Sure, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong may rail against the president and ring his eyes in black to add edge to his choirboy face. But I’ll bet you never expected to hear 2005’s most popular political agitator growl anything like this to, say, a fan gushing about being guided by his defiant light: “All right, all right, I get the analogy. Would you please shut up and suck my cock?” (Even if he does follow up with a personal question: "What is your name, woman? So I know what to say when I shoot my multiple loads all over you!”)

Armstrong, of course, doesn’t say this as himself — for all we know — but as Live Freaky! Die Freaky!’s Charlie Hanson, the antihero with a yellow face, red eyes, and some serious Claudio Sanchez hair in writer-director John Roecker’s stop-motion parody of the Manson Family murders. The movie begins in 3069, when Earth has become a barren desert and its inhabitants are looking for a god — whom they find when a copy of Helter Skelter is discovered.

After this point, take the opening credits’ warning, “Not for the easily offended,” seriously: It’s now 1969, and Hanson and the rest of the rock-world-voiced claymation characters (including Armstrong’s bandmates and “Nelly Pozbourne,” nee Kelly Osbourne, as Sharon Hate) are about to get freaky indeed: There’s tons of blood, all manner of wide-open orifices, and plenty of bush and dick, though not the kind that make Armstrong homicidal himself.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

This review is about a movie that’s going straight to video. And cable. And, actually, first-run theaters. Bubble is being tagged as “Another Steven Soderbergh Experience,” which has little to do with the film itself. Instead, it refers to the director’s decision to release his latest more or less simultaneously via the three traditionally hierarchical ways to catch a flick. Yes, your mind has just been blown.

As one would imagine studio and theater chains’ pockets would be after such a gimmick. In fact, however, this is a risk that’s being firmly steered: Bubble’s backers, 2929 Productions, distributes its own DVDs (Bubble, at $30, will be priced  above the norm) and owns both HDNet Films (which will exclusively present Bubble on its movie channel) and Landmark Theatres (also offering an exclusive engagement, considering no other chains were willing to take on the Experience…of surely losing money). Even 2929, which has committed to producing five more so-called  “day and date” releases with Soderbergh, limited their gamble somewhat, allowing Bubble a budget of only $1.6 million.

The movie itself makes even that modest price tag seem bloated. Bubble is as slight as its running time — 73 minutes — in telling Full Frontal writer Coleman Hough’s story of a murder in a depressed, lower-middle-class Ohio town. Every dawn, middle-aged Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) wakes and feeds her infirm father before leaving to pick up Kyle (Dustin James Ashley), a kid she works with at a doll factory. They get doughnuts in the morning and eat their lunches together; though their conversations never seem to go beyond awkward small talk, Martha tells Kyle that he’s her best friend. So when an attractive young woman, Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), is hired to airbrush the creepy plastic dolls’ faces and begins joining the pair for lunch, Kyle is obviously interested and Martha is obviously perturbed.

Bubble’s tone is one of hypnotic and sometimes spooky boredom. No one talks much to each other, and what little dialogue there is is typically delivered in a monotone by the actors, all of whom are nonprofessionals from Southern Ohio. The soundtrack is spare, too, with only a handful of scenes accompanied by Robert Pollard’s acoustic-guitar score. Soderbergh fills the time in between Bubble’s major plot points — which, after Rose’s hiring, really only include the quick succession of a date, an accusation of theft, the murder, and an arrest — with silent shots of either rows of freaky doll parts or what day-to-day life is like in this town: Empty streets. Trailer homes. A church full of blank-faced worshipers. And lots of people staring at TVs. When Martha drives Rose one day to her second job as a housecleaner and takes a tour of the large but blandly middle-class-suburban home, she reacts as if she’s in a palace.

There’s nothing about Bubble that would make its viewing on a big screen seem necessary by anyone but the most serious cineastes. Soderbergh’s bare-bones approach, though, is absorbing enough to make it enjoyable, the actors are working-class-dejected through and through, and Hough’s script even throws in a tiny red herring or two to make you second-guess the film’s apparent predictability. Bubble’s only arguable flaw is its abrupt and simplistic conclusion, likely to leave viewers unsatisfied no matter which way they’ve chosen to watch it.

