SYNOPSIS: In “Merrily We Roll Along,” a filmed version of the Tony Award winning Broadway show starring Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe, a composer (Groff) reflects on his fracrtured relationships with his two besties, playwright Charley (Radcliffe) and novelist Mary (Mendez).
CAST: Natalie Wachen, Krystal Joy Brown, Katie Rose Clarke, Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, Max Rackenberg, Daniel Radcliffe, Reg Rogers, Jacob Keith Watson. Directed by Maria Friedman.
REVIEW: What a difference a few decades can make. A flop that lasted only two weeks on Broadway in its 1981 debut, Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Merrily We Roll Along” rebounded in 2023 in a revamped, all-star staging that won four Tony Awards and bested the previous run by 50 weeks.
It’s that vaunted production, starring Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe—who both won Tonys for their work—that comes to the big screen this week.
Filmed live in front of a Broadway audience—you hear applause and laughter but never see them—the show is a story of success and ambition told backwards.
Despite the show’s reverse chronology conceit, the story is fairly straight-ahead. When we first meet Franklin Shepard (Groff) he’s a Broadway composer turned Hollywood hotshot. During a booze fuelled party at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by hangers-on and his soon-to-be-ex-wife he is filled with longing for his estranged friends, novelist-turned-alcoholic-critic Mary Flynn (Lindsay Mendez), who has always carried a flame for Franklin and his former partner Charley Kringas (Daniel Radcliffe), the hot-headed playwright who has little use for the business part of show business.
As Franklin’s memories unfold, the story winds backwards two decades in time, from the bitter acrimony of present day to their first blush of success and the happy beginning of their friendship.
The story should end on a high note, but the beauty of the movie’s jigsaw puzzle construction is that it allows for mixed emotions at every stage. Over the course of the show Franklin’s regret shifts to bright-eyed optimism, but it is always coloured by the melancholic notion that we don’t understand the important things in life until it is too late.
Key to the success of the show, other than Sondheim songs like “Old Friends” and “Good Thing Going,” is Groff’s skillful performance. As written, Franklin is not immediately likeable, but Groff plays him as someone who we merrily rolled along through life, leaving behind a trail of broken relationships in his pursuit of success. That one character tweak transforms the character from villain to someone who becomes sympathetic as he realizes all that his ambition and artistic compromise have cost.
Mendez brings both a comic touch and heartbreaking pathos to the lovesick Mary and Radcliffe, as the neurotic Charley, bridges the gap between stage and screen, handing in a performance big enough for Broadway but intimate enough for the movies.
The beauty of a filmed adaptation of a stage bound show is the ability for the camera to pick up on the small moments that can easily be lost on stage. Mendez’s work benefits from the up-close-and-personal medium as Maria Friedman’s camera catches Mary’s subtle moments of heartbreak as they flash across her face.
But “Merrily We Roll Along” doesn’t look or feel like a traditional movie. There are close-ups and the camera moves through the space, but it feels lodged somewhere between a live show and a film. Still, while the grand overall effect of the Broadway show may get lost in the shuffle, it is a treat to get a better look at these committed performances.
“The Lost City,” a new action adventure now playing in theatres, pairs up goofy, good looking actors Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in a new movie about a romance writer, a kidnapping and a secret treasure is a satire of romance stories that actually is a romance.
Bullock plays Loretta Sage, burned-out author of twenty romance novels featuring a Fabio-esque hero named Dash McMahon. Still grieving the loss of her husband, she took years to deliver the manuscript for “The Lost City of D,” an epic adventure that mixes her true loves, archeology and history, with an exploitive romance angle that she has come to hate.
On the front of all the novels Dash is “played” by the world’s sexiest cover model Alan Caprison (Tatum), a sweet-natured hunk with flowing hair and a sculpted torso, who will accompany Loretta on an upcoming promotional tour. He’s dumb-as-a-stump, more Chippendales than Chaucer, but under the long, blonde flowing wig he wears in public is a good guy.
When the author is kidnapped by billionaire Abigail (“It’s a gender-neutral name,” he says.) Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), who believes Loretta’s books contain real life clues as to the existence of the legendary Crown of Fire, Alan springs into action. “I’m going to rescue her,” he says. “I want her to think of me as more than just a cover model.”
He enlists the help of Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt), a mercenary with a special set of skills, to breach Fairfax’s secret island compound. “Why are you so handsome,” Loretta asks him. “My dad was a weatherman.” Jack is the real deal, the kind of hero Loretta always imagined Dash would be, but this isn’t the Loretta and Jack story, it’s all about the author and her goofy cover model. “This is so much better than your books,” says Alan about their real-life adventure.
