“Hall Pass” can’t rightly be called a romantic comedy because there is very little actual romance contained in its story of two couples who are experiencing the martial blahs. Instead let’s call it a mid life comedy.
In this Farrelly Brothers film Owen Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Jason Sudeikis and Christina Applegate are Rick, Maggie, Fred and Grace, two long time couples in stale, sexless marriages. After an embarrassing incident at a friend’s home the fed up wives decide to give their husbands a “hall pass”—a week long holiday from marriage in an effort to prove to them that the grass is not greener on the other side of the nuptial fence.
The kind of gross out humor you would expect from the purveyors of films like “There’s Something about Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber” is firmly in place here. Unfortunately “Hall Pass” isn’t anywhere near as funny as either “Mary” or “Dumber”—even though the Farrely’s obsession with overly tanned people is firmly in place—but as puerile as it may be the charming cast wrings whatever humor there is to be found out of the script. Because of them the movie has a fairly constant ripple of giggles punctuated occasionally by big laughs.
It’s a thin premise, stretched almost to breaking, with a moral—surprise, surprise, single life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—that seems very predictable, especially coming from the Farrelys. Luckily good casting and the odd well timed joke elevates “Hall Pass” from the level of a Katherine Heigl couples comedy, but just barely.
“The Internship,” the story of two old guys who try to get jobs at Google, is the funniest infomercial I’ve ever seen. As a comedy movie it doesn’t rate that high, but as an advertisement for Google it’s a knee slapper.
I’ve seen product placement in movies before, but this is something else. By the time Rose Byrnes’ character says, “I believe what we do here makes people’s lives better,” I was ready to worship at the Church of the Sacred Search Engine.
We also learn that Google is ranked as the best place to work in America.
That’s all great, but I was hoping for more laughs with my infomercial.
This new buddy comedy pairs Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn for the first time since 2005’s “Wedding Crashers.” They are Nick and Billy, two wild and crazy guys whose sales jobs are made obsolete in the technological age. Unable to get a foothold in the new media field they crash Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters and become “noogles” in hopes of landing gigs as interns, despite having no experience with computers. “We’re looking at some sort of mental Hunger Games against a bunch of genius kids for just a handful of jobs,” says Nick.
There are some laughs in “The Internship.” Unfortunately very few of them are generated by the over-the-title-stars, Vaughn and Wilson. The chemistry that made “Wedding Crashers” such a big hit eight years ago is still in place, but the material isn’t. They still banter a blue streak—one of the characters says, “you’re saying a lot of words that mean nothing,” and she hits it right on the head—but it feels tired and old, like many of the jokes.
The fish-out-of-water idea—two luddites at a tech mecca—should have been workable, but it often feels like laughing at grandpa because he can’t figure out how to work the remote. It’s a bit too easy.
Add to that Nick and Billy—or Nick, Nicky, Nickelodeon and Bill, Willie, Billiard as those crazy kids slangily call one another—being heroes for teaching the overachieving kids about life by getting them drunk and taking them to a strip club, and you have a “Revenge of the Nerds” with a dollop of “Jersey Shore” thrown in—and the two mix about as well as you might imagine.
The situations, while predictable and often stretched a bit thin, do allow several of the other cast members to shine. As Yoyo, the anxious overachiever Tobit Raphael earns a few laughs and as the nerdy NehaTiya Sircargets a couple of good lines in, as do others, but overall it isn’t a laugh riot.
“The Internship” overdoes it with the Googliness and easy sentiment, and underdoes it with the jokes. Perhaps next time the screenwriterscan Google some better gags.
The cliché when reviewing a Woody Allen film is to play the “Spot the Woody” game. Since Allen stopped actually appearing in his own films it has become de rigueur to speculate on which role Woody would have played. It’s a bit of a tired game, but in his new film, “Midnight in Paris,” (which opened the most recent Cannes Film Festival) Owen Wilson is clearly playing the part. He’s a nostalgic Hollywood screenwriter who yearns to be taken seriously as an author. It’s Woody alright, despite Wilson’s California beach bum style.