Soderbergh’s innovation would have been a great approach to Underworld: Revolution — minus the first-run theaters part. Improbably more tedious than its predecessor, 2003’s Underworld, Revolution continues the story  about a centuries-old war between death dealers and lycans (vampires and werewolves, for anyone who’s been blissfully unexposed to the franchise). The scariest thing about this sequel isn’t the bloody, goopy, never-ending fights between the man-beasts, however, but the poorly written voiceover that’s attached to its end: “An unknown chapter is still ahead…All I know is darkness is still ahead.”

It sure is, if we’re to be subjected to Installment 3. Revolution’s narrator and main character is again Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a “vampire warrior” who has to wear latex catsuits, keep her hair stringy, and unload a gangsta’s worth of bullets to settle some kind of ancient score. (You’d have to go to the film’s writers — returning director Len Wiseman and Danny McBride, with some character contribution from Kevin Grevioux — to get a plot summary less murky.) The movie begins with an explanatory scroll (nowadays, always a bad sign) about the offense committed some 800 years ago that makes poor Selene battle lycans to this day. Helping her — mainly by gazing into her eyes — is Michael (Scott Speedman, a poor man’s Billy Baldwin). Michael’s a half-vampire, half-lycan “hybrid,” which for some reason other than great mileage makes him a practical thing for Selene to have around.

Like the first Underworld, Revolution is all gray-blue darkness and chill. Also like the first Underworld, Revolution is filled with portentous, sometimes ridiculously costumed characters who talk Matrix-style of “serums” and “bloodlines” and such. There are a few — very few — stunts and effects, notably a literally through-the-roof helicopter crash, that will occasionally reignite your interest, if only on a scene-by-scene basis. And while some of the undeads’ methods remain mystical — a bite of another’s wrist, for instance, gives the nibbler a fast-mo replay of the victim’s memories — these ghouls are not adverse to technology: Computers and surveillance equipment play a big part in the hunt, and battles are won not only by old-fashioned flesh-ripping and body-hurling but by a cache of automatic weaponry that would make 50 Cent proud.

It all seemed like a promising, badass twist on the vampire genre back in ’03, especially led by the saucy Beckinsale (who, not willing to let a lack of talent get in the way of love, eventually married Wiseman). But the black-haired Brit, given more impressive stunts and ego in the first installment, is here pretty much reduced to a killing machine dull enough to make fans of Tomb Raider yawn. Between its overly complicated story, zero-personality characters, and increasingly slimy and uninspired action, this Underworld is one that gets very tiresome very quickly, making its 105 minutes feel like a bloodsucker’s lifetime.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

On the Outs is about life on the streets, so let’s get the
inevitable adjectives out of the way: It’s gritty. And at times
shocking. And almost always heartbreaking. This first collaboration
between freshman writer-director Lori Silverbush and documentary
filmmaker Michael Skolnik interweaves the stories of three teenage
girls living in the most crime-ridden parts of Jersey City. One’s a
dealer. One’s an addict. One lives a relatively sheltered life until
she gets involved with a thug.

Even though it’s based on actual events, On the Outs is
dispassionate enough to never trumpet that fact. Silverbush, Skolnik,
and actress Paola Mendoza, who plays one of the lead characters and is
credited as a co-creator on the film’s Web site, began developing On
the Outs by setting up an acting and writing program in a New Jersey
juvenile-detention center. Working with a selection of the inmates’
stories, the trio set out to cast actors who came from backgrounds
similar to the kids’; they also invited the detainees to give their
input during production.

The result, shot on quivering digital video, feels as disturbingly
real as 2003’s similarly themed Girlhood. The film’s biggest flaw might
be its opening, with the directors’ messy storytelling introducing you
to all three girls and the people in their lives in such quick
succession that it can be difficult to grasp their circumstances. But
then again, Silverbush and Skolnik might be intentionally keeping
viewers unsure and unsettled—after all, that’s an appropriate way to
depict lives as unsure and unsettled as their main characters’.

Oz (Raising Victor Vargas’ Judy Marte), the dealer, for example, is
introduced getting released from a detention facility and going home to
a mentally challenged man, Chuey (Dominic Colon), whose relationship to
her isn’t clear. Later, a family gathering reveals him as Oz’s brother.
And the woman who looks to be about the same age as Oz? That’s her
mother. The middle-aged woman at the table is Grandma.

