Dolittle: Animal crackers

Dolittle (2020) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.17.20

Hollywood had a distressing habit, in the 1960s and early ’70s, of turning classic children’s books into musicals.

Having joined the unlikely crew of a ship heading for an island that never has been found,
young Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) is befriended by a frigophobic polar bear (named
Yoshi) and an uncharacteristically meek mountain gorilla (Chee-Chee).

This lamentable trend started with 1964’s Mary Poppins, which — by becoming that year’s third most popular film — lit the fuse on what followed. Subsequent entries, most with positively dire songs, included 1968’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (as 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and — I positively shudder — 1973’s Tom Sawyer.

Not to be left out, animated examples included 1966’s Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, 1970’s The Phantom Tollbooth and 1973’s Charlotte’s Web.

Every one of which, without exception, destroyed the gentle tone so carefully wrought by the authors of the respective books. A few of these films may have been popular — most were just this side of awful — but many loyal young readers felt utterly betrayed, with ample justification. Hollywood didn’t “get” children’s literature any better than it understood the decade’s counter-culture revolution.

All of which brings us to 1967’s Doctor Dolittle, arguably one of the worst offenders. Rex Harrison may have been suitably refined and British in the title role — albeit much too old — but the film is a bloated, over-produced train wreck that pleased nobody, but nonetheless pulled nine Academy Award nominations (including, the mind doth boggle, Best Picture) … only because 20th Century Fox bought votes by serving fancy buffet dinners, cocktails and bottomless champagne at all pre-nomination screenings.

(The ploy succeeded, if only partially. The film won two Oscars — Special Effects and Song — the latter robbing Bacharach/David’s vastly superior “The Look of Love” from its rightful statuette.)

Harrison turned British author Hugh Lofting’s quiet bachelor veterinarian, who operates a clinic in the small village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, into a creaky song-and-dance man. Eddie Murphy made him a wise-cracking animal rights advocate in a 1998 comedy that borrowed little but the title and premise of Lofting’s books.

Robert Downey Jr., in turn, has turned Dolittle into a superhero.

Brad's Status: On life-support

Brad's Status (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang

Inevitability is the death of drama.

Ten minutes into Brad’s Status, it’s blindingly obvious where writer/director Mike White will take his story, and precisely how he’ll get there.

Brad (Ben Stiller, right) and his son, Troy (Austin Abrams), time their visit to Harvard so
they can catch a classical music concert by one of the latter's former high school friends.

And that journey is pretty damn dull.

Mind you, the premise would have been a tough sell, even under more optimal circumstances. A middle-class, mid-life crisis feels unpalatably narcissistic these days, and casting Ben Stiller in such a project is way too on the nose. Much of his career has involved playing self-absorbed mopes, and this story’s Brad Sloan finds Stiller treading his own well-worn ground.

A 101-minute self-pity party isn’t my idea of a good time. Particularly when White’s plot bumps are so predictable.

Brad and his wife Melanie (Jenna Fischer) lead comfortable lives in suburban Sacramento; he runs a nonprofit that matches worthy causes with like-minded angel investors, while she pulls in “real money” with a government job. Their 17-year-old only child Troy (Austin Abrams) is college-bound, prompting a father/son trip across the country, to check out the universities likely to extend offers on the basis of the lad’s strong transcript and solid extracurriculars.

It’s a milestone event for Brad, which triggers all sorts of memories, long-buried desires and Big Questions. Am I successful? Have I done everything in life, that my impassioned, idealistic college-age self intended?

Trouble is, White saddles Brad with some rather insensitive dialogue right off the bat, during the sleepless night before the trip, in the form of a financially themed chat with the patiently exhausted Melanie. Right away, we don’t like Brad. He sounds and behaves like a whiny jerk, and Stiller never does much to change that snap judgment.

Which is a problem, because we’re definitely supposed to identify — even sympathize — with this guy. That’s an uphill struggle, likely impossible for some.

Matters aren’t helped when Brad constantly shares his innermost thoughts, via a constant sulky voice-over. I’ve long found unrelenting off-camera narration a potential red flag in cinematic storytelling; very few writers and directors know how to use it properly. White isn’t one of them; the technique merely slows his already dull fill to a lifeless crawl.

Passengers: A bumpy ride

Passengers (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, sexuality and brief chaste nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.23.16

Science-fiction authors figured this out a long time ago: Trans-galaxy “sleeper ships” need functioning human crew members — in some cases, generations of same — in order to handle the dire emergencies that inevitably occur.