Not funny enough to be a comedy with some action and not action packed enough to be an action comedy, “The Lost City” is somewhere in the mushy middle. The likeable cast is game, and we get the rare chance to see Radcliffe in villain mode, but the movie never quite gels. Too many jokes go south, and, other than the leads, no character really makes much of an impression.
The romance angle is slightly more successful. Big hearted lug Alan loves Loretta. The chemistry between Bullock and Tatum is warm, witty and welcoming, but it’s not enough to rescue a movie that tries hard but feels slipshod.
Brad Pitt slips in for an extended cameo that contains some actual action adventure and a few laughs, but this isn’t his movie. He’s just an added bonus.
“The Lost City” doesn’t take itself seriously, and neither should you. It aims to entertain, but, despite a few laughs, just misses the mark.
In “Learn To Swim,” a new film about memories and music, and now playing in theatres, first time feature filmmaker Thyrone Tommy tells the story as though he was creating a jazz riff. The love story may be familiar but he bends the notes just enough to create something new.
The story of gifted sax player Dezi (Thomas Antony Olajide) is told on a broken timeline. His past affair with singer Selma (Emma Ferreira) is shot in warm, welcoming colors as the two create music and fall in love. Interspersed are colder, harder scenes from Dezi’s present day. Bitter and alone, he is isolated from the world, unable to play music because of a jaw infection.
It is a study of Dezi’s relationships, with Selma, others around him and his connection to music. Like real life, those relationships are often messy and chaotic, but even as the disparate parts of Dezi’s story threaten to become obtuse, Tommy brings the story back into focus as the sax player’s pain becomes a common thread between the two timelines.
“Learn To Swim” is a simple story told in a way that adds depth and complexity. Dezi is an interesting character, talented and troubled, yet still, often sympathetic. Olajide brings him to life in a quietly powerful performance that emphasizes not only the character’s talent but the love and loss that shaped his creativity.
Ferreira is an effective foil, but never loses sight of what makes Selma tick.
The real star here, however, is Tommy. He and co-writer Marni Van Dyk create a story palette to paint a portrait of love, loss and beautiful music. It is a very promising feature debut, one that expertly balances performance and feel, just like the best jazz.
Twelve years ago tonight, at the 2012 Canadian premier of The Woman in Black a young woman yelled, “I love you!” as Daniel Radcliffe and I took the stage to introduce the film.
“I love you too,” he replied with a smirk. “But I think we should see other people.”
The audience laughed but probably missed the double meaning of his comment. For ten years Radcliffe was the face of Harry Potter, one of the biggest grossing movie franchises ever. Potter ended in 2011 (for Radcliffe, anyway) and the actor has moved on, and hopes his audience will follow along.
Radcliffe has perspective on where he’d like his career to go, but what about the fame that came along with playing Harry Potter? The next day after The Woman in Black premier I asked him about the screaming fans that greeted him and what that does to his ego.
“The thing you have to remind yourself is that it’s not about me. It’s about the fact that I played this character who became beloved. Anyone who took on this character would be getting this reaction. When I’m home, smoking a cigarette and it’s cold and I’m eating half a pizza. You have to take a picture of yourself then and play it to yourself when you’re on the red carpets and go, ‘Yeah, you’re not all that.’”
Radcliffe is not being modest when he says “it’s not about me,” just realistic. He understands his role in bringing the iconic character to life. The actor’s mix of vulnerability and strength won him the part and imprinted the journey from young kid to powerful wizard in the imaginations of millions of people. Had he not been cast as Harry he may or may not have found fame in some other way and someone else would likely be getting all the attention instead of him. That is the luck of the draw.
Eventually he’ll be able to walk down the street again, perhaps pick up a slice without being mobbed by eager fans but when we hosted the Woman in Black event in 2012 that tide had not yet turned.
After we introduced the movie we made our way back to the greenroom. A young woman, unaware of that Radcliffe was in the building, spotted us. Her reaction has stayed with me. Agog, she was a mix of disbelief, excitement and raw nerves. She was the definition of the word verklempt come to life. Unsure why Harry Potter was standing in front of her near the concession stand, she burst into tears and ran toward him with arms extended. He sidestepped her, while still acknowledging her excitement, and we quickly hoofed it to safety, doubtlessly leaving the young Potter fan to wonder whether she was hallucinating or not.
