Why Him? — Why bother?

Why Him? (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for sexual candor, vulgarity and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang

A modest holiday-themed comedy lurks in the bowels of this wildly uneven movie, but it doesn’t escape very often.

Stephanie (Zoey Deutch, left) is more than a little nervous while introducing boyfriend
Laird (James Franco) to her family: from left, parents Ned (Bryan Cranston) and Barb
(Megan Mullally), and younger brother Scotty (Griffin Gluck).

As has become typical of far too much of today’s “lighter” fare, this flick’s infrequent delights — the story credited to Jonah Hill, John Hamburg and Ian Helfer — are buried beneath an avalanche of profanity and vulgarity.

But that’s clearly a generation gap in the classic sense, very much like the behavioral impasse that separates the characters played here by Bryan Cranston and James Franco. The juvenile, foul-mouthed conduct that prompts long-suffering sighs from many (likely older) viewers, is embraced gleefully by the intended target audience (likely millennials).

And so it goes.

In fairness, director John Hamburg draws quite a few genuine laughs throughout his film, thanks mostly to Cranston’s masterful comic timing. He handles long-suffering and put-upon with hilarious panache, as he demonstrated during his numerous seasons on television’s Malcolm in the Middle (before becoming a “serious actor” in big-screen projects).

Why Him? is a comic homecoming for Cranston, and he maximizes the project’s potential. Not since Father of the Bride’s Steve Martin — or Spencer Tracy, depending on one’s preference — has a Dad become so flummoxed over his daughter’s transition to full independence.

Granted, poor Ned Fleming (Cranston) has a lot more to process.

A web-cam 55th birthday greeting from daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) — completing college courses in California, far from her Michigan home town — is marred by the revelation that she has a guy in her life: the hitherto undisclosed Laird Mayhew (Franco), who bursts into Stephanie’s apartment and proceeds to strip.

Laird’s spontaneous disrobing notwithstanding, the presence of a boyfriend isn’t a shock per se; after all, Stephanie is a responsible, self-sufficient 22 years old. But the fact that Ned and wife Barb (Megan Mullally) haven’t heard about this fellow is a bit distressing, particularly since Ned has long enjoyed a mutually close relationship with his only daughter.

Wanting to make up for this gaffe, Stephanie invites her family to Palo Alto for the impending Christmas weekend, so that everybody — which includes her 15-year-old brother Scotty (Griffin Gluck) — can “get acquainted.” This seems a reasonable olive branch, until Ned, Barb and Scotty actually meet Laird.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: Modest but enjoyable

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang

Kid-oriented family films seem an endangered species these days, because too many Hollywood execs confuse “sweet” with “stupid.” Most so-called family comedies succumb to the sort of wretched excess and mindless slapstick that very nearly destroyed the Disney studio, back in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

Alexander (Ed Oxenbould, foreground left) and his family — from left, Anthony (Dylan
Minnette), Emily (Kerris Dorsey), Ben (Steve Carell), Kelly (Jennifer Garner) and Baby
Trevor — react to the newest calamity during a ghastly day laden with crises.

It really is true: In Hollywood, as everywhere else, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

On top of which, the core premise is flawed: Family films need not rely on the massive destruction of personal property, or on adults made to look inane while in the presence of obnoxious and overly precocious brats. Nor is it necessary to slide into icky sentimentality while delivering a few mellow truths.

Some filmmakers understand this, with the recent trilogy drawn from Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid books being a prominent example. They carefully maneuvered the fine line between genuine humor and dumb farce, between heartfelt emotion and slushy schmaltz.

Director Miguel Arteta and scripter Rob Lieber also get the proper mix, with their big-screen adaptation of Judith Viorst’s popular children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Full disclosure dictates, however, the acknowledgment that this film shares absolutely nothing with Viorst’s book, aside from its title and core premise. Former kids who remember having the book read aloud to them, back when it was published in 1972, are apt to wonder what the heck happened to their favorite story. And the parents doing the reading are certain to be just as surprised.