In a story that harkens back to Allen’s older magic realism films like “Purple Rose of Cairo,” Gil Pender (Wilson), an American on vacation in France, finds himself transported back to 1920s Paris. For a man with “golden Age” fantasies it’s a dream come true. He meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston, last seen as Loki from “Thor” and Alison Pill), hangs out with surrealists, sees Cole Porter sing at a party, drinks with Hemmingway and tries to steal Picasso’s girl Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Bringing him back to reality is his irritating present day fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her obnoxious parents.
It must first be said that “Midnight in Paris” is worth the price of admissions for the lovely shots of the fetching Marion Cotillard strolling the streets of Paris in a flapper dress. It’s also worth it to see Woody do for 1920s Paris what he did for 1970s Manhattan. He has one character say, “that Paris exists and anyone would choose to live anywhere else is a mystery to me,” and after seeing the film it’s hard not to agree. Allen’s cities are often as much a character as any of the actors and Paris is no exception. Now if he’d only shoot in Toronto. It might help tourism.
“Midnight in Paris” is a fantasy, but there is a point. Every generation looks back at the past with envy, Gil comes to realize that there really never was a “golden age” and that top be truly happy he must live in the present. That resolution is a bit of a revelation coming from Woody Allen, a man whose films seem to be from a different age but the skill he brings to this film proves he’s still a vital interesting filmmaker and not a relic from a past age.
Wilson and Anderson! Together again after “Bottle Rocket,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Darjeeling Limited.” Whoops. Right Wilson, wrong Anderson. This weekend Owen Wilson collaborates with Brad Anderson, not Wes, in a live action adaptation of Anderson’s long running comic “Marmaduke.” The arty flourishes and subtle humor of Wilson’s work with Wes has been replaced with big-dog-in-a-little-car comedy.
Marmaduke (voice of Owen Wilson) is an unruly Great Dane with a habit of speaking directly into the camera. As the film’s narrator he introduces us to his family and leads us through the story of how Phil (Lee Pace), a dog food executive in Kansas, winds up moving the family to California and working for that state’s biggest manufacturer of organic kibble (a slumming William H. Macy). Before you can say “Kowabarka” Marmaduke is “getting his bark on” in The Golden State, winning a surfing contest, falling for a girl dog with Farah Fawcett fur, faking a cat attack to impress Alfa dog Bosco (Kiefer Sutherland) and tearing up the house. Oh that Marmaduke!
Not since Bill Murray loaned his voice to “Garfield” has a hip actor gone to the dogs like this. We can forgive Wilson the odd misstep like “You, Me and Dupree” as long as he keeps appearing in movies like “Fantastic Mr. Fox” but “Marmaduke” earns him a week wearing a shock collar. Bad dog!
He’s not alone. Kiefer Sutherland, Steve Coogan, George Lopez, Sam Elliott and the Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie all take advantage of the easy money of voice acting, but it is Wilson, in the title role, who must take the lion’s share (canine’s share?) of the blame for this. Where is the Humane Society when you really need them? Somewhere Benji and Rin Tin Tin are rolling over (in their graves) at the state of doggie style movies for kids.
Tots may find some fun in the talking animals and gentle action, but there is nothing here for anyone over the age of five except bad puns—Dog Vader, anyone? Boneillionaire, perhaps?—and an allegedly heartwarming story that actually gave me heartburn.
“Marmaduke” is an instantaneously forgettable kid’s flick that’s all bark, no laughs. There are no treats in “Marmaduke,” doggie or otherwise.
