A sexy hamburger

You’d
imagine that most 14-year-old boys feel the same way about sex comedies
as they do about each of their battled-for baby steps toward the big
deed itself – it doesn’t matter if it’s any good, the point is that
they’re getting some. About a decade ago, though, budding horndogs Seth
Rogen and Evan Goldberg allegedly became fed up with the subpar antics
of their cinematic counterparts. Fuck this noise, they thought. We can
do better, they said.

And today you have Superbad,
a movie whose script started out as a seed in two boys’ dirty minds. Of
course, the final product has gone through polishings and fleshings-out
since its first wobbly-legged drafts, informed by the writers’
subsequent experience (Goldberg’s penning for Da Ali G Show; Rogen’s
starring on such Judd Apatow productions as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and
Knocked Up) and maturity (though a certain period joke might have been in the original).

If
you’re not familiar with the R-comedy magic previously created by King
Apatow and his court, Superbad sounds August-unexceptional: Two
high-school seniors, thus far none too popular with the ladies, try to
score some alcohol for a hottie’s party. They’ve been accepted to
different colleges, so the best friends are thinking it’s gonna be
their last big blowout. The ultimate goal: to get laid. Duh.

But
audiences who’ve laughed their asses off at Rogen’s other work will be
pleased to know that the Greg Mottola-directed Superbad is not just
another teen movie. At 25, Rogen wisely deemed himself too old to star
– even though he and Goldberg named the characters after themselves –
but found a worthy surrogate in Jonah Hill, whose bawdy, loud-mouthed,
obnoxious-if-he-weren’t-so-funny turn as Seth is the ’00s Bluto
Blutarsky. Michael Cera’s the straight man as Seth’s awkward friend
Evan, an extension of Cera’s awkward George Michael Bluth from the
celebrated but canceled television series Arrested Development.   

Seth
and Evan spend most of their time moaning about their lack of action –
Evan pines over one particular sweetheart, Becca (Martha MacIsaac),
while Seth is happy to fixate on girls in general, especially ones who
"look like they can take a dick." So when the sexy Jules (Emma Stone)
improbably invites Seth to her party, he’s determined to become the
booze-bringing life of it. Enter Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse),
who’s so nerdy that even Seth considers him "the fucking anti-poon."
But, he’s got a fake I.D., and even though it’s a terrible one (stating
that Fogell is actually the one-named, 25-year-old Hawaii resident
"McLovin"), it’ll have to do. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t.

Superbad
tosses its hopeless antiheroes into some fantastically ridiculous
situations as they make their way to said party, including Fogell’s
adventures with a couple of cops (Rogen and Saturday Night Live’s Bill
Hader) and Seth and Evan’s rather more disturbing run-in with a
potential pedophile ("So, you guys on MySpace?") and his psychotic but
alcohol-holding friends. Together, the main characters riff on typical
Apatow topics – the production values of porn, say, or how unfair it is
that women can show off their boobs but guys have to hide their boners.
The dialogue is at times overwhelmingly hyperactive — though Hill’s
wild-eyed and -haired mania is more difficult to settle in to than
Cera’s dry, soft-spoken Bob Newhart-isms — but for every moment that
blows there are 10 that’ll make you piss yourself laughing.

As
with any solid teen comedy, Superbad isn’t just about getting loaded
and lucky, with Seth and Evan’s friendship and impending separation –
because of school, and, God willing, just maybe because of girlfriends
– anchoring the story. Admittedly, the filmmakers don’t always handle
the material’s tonal transitions smoothly, especially the friends’
abrupt if inevitable blowup. But then they offer yet another inspired
dick joke — and as any 14-year-old will tell you, sometimes that’s
what really counts.

Blitz: Stop me before I annoy the shit out of someone again

To
anyone thinking about writing, directing, starring in, or providing
catering for a movie: Please, enough with Napoleon Dynamite Syndrome
already. Nerd stories may have been around since the birth of nerds,
but there’s a difference between focusing on the unpopular – like
Superbad – and "celebrating" the just plain weird. Rocket Science,
unsurprisingly a Sundance favorite, falls into the latter category,
this time propping up a high-school stutterer and his odd family and
friends for evisceration/good fun.

