Leap Year: Leap of faith

Leap Year (2010) • View trailer for Leap Year
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for mild sensuality and milder profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.14.10
Buy DVD: Leap Year • Buy Blu-Ray: Leap Year [Blu-ray]


This film is a triumph of star talent over thin material and ham-fisted execution.

Honestly, whatever Amy Adams and Matthew Goode were paid for this limp romantic comedy, it wasn't enough. Absent their considerable charm and engaging chemistry, this tired flick wouldn't even rate release as a late-night cable original.

Every time Declan (Matthew Goode) ticks her off, or they miss one of their
travel connection -- both events sometimes occurring simultaneously -- Anna
(Amy Adams) petulantly hits the road again, rolling her Louis Vuitton suitcase
in her wake, like a misbehaving child. No matter how thin his patience wears,
Declan is too much a gentleman to let her trundle off alone, and so he follows
in her heel-clacking wake. True love must be just around the next corner, right?

But Adams, bless her heart, sparkles in every scene ... and Goode isn't far behind. Both embrace this predictable material as if it were as fresh as the Irish countryside, which offers its own radiance. The company filmed on location, and we're treated to stunning Irish vistas and picturesque countryside rambles in and around Dun Aengus, Wicklow, Dublin and — most impressively — the Aran Islands.

Too bad Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont's script can't live up to the scenery.

Worse, still, that Anand Tucker's direction — and most particularly Nick Moore's editing — don't even live up to the script.

Adams stars as perky Anna Brady, an "apartment stager" who has tired of waiting for longtime boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott, utterly unmemorable) to pop the question. Reminded of a family legend by her father (John Lithgow, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo), Anna decides to surprise Jeremy, who has flown to Dublin for a cardiologist convention, by following and proposing herself.

This is in accordance with the swooningly romantic Irish "leap year tradition" that "allows" women to take the lead.

(We'll skip the raised-eyebrow surprise at such a story emerging in the enlightened 21st century, as opposed to, say, the 1940s or '50s, when such a premise would have been much more appropriate. By now, I suspect women have been proposing to men for decades.)

Alas, bad weather forces Anna's plane into an emergency landing far short of Dublin, and she eventually winds up in a small-town Irish bar/hotel run by Declan (Goode), a mildly surly bloke who is quite amused by this prissy, displaced American. They eventually negotiate a fee for his driving her to Dublin, and set off on a road journey destined to be fraught with complications and missed connections, some of them far more contrived than funny.

Indeed, this film's early scenes are clumsy enough to be off-putting. Anna's attempt to re-charge her BlackBerry, late the first night, would have been amusing enough when an ill-fitting charger blows the power grid in this entire hamlet; was it absolutely necessary for her to trash her room as well, by blundering about like a bull in a china shop?

The Young Victoria: Vivat regina!

The Young Victoria (2009) • View trailer for The Young Victoria
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for brief violence and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.8.10
Buy DVD: The Young Victoria • Buy Blu-Ray: The Young Victoria [Blu-ray]


If Jane Austen had written a factual novel about Queen Victoria's early years, it likely would have sounded much like The Young Victoria.

No surprise there: Screenwriter Julian Fellowes won a well-deserved Academy Award for his sly 2001 pastiche, Gosford Park, which felt like an impossible dream collaboration between Austen and Agatha Christie. Fellowes has a knack for meticulously interlaced ensemble drama and the delectable, tart-tongued dialogue that Austen employed so well.

Recently married and still working out how to behave with each other, Prince
Albert (Rupert Friend) and Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) must set aside the
injured pride of a recent quarrel while making a necessary public appearance.

Fresh evidence is on hand in director Jean-Marc Vallee's tantalizing Young Victoria, which also benefits from Emily Blunt's accomplished and carefully layered starring performance.

Queen Victoria reigned for a jaw-dropping 64 years, from 1837 to 1901, during which time — as the saying goes -— the sun never set on the British empire. She championed the arts, ignored the customary aristocratic arrogance and developed relations with "the riff-raff" (read: ordinary citizens), and kept her nation stable during a time of great industrial and economic change.