Trying to make the most of a bad situation that seems likely to last for the rest of their
lives, Jim (Chris Pratt, center) and Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) briefly distract
themselves by chatting with an amiable android bartender (Michael Sheen).

That said, and given a current corporate climate that values human life on a par with plumbing fixtures, I’m willing to believe that a huge colony transport would be sent to its light-years-distant destination with 5,000-plus hibernating passengers, monitored solely by ship-wide computers. Cost-efficiency, y’know. Don’t want to waste all the money and resources necessary to feed and house attentive crewmembers.

Passengers is an old-style sci-fi pulp adventure constructed with top-drawer, 21st century movie-making pizzazz. The latter does its best to obscure the hoary melodramatic clichés that run rampant through Jon Spaihts’ original screenplay; for the most part director Morten Tyldum delivers an engaging outer space escapade, with enough momentum to keep viewers entertained.

That’s assuming we can forgive an eye-rolling climax on par with Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, back in the days of TV’s original Star Trek, shouting “Ya canna change the laws of physics ... she’s gonna blow!”

Actually, that’s the lesser of the two key issues that must be overcome in Spaihts’ script. The first is a major plot point, and a deliberate moment of character development; based on the reactions from Monday evening’s preview audience, some viewers won’t be able to get past the moment in question.

All of which I hint at with deliberate vagueness; this film builds suspense by slowly teasing its various revelations.

Our first glimpse of the space-bound Avalon is appropriately awesome, the huge ship’s rotating drive system and passenger quarters protected by a forward-mounted shield array, slowly crossing the screen in an introductory scene that evokes fond memories of the similar first view of the Discovery, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Visual effects gurus Erik Nordby and Greg Baxter have fabricated a golly-gosh magnificent vessel: equal parts opulent luxury liner and bad-ass interstellar convoy craft.

The autonomous shields precisely deflect all stray space debris, until — giving us barely enough time to absorb the vessel’s splendor — encountering an asteroid field surrounding a daunting, moon-sized body. The shields hold, but the impact nonetheless resonates.

Far from the Madding Crowd: Frequently maddening

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and needlessly, for mild sensuality and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.15.15

This has been obvious for (literally) centuries, but it bears repeating: Thomas Hardy was no Jane Austen.

Although Bathsheba (Cary Mulligan) knows that Gabriel (Matthias Schoenaerts) loves her,
she's too independent and stubborn to acknowledge that she quite likely feels the same.
Sadly, such innocence in matters of the heart is about to make her vulnerable to another
potential suitor: one who's far less honorable.

Although Far from the Madding Crowd — his fourth novel, and the one that brought him fame — paints a lovingly descriptive portrait of the rolling, rugged countryside of 19th century Southwest England, with the inflexible class divide that we’ve come to expect from the period, Hardy fails utterly in his novel’s most important task: the creation of a sympathetic protagonist.

Director Thomas Vinterberg and star Carey Mulligan do their very best, in this newest film adaptation of Hardy’s novel. In appearance, spirit and resourcefulness, her handling of Bathsheba Everdene positively sparkles: an effervescent young woman who’d be the center of attention at any social gathering, warding off the advances of countless suitors.

Mulligan is adorable. Her radiant smile is granted additional intensity by a mischievous glint in her eyes, and her nose crinkles in a particularly endearing way when that smile blossoms into a delightful grin that hints at the promise of ... something.

But that’s the problem: Bathsheba is all coy suggestion, with no delivery. Her behavior is to be excused, in Hardy’s view, by her innocence; the parentless upbringing that fueled her pride and grit — and most particularly a determination to prove that a woman can go it alone, despite the era’s disparagement of single women — also left her clueless in kinder social graces such as diplomacy, tact and sensitivity.

By surface appearance, we can’t help admiring Bathsheba. By her actions ... well, that’s another matter indeed.

Part of the problem, of course, is the widening gap that separates our 21st century sensibilities from this novel’s 1874 publication date, with all that entailed. During the past 50 years in particular — since this book’s best-known 1967 adaptation by director John Schlesinger, with Julie Christie handling the title role — we’ve grown less tolerant of a 19th century male author’s clumsy attempt at a female protagonist, and far more impressed by Austen’s progressive 18th century creation of (to us) much more interesting heroines.