To
his credit, first-time feature writer-director Jeffrey Blitz
(Spellbound) doesn’t make his central character, Hal Hefner (what an
ironic name!), a colorful idiot. (Don’t worry, though, there are plenty
of those here anyway.) Instead, Hal (Reece Thompson) is a smart if shy
New Jersey kid with a speech impediment, one so bad that he practices
his lunch order on the bus ride to school. His parents just split up –
loudly and unexpectedly – and his brother, Earl (Vincent Piazza), is a
bullying thief. Hal isn’t totally friendless, though: There’s his
neighbor and classmate, Heston (Aaron Yoo), an Asian who does nothing
but smilingly, creepily leer at whatever’s going on and, it’s implied,
is sexually confused. (His dad, "Judge Pete," isn’t, however, as he’s
banging Hal and Earl’s mom.) And eventually there’s Lewis (Josh Kay),
an 11-year-old who invites Hal in for 7-Up after questioning Hal’s
right to ride his bike in front of Lewis’ house. (Lewis’ parents –
you’ll love this – are always shown playing "Blister in the Sun" on the
cello and piano as part of their marital therapy.) 

The
reason Hal begins lurking on Lewis’ street to begin with is Ginny (Anna
Kendrick), a cute but ruthless senior who’s a star on the debate team.
Ginny used to be paired with another sharp talker, the slick,
good-looking Ben (Nicholas D’Agosto). On the night of an important
debate, however – the very night Hal and Earl’s father walks out! –
Ben falls silent in the middle of his argument and drops out of school.
And so Ginny recruits Hal to replace Ben, impolitely reasoning that
"deformed people are the best – maybe because they have a deep reserve
of anger."

Ginny’s
strategy continually and painfully proves to be a bad idea, yet she
persists in trying to mold Hal – and he, naturally in love, improbably
continues to let her despite his multiple failures. It turns out that
some sort of scheme is involved, but it doesn’t make much sense. Then
again, nothing besides Hal’s stutter and the deep hurt it causes him
feels real here. Thompson will make you ache – though not over Hal’s
alleged crush on the baby-faced beeyotch, who, even if her debate
skills are impressive, is not for one moment likable. But Thompson
makes his character’s emotional wounds palpable as he tries to speak
the words so clearly being bullhorned inside his head. Blitz is trying
to communicate worthy messages, predominantly about finding one’s own
voice and taking chances, but they’re so bogged down in preciousness
that you can’t see the intentions beneath the quirks.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
 

De Niro, Danes, Pfeiffer, and…some kid

Stardust’s
plot is as crammed as Interview’s is minimal. The PG-13 fairy tale,
directed and co-written by Layer Cake helmer Matthew Vaughn, is very
Princess Bride in its tongue-in-cheek telling of swashbucklers and
enchanted lands. No doubt, though, that audiences of all ages – the
movie’s intended demographic isn’t exactly clear – will instantly
compare it to the more recent adventures of a certain beloved boy
wizard named Potter.

Both
share obvious elements – witches, magic, good vs. evil, the idea that Mugg…regular people live in one realm, largely unaware of the magical
world that exists under their unbewitched noses. Stardust takes place
in Wall, an area between England and the supernatural kingdom of
Stormhold. Now, try to keep up with me: Stormhold’s king (Peter
O’Toole) is dying and is expected to name one of his three still-living
sons successor. The king is proud that he murdered his own brothers to
obtain his crown, though, so he encourages his spawn to do the same.
Not only does the successor have to be the last one standing, however;
the king has taken a ruby pendant, drained it of its color, and thrown
it out into the sky (with great whooshes, light, and general fanfare).
The new king must find the pendant and restore its color to win the
crown.

