Red, White & Royal Blue: Colorless

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong sexual content, partial nudity and profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

I’ve rarely seen a film this uneven.

 

Director Matthew López’s romantic comedy opens with a bit of over-the-top slapstick that suggests what follows might be relentless, frat-boy hijinks.

 

Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine, left) and "First Son" Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor
Zakhar Perez) smile politely — despite mutual antipathy — moments before they
create a horrific wedding crisis.

Fortunately, the bulk of the film instead settles into a sweet — if needlessly protracted, and highly improbable — wouldn’t-it-be-nice romantic fairy tale, set in the rarefied realm of upper-echelon U.S. and British ruling families.

But that idealistic atmosphere ultimately is destroyed by an atrociously strident, sermonesque finale that stretches credibility way beyond any level of acceptance ... and, it must be mentioned, veers wildly from the 2019 Casey McQuiston novel on which this film is based. The word “overkill” leaps to mind.

 

I can’t imagine what López and co-scripter Ted Malawer were thinking. If I wanted a lecture, I’d go back to school.

 

Everybody involved undoubtedly hoped to replicate the warm reception McQuiston’s LGBT romance novel received upon publication, but the characters and plot beats here have been simplified and sugar-coated to an absurd degree. Drama doesn’t exist without conflict, and — at an overlong two hours — López’s film becomes dull and plodding.

 

Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), son of U.S. President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman), has long nurtured a grudge against Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), younger brother of the future king of England. Alex nonetheless is sent to represent the States when Henry’s brother, Philip (Thomas Flynn), gets married.

 

The subsequent reception is highlighted by a £75,000 cake that stands taller than the White House Christmas tree. When Alex and Henry begin squabbling like a pair of 5-year-olds, we just know that cake is coming down. On top of them.

 

(This may have played in McQuiston’s book, but — as visualized — it’s a wincing display of wretched excess.)

 

The resulting media circus throws a spanner into President Claremonth’s re-election campaign, and her ongoing negotiations with the British Prime Minister (Sharon D. Clarke). In order to quell what could blossom into a diplomatic crisis, both families force Alex and Henry to feign friendship during a series of interviews and photo ops. (No hostility here, folks!)

 

Hollywood Stargirl: The sparkle is gone

Hollywood Stargirl (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild profanity

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.3.22

Sigh.

 

All that was fresh, clever and endearing about 2020’s Stargirl, is missing in this ill-advised sequel.

 

Over twin Shirley Temples, Stargirl (Grace VanderWaal, right) tries to find out why
Roxanne Martel (Uma Thurman) abandoned the music scene so many years ago,
after the well-received release of her one and only album.

The title is apt, because Hollywood Stargirl is pure product: a cynical, coldly calculated triumph of commerce over art. Everything feels processed and artificial; the dialogue throughout is particularly contrived and false.

Sadly, this “packaging” particularly applies to Grace VanderWaal. Gone is the bubbly, fresh-faced, free-spirited and wholly natural 16-year-old who starred in the first film. She has been replaced by an overly poised and coifed runway model whose gamine look has been based on Jean Seberg’s appearance in 1960’s Breathless.

 

And, my goodness, the make-up. Way too much, particularly with the overdone Elizabeth Taylor/Cleopatra eyes. I cannot imagine what make-up supervisor Geno Freeman was thinking.

 

The result? VanderWaal has been transformed into another of the interchangeable Radio Disney bubble-gum poppettes. Her uniqueness is gone.

 

In fairness, costume designer Natalie O’Brien outfits VanderWaal in dozens of adorable and wildly colorful outfits, each cuter and more vividly imaginative than the last. (The Los Angeles Times logo T-shirt Stargirl wears, at one point, is a deliberate nod to the Herald Tribune logo shirt Seberg wore in Breathless.)

 

It must be said, though, that this young woman of modest means has a stunningly large wardrobe.

 

As for the story…

 

Absent the Jerry Spinelli novel on which the first film was based, scripters Jordan Horowitz and Julia Hart — the latter also directed — have reached back to early 1940s Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney musicals, with a soupçon of 1960’s Pollyanna thrown in. But instead of “Hey kids, let’s put on a show,” this 21st century version is “Hey kids, let’s make a movie!”

 

That isn’t a bad idea, in and of itself, but Hart and Horowitz aren’t able to make their handling of said plot the slightest bit credible.

