Hello. I’d like to trade in my testicles, please.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a movie in possession of a title such as The Jane Austen Book Club
will be in want of a male audience. Based on a novel of the same name,
the Robin Swicord-written and -directed film is exactly what you’d
expect it to be: It’s breezy one moment, somber the next, and, of
course, full of women, sentimentality, and reaction shots of dogs. And
when each showing lets out, it’s likely there won’t be a long line at
the men’s room.

The
somewhat interesting idea of Karen Joy Fowler’s novel is that real
people can find in Austen parallels to and guidance for their own
lives. But it’s a gimmick that was set up to fail. Go too deep with the
theory, and you risk alienating viewers who aren’t Janeites. Skimp on
it, and there’s little else to differentiate the story from countless
other romantic comedies. Swicord, a first-time feature director,
decided on the latter, offering characters and plot turns whose
resemblances to Austen are often too superficial to be recognizable.

Five
women and one man comprise the titular Sacramento book club, and each
is a shameless type. Bernadette (Kathy Baker) is the organizer of the
group and its eldest member, a currently single, freewheeling sort
who’s been married as often as Austen published. (That’d be six times.)
Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) has just been dumped by her husband (Jimmy
Smits) of two decades. Sylvia’s daughter, Allegra (Maggie Grace), is a
lesbian and extreme-sport enthusiast who immediately clashes with
Prudie (Emily Blunt), a young, snooty high-school-French teacher with a
severe black bob and an unhappy marriage. And Jocelyn (Maria Bello),
the arguable focus of the story, is Sylvia’s best friend, a
never-married dog breeder who impulsively invites the handsome,
chick-flick-ready Grigg (Hugh Dancy) to join the club when he hits on
her at a conference.

Grigg
agrees, with a caveat: He’ll give Austen a chance if she’ll try science
fiction. The chemistry between them as they argue the merits of each of
their preferred styles of literature is obvious, and when Jocelyn asks
Grigg how he feels about older women, it seems clear where this is
going. But Jocelyn doesn’t want Grigg for herself. Instead, she means
to set up him with Sylvia, and in this case the unforeseen plot turn is
irritating: Jocelyn never lets either of them know about her
intentions, leaving both the characters and the audience baffled when
she switches from being sly to getting angry at Grigg for not asking
Sylvia out. "You need to dance with Sylvia tonight!" she admonishes him
before they all meet for a library benefit. But wouldn’t you know it,
as soon as Grigg shows the slightest interest in her friend, Jocelyn
turns pouty. And yet later yells at Grigg for not sufficiently
appreciating what a great person Sylvia is. It’s a back-and-forth even
Elizabeth Bennett would find exhausting.

Swicord’s
script is woefully underdeveloped, with the passage of time marked with
montages of the members reading each book and only cursory subplots for
most of the characters. Prudie’s may be as hole-y as the others – you
can’t imagine how the buttoned-down, romantic teacher ended up with a
distant, jockish husband – but because of Blunt, this story is the most
compelling: Quite the opposite of Blunt’s outspoken, nearly boorish
character in her breakout movie, The Devil Wears Prada, her Prudie is
quiet and mannered, peppering her speech French phrases that make her
seem arrogant. But she speaks slowly and avoids eye contact, often
running her hands down her bob as if to squeeze out a clear thought
from a brain noisy with thoughts of her miserable home life. One of the
movie’s most realistic and raw moments involves a fight between Prudie
and her husband when she thinks he was flirting with another woman at a
party, a blonde "with those ridiculous plastic boobs," she cries. "Is
that what you go for?" Unfortunately, any credibility in that story
line is wiped out with the suggestion that a caveman need only spend an
afternoon reading Austen aloud to undergo a Mr. Darcy transformation.   

