A Wrinkle in Time: Crumpled beyond recognition

A Wrinkle in Time (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.9.18

Many reasons exist for this book’s failure to be adapted to the big screen, during the half-century since its publication in 1962, all of which director Ava DuVernay and scripters Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell attempted to ignore, evade or surmount.

Their well-intentioned effort clearly is heartfelt; it’s just as clearly a failure.

Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), younger brother of Meg (Storm Reid), has the ability to
"know things." Ergo, he's not surprised by the unexpected appearance of the decidedly
unusual Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon).

Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery Medal-winning fantasy was quite unusual for its time: a loquacious children’s novel that blends discussions of quantum physics and upper-echelon mathematics with a Christian subtext likely inspired by C.S. Lewis. It’s a “head” story, with much of the narrative probing the thoughts and interactions of its protagonist, who — also quite unusual, for its time — is a young teenage girl.

That latter detail no doubt has made the book more attractive to today’s potential filmmakers, and I guess DuVernay can be applauded for bravery. But her handling of A Wrinkle in Time is ponderous, boring and weird, with characters too frequently placing so much weight on flowery speeches, that I’m surprised the words don’t sink beneath the story’s many unusual landscapes.

Much of the acting is stiff and clumsy, and Ramin Djawadi’s relentlessly maudlin orchestral score — which never, ever lets up — makes one want to scream for relief.

DuVernay practically begs her audience to regard this film as Momentously Important, and — needless to say — that’s the death of successful drama. (Indeed, she did beg, during the uncomfortably awkward on-camera appeal that preceded Tuesday evening’s preview screening.)

The many disappointing performances notwithstanding, Storm Reid is an exception. She stands tall as the saga’s heroine, Meg Murry, a brilliant but self-conscious social outcast who has come to believe that she’s nowhere near the best version of herself. Since that insecurity is worn like a shroud, she’s naturally a target for mean-spirited classmates.

Reid handles this role with delicacy, her flickering, downcast eyes often half-concealed by a hairstyle she wears as a shield. She blends the awkwardness of departing childhood with the coltish grace of impending womanhood, her face often on the verge of tears that Meg likely couldn’t explain. At the same time, Reid exudes the perception and ferocious intelligence at the core of this girl. She’s a marvelous heroine.

Adolescent angst notwithstanding, Meg has good reason for her unrelenting despair: She grieves the loss of her father (Chris Pine), a scientist who simply ... vanished ... four years earlier. He and his equally brilliant wife (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) — they’re never given first names, and are addressed simply as Mother and Father — had been working on a high-falutin’ concept of instantaneous space travel via what’s dubbed a “tesseract.”

Hot Pursuit: Stone cold

Hot Pursuit (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, sexual candor, profanity and drug references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.1.15

In the space of one short month at the end of last year, Reese Witherspoon starred in an inspirational drama about Sudanese refugees settling in Missouri (The Good Lie); collected a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for her persuasive portrayal of solo hiker Cheryl Strayed (Wild); and delivered a droll supporting performance as a snarky deputy district attorney in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s admittedly weird — but oddly compelling — handling of a notorious Thomas Pynchon novel (Inherent Vice).

Worried about their ability to remain on the down-low, given that every TV newscast has
been leading with their photographs, Daniella (Sofía Vergara, left) nonetheless assures
Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) that this particular sales clerk won't be staring at her face.

So ... what does Reese — a previous Oscar winner, let us not forget, for her memorable turn as June Carter, in Walk the Line — do for a follow-up?

Something rilly, rilly nifty, right?

If only.

I’ve no idea why high-caliber talents such as Witherspoon attach themselves to low-rent junk such as Hot Pursuit. There’s no way David Feeney and John Quaintance’s misbegotten script ever could have shown promise. Nor has it been dragged to life by director Anne Fletcher, which merely proves that the pudding was rancid to begin with; she did far better with previous comedies such as 27 Dresses, The Guilt Trip and most particularly The Proposal.

Fletcher clearly knows funny, and Witherspoon can do funny. So can co-star Sofía Vergara, as she has quite ably demonstrated during six seasons (and counting) of television’s Modern Family.

No, the blame here belongs solely to the numb-nuts script, which plays like a bottom-of-the-barrel television sitcom episode. No surprise there, since Feeney is a veteran of slapstick (but successful) TV work such as New Girl, According to Jim and 2 Broke Girls, while Quaintance has struggled with less successful rom-coms such as Perfect Couples, Whitney and Ben and Kate.

