Tropic Thunder
There is a reason why in most films different people take on the roles of the writer, director, and the lead actor: Rarely is one and the same person equally good at all these jobs. Tropic Thunder stars Ben Stiller, and is written and directed by Ben Stiller. That was a mistake. When I saw the trailer a few weeks ago, my hopes soared. Perhaps Tropic Thunder was going to be as funny as There is something about Mary. Far from it, the new Ben Stiller vehicle only provokes a few laughs. The story (a film crew making war movie in Vietnam comes under real attack) is rather weak, a mumble jumble of ideas that Stiller had over the years. The best part of the movie was Tom Cruise, who plays a slimy, foul-mouthed, overly hairy Hollywood producer. Cruise steals the show from Stiller, even though he only played a minor character, in a sideline of film. I am not going to see another film written and directed by Stiller any time soon.
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Sex and the City
The four ladies of HBO’s “Sex and the City” comedy series continue their adventure in New York. The writers infused the film with a good sense of fun. At times it is also a bit sexually daring, but for the most part it falls into the genre of a tame romantic comedy. This is not a movie that will make it into the top 250 hundred films of all time but it offers light entertainment if that is what you are seeking.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry reminded me of an episode of the Love Boat in the 1980s. After yet another romantic disappointment, a lady decides that she had it with men. She meets a notorious womanizer on the boat. To get the woman “into the sack”, the gigolo plays the role of a man who claims that he also never wants to start a new relationship. To make their commitment to abstinence even stronger, the womanizer proposes after a few encounters that they should sleep in the same bed andprove to themselves that they are capable of foregoing sex. The lady agrees, but her hand reaches over to his side of the bed before longThe next morning the love boat has a new romantic pair. Back to Chuck & Larry. Chucks wife has died and he no longer is entitled to spousal benefits from the City of New York, which would help his children in case he would also die. Chuck asks his womanizing best fried to pretend that he is his domestic partner.
License to Wed
One of the big ironies of modern society is that we require people to obtain licenses for important and trivial tasks before we let them lose onto the world. I remember being told in my late teens. The of two most important decisions in life about choosing the right job and the right wife. For almost every job we need to demonstrate qualification before we can get hired. But when it comes to marriage anyone having reached the appropriate age can self-declare to be ready for the task of committing for a life-time. License to Wed thinks this to be ridiculous. The reverend Frank (Robin Williams) believes that a couple should first go through a rigorous program of examinations before they can be declared fit to marry. Sadie Jones (Mandy Moore) enlists reverend Frank to help her figure out whether Ben Jones (John Krasinski) is the right one. I thought that the film’s premise was clever but the execution left much to be desired.
Blades of Glory
This newest effort by Will Farrell is not nearly as funny as Bodega Nights. The basic idea behind the movie has some charms. Let’s use the gender wars to go for a real gender bender. Two guys compete in the Olympic pair ice-skating competition. I have been told many times that the top female player on the tennis circuit would have not chance against any of the top forty players on the men’s circuit. But in ice dance you imagine that female grace will make it impossible for two guys to win over the judges and win the gold medal in pair ice-skating.
Catch and Release
One should not be a reviewer of a film in which a colleague has a gig. Richard Roeper (who together with Ebert forms the Chicago Sun-Times film critic team) said that he did not like the film based on the trailer, but came to like it quite a bit. This is chick’s film and not one that Roeper would have praised if his colleague Kevin Smith did play a role (Smith sometimes replaces Roger Ebert in the critic’s seat). Catch and Release has an interesting twist for a romantic comedy. It opens with a tragedy (the fiancé dies just before the wedding and the wedding is turned into the funeral.) If you are female and you are in the mood for a romantic comedy where romance often fails, you might not be disappointed. But I strongly recommend that before seeing the film you read the first chapter on America in Pamela Druckerman’s book Lust in Translation. You will have much deeper understanding of why the characters in the film feel the way they do. For guys Catch and Release is just to slow. If your girl wants to see this film, go to another room and watch instead A heart in the winter (Un Coeur en hiver), an excellent French movie which guys like much more than girls. Every guy I know loved the film and every girl found it depressing!
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Remember the six months before American troops invaded Iraq. The French and German secret services were claiming that no credible evidence existed to show that Saddam was close to producing nuclear weapons. Colin Powel, in what became a reputation destroying speech at the UN, claimed that the U.S. had precisely this smoking-gun kind of evidence. After the speech, the French were not still convinced and blocked an U.N. vote that would have given U.N. approval for a U.S. military strike against Iraq. Some Americans were so upset by what they perceived to as unwarranted French obstinacy that they started to a movement to rename
A Prairie Home Companion
A Prairie Home Companion is a film about the live radio show presenting a mixture of folk music and comedy for the heartland of America every Saturday night. Periodically I would stumble upon show on my classical radio station, but never listened more than a few minutes because the humor was not my cup of tea. I suspect that the director Robert Altman grew up with this kind of show and was willing to make a film about a fictional last show of radio program out of sense of nostalgia for a time gone by. One could have made a beautiful film about American folk music and its cultural meaning. But the ambitions of the film are too modest. It simply wants to preserve for posterity one of these shows and what its dominant host was like. This does not amount to much despite its great cast of actors, including Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson.
The Devil Wears Prada
The Devil Wears Prada does not offer any meaningful drama but it gives a wonderful peek into the world of high fashion magazines. . If you read fashion magazines regularly, you will enjoy this behind the scenes look. If you never open such magazines, you will probably enjoy getting to know this world. I did. Based on a book about the long-term editor of Vogue, Meryl Streep plays satan at the top fashion magazine in the world. And she does it well. But don’t expect any real drama except feeling every more acutely during the course of the movie your wardrobe is totally inadequate!
McLintock!
Drawing on the plot of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Mclintock shows you what the fourth of July was like in the Wild West. They did not have fireworks but plenty of fun. The Wild West in this film is a comedy land. The place is Arizona and it is dry. My historical knowledge is inadequate to understand why the West was so romanticized in American culture. The land from from Utah to California is not particularly lushes. Why would I want to move there if I am on lushes green land on the East Coast? Perhaps it was the availability of free land that gave a lot of people the opportunity to become economically self-sufficient, which was not possible in Europe. How little I new about the historical Wild West became clear after I read the article on the subject in the Wikipedia.
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