Hollywood has a long standing tradition of churning out holiday films in which large, loving but dysfunctional families gather to celebrate Christmas and end up bring up old feuds, swapping girlfriends (or boyfriends) and over-cooking the turkey. So the idea for The Family Stone, a new comedy starring Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker, isn’t a new one, but despite the ring of familiarity The Family Stone works as both a comedy and a poignant family drama.
The story centers around Dermot Mulroney—the oldest and favorite Stone son—who brings his uptight girlfriend, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, home for Christmas. The Stone siblings and parents take an instant dislike to her and united in the cause of tormenting her they try to drive her away. For support she brings in her beautiful younger sister, played by Claire Danes who only complicates an already strange situation.
This is normally the kind of thing that makes me run to the theatre—to see something else—but the great ensemble cast really salvages this from the treacly depths. As Meredith Sarah Jessica Parker leaves her Sex in the City character far behind daring to be unlikable and along the way proves that there is more to her than simply being Carrie Bradshaw.
We also get a welcome glimpse of Canadian actress Rachel McAdams as the nasty Stone sister Amy. This is her third good film this year after The Wedding Crashers and Red Eye, and in it she proves that she has mastered the role of the cinematic mean girl.
There are many humorous moments but the film packs an emotional punch in the scenes between the elder Stones, played by Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson. In their best moment together they tell us all we need to know about their relationship in one quiet bedroom scene and one gentle touch of a scar.
In “Morning Glory” Canadian Sweetheart Rachel McAdams plays an eternally optimistic television producer. That’s how we know this is a work of fantasy. Like unicorns or a good Matthew Lillard movie, there’s no such thing an eternally optimistic television producer. She may be completely fictitious but she’s also perky, precocious and fighting for the survival of her morning television show.
After being fired from the producer’s chair of “Good Morning New Jersey,” Becky (McAdams) moves up to the big leagues, executive producing a network morning show in New York City. The trouble is the network is IBS—it can’t be a co-incidence that their name is an acronym for Irritable Bowel Syndrome because their ratings are in the toilet—and the show is Daybreak, a telecast so lowly rated one observer says “half the audience has lost their remotes and the other half are waiting for their nurse to turn them over.” It’s her job to whip the show into shape, despite the protests of its two high maintenance hosts, former Miss Arizona Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) and the “third worst person in the world,” Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford).
“Morning Glory” is a screwball romantic comedy that has a sit com-ish edge, but is rescued by the charm of its leads. It’s a pleasure to see Harrison Ford grumping it up in his first all out comedic role in some time (that is, if you don’t count the ill-advised Indiana Jones reboot) and Diane Keaton has some good bitchy fun here but it is McAdams who really saves the day.
Her effervescent screen presence keeps us interested even when the script is content to rely on predictable, feel-good story turns. “Morning Glory” often feels like a collection of good ideas that don’t quite hang together. The Patrick Wilson love interest angle feels tagged on and near the end the movie becomes a series of montages as various story threads are a little too conveniently wrapped up, but through it all McAdams shines.
There are echoes of “Broadcast News” throughout. That movie played up the romance a bit more than “Morning Glory” does and twenty-three years ago when the Albert Brooks comedy first addressed the trend of the show business-ification of hard news to pander to ratings the hard news side won. This time around Mike Pomeroy, a seasoned journalist with impeccable credentials, is told by the upstart Becky, “Your side lost” and asked to bring along a camera to his prostate exam. “Broadcast News” had interesting things to say about television and how TV is changing. “Morning Glory” doesn’t have that same kind of insight but it does have Rachel McAdams, which for this lightweight comedy, is enough.
Mad Money comes with quite a pedigree. Director Callie Khouri wrote Thelma and Louise. Star Diane Keaton is an Oscar winning actress with credits that include The Godfather, Annie Hall and Reds. Co-star Queen Latifah is an Oscar nominee and was the first hip hop artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Supporting actor Ted Danson is best known for his role as Sam Malone on Cheers and once won Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series from the American Comedy Awards. So you’d think with all that know-how, all those years of experience, that this team would be able to make a good movie.
You’d be wrong.
Mad Money, is a heist movie in the vein of Ocean’s 11, except the snazzy suits, stylish setting, most of the entertainment value and all the good looking boys are gone. In their place is Diane Keaton as yuppie housewife Bridget Cardigan, a woman used to the finer things in life who must return to the workforce when her executive husband is downsized. Faced with mounting debt she is forced to take a job as a janitor at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
Realizing the Sisyphean task of trying to pay off her debts on her meager salary she teams up with two other employees—Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes—to steal worn-out money (hiding it in their underwear!) that has been taken out of circulation and is about to be destroyed.
Rich people on the skids have been the subject of a lot of movies and Mad Money greedily looks to them for inspiration. It is a caper film like Fun with Dick and Jane, but without the Dick. Or the fun. It’s aspires to the social comment of How to Beat the High Co$t of Living without actually seriously—comedies can have serious undertones too!— exploring any social issues. “Don’t get greedy” is about as deep as it gets here.