So if this big-screen gal-pal comedy looks, walks and quacks like a TV duck, there’s ample reason.

Mind you, I’ve no objection per se to dumb and aggressively loud TV comedies; I’ve laughed plenty hard during random episodes of New Girl. (2 Broke Girls ... not so much.) But there comes a point when it too frequently feels as if the stars in such material are trying to wring laughter from predictably stupid plots and dead-on-arrival one-liners.

That’s most definitely the case with Hot Pursuit.

Inherent Vice: A very bad trip

Inherent Vice (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, graphic nudity, sexual content, constant drug use and occasional violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.23.15

This deranged flick is best imagined as an unholy love child spawned by Chinatown and every Sam Spade novel Dashiell Hammett never wrote.

Glimpsed through a peyote haze.

Private detective Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix, left) and maritime lawyer Sauncho
Smilax (Benicio Del Toro) watch from an oceanside restaurant as a suspicious
schooner — recently re-christened the Golden Fang — makes its way into port,
its purpose certain to be illicit.

Thomas Pynchon is challenging under the best of circumstances, which also can be said of director/scripter Paul Thomas Anderson, whose oeuvre features aggressively peculiar films such as Magnolia, There Will Be Blood and The Master. Put these two eclectic minds together, and the results are far from the best of circumstances.

At its better moments, Anderson’s take on Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is a funny pastiche of 1940s film noir atmosphere and attitude, filtered through the drug-hazed cheesecloth of 1970s hippiefied Los Angeles. The characters are manic, the dialog heightened far beyond stratospheric visibility, and the unfolding plot a crazy-quilt conspiracy that gets more flamboyantly, hilariously preposterous by the minute.

You can’t help admiring the self-indulgent audacity ... except, well, too much rapidly becomes way too much. The stoner somnambulance through which every character delivers his lines becomes trés tedious, and a tedious film wears out its welcome long before the clock winds down on its 148-minute running time.

Anderson, it should be noted, never makes short films. He should consider doing so.

Pynchon’s 2009 novel exists in the same seemingly random, psychedelic fever that was typical of Richard Brautigan’s work in the 1960s and ’70s. If so-called “free jazz” is music without melody, then Brautigan’s prose was words without context: sentences strung together solely to befuddle and amuse. Brautigan was adored by the counter-counter set, who no doubt found his books far more compelling when read aloud under the influence of LSD.

Inherent Vice is similarly haphazard, with bizarre characters wandering into our protagonist’s landscape like the pink elephants that haunt somebody enduring delirium tremens. We must consider Pynchon’s history: As we’re reminded in a delightful December analysis in the Los Angeles Times, Pynchon’s third novel, 1973’s Gravity’s Rainbow, won the National Book Award ... “and caused the Pulitzer Committee to cancel that year’s fiction prize after it found the book ‘unreadable’ and ‘obscene.’ ”

Inherent Vice is somewhat more coherent, but that’s not saying much. Indeed, it could be argued that the entire story is a marijuana-induced nightmare experienced by main character Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix): In other words, nothing that we see is real. The film dares us to imagine this from the very first scene, as Doc views the unexpected arrival of former girlfriend Shasta Fay (Katherine Wilson) with surprise, and she murmurs, almost to herself, “Thinks he’s hallucinating.”

That notion likely will make the film work better for some viewers, but it’s too easy an explanation. More complicated is the possibility that some of what we see is real ... and some isn’t.

I’ve serious doubts, for example, about the actual existence of Sortilège (Joanna Newsom), who both narrates this saga — providing indispensable linking commentary that helps us over the rough spots — and serves as Doc’s sounding board. Eventually, it seems odd that nobody else seems to interact with Sortilège, suggesting that she’s the personification of Doc arguing with himself.

Perhaps.

Wild: An incredible journey

Wild (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for nudity, sexual content, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.2.15

In June 1995, at the age of 26 and with her life in what could have been an inescapable downward spiral, Cheryl Strayed impulsively — foolishly, naïvely, absurdly — embarked on a solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.

A glimpse backward, at a happier time: Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon, right) watches as her
mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern) enjoys a daily ride on the beloved horse that is one of the
few precious things in her life.