In the greenroom I asked him if that happens all the time. It does, he said, and then detailed some of the tricks he’s learned about not making eye-contact and how a hoodie can be an effective disguise for a late-night convenience store run. In the post Potter phase of his career Radcliffe plays a waiting game, confident in the knowledge that a burning match does not stay hot forever. He’s learned to deal with the attention and is able to cope with it because knows that it will pass.
Acceptance and understanding of situations, whether it is an excited fan tackling you or wanting to smoke when you’re trying to quit or great personal loss or business collapse, can help you find the solutions that will help you deal with whatever’s troubling you.
The lesson here is whatever happens in life, whether it is international stardom or any other of the more mundane things that touch our daily lives, the feeling is likely transitory.
Many of us live in the moment. Beautiful times are amplified. Conversely, bad stuff often feels permanent, as though it will be like this forever. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment but taking time out to think about what’s really happening is the great leveller. Perspective allows us to deeply enjoy the good times and, in bad times, reassures us that it will not always be this way. As classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein says, “there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”
Radcliffe accepts his life but understands that fame does not define him. “I think it’s very important,” he told The Independent, “especially when you become famous young, to work out who you are without fame and without that as part of your identity, because that will go. Fame does not last forever. For anyone.”
He’s right. I recall doing a junket in Los Angeles for an unremarkable coming-of-age story with a gangland twist called Knockaround Guys. It’s the story of four sons (Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Barry Pepper, and Andrew Davoli) of Brooklyn mobsters bond together to reclaim a quarter of a million dollars lost in a small Montana town. Dennis Hopper plays cigar chomping mob boss Benny “Chains” Demaret.
Hopper’s appearance is little more than a cameo, but casts a big shadow. Here was an Actors Studio alum who made his first television appearance in 1954. He’s legend who helped do in the studio system by directing Easy Rider, appeared alongside James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant and was legendarily stoned on the set of Apocalypse Now.
On the day of the junket I sat with the other interviewers, largely lifestyle reporters, waited in the hospitality room waiting to be called. A publicist rolled into the room, clipboard in hand. “Jane Doe,” she said, “you’re on deck to interview Mr. Hopper.”
“Who?” said Jane. “I’m really only here to talk to Seth Green.”
Almost half a century of work, awards and thousands of column inches in the tabloid press shunted aside for the guy who created Robot Chicken. Radcliffe is right. Fame is fleeting.
Radcliffe breathes rarified air and reportedly enjoys a substantial bank account but the questions he grapples with maybe different than you and I but awareness of life situations is crucial to all, whether wizard or muggle.
It can take some doing, but once you get past the idea of Harry Potter as a white supremacist “Imperium” is an enjoyable potboiler.
Daniel Radcliffe plays FBI agent Nate Foster, a principled young man with an uncanny resemblance to Harry Potter, whose empathy and idealism attract the attention of his FBI superior Angela Zamparo (Toni Collette). She recruits him to
shave his hair down to the stubble and go deep undercover to take down a radical white nationalist group planning to build a dirty bomb. Inexperienced but focussed, he pilots his way through the ranks of racists, including the Ayran Brotherhood, right wing radio host Dallas Wolf (Tracy Letts) and wealthy extremist Gerry Conway (“True Blood’s” Sam Trammell). Fully embedded, he finds the tricky balance between maintaining his personal beliefs without blowing his cover.
Based on real events “Imperium” is a standard undercover drama with a few standout performances. Radcliffe is very good at portraying Nate’s calm-under-pressure demeanour, while imparting a sense of urgency into the character. On the other end of the scale is Trammell who quietly plays his racist as an everyday family man who has allowed hate to infect his soul. As a provocative radio host Tracy Letts hands in another interesting performance, one that suggests that for some, money is more important than principles, no matter how skewed they may be.
“Imperium” contains some provocative and offensive images—the mere sight of Harry Potter shouting racial epithets will be enough to upset many a viewer—but the underlying story of racial intolerance doesn’t add much to the conversation. Instead of exploring the psychopathology of hatred and anti-Semitism in the United States it is content to play as a thriller and little else. As such it’s good, if not quite edge-of-your-seat stuff, but it could have been much more.
Swiss Army Man, the story of a marooned man and his dead buddy’s journey back to civilization is a tale of friendship and what it means to be alive, really and truly alive. The easy thing would be to describe the new Daniel Radcliffe, Paul Dano two-hander as Cast Away meets Weekend at Bernie’s but that doesn’t grab the poetic essence of what the film is trying to achieve.
“We make our movies for ourselves and we wanted to surprise ourselves into learning something and feeling something,” says Dan Kwan, the film’s co-director and co-writer.