A progressive sense of time is lacking, too, though one can’t
imagine that any one of the girls’ days is much different than any
other. Fifteen-year-old Suzette (Anny Mariano), baby-faced and naive,
gets impregnated by Tyrell (Don Parma), an older dealer who hangs out
with loud, chest-thumping gangstas who like to get wasted and play
Russian roulette. But instead of getting the abortion her mother
schedules for her, Suzette runs off with Tyrell, often looking
terrified of the company he keeps and quickly learning that she won’t
necessarily have a safe place to sleep every night. Oz continues
selling crack but remains sickened by those who use—foremost her
mother. Marisol (Mendoza) has a toddler she adores, although her love
for her daughter is about neck and neck with her love for crack, which
lands her in the detention center and her little girl in foster care.

If it all sounds too gritty, shocking, and heartbreaking to be
convincing, it isn’t. The lead actresses inhabit their characters
effortlessly, and Silverbush and Skolnik add authenticity by filming on
Jersey City’s roughest streets, using locals for smaller roles, and
eschewing the emotional cues of a score. And though the majority of the
movie shows the girls dealing, smoking, or just witnessing the constant
unrest in their neighborhoods, a few scenes stand out: A couple of
boys, no more than 10, trying to buy drugs and then pulling a gun on
the dealer. Marisol’s daughter screaming because she hasn’t eaten and
there’s no food in the house. Suzette ending up in a cop car, where she
meets an apparently younger girl who asks, “Is this your first time?”
Suzette shaking her head no.

The filmmakers render such scenes with a rawness that never feels
cheap or dishonest—even when they’re selling the big-picture tragedy
summed up in Oz’s question to a detention-center guard: “How can you
work here? For real—doesn’t that hurt your heart?”

It’s politics, not drugs, that shackle the characters in The White
Countess. The movie, which will be forever famous as the final Merchant
Ivory collaboration, opens in 1936 Shanghai, where a family of Russian
royals has settled after escaping the Bolsheviks. The extended clan now
lives in poverty, supported only by Countess Sofia Belinsky (Natasha
Richardson), who nightly puts on rouge and lipstick to dance with the
lonely hearts at a nightclub and turn the occasional trick. Her
relatives, who apparently contribute nothing but criticism to the
household, do not approve, especially because of the effect Sofia might
have on her young daughter, Katya (Madeleine Daly).

They shouldn’t worry: The only character here who really falls under
the sway of the aristocratic taxi dancer is Todd Jackson (Ralph
Fiennes), a former American diplomat and current barfly recently
blinded by a terrorist attack. He’s been dreaming of opening the
perfect nightclub: classy, politically diverse, filled with bouncers
who keep the peace merely by projecting the possibility of violence and
women who exhibit “a balance between the erotic and the tragic.” He
stumbles into Sofia’s erotic/tragic sphere; she helps him avoid some
potential muggers lurking outside the definitely imperfect nightclub
she works in; and, soon enough, one handsome, guarded expat is a lot
closer to realizing his vision. That last word, by the way, is used
frequently to describe Jackson’s project—a little joke made at the
expense of the character, yes, but also one of the film’s many Serious
Metaphors.

The White Countess, also the name of Jackson’s utopian
establishment, is a characteristically stately if sometimes sluggish
finale to producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory’s 44-year
partnership. The gloomy monochrome of the Belinsky home and its wan
inhabitants—who also make the film notable by including Richardson’s
mother, Vanessa Redgrave, as Sofia’s aunt and Richardson’s real aunt,
Lynn Redgrave, as Sofia’s mother-in-law—is meant to contrast with the
vitality of Jackson’s nightclub. Though here, where a significant
portion of the movie takes place, vitality is represented by a house
full of clientele watching performances by ballerinas and people
dressed as cats—and despite the plastered smiles, no one looks as if
he’s having much fun.

And for good reason: Jackson, though pleased to have gotten the
joint running, senses there’s something missing. Better booze? A
livelier band? Nope: “political tension,” in his words. Although
despondent over his failed peace efforts while with the League of
Nations, Jackson still has a shred of hope in him. He theorizes that if
members of opposite factions socialized, they’d begin to see their
commonality instead of just their differences. And Jackson isn’t just
wishing this for the good of all mankind—he knows that if Shanghai is
invaded by the Japanese, Sofia will probably seek refuge elsewhere.