The Minneapolis-based liberal arts scholar — magna cum laude, with a double major in English and women’s studies — had zero experience with such activities, but she knew one thing: Her life was in crisis, and she had to do something.

Attempting to regain her soul while trekking through Nature’s wonderland likely seemed a reasonable plan.

The resulting memoir — Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail — was published in the spring of 2012, reaching No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list that July. The book was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club, and in fact had been optioned by Reese Witherspoon’s production company before copies even hit bookstores.

And so here we are, two years and change later, with director Jean-Marc Vallée’s big-screen adaptation bringing Witherspoon the best reviews of her career: accolades that are heartily deserved.

Vallée will be remembered as the director/editor who just last year guided Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto to Academy Awards in Dallas Buyers Club. Clearly, Vallée has a gift for extracting the best from his actors, and he has worked the same magic here: not merely with Witherspoon, but also — and equally notably — with Laura Dern, utterly luminescent as Cheryl’s wise and loving mother, Bobbi.

And it wouldn’t surprise me if both Witherspoon and Dern galloped home with the same two Oscars.

Vallée also is drawn to fact-based stories involving people in deep spiritual crisis: self-destructive individuals who — whether through anger, anguish or an epiphany — abruptly resolve to turn things around, to make a difference. Two decades passed before scrappy AIDS angel Ron Woodroof’s saga became a film, in Dallas Buyers Club; I’m intrigued by the similar length of time that passed before Strayed felt comfortable turning her chronicle into a book (after which, the film couldn’t have been made faster).

One suspects she needed time to process everything.

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.

This Means War: Intermittently funny battle for love

This Means War (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, and quite generously, for profanity, violence, sexual content and plenty of smutty dialogue
By Derrick Bang


Most films benefit from the guiding hand of a competent director ... which is, after all, the point of the entire endeavor.

Are CIA agents ever this cute? FDR (Chris Pine, left) and best friend Tuck (Tom
Hardy) size up the opposition before plunging into a furiously choreographed
battle. Alas, this melee will have dire consequences, when one baddie gets away
and swears revenge.

On the other hand, some films succeed in spite of ham-fisted directors, and This Means War is a perfect example. The director who prefers to be known as McG — born Joseph McGinty Nichol — never has been what could be termed a thoughtful filmmaker; his oeuvre runs to flashy action fare such as Charlie’s Angels and Terminator Salvation.

In fairness, he also delivered a genuinely heartfelt drama with We Are Marshall: apparently a bid for respectability.

But his tendency toward wretched excess obviously proved too great a temptation, when it came to This Means War. McG’s egregiously stylistic flourishes constantly get in the way, and he appears to have fired his continuity supervisor; key plot points and minor details come and go at random.

Granted, the script is something of a hodge-podge to begin with; one gets a sense that writers Timothy Dowling, Marcus Gautesen and Simon Kinberg didn’t agree on much. But the core premise is cute and engaging: Best-buddy CIA agents FDR (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy) accidentally wind up dating the same woman, a Consumer Reports-style product tester named Lauren (Reese Witherspoon).

FDR and Tuck figure this out quickly, and agree to let Lauren’s heart choose between them ... without telling her any of this. (She never sees them together.)

At first, with minimal emotional involvement, FDR and Tuck have no trouble keeping things honorable. Unfortunately, as they both begin to fall for Lauren, their behavior becomes increasingly petty, their determination to sabotage each other’s date nights increasingly nasty (and funny). Eventually, the friendship and working relationship begin to fray.

Bad timing on that, since a vengeful villain from a recent mission has promised to kill them both.

And Lauren? Heck, after being dateless for so long — the usual plot point that raises eyebrows, when dealing with somebody of Witherspoon’s blinding charm and hotness — she’s in seventh heaven, courting two hunky guys with an uncanny knack for catering to her interests, hobbies and passions.

No surprise there: FDR and Tuck have mobilized surveillance teams to bug her entire life and research every detail from her past. When these junior operatives worry aloud about privacy issues, FDR reassures them with the catch-all answer: “Patriot Act.”

Utterly preposterous, to be sure, but laden with potential. Most importantly, Pine, Hardy and Witherspoon plunge enthusiastically into every crazed detail.

Water for Elephants: Medium-top melodrama

Water for Elephants (2011) • View trailer for Water for Elephants
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.22.11


Acting flavors of the month shouldn't be allowed anywhere near prestige projects.