Admission: Not quite top marks

Admission (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for occasional profanity and mild sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Paul Weitz obviously courts variety; his writing and directing résumé includes everything from dumb comedy (American Pie, Little Fockers) and impudent horror (Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant) to the heartfelt relationship dramedy of About a Boy.

Admissions officer Portia (Tina Fey) can't understand why John (Paul Rudd, right) is so
enthusiastic about getting Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) into Princeton; as far as she can tell,
this young man — although certainly personable — just isn't university material, let
alone Princeton material. But she's about to learn a detail that will seriously
compromise her objectivity.

His newest film, Admission, belongs in the latter’s company; its frequently whimsical, romantic-comedy trappings are blended with some sharp social commentary about the lengths to which parents and students will go, to ensure entry to an appropriately prestigious university.

That’s a delicate balance to maintain, and for the most part scripter Karen Croner succeeds; we’re never quite sure whether it’s appropriate to root for what the central characters seem to want, in this adaptation of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s perceptive novel. Even well-motivated actions have unfortunate consequences, and one’s past has a way of revealing that an apparently “comfortable” life may be little more than a façade.

Admission also is a big-screen starring vehicle for Tiny Fey, who needs a solid next step in a career that has been dominated, until recently, by her all-consuming involvement with television’s 30 Rock. Fey is smart, savvy and sharp: an all-around talent who hasn’t always been served well by her occasional trips to the big screen. She was ill-used in trivial fluff such as Date Night and The Invention of Lying, and her more successful presence in Baby Mama had just as much to do with co-star (and frequent cohort) Amy Poehler.

In a nutshell, then, Fey could use a few starring roles that grant her characters with the all-essential blend of intelligence, comic impulsiveness and vulnerability that has made 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon such a delight for so many years. Weitz and Croner come close to granting her the necessary formula in Admission, although Fey’s character here is just a bit too much the helpless victim for my taste. But that’s a personal judgment call, and likely not enough of an issue to bother most viewers.

Portia Nathan (Fey) is an admissions officer at Princeton University, one of the dozen or so “gatekeepers” who evaluate thousands of applicants every spring, and then decide which anxious high school seniors will win entry within these Ivy League walls.

Korelitz is a former part-time application reader for Princeton, so if this aspect of Weitz’s film has the queasy, casually cruel tone of reality, it’s no accident. Korelitz knows the territory, and Croner has done her best to replicate the impossible necessity of such a job: of the need to choose between this gymnast with multiple extracurricular activities, or that impassioned scholar with an aptitude for different languages.

Korelitz’s book employs a narrative device that allows us to eavesdrop on various application essays; Weitz and Croner replicate that gimmick here by having Portia imagine these various young hopefuls standing in front of her, as they eloquently argue their own merits ... only to drop through a hidden trap door and vanish forever, as she regretfully discards yet another fat orange folder.

Tron Legacy: Badly tarnished

Tron: Legacy (2010) • View trailer for Tron: Legacy
Two stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for mild profanity and meaningless action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.17.10

Goodness, what an empty, soulless snooze.

Just like the first one.

OK, yes, the original Tron remains a groundbreaking visual tour-de-force: decades ahead of its time, when released in 1982 ... but with roughly a pinball machine’s worth of plot. Yes, it deserves credit as a clever demonstration of proto-CGI effects, and it also pioneered (on film, anyway) the notion of slipping into way-cool “avatar” versions of ourselves in a virtual world, while navigating a hippy-trippy interpretation of the information superhighway.

Quorra (Olivia Wilde), sympathetic to Sam's (Garrett Hedlund) desire to defeat
the Grid's menacing despot and find his way back to Earth, pays an
unexpected visit with a bit of intel: a mysterious individual who should be
able to help Sam with his dangerous quest.

But the story was bone-deep dumb, with perils and powers randomly designed only to fill any given scene, with little attempt at a logically cohesive plot. The result was boring, boring, boring.

Just like this one.

More than a few eyebrows shot up, back when Tron: Legacy was announced; the original Tron was a box-office dud, and a three-decades-later sequel seemed an unlikely notion, at best. Granted, the mainstream world has become more comfortable with computers and information technology during that time; concepts and jargon that were far-reaching in 1982 have become readily accessible elements of everyday speech. The original Tron failed, to a degree, because it was too way out at the time: a head-scratching anomaly during an era when even conventional animated films were struggling to find an audience.

