200 million people play Angry Birds on their smartphones every day. More fictional birds have been flung in the name of the game than there are real birds in the world. It’s the first app to sell movie rights to the movies and if just a fraction of the people who play the game everyday go see the movie it should be a rousing success. Keep in mind though, that if “The Angry Birds Movie” doesn’t lay an egg at the box office it is inevitable that “Candy Crush: The Saga” and “Fruit Ninjas” movies won’t be far behind. The choice is yours.
This weekend the furious feathered friends catapult onto the big screen accompanied by a classic rock score—this may be the only kid’s flick to feature Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”—and plenty of bird puns—”Pluck my life,” says Red (Jason Sudeikis) when he is sentenced to anger management class.
Sudeikis, Josh Gad and Maya Rudolph star in “The Angry Birds Movie,” a story that tells us why the annoyed avians—like flock leader Red Bird, Bomb the Black Bird (Danny McBride) and Slingshot Stella the Cockatoo (Kate McKinnon)—are so angry. Turns out they feel betrayed when Bird Island is invaded by pigs—including one named John Ham—who arrive uninvited but soon win over the birds. “We mean no harm,” says Leonard the Pig (Bill Hader). “We saw your island from the sea and thought, I wonder what’s going on there?” Only Red who is suspicious of the porcine interlopers. “Something isn’t kosher with these pigs,” he says, “and it’s up to us to figure out what it is.” Seems the pigs are only pretending to be friendly. In truth they’re only interested in stealing all the eggs on the island. To save the eggs Red assembles the troops—“We’re birds were descended from dinosaurs,” he says, “we’re not supposed to be nice.”—the catapults and mountains of TNT.
“Angry Birds The Movie” is about as plot heavy as you’d imagine a movie based on an app would be. It’s an underdog tale with messages of never giving up and being true to yourself but mostly its an excuse for bad bird jokes—Free Rage Chicken anyone?—and lots of finely feathered action. Breezy in the extreme, it is padded out with frenetic chase scenes and music numbers. The colourful animation is designed to attract the attention of young eyes but for many adults the story will be as about as appealing as a case of bird flu.
In Trainwreck, a new comedy directed by Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer plays a promiscuous New Yorker who finds love.
It’s a side-splitting movie that will be Schumer’s big-screen breakout, but the film is also populated by a very funny supporting cast, many of whom are Schumer’s Manhattan comedy peers.
“I got to give my friends work,” Schumer, who also wrote the script, says, “and they did great in it.”
Colin Quinn and Dave Attell are two standups and friends who make big impressions in the film.
“I consider Colin to be like, in vampire terms, the maker,” says Attell.
Quinn, a legendary comedian and former SNL Weekend Update anchor, co-stars as Amy’s father, a cranky old man with an attitude and a possible drug problem.
“With actors, it’s not about the lines, it’s about the behaviour,” says Quinn. “With us, it’s just about the words. We love it, so if you come up with something funny and it’s quiet behind the camera and they yell ‘Cut’ and everybody starts laughing, that’s the best.
“In so many things it’s not about the words, but in stand-up, it’s all about the words, the order of the words. I feel more than any other art form, the audience matters so much. You have this contentious relationship with them, but they are so much a part of it. I feel like musicians get together and they jam with one each other. We need the crowd to jam. To rehearse.”
Attell is a club veteran, best known for his TV show Insomniac with Dave Attell and dark-edged lines like, “You know, men and women are a lot alike in certain situations. Like when they’re both on fire — they’re exactly alike.”
In the movie, he plays a homeless man who talks to Amy everyday.
“This is the character, of the four characters that I’ve ever played in movies, that is most like me,” he says. “That’s me in five years. That’s me after the last season of Last Comic Standing, physically and emotionally.
“I’ve been in like, three other movies, and this movie was the most fun. You show up and they want you to riff around and you go for the jokes and you keep going until you feel you got it. I love that, especially for people who aren’t classically trained actors.”
You get the feeling that as much as these guys enjoyed making Trainwreck, they are more comfortable on a stage in front of a crowd than they are on a movie set. Both agree that hostile audiences fuel them creatively.
“When it’s not going well, you still have to do the job and that’s what makes it a job,” says Attell. “That’s also often when you come up with the most enlightening stuff, in the tough crowd moment.”
Quinn may prefer live venues but according to Jimmy Fallon he may have more movie work coming his way. The Tonight Show host predicts an Oscar nomination for the comic’s work in the film.
“Why not?” Quinn deadpans. “I wasn’t expecting one but an Academy Award would not affect me now, because after I didn’t get nominated for Grown Ups 2 I feel like it’s a rigged game.”
