“Megamind,” the new animated kid’s flick starring Will Ferrell and Tiny Fey, ponders an age old question, asked by super villains from Lex Luthor to Doctor Doom: What’s the point of being evil is there’s no one there to stop you?
Self described super genius and master of all villainy Megamind (voice of Will Ferrell) has had a lifelong rivalry with Metro Man (Brad Pitt), a hero so special he can literally walk on water. Megamind has been trying to wrestle control of Mega City from Metro Man for years, and despite his best efforts cannot defeat the ridiculously square-jawed hero. That is, until the day he breaks out of jail, kidnaps intrepid girl reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey) and finally outsmarts his nemesis. Metro City is finally his but now that his lifelong dream has come true he finds when there is no good guy, no yin to his yang, his evil existence is an empty experience. To combat his boredom he decides to create a superhero to spice things up… of course nothing could go wrong with that plan.
“Megamind” plays like the evil stepchild of “The Incredibles” and “Monsters vs Aliens” with some pop culture references thrown in—like a takeoff on the famous balcony scene from “Superman” and a wild spoof of Jor-El’s windswept hair. It’s a pleasant enough confection, with some genuine laughs sprinkled throughout, but given the talent involved—Ferrell, Fey and David Cross—it should be much funnier.
David Cross and Ferrell make the most out of their characters. Ferrell gives Megamind fun vocal tics—he pronounces Metro City as one long word, Metrossoity—but Fey, in the Lois Lane role, and Jonah Hill as the newly minted superhero, hand in the bland voice work that doesn’t add much to the movie. It’s a shame, spunkier voice work would have wrung a few more laughs out of a script that is more a funny idea than actually funny all the way through.
Little kids probably won’t get—or care about—the “Superman” references or Megamind’s secret taste for Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You,” but they will enjoy the larger than life characters, the 3D slapstick and even take away the message that there is good inside of almost everyone.
The idea to pair up over-the-top comedian Will Ferrell and movie tough guy Mark Wahlberg was hatched three years ago during the Academy Awards. During the show’s opening number Jack Black and Ferrell sang a song about comedians never winning Oscars followed by some vicious roasting of the dramatic actors seated in the front rows. Jack Black told Peter O’Toole he was going to beat him “down with my Nickelodeon Award!” and Ferrell insulted Ryan Gostling. But when he got to Best Actor Wahlberg Ferrell feigned fear and said, “I won’t mess with you. You’re actually kinda badass. Once again, I hope we’re cool. You are very talented.” Wahlberg’s unscripted reaction convinced director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers) that the mismatched pair would work well together on screen. One thing is for sure, the Academy’s record of handing out Oscars to comedians is unlikely to be changed by the resulting film.
Ferrell and Wahlberg play New York City Detectives Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz. The two do not get along. Gamble is a forensic accountant content to push a pencil and avoid doing any down-and-dirty-and-dangerous fieldwork. Hoitz, on the other hand, is sick of riding a desk and desperately wants a chance to prove himself and win the respect of station hotshots P.K. Highsmith (Jackson) and Christopher Danson (Johnson) after the embarrassing incident—he accidentally shot Derek Jeter during a Yankees game—that landed him Gamble as a partner. He gets his chance when Gamble uncovers a Madoffesque white collar conspiracy.
Will Ferrell has been on a bit of a big screen losing streak lately. His last film “Land of the Lost” was a total bust both comedically and commercially and for a while it looked like the glory days of “Anchorman” were a highpoint he wasn’t likely to ever top. His work had become excessive, as if every director he worked with was too enamored of his improvisational style, allowing him do whatever he wanted, no matter how long he milked a joke or held an uncomfortable silence. In Adam McKay he has found someone unafraid to yell cut and rein him in. With McKay behind the camera Gamble becomes Ferrell’s most restrained comedic character since “Stranger than Fiction.” He’s still extremely silly, but in much smaller doses than usual. A little Ferrell absurdity goes a long way and “The Other Guys” never lets him or his silliness overstay its welcome.
He balances nicely with Wahlberg who dials up his usual tough guy intensity about twenty-five percent, spitting out lines like “I am a peacock! I need to fly!” as though he isn’t in on the joke. He rides the line between serious and absurd and pulls off a lot of laughs in the process.