Meanwhile,
in Wall, a young, motherless peasant named Tristan (Charlie Cox) is
trying to woo the beautiful and popular Victoria (Sienna Miller again).
She pretty much laughs at him, but when they spot a shooting star
(accompanied by great whooshes, light, and general fanfare), she agrees
to marry him if he finds the star and brings it to her within a week.
This means crossing into Stormhold, which normal folk aren’t allowed to
do, though Tristan’s father once managed to bypass the guard and create
a little magic himself there some 18 years back, if you know what I
mean. The "star" is actually the ruby, which is actually a woman named
Yvaine (Claire Danes doing a Gwyneth Paltrow impersonation in terms of
both looks and awkward British accent). Also after Yvaine is Lamia
(Michelle Pfeiffer), an evil, aged witch who needs the star’s heart so
she and her equally hideous sisters can be young again. Lamia turns
back the clock temporarily in order to go undercover in her hunt,
though she ages whenever she uses magic (whooshes, light, fanfare).

This
web has been extracted from a mere 250-page novel by Neil Gaiman, which
underscores the big difference between Stardust and any of the Potter
films: Whereas the latter movies have been whittled from books many
times that size, their stories have been at once smarter and easier to
digest. (Then again, this isn’t much of a surprise coming from Vaughn,
whose Layer Cake was also visually impressive if narratively cloudy.)
Still, Stardust has its, uh, charms. Its humor, though sometimes
forced, is smile- if not guffaw-inducing, with highlights including a
ghostly Greek chorus of the king’s dead sons and a typically droll
cameo by Ricky Gervais as a fence. (Less successful – OK, weird and
sorta offensive – is Robert De Niro’s turn as the "wopsie" captain of a
flying pirate ship. The term will define itself.)

Out
of the all-star cast, Pfeiffer is the ace here. Fresh off her somewhat
limited role as a ruthless stage mom in Hairspray, she’s allowed to run
away with this movie, taking cackling glee in her character’s witchly
schemes and gamely stealing the spotlight even when Lamia is
increasingly resembling the crypt keeper. The love story itself –
naturally, the affair that began the story isn’t the one that concludes
it – exists merely as an excuse for lots of special effects (though
some are cheesy) and scheming (much more satisfying). Still, once
you’re more at home with the basic plot and can relax as it unfolds,
Stardust ends up being a lovely little fairy tale – it may even fulfill
the jonesing that the Summer of Harry has no doubt left in its wake.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Funny, my interviews never end up like this…

During
the course of the compact, 83-minute Interview, variations on the line
"Do you realize that you’re unpleasant?" are spoken approximately 216
times. Possibly, some of those sentiments are actually just bouncing
around your brain, a natural consequence of watching two actors
exercise their chops so strenuously that you’re the one who’ll feel
exhausted afterward.

Steve
Buscemi’s Interview is a remake of a 2003 film of the same name by
slain Dutch director Theo van Gogh. Buscemi, who adapted the original
script with first-time writer David Schechter, also plays Pierre
Peders, a political journalist who has been relegated to doing a
celebrity profile for his magazine. His subject is Katya (Sienna
Miller), a starlet with a Sex and the City-like show on TV and loads of
mass-appeal movies in the can. Though Pierre is itching to get out of
it so he can cover a breaking Washington scandal, he’s scheduled to
meet Katya a restaurant one night. She’s an hour late; we see her
telling a friend earlier that she "thinks she has to be somewhere."
When she finally arrives, the privileges Katya enjoys are obvious: No
one balks as she talks on her phone in the cell-free restaurant, and
the people already sitting at her favorite table cheerily scoot to
another one.

Pierre
hardly disguises his disgust – if not exactly at Katya, at what she
represents – and proceeds to conduct a half-assed interview. It’s clear
that he hasn’t bothered to prepare. When Katya calls him on it, they
both forget about trying to be civilized and decide to just get the
hell away from each other. Doesn’t work: Pierre ends up in a cab with a
driver who’s too busy harassing the on-foot Katya to avoid hitting a
parked van. Katya suddenly feels bad about her behavior and brings
Pierre, who’s got a gash on his forehead, back to her loft for
first-aid, booze, cigarettes, and lots of mood-cycling and
conversational jousting.