The screenplay, penned by Remains of the Day scribe Kazuo Ishiguro
and loosely adapted from a Japanese novel, shares that film’s theme of
isolation and how it might be overcome—though it tends to express it
less gracefully. Jackson and Sofia’s agreement to have a strictly
professional relationship, despite their obvious attraction, is
referenced pretty much every time they begin talking about their
personal lives—which is often. When he finally accepts her offer to
feel her face, he responds, “Strange to think that all this time, I
never knew how beautiful you were!” And once Sofia asks Jackson if the
club’s heavy doors are meant “to keep out the rest of the world”—the
one in which Jackson met tragedy and realized that peace between China
and Japan was unlikely—well, that’s not the last time the analogy gets
trotted out.

Consistently strong, however, are the performances. Fiennes’ Jackson
is similar to his character in The Constant Gardener: stubborn,
wounded, and believably risk-taking. (The twist is that he’s also
physically wobbly and randomly loud, characteristics that seem to have
as much to do with his affinity for the sauce as his disability or
state of mind.) Richardson’s Sofia is understated—quiet but beguiling
in her seductions and incomprehensibly submissive around her family,
especially her sister-in-law Greshenka (a wicked Madeleine Potter).

The White Countess becomes more worthy of its excellent performances
during its final chapter, in which all hell breaks loose. Jackson
discovers that his partner in carousing, the Japanese Mr. Matsuda (a
perfectly menacing Hiroyuki Sanada), may not exactly be his ally. And
Japan’s imminent takeover of Shanghai sparks a mass exodus—just as
Jackson and Sofia agree to get close to each other. When the troops
finally roll in, it’s time for all involved—Sofia, her family, Jackson,
his heretofore loyal driver—to Do What Must Be Done, and their
decisions are sometimes wrenching. Everyone is out on the streets,
frantically trying to execute their choices and changes of mind among
the chaos, which is rendered with almost palpable urgency by
cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Removed from Merchant Ivory’s
upholstered interiors, the not-quite-romance seems nearly as grand as
the world’s conflicts. Finally, The White Countess feels real and
compelling—a fit conclusion to both the film and an acclaimed
partnership.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Recasting the Grimm brothers’ “Little Red Riding Hood” as a whodunit is not unlike the O.J. trial all over again. In Hoodwinked, a version of Red’s adventure by writer-directors Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech — yes, it took three of them — the approach is creative and the players are, well, let’s say eccentric. And the result? Exasperating — not to mention, at least by popular opinion, wrong.

But it won’t be long into this 80-minute debut from the Weinstein Company’s animation house, Kanbar Entertainment, that your memory of the classic fairy tale gets as lost as a little girl in the woods. Hoodwinked begins with a traditional scene, as Red (Anne Hathaway, recalling a  deadpan Janeane Garofolo) visits her Granny and realizes that something ain’t right. “What big [blank] you have,” Red observes repeatedly — at least until the ear part,  when the masked Wolf (Patrick Warburton) gets annoyed and responds, “The better to hear your many criticisms!” Great, let’s go: At this point Hoodwinked takes off in dizzying directions, introducing a team of investigators before you even realize there’s anything to be investigated. Then the movie goes Rashomon as the main characters — Red, the sarcastic Wolf, the dopey Woodsman (James Belushi) — give up their versions of Red’s journey and the Wolf’s alleged gotcha moment. What immediately makes the story confusing is the freshmen writers’ decision to add a mysterious “Goody Bandit” to the case, a rather nonsensical criminal who’s somehow responsible for a bunch of sweet shops closing down.

And then there are the retellings themselves — occasionally, some of these Warner Bros.-frantic flashbacks illuminate details from the others, but mostly they just add a slew of distracting minor characters and tedium. At least Hoodwinked’s one-liners, which don’t snap so much as stretch (“Name’s Shaw. Rick Shaw. I’m from Japan”) are of slightly better quality than its flat animation (Red looks plastic, while the others are just stiff). And its soundtrack is refreshingly heavy on listenable movie-pop, with a couple mildly amusing Disney-ballad sendups in between. It’s all wan but forgivable enough, even when a line suggests that the movie’s title can be a synonym for ”punk’d.” But when Granny turns out to be not a feeble baker but a secret extreme-sports junkie, well, ticket buyers, that’s when you’ll finally decide you’ve been hoodwink’d. 

