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).

 

Wonderstruck: Very well titled

Wonderstruck (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particularly reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.10.17

This one is pure magic.

Wholly enchanting.

Elaine (Michelle Williams) marvels, each evening, that her son Ben (Oakes Fegley) has
crammed even more stuff into the amateur natural history museum disguised as his
bedroom.

Director Todd Haynes orchestrates this slice of fantasy with the exquisite touch of a master conductor who understands the importance of each note played by every instrument. The music analogy is apt, because this film’s many delights include Carter Burwell’s amazing score: a continuous symphony of drama and delight that tells the story just as skillfully as the talented cast.

Haynes uses everything: images, sounds, music, color, puppetry, sketches and much, much more. All are blended with grace, whimsy and a true sense of wonder (with apologies for riffing on the title).

Such a talent for imagination — along with a delicate touch — are essential for anybody embracing the challenge of bringing a Brian Selznick book to the big screen. Martin Scorsese succeeded masterfully, with his 2011 adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret (the film title shorted to Hugo). Now Haynes has duplicated this feat.

Selznick adapted his own book this time, and we shouldn’t be surprised by his skillful scripting debut. His “bookmaking” novels, replete with illustrations, are de facto screenplays to begin with: presented with a master raconteur’s gift for filling the readers’ minds with their own private movies.

I hesitate to explain anything, because Haynes and Selznick coyly tease and toy with us viewers: establishing little mysteries that surround the two primary characters, while mischievously using the cinematic form to dangle clues via sidebars, dreams, flashbacks and all manner of narrative trickery.

Our protagonists are Rose (Millicent Simmonds) and Ben (Oakes Fegley), rebellious young adolescents somewhat askew from social norms. Both are lonely; both have transformed their bedrooms into veritable museums of stuff, all carefully notated, indexed and catalogued. Both are curators — an important term, for what follows — of their possessions, and of their discontent.

Rose endures a privileged life with a disciplinarian father (James Urbaniak) who shows her the warmth he might bestow upon a house plant. She finds solace by filling her bedroom with impressively detailed cityscapes constructed from paper and glue, and by scrapbooking the career of actress Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore).

Ben, having just lost his mother to a traffic accident, chafes at having to live with his aunt, sharing a room with his snotty cousin. Flashbacks reveal the bond that Ben shared with his free-spirited mother, Elaine (Michelle Williams), and the patience with which she puts up with his bedroom having grown into what feels like a branch of the nearest natural history museum.

But she stayed mute on one subject that dominates Ben’s thoughts: the identity of his father, who remains a nameless, faceless unknown. She knew, but always put Ben off, promising to reveal all “when the time was right.” Now, of course, the “right” time never will come.

Ben lives in the rural Minnesota community of Gunflint Lake; it’s the summer of 1977.

Rose lives in Hoboken, New Jersey; it’s early autumn in 1927.

Pete's Dragon: A somewhat unsteady flight

Pete's Dragon (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.12.16

All right; there’s such a thing as too much pathos.

Disney films have a merciless Dickensian history of parental mortality, usually as a means of first-act dramatic impact. The trend goes all the way back to 1942’s Bambi, and has remained a scripting constant ever since, reaching its horrific nadir with 1985’s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. (I still wince over how that one started.)

Having grown up in a remote forest, with only a massive green dragon for a friend,
Pete (Oakes Fegley) knows a life of nothing but fun. Alas, that's about to change, when
he and his huge furry buddy are "discovered" by people.

In some ways, this new Pete’s Dragon is even more brutal.

On the whole, director David Lowery has done a lovely job with this updated fairy tale, giving it a contemporary, top-to-bottom re-write with the assistance of co-scripter Toby Halbrooks. The fantasy elements are impressive, with the fuzzy green dragon — Elliot — not only brought to persuasive life, but also given a charming, shaggy dog personality: not an easy task, for a character that cannot speak.

Much of the film also takes place from a child’s-eye view of the world, which is a nice touch.

The storyline has a gentle environmental undertone that’s given additional heft by the presence of Robert Redford, both as co-star and occasional narrator. His distinctive voice is immediately familiar, with its warm and friendly cadence; at this point in his career, he has become everybody’s favorite uncle, while also radiating the graceful ecological integrity of icons such as John Ruskin, John Muir and Henry David Thoreau.

He’s perfect here.

On the other hand, this film’s tone is far different than its larkish 1977 predecessor. Poster art for this new Pete’s Dragon shows our young human hero — a sensitively nuanced Oakes Fegley — resting peacefully on Elliot’s huge tail, smiling up at his furry green friend. The implication is happy and cheerful, which is extremely misleading.

Because, before Pete can befriend a massive dragon that has remained (mostly) undiscovered in the deep woods of the Pacific Northwest, he must lose his parents. This takes place during a prologue that introduces Pete as barely more than a toddler, driving through the woods with his parents, and excited by the thought of a “family adventure.”

That anticipation is shattered one road accident later. Although Lowery deserves credit for handling this sequence with off-camera sensitivity, it’s no less heartbreaking ... and it also sets the mood for what follows. And while the subsequent narrative is by no means nonstop tragedy, it feels that way, in great part because of composer Daniel Hart’s unrelentingly gloomy orchestral score. Sad and maudlin themes undercut far too much of this film’s action.

(Just in passing, Lowery and Halbrooks also deserve to be spanked for the immediate peril that prompts the nearby Elliot to rescue little Pete: Wolves don’t attack people! A bear would have been a far better choice.)