Blunt
may be the standout in this terrific ensemble, but it’s because no one
else is given material worthy of their talents — Brenneman cries a
lot, Baker tosses off bon mots, and the typically intense Bello is
reduced to romantic-comedy giddiness and embarrassing dialogue such as,
"Reading Jane Austen is a freakin’ minefield!" Dancy gets a pass: Not
only is his character supposed
to be little more than charming window dressing, the unthreateningly
handsome actor is a much better fit as Grigg than in serious leading
roles such as in last year’s Beyond the Gates. The cast is ultimately
wasted on a film that, at best, might have been a Cliffs Notes version
of Austen, but more closely resembles a bargain-bin romance.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
 

Damsel no longer in distress

Erica
Bain "walks the streets" of New York City and relates eloquent
meditations about what she observes on her popular radio show. She
loves her job, but resists when she finds out that a television station
is courting her. "I’m not a face, I’m just a voice," Erica insists to
her boss. More than her job, though, the storyteller loves her town,
and seems deliriously happy to spend that evening with her fiance and
dog at the park. Then they’re assaulted, and her boyfriend is killed.
Suddenly, New York doesn’t seem so shiny. So Erica’s new companion
becomes a gun.

Neil Jordan’s The Brave One
is consistently and profoundly unsettling – and not just because it
brings Charles Bronson to mind. But star Jodie Foster hasn’t undone a
career’s worth of choosing smart if similarly themed female-in-peril
roles to make Death Wish VI: A Woman Scorned,
even this movie’s plot is remarkably similar to the 1974 Bronson
vehicle that kicked off a bloodthirsty franchise. (See James Wan’s
just-released, critically thrashed Death Sentence to get a rehashing of the story that more properly translates the series’ spirit for today’s zeitgeist.)

Foster’s
Erica is angry, yes, but she’s frightened first. After awaking from a
three-week coma to the news that David (Naveen Andrews) is dead, Erica
returns to their apartment, still messy with life, and holes up to
mourn. When it’s time to reconnect with the world, Erica obviously has
to not only overcome her grief, but the anxiety that inevitably
envelops a crime victim. Jordan highlights this terror, if a little too
dramatically: As Erica makes her way down her building’s dark hallway,
light harshly gleams in through the door and quietly menacing music
plays. It’s a scene more appropriate for a slasher film, but it’s a
forgivable indulgence.

Erica
admits to her audience that fear is something that’s foreign to her, a
chosen state of being she formerly associated with "weaker" people. She
knows that she’s changed and refers to the "stranger" within. But one
thing about her remains constant: Erica’s still just a voice, not a
face – and keeping the latter anonymous is now more important than
ever. After being unnerved by situations as innocuous as a skateboarder
passing her by on her first day out, Erica buys an unregistered gun.
One presumes it’s just for protection. And when she later witnesses a
murder in a convenience store and shoots wildly at the gunman when he
comes after her, Erica is suitably horrified. The next time there’s a
danger, though, she decides to kill again, later wrestling with the
fact that revealing her weapon would have probably been enough to save
her. She’s not comfortable with what she’s doing, but she doesn’t stop. 

Foster
is unsurprisingly terrific as Erica, projecting her usual toughness
while physically looking like a stiff breeze could snap her in half.
She knows that feeling shocked doesn’t mean turning frozen. Best, she
never lets Erica get smug, even as the media’s screaming about the
vigilante they’re sure is a man or as she befriends the detective
investigating the case (Terrence Howard, smoothly proving that
indignation can be righteous without being arrogant). As Erica finds
herself increasingly mired, Foster’s expression is tense but about to
crumble, with tears always threatening but rarely unleashed.

Of
course, The Brave One wouldn’t really work if Erica didn’t turn into a
magnet for crime, but the parade of coincidences that accompany the
character’s development is a minor script weakness. More impressive is
the film’s ability to wring your gut. Its violence is pervasive and all
the more sickening due to its presence in many forms: It can be
graphic, like Erica and David’s vicious attack, which included her
being slammed against a concrete wall. (The assailants videotape it, a
recording that finds its way back to Erica; she also has audio of
confrontations that took place while she was out taping ambient sounds
for work.) More often, though, violence is implied or impending: A
subplot involving a girl and the stepfather who allegedly murdered her
mother is heartbreaking, and each time Erica suddenly finds herself
vulnerable is another occasion to hold your breath regardless of the
fact that she’s packing.