It’s also nice to see Michael Keaton back in a comedy. He’s slowly been easing his way back in after doing a string of dramas, but this is the funniest we’ve seen him since “Beetlejuice.” As the precinct captain who works part time at Bed, Bath and Beyond to make ends meet he displays the kind of way with a joke that made him a star in the first place.
“The Other Guys” is an enjoyable piece of summer fluff, that may revive not only the buddy cop comedy (after “Cop Out” mortally wounded it earlier this year) but also interest in Will Ferrell’s brand of absurdity.
Comedian Will Ferrell graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Sports Information. This bit of trivia becomes significant when you take a look at his career and note that time after time he has been drawn to playing professional athletes.
There was Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, Phil Weston, an over-the-top soccer coach in Kicking and Screaming and championship skater Chazz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory. In Semi Pro Ferrell is Jackie Moon the owner-coach-player of the American Basketball Association’s Flint Michigan Tropics. All that despite his complete lack of a sportsman’s body.
Set in 1976 Semi Pro takes place just as the nine year old wild and crazy outlaw league The ABA is about to merge its best teams with the more established and certainly more traditional NBA.
Ego maniac Jackie “I’m the greatest man in the world!” Moon (Ferrell) is a former pop star, a one hit wonder, whose tune Barry White inspired disco tune Love Me Sexy—“Let’s get sweaty. Let’s fill the bathtub with sweat”—earned enough cash for him to buy a basketball team, the Flint Michigan Tropics. Trouble is, they are the worst team in the league and will be faced with extinction when the merge goes through unless they turn things around.
Jackie tires everything to increase attendance at the games, including outlandish stunts like a roller skate jump over forty-seven feet of cheerleaders laid end-to-end and, in a scene that is definitely not PETA approved, wrestling a large angry bear. To score more points he trades the team’s old washing machine for washed-up ex-NBA player Monix, played by Woody Harrelson.
Unlike the bloated Blades of Glory which was simply a funnyish idea hung around Will Ferrell’s unbridled antics, Semi Pro actually has a fully fleshed out story and knows when to use, and more importantly not use Ferrell’s manic energy. A little of Ferrell can go a long way, and here, director Kent Alterman seems to understand that less is more. He’s dialed back on Ferrell’s screen time and uses him more effectively when he is on screen. Scenes don’t drag on too long, and at a tight hour-and-a-half it is punchier than Ferrell’s recent two plus hour comedy epics that contain as much dead air as laughs.
Semi Pro is a hybrid of sports movie—underdog team wants to prove their worth, although in this case they have the more humble goal of striving to come in at fourth place—seventies homage and Will Ferrell comedy. By reigning in Ferrell’s scattershot approach to comedy and using him only when necessary, Semi Pro delivers his best work since Anchorman.
Step Brothers, the new R-rated comedy from the Judd Apatow sausage factory, is a look at extreme Peter Pan Syndrome. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, last seen together in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, play 40ish men who still live at home and become bunkmates and reluctant step brothers when their parents marry. The familiar reprimand “Grow up and act your age” fell on deaf ears with these guys.
Ferrell and Reilly play Brennan Huff, a thirty-nine-year-old who recently lost his part-time job at Pet Smart who lives with his mother, Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale Doback, an unemployed forty-year-old who still resides under his father Robert’s (Richard Jenkins) roof. When Nancy and Robert tie the knot Brennan and Dale are forced to share a room in Robert’s luxurious home. Sparks fly as the two immature men clash, arguing and beating one another with golf clubs.
Eventually their shared love of Star Wars and karate helps them find a bond and they become tight friends. Unfortunately as one big immature, lazy force they are twice as destructive as before. Their aggressive behavior prevents them from getting jobs and finally drives a wedge between Nancy and Robert. Will their parent’s impending divorce finally force these middle-aged slackers to grow up?
Step Brothers is essentially an 80s teen comedy with two 40 year olds in the roles that would have been played by young nerdy actors Anthony Michael Hall and Larry B. Scott in 1985. It’s got a meaner edge and certainly worse language than the classic teen comedies of twenty years ago, but the message of being true to yourself could have come straight from the pen of teen scribe guru John Hughes. Besides, any movie that uses a Dane Cook Pay-Per-View Special as a punch line is OK by me.
The chemistry between Ferrell and Reilly as the poster boys for arrested development saves this one-joke idea from becoming monotonous. They play off one another well and as their step-sibling-rivalry escalates so does their outrageously childish behavior. It’s like watching two overweight, foul mouthed ten year olds with thinning hair going at each other.