Ryan (Troy Gentile), Wade (Nate Hartley) and Emmit (David Dorfman) are pumped about their first day in high school. For them it is a new start; a chance to be cool, leave the geekiness of junior high behind and maybe meet or even touch some real live human girls. Their dreams of being too cool for school go pear shaped, however, when the school’s biggest bully, a psycho-in-the-making named Filkins (Alex Frost, one of the bullied kids in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant) focuses his attention on them. He’s a professional level tormentor who uses verbal, physical and psychological abuse to terrorize the boys.
The situation becomes so threatening the trio take desperate measures to save themselves—they place an ad for a personal bodyguard on the Soldier of Fortune website. After sorting through the mercenaries, Israeli secret service agents and hit men who reply they hire the cheapest applicant, Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson). The bodyguard claims to be adept in all forms of improvised weapons, skilled in covert black-ops and to have worked for three Vice Presidents, Bobby Brown and Sylvester Stallone. “Not quite as tough as he looks,” says Drillbit.
He sounds like the ideal person to solve their problem, but soon it becomes obvious he oversold his skill set, and is, in fact, just a Santa Monica homeless dude—he prefers to say “home free”—who was planning on stealing and robbing their parents’ houses. He tries to justify the robbery as doing the boys a favor. “Steal their TV,” he says, “and maybe they’ll read a book.”
On the upside the budget bodyguard does engage in a series of ridiculous boot camp exercises where he teaches the boys about “mind over pain” and instills a sense of confidence in them. “Teach the victim to beat up the bully,” he says, “and they will live forever. Steven Seagal said that.”
The evil Filkins is still a problem, however, so Ryan, Wade and Emmit use their newborn self-reliance to try to put an end to the bully’s reign of terror. The only question is whether or not Drillbit will discover his inner warrior and step up to the plate and help.
The original idea for Drillbit Taylor came from teen movie king John Hughes who dreamed up the treatment but never got around to writing the script. That job fell to Knocked Up’s Seth Rogen, comedy’s man of the moment and former Beavis and Butthead writer Kristofor Brown. For the most part they squeeze laughs out of a pretty thin concept, but ultimately Drillbit Taylor doesn’t work as well as last summer’s Superbad, another movie written by Rogen and starring a trio of teenage geeks. Why? Superbad had more heart. Superbad had more believable situations and better performances. No, Drillbit Taylor is no Superbad, it just isn’t up to that caliber, and like most of the Rogen-Judd Apatow collaborations it is a tad too long, but it isn’t a write-off.
A subplot with an English teacher who develops a crush on Drillbit thinking his name is Dr. Illbit is good for a few laughs and the interaction between Drillbit and the boys has its moments. I just wish the movie had more good hearty laughs. Superbad simply set the bar too high for this kind of film for Drillbit Taylor to seem like anything other than a pale imitation of comedy greatness.
Wedding Crashers is a comedy of manners—bad manners that is. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn make their living as smooth talking mediators in difficult divorce cases. The side effect of this is that they are really good at talking malarkey to get people to do what they want—especially women. This dovetails nicely with their sideline of crashing weddings and using their charm to score food, drinks and bridesmaids who they say “throw their inhibitions to the wind” at marriage ceremonies. For these guys wedding crashing is more than just a hobby, it is a way of life with a strict set of rules, one of which says that they must never fall in love with any of their conquests. Of course, both break the rule—Vaughn hooks up with the slightly psychotic daughter of a well connected politician and Wilson with her beautiful sister, played by Canadian Rachel McAdams. Much of the success of Wedding Crashers is due to the chemistry between Vaughn and Wilson, who keep things cruising along at a good clip with snappy dialogue—much of which seems improvised—and their considerable charms. Neither are stretching as actors here—we’ve seen Vaughn’s manic motor mouth routine in a few films recently, and Wilson isn’t displaying any of the acting muscle he did in The Royal Tenenbaums—but audiences won’t care because although the film has some pacing problems, little comic momentum and is fairly predictable, but it does have enough funny lines to be enjoyable.
The new buddy comedy The Internship pairs Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn for the first time since 2005’s Wedding Crashers.