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

In Dorian Blues, the Lagatos family dines together and talks about the issues of the world. Quotes from historical figures often pepper their discussions. One son’s an academic, and the other a star quarterback. Old-fashioned as this archetype may be, on the surface it seems the kind of loving and enlightened environment in which a teenager can announce his homosexuality without fear of derision or banishment.

Except that when the father (Steven C. Fletcher) quotes Abraham Lincoln at the dinner table, it’s to advise his not-yet-out son, Dorian (WB vet Michael McMillian), that "it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." And when Dorian confesses his secret to his younger, studlier brother, Nicky (Lea Coco), Nicky suggests persistent denial to any classmates who may suspect, borrowing from Mein Kampf to support his argument: "You tell a lie long enough and loud enough," he says, "eventually they’ll believe it!"

"So your advice is to be more like Hitler?" Dorian deadpans.

Writer-director Tennyson Bardwell’s debut about a young man’s struggle with sexual identity is witty if familiarly themed, though it doesn’t begin auspiciously: At the scene of a burial, Dorian introduces himself in an irritatingly self-conscious, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang-like narration by saying, "I find it’s good to talk about everything. My therapist says I overdo that — that I overanalyze. Of course, she’s bulimic, so let’s not get too preachy."
Fortunately, the neurotic nattering slows down, and instead of presenting Dorian as a younger Woody Allen, Bardwell shapes McMillian into gayer Topher Grace.

McMillian’s Dorian is sarcastic but not smart-alecky, and the actor’s charm and the character’s keen awareness helps make this largely predictable journey a pleasant one. Bardwell doesn’t entirely treat his subject lightly, but there’s plenty to laugh at here. Such as Nicky’s Guide for the Closeted, which includes saying "awesome" instead of "fabulous." Or Dorian’s first attempt in a therapy session to come out to his dad, represented by a dummy, which turns into a phantom off-the-topic back-and-forth during which Dorian turns to his therapist and says, "Annoying, isn’t he?" There’s even a blatantly ripped-off — though still pretty joyous — Napoleon Dynamite-ish dance by a fellow high-school reject.

This is a story of confusion and angst, though, and Bardwell skillfully balances the humor with a proper amount of sobriety. What initially seems a stereotypical fraternal relationship — tough-talking jock versus sensitive thinker — evolves into something deeper as Nicky tries to support and protect Dorian in the best ways he knows how. Both of them, after all, are united by one force, and that’s their mercilessly critical and unfair father — though he clearly favors Nicky, even the star son begins to empathize with Dorian regarding this particular hurdle in light of all the others he’s trying to negotiate. As the father, Fletcher, a stage performer "throughout the [N]ortheast," is a powerhouse, with a caustic edge to his voice and an unblinking, withering glare that clearly demonstrates how much more difficult Dorian’s burden will be to reveal. Coco, too, nicely humanizes a typically one-dimensional character — not bad for a former member of the Blue Man Group. Mo Quigley, as the boys’ mother, doesn’t leave much of an impression, but her invisibility is actually a crucial part of her role.

Bardwell’s debut has its flaws, however. The film is supposed to cover a 10-year span, though if that’s true, Dorian and Nicky take a helluva long time moving through late high school and early college. Another problem, and this one’s a bit more significant, is that early in the story, Dorian is often referred to as not merely a melancholy loner, but a "moody" loser who’s purposefully shunned — McMillian’s Dorian may have an obviously gargantuan weight on his shoulders, but he’s no prince of  darkness, either, and the script’s occasional dissonance can be distracting. Mercifully, though, Dorian also isn’t portrayed as a queen. In Bardwell’s hands, the boy’s neither too black nor too pink, and his depiction of a normal kid with a not-uncommon problem turns out to be the movie’s biggest strength.

39 Pounds of Love also seeks to prove how normal its subject is — only in an exceptional,  life-affirming way. Ami Ankilewitz, an Israeli citizen who was born in Texas, was diagnosed as a toddler with a rare form of muscular dystrophy. His doctor told Ami’s mother that the boy wouldn’t live past the age of six. After giving this bit of background, writer-director Dani Menkin’s documentary then opens with Ami’s 34th-birthday party, just as Ami — stick-figured and sitting in his wheelchair — is about to make an announcement to his gathered family and friends. “I’m pregnant,” Ami says.

Har har. But seriously, folks, Ami continues, he’s planning on taking a trip to the U.S. and travel from coast to coast, which has been his lifelong dream. Ami’s parents immediately and somewhat ridiculously forbid him, but Ami says he doesn’t care about what they think or how risky the journey may be. His main goal is to confront the doctor who diagnosed him and show the now-old man how wrong he was.

