)
doesn't fear the winged insects that fill the hives and produce the sweet honey
for which the Boatwright sisters have become famous. Indeed, Lily seems to
understand — in a deeply spiritual way — when August speaks reverently of
"the secret life of bees."

Director/scripter Gina Prince-Bythewood's deeply moving adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is just such a story. Set in 1964 South Carolina, at a time when the rising civil rights movement actually made an already toxic racial environment even more combustible — because, to the hysterical rage of hard-core racists, African-Americans were daring to stand up for themselves — the narrative unfolds in a constant state of tension and suspense.

All sorts of bad things seem to await these good characters.

Grief battles with pragmatism and hope, in a film highlighted by strong performances that allow us intimate and at-times painful access to these characters and their thoughts. And, as was the case with To Kill a Mockingbird — with which this film shares both subject and tone — these events are filtered through the dawning awareness of a child, and her subsequent loss of innocence.

In the case of 14-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning), she's not that innocent to begin with. As depicted in a brief but horrifying prologue, Lily believes herself responsible for her mother's death, years earlier, and has suffered ever since at the hands of a father, T. Ray (Paul Bettany), prone to casual cruelty.

T. Ray isn't exactly abusive, and we get a strong sense that he, too, is in a state of constant despair — such is the impressive subtlety of Bettany's performance — but that doesn't make his needlessly stern and unloving treatment of Lily any less heinous.

Things might be worse, were if not for the sheltering care extended by Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), who works for T. Ray and has become something of a surrogate mother to Lily. The girl, in turn, has grown to care for Rosaleen: enough to be quite concerned when the older woman quietly shares her intention to walk to a nearby town and register to vote.

Sadly, an almost inevitable encounter with some vicious white crackers goes as badly as could be expected.

Prince-Bythewood does not exploit this scene, but Rogier Stoffers' camera also doesn't flinch from it; we cannot help sharing Lily's sick and heavy-hearted reaction to what she witnesses. (Bullies are nothing new in the world, I realize, and yet I still find it difficult to comprehend that people would behave this way to another human being, based solely on skin color ... and that such behavior was considered acceptable, as recently as 44 years ago.)

Finally fed up with her own father, and worried about Rosaleen's likely future, Lily orchestrates a plan of escape and the two hit the road. Their destination — Tiburon, also in South Carolina — is governed solely by the fact that this town's name is printed on the back of one of the few mementos Lily has from her mother.

Mad Money: Moderately amusing spare change

Mad Money (2008) • View trailer
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and much too harshly, for mild sensuality and a fleeting drug reference
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.24.08

Although unlikely to set the world on fire, Mad Money is a breezy little caper romp that provides ample opportunity for stars Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes to display their light comedy chops.

Although their first score falls short of setting them up for life, Nina (Queen
Latifah, left), Bridget (Diane Keaton, center) and Jackie (Katie Holmes) become
giddy over the mere fact that the scheme worked ... and that it can be repeated.

The production values are modest, and Glenn Gers' script doesn't tread any particularly provocative ground; aside from the high-wattage cast, this is the sort of pleasant diversion that usually turns up as a made-for-TV movie ... or, back in the day, would have been the bottom half of a movie theater double- feature.

Which is not intended as condemnation. B-films with no particular pretensions often are far more entertaining than their bigger-budgeted cousins.

Perhaps most impressive is the degree to which Diane Keaton, 62 years young, carries this film; she just gets better and better. Finally content to abandon all those Woody Allen-esque behavioral quirks that became her stock-in-trade for so many years following Annie Hall, Keaton now is comfortable in a broader range of moods. Here, she's the most methodical and organized of a trio of quite unlikely bank robbers, and she's quite credible as a white-collar master criminal.

Not so credible as a mop-wielding cleaning woman, but hey, we can't have everything.

Director Callie Khouri, who won an Academy Award for writing 1991's Thelma and Louise before becoming a hyphenate and directing and scripting 2002's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, has an ear for the gal-chat that bounces between the three protagonists. Better still, all are sympathetic characters, and that's important: We're expected to identify with them, even as they turn larcenous.

But Gers' script is quite aggravating in one respect: its reliance on a flash-forward framing device that reveals, right away, that our heroes are being grilled by the cops. In other words, they've been caught, and we learn this even before we get a sense of what they'll do to attract this sort of attention.

Even clumsier is the talk-to-the-camera technique that Khouri employs a few times; this gimmick almost never works in a conventional film, and should be reserved solely for serious historical projects such as Reds.

We're thus robbed of a great deal of the story's potential suspense. There's no question of whether they'll get busted; our musings now are restricted to when and how. That's a daft artistic decision.