Don’t get me wrong it doesn’t take social context in order for me to get the joke, but this movie could use some perspective to deepen the humor. Why can’t Bridget get a job? Why is her husband unemployable? Let us get to know the characters and set up a real reason for us to care about them and the movie’s humor will have much more resonance. As it is Bridget and her husband are just formerly rich people who’ll do anything to keep up with the Jones and as a result, not very interesting.
But then again, there’s nothing much interesting about this movie. The story, although based on true events, is slight and the attempts to pump it up by introducing romance feel manipulative and sentimental, not sexy or interesting. It doesn’t feel worthy of a big screen treatment, and it comes as no surprise that it is based on a British made-for-television movie called Hot Money.
The title says it all—you’ll be mad if you spend your money on this film.
The spirit of the Littlest Hobo is very much alive in “Darling Companion.” The homeless German Shepherd of the TV series (which was based on a 1958 movie of the same name) dropped into people’s lives for thirty minutes every Saturday morning, bringing with him goodwill and understanding.
Freeway, the homeless dog of “Darling Companion,” doesn’t get up to exactly the same tricks as the Littlest Hobo. He doesn’t help rescue a Prima Ballerina who wants to defect from her Iron Curtain captors or protect an elderly prospector from greedy land-grabbers, but by going on a wild adventure, he does bring one family closer together.
When we first meet Freeway he’s an abandoned dog on the side of the… you guessed it, freeway. In quick succession Beth (Diane Keaton) and daughter Grace (“Mad Men’s” Elisabeth Moss) rescue the mangy mutt, Grace falls for the dog’s vet and in the length of one musical montage, Beth adopts and falls in love with the dog. Tragedy strikes, however, when Beth’s egotistical surgeon husband Joseph (Kevin Kline), allows the dog to wander off. Distraught, Beth searches for Freeway—along with family and friends—for three days. In those seventy-two hours they not only hunt for the dog but for meaning in their relationships.
Lawrence Kasdan wrote (with wife Meg) and directed “Darling Companion” and many of the trademarks of his best work are evident here–the ensemble cast à la “The Big Chill,” “The Accidental Tourist’s” distant lead male character—but what isn’t here is subtext. Kasdan’s other movies have been rich examinations of the inner workings of life.
On the surface “The Big Chill” was about a disparate group of friends who danced in the kitchen and attended their friend’s funeral, but underneath it all it really was about the renewal of hope in the character’s lives.
That’s the thing that made “The Big Chill” an enduring classic. “Darling Companion,” on the other hand is mostly about people looking for a dog. There are lots of nice moments during the search but it takes up virtually the entire movie and there simply isn’t enough going on to justify the running time. The plot contrivance of having an exotic psychic (Ayelet Zurer) as a spiritual guide for the search doesn’t help matters much.
Luckily the seasoned cast knows how to wring as much interest as possible out of the slight script. One of the film’s pleasures is watching Kline, Keaton, Richard Jenkins and Dianne Wiest glide through this material as if it was melted butter. They love, they laugh, they look (for the dog) all the while handing in performances better than the script deserves.
“Darling Companion” is a well-intentioned, gently paced movie about how people react in a crisis but could have used some more real drama. Where’s the Littlest Hobo when you really need him?
In The Big Wedding a long-divorced couple, played by Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton, pretend to be happily married at their adopted son’s wedding for the benefit of his biological mother.
Hijinks ensue, but like all movies with the word “wedding” in the title, audiences don’t buy a ticket for the shenanigans, they go to see the ceremony. Anything that happens before the walk down the aisle is window dressing, the journey that gets the audience where they really want to be, at the altar.
The famous wedding scene in The Godfather—including the much-quoted Luca Brasi line, “Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter. And may their first child be a masculine child.”—featured many Staten Island Italian-Americans as extras. They were invited to the set to enjoy homemade wine, traditional Italian food and enjoy themselves as though it were a real wedding.
Inspiration for the film Four Weddings and a Funeral came when writer Richard Curtis realized he had been to 72 weddings in 10 years. The movie, about a confirmed bachelor who discovers love, made an international star of Hugh Grant, who won the role after auditioning with a tape from when he was best man at his brother’s wedding.
Both those films, plus others like Wedding Crashers, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Fiddler on the Roof feature wonderful wedding scenes, but what about when nuptials turn nasty?
Who could forget Mr. Robinson howling, “You punk! You crazy punk! I’ll kill you!” at The Graduate’s Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) after he interrupted the wedding of Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross) to another man? Elaine leaves her intended at the altar, running off with Ben to an uncertain future, creating one of the classic endings in movie history.
In Runaway Bride Richard Gere plays a reporter investigating the story of Maggie Carpenter, a serial bride who has had multiple disastrous weddings, leaving three men at the altar. “Always a bride,” she says, “never a bridesmaid!”