So within the movie’s first few minutes, Menkin and co-writer Ilan Heitner have already established most of their apparent objectives: Ami is a fighter! Ami has friends! Ami has a sense of humor! And Ami doesn’t let anyone  push him around! (Er, figuratively, at least.) 39 Pounds — which, yes, is Ami’s adult weight — then jumps back a year to give a couple more tidbits about this medical miracle’s everyday life. Though his movement is limited to a single finger, Ami works as an animator in Israel. Ami’s animations are woven throughout the 70-minute movie, once or twice to decorate his travels (for instance, a little bird, which Ami uses to represent himself, flies just outside Ami’s plane). But there’s an even more heart-tugging facet of Ami’s story that his drawings illustrate: His all-consuming love of his bubbly former caretaker, Christina.

Truthfully, Menkin’s film is short enough to keep your attention in a car-wreck kind of way. It’s unlikely that many of 39 Pounds’ viewers will have been exposed to anyone quite in Ami’s condition, even on screen — Murderball’s subjects weren’t nearly as physically feeble, and though last year’s Rory O’Shea Was Here illustrated the lives of the several handicapped, its main actors were able-bodied. It also seems unlikely, however, that so many people would react to seeing Ami in person the way Menkin cherry-picks it: In a scene in which Ami is in a park with Christina, several passers-by — mostly seniors — stare at him with expressions bordering on disgust. When Christina and Ami move to a wide bench where two women are already sitting, they glance not-so-furtively in Ami’s direction before getting up to move someplace else.

Moments such as these are what veer 39 Pounds into shameless reality-TV territory. The road scenes, complete with film crew and  friends (who, naturally, can’t speak highly enough of Ami in separate interviews), are predominantly buoyant as the caravan travels from California to Florida. But then come the dramatics, including an emergency brought on by the rarified air at the Grand Canyon and a family reunion so scriptedly sentimental  you expect Amy Grant to pop out of the manicured bushes. The worst, however, is the focus on Ami’s crush on Christina. Ami provides obsessive narration about how wonderful she is, and clips show her bathing him and making him laugh. But then Menkin zooms in for the kill: Christina is asked, on camera, whether Ami’s feelings are requited. The answer is no. And, somewhat horrifically, Ami is right there for his reaction to be immortalized. That’s not the end, though — Ami still swoons for her, so prepare for repeated slow-motion footage of Christina beaming and bouncing around at some occasion, lest we forget her saintly loveliness, the heartless bitch.

Of course, there are genuinely touching aspects of 39 Pounds, too. Ami and his gang like to drink and goof around, but he doesn’t deny the precariousness of his life: “I live with death by my side,” Ami says. “We’re old friends.”  The lesson about making the most of the time you’ve got may be predictable, but it’s also one that’s universal and really not a bad thing for viewers to be reminded of. But then Menkin closes with not only the treacly but the weird, with an incredibly awkward encounter with the baffled man who may or may  not have been Ami’s childhood doctor and some seriously inspirational music as the animated Ami returns. This time, the bird is climbing a mountain and then flying off to the moon. Whether Ami safely returns to his home country or what’s become of him since is not included in 39 Pounds, presumably because such matters were too dull for the camera.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Miss the opening credits of Match Point, and you may not be able to identify its habitually conspicuous director. The drama, for one, is set in London. Its characters are at ease with their lots in life, twittering about the frivolities of the day and balking when talk gets too serious or philosophical. Philistines, however, they are not: When sizing up a potential son-in-law, the patriarch of Match Point’s central family observes, “He’s not trivial. We had a very interesting conversation the other day about Dostoyevsky.”

Ah. It’s that neurotic New Yorker, trying out his passport.

Finally, Woody Allen realized that a significant shake-up was in order if he were to once again be regarded as, well, significant. After the spectacular failure of last year’s Melinda and Melinda, Allen’s half-comedy, half-tragedy, half-assed attempt at novelty, it’s no wonder that the auteur’s watchable latest is being heralded as the second coming of a compulsive Christ. And a modest one at that: For the first time, neither Allen nor an obvious, hand-wringing stand-in is the lead. Or even a minor character, for that matter.

