TALE OF DESEREAUX REVIEW

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX: Review

First, there is only one Pixar. In addition to being fact, this is also the truth.

But just because there is only one Pixar, doesn't mean that other companies can't (or shouldn't) make animated films. I’ve already raved about Meet the Robinsons. Shrek (the first) is a minor classic. Robots had a good amount of charm. And Madagscar 2: Escape to Africa cracks me up just thinking about it.

But then there are movies like The Tale of Desperaux, where Pixar doesn’t even enter into it, except to say that they would never have attempted a movie like this. Not because it’s inherently a bad idea: mouse versus world, based on award winning novel. The problem is that the script was nowhere near read for filming. Source material is not enough. Golden Compass was also based on an award winning novel. And like Golden Compass, The Tale of Desperaux is made with love, care, and total incompetence.

Here are the various plots, as I understand them:

a) A young mouse is rejected from his home for his bravery and refusal to cower. He is brave and wants to be a knight.

b) A rat is an outcast for liking the sunlight and eating regular people food. He is sad.

c) A princess misses the rain, soup, and even the rats, and is sad.

d) A princess’s maid wishes to be a princess, and is bitter.

e) A chef is banned from making soup, and is berated by a magical vegetable man.

Got all that? There is also a sad human king who plays his guitar/ukulele thing because of his wife’s soup-related death, an evil rat king who is evil because it’s fun, a cat that thinks it is the beast from Return of the Jedi. Also, for reasons often narrated but seldom explained, because the king banned soup, the sun disappeared and the rain stopped and the color vanished from the land.

The movie makes about as much sense as Dune, and has a similar array of stars embarrassing themselves. Among the guilty parties include Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emily Watson, Frank Langella, William H. Macy and Signorney Weaver, who has the worst job of the bunch, as the narrator. And she narrates endlessly, often pointlessly. (“Rats are rats, and nothing can change a rat.” “What would it be like for your name to be a bad word? How would that make you feel?” “How could you outlaw something as natural as the sun?”) This may work as the voice on the page, but here, it grinds the proceedings to a halt every time she opens her mouth.

The narration would be enough to sink the movie, but other choices torpedo it into oblivion. The plot rarely makes sense, as we constantly move between stories we understand little and care about less. There are too many characters, and the confusion compounds when some characters turn evil and then sympathetic, sometimes in the same scene. Desperaux, as the movie’s apparent lead, never changes much on his journey, and makes for an uninvolving, if plucky protagonist. (He's really brave!) (Really!) To call the ending an anticlimax would be an insult to anti-climaxes, as all the problems of the plot are resolved simply because the narrator says so (someone explain to me the relationship between soup and whether or not it rains.)

Because one poor choice deserves another, the movie’s creators are disciples of the Nathanial Hawthorne School of Lead Pipe Symbolism: each point about racism, facism, cowardice and how ugly people are invariably selfish lands with a cringe-inducing THUD on your head. See? Rats, like people, can change too! See, racism is bad, kids. So is banning soup. So is getting in fights with a magical vegetable man.

There is one scene where the movie comes to life. When Desperaux first reads a storybook, the images come to life in a wonderful stylized sequence. Rousing music is played, and we see why someone would want to drop everything to become a knight. It works. If they had followed that impulse, instead of all the racism allegories, we might have had something.

To be clear: the movie is competently animated and the dialogue is serviceable. The actors do what they can. All the raw materials are there for a wonderful fable, but the final product feels like someone left entire chunks of eggshell in the cake batter. I don’t care how noble your intentions are: the cake is inedible, and the movie is unwatchable. Give me Bolt anyday.

GRADE: * Star (Out of Five)

P.S. This movie is as bad as Golden Compass, but Golden Compass at least had Sam Elliot’s Moustache and Nicole Kidman slapping a monkey.

P.P.S. This movie, like Reign of Fire, has a false dragon advertising problem. Namely, there are no dragons in the movie, except for a dream sequence. Someone alert the Nerd Police. Oh, and here's the vegetable man:

BAD SANTA: REVIEW

Note: Originally ran in the Tufts Daily

Every once in awhile, the ancient and unbending laws of movie clichés demand that we find a man in a bar, drunk. He is the experienced Professional, but retired, out of the game, quit for good and living in a bottle of whiskey.

In walks the Chief. After some hard-boiled banter, the Chief tells the Pro, "We have a problem. We can't solve it. We need you to come back... one last time." After initially refusing, the drunk eventually agrees. Later, it turns out that his long lost daughter (or wife, or dog) is involved in the intricate plot. Multiple explosions ensue, necessitating slow-motion photography.

Something like that must have happened when the Coen brothers asked Terry Zwigoff, the director of the bizarre documentary Crumb and the hilariously dark Ghost World, to direct Bad Santa. Each of those movies, while critically acclaimed, made no money and Zwigoff was quoted as saying he would never work again. The Coen brothers, the film's executive producers, probably said, "We have a script. It might destroy sentimental Christmas movies forever. We need you to come back... one last time... with a vengeance."

Zwigoff does not so much poke fun at the hollowness of the holidays but rather he pours gasoline on them, throws a match, watches it burn and then pours on cement, just to make sure.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie, the world's worst department store Santa. Willie smokes, drinks, swears, vomits, destroys fake reindeer and drinks some more. He snarls at his partner Marcus (Tony Cox), a dwarf playing Santa's Elf, "You can't hold liquor worth s-t." Marcus replies, "I weigh 97 pounds, dickhead. What's your excuse?"

Willie and Marcus are employed by the very nervous Bob (the late John Ritter), who twitches at the mere mention of sex, and are lorded over by the head of security, Gin, a funny but underused Bernie Mac. What their bosses don't know is that Willie and Marcus are a team of safecrackers, who have been hitting up department stores for eight Christmases in a row.

