The Brady Bunch is pop culture’s most famous blended family.
The story of a “lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls,” and a “man named Brady with three boys of his own,” who “would somehow form a family,” ran for fives seasons on TV, endlessly in reruns and even spawned two movies.
“The Brady Bunch is a live-action modern fairy tale of family,” says Christopher Knight who played Peter Brady on the original show. “In this context it’s less odd that it’s lasted for over 30 years; and why it may last in some respects as long as Mother Goose!”
He may be optimistic on the eternal appeal of his show, but he’s not wrong to imply that the idea of blended families could remain the subject of stories and movies for years to come.
This weekend “cinematic soulmates” Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler reunite for a third time, following The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, for Blended, a romantic comedy about the mixing and mingling of two families.
Hollywood has been blending screen families for years. The grandfather of these blended family stories has to be Yours, Mine and Ours.
Based on the memoir Who Gets the Drumstick? by Helen Beardsley, this 1968 Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda film sees a widow with eight kids and a widower with 10 children (including Mike, played by Tim Matheson 10 years before he found fame in Animal House) become one big (almost) happy family.
The film was produced by Ball, who became so friendly with the Beardsleys she treated all 20 of them to a trip to Disneyland. ABC and Paramount Studios were so impressed with the film they gave the green light to the similarly themed The Brady Bunch show.
The same year, movie legend Doris Day made her final big-screen appearance in With Six You Get Egg Roll, a blended family story about a widow with three sons who marries a man with a daughter. The kids don’t see eye to eye, but soon figure out a way to live together. Released so soon after Yours, Mine and Ours, Eggroll got good reviews, but, as Roger Ebert wrote at the time, “would probably seem funnier if it didn’t suffer by comparison.”
Finally, Step Brothers is an R-rated look at extreme Peter Pan Syndrome. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play 40ish men who become bunkmates and reluctant stepbrothers when their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) marry. The familiar reprimand “Grow up and act your age” fell on deaf ears with these guys. It’s like watching two overweight, foul-mouthed 10-year-olds with thinning hair going at each other, but it is good vulgar fun.
People in the Niagara Falls area have two chances to see Kevin Nealon next week. He’ll be on the big screen co-starring with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in Blended, or for a more up-close-and-personal look, they can check him out on stage at the Fallsview Casino Resort on May 24.
Best known for his nine-year stint as part of the ensemble cast of Saturday Night Live where he introduced audiences to characters like Subliminal Message Man, the muscle-bound Austrian jock Franz and Mr. No Depth Perception, he was encouraged to make people laugh at an early age by watching comics on television.
“I loved stand-up growing up,” he says. “I used to follow all the stand-ups on TV. I’d highlight when they were going to be on in the TV Guide. Ultimately I decided that would be a great job because I liked telling jokes and I felt kind of an ease with it.”
While honing his craft at legendary Los Angeles comedy club The Improvisation — “I pretty much lived there,” he says — he was encouraged to try acting.
“One of the co-owners said to me, ‘You ought to take acting lessons because one day a casting agent will come into the back of the room, see you and want you to read for their show.’ I had (considered acting) but was embarrassed to say so. I didn’t have any training or anything, so I took acting classes.”
These days he’s a SAG Award ensemble nominee for his work on Weeds, and can be heard doing voice-work shows like American Dad, but his early performances weren’t always so high-profile.
“There was a commercial I did that didn’t require a lot of acting. It was for Nabisco Country Crackers with (country singer) Lynn Anderson. I just had to play the banjo next to her while she fed me crackers. I remember Jay Leno saying, ‘Yeah, saw your commercial. Good for you.’
Then a week later they found copper dust particles in the crackers and had to recall them all so they took the commercial off the air.”
The family comedy Blended is his latest outing with Adam Sandler, whom he has previously appeared with in Little Nicky, Anger Management and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, among others.
“Usually you’re on board if he’s doing something,” Nealon says of his frequent collaborator. “There was one movie I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to be a part of. It was called Grandma’s Boy. It was so lowball and crass. I thought it might be a little embarrassing to be in that one. So
I told Sandler I’d probably pass on it and he called me and said, ‘I really hope you do this because if you don’t do it and it’s a big hit I’ll feel bad, but if you do it and it’s not a big hit, no one is going to see it anyway.’ So I said, ‘All right, I’ll do it.’”
Long distance relationships never work out and unfortunately movies about them rarely do either. “Going the Distance,” the new rom com from real life exes Drew Barrymore and Justin Long explores the ups (as in up in the air) and downs (as in crashing back to reality) of long distance dating.