Match Point doesn’t entirely deviate from Allen’s oeuvre, though. Its plot, about the extreme measures a person will take to protect his interests, echoes 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. And its women — sigh. There’s a sour shrew, an aspiring baby factory, and a madonna/whore, except take out the “madonna” and add “crazy, demanding bitch.” Needless to say, none of them are terribly likable, though at least some viewers should see strength in the latter even if the film paints her as an irrational nag.

Allen explains the allegory of his title right at the start. With a graceful, slow-motion shot of a tennis ball being volleyed back and forth over a net, an Irish former professional player named Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) talks about luck versus talent. “The man who said ‘I’d rather be lucky than good’ saw deeply into life,” Chris narrates. And then the scene  supports his point: Caught by the very top of the net, the ball lingers for a moment, teasing the offcamera competitors as they hold their breath. It goes one way, you win. It goes the other way, you lose.

With that in mind, you watch Match Point as if it’s only one chapter of Sliding Doors, or perhaps subtitled It’s a Terrible Life. Chris, who knows he doesn’t have the talent of the top seeds, decides to chuck the circuit and become a tennis instructor in London. His first student is Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), a lad of leisure who discovers that he and Chris share a love of opera. One night out with the wealthy, British Hewetts — parents Eleanor and Alec (Penelope Wilton and Brian Cox) and Tom’s sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer) — and Chris soon finds himself firmly entrenched in a surrogate family. He’s best buds with Tom. He’s engaged to Chloe. He’s handed a nothing-to-sneeze-at job at Papa Hewett’s nondescript behemoth company. Accidentally slipping into all this bland poshitude leaves the formerly money-strapped Chris grateful, yes (though with Rhys Meyers, it’s hard to tell). But that doesn’t mean he’s stopped himself from looking for something more — which comes in the form of Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), a struggling American actress who also happens to be Tom’s fianc[E AIGU]e.

Nola’s the only fire here, which is due both to Allen’s writing and Johansson’s sultry performance. The character’s often salacious demeanor — her first line, “Who’s my next victim?” is cooed as she looks for a pingpong partner — is in stark contrast to the dullness of her in-laws, the type of family whose hobbies are matched with appropriate outfits and whose main personality trait is upper-crustiness. Nola gets angry, she wears clingy outfits, she smokes her cigarettes as if channeling Lauren Bacall. You wonder why the hell she’s chosen to commit to these twits, and when she and Chris boil down the reasons for their respective engagements to “He’s very handsome” and “She’s very sweet,” the outsiders’ eventual affair is intended to be a no-brainer.

You’d buy it, too, if Chris weren’t as charm-challenged as the rest of the Hewetts. Rhys Meyers’ performance, as blank as his Calvin Klein looks, is nearly as big a failure as Will Ferrell’s stuttering turn in Melinda and Melinda. Whether Chris is getting a new job, making a new friend, or moving into a gigantic loft after he and Chloe are married, Rhys Meyers’ face is expressionless and his delivery narcotic. (When Tom invites him to the opera the day they meet, for example, Chris’ reaction is a monotone “My God. I’d love to.”) Whereas Ferrell was only one car in giant pile-up, however, Rhys Meyers is not only supported by a terrific cast — Cox, Wilton, Goode, and Mortimer pull off their characters’ insipid pleasantness effortlessly — but also a compelling story. It’s even arguable that the character’s passivity makes Match Point’s dramatic turn, informed for once by desperation instead of therapy, all the more shocking.

Though the film as a whole is a departure for Allen, he stamps it with his typically refined milieu: A significant development takes place at the Tate Modern; wining, dining, and theater fill the family’s evenings; and scratchy opera recordings replace Allen’s favored ragtime jazz. The director insisted on filming mostly on London’s gray but bright days, capturing with cinematographer Remi Adefarasin only a subtle sense of foreboding. (The burst of passion that takes place in a rain-drenched wheatfield is a tad less understated.)

Mercifully, Allen’s ear for dialogue has also returned, though a few clunkers have snuck past. “What’s a beautiful young American pingpong player doing mingling amongst the British upper class?” for example, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. And when Chris, who backs himself progressively deeper into an operatic hole, begins one of his retorts to his surrealistic demons by droning, “Sophocles said…,” well, it’s the only laugh in an increasingly unsettling movie. Reflecting on Allen’s recent record, however, that only one such gaffe exists should be considered a triumph.   

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