I hate puns and I especially hate punny titles. Imagine taking the time to read “the Long Quiche Goodbye: A Cheese Shop Mystery” or a thriller called “Doppelgangster.” The mind reels. As such, my expectations for the animated outer space monkey movie “Spark: A Space Tail” were not high. Sadly, my expectations were met.
Once the prince of a planet of the apes called Bana (banana without the “na”), Spark (voice of Jace Norman) is a teenage chimp living on a tiny slice of his former planet, one of many blown into space thirteen years ago following a coup by the Napoleon-esque Zhong (voice of Alan C. Peterson). Spark lives with robot caretaker Bananny (voice of Susan Sarandon) and former royal guard members, Vix (voice of Jessica Biel) and Chunk (voice of Rob deLeeuw), warriors whose job is to protect, train and prepare Spark for his destiny—the recapture of the kingdom. Key to Zhong’s defeat is the Galactic Kraken, a beast whose harnessed power may be the most powerful weapon history has ever known.
An air of déjà vu hangs heavy over “Spark: A Space Tail.” Anyone over the age of four will immediately recognize story elements lightly lifted from “Star Wars,” “WALL-E” and just about any other adolescent in space movie that came before. Most of the borrowed concepts were good ideas the first, second or even third time around but feel a bit been-there-done-that here.
But it’s not just the story that feels shopworn. Space underdog stories will always find some kind of audience but other than a couple of effective scenes of interplanetary dodge ball the animation here is as unattractive as it gets. Not only is “Spark: A Space Tail” saddled with a story that would have been quite at home in an early nineties direct to video release, but it has animation to match. The a-lister cast—including Sarandon, Patrick Stewart and Hilary Swank among others—cannot compensate for visuals that redefine the word generic.
Unfortunately the punny title may be the best thing about “Spark: A Space Tail.”
“My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea” is an audacious animated film from graphic novelist Dash Shaw that has been described as, “John Hughes fused with The Poseidon Adventure.” That’s not far off the mark. It’s a bravura, bizarro-land high school disaster flick, unlike anything else you’re likely to see this year.
Animated using a colourful hodgepodge of drawings, paintings and collage, it’s the strange story of sophomores Dash (voice of Jason Schwartzman) and his best friend Assaf (voice of Reggie Watts), writers for the newspaper at Tides High School. A wedge is pushed between the junior Woodward and Bernsteins when editor Verti (voice of Maya Rudolph) offers Assaf solo assignments. To even the score Dash writes a fictitious story about his former friend’s erectile dysfunction. He is suspended and when he uncovers an actual story—their school isn’t built to code—no one will believe him.
No one, that is, until an earthquake strikes, toppling the school into the Pacific trapping everyone inside. Racing to escape the crumbling building Dash and Assaf plus a crafty lunch lady (Susan Sarandon) and school-know-it-all Mary (Lena Dunham), must battle sharks, jellyfish, senior gangs, electrocution and more.
“My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea” startles with its originality. Visually it’s an eye-bending exercise in collage while the script’s dry wit and explorations of high school hierarchy are bang on the money. High school is about a balance of power and how better to test friendships and power dynamics than to throw everyone into a potentially life threatening situation?
“The Meddler,” a new Susan Sarandon movie, has a lot in common with its main character. Like the overbearing mother she plays in the film, the movie is frequently kind and sweet but also often exasperating.
Sarandon is Marnie Minervini, the recently widowed mother of a newly single daughter Lori (Rose Byrne). After the death of her beloved husband Joey Marnie moves across country from New Jersey to Los Angeles to be closer to her screenwriting daughter. She’s the kind of mom who drops by unexpectedly, who makes an appointment with her daughter’s therapist to snoop on her life (“Call me and remind me to tell you what your therapist said.”) and constantly mentions Lori’s former flame, actor Jacob (Jason Ritter). When Lori suggests Marni get a hobby, mom, not-so-helpfully says, “Maybe you could be my hobby.”
Fed up, Rose takes a job in New York, leaving her mom with the words, “I need to get a life of my own and so do you.” Marnie replaces her late husband and absent daughter with Apple Store employee Freddy (Jerrod Carmichael) and friend-of-a-friend Jillian (Cecily Strong), strangers she wins over with kindness and money. Blind to the fact that she can’t move on with her own life until she stops meddling in the lives of others, she almost pushes away Zipper, a charming ex-cop played by J.K. Simmons.
“The Meddler” is Sarandon’s movie. She is in virtually every frame and when she isn’t on camera her presence is felt. She hands in an amiably comedic performance— occasionally touching, occasionally frustrating—that makes the most of the script. The story is more a star showcase than a revealing look at mother-daughter relationships. MucThe Rainbow Kid, h is said, but nothing is revealed. Sarandon paints a flamboyant picture of a woman adjusting to a new kind of life, complete with a few crowd-pleasing laughs and a hankie moment or two, but this is an agreeable paint-by-numbers look at family relations, not a finely etched masterpiece.
Richard and CP24 anchor Nneka Elliott have a look at the weekend’s big releases, “Deadpool” with Ryan Reynolds as The Merc with the Mouth, “Zoolander 2,” Ben Stiller’s fifteen years in the making sequel to his 2001 comedy cult hit and “How to Be Single,” Dakota Johnson’s sex and the city.