The
story’s revenge factor is undeniable, but Jordan never plays any of
Erica’s murders for a thrill. Her actions are the desperate grasps of a
traumatized person trying to regain a sense of control. She’s surprised
by them, is never at peace with them, and she eventually comes to the
realization that they’re destroying instead of rescuing her. Still, The
Brave One is likely to get a raucous response whenever a bad guy goes
down. You may be disturbed by this, or you may be one of those
cheering. Either way, this movie will make you react.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
 

Cheese: The new Brussels sprouts

At one point in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With,
a struggling Chicago actor named James is giving a career-day talk at
an elementary school when he starts rambling. "Get this," he tells the
stone-faced kids about his latest job. "It was supposed to be a funny
show, but I made people cry. Isn’t that silly?"

Curb Your Enthusiam’s
Jeff Garlin plays James – and also wrote and directed – and although he
won’t make you cry here, he’ll probably make you yawn. Garlin’s pet
project with the unwieldy title feels terribly familiar, with its
chatter about minutiae and throwback, accordion-heavy soundtrack making
it seem like a Curb episode
directed by Woody Allen. But instead of neuroses that are black-tinged
and deep-seated, most of Cheese’s navel-gazing is genial to the point
of being childlike. "Where’d the term ‘dealership’ come from?" James
asks a receptionist when the reality show he hosts plays a joke on a
mechanic. "What about tent sales? What is it about tents that make
people want to buy cars?" With each scene change, you can picture
Garlin cut-and-pasting riffs he’s written over the years to form some
semblance of a story. Occasionally they’re amusing; mostly, though,
it’s like hanging out with someone who tediously must express every
thought that comes to mind. Or a toddler who just learned how to ask
questions.

Then again, perhaps that’s fitting considering that the 39-year-old James still lives with mother.
The two other things that are important to know about James is that
he’s fat and looking for love. (If watching the plus-size actor in
every scene isn’t enough to remind you about his weight, someone
mentions it at what feels like five-minute intervals.) He seems to find
love but not a solution to his dieting problems when he meets Beth
(Sarah Silverman), a "hot girl" who gives James her practice sundae
when she’s watching her sister’s ice-cream shop – and soon, uh, asks
him to go underwear-shopping with her. (He’s as incredulous as we are.)

Silverman
is initially a bright spot in this exceedingly loose film, but her
character is impossible to like. The same can be said of the majority
of the well-connected Garlin’s guest stars: Second City alumni such as
Bonnie Hunt, Amy Sedaris, and Dan Castellanata show up, though their
main direction was apparently to act weird so Garlin can scrunch his
eyebrows together at them.

James does
little but meander from rejection to rejection throughout the film.
He’s dumped personally, he’s dumped professionally. None of these turns
are given much explanation, despite the fact that, clocking in at a
meager 80 minutes, the script had plenty of room for some. Every time
someone tells James what a loser he is, though, he never raises more
than an affable fuss over it, which makes the character’s problems feel
all the more contrived. Hearing about a remake of Marty for the Tiger
Beat generation, in fact, seems to upset James more than the idea that
his life is tanking. This sub-sub-plot at least leads to Cheese’s
funniest scene – which involves a secondslong upstaging by teen pop
star Aaron Carter. Now that’s silly.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Lame and Lamer

It’s hard to defend Bob Odenkirk’s Let’s Go to Prison.
The 2006 comedy coasts along on don’t-drop-the-soap cliches and would
be completely sparkless if it weren’t for its star, Will Arnett. Even
then, you have to really be a fan of the Arrested Development-broken
actor to let his comedic subtleties trump the movie’s broadness. It’s
in his eyes: A striking blue-green, they lend a delusional, slightly
maniacal sparkle to Arnett’s off-kilter good looks, which has allowed
him to perfect characters brimming with misplaced cockiness. But close
up, those pretty peepers could just as easily belong to a frightened
little girl. Odenkirk knows this, and zoomed in on them tightly and
often to add laughs that the script just wasn’t going to deliver.