Garrett (Long) is a record company grunt who has never had a serious relationship with a woman. On the verty night he breaks up with his latest one (or two or three) night stand he meets Erin (Barrymore), a rough edged intern at the New York Sentinel. A drunken roll in the hay leads to a burgeoning love match, trouble is, Erin is leaving New York at the end of the summer to return to grad school in San Francisco. They make a deal not to become emotionally attached but nature takes its course and they fall in love. They are determined not to let the 3000 mile hole in the relationship affect their lives but before long jealousies and petty arguments cast a shadow on the union.
Too bad the script has such a worn out feel to it. Unfunny and predictable, it limps along from one rom com cliché to the next. Is there the caring but edgy sister? Check. How about the goofy male best friends, brimming with bad advice but who ultimately turn out to be pretty good guys? Check. Perhaps an airport scene or two? Check. It’s all there, straight out of the romantic comedy rule book.
What isn’t there is a reason why we should care. Not only have we seen these characters—or variations on them—many times before, but they’re called romantic comedies for a reason. But when the romance involves puffing on a bong and falling into bed while a roommate listens in the next room or making love on a dining room table without noticing the man at the head of the table eating a sandwich, it doesn’t exactly fill the screen with warmth. Add to that a lack of memorable jokes and it doesn’t really qualify as a comedy either.
Best to keep your distance from “Going the Distance.”
He’s Just Not That Into You, a new romantic comedy with an all star cast, is being described as Love Actually meets Sex and the City. Not surprising since the book it was based on was inspired by a line from the latter. The book’s authors Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo’s eureka moment came when they saw the episode Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little. On the show Miranda (if you don’t know who that is, stop reading now) was telling Carrie’s boyfriend Berger about a date who declined her invitation to come up to her apartment. “I have an early meeting,” he said by way of an excuse. Berger analyzes the situation and concludes that “he’s just not that into you,” adding that “when a guy’s really into you, he’s coming upstairs, meeting or no meeting.” That one exchange inspired a self help book which became a bestseller and now a two hour movie starring Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Aniston.
The multi-pronged plot involves a seemingly unconnected group of Baltimore men and women who by the time the movie is over have swapped spit, broken up, gotten back together, dated, stalked and generally dabbled in all forms of human interaction. The unifying theme is that one person in each relationship is more “into” the other person than vice versa. According to director Ken Kwapis the relationship tango goes like this: “Character A is going out with character B, character B is really into Character A, but Character A is really into Character C who’s dating Character D…”
The first thing you’ll notice about He’s Just Not That Into You is that every good looking actor or actress in Hollywood is in this movie. It’s a panoply of blue eyes, shiny coiffed hair and jaw lines so sharp you could use them to cut granite and, of course they all live in beautifully designed homes and have cool jobs. So go see the movie for the clothes, the apartments, the general beauty of the cast, but don’t expect anything useful in terms of relationship advice.
Despite the movie’s source material and general self-help premise this is one of the most toxic looks at male – female relations since the Brittney Spears, Kevin Federline wedding video. The women are either portrayed as a.) incomplete without a man in their lives, b.) home wreckers, or c.) pathetically man crazy.
The men don’t fare much better. The guys are needy, cheaters, slobs or downright smarmy. One man, played by Bradley Cooper, has a slip of the tongue where he says “funeral” when the word he should have said was “wedding.” That’s about the extent of the character development on display here. (In case you don’t get it, he’s wondering if he ruined his life by marrying too young.) All in all despite their obvious genetic gifts it’s no wonder these characters are terminally single.
He’s Just Not That Into You makes the point that dating is hard and relationships are difficult and confusing. Well, thanks for the info. I get it. I got it after the first hour. By the end of the second hour of watching these hapless characters flop around from one warm body to the next I could only think of one sure fire way to test for a prospective mate. Make them watch He’s Just Not That Into You. If they want to leave midway through you may have found someone worth hanging out with.
In Lucky You Eric Bana plays a professional card shark trying to raise enough money to compete in the World Series of Poker at a Las Vegas hotel. Things haven’t been going well for him. His father, poker legend LC Cheever (Robert Duvall) is back in town; he loses a ten thousand dollar bet; the girl of his dreams, lounge singer Billie (Drew Barrymore), dumps him when he steals money from her and he gets roughed up by some Vegas thugs. If it wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have no luck at all.
Fortune, however, favors the bold, especially in Hollywood, and he finds a way to come up with the money, play kissy face with Billie and get his private life in order all in one marathon two hour plus movie. It’s Cincinnati Kid-lite, a movie about the gritty sub-culture of Vegas gamblers that is completely without grit.