“Trainwreck,” the new film from director Judd Apatow, is a romantic comedy with a pure heart and a dirty mouth.
In descending order of importance Amy (Amy Schumer, who also wrote the script) is a party girl, drinker and journalist. Her serial womanizing father’s mantra, “Monogamy isn’t realistic,” made an impression and she has grown into a promiscuous woman whose main relationship rule is “never stay over.” She inappropriate, sometimes cruel—“You are not nice,” says one ex—and occasionally clueless but nonetheless is handed a plum assignment by her editor (Tilda Swinton) to write an article on hotshot sports doctor Aaron Connors (Bill Hader).
Breaking both her personal rule and the first law of journalism, she gets involved with her subject. She leaves a toothbrush at his house, introduces him to her family and for once stays monogamous. Their relationship blooms until she allows self doubt—Why would this guy want to go out with me?—to get in the way of enjoying a happy, functional relationship.
There’s more to the story. Subplots about Amy’s ailing father (Colin Quinn), her sister’s (Brie Larson) suburban life and LeBron James’s cheapness—“I don’t want to end up like MC Hammer!”—are woven into the fabric, but the heart of the tale is about Amy and Aaron. Their roles are flipped—she plays the traditionally male commitment-phobe role, while Aaron wants to settle down—but it is their chemistry that keeps us interested.
Like most Apatow films “Trainwreck” is frontloaded with outrageous laughs that slowly give way to a funny but more restrained resolution. Schumer delivers most of the raunchy stuff but is never less than likeable, even when her character is reckless and immature. It’s a fine line that she treads in her stand-up comedy and it translates to the screen. Perhaps it’s because of the deep core of truth that props up even the more outrageous moments or perhaps it’s her way with a line. Either way her charm in the comedic and dramatic is the stuff of movie stars.
Hader is an unlikely romantic lead, but for many of the same reasons Schumer succeeds he scores a home run as Aaron. His scenes with Schumer have a comic ease about them, but his funniest work is reserved for his back-and-forth with LeBron James. The basketball superstar is the film’s unexpected secret weapon, delivering lines like, “Do you see his face when you look into clouds?” with the ease of a seasoned comic.
“Trainwreck” is complex and laugh out loud funny—you’ll likely miss some of the best lines because you’ll be laughing so hard—not a mix you get in many rom coms. Featuring edgy, interesting performances from its leads and supporting cast—especially Colin Quinn and Tilda Swinton—it is an auspicious big screen debut for Schumer and is Apatow’s most focused and interesting film to date.
Pete Docter, the visionary director of Pixar’s Up, Monsters, Inc. and Inside Out, joined host Richard Crouse in March for this onstage discussion of his extraordinary career in animation and screenwriting.
Amy Schumer is having a fantastic year. The standup comic, television star and headline magnet is about to add movie star to her resumé.
Inside Amy Schumer, her Peabody Award-winning TV show, makes news every single week, whether it’s tackling topics like high school rape culture in a Friday Night Lights takeoff or assembling a jury, à la 12 Angry Men, to debate whether Schumer is quote, hot enough, unquote, to be on television.
She’s everywhere and soon she’ll be on the big screen in Trainwreck, directed by comedy maestro Judd Apatow from a script by Schumer. In the most unconventional rom-com since Bridesmaids, she stars as a young, promiscuous New York woman who drinks too much and finds true love despite doing everything to avoid it.
“To be me right now is very weird,” she says. “It’s weird, I feel like I am famous all of a sudden. I’ve been kind of recognizable but now it is very different and it is very new. It’s overwhelming. It is a little scary. I’m on the subway and it’s not like one or two people — it’s like the whole car wants a picture. It’s overwhelming.”
“I never thought about being famous. That was never part of my thing, but once it was on the horizon as a possibility, it seemed like a real bummer. I could see there’s no upside. The upside is I sometimes get free appetizers and I can get a reservation at a restaurant. I only go to one place in New York, it’s a tea place, the Tea Cup, and they don’t take reservations but I can make a reservation there. I swear I don’t see another upside. It sucks.”
As that last quote displays, Schumer’s work is characterized by a lack of pretence.
“I like to get rid of artifice,” she says. “I haven’t gone to the bathroom in three days and I’m hungover and that’s OK.”
But these days she’s more often than not very publicly on display.
“It’s very hard for me to be in hair and makeup all the time and clothes I don’t feel comfortable in. Because you do this work you feel proud of, I feel you’re punished by having to dress up like a show poodle.”
Trainwreck is set in New York but not because it is the traditional home of the classic rom-coms, but because “I just don’t know any other city,” she says. “I am a creature of habit. I just like going to the Comedy Cellar and walking around the reservoir in Central Park.”