The pair team up again in The Brothers Solomon,
but this time neither the director’s go-to move– which peppers the
too-long opening credits as Arnett spies each name — nor the
comedian’s general charms can save the project. Written by Saturday
Night Live veteran and co-star Will Forte, this dreadful movie focuses
on two Dumb and Dumberer-like brothers whose father (Lee Majors) slips
into a coma. John (Arnett) and Dean (Forte) were homeschooled and still
live together, and though both want to settle down, their lack of early
socialization has turned them into clueless daters. They’re not
terribly picky – on a networking website, they describe their ideal
woman as "female" — but their strategies keep them single. Dean, for
instance, tries to impress a date by showing her father "the ultimate
respect" and kissing him on the lips. (Yes, there’s a saliva bridge as
he pulls away.) John likes to hang around the supermarket and buy women
groceries like normal guys buy drinks at a bar. When he picks up
someone’s tab and you see him, in khaki shorts and a sport coat,
seductively fingering a banana as he looks over at her, it’s kind of
funny. But when he stops her from leaving the store and says, "I don’t
mean to be rude, but I just bought your groceries," it’s rather
unsettling. 

The
brothers need to step up their efforts, however, when their dad’s
doctor tells them that a patient has a better chance of surviving when
he has something to look forward to – so they decide to have a baby.
Using the ever-versatile craigslist, they find Janine (SNL’s Kristen
Wiig), a woman who’s willing to rent out her womb for cash. She doesn’t
mind that John and Dean are bumbling; naturally, she comes to the
realization that despite their weirdness, they’re "really sweet," as
she tries to convince the hot neighbor (Malin Akerman) John wouldn’t
mind impregnating. Janine’s boyfriend, James (Chi McBride, Arnett’s
Let’s Go to Prison suitor), however, has an anger problem as it is, and
isn’t too thrilled about the two goofy white dudes suddenly hanging
around his girl.

Cringingly,
you get the feeling that the filmmakers thought it would be hilarious
to cast McBride as James, because how crazy would it be for the petite,
blond Janine to have a big, black boyfriend? That’s about consistent
with the general depth of ingenuity here. The script is a painful
exercise of potluck humor: You get a bit of Airplane!-esque wordplay,
some Simpsons randomness, a lot of awkward pauses a la The Office. What
Forte is especially fond of, though, is the incredibly tired fake-out
admonishment (starts out stern, ends in a compliment). The jumble of
styles would be a momentum-killer even if the jokes did work, but an
overwhelming number don’t. The brothers are supposed to come off as
endearingly hopeful – when Dean asks about one of John’s disastrous
dates, he replies, "Well, it wasn’t exactly an A+. More like an A" –
but it’s usually just excruciating. Particularly Arnett’s scenes: Any
longtime SNL viewer can’t be surprised when one of its players
humiliates himself on the big screen. But watching an actor who was
crucial to Arrested Development’s critical (if not commercial) success
reduced to smiling stupidly through fart gags is more uncomfortable
than anything Ricky Gervais could dream up.   

To
be fair, there are a few mildly amusing moments, including the trial
runs the brothers put themselves through to prepare for the child ("The
baby’s lost, and you gotta find it. Go!") and their attempt to spend
time with some kids by staking out a playground ("We’re trying to coax
that little girl into our car, but her mom’s being a real pain in the
ass," John tells a cop). But the movie’s incompetence is mighty enough
to snuff out its laughs. Even the outtakes aren’t funny, which is the
final proof that The Brothers Solomon isn’t exactly an A+ — more like
a D.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

You don’t know who they are in Them,
a thriller from writer-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud – which
makes the film feel more like an experiment in nerve-rattling
minimalism than the true story it’s purported to be.

After
a frightening but ultimately useless intro, Them focuses on a French
couple who realize they’ve come under attack in the middle of the
night. Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) is a schoolteacher living with her
scruffy writer boyfriend, Lucas (Michael Cohen), in a cavernous if
rickety mansion in Middle of Nowhere, Romania. (Perhaps they’re
married, but with exchanges such as, "Are you sleepy, Mr. Sleepy?"
they’re newlyweds at best.) After dinner one evening, she spends some
time grading papers while he goes to bed. But soon Clementine is waking
Mr. Sleepy up, because Messrs. Intruders are outside making a racket
and perhaps stealing her car. They investigate but soon shut themselves
in, forced to take cover by aggressive beings armed with a flurry of
flashlights and what sounds like evil noisemakers.