Granted, it’s not possible to make a feature-length film from a 32-page picture book; some expansion was essential. But you have to wonder why Lieber messed with details such as Alexander’s two older brothers, who in this film morph into an older brother and sister, along with a bonus infant brother. Part of the original Alexander’s bad day concerned the belittling behavior of his jerky older siblings, whereas Arteta and Lieber go out of their way to emphasize harmony and mutual respect between all members of the Cooper family.

So, okay; that’s a reasonable alternate approach, and it better sets up the calamities that erupt in this very bad day.

To elaborate:

This particular Alexander (Ed Oxenbould, perhaps remembered from the TV series Puberty Blues) endures his personal bad day as something of a prologue, on the day before his 12th birthday. It begins when he wakes up with chewing gum in his hair, and climaxes with a catastrophe in the school science lab, thanks to his efforts to flirt with the girl of his dreams (Sidney Fullmer, appropriately adorable as Becky).

The Kings of Summer: This film rules!

The Kings of Summer (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, and rather harshly, for occasional profanity and teen drinking
By Derrick Bang

This is why I love my job.

The Kings of Summer marks an impressive feature debut for director Joran Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta, the latter with nothing more to his credit than a brief 2005 stint as a production staff member for The Late Show with David Letterman. Vogt-Roberts’ résumé includes several shorts and a lot of TV series work, the latter suggesting the hilariously snarky mind set on ample display in this film.

Having more or less completed their new home away from home, our three young
renegades — from left, Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and Biaggio (Moises
Arias) — contemplate the next challenge: putting food on the table. That'll prove far
more difficult than anticipated, since they've no experience with traps, lures, bare-handed
fishing or any other woodsian skills.

Actually, calling this picture “impressive” isn’t nearly strong enough. It’s a sure-fire audience pleaser: one of those so-called “little films” — like Little Miss Sunshine or Juno — guaranteed to take off like a rocket, once word gets out. This year’s enthusiastic Sundance Festival audience certainly thought so, granting a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize (not won, alas).

As a collaborative team, Vogt-Roberts and Galletta demonstrate a striking degree of creative synch; the latter’s dialogue sounds just right coming from the naturalistic ensemble cast, granting a level of verisimilitude that makes these characters feel like the folks next door.

Allowing, that is, for a left-of-center gaggle of eccentrics commonly found in films by Wes Anderson or the Coen Brothers. But I mean that in the gentlest way: However funny the lines, however warped some of the emotional behavior by sidebar adults, this is — first and foremost — an intimate coming-of-age saga.

In the truest sense of the old cliché, we laugh with our young protagonists, not at them.

The contemporary setting is a smallish town in Northeast Ohio, the sort of all-American community that typifies such narratives. Best friends Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) are strongly bonded, in part, by their inability to cope with utterly impossible parents.

Joe’s father, Frank (Nick Offerman), hasn’t yet recovered from his wife’s untimely death, years earlier. He has become bitter, condescending and imperious: a combination that doesn’t blend well with a teenage son’s instinctive rebelliousness. Joe’s favorite method of revenge, when sufficiently annoyed, is to summon the local law — personified by the competent Capt. Davis (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and her absolutely useless rookie companion (Thomas Middleditch) — on some trumped-up accusation.

Frank responds to such hijinks the way he deals with everybody: angry sarcasm delivered by Offerman with a relentlessly straight face ... which, of course, makes every bile-fueled line that much funnier. (And they’re pretty funny to begin with.)

Joe’s older sister, Heather (Alison Brie), fled the tension-laced home awhile back, although she still visits. That speaks well of the young woman; her choice of male companions, however, does not. Colin (Eugene Cordero) is a misfit who’s as oblivious to social cues, as he is to the fact that Frank constantly winds him up.

In this case, we can hardly blame Frank; Colin’s much too easy a target. Which Heather is aware of, and Brie’s face is an amusing study in conflict: clearly annoyed by her loutish father, but equally embarrassed by her clueless boyfriend.