Step Brothers is silly R-rated summer moving-going fun.
Sometimes all it takes is one scene to rescue a faltering movie. Stranger Than Fiction, the new film from Finding Neverland director Marc Forester is a great example of a film saved by one tender scene that sheds a light on an otherwise inscrutable character.
Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a by the numbers IRS auditor. Numbers rule his life, not only at work but in his personal life as well. He counts the number of brush strokes he uses to clean his teeth, the number of steps to the bus stop and can do extremely complicated equations in his head.
His drab Kafkaesque existence is upended when he becomes aware of a narrator’s voice in his head. The voice doesn’t speak to him directly, it simply documents his life, like a writer describing a scene. It’s bothersome, but benign until the day it announces that Crick’s death is imminent. Crick, with the help of a professor of literature (Dustin Hoffman) tries to decipher the source of the voice, coming up with a surreal conclusion—Crick is a fictional character in someone’s book who by some means manages to live in the real world. The realization that his life might not be his own and a budding romance with an anarchist baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) fill Crick with the desire to make his life mean something.
It’s a strange, but sweet meta-story, one that echoes themes from The Truman Show, Adaptation and Pleasantville of a character in search of a story.
At the beginning of the movie Ferrell is a blank slate, a character so devoid of personality that he barely exists. The actor has a rough road ahead making this character compelling enough to maintain our interest. For me he doesn’t really succeed until midway through the movie when his romance with the baker starts to develop. [SPOILER ALERT] In one great scene he hesitantly plays a song on guitar for Gyllenhaal and immediately takes the character from zero to hero. With his high pitched, tentative voice mumbling through the opening verse of Whole Wide World, a song about long lost love, it is touching and a big step toward Crick taking power over his own life. It’s the scene where Ferrell takes control of the character and is one of the most romantic sequences in a movie since Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen talked about their love of wine in Sideways a couple of years back.
Stranger Than Fiction is an odd movie, with high points, the aforementioned serenade, Emma Thompson as Crick’s unwitting narrator that far outweigh its negatives. The metaphysical angle doesn’t quite work, but the winning performances and strong message of finding one’s self worth rise above any deficiencies.
It’s been a rough twelve months for Will Ferrell fans. It seemed the funnyman was losing his touch. Kicking and Screaming was an unfunny flop, Bewitched was so bad that even if I saw it on an airplane I would still want to walk out and Melinda and Melinda showed his more serious and less interesting side. He had a couple of cameos that raised a smile or two in The Producers and The Wedding Crashers, but overall it seemed that the prolific comedian was making too many movies too quickly. It appeared that the silly glory days of Anchorman, Elf and Old School were behind him. That is until the release of Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby reaffirmed his status as the silliest man in movies.
Ferrell co-wrote and stars in this movie about a dim-witted Nascar driver who rises to the top of his field only to lose everything when a French Formula One racer undermines his confidence. Call it the Fast and the Hilarious because it is the funniest movie that Ferrell has been in a while.
As Ricky Bobby, Ferrell has just the right amount of mindless redneck emptiness behind his eyes, the perfect slanted grin and all-American go-for-broke spirit to bring the Nascar driver to life. Ferrell is also one of the pluckiest of the comics currently working on screen. No joke is too broad to be milked, no chance to strip down to his underwear is missed and no pratfall is too undignified for the fearless Ferrell. Whether he is saying his version of grace at the dinner table re-imagining Jesus way he likes to see him, as a baby not as the long-haired hippie, or driving with a live cougar in the passenger seat every joke is pushed to the limit.
Good supporting work from Gary Cole, John C. Reilly and Sacha Baron Cohen, (better known as Ali G), make Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby the funniest movie of the summer.
Movies like “The Candidate” and “The Great McGinty” have set the bar pretty high in terms of political comedy. Both are satires about ambition, greed and corruption but neither features a candidate who punches a baby. That’s just one reason “The Campaign,” the new comedy starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, gets the vote for the most outrageous political parody of all time.
Ferrell is political party animal Cam Brady, a slick four-term North Carolina congressman. When a drunken dial results in an Anthony Weiner-style scandal just before an election, two conniving and ultra-rich CEOs, Glen and Wade Motch (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) back a rival candidate they think they can control. Marty Huggins (Galifianakis) is the naïve operator of a small town tourist center who is suddenly thrust into the spotlight. The race turns ugly and soon mud is being slung faster than you can say Mitt Romney.