We can well imagine that this grande dame might have looked and sounded like Blunt's portrayal here, because one thing is obvious: From a young age, Victoria had to have been quite waspish with those making meddlesome attempts to usurp her birthright. History proves this, because otherwise she likely never would have retained the royal power necessary to back up the authority of her crown.

Vallee's film is tightly compressed, detailing — as its title suggests — Victoria's life and career from just prior to her 17th birthday, to shortly after her initially tempestuous but eventually highly successful marriage to Prince Albert. Fellowes' focus concerns Victoria's need to retain, understand and consolidate her power, and the point at which — not that many years later — it becomes clear that she'll successfully do so.

And yes, those who've not recently dipped into a history book may be vexed by the spoiler unleashed in the previous paragraph, since this film teases us with respect to whether Victoria will succumb to the much more flamboyantly dashing advances of Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany), who becomes her first prime minister and, for a time, sole advisor.

But c'mon, folks; the London landmark is the Royal Albert Hall, not the Royal Melbourne Hall!

Up in the Air: Rarefied air

Up in the Air (2009) • View trailer for Up in the Air
4.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, sensuality and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.7.10
Buy Blu-Ray: Up in the Air [Blu-ray]


When Columbia Pictures released The China Syndrome on March 16, 1979, just 12 days before Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island turned fiction into uncomfortable fact, more than a few editorials discussed this unsettling convergence of art and real-world events.

Pure coincidence, of course, given the several years required to get any film from concept to screen. But there's no denying the degree to which The China Syndrome subsequently tapped into the late 1970s Zeitgeist and general paranoia concerning nuclear power plants. Indeed, the film quite probably had far too much influence — to this day — on subsequent political decisions made regarding the nuclear power industry.

After watching Natalie (Anna Kendrick) struggle to maneuver her old-fashioned
suitcase -- which isn't even that large -- Ryan (George Clooney) buys her a
more efficient bag, like his, and brutally instructs her in the "proper" way of
packing. No surprise: She resents this...

Similarly, 1999's American Beauty truly caught the mood of that decade, with screenwriter Alan Ball exploiting his gift for slightly exaggerated truth to denounce our corrupt, overly materialistic and unwholesomely narcissistic society, as viewed with growing clarity by one man doing his best to escape it. Director Sam Mendes' film became the mirror in which we viewed ourselves, as the millennium approached, and the reflection wasn't terribly inspiring.

Art sometimes speaks to us, as a nation, on a level that far exceeds its creators' wildest expectations. It's lightning in a bottle: You can't plan or design it. Coincidence frequently plays a role, as if God — or your supreme being of choice — occasionally likes to look down and go boogah-boogah-boogah.

Jason Reitman's Up in the Air — collaboratively scripted with Sheldon Turner, and adapted from Walter Kirn's novel — is such a stunningly accurate commentary on Where We Are Right Now, that it's positively spooky.

It's not merely a function of putting faces to the down-sizing epidemic that has booted so many people from their jobs, although that's part of the well-seasoned recipe that makes this film so thought-provoking. Far more relevant is this script's savage indictment of the illusion of "contact" that we have via cell phones, e-mail, texting, tweeting and whatever else arrives in the next five minutes: technological substitutes for actual human interaction.

"People don't look each other in the eye much anymore," Reitman comments, in his film's press notes, "and we have fewer relationships."

This is not a good thing.

The phenomenon is all around us, the trend increasingly disturbing. How many friends and family members skipped traditional holiday greeting cards this year, for the "easier" — read: less personal — option of group e-mail?

You won't get any warm fuzzies by hanging the paper print-out of an e-mail over the fireplace.

And here's the limit, at least at our home: We received a card from friends — who grudgingly get points for that much — that had no message inside, beyond a Web address where we could find their "holiday greeting" to all. (Yeah, we'll get right on that.)

But I digress...

Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakquel: Nuts to 'em!