The newbie's presence inevitably affects atmosphere and tone, and sometimes story elements are modified — or compromised — according to this fresh young talent's strengths ... or limitations.

When August (Christoph Waltz, left) begins to suspect that his wife, Mariena
(Reese Witherspoon), and Jacob (Robert Pattinson) have become more than
troupe acquaintances, he orchestrates a cruel charade and orders them to
participate; we nervously eye this uncomfortable game, while also wondering
why the circus owner has insisted on the presence of Rosie, the company's
new elephant star.

Robert Pattinson's most visible problem is an acting range that stretches most of the way from A to B. He delivers tortured angst quite well, having had plenty of practice as the sparkly vampire love interest in the Twilight series. The trouble is, Pattinson's apparent takes on more cheerful emotions — happiness, satisfaction, love — still look very much like ... well, tortured angst.

He's therefore quite credible here while pining for Reese Witherspoon, or one of the most personable elephants ever captured on camera ... although it looks very much like the way he pines for Kristin Stewart's Bella, in the Twilight movies.

When things go his character's way in Water for Elephants, though ... well, it's difficult to tell the difference.

In a nutshell, both Witherspoon and supporting actor Christoph Waltz act circles around Pattinson. They're so far superior that he all but vanishes from the screen: rather awkward, given that his character is this story's protagonist. Heck, Mark Povinelli, in a minor role as a dwarf circus clown named Kinko, is more credible — and gives us a better sense of his character — than Pattinson.

In most other respects, director Francis Lawrence delivers a respectable adaptation of Sara Gruen's best-selling novel, thanks in great part to a thoughtful, well-constructed screenplay from Richard LaGravanese (who also adapted The Bridges of Madison County and The Horse Whisperer, among his numerous other credits). He has, of necessity, condensed many of the events from Gruen's dense Depression-era saga; he and Lawrence also have made the story far more viewer-friendly, toning down both the period squalor and often shocking animal cruelty, as befits a gentler PG-13 rating.

So while this film affords a reasonable glimpse of the hard-scrabble conditions found within a third-rated Depression-era traveling circus, the cruelty and sadism displayed by numerous characters in Gruen's book have been condensed into a single, supremely malevolent figure: Waltz's August, owner/manager of the Benzini Brothers Circus ("the most spec-ta-cu-lar show on Earth!").

But his introduction comes later. We first meet Jacob (Hal Holbrook) in the present day: an old-timer disgusted with life in a nursing home, who has wandered off to visit a nearby circus. Jacob winds up recounting his youthful days to an interested listener, and thus we're whisked back to the 1930s, as a polished and confident veterinary medicine student (now played by Pattinson) prepares to take the test that will confer his degree. But the exam is interrupted by a crisis: Jacob's two loving parents have been killed in a road accident. The young man subsequently learns that he's penniless, his parents having converted their house and business into cash, in order to fund their only child's education.

Bereft and adrift, Jacob hits the road, unable to return to the life and career that had been so carefully planned.

(One would think, given the nature of Jacob's devotion to his mother and father, that he'd honor their memory by taking the damn exam and hanging up his vet-med shingle. But then, of course, we wouldn't have a story...)

How Do You Know: Hard to be sure

How Do You Know (2010) • View trailer for How Do You Know
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang

Sweetest movie proposal scene ever.

And no, I’m not revealing anything that has to do with our stars. One of the hallmarks of a sharp script – and well-directed film – is the degree to which attention is paid to the smallest characters. Writer/director James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets) delivers precisely those goods in How Do You Know, and we can’t help being charmed by everybody from an observant doorman (John Tormey) to a savvy psychiatrist (Tony Shalhoub, making the most of a single scene).

When Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) invites George (Paul Rudd, right) inside for a
brief visit, she's surprised to be dressed down by Matty (Owen Wilson), who
objects because she's living in "his" place ... rather than sharing digs in "their"
place. (Ergo, she should have "asked permission" before having any guests.)
Not for the first time, Lisa subsequently sees the need to re-evaluate her
relationship with Matty.

Indeed, Shalhoub’s sage advice to our heroine should be stitched onto a sampler and mounted on the wall adjacent to everybody’s kitchen.

