Is Kristen Wiig the most daring actress in Hollywood? After having been an all-star utility player on “Saturday Night Live” for 9 years and the massive success of “Bridesmaids” she could have written her own ticket. She could have reteamed with Melissa McCarthy to make the expected follow-up to “Bridesmaids,” or even played a Marvel superhero. She could have paired off with Will Ferrell and made big budget big screen comedies or elbowed Sandra Bullock out of the way and starred in “The Heat.”
Instead she has kept a low profile, making challenging, quirky films that mix mirth with melancholy and are unlikely to gross even “Bridesmaids’s” catering cost.
She returns as Alice Klieg in “Welcome to Me,” a dark comedy about a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder and a dream of being on television. Divorced, she lives in a small apartment, sleeping in a sleeping bag on top of the bed, in front of a television that hasn’t been turned off in eleven years.
She mouths along with Oprah reruns and dreams, one day, of sharing herself and her ideas with the world. Her dream becomes a possibility when she wins an $87 million lottery. Using the facilities of a failing TV infomercial studio run by Gabe (Wes Bentley) and Rich (James Marsden), she buys herself a show unlike anything that has ever been seen on TV. Titled “Welcome to Me,” it’s a puzzling glimpse into her life. “Today I woke up and there was a public hair on my pillow shaped like a question mark,” she says introducing a segment called Unanswered Questions. For a week straight she neuters dogs live on air. The show, which airs so high on the dial it’s just above the Alien Channel, becomes a mini sensation with people tuning in to see the unusual mix of tortured revelations and performance art. One student credits her with the invention of “the narrative infomercial.”
As the show gains in popularity Alice’s ego bloats but success doesn’t make her happy, and eventually she is stripped bare, both emotionally and physically.
Brave, dynamic work like this separates Wiig from the pack. In a high wire performance she balances playing someone dealing with severe mental health issues while earning laughs along the way. It’s tough to do, but in what is her best work yet she rides the line, never backing off the tough stuff but also frequently taking a sideways step toward the laughs.
Other characters aren’t given as much of a chance to shine–Jennifer Jason Leigh as the show’s designer is cut adrift but Joan Cusack makes the best of an underwritten role as the show’s director—but as Alice’s best friend Linda Cardinelli is equal parts warmth and frustration, and perfect in the role.
“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.
The offspring of “Saturday Night Live” have provided highs and lows in terms of the movie going experience. On the upside there is “Wayne’s World,” a very funny comedy about a suburban headbanger and his best friend. Less successful was Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin as Beldar and Prymaat Clorhone in “Coneheads.”
Then there is another category of “SNL” movies. The ones like “The Skeleton Twins,” films that just happen to feature former stars of the show.
Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader are Maggie and Milo, twins who haven’t spoken in ten years. The product of a troubled upbringing, she still lives in their upstate New York hometown, he in Los Angeles where he pursues a career in acting while waiting tables at a Hollywood tourist trap.
When Milo survives a suicide attempt Maggie invites him to recuperate at her home. Her husband Lance (Luke Wilson) welcomes him, but Milo’s presence in town brings up old, disturbing feelings for his ex-boyfriend Rich (Ty Burrell) and Maggie who is still troubled by the past.
Unlike Aykroyd and Curtain in “Coneheads,” Wiig and Hader are revelations in “The Skeleton Twins.” The movie is a parade of dysfunction, but the performances from these two actors are nuanced and delicate. Both are famous for making people laugh—Wiig has several dramas on her resume like “Girl Most Likely,” but is best known on the big screen for “Bridesmaids”—but both stretch here, becoming dramatic actors who know how to deliver a funny line.
Despite its downbeat tone the script (co-written by Mark Heyman and director Craig Johnson) is packed with laughs, most of which are situational and massaged out of the material by Wiig and Hader.
Luke Wilson and Joanna Gleason are also noteworthy. He’s the sweet but dim-witted “big Labrador Retriever” of a man, and brings some down-to-earth humanity to a movie about people searching to find their humanity. Gleason is terrific as the world’s worst mother, a self-centered woman who presence dredges up old, bad memories.