Director Curtis Hanson, best known as the helmer behind L.A. Confidential and 8 Mile, has succeeded in the past by creating interesting, richly textured worlds for his movies to inhabit. The former wouldn’t have been as effective if not for the lush, sexy and dangerous Los Angeles he created, and the latter’s grungy depiction of the wrong side of Detroit’s tracks added a great deal of flavor to that film. Both seemed authentic and were integral parts of those movies. Lucky You isn’t so fortunate to have such a well defined sense of place. Las Vegas is probably the least authentic city on the planet. Everything there is artifice, which should create interesting possibilities to for a director to place some real people in amongst the surreal surroundings. Instead Hanson’s Las Vegas is populated by characters we’ve seen before—wacky locals who’ll bet on anything, the down-on-his-luck gambler, and the supportive love interest.
Eric Bana has been given four shots at A-list stardom in the past few years—more than anyone else I can think of—and yet leaves virtually no impression on me as a viewer. I wanted to like him in The Hulk, but found his performance flat. I barely remember him in Troy even though he was second billed to Brad Pitt and in Munich he, once again, failed to impress. As Huck in Luck You, a gambling addicted poker player with deep personal issues, we should understand his compulsion. Instead he spouts a handful of catch-phrases which are suppose to shed light on his compulsion, but end up sounding more like excuses than explanations. Unfortunately Bana just isn’t strong enough or interesting enough an actor to carry this kind of material.
Barrymore is wasted in a supporting role that requires little more from her than to be the resilient and supportive girlfriend.
Third billed lead Robert Duvall, however, schools both these younger actors in how to walk through material like this with your dignity intact. His performance as L.C. Cheever is the highlight of the film.
Lucky You? Lucky you if you don’t have to sit through this.
Lately I have been very hard on that reliable old standby, the romantic comedy. I’ve said that the recent crop of them are neither romantic or funny and I even went so far as to suggest that The Holiday is misogynist. Today we’re talking about a different kind of romantic comedy, the trademarked Drew Barrymore Rom Com®. This genre contains some of the laughs missing from Because I Said So, the romance absent from Catch and Release and none of the woman bashing. What it does have are stories so formulaic I experience déjà vu while watching them.
The breakdown for a Drew Barrymore romance fest is simple. Act One sees the quirky couple—in this case she’s a substitute plant caregiver, he’s a faded 80s pop star—meet. Sparks fly. Act Two has the pair falling in love under unlikely circumstances. Things go great until the ugly confrontation that leads to separation and general unhappiness. Act Three contains the Grand Gesture. He or she, depending on the movie, moves heaven and earth to win the other back. Insert happy ending.
That’s the basic plot of all of her romantic opuses from 50 First Dates to Fever Pitch and beyond. Only the faces change. Barrymore is a warm, engaging screen presence and often that is enough to carry one of these movies, but Music and Lyrics falls flat. Her co-star, rom com vet Hugh Grant, seems off his game, and I didn’t sense a great deal of chemistry between the two.
On paper Grant’s casting as an 80s has-been pop idol seems inspired. He has the looks (and nails the 80s era mullet) and just the right self-depreciating attitude, but his comic timing seems askew and perhaps he’s a bit long in the tooth to continue playing his brand name bumbling Englishman role.
Music and Lyrics is predictable—here’s a spoiler: they get together at the end. Big Surprise!—but so are most romantic comedies. There are some laughs here, but with little chemistry between the leads it’s as though we’re laughing at them rather than with them.
There’s nothing groundbreaking about Whip It, the directorial debut of American sweetheart Drew Barrymore. It’s the dance movie where the hero or heroine learns about life through ballet or hip hop. Or it’s the Spelling Bee movie where the main character learns self confidence at the Scripps National competition. In this case the back drop is the wild and wacky world of women’s Roller Derby, but the story is very familiar.
Based on the Shauna Cross novel Derby Girl Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar an unhappy teenager from small town Texas who suffers from adolescent ennui. She’s Juno without the pregnancy or the sharp tongue. She’s tired of beauty pageants, her over protective mother and being seventeen. When she stumbles across a flyer for a female Roller Derby league in nearby Austin she sees a way out of her mundane life. Turns out she has a natural ability as a derby demon, and an equally natural ability at attracting skinny guitar players. Soon enough, though, she realizes that skinny guitar players aren’t always the best dates and just because she’s found a new family at the roller rink she can’t throw her old family away.
The world of female roller derby is a colorful, eccentric world that should really lend itself to a rollicking big screen treatment. Unfortunately Whip It doesn’t do it justice. First time director Drew Barrymore gets some of the details right—the women all have fun, campy names like Bloody Holly, Smashly Simpson and Babe Ruthless, and play for teams with names like the Hurl Scouts—but the Roller Derby sequences don’t have the over-the-top rock ‘n’ roll feel they should have. The game scenes are too genteel by half and could have used a bit more rough and tumble energy. It is worth noting however, that the actors seem to be doing their own stunts and some of their falls look quite realistic and quite painful but it isn’t enough to make it feel like authentic down and dirty roller derby.