They are still wild and crazy guys, but this time out they are unemployed wild and crazy guys pushed out of their jobs by technology.
Unable to get a foothold in the new media field they take intern jobs at Google.
“We’re looking at some sort of mental Hunger Games against a bunch of genius kids for just a handful of jobs,” says Wilson.
Many movies have used unemployment as the starting point for storytelling.
In Lost in America, rated one of Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies, Albert Brooks plays a successful advertising executive who gets fired for insulting his boss.
Free from the shackles of employment he goes all carpe diem and convinces his wife Linda (Julie Hagerty) to leave her job and explore the country in a Winnebago. When they lose their nest egg on a Las Vegas stop over they reenter the work force as a crossing guard and manager at a Der Wienerschnitzel restaurant, respectively.
As the movie ends they hit the road once again, hoping to reclaim their old jobs and lifestyles.
It would be hard to imagine a more toxic workplace than the real estate office in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Encouragement comes in the form of verbal abuse — most of which can’t be printed in a family newspaper — and a motivational sales contest offering three prizes.
The top seller wins a Cadillac Eldorado.
“Second prize is a set of steak knives,” says Blake (Alec Baldwin). “Third prize is you’re fired.”
Playwright David Mamet based the original play on his experiences working in a real estate office in the 1970s.
Finally, The Full Monty is a comedy that takes a serious look at the effects of unemployment on the individual and the community.
Set in Sheffield, England, it’s the story of six men, most unemployed steel workers, who come up with a unique way to pay the bills.
They decide to form a Chippendale dancer style group, separating themselves from the pack by going “the full monty” and go completely stark naked.
While filming, the actors agreed to go completely nude in front of 400 extras provided they only had to do it once.
They got it in one take, and according to Roger Ebert, the inspiring and revealing final scene “was applauded at the screening I attended.”
This weekend Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg co-star as a DEA agent and an undercover Naval Intelligence officer who are investigating one another in 2 Guns. Each think the other is on the take from the mob, but eventually must work together to get to the truth.
This action-comedy was directed by Contraband helmer Baltasar Kormakur the movie promises more action than comedy, putting it at odds with the original plan for the film.
Conceived as a vehicle for Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn after the success of Wedding Crashers, the movie was originally meant to take advantage of the comedic chemistry between the two, but slowly morphed into something else as it made its way to Wahlberg and Washington.
It joins a long list of movies to change tone as they swap casts.
We think of Beverly Hills Cop as the hilarious Eddie Murphy movie about a streetwise Detroit cop displaced to hoity-toity Los Angeles. Initially however, the movie was meant to star Sylvester Stallone, who, aside from Oscar or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, is better known for breaking jaws than busting guts. Comedy not being his thing, Stallone tried to rewrite the script to emphasize the action, which raised the budget and he was replaced.
Stallone also turned down the part of Jack Colton in the romantic action-adventure Romancing the Stone and was replaced by Michael Douglas
Unlike Stallone, Bill Murray can flit back-and-forth between drama and comedy with ease, still it would have seemed odd to see him as Dr. Wren in Alien: Resurrection. The part was written for him, but when he passed it went to J.E. Freeman.
Stranger still was the casting for the crime comedy Legal Eagles. In the version we know Debra Winger plays defense lawyer Laura Kelly who becomes romantically involved with District Attorney Tom Logan, played by Robert Redford. Originally Winger’s character was written for Murray, who dropped out and forced massive rewrites.
Taxi Driver made Cybill Shepherd a star, but the part almost went to Farah Fawcett Majors because, producer Julia Phillips claims, director Martin Scorsese preferred Majors’ “shapely bottom.”
Finally, Daniel Day Lewis is an acting legend with five Oscar nominations and three wins to his credit, but imagine if he hadn’t turned down the roles of Zod in the recent Superman epic Man of Steel or Shakespeare in Love’s love interest, a part that went to Joseph Fiennes.