“The Skeleton Twins” is an interesting and funny character study for much of its 93 minute running time, but the ending feels almost as if the production ran out of money and shut down before they figured out a satisfactory conclusion. Its as if someone simply flicked off the story switch before the narrative was quite done.
Despite a rushed ending, “The Skeleton Twins” features breakthrough performances from its leads that are worth a look.
The Toronto International Film Festival premieres some of the best movies across the globe and attracts some of the biggest names in Hollywood. This year is certainly no exception with expected appearances from Reese Witherspoon, Robert Downey Jr., Kristen Wiig, Bill Murray and more.
Each year we get the inside scoop on the hottest TIFF movie premieres from renowned Canadian critic Richard Crouse, an expert in what films to see…and what films to skip…
If you have ever day dreamed about saying the right thing or having a snappy comeback to an insult, there’s a little bit of Walter Mitty in you.
From the original 1947 film starring Danny Kaye to the remake directed and featuring Ben Stiller, the name Walter Mitty has been synonymous with a certain kind of person, defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as “an ordinary, often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs.”
In the new film Mitty (Stiller) is a 42-year-old behind-the-scenes “Life” employee who spaces out so much his new boss calls him Major Tom. He’s a hard working but invisible sixteen-year vet of the magazine’s photo department even his official title, negative asset manager, sounds Kafkaesque.
He’s secretly in love with co-worker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) but while he dithers with an eHarmony representative (Paton Oswalt) regarding contacting her on-line (even though her office is just down the hall) the magazine is sold.
“This month’s issue will be the last before going on line,” says smarmy corporate lackey (Adam Scott) and soon, he adds, “some employees will be deemed ‘non vital.’”
It looks like Walter’s head might be on the corporate chopping block when he loses a negative from legendary photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn). The picture is pegged to be the last “Life” cover ever, and if Walter can’t locate it, he will lose his job.
To find the picture he sets his daydreams aside and enacts “Life’s” motto, to see the world. His travels take him around the world and, at the same timer, closer to Cheryl’s heart.
Although Stiller appears in almost every frame of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” there’s no hint of the “There’s Something About Mary” Ben Stiller here at all. His take on Mitty is understated. The character’s moments get bigger and bigger as Walter begins to control his destiny, but Stiller never lets go of the core of what makes Walter, Walter. It’s his most subdued performance ever, and it looks good on him.
Wiig also displays her sweet side. There’s not a “little hand” (Dooneese from “S.N.L.’s” Lawrence Welk Show”) or bit of sketch comedy in the performance at all.
Both are quietly funny for the most part—a “Benjamin Button” daydream is the closest thing to punchline-setup in the movie. “My little heart is no bigger than a quarter,” says a mini-Walter, “but it’s filled more than Fort Knox.”
And, because this is a big Christmas release there is an unexpected superhero style action sequence where Walter Mitty tears up Manhattan in defense of his Stretch Armstrong doll, but for the most part it is sweet but occasionally twee.
The embossed “That is the Purpose of Life” slogan on an airport runway blurs the line between magic realism and silly sentimentalism but Stiller the director mostly subverts the mundane with the surreal as though he is following Walter’s own ABCs of everything you want in a man (or in this case director), to be Adventurous, Brave and Creative.
It’s been ten years since we first met Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), a San Diego newscaster who claims he was put on earth to do two things, “have salon quality hair and read the news.” With his extreme news team—field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner) and bizarro weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell)—he ruled the local airwaves.
This time around the stakes are much bigger. Relocated to New York City, Burgundy and company are set to change the face of news in a film that almost plays like a comedic version of “Network.” Almost… but not quite.
At the dawn of the 1980s Ron Burgundy’s best days seem to be behind him. His marriage implodes when his wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) becomes the first female national news host. He hits the bottle, stops combing his perfect hair and it looks like his career is over until he’s recruited to join the anchor team at the newly formed Global News Network, the first 24-hour news channel.