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009) • View trailer for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.09
Buy DVD: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel • Buy Blu-Ray: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel [Blu-ray]

The law of diminishing returns caught up with the chipmunks.

I call it the Home Alone syndrome, although numerous older examples also exist. A film — generally a comedy — takes the world by storm, so of course the studio rushes a sequel into production. Corporate wonks — who get paid far too much for mistakes of this nature — "analyze" the original picture and conclude that the public was most captivated by the element easiest the quantify and reproduce: the slapstick nonsense.

Although initially delighted to be sent to the school where Alvin and his two
brothers already have become celebrities, gal chipmunks Jeanette, Brittany and
Eleanor eventually are persuaded -- by the villain of this piece -- that their idols
are self-centered jerks. Fortunately, a budding romance between Eleanor and
Theodore evokes a thawing in affairs, just in time for a triumphant musical
climax. Too bad the rest of the film isn't nearly as endearing...

And so the sequel is nothing but slapstick nonsense.

But if you examine Home Alone carefully, you'll notice ample evidence of the film's heart, as young Kevin struggles to cope with having been abandoned, while also attempting to retain some semblance of the Christmas spirit. The pratfall-laden invasion by the burglars doesn't arrive until the very end, and it's actually that much funnier because we've grown to truly care about the little boy they're attacking.

Home Alone 2, in great contrast, skips the character development and goes straight for the stupid stuff. Result: bad sequel.

2007's Alvin and the Chipmunks — no classic to begin with — at least benefited from a script that attempted actual poignance, most of it deriving from the vulnerable Theodore, whose insecurities helped Dave Seville (Jason Lee) find his inner responsible self.

(And yes, I know how silly that previous sentence sounds. Work with me here.)

As a sidebar, we also had Dave's long-stalled efforts to become a successful songwriter, and his goofily endearing attempt to ignite a relationship with the kind-hearted hottie who lived in his adorable apartment complex. These elements complemented and offset the self-centered Alvin's frequent lapses in judgment, not to mention the bad behavior that wreaked havoc within Dave's apartment.

And, most important, we had a villain — music mogul Ian (David Cross) — who represented a genuinely sinister threat: a greedy, manipulative swine who may as well have worn a Snidely Whiplash mustache.

Sigh.

Flash-forward two years, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel has made every mistake possible; it's almost as if somebody maintained a checklist of what went wrong with Home Alone 2 and reproduced it.

Sherlock Holmes: The game's afoot!

Sherlock Holmes (2009) • View trailer for Sherlock Holmes
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity and brief sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.30.09
Buy DVD: Sherlock Holmes • Buy Blu-Ray: Sherlock Holmes [Blu-ray]

Arthur Conan Doyle purists likely will sputter and take solace in the canonical 56 short stories and four novels, while more aggressive members of various Baker Street Irregulars societies will pen waspish editorials in their newsletters, but that won't change the facts: Director Guy Ritchie's audacious re-imagining of the world's most famous consulting detective is impressively realized.

And a lot of fun.

Watson (Jude Law, left) and Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.), relaxing in their digs
at 221 B Baker Street, ponder a particularly devilish detail in a case that grows
weirder -- and possibly more supernatural -- by the day.

Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes — with a stylish original script by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, Simon Kinberg and Lionel Wigram — isn't even close to being the most outré send-up of Holmes and his faithful companion, Dr. Watson; half a dozen earlier projects could vie for that title (my vote for the most wretched being the 1977 Dudley Moore/Peter Cook version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, easily one of the worst movies ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public).

Ritchie is, it therefore must be said, being pilloried both unnecessarily and unfairly. True, this new Sherlock Holmes owes much to co-producer Joel Silver's bombastic, testosterone-fueled school of filmmaking; the frequent bouts of fisticuffs border on the bone-shattering absurd, and at least one of the more vicious death-traps seems to have escaped from the Saw horror franchise.

But the sense and mood of Doyle's brooding detective, along with his environment, are spot-on. Production designer Sarah Greenwood (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) has done a phenomenal job of re-creating Victorian London, albeit with considerable assistance from the special-effects team that — as just one example — fills the Thames with meticulously authentic 19th century water craft.