The intervening years, however, have encouraged a case of selective memory loss among fans who have come to believe that the overuse of tech terminology was the sole reason for the film’s initial reputation as a stiff. Not true. It failed because it really is stiff: minimal story, laughable “acting” and a so-called plot that felt like script pages tossed into the air and then filmed as they randomly floated back to the ground.

As I find myself saying, far too frequently these days, that it’s the story, stupid ... the same failing that also dooms this sequel.

Back in the day, following his successful adventures on the grid in the original Tron, tech visionary Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) returned to his life. As the 1980s waned, his attention was divided between working at his company, Encom, and quality time with his young son, Sam. Then, one day, Kevin went to the office and never returned. Some suggested he’d had a mental breakdown; others surmised that he had fled the mounting pressure of his increasingly corporatized life, for a sunny beach in some far quieter part of the world.

Either way, young Sam – having previously lost his mother, as well – became an orphan. Encom, lacking Kevin’s progressive, planet-friendly hand at the tiller, evolved into a greedy, power-hungry giant led by a board of directors cheerfully willing to overcharge schools for “new” operating system platforms that were little more than higher numbers (“version 12”) on colorful boxes.

Sam, meanwhile, has grown a disenchanted young man – now played by Garrett Hedlund – who races motorcycles (allowing plenty of gratuitous product placement for Ducati) while occasionally breaking into Encom long enough to hack a system or three, in order to embarrass the CEO. The company board’s sole holdover from the old days, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, also reprising his original role), has all but given up on Sam, who in turn resents the older man’s efforts to be, if not a father figure, then at least a trustworthy uncle figure.

Frost/Nixon: Battle royale

Frost/Nixon (2008) • View trailer for Frost/Nixon
Five stars (out of five). Rating: R, and rather too harshly, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.15.09
Buy DVD: Frost/Nixon • Buy Blu-Ray: Frost/Nixon [Blu-ray]


"And the American people?"

David Frost's question, although hardly a surprise when it emerges during the climactic fourth interview, nonetheless seems to catch his subject off-guard.

Despite the increased agitation of his research team — from right, journalist Bob
Zelnick (Oliver Platt), author James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell) and veteran
producer John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen) — David Frost (Michael Sheen, far
left) refuses to believe he'll be outmatched, outgunned and outfoxed when former
U.S. President Richard Nixon faces him during the first of four upcoming
interviews. Frost quickly discovers, however, that he has much to learn about
shrewd, skilled subjects with agendas of their own.

And in that moment, as his features sag slightly, and his eyes betray a blend of surrender and wan hope — perhaps redemption really does come from baring one's soul? — actor Frank Langella ceases to exist. We are, instead, witnessing the crumbling of former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.

The transformation, creeping up on us throughout director Ron Howard's Frost/ Nixon, is complete. And astonishing.

It's a fascinating performance, all the more so because Langella doesn't really look a thing like Nixon. But the actor clearly studied every facial tic and physical mannerism, from the slightly stooped walk to the jowly frown that forever seemed poised between censure and admiration. Langella radiates the sense of Nixon, every facet of the man's complex personality either on view or slyly suggested.

("I was determined not to do an impression," Langella explains, in the press notes. "I looked in him for the thing I look for in every character I play: What is his soul about?")

Langella has had plenty of practice, since both he and Michael Sheen — as Frost — starred when playwright/screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Last King of Scotland) debuted this stage drama at London's Donmar Warehouse in August 2006. Following a subsequent transition to Broadway, Langella won a Tony Award for best actor in a drama.

It's easy to see why.

Aside from the eerie sense that we're witnessing some resurrection of Richard Nixon in Frank Langella's body, the actor also manages the near impossible: He actually engenders sympathy for a man it has become fashionable to despise. Despite the oily, unctuous manner; despite the naked, self-serving desire — glittering in Langella's eyes — to engage in what he imagines will be damage control, simply to revive a reputation in tatters; despite all the glib maneuvering that prompted the feared nickname of "Tricky Dick," this man emerges as a tragic figure.

Perhaps no less reviled, but pathetic nonetheless.

Langella's performance is one of the two amazing aspects of Howard's film. The other, thanks to the clever way Morgan orchestrates his script in three acts — prologue and establishing maneuvers; hideous battle of unequals; revelatory climax — we're on the edge of our seats in tense anticipation, despite knowing with certainty how these events eventually play out.