He takes the job, but first insists on reuniting his old team, Blues Brothers style. With Champ, Brick and Brian on board they prepare to take New York by storm, but first they have to out do and out perform hot shot anchor Jack Lime (James Marsden).
Cobbling together a newscast made up of car chases, cat videos and Fox News style patriotism they inadvertently give birth to a new style of news.
As their ratings rise, so do questions of journalistic ethics. And that’s the first hour. Beyond that the movie is so demented I don’t want to give away any more plot points.
“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” brings with it a fair amount of goodwill. People love the original and the audience I saw the new one with laughed at almost everything that came out of Ferrell’s mouth.
For the first hour. Then the movie’s faults begin to show.
The opening sixty minutes feel like a worthy, although not quite as quotable, revisiting of the first movie. There’s nothing as memorable as, “I love scotch. Scotchy, scotch, scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly…” but you’ll laugh, especially if you’re a fan of the original.
You’ll also laugh in the second hour, but it feels less like a film than a series of connected sketches. The plot veers around wildly, again delivering giggles, but in a rambling way that doesn’t feel like the first half. It tries hard to make a statement about early 1980s race relations and for a short while Ferrell channels his inner Howard Beale to comment on the erosion of the quality of news reporting.
Sounds more nuanced than it actually is. Despite the social commentary, this is still the kind of movie where Burgundy goes temporarily blind, hand feeds a baby shark and engages in hand-to-hand combat with rival news teams.
“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” is funny in an outrageous way. It’s a bit too long, (and don’t bother sitting through to the post credit scene unless you find the sight of Steve Carell eating cookies hilarious) but the buffoonery level is high in a season where serious drama seems to be the ticket.
Jerry Lewis didn’t find Lucille Ball amusing. Not only that but the man who, ironically as it turns out, made a career of spastically yelling, “Laaa-dy!” at every opportunity says he doesn’t “like any female comedians.” Doesn’t find them funny
Jerry meet Tina Fey.
Jerry meet Kristen Wiig.
Jerry meet… I could go on but I think the point I’m making is that old Jerry is about as right about this as he is funny. Which is to say, not so much.
This summer has seen the release of two movies headlined by women and aimed at the funny bone. Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher, which premiers this weekend, both take the tried and true recipe of mixing vulgar jokes with sentimentality and heart—the boys have been doing it for years in movies like The Forty Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up—and folds in female characters that are used as more than set decoration.
Women have yukked it up on the small screen since the beginning of the medium. The aforementioned Ball gave way to Marlo Thomas, Betty White, Cloris Leachman, Sarah Silverman and others, but on the big screen women have often been simply regarded as an attractive foil for the male star or given what Modern Family’s Julie Bowen calls the “finger shaking role.”
Women frequently headline big screen romantic comedies, but there is a reason why the word romantic comes first in the genre description. Sure Kathryn Hiegl or Kristen Bell will be allowed to do a pratfall or two in movies like 27 Dresses or When in Rome, but when it comes right down to it are there to deliver the romance and leave the chuckle-grabbing to their costars.
It’s rare to see comedic women front and center in the movies, but Bridesmaids had six of them and is already a hit and depending on the audience appetite for Cameron Diaz’s return to her There’s Something About Mary-esque comedic roots, Bad Teacher might usher in an era of funny female flicks that rely on chuckles and not C cups.
In an article called Why Women Aren’t Funny Christopher Hitchens wrote “women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing.” I would suggest Mr. Hitchens have a look at the food poisoning scene in Bridesmaids and rethink his position.
I would also suggest everyone take a gander at Lake Bell, an actress who shares initials and comedic style with Lucille Ball, and who never fails to make me laugh, which is more than I can say about Jerry Lewis.
“Girl Most Likely,” a dysfunctional family comedy starring Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening and Matt Dillon, proves that you can take the girl out of New Jersey, but you can’t take the New Jersey out of the girl.
Wiig stars as Imogene, a wannabe New York playwright. Years before she won a prestigious award but the promise of a distinguished career in the theatre evaporated, leaving her with a cheating boyfriend, some high society friends who sneer at her behind her back and an inferiority complex.