She may be a creature of habit in her personal life, but has shaken up the formula for her first movie, although she balks at the suggestion that she switched the gender roles in the film.
“It was a complete surprise to me,” she says. “There wasn’t a thought of, ‘I’m playing the male role.’ It makes sense to me. I know in most movies it’s not this way, but in my real life and in the lives of the women I’m close to and in this age, I’ve found that, as somebody who is still out there dating, that the men often times are the more vulnerable of the two and just more sensitive. Mostly about it being over. If you go out with someone once and you’re just not feeling it, if a guy doesn’t call me back it is a blow to the ego, but I’m not like, ‘But … why? I have a great job.’
“It’s funny, I was watching The Bachelorette, I’m a fan. One of the guys was feeling rejected and he kind of turned on her. She didn’t do anything to him but he was like, ‘My ex-girlfriend was twice as hot as her.’ I think the male ego is way more sensitive than the female ego. It was not a conscious decision to reverse the roles. That has really been my experience.”
She says watching the final cut of the film and seeing the audience reaction at SXSW earlier this year “was the best night of my life so far.”
“I’m already proud of the movie. The movie is already a success to me. My peers really like it and I got to give my friends work and they did great in it. Beyond that, I hope it changes the perspective of people who see it. I hope people are a little less likely to judge and women feel more empowered.”
Actress Phyllis Smith has had many jobs in and out of show business.
She was working as a casting associate when director Ken Kwapis fell in love with the way she read opposite the auditioning actors and cast her as Dunder Mifflin saleswoman Phyllis on The Office. She appeared on the hit show for nine years and just as that series wound down she got a call from Pixar.
Inside Out producer Jonas Rivera was flicking around the stations one night when he settled on Bad Teacher, a 2011 comedy co-starring Smith and Cameron Diaz. The raunchy film couldn’t be further afield of Pixar’s family friendly movies, but Rivera liked the sound of Smith’s voice. He knew she was the actor to play one of Inside Out’s main roles, the living embodiment of an emotion in an eleven-year-old girl’s head.
“He picked up the phone and called [director] Pete Docter and said, ‘I think I’ve found our Sadness,’” recalls Smith. “I guess it was the timidity in that scene and the timbre of my voice. That’s the nice thing about working for Pixar, when you get that call they pretty much already know what they want.”
Smith joins an all-star cast — Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler as Fear, Anger, Disgust and Joy respectively — in a film that Variety called, “the greatest idea the toon studio [Pixar] has ever had.”
“Long after we’re gone people will still be watching,” Smith says. “Sort of like the Wizard of Oz.”
Smith, who is much more gregarious in person than her onscreen persona would suggest, is riding high today but it was a long circuitous route to television and film success.
“I started out as a professional dancer,” she says. “A show dancer. No stripping, but there were plumes, feathers, g-strings and all that. I was also in two ballet companies, a jazz company. That was my passion but I had an injury and knew logically it was time for me to make a switch in my career. I was getting older. So I just did what I had to do to pay my bills.”
She worked as a receptionist, an NFL cheerleader and manned the box office at a Los Angeles movie theatre. She dressed as Marilyn Monroe and played Steve Carell’s mother in a deleted scene from The 40-Year Old Virgin, but one job stands out for her.
“I worked for JC Penny in the warehouse tagging the merchandise,” she remembers. “I used to stand there and tag thousands of fishing lures or bowling balls or roller shades, which were heavy as heck to lift around. The people were great to work with but the merchandise was a little challenging.
“I used to stand there, thinking about life, wondering what it is we all have in common because we’re not all given the same opportunity. Some people’s health is impaired when they’re born while others are charmed with intelligence or looks. I thought, ‘There has to be something that we all have. A commonality.’ I figured out that it’s the ability to love. We all, in some form or another, want to love and be loved. That was my big revelation. My lightbulb moment. Also, if you’re standing on a concrete floor, make sure you’re wearing comfortable shoes or you’ll pay for it later.”
If you’ve ever looked at someone and wondered what’s going on inside their head—and who hasn’t?—the new Pixar film “Inside Out” tries to provide some answers. Loosely based on the mood swings of director Pete Docter’s twelve-year-old daughter it’s an action adventure set in the subconscious of a young girl.
The set up is simple. A Minnesotan family, Mom (voice of Diane Lane), Dad (Kyle MacLachlan) and eleven-year-old daughter Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), leave their comfortable Midwestern life behind in favour of business opportunities in San Francisco. Riley leaves behind her friends, her school and her beloved hockey team; everything she’s ever known.