The
remainder of the film’s 77 minutes is spent as the couple alternately
hides, searches, and is chased, while both they and the audience see no
more than flashes of attackers who seem to be human but have that
all-seeing, supernatural serial-killer third eye. It’s quite similar to
the recent Vacancy – Bonamy even resembles that film’s star, Kate
Beckinsale – and though it gets points for being less graphic, Them is
overall a weaker film. For one, the couple may be trapped in their
home, but this is a place the size of Cleveland – long spooky hallways
or not, whenever the characters take five minutes to walk from a
bedroom to the front door, you imagine that there has to be an inner
sanctum among all the rooms that would allow the victims to more
effectively hide. Pacing is also a problem: Relying too frequently on
long, silent scenes of waiting and lurking about, the directors aren’t
good judges of when quiet tension gets boring, making the story one in
which a whole lot of nothing happens.

If
you haven’t seen Vacancy – or are sick of by-the-numbers slashers –
Them is a relatively enjoyable and often spooky sit. (Clementine’s car
in particular gets a few Christine-worthy scenes.) The big end, though
– well, it may not be what you’ve been dreaming up, but it’s not
exactly a Sixth Sense-impressive  reveal, either. And after such a
measured buildup, a film that makes you go,  "That’s it?!?" is perhaps
worse than one that was just bad all along.

One
imagines that the appeal of remaking a movie is the relative
brainlessness involved. Grab a ready-made script and a DVD of an old
fave, and the hardest part about creating a film is over. Now it’s time
to pick your cast, dress ‘em up, and point ‘n’ shoot.

The new Halloween,
by that standard, is a surprise, then – though maybe not to fans of
writer-director Rob Zombie’s earlier, much maligned work, House of 1000
Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. Zombie’s "reimagining" of John
Carpenter’s overrated 1978 classic is, for once, a true claim. The
general timeline of the Michael Myers story remains largely the same –
Mikey debuts as the Li’l Murderer one Halloween night as a child and
returns to his hometown after escaping a mental facility as an adult –
but Zombie shifts the movie’s magnifying glass to expand on the biggest
mystery of the original: What set this kid off? (And, admittedly less
important but more infuriating: Why the hell couldn’t a teenage girl
fight off a six-year-old who was merely standing in front of her?)

Halloween
opens with a scene in the Myers’ kitchen the morning of Oct. 31: Mom
(Sheri Moon Zombie), no doubt tired after a night of stripping, is
cooking breakfast for her three children while fighting with her
wheelchair-bound boyfriend, Ronnie (William Forsythe), who pelts her
with threats such as, "Bitch, I will crawl over there and skull-fuck
the shit outta yeh!" The baby’s screeching and her slutty teenage
daughter, Judith (Hannah Hall), is mouthing off, but Michael (a Kurt
Cobain-coiffed Daeg Faerch) merely kisses the baby hello and proceeds
to eat. Of course, he had to wash his hands first – they had gotten
quite bloody when he killed one of his pet rats.

After
he’s forced to go trick-or-treating alone that night – a scene that’s
set, camp-free, to "Love Hurts," the movie’s sole ridiculous musical
cue in a soundtrack filled with KISS, Rush, and, naturally, the
original’s haunting score – Michael decides to take care of the family
turmoil by offing Ronnie, his big sis, and her boyfriend. (And Zombie
takes giant steps toward realism by having him attack his victims when
they’re distracted, say, or asleep.) At this point, Michael’s face is
nearly constantly covered, mostly with a clown disguise but, in a touch
that’s both spooky and a nice wink, digging out the iconic Mike Myers
mask to terrorize Judith. He’ll spend the bulk of his incarceration
crafting and hiding behind such concealments, pointing out perhaps a
little too psychobabbly too his mother, "It hides my ugliness."