Interview
is at once captivating and infuriating. It’s theatrical in its
spareness – there aren’t any time jumps, costume changes, or even much
of a plot, just Pierre, Katya, and lots of soundtrack-free talk.
Buscemi and Miller are sharp in their portrayals of, respectively, the
jaded journo and misunderstood ingenue who quickly drop professional
pretense and try to get to know one another more casually. The problem
is that the characters are too mercurial to even come across as
believably nuts. It’s not much fun watching, say, Katya talk Pierre
into letting her kiss him, only to wriggle free from the embrace and
shout, "God, I hate you!" Or listening to him meltingly say how
beautiful she is one moment, then offer a bitter armchair-psychologist
analysis about her lack of talent: "You’re good at lying, but mostly to
yourself."

The
whole spectacle – and with the two characters going hot and cold on
each other every few minutes, answering questions with questions and
"playing games," it is a spectacle – is fashioned as some kind of
ridiculous power struggle, an attempt by each to intellectually and
emotionally one-up the other. Unsurprisingly, all of their
back-and-forth about their careers, families, ideas about love, etc.
are merely steps on the way to the Big Reveals, the kind that seem to
come to light only during such encounters involving late hours, drink,
and a love-hate dynamic. Interview’s whiplash turns may make it a dream
addition to an acting- or scriptwriting-class syllabus. But by the
halfway point of the film, viewers will more likely sympathize with one
of Katya’s pained questions to Pierre: "Haven’t you got enough already?"

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Dick on a bike

Hot Rod’s
Rod Kimble is a moped-driving stuntman, but he may as well be
figure-skating while reading a teleprompter and wearing a "Vote for
Pedro" t-shirt. Saturday Night Live comic Andy Samberg’s amalgam of
Napoleon Dynamite and every Will Ferrell character to grace the big
screen overestimates his talents, his appeal, his friends – and does
much of it while wearing a thick fake mustache and occasionally making
noises reminiscent of a barking walrus.

Rod
is your go-to loser, a petulant college-age kid who doesn’t work, still
lives at home, and had a vaguely triangular haircut. He butts heads –
quite literally – with his stepdad, Frank (Deadwood’s Ian McShane),
attempting to win his respect by challenging the old man to fights.
These battles are put on hiatus, however, when Rod’s mother (Sissy
Spacek, embarrassingly filling the Julie Hagerty space-mom role) tells
him that Frank has a heart problem and will likely die soon because
they can’t afford a transplant. So Rod decides he’s going to put his
stuntman skills to use to raise funds: "I’m going to get you better,"
he seethes to Frank, "then I’m going to BEAT YOU TO DEATH!"

Hot
Rod is the misfit brain child of Samberg’s comedy trio the Lonely
Island (also comprising director Akiva Schaffer and co-star Jorma
Taccone), best known for creating SNL digital shorts such as "Lazy
Sunday" and "Dick in a Box." Though some of its basics are derivative,
the movie still manages to add new color to the stupidity rainbow.
Really, you can’t go wrong with the elements thrown together here –
Samberg’s gangliness, a terrible hair-metal soundtrack, and completely
random gags such as a character (Chester Tam) who seems to exist only
to thrust-dance in various scenes are reflexive laugh-inducers despite
the resistance your brain will inevitably put up.

It’s
way less consistent than such top Ferrell vehicles as Anchorman: The
Legend of Ron Burgundy. But the silly genius of, say, an extended scene
of Rod falling down a hill that’s made up of obviously separate takes
are just enough to compensate for awkward misfires, including many
moments with a wasted Isla Fisher, who as Rod’s love interest mostly
has to look uncomfortably confused.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

I said I don’t know anyone named Ben Affleck!

"Moscow, Russia." Uh oh: The dateline-for-dummies announcement on the very opening scene of The Bourne Ultimatum
doesn’t bode well for the third installment of the action franchise.
And, yes, sequences set in "Paris, France" and "London, England" are to
follow. The Ultimatum’s predecessors, 2002’s The Bourne Identity and
2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, were already much like their titular
amnesiac’s life – exciting but forgettable. Did returning director Paul
Greengrass and two new scripters (along with Tony Gilroy, who penned
the previous films based on Robert Ludlow’s novels) decide to further
water down Jason Bourne’s allegedly final adventure, just in case the
audience’s wits were as weak as the superspy’s memory? 