Plopped down in a new city, homesick and surrounded by new people, she becomes moody. She’s completely guided by her emotions, which happen to run things from Headquarters, located deep inside her thinking box. In these San Fran days and nights Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) rule the roost, while Joy (Amy Poehler) tries to hold things together. Navigating Riley’s cerebrum, Joy journeys through long term and core memories, the Islands of Personality and Dream Productions to realize it takes a variety of emotions to make a balanced life.
I don’t know if there is such a thing as an instant classic but “Inside Out” is the best argument for creating the term I’ve come across for some time. From dazzling animation, to a script that toggles between childlike wonder and ingenious introspection “Inside Out” is glued together with a degree of emotional acumen not often found in mainstream film. In other words, it will make you laugh, cry and think.
Like the best of Pixar’s work—“Toy Story,” “Up,” “WALL-E”—“Inside Out” works on multiple levels. It is, first and foremost a family film designed to entertain everyone from the young’uns to grandma, but it’s also simultaneously a flight of fancy and a grounded story about growing up that kids (and anyone who has ever been a kid) will relate to. The movie may deal with abstract thought, but the idea that without sadness there can be no joy, and vice versa, is clear as day.
“Inside Out” is a film that will deepen with repeat viewings, which is probably a good thing as when it hits Blu Ray kids are going to want to watch it again and again, and for once, parents won’t mind joining in.
Richard Crouse interviews “Inside Out” star Phyllis Smith.
“I started out as a professional dancer. A show dancer. No stripping, but there were plumes, feathers, g-strings and all that. I was also in two ballet companies, a jazz company. I studied modern dance. That was my passion. I always wanted to be a dancer. Not necessarily an actor. When I came to LA I had an injury and I knew logically it was time for me to make a switch in my career because I was getting older. It was hard to make that decision. For dancers at a certain age there is not a lot to fall back on. So I just did what I had to do to pay my bills. I worked as a receptionist. I worked at a movie theatre. I’d go to my nine-to-five job then I’d change my clothes and get to my movie theatre gig and work the box office until eleven o’clock at night. I did that for three years.
“Before I got to LA I worked for JC Penny in the warehouse tagging the merchandise. I don’t think they do it anymore. I used to stand there and tag thousands of fishing lures or bowling balls or roller shades, which were heavy as hell to lift around. The people were great to work with but the merchandise was a little challenging. I used to stand there, thinking about life, wondering what it is we all have in common because we’re not all given the same opportunity. Some people’s health is impaired when they’re born and they don’t even have that to start with and others are charmed with intelligence or looks or whatever they’re given. I thought, ‘There has to be something that we all have. A commonality.’ I figured out that it’s the ability to love. We all, in some form or another, to love and be loved. That was my big revelation. My lightbulb moment. Also to make sure if you’re standing on a concrete floor to make sure you’re wearing comfortable shoes or you’ll pay for it later.”
“Adult Beginners” is cut from the same cloth as the recently released “The Skeleton Twins.” It’s another brother-returns-to-his-suburban-New-York-state-hometown-to-confront-his-estranged-family-and-his-past-while-forging-a-future movie starring people known for comedy—Nick Kroll and Rose Byrne—but who don’t play up the laughs.
Kroll is Jake, a New York City entrepreneur who went broke and bankrupted several friend in a failed high tech manufacturing scheme. Penniless and friendless—“I’ve changed your name in my phone to ‘life ruiner,’” says one former investor—he retreats to his hometown, the sleepy New Rochelle.
Sister Justine (Byrne) and her husband Danny (Bobby Cannavale) reluctantly allow him to move in but just for three months and only if he’ll play nanny to Teddy (Caleb and Matthew Paddock), his three-year-old nephew. “I wish you came to visit because you were happy,” says Justine.
At first Jake is ill equipped to deal with the youngster but soon finds being a caregiver comes naturally to him. What is more difficult is finding happy and smooth relationships with Justine, who harbours some resentment from the past and Danny who has a damaging secret.
Both “Adult Beginners” and “The Skeleton Twins” chronicle unhappy thirtysomethings who parade their dysfunction for the cameras. Jake is a self-absorbed jerk, Justine drinks while pregnant and Danny looks for love in all the wrong places. Depending on your point of view they’re either awful people, or, if you are director Ross Katz, you see them as tragic characters who are a product of their pasts. The truth is probably somewhere in between and whatever side you fall on will determine your enjoyment of the movie. One thing is for sure, no one on display is terribly happy.
Of the leads Bryne and Kroll milk the drama and the comedy from the script, but a predictable story arc sucks much of the life out of Canavale’s storyline. He’s an agreeable and welcome presence, but feels extraneous.
“Adult Beginners” has good, appealing performers, but shop worn plot points and a predictable conclusion mar what might have been an insightful look at troubled a troubled generation.
