Go for Zucker
Go for Zucker is a delightful German comedy written and directed by Dani Levy. With a Midas touch, he navigates around highly sensitive topics for the German national psyche and creates the first post World War II German comedy about a Jewish family. Jacky Zucker (nee Jakob Zuckermann) was born to a Jewish mother in East Germany. She is on a trip to Frankfurt with her other son Samuel when the Wall dividing the country comes up, and she decides to stay in West Germany. Fourteen-year-old Jack determines to stay in the East German sports high schools he loves. For the next 30 years, the two brothers who hated each others’ guts as teenagers lead separate lives. The film opens just as the gambler Jacky is thrown out by his wife and about to go to jail for not paying his debts. His unsuspecting wife receives a telegram from Samuel, who in the meantime has taken up Orthodox Judaism, that their mother has died and that he is coming to Berlin lay her to rest in Jewish cemetery. The mother specified in her will that Jacky and Samuel will only get her money if they make up and spend one week together or morning her as prescribed by Jewish rituals. When Samuel first arrives in Berlin with the coffin of the dead mother, the schism between the brothers seems insurmountable were it not for the fact that both would have a good use for a big injection of cash. Go see Zucker!
The Upside of Anger
Mike Binder, who wrote, directed, and played a small part in The Upside of Anger, successfully pushes the boundaries of the “romantic comedy” genre. The humor takes place on a thick background of anger, despair and sadness. Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen), an elegant suburban woman with four daughters ranging between the ages of 13 to 22 suffers an all too common fate of middle-age wives: the husband just takes off from one day to the next. Terry is devasted by the thought that the father of her four children would run off with his young Swedish secretary. She becomes an alocoholic, barely managing to keep her household going. She is full of anger, letting it out on her four children and the former baseball star, now low-life, neighbor Denny (Kevin Costner). What makes this film watchable is that it frequently creates funny dialogs between the angry Terry, her headstrong children, and the Danny, who quickly has second thoughts about getting her into the sack.
Napoleon Dynamite
The typical high school movie has a plot line that goes like this: Students collectively arrive at standards for deciding a status order for the group. Good looks, athleticism, and social skills typically form the standards by which each student is ranked. The high-status people form an in-group with a very strict social social boundary, keeping the majority of lower status students in the out-group. The cool people constantly pick on the nerds and remind the latter that they would like to join the in-group, but will never be allowed to do so. After considerable abuse, the nerds commiserate with one another and form a mutual support group. As the drama unfolds, the cool people turn out to be shallow and not very intelligent. The nerds, by contrast, reveal themselves to be deep, authentic, capable of true friendship, and above all intelligent. These qualities allow them to defeat the cool people at their own game (revenge of the nerds).
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
If you are flying to the West Coast this month with United Airlines, you are presented with the Briget Jones sequel. Just like the first film, it is a light romantic comedy. Competent writers were hired to put together a script that delivers the same kind of effects as the first movie. It is not profound in any sense of the word. The film feels over-engineered, except with regard to Bridget’s boyfriend Mark. The writers left him without any trace of character. You forget Bridge Jones II the moment you step out of the plane. If you are looking for a playful light romantic comedy, bring your DVD player on board and watch Renée Zellweger in Down with Love. If you want to see how good an actress Zwellweger you might want to watch her in the marvelous film Cold Mountain, which I reviewed on this page early last year.
Shall We Dance?
Stuck in the airplane, I watched Richard Gere dance again. Dirty Dancing or last year’s sequel Dirty Dancing Havanna Nights are filled with teenage lust and broken hearts. This film is the middle aged version of the earlier dance films. Everything is cleaned up. A young women makes a bored estate lawyer take up ball room dacing because he craves some adventure after 19 years of marriage. Fortunately for the institution of marriage, dancing keeps his lust in check. The story has some surprising twists, but on the whole remains quite banal. What this light romantic comedy has going for itself is that the dancing is beautiful. If you like ball room dancing, the movie will not bore you.
Tom Jones
This film, which received an Ocscar for best picture in 1963, takes an hour to become funny for someone who is not English. The first hour is filled with dry British humor. The second hour adds drama, making it easier for me to forget that I was standing on a stairmaster, trying to lose a few pounds while watching a movie. It was fun to see Albert Finney as a young man. As many a woman remarks in the film, he was quite easy to look at.
Election
Unlike his later masterpieces About Schmidt and Sideways, this film lacks existential gravity. Instead of directing it as a comedy, Payne should have cast it as a drama with comic scenes. This is the style he uses in his later movies. But you can see already here Payne’s immense ability to bring onto the screen the social psychology of contemporary America.
50 First Dates
Deeply built into our notion of romantic love is the idea that there is one other person out there who is tailor-made to be your mate. The only real question in this particular notion of love is whether you are able to find this person among the 6 billion people who could be the one. The film is firmly built on these premises. But it cleverly explores the complications of keeping even the most promising romance going. What if you have short-term memory loss and wake up every morning with no recollection whatsoever that you fell in love yesterday. Is romantic love possible under these trying circumstances? Can you form a meaningful relationship? If you are looking for an interesting little romance movie, this is a film for you.
High Fidelity
The movie is billed as a comedy. It is not much of one. It is a diary of a man whose girlfriend just walked out and who starts callling old girl friends to find out why they all rejected him. The situation is ripe with comic potential but the narrative lacks power and leaves one craving for good writing and deeper insight in the human condition.
“School of Rock” Rocks
If you like popular music and if you like to laugh, this movie is pure joy. I haven’t cried in laughter so much for a long time. Jack Black’s acting performance itself is a joy to watch. He deserves an Oscar for the gig.
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