The biggest bummer wedding in movie history has to be in Kill Bill Vol. 2. “How it happened, who was there, how many got killed and who killed them, changes depending on who’s telling the story,” says The Bride (Uma Thurman). “In actual fact, the massacre didn’t happen during a wedding at all. It was a wedding rehearsal.”
Movies this bad don’t get released… they escape. The story, which picks the bones of everything from Something’s Gotta Give (sans Jack Nicholson) to Fiddler on the Roof, never met a cliché it didn’t love or a situation too hackneyed to be inserted into the mix.
Diane Keaton plays a single mother who raised three beautiful daughters. Her oldest, Maggie (The Gilmour Girls’ Lauren Graham) and middle child Mae (Maggie Mae, get it?) played by Piper “Coyote Ugly” Perabo lead perfect romantic comedy lives—they have great jobs, handsome husbands and seem set to happily ride off into the sunset. That leaves the third daughter, the Cinderella of the bunch, Milly, the quirky daughter who can’t seem to find a man. Mom, fearful that her youngest won’t ever find happiness decides to act as a pimp… er… I mean set her daughter up with a man. Romantic entanglements ensue as Mom chooses a wealthy but emotionally detached architect and Milly falls for a penniless but warm-hearted musician. Who do you think she’ll end up with?
It’s a fairly standard romantic comedy set-up, although, just as The Holiday did last year, has at its core the notion that women cannot be fulfilled unless they have a man in their lives. The idea is that Diane Keaton is a cranky old maid who has given up on any hope of love in her life and she is trying to steer her children away from her fate. It’s an intrinsically misogynist concept that seems to be the basis for more and more romantic comedies these days.
The gender politics of the piece notwithstanding, there isn’t much to like about this movie. The comedy, which often veers into slapstick, falls flat, the story is predictable, the characters right out of central casting. Diane Keaton—it should be noted has been nominated for Best Actress four times and won in 1978 for a truly the great rom com Annie Hall—delivers the worst performance of her long career. Perhaps she stands out so much because the other actors are barely given characters to work with, and thusly blend into the scenery, but her over-the-top shrieky performance brought to mind bad sitcom acting. She makes Bozo the Clown look subtle and nuanced.
Why shouldn’t you go see this movie? I’ll use a running gag from the movie as my answer: “Because I Said So…”
“The Big Wedding” is is the kind of movie that you only buy a ticket for when everything else is sold out. You arrive at the theatre at 7:30, hungry for popcorn because you missed lunch, only to discover that “42,” the movie you really wanted to see, is packed. Ditto for “The Croods,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and even “Jurassic Park 3D.”
Then you see a poster for “The Big Wedding” and notice it stars Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and that nice boy from “That 70s Show.”
“How bad can it be?” you think.
I’m here to tell you how bad it can be.
In a bit of farce that, no doubt, has Molière spinning in his grave, the movie has at its wizened dark heart an elaborate ruse. Alejandro (Ben Barnes) is the adopted son of a long divorced couple, Don (Robert De Niro) and Elle (Diane Keaton). Don is now happily living with Elle’s former best friend Bebe (Susan Sarandon). Al’s planned wedding to Missy (Amanda Seyfried) is going to be a big affair, but there’s a hitch. His devoutly Catholic mother is coming over from Columbia for the visit, and Al fears she won’t give her blessing to the marriage if finds out that Don and Elle are divorced, so he asks them to masquerade as a married couple for the weekend.
There’s more. Lots more. Topher Grace is the twenty-nine-year-old virgin doctor son who falls for Alejandro’s sister. Katherine Heigl is a sour-faced lawyer and Robin Williams plays a priest.
The supporting characters sound like the set-up to an old joke—A doctor, a lawyer and a priest walk into a bar!—except that there’s nothing remotely funny about any of them.
It’s frustrating not because it isn’t funny but because it wastes the talents of almost everyone involved. Forevermore when anyone tells me that De Niro is the greatest actor of his generation, my mind will flash back to his most painful scene, a bit of slapstick on a diving board. Maybe I’m in denial, but I chose to remember the good times.
The set-up sounds family friendly—everybody loves a wedding, especially grandma!—but the movie is far from it. Language and nudity make it inappropriate for kids, and the general lack of anything else makes it a no go for everybody else.
With a story as imaginative as the title and “jokes” telegraphed so far in advance you need binoculars to see them coming, “The Big Wedding” is as appealing as a cash bar at the reception. It’s bad even for a Katherine Heigl movie.
Hollywood has a long standing tradition of churning out holiday films in which large, loving but dysfunctional families gather to celebrate Christmas and end up bring up old feuds, swapping girlfriends (or boyfriends) and over-cooking the turkey. So the idea for The Family Stone, a new comedy starring Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker, isn’t a new one, but despite the ring of familiarity The Family Stone works as both a comedy and a poignant family drama.