Hitting rock bottom she’s forced to move back home, to Ocean City, New Jersey with her eccentric mother (Bening), younger brother (Christopher Fitzgerald) and assorted boyfriends (Dillon) and roomers (Darren Criss).
Living with mom stirs up some old memories, reveals some new truths and makes her more determined than ever to get back to the bright lights of NYC… if she can find a way to break free of her roots.
“Girl Most Likely” is a frustrating movie because it comes so close to being a home run, but doesn’t quite make it to home base. Co-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini have assembled a great, charismatic cast but given them a script that relies on quirk rather than depth to make its point.
Narcissistic characters can be fascinating on screen—think “American Psycho’s” Patrick Bateman or Gregory Anton from “Gaslight” or even “The Princess Bride’s” Vizzini—but the psychological issues that drive them have to resonate, or at least be apparent and that’s where “Girl Most Likely” fails.
It’s a narcissistic cesspool played for laughs without ever really giving us the dark background that feeds the self-absorbed behavior on display. There are hints along the way but they are over shadowed by a plot that relies on idiosyncratic twists, like a brother who specializes in mollusk protection methods and a mysterious stranger who may, or may not, be an international spy.
Paring down the eccentricity and upping the realistic elements of the story would have allowed the performances to shine brighter and made “Girl Most Likely” a more satisfying movie.
There are one joke movies and then there are the SNL skit movies like “It’s Pat” that stretch a thin premise out to ninety minutes and then there is “MacGruber,” a spy spoof starring Will Forte as a secret agent ready to save the world with only a couple of celery stalks, some dental floss and a tennis ball. Similarities to “MacGyver” are intentional, but only the tip of this all-80s parody.
As the movie begins MacGruber has been in retirement for ten years since the murder of his bride (Maya Rudolph) on their wedding day. He is pulled back into the fray when it appears that his arch enemy—Val Kilmer playing a bad guy whose name cannot be repeated here for fear of having to wash my mouth out with soap afterward—may have gotten his hands on a nuclear warhead. Using their wits (and the above mentioned celery stalks) MacGruber, along with his Blaupunkt car radio, cherry red Miata and cohorts Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) must stop him before the State of the Union address.
Like the television character it is loosely based on “MacGruber,” (the movie, not the man) aims to use odds and ends to cobble together a weapon capable of slaying the SNL skit movie curse. It’s not entirely successful, but as a parody of 1980s action films—and the fashions of the 1980s, the cheesy soundtracks of the 1980s and that decade’s cavalier attitude toward movie violence—it has its moments just not enough of them.
First the good stuff. The casting of Powers “Red Dawn” Boothe as a tough talking army colonel is inspired, as is the prerequisite “getting-the-team-together montage. Also great is the dialogue, the kind that used to roll off the tongue of sweaty action stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. “He can be quite a fly in the ointment,” says MacGruber, “so let’s get a couple of fly swatters.” Those lines, played straight as an arrow, and coupled with some crazy non sequiturs provide many of the film’s laughs and there are many laughs, until the movie starts to rely a bit too heavily on bathroom jokes. This movie is more consumed by bums (and their contents) than a diaper designer. Imagine if JCVD told poo poo jokes in “Double Impact” and you get the idea.
Up until the introduction of celery stalks to a place where the sun doesn’t usually shine, the movie is a silly homage to the excess of 1980s b action movies, afterwards it’s an only occasionally funny homage to the excesses of modern sketch comedy—awkward pauses, pushing the joke past its breaking point and juvenile characters.
Forte is 100% committed to the role of the inept MacGruber, but his cocky, but insane take on the character gets tired after the first half hour. Wiig fares better. It seems she is incapable of not being funny even when the material isn’t up to snuff. Val Kilmer, who is looking more like mid career John Travolta all the time, hams it up, but doesn’t have the same comic verve he did in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” but then, he had a much better script to work with that time out.
“MacGruber” has some laugh-out-loud moments, just not enough of them. It seems it would take more skill than Mcgyver to rescue this movie.