Kwan is half of Daniels, his directing collective with partner Daniel Scheinert. The duo came up with the idea for Swiss Army Man after directing a series of innovative, internet-breaking music videos like DJ Snake and Lil’ Jon’s Turn Down for What (35 million views and counting).
“We’ve been working together since 2009 and kind of discovered this movie as much as we wrote it,” says Scheinert. “We have very different filmmaking processes but very similar tastes. As we work together certain stories started to reveal themselves.
“It’s kind of autobiographical about the two of us. That’s a joke answer but it is also kind of true. Certain jokes would make us both laugh. Somewhere in that stew of us becoming friends a movie about two guys becoming friends came out. The signature image of a man riding a corpse’s farts across the ocean came out somewhere in there. The relationships with all the crew that made this movie also inspired the movie. We met our DP and our production designer and wrote a movie that played to their strengths.”
With a premise Monty Python might have rejected as too silly Swiss Army Man uses the relationship between its characters to shed light on everything from stifled machismo and loyalty to unrequited love and the need for compassion.
“The overall meta joke was, let’s make a farting corpse movie but let’s make the most personal movie we can,” says Kwan. “If people are connecting to it they’re connecting to us pouring a lot of ourselves into it.”
“Dan keeps saying this movie breeds a strange kind of empathy,” adds Scheinert. “One of the goals was to tell the most unlikely love story. We knew Farting Corpse and Daniel Radcliffe would be viral. Cool, but if we can make you really care about that farting corpse, what a cool achievement. If we can do that, what can’t you care about? You can walk out of the theatre and it will be real hard for you to find someone you can’t empathize with once you have just fallen in love with a farting corpse.”
Reviews have ranged from rapturous (“Hilarious, deranged, and always alive with possibility.”) to rotten (“ridiculously infantile”) but Daniels are unfazed by the reaction. “Even some of the bad reviews were sweet and complimentary,” says Scheinert. Mostly they just want people to see the film.
“I hope people go to a theatre and watch it with strangers because even if they hate it they’ll have a really memorable experience,” says Scheinert. “I hate it when people say it’s not a movie for everyone because I kind of feel it is a movie for everyone. You have permission to dislike this and you won’t be bored if even if dislike it.”
“Swiss Army Man,” a new film starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, will exceed your expectations. No matter how odd you think a movie about a lovesick, stranded man and his dead friend will be, “Swiss Army Man” is odder. It’s “Hope and Crosby On the Road to Self Awareness,” and it is weirder than you imagine it will be, but also wonderful and rather sweet in its own strange way.
The surreal saga begins with Hank (Dano) marooned on a Pacific island. On the verge of suicide, he has lost hope until he sees a man wash up on shore. “Don’t be dead,” he says, rushing to examine the body. It’s Manny (Radcliffe), and he is dead… or, perhaps more rightly, deadish. Manny’s body may be lifeless but it’s not useless. His flatulence lights fires, his erections sub in for a compass, he becomes a gun, a fountain and even a showerhead. “You’re a miracle,” says Hank, “or I’m just hallucinating from eating starfish.” As they journey toward civilisation the two men dig deep finding reasons to keep one another reasons to stay alive.
This story of a hopeless man and his dead buddy is a tale of friendship and what it means to be alive, really and truly alive. Unconventional and even occasionally off-putting, the easy thing would be to describe it as “Cast Away” meets “Weekend at Bernie’s” but that doesn’t grab the poetic essence of what the film is trying to achieve. Using a premise Monty Python might have rejected as too silly, “Swiss Army Man” uses the relationship between its characters to shed light on everything from stifled machismo and loyalty to unrequited love and the need for compassion. It’s a big order for a film that so whole-heartedly embraces its own eccentricity and it won’t be for everyone but adventurous viewers may enjoy the sheer audacity of it.
As for Daniel Radcliffe fans, if you can accept the idea of Harry Potter’s body being used as a jet ski, propelled through the water by the power of his own flatulence, then this movie will be for you. If not, perhaps stick to “Prisoner of Azkaban.”
Three years ago “Now You See Me” played like “Ocean’s Eleven” reimagined by Penn and Teller. A magical heist movie, it introduced a prestidigitation collective known as The Four Horsemen—Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher (replaced by Lizzy Caplan in this sequel), Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco—who outsmarted the FBI and Interpol with some highly focused hocus pocus. The tricksters stole from the rich to give to the poor—the poor people who paid premium prices to see their shows.