“The Candidate” begins with a quote from former presidential hopeful Ross Perot: “War has rules. Mud wrestling has rules. Politics has no rules.” Neither does the movie; no rules or boundaries. These candidates go beyond the usual name-calling—“He’s a communist.” “He looks like Osama Bin Laden.”—to dirty tricks that would make Tricky Dick blush.
It’s an exaggerated version of real life on the campaign trail, a through-the-looking glass-vision of how politics works.
Brady is the charismatic contender whose “America, Jesus and Freedom” mantra usually precedes a shout of “support our troops!” He knows what people want to hear and gives it to them.
You can’t help but see some of Ferrell’s famous George W. impression in the role, but that in take-off Bush was portrayed as bumbling and cocky. Brady, on the other hand is played as bumbling, cocky and desperate; desperate to win, to be liked, to be successful. It’s a fine line, but unlike Tina Fey and her bang-on impression of Sarah Palin, Ferrell lets go of the finer points and goes for a broader characterization of a dirty politician and not a mirror image of the former commander in chief.
Huggins is a Beltway outsider who polls say is perceived as “odd, clammy and looks like the Travelocity Gnome.” Soon, however, he learns the game. Galifianakis is an old hand at playing these unconventional characters, and brings a strange sweetness to Huggins. There’s a sense of character déjà vu here—the annoying but essentially goodhearted guy—is something we’ve seen him do before, so it’s not a game changer for him, but he is a good foil for the more physically imposing Ferrell.
“The Campaign” has its share of fun and funny commentary. The plan to create “insourcing”—moving Chinese factories and workers to America to save on shipping costs—is funny, (just so long as it doesn’t inspire any real-life industrialists), and it’s almost worth the price of admission to hear Chris Matthews report that Brady has lost support from “any group who opposes baby punching.”
But this isn’t “The Candidate” or “The Great McGinty.” Instead it is a slapstick comedy that earns its laughs from awkward and inappropriate humor—and the strangest version of the Lord’s Prayer ever committed to film—instead of pointed political satire.
Curious George is a movie for kids that harkens back to a quieter, gentler time. So much of kid’s entertainment today is frenetic and flatulent, featuring fast editing and bathroom jokes. The movie, based on the books by Margaret and H.A. Rey, is extremely G-rated and should appeal to young kids from ages zero to five or six.
Unlike Toy Story or Finding Nemo, no attempt is made to appeal to older views by layering pop culture references into the script. Curious George, tells the story of Ted (voiced by Will Ferrell) who sets out on a jungle expedition to bring back a massive idol that will save the natural history museum where he’s employed.
In Africa, where he encounters a playful monkey who stows away in Ted’s ship, following him back to civilization. Once back home they must deal with Ted’s failure to locate the giant idol and the imminent closure of the museum.
That’s it. Simple and to the point Curious George won’t have much appeal to adults, but should delight younger kids.
Bewitched is an attempt to side-step the usual pitfalls of turning a beloved television show into a movie. Will Ferrell stars as Jack Wyatt, a spoiled movie star whose career has seen better days. In hope of comeback he takes on the role of Darren in a television update of Bewitched. Prompted by his agent, Wyatt insists that a newcomer play Samantha, and he finds the perfect person in the form of Isabel, played by Nicole Kidman. Here’s the twist—Isabel is a real-life witch who is trying to go straight and give up witchcraft in return for a normal life. Here the hilarity begins. Or, at least it should.
God help me, as much as I like Nicole Kidman, she simply isn’t funny. She excels in heavy, meatier roles like Anna in the underrated Birth from last year, but when it comes to lighter fare like The Stepford Wives and Bewitched she proves that she’s no Groucho Marx.
Will Ferrell tries hard for the laughs here—maybe too hard. He’s a performer that I like watching—I thought Elf and Anchorman were both hilarious—but, sadly, I’m beginning to realize that a little Will goes a long way. The one two punch of Kicking and Screaming, his lame soccer-dad movie from May and now this is more hammyness than even Porky Pig could handle.
Bewitched is a uneasy mixture of special effects movie and romantic comedy without ever really committing to either one.
