Elemental: Burns brightly

Elemental (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.16.23

Pixar’s new fantasy is just as sneakily subversive as 2015’s Inside Out.

 

I continue to be impressed by the way the animation studio’s writers — in this case, Peter Sohn, John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh — work so much real-world relevance into their wildly imaginative stories. On top of which, the strong note of “working hard to get along” is sorely needed these days.

 

While watery Wade looks on happily, fiery Ember does her best to handle his mother
Brook's effusive greeting.

Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis) is a second-generation transplant to the metropolis of Element City, a realm of Fire-, Water-, Air- and Earth-residents. Her parents — Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) — left their native Fireland decades ago, in order to grant their daughter a better life. They arrived with little more than a blue flame representing their heritage, and worked hard to turn their new shop, Fireplace, into a popular success.

Bernie is nearing retirement age, and has long promised that Ember will inherit the family business. Unfortunately, the impatient and (ahem) hot-headed young woman has an explosive temper that isn’t conducive to customer interactions.

 

Some structural mishaps bring their shop to the attention of city inspector Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), a Water guy who takes his job seriously. That said, such responsibilities frequently conflict with his compassionate nature; issuing tickets often makes him burst into tears.

 

(“He’s the type of character that’ll cry at a diaper commercial,” notes director Peter Sohn.)

 

Circumstances — and a citywide mystery — force Ember and Wade together, despite the danger that they pose to each other. And while their slowly developing relationship mirrors countless romantic comedies that begin with an oil-and-vinegar couple, the writers here have far more on their minds.

 

Wade is as laid back and gentle as Ember is uptight and passionate. But Wade also is a perceptive listener: a “mirror character” who allows Ember to see herself better. This is crucial, because she has long suppressed a talented artistic side. Truth be told, she doesn’t really want to take over the family business … but she also doesn’t want to disrespect her old-school parents.

 

What’s a loving daughter to do?

 

Yep, we once again have the push/pull that finds a young adult caught between personal ambition — a desire to blaze one’s own trail — and parental expectations. This is handled poignantly, and with gentle good humor; the same is true of the parallel narrative that finds Ember and Wade struggling to look beyond their (blatantly obvious) surface differences, to forge a bond.

 

Hello, My Name Is Doris: A woman worth knowing

Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.1.16

Sally Field remains cute as a bug: as personable and effervescent as she was back in 1965, when she debuted as television’s Gidget.

Decked out in a wildly inappropriate, hot-neon-yellow '80s-era jumpsuit in order to "fit in"
with the modern millennial nightclub crowd, Doris (Sally Field, center) does her best to
impress John (Max Greenfield, third from left) and the rest of their hipster entourage.

The difference, all these years later, is that she also has matured into a deceptively powerful actress. Too many people take the bubbly exterior for granted — the signature cheerfulness — and then act surprised when Field unleashes impressive layers of pathos or expressive intensity.

We shouldn’t be surprised; her dramatic chops have been well established ever since Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, and subsequently well exercised in Steel Magnolias, a well-remembered guest appearance on TV’s E.R., and 2013’s Oscar-nominated supporting role in Lincoln.

Given the right material, Field can be a force of nature ... and Hello, My Name Is Doris definitely is the right material.

Director Michael Showalter’s bittersweet dramedy has been expanded from Doris and the Intern, an 8-minute short by then film student Laura Terruso, who shared her work with Showalter while he was teaching at her alma mater, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Obviously impressed, he and Terruso began a scripting collaboration that has resulted in this feature film: a clever and sensitive expansion of what began as little more than a droll comedy.

(Terruso’s short is readily available for online viewing: an opportunity I strongly encourage ... but only after you’ve seen this feature.)

We meet Doris Miller (Field), a “woman of a certain age,” during her all-time worst personal crisis. Her mother has just died, after having been “monitored” full-time by Doris, who put her own life on hold in the process. We get hints that Mom was something of a shut-in with a “clutter habit,” both traits having been absorbed, more or less, by Doris.

With Mom barely in the grave, Doris’ insensitive brother Todd (Stephen Root) and his mean-spirited wife Cynthia (Wendi McLendon-Covey, the pluperfect shrew) are anxious for Doris to sell the Staten Island house in which she was raised, and has spent all that effort as a full-time caregiver. Todd and Cynthia wish to reap the financial windfall.

Doris panics at the thought: What Cynthia dismisses as the home’s mountains of junk, Doris regards as a “museum” of accumulated memories shared with her late mother. As with most hoarders, Doris simply refuses to acknowledge any sort of problem.

More to the point, she’s suddenly adrift — answerable to nobody but herself — and utterly baffled by how to put that first self-indulgent foot forward.

Blended: Pulverized

Blended (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for crude content, sexual candor and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

A modest but fairly decent romantic comedy lurks somewhere within the clumsy, bloated mess of this movie, but it’s damn hard to find.

Years removed from the dating scene, Jim (Adam Sandler) sets up a blind date with
Lauren (Drew Barrymore) at the local Hooters. First impressions aren't so hot; second
impressions are even worse. So, naturally, these two will be seeing a lot more of each
other. Because, otherwise, we wouldn't have a movie (not necessarily a bad thing).

As often has been the case with Adam Sandler’s recent films, the actor seems at war with his own conflicting sensibilities: a perceived need to reward fans who expect the vulgar, gross-out slapstick of his early career; and an honest desire to veer toward gentler, family-friendly material.

The results can be awkward, to say the least, as we’ve already seen in his two Grown Ups entries, each of which tried for aw-shucks, feel-good moments that simply didn’t gel with the sexist, moronic “humor” targeted more specifically at arrested adolescent males.

You’ll find the same unwieldy mix in Blended, Sandler’s third — and least satisfying — pairing with co-star Drew Barrymore. I can’t help wondering if Sandler views Barrymore as his lucky token, given that their first collaboration, 1998’s The Wedding Singer, remains one of his most satisfying films. (Mind you, we’re still not talking Shakespeare; a “superior” Sandler comedy doesn’t raise the bar very high.)

Their sophomore team-up — 2004’s 50 First Dates — wasn’t quite as successful, but its virtues still overshadowed the coarse and tasteless elements that by then had become a stronger part of Sandler’s oeuvre.

All of which brings us to Blended, which can be viewed as something of a cinematic Hail Mary play, coming in the wake of gawdawful bombs such as Jack and Jill and That’s My Boy. (Frankly, Sandler’s only truly entertaining movie of late was HotelTransylvania, and it starred only his voice.) Unfortunately, Blended is yet another flick that doesn’t know what it wants to be, when it grows up: a flaw directly attributed to the haphazard script from Ivan Menchell and Clare Sera, making inept big-screen writing debuts.

The results are all over the map, and director Frank Coraci doesn’t help much. Although he helmed the aforementioned Wedding Singer, more recently he has been responsible for the numb-nuts Kevin James comedies Zookeeper and Here Comes the Boom. So let’s just say that Coraci’s tendencies aren’t likely to support any of Sandler’s efforts to channel his kinder, gentler self.