The War with Grandpa: Scorched-earth tactics

The War with Grandpa (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated PG, for mild rude humor

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.9.20

Robert Kimmel Smith’s 1984 young reader’s novel is a parable about the perils of escalation, when a grieving widower moves in with his daughter’s family, forcing 10-year-old Peter to surrender his beloved bedroom and move into the attic.

 

Believing they've declared a truce during his young granddaughter's Christmas-themed
birthday party, Ed (Robert De Niro, right) offers a cookie to his grandson Peter
(Oakes Fegley).

The boy wants his room back.

 

The subsequent “declaration of war” involves gentle, low-level pranks, such as wrongly set alarm clocks and hidden slippers. Grandpa, initially distressed, reluctantly responds in kind; Peter’s toothbrush and schoolbooks go missing. Realizing that the situation threatens to escalate uncomfortably, Grandpa has a heart-to-heart with Peter, using Pearl Harbor to demonstrate that, ultimately, both sides lose in a war.

 

Although not entirely convinced, Peter orchestrates one more prank before realizing that he has, indeed, gone too far. He and Grandpa reconcile, put their heads together, and devise a win-win solution that pleases the entire family.

 

You won’t be surprised to learn that Hollywood “goes too far” with this big-screen adaptation, opening today at operational movie theaters. Director Tim Hill frequently yields to exaggerated slapstick, while scripters Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember have turned many of Smith’s mild-mannered characters into two-dimensional burlesques.

 

The result is an overly broad comedy that only barely retains the essential moral of Smith’s book.

 

Yes, Hill’s film is laugh-out-loud funny at times; more often than not, though, we’re dealing with the sort of destructive overkill that turned so many 1970s Disney comedies into eye-rolling disasters.

 

Ed (Robert De Niro) leaves his home reluctantly, not wanting to surrender his independence. The reference to his departed wife is retained via a brief, wistful glance at a photograph, and thereafter ceases to be a plot point. Ed joins the household containing his daughter Sally (Uma Thurman), her husband Arthur (Rob Riggle), and their three children: teenage daughter Mia (Laura Marano), Peter (Oakes Fegley) and 4-year-old Jennifer (Poppy Gagnon).

 

Ed is given Peter’s room; the latter is bumped upstairs, into the attic. (Mind you, every kid I knew — myself included — would have killed to have an attic room. But to each his own, I guess.) The situation might have remained stable, except that Peter is goaded into action against the “room robber” by his sixth-grade posse: Emma (T.J. McGibbon), Billy (Juliocesar Chavez) and Steve (Isaac Kragten).

 

Playing for Keeps: Toss it back

Playing for Keeps (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Former soccer star George Dryer, stalled in the well-worn rut of an arrested adolescent, can’t figure out what to be when he grows up.

The same can be said of this film.

An echo of happier times: Young Lewis (Noah Lomax, center) is delighted to see that
his divorced parents, Stacie (Jessica Biel) and George (Gerard Butler), still seem to
enjoy each other's company. And, yes, George definitely is trying to woo Stacie
back ... although she insists that would be a waste of time. 

Rarely have so many top-flight supporting actors been handed such poorly defined roles, and given nothing to do with them. Robbie Fox’s screenplay is a mess; even when the dialogue occasionally sparkles, and genuine chemistry ignites as it should in a romantic comedy, a moment’s thought reveals that logic and continuity are all over the map, if not absent entirely.

We probably shouldn’t expect more; Fox made his Hollywood rep in the early 1990s with low-low-lowbrow Mike Myers and Pauly Shore comedies such as So I Married an Axe Murderer and In the Army Now. Following the latter, Fox went off the grid for almost two decades until reappearing with Playing for Keeps.

Perhaps he should have waited longer, to further refine his craft.

In fairness, though, Fox can shoulder only part of the blame. Director Gabriele Muccino is equally at fault, bringing little to this party beyond some solid father/son scenes between Gerard Butler and Noah Lomax.

After establishing a solid reputation in his native Italy, with well-received rom-coms such as 2001’s The Last Kiss, Muccino made a splash in the States when he teamed with Will Smith for 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness. Their next project, however, was a ghastly miscalculation; Seven Pounds was the coal in 2008’s Christmas stocking, with its unsettling blend of fairy tale and real-world angst, all building to a thoroughly unpleasant conclusion that was intended to be uplifting.

Playing for Keeps has similar problems. We want to like these characters, and we’re clearly intended to ... but damn, it sure is difficult. Once again, Muccino’s desire for a sparkling holiday cracker — he seems to like releasing his films in December — has fizzled.