Richard and “Canada AM” host Marci Ien dissect the weekend’s big releases, “Deadpool” with Ryan Reynolds as The Merc with the Mouth, “Zoolander 2,” Ben Stiller’s fifteen years in the making sequel to his 2001 comedy cult hit and “How to Be Single,” Dakota Johnson’s sex and the city.
“Zoolander 2,” the fifteen years in the making follow-up to the 2001 comedy hit, finds former “Blue Steel” supermodel Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) “out of fashion,” literally and figuratively. Following a tragic event involving his wife and his Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good, Derek stepped away from fashion and the world. He now lives the life of a “hermit crab,” complete with a long beard that obscures his “really, really, really, really, really ridiculously good looking face.”
When some of the most beautiful people in the world turn up dead, their Instagram images frozen in time in perma-duckface, Derek’s most famous facial expression, Zoolander and his past partner Hansel (Owen Wilson) are tricked into travelling to Rome to uncover who is behind this evil plot to rid the world of good looking celebrities.
In the Eternal City the dim-witted models will search for Derek’s long-lost son—whose blood may contain the secret to eternal fashionability—battle fashion criminal Mugato (Will Ferrell) and meet new high-powered fashionista All (Benedict Cumberbatch). Aiding the boys is Valentina (Penélope Cruz), a former swimsuit model troubled by her inability to “transition to print and runway work,” now working as an agent for Interpol’s Global Fashion Division.
“Zoolander 2’s” main joke isn’t the Blue Steel, the pouty-lipped move that made Zoolander a superstar, or the dim-witted antics of Derek and Hansel. No, the movie’s best joke is its commentary on how quickly the best-by date comes for modern day celebrities. The speed of popular culture has revved considerably since 2001 and what seems hip today may be passé tomorrow. Fashion is fleeting, as cameos from Anna Wintour, Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs demonstrate, but the big question is has “Zoolander 2” reached its expiration date?
I usually avoid the scatological in my reviews but suffice to say any movie whose best joke involves the morphing of the word “faces” into feces over and over, that features a hotel made of “reclaimed human waste” and subtitles itself with “No. 2” is really asking for it.
To put it more delicately, villain Mugato marvels at how “super white hot blazingly stupid” Derek is, and you’ll do the same thing about the film. Stupid can be OK if it’s funny but “Zoolander 2” leaves the laughs on the runway. Stiller’s mugging gets tired quickly and the simple, juvenile jokes were much funnier fifteen years ago when we heard them the first time. To use the movie’s own dialogue against itself, “You guys are so old-school,” says Don Atari (Kyle Mooney), “so lame.”
Stiller, who directs and co-wrote the script, jam packs every frame with with cameos in a desperate grab for relevancy. Everyone from Justin Bieber (who appearance may please non- Beliebers) to Joe Jonas and Katy Perry to Ariana Grande decorate the screen, while Susan Sarandon does a “Rocky Horror” call back and Billy Zane demonstrates that he is no longer an actor, but a pop-culture punchline. I doubt even Neil deGrasse Tyson could scientifically explain why he chose to appear in this dreck.
Fred Armisen as an eleven-year-old manager of social media tries his best to make his brief role strange-funny while Will Ferrell’s Mugatu is essentially an audition to play an alternate universe Bond villain.
The best thing about “Zoolander 2” that it is such a fashion faux pas and so desperately unfunny it’s hard to imagine Stiller and Company making a third one fifteen years from now.
“My resume belies some of my appetite for gross out humor,” laughs the South African born, Toronto-raised producer of the Seth Rogen hit This Is the End.
But today we’re not talking about his edgy work with Rogen, his writing (he co-wrote the satanic comedy Teen Lust which debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival this year) or his award winning short films.
“I love using the scope of filmmaking and really getting the wheels turning,” he says, “being larger than life and creating a world. I thought The Calling had all of that, elements of mystery and comedy and drama, that I thought were a real draw.”
The Calling is his feature directing debut and stars Susan Sarandon as small-town Canadian cop tracking down a serial killer.
“I still pinch myself that it all came together the way it did,” he says. “There’s a saying in casting, ‘Who’s going to be your cast magnet?’ We had a pretty powerful magnet with Susan and once she was involved we were able to attract talent as diverse as the top line cast, Topher [Grace], Ellen [Burstyn] and Donald [Sutherland].”
The movie is a throwback to, as Stone says, “propulsive thrillers with big ideas executed by brilliant actors.” He says movies like Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider and Silence of the Lambs, “used to be the bread and butter back in the early 90s and if we could even be put in the same breath as any of those I’d be thrilled.”
“Those are some of my favorite movies of that era. There is so much character in them. I feel like the studios have replaced a lot of the character in those mid range films with spectacle. It takes a lot more money to make your money back so you have to appeal to a much broader audience. I guess that means adding robots.”
Not that he’s unwilling to make a mega movie one day.
“I hope to have a long career making the films I’d love to make,” he says, “so if the right story comes along and there’s a budget behind it I feel like I’d definitely jump at the chance if there was a story I could connect to and I thought there was some humanity to it. I would like to think I would only make something I feel a personal connection to.”