Elsewhere, the half-constructed Tower Bridge looms with exposed steel frames and wooden walkways across that same mighty river: an imposing set piece that we just know will figure prominently in this story's climax.

Holmes' cluttered lodgings at 221 B Baker Street are brought to life with similar fidelity to Doyle's original vision. While I couldn't spot the detective's correspondence stuck to the fireplace mantel with an oversized knife, I did note the glass-covered hive of bees, phrenology charts, anatomical drawings, chemical retorts and sagging piles of dog-eared books and scattered newspapers.

And if Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes combats the frustration of boredom with bare-knuckle boxing, as opposed to a seven-percent solution of cocaine, that seems a minor quibble; either way, the man remains the cheerful misogynist and raging manic depressive that we all know and love.

Indeed, Downey's mesmerizing performance — his coldly analytical approach to any conundrum, his wild mood swings, his foolhardy tendency to charge where angels would fear to tread — ranks as one of cinema's most authentic portrayals of Doyle's famed detective.

It's Complicated: Is it too complicated?

It's Complicated (2009) • View trailer for It's Complicated
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for drug content and frank sexual dialogue
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.09
Buy DVD: It's Complicated • Buy Blu-Ray: It's Complicated [Blu-ray]

Eyebrows are likely to lift, not far into It's Complicated, when Meryl Streep's Jane Adler speaks wistfully of a home remodel that finally will give her "the kitchen she's always dreamed of" ... a statement she makes while standing in a kitchen most of us would kill for, in a luxurious and rambling country home that resembles a presidential summer retreat.

Yes, writer/director Nancy Meyers' film is another one of those romantic comedies that we all can identify with so easily, since it involves only White People With More Money Than God. You'll not find a single African-American, Latino or Asian face in this entire picture, which makes it a rather curious throwback to the lavish Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers dance films of the 1930s.

Jake (Alec Baldwin, center right) and his much younger second wife, Agness
(Lake Bell, far right), are quite amused by the enthusiasm that Jane (Meryl
Streep) and Adam (Steve Martin) have brought to a party. But these giddy high
spirits aren't self-induced; Jane and Adam rather naughtily split a joint before
entering the room, in an effort to "take the edge off." They succeed...

Those pictures were intended to take audiences away, if only for a few hours, from the grim realities of the real-world Depression; to a degree, the ploy was successful. Funny thing, though; my reaction to It's Complicated and its financial largess involves far more irritation than capricious wish-fulfillment.

Jane apparently gets her bottomless bank account from her thriving bakery/restaurant, always packed to the gills even in these discouraging times. And while we can assume that ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin), a successful attorney, ponied up a substantial settlement during contentious divorce proceedings, many years ago, I'm still not sure this would justify such a house in tony Santa Barbara.

Such issues make Meyers' film feel oddly retro, as if it hopped a time machine from Hollywood's Golden Age. The core premise — divorcée embarks on a hot affair with her ex — has the potential for the sort of screwball comedy riffs delivered so well by the likes of Cary Grant and Irene Dunn, back in the day. (Appropriately enhanced by 21st century smutty dialogue, of course.)

But the "complicated" part of this film — the genuine pain and angst the affair brings both to its primary protagonists and a gaggle of secondary characters, notably Jane and Jake's three adult children — feels far more European. Indeed, at one point Jake even comments that he finds the situation "very French."

These two moods — American screwball comedy and sophisticated French sex farce — don't really mesh all that well. As a result, the film feels a bit "off" and unbalanced, although you may be at pains to identify the primary source of your dissatisfaction, upon exiting the theater.

On the other hand, Streep and Baldwin — ably supported by Steve Martin and John Krasinski — embrace this uneven material with the persuasive conviction we'd expect from top-flight stage actors in a production of King Lear. The cast is far superior to Meyers' screenplay, and this likely will make It's Complicated far more popular than it deserves to be.