Perhaps this also explains why How Do You Know seems to be on the losing end of the 2010 holiday films tsunami. For all its witty delights and clever repartee – Brooks’ characters always unerringly say the best possible things, at the best possible moments – the result sometimes feels a bit too slick, a bit too formulaic, a bit too clever for its own good. Much as we come to enjoy our time spent with Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), George (Paul Rudd) and Matty (Owen Wilson), the set-up is contrived and the execution rather retro: It’s not hard to imagine these lines being delivered by the likes of, say, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, back in the day.

Mind you, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it does require a particular mindset: a willingness to go with the flow in order to enjoy what frequently feels more like a particularly nimble stage play.

Lisa has played ball her whole life; indeed, her entire soul is wrapped up in the game. But advancing age – a heart-stopping 31 – has robbed her of those necessary precious seconds of additional speed and swift reflexes. As this saga begins, she’s hit with the worst possible calamity: She’s cut from the USA Women’s softball team.

Cast adrift. Directionless. Without a clue what to do next.

Oh, sure; Lisa knew, intellectually, that this day would come. She simply didn’t expect it to come now. Her plight – and Witherspoon’s nuanced depiction of Lisa’s reaction – will feel familiar to anybody downsized during our ongoing economic malaise. It’s like being in a relationship that one knows won’t go the distance: We always want to leave on our terms, rather than wake up one morning to discover we’ve been left.

Monsters vs. Aliens: Retro giggle

Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) • View trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for action violence and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.27.09
Buy DVD: Monsters vs. Aliens • Buy Blu-Ray: Monsters vs. Aliens [Blu-ray]


Curious about the degree to which voice talent can bring additional sizzle to an animated film's steak?

Look no further than Monsters vs. Aliens.

This fast-paced sci-fi comedy probably would have done well regardless; directors Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon hit the ground running and never let up, and their script — co-authored with four other credited writers — has both a clever premise and plenty of room for sight gags, one-liners and exciting action sequences.

Having blossomed to 1 inch shy of 50 feet, poor Susan Murphy
(voiced by Reese Witherspoon) is horrified to discover that a massive
alien probe wants to capture her; the subsequent chase rages through
most of San Francisco -- the residents having fled -- and threatens to
engulf the Golden Gate Bridge. And this is just the first chaotic
skirmish!

The voice talent, however, really makes the film.

And while I hesitate to single out anybody, Seth Rogen is too funny for words as the bright blue benzoate-ostylezene-bicarbonate blob mercifully known as B.O.B. As the sentient result of an experiment that blended a chemically altered ranch-flavored dessert topping with a genetically altered tomato — an origin story that should bring an additional giggle from Davis viewers — poor Bob was fabricated without a brain.

The character therefore lives truly for the moment, since it can't plan ahead or remember details even a few minutes removed. Needless to say, such a concept gives plenty of ammunition to Rogen, and Bob pretty much steals the film.

Fortunately, the blue blob has plenty of competition.

Monsters vs. Aliens is a deliberately retro take on what might have happened if the frequently silly creatures cobbled together for 1950s monster flicks actually existed. Bob therefore can be viewed as a much funnier cousin of the gelatinous "Blob" that menaced Steve McQueen in the 1958 film of the same title; Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie, perfectly stuffy and condescending) is a superior result of the trans-matter experiment gone awry in 1958's The Fly.

The preening, half-fish/half-ape known as The Missing Link (Will Arnett) is 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon in all but name, while the 350-foot grub dubbed Insectosaurus stands in for every giant costumed monster that battled Godzilla in a variety of flicks.

The narrative begins sedately, as California gal Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) prepares to marry Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd), a narcissistic weather guy hoping to graduate from his remote-channel Modesto indie station to a more prestigious market. Sadly, when Susan gets clonked by an oddly glowing meteor mere minutes before her wedding, she derails the ceremony by growing until she's 49 feet and 11 inches tall (the tattered remnants of her wedding dress somehow still preserving her modesty).

Next thing she knows, Susan has been whisked to a top-top-top-secret government facility, where she's given the new code name Ginormica and left to fraternize with her fellow monsters.

Because it's Witherspoon, we can't help feeling achingly sorry for the poor woman. The deliberately cartoonish animation style is too far removed from physical reality to take seriously, and yet — thanks to Witherspoon's acting chops — we're deeply moved by her plight. Even though it's utterly absurd.