Well,
sort of. In addition to the obvious placards, Gilroy and co-writers
Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi aren’t aces when it comes to dialogue,
which makes Ultimatum sound a lot dumber than it is. Bourne himself
(Matt Damon) isn’t much affected, considering that most of what he’s
asked to do is run, run, run as he dodges his former employer, the CIA,
while trying to figure out his true identity – all he knows about his
life is that he’s a killing machine, his girlfriend was murdered, and
people who tend to have weapons think he’s dangerous. More problematic
are the cliche-spouting supporting characters, particularly David
Strathairn’s barky agency head, Noah Vosen. Vosen, slickly dressed,
frequently pacing, and often shot from low angles, couldn’t look any
more impressive. But then he opens his mouth: "Where is he, people?" he
demands of his furiously tapping surveillance crew. "We can’t afford to
lose this guy, people!" "I pay you people to find people, people!"

OK,
I made that last one up, but it’d fit right in with the rest of Vosen’s
ridiculous spiels as he struggles to find Bourne, whom he believes is
either "the source" — of something bad, presumably — "or after the
source like we are." Vosen is determined to kill Bourne if he has to,
to the alarm of Agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), who tussled with the
spy in Supremacy but now believes he’s a good guy who doesn’t like it
when violent strangers chase him. Also on his side is Nicky Parsons
(Julia Stiles), another CIA operative who’s targeted for guilt by
association when it appears that she’s helping Bourne.

Despite
a few other tired details (why do spies always break into the homes of
whomever they’re visiting, for example?) and a bit of melodrama
(Bourne’s memories are laughably always accompanied by hyperventilation
and, often, the addled guy falling to his knees), though, The Bourne
Ultimatum is as consistently gripping a thriller as you’ll see all
summer. What the filmmakers do best is what’s most important – crafting
nonstop cat-and-mouse scenes spiked with breathtaking, original action.
Greengrass relies on the irritating shaky-cam significantly less this
time around, using it just enough to add grit as the spy is pursued
throughout tight, colorful global locales (the money chase scene
consists of Bourne dashing through the alleys of Tangier on a moped)
while accompanied by a heart-thumping tribal soundtrack. Ultimatum is a
satisfying – and, ultimately, smart – finale to the sleeper franchise.
But its success is dubious. When Bourne, about to discover what he’s
been running after this whole time, intones, "This is where it ends,"
you may be thinking, for the first time this summer, that a threequel
is no longer enough.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

The Pope of Chilitown

Just
because Eddie Punchclock and Sally Housecoat have managed to keep The
Simpsons on the air for 18 years doesn’t mean that it’s still worth
tuning in to. The past few seasons have become increasingly painful to
watch, with forced, out-of-character antics and jokes being shamelessly
recycled like so many stapled-together Krusty Burgers. So for loyal,
longtime fans, the prospect of The Simpsons Movie
was as worrisome as it was exciting: A failed big-screen adaptation of
the beloved series would be the unfortunate, unequivocal sign that it
was time to release the hounds on the clan for good.

What
a relief, then, that it doesn’t suck. Creator Matt Groening gathered a
veteran series director, David Silverman, and plenty of back-in-the-day
writers to create a zippy, 87-minute mega-episode, one that doesn’t
quite rank among the best but is far from the worst. The story returns
to Simpsons-save-the-day basics and reverses a couple of recently
developed bad habits along the way – most egregiously, the morphing of
Homer from cranky buffoon to enraged jerk.

Of
course, he still screws up, and this time it’s a big one that
potentially dooms not only his marriage but all of Springfield. The
no-state town is in denial about its toxic lake, despite attempts by
Lisa (Yeardley Smith) to environmentally school her neighbors by
preaching about pollution door-to-door and hosting a conference, An
Irritating Truth. Lisa convinces the residents to stop dumping, but
eventually doughnuts speak louder than words: When Homer (Dan
Castellaneta) hears that Lard Lad is giving out free goodies, he
decides that he doesn’t have time to properly dispose of a silo filled
with the waste of his new pet pig. So into Lake Springfield it slides.
Immediately, the waters burble into an ominous green and a skull
appears, growling "Eeeevil!" Soon after, the head of the Environmental
Protection Agency (Albert Brooks) seals off the whole dirty city in an
impenetrable – or is it? — dome.