The
first half of Zombie’s Halloween is spent on Michael’s childhood crimes
and his time in the detention center, mainly his sessions with his
frustrated therapist, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). And though the
nightmare-family rationale may be cliched, this look into Michael’s
childhood is quick-moving and fascinating. Faerch’s performance is a
little rough around the edges considering the young actor’s experience
– he’d probably be in trouble if the masks didn’t help him project
"evil" — but with his apple-cheeked face and the baby voice he uses
when Michael’s around his mother and the baby, the kid is still creepy
as hell. The best part of Zombie’s addition to the plot, though, is
what makes the entire movie worthwhile despite a plodding second half,
and that’s the director’s stylistic flair. Nearly every shot feels
carefully crafted, but like in The Devil’s Rejects, there are a handful
here that are mini-masterpieces of visuals and sound, particularly the
aftermath of one of Michael’s detention-center murders: With the
ambient noise silenced, a whooping siren accompanies the slow-motion
reaction as the camera eyes a nurse’s bloody hand, Michael being
restrained, and his mother silently screaming. It’s hypnotic.

When
the film skips to Michael’s adulthood and his escape, however, it
switches to straightforward homage – and falters. Now played by Tyler
Mane, Michael is gigantic and no doubt intimidating, but his quick
succession of murders when he returns to his hometown feels gratuitous
and, worse, illogical: One liberty Zombie took with the latter half of
the story regards the reason he’s hunting Laurie (an annoyingly cutesy
Scout Taylor-Compton in the Jamie Lee Curtis’ role), and killing off
all her friends doesn’t quite go along with it. Zombie also eschews
typical teen-slasher cheesiness, an asset that turns into a liability
during this segment. Refusing to rely too heavily on the trendy
whipped-around camera, Zombie often trains on each murder victim,
always bloodied but never cartoonishly gory. The seriousness makes the
mayhem feel realistic, yes, but also brutal and nearly voyeuristic,
inching toward torture-porn territory. It’s hard to feel entertained.
Yet even as when the new Halloween proceeds as a scene-by-scene
re-creation, you can feel Zombie’s effort in each unique camera angle
and dark-but-not-done-before atmospherics. For once, this is remake,
not a regurgitation.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
   

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

It’s a little hard at first to believe Billy Mitchell, the subject of
the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It’s not
because the Florida restaurateur and hot-sauce shill, now in his early
40s, was once crowned “Gamer of the Century” after setting records on a
number of classic video-arcade games—most notably Donkey Kong, on which
he recorded a seemingly unbreakable high score of 874,300 in 1982. Nor
is it because he’s still proud of those achievements and was happy to
talk about the good ol’ days with Seth Gordon, the film’s director.

Rather, what’s difficult to believe is that the character of Billy
Mitchell you see onscreen actually exists. Now that reality shows and
mockumentaries have hardened us to the truthiness that’s out there,
your natural reaction to Mitchell may be that the dude’s been coached.
The hair: long but tidy and businessman-slick, accompanied by a trimmed
full beard. The clothes: skinny black pants, dark shirts, and patriotic
ties for a monochrome look that says “I love the ’80s.” And, finally,
the attitude, which involves not only referring to himself in the third
person but announcing things like, “No matter what I say, it draws
controversy. Sort of like the abortion issue.” Come on.

But Mitchell persistently uses that same self-important tone whether
he’s talking about the “absolute brutality” of Donkey Kong or going on
about what it takes to be a winner in life and, well, it would have
taken some serious craftiness on the filmmakers’ part to fashion a
person who wasn’t an inherent ass into the Mitchell you meet. The King
of Kong also isn’t a nostalgia trip but an update. Mitchell had been
sitting pretty on his record for more than two decades when a
challenger emerged in 2003. Steve Wiebe, a 35-year-old father of two,
had just been laid off from what he expected would be a lifelong job at
Boeing (his father had worked there) when he discovered that he was
pretty good at Donkey Kong. Desperate for a purpose, he looked into the
game’s best score and decided to try to beat it on his home machine.
Fate was not on his side: As the film shows, Wiebe was always the
frustrated-but-amiable loser, gifted in sports and music but never
quite able to become the No. 1 anything. He even lost his job the same
day that he and his wife bought their first house.