When asked how any of this could have happened Interpol agent Alma Vargas (Mélanie Laurent) says, “Some things are best left unexplained.”
Also left unexplained is how a star-studded but modest hit like “Now You See Me” spawned a sequel three years after it briefly played in theatres.
The new film, “Now You See Me 2,” begins one year after the last one ended with the Four Horsemen staging a comeback. This time, however, the trick backfires and the magicians are forced to escape, fleeing from one side of the world to the other via a giant chute.
New York to China in under a minute. “This makes no sense,” says J. Daniel Atlas (Eisenberg) upon arrival in China. Damn right. It’s that kind of movie. Buy into that and the rest of the movie’s twists and turns will seem… if not quite believable than a little less preposterous. The world’s greatest magicians have just become the object of someone else’s magic trick.
In Macau, the Vegas of China, the mysterious tech genius Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe)—imagine Harry Potter with a James Bond villain vibe—forces them to use their skills to pull off a seemingly impossible heist, the theft of “the stick,” a device able to hack any computer on earth. Using misdirection, hypnotism, showmanship and sleight-of-hand—coupled with some good old-fashioned CGI movie magic—the Horsemen must pull off their greatest trick—exposing Mabry.
“Now You See Me 2” has a serious case of the sillies but luckily it embraces its silliness. Revels in it, even. For instance Caplan’s character Lula is best known for a previously unheard of magic trick, pulling a hat out of a rabbit. Make sense? Nope, but in “Now You See Me 2’s” world it doesn’t have to.
It all makes sense in a Harry Houdini misdirected kind of way, but don’t worry if the labyrinthine plot loses you here and there. Every few minutes one of the characters explains what’s just happened, or what is about to happen. Even though magicians aren’t supposed to tell their secrets the Horsemen can’t seem to stop giving away the movie’s riddles. There’s way too much exposition but by and large the mix of action, intrigue and magic is a fun diversion.
At the 2012 Canadian premier of The Woman in Black a young woman yelled, “I love you!” as Daniel Radcliffe and I took the stage to introduce the film.
“I love you too,” he replied with a smirk. “But I think we should see other people.”
The audience laughed but probably missed the double meaning of his comment. For ten years Radcliffe was the face of Harry Potter, one of the biggest grossing movie franchises ever. Potter ended in 2011 (for Radcliffe, anyway) and the actor has moved on, and hopes his audience will follow along.
This week he’s taking on another classic character, one played in the past by everyone from Bela Lugosi to Marty Feldman. In Victor Frankenstein he transcends Igor’s traditional, “Yes master,” function to become the movie’s moral compass and emotional core. A reimagining of the Frankenstein story that focuses on the men rather than the monster, it’s a change of pace from an actor who likes to shake it up, career-wise.
“I want to try my hand at as many things as possible,” he told me in 2014. “Having played one character for a very long time, that builds up in you a desire to play a number of different characters and do as much different work as you can. I like that you can’t predict what my next thing is going to be.”
Since Potter wrapped he has kept audiences guessing. From the Gothic horror of Woman in Black and The F Word’s light romance to a biographical look at the Beat Generation in Kill Your Darlings and the twisted morality of Horns, the only predictable thing about his career is its unpredictability.
“It’s about finding out what I’m good at, finding out which things I prefer doing because I’ve only done Potter up until a few years ago, so now this period is really me going, ‘If I had my choice.’
“Being that I do have a semblance of control over my career, — which most actors my age don’t — I feel I might not always have this opportunity to try loads of different things.”
Radcliffe credits working with the likes of Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman and David Tennant on the Potter films with giving him some perspective on how to manage his career.
“The defining feature of Alan, Gary, David and many more that I’ve worked with, is that they never want to stop learning,” Radcliffe told me during an interview for The Women in Black.
“They never feel they are finished. Alan Rickman is constantly trying to get better and refined. When you see that in someone who is A) Brilliant and B) 30 years older than you, it’s very inspiring to see they have gone through their whole careers and never been satisfied.”
Radcliffe has perspective on where he’d like his career to go, but what about the fame that came along with playing Harry Potter? The next day after The Woman in Black premier I asked him about the screaming fans that greeted him and what that does to his ego.
“The thing you have to remind yourself is that it’s not about me. It’s about the fact that I played this character who became beloved. Anyone who took on this character would be getting this reaction. When I’m home, smoking a cigarette and it’s cold and I’m eating half a pizza — you have to take a picture of yourself then and play it to yourself when you’re on the red carpets and go, ‘Yeah, you’re not all that.’”