The
literally and figuratively sharply drawn Simpsons Movie doesn’t show
off with an onslaught of celebrity cameos (Green Day and Tom Hanks
being the quick exceptions), and, in fact, even many favorite secondary
characters are restricted to populating crowd scenes or spouting a line
or two. The latter is somewhat unfortunate – no episode has suffered
because of too much Principal Skinner or Mr. Burns – but the writers’
decision to focus on the family doesn’t backfire. (The choice to
include a "President Schwarzenegger" instead of the show’s Ahrnold
stand-in, Rainier Wolfcastle? More puzzling.) It’s not only Homer
that’s been de-caricaturized: Marge (Julie Kavner) and Lisa are once
again do-gooders who are funny instead of annoying and Bart (Nancy
Cartwright), though arguably the character who’s stayed the truest
throughout the years, is a troublemaker who’s entertainingly rebellious
(two words: skateboarding sequence) without coming off like a brat.

Homer,
though, is the center of this universe, and the script effortlessly
laces a story of government corruption with lessons geared toward the
bumbling patriarch on maintaining a good marriage and thinking of
people other than yourself. Still, this isn’t a Hallmark special: Sly
humor and subversion are what have won The Simpsons fans for the past
two decades, and the movie continues that tradition by including
mischief such as drunkenness, nudity, slams on cultural icons, and
social commentary that will offend sensitive sensibilities. A wide
canvas gave the animators ample opportunity to fill the screen to
bursting with gags you’ll likely need the DVD to catch, including
credit-crawls of fake names. Turning out a film worthy of 18 years’ of
anticipation couldn’t have been easy – but cheers to Groening for not
taking Homer’s legendary advice to never try.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
 

There’s no shortage of statistics, analysis, and eloquent opinions in No End in Sight,
Charles Ferguson’s prizewinning documentary about the United States’
occupation of Iraq. But in terms of tidiness, none of the film’s
interview subjects expresses concern about the administration’s
decisions better than retired Army Col. Paul Hughes: "Common sense
tells me, You don’t do that."
Hughes, who was part of the transition team after the "Mission
Accomplished"–anointed taking of Baghdad in May 2003, is speaking
specifically about the move to disband the Iraqi military, but the
remark could apply to the whole litany of missteps chronicled here—and
it’ll feel like a tiny, triumphant moment of high-rank candor to anyone
who’s spent the past four years figuratively smacking his forehead as
the situation has disintegrated.

Inarguably, No End in Sight
piles on, adding to the onslaught of criticism—filmic and
otherwise—against the Iraq invasion, and sitting through yet another
round of battering may sound wearisome. But for a comprehensive,
comprehensible account of what’s gone wrong, you can’t find much
better. Ferguson is a first-rate lecturer whose most impressive talent
is the ability to speak to the layman without resorting to Michael
Moore–isms such as jokes, ironic pop songs, and general
hammerings-home. Instead, he looks at a series of problems—from a
slapped-together reconstruction organization sent to work minus little
things like computers and a staff, to a tight circle of upper-level
policymakers who’d never set foot in Iraq—while presenting some basic
information (courtesy of narrator Campbell Scott), and letting people
such as Hughes tell the story of what went wrong. (The film isn’t
completely free of cheap shots: There are a few subtly critical images
of George Bush in shirt sleeves, for example, and, more frequently,
footage of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making an ass of
himself, such as infamously retorting "Stuff happens!" in response to
questions about the looting of Iraqi artifacts.)

Ferguson,
above all, is meticulous in his chronological combing of each and
seemingly every government mishap. By the time No End in Sight gets to
a late chapter titled "Things Fall Apart," you’ll believe that call
could have been made a long time ago.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com