The nerds went wild over the competition anyway. The nerve center of
the gaming world is Twin Galaxies, an organization with “referees” who
police the virtual world by recording game statistics and player
rankings as well as creating codes of conduct. Its founder, a slightly
weird and vaguely bummish man named Walter Day, is tickled by the
unexpected rivalry, as are the assortment of eccentric
characters—mainly refs and other record-holders—included here, most of
whom pretty much admit that they’ve got nothing else going on in their
lives. Again, the high degree of geekdom that Gordon presents knocks
you off-balance a bit: Is this meant to be merely a
let’s-laugh-at-the-freaks project, a real-life Napoleon Dynamite?

Mercifully, the answer is no. The King of Kong genuinely unfolds
into a classic and very funny underdog story, yet because of the
bizarre subject matter—and bizarre subjects—it never feels clichéd.
Better yet, Gordon makes you understand that the competition really
isn’t a joke to these guys: Wiebe submits a tape that shows him beating
Mitchell’s record (and in which Wiebe’s young son repeatedly and
hilariously demands, “Wipe my butt! Stop playing Dooooonkey
Koooooong!”), but when his score is disqualified by Twin Galaxies, he
twice travels to compete in person at a sanctioned machine. (Yes,
there’s a conspiracy, and it’s strangely compelling.) But Mitchell,
even after sneering about how setting a world record at home doesn’t
mean a thing, well, let’s just say that the talent he shows off best
here is running his mouth. The players’ motivations, and therefore
their humanity, eventually trump their initial caricatures as it
becomes clear that neither of them want to hold the world record just
because. As with any other sports film, there’s tension and snarkiness
and thrills and even, unfortunately, tears, although this bit of
melodrama is kept to a flash. “It’s not even about Donkey Kong
anymore,” Wiebe says as the competition is about to boil over. And you
believe him.

And that’s the 1,498 reason why this was a bad idea

Balls of Fury has nearly all the elements that make The King of Kong
a success—a nerdy pseudo-sport, characters that can politely be
described as eccentric, an obsession with the ’80s—yet the music to
Donkey Kong will stick in your head longer than this disaster. Born of
Reno 911! creators and stars Robert Ben Garant (writer-director) and
Thomas Lennon (writer-co-star), Balls of Fury barely even counts as a
one-joke movie, considering that the sloppy former table-tennis
champion who serves as its main sight gag isn’t very funny.

Cringingly unsuccessful Jack Black wannabe Dan Fogler is Randy
Daytona, a one-time Ping-Pong prodigy whose defeat in the 1988 Olympics
resulted in his gambling father’s death. Nineteen years later, Randy is
still digging Def Leppard and headbands but no longer competes, instead
eking an existence out of performing Ping-Pong-related stunts at a
dinner theater favored by the elderly. One day, an FBI agent (George
Lopez) enlists his help in catching Feng (Christopher Walken), some
kind of criminal table-tennis overlord who killed Randy’s father. In
order to get close to Feng, Randy needs to be invited to his
underground competition, which means receiving training at the hands of
a blind Chinese man (James Hong) and his lithe-but-fierce niece (Maggie
Q).

If you’re waiting to read about the funny parts, you just did.
Garant and Lennon bring a vague sense of Reno 911! silliness to Balls
of Fury, but set against the series’ best episodes, it feels like the
first draft from a couple of guys who drunkenly slurred “Let’s make a
movie!” after stumbling home from karaoke night. How else could they
defend what feels like dozens of jokes about prostitutes? And a love
interest—poor Maggie Q—who literally hates Randy in one go-nowhere
scene and is kissing him in the next? And here’s an easy game: Guess
what’s coming when the FBI guys say that

a communication device needs to travel with Randy “the old-fashioned way.” Gas, groin kicks, and
a random pet panda—ha ha, it’s dead!—are also dragged out for so-called
laughs.

Fogler, all hair, chub, and unfunny mugging, is as unpleasant as the
attempts at humor are exhausting. Even Walken can’t redeem a minute of
this mess, though his contribution might have been a little amusing had
the trailers not given it away. Allow me to throw one of Balls of
Fury’s lines right back at it, courtesy of Randy’s boss when he gets
fired: “Get your stink out of my theater.”

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com