The feminist aspect of the story—roller derby is often associated with third wave feminism—is blunted because the game is more a plot device than the focus of the story. There is camaraderie among the women on the team and their journey is quite interesting but the film too often detours from the roller rink to Bliss’s love life or struggle with her family.
Barrymore does some good work here. She does a nice job at wordlessly showing Bliss’s alienation in the scene where she takes a bus to her roller derby audition. As she physically leaves the town she has come to hate you get the sense that in her mind she had really left years before. It’s a nicely handled bit of business as is a touching “please don‘t judge me” sequence late in the film between Bliss and her parents (Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern). There’s also some very funny moments and a show stopping performance from Eulala Scheel (Harden’s real life daughter) as Bliss’s younger sister.
But for all the well handled moments there are still the bungled derby scenes which should have added real punch to the story, but instead don’t make much of an impression. If you want to see the real deal derby check out Hell On Wheels, a documentary about the creation of the all-female roller derby league in Austin, Texas in 2001.
It’s hard not to like a movie that features scantily-dressed fun-lovin’ women kicking butt and having a good time, but Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle rings so hollow I can’t muster much enthusiasm for it.
The first film, 2000’s Charlie’s Angels was empty-headed, but at least had a sense of fun. This instalment ups the hip quotient, taking all the elements that worked well in the previous one and amplifying them – the actions scenes are louder, the kicks (and the skirts) a little higher, Cameron Diaz has not one, but two dance sequences and story is even more confusing than the first – jamming maximum eye candy into every frame. It has everything that summer audiences crave, everything that is, except soul. The MTV reared director McG moves the action along at the speed of light, proving that he has an attention span only as long as his name.
Last time around McG and producer Drew Barrymore (who also starred as Dylan Sanders) created a movie that paid homage to, but winked at the original 70s television series. In that daftly subversive movie the trio were at the beck and call of the mysterious Charlie, but were in no way enslaved by him, which was the uncomfortable reality of the television show. The movie Angels were playful and powerful.
This time out the film tries to hard. The fun, what little of it there is seems forced and uninspired. Instead of empowered women, Full Throttle offers up high kicking Barbies devoid of the charm that made them so winning the first time. In lieu of an actual character Cameron Diaz (look for her to earn multiple nominations when the next Golden Booty Awards are announced) simply flashes her toothy smile and underpants around, while Lucy Liu is still trading off the same hard-core dominatrix pose she perfected on Ally McBeal. Only Barrymore’s character seems rooted in reality, but even that sense of humanity evaporates the first time we see her fly through the air, kicking the stuffing out of the bad guys.
As the villainous ex-Angel Madison Lee, Demi Moore looks fabulous in her barely-there wardrobe. Apparently she has spent a good deal of time since we last saw her on the big screen at the gym. Too bad she didn’t skip the weights and take an acting course or two. Never a brilliant actress, I believe this is the first time Moore has actually been upstaged by her own abs.
Other supporting cast members fare only slightly better. Demi’s ex Bruce Willis is seen for under a minute, while the teenage Olsen Twins barely muster ten seconds of screen time. Other star cameos include Pink, Robert Forster, Carrie Fisher, Eric Bogosian and television Angel Jaclyn Smith. Director McG should be fully throttled for his mishandling of John Cleese as Lucy Liu’s father. It’s a funny idea to have a tall gawky Brit playing the diminutive Liu’s father, but his talent is utterly wasted. He’s given nothing to do except react with bulging eyes to a string of cheap double entendres. On the plus side Crispen Glover reprises his role from the first film as The Thin Man, delivering a delightfully unhinged performance as the hair fetishist assassin.
In the end big and bloated are two words I’d never use to describe the Angels (for fear of bring pummelled) but would use to describe the movie.
This weekend Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut with Whip It, the story of a young girl who finds the antidote for her small town blues on the roller derby track.
Barrymore’s movie delves deep into the murky world of women’s roller derby, but it isn’t the sport’s first big screen treatment.
In the early 1970s UCLA student Barry Sandler saw his master’s thesis, a screenplay called Kansas City Bomber, become a Golden Globe-nominated movie starring Raquel Welch. She plays a single Mom roller-derby queen (Jodie Foster is her daughter) who has an affair with her boss and a skating showdown with a rival.
The 1970s were the height of roller derby’s popularity but the sport made a comeback early in the millennium. That return was chronicled in Hell On Wheels, a documentary about a women-only Roller Derby league in Austin, Texas.
Ain’t It Cool says this inspirational movie has “the kind of twists, drama, cat fights and compound fractures that only happen in real life.”
Maybe that explains why the roller derby is popular again. Sure, the action is wild and wooly and it has a punk rock attitude but its recent recognition has to do with the people and girl power.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada 