Three kinks hamper their plans this year. One, Willie has gotten so drunk and sloppy, that the duo might actually get fired before they can pull off the job. Two, as improbable as it may seem, Willie has found a girlfriend (Lauren Graham) with a Santa fetish, who will sleep with him any hour of the day... as long as he wears the Santa hat the entire time. Three -- and this is where it gets really sick -- is a butterball of a kid played by Brett Kelly, who decides that Willie must be the real Santa, and must be his friend. His only friend.

The boy's mother has "gone to live with Jesus and the Walnut People," and his dad is in jail. His only caretaker is a senile grandmother (Cloris Leachman) who is obsessed with making sandwiches. "I thought you might get me a present, Santa," the Kid whines to Willie, "because you didn't get me one last year. Or the year before that." We finally find out the Kid's name late in the movie. It is Thurman Merman.

While in the beginning it all seems dark and a little wrong, it only gets worse. And funnier. Willie has a habit of seducing plus-size ladies in the dressing rooms, The Kid gets a mega-wedgie every day on the way to the mall, Marcus accuses his boss of racial/vertical discrimination, and Bernie Mac's character shakes down little kids in video game stores.

The story meanders until Willie is forced to live at the Kid's house and starts to get attached to him, in the same way that one gets attached to a giant scar on their face. After one mega-wedgie too many, he tries to teach the Kid self-defense, which degenerates into a crotch kicking contest of hilarious proportions. You have not lived until you have seen Billy Bob Thornton punch a dwarf in the nuts. Eventually, Willie steps up for the Kid, resulting in the inspirational scene where he announces: "I beat the s-t out of some kids today. It made me feel good, you know, like I did something right." "Therapy," replies Marcus, "you need therapy. Years and years of therapy."

The movie is, as some critics have called it, one note, completely based on the gimmick of a vulgar Santa Claus. It is also dark and dirty with wall-to-wall vulgarity and tastelessness. But it's not boring, it isn't swamped in syrupy sentiment and the movie did not (thank god) have a heart of gold. The actors take their jobs seriously, the director hits the right notes, and the writing is refreshingly unconcerned with being hip and ironically distant.

It is the real deal: a direct answer to Disney, It's a Wonderful Life, and every crappy Tim Allen holiday movie ever made. It is an up-yours to those who say, without a sense of humor or reality, that this is the most wonderful time of the year. And it is the funniest movie I've seen in a long, long time.

RATING: * * * * (out of 5 Stars)

CABIN BOY: REVIEW

CABIN BOY

I saw this movie as a kid, I remember liking it. But I also remember liking stupid movies as a kid. I also remember Entertainment Weekly giving it an F and a two line review. And David Letterman asking someone if they wanted to buy a monkey.

Thanks to the power of Brian Smallwood's lending, I shall review this movie as it happens to me.

...

Again.


TimeCode ahoy, and enjoy!


Credit Sequence:
A rousing score, with traditional bold credits and a sea chart... but the credits are interrupted with fish. Lots and lots of fish. It is not funny so much as odd. Also, Tim Burton produced this?

2:40:
Chris Elloitt is a fancy lad. I don't know what that means, except that he's wearing a wig and too short shorts, and is an ass.

4:40:
Alfred Molina plays a very small part of a professor. Doesn't embarass himself.

5:40:
Chris Elliot makes a joke about his large penis. Embarrasses himself.

9:30:
David Letterman plays some old crusty lowlife. Embarrasses himself, but makes a joke about a sock monkey, so it's okay.

11:20:
Andy Richter shows up. Instantly funnier than anything that's happened so far, and all he's done is stare at the screen.

13:25:
I retract the previous statement, as I have just seen Andy Richter impersonate a harem girl dancing. Yes, it was gross. No, he didn't take his shirt off. Chris Elliott responds with his one funny line so far: "Well, thank you for that, whatever that was."

15:06
James Gammond just showed up, the manager from Major League. This is the most positive development so far.

15:10
The “fishing ship” takes off, it’s a shitty model in a tank. Does not bode well.

24:30
Nothing of note has happened in the past ten minutes. The movie’s only 80 minutes long.

24:59
Straight from a John Waters/Steven King Nightmare, it’s Ricki Lake as the living masthead of the boat and two leathery cloud faces blowing wind from the skies.

26:10
Andy Richter just died.

28:55:
Crew banter:
“I don’t want to end up as flounder shit.”
“Yeah, those flounders are bloodthirsty bastards.”

30:59
Chris Elloitt has given James Gammond a bath, and I, I have gone blind.

35:10
A self described giant, fat ass floating cupcake just spit tobacco in Chris Ellott’s face. I swear to god I am not making this up.

See?! Giant Cucpake.

36:35:
Russ tamblyn, aka Dr. Jackobi from Twin Peaks, has a cameo as a sharkman.

37:35:
Sharkman is actually Chocki. We just heard the legend. I fear it’s a plot point.

43:58:
The romantic interest just showed up. She was trying to swim from Maryland to Maryland. This is the longest 80 minute of my life;

48:07
Also, worst water special effects ever, and I’ve seen Ed Wood movies.

52:00
It occurs to me the actor who’s playing the captain thinks he’s in an actual movie. Oh, and an iceburg just winked at Chris Elliott.

52:55
Iceberg is an abominable snowman. Attacking ship. This movie makes no sense.

54:45
they just defeated the snowman with their coffeemaker. There was no reason for that scene at all.

55:05:
The name of the boat is “The Filthy Whore.”

1:01:52
Chris Elliott just lost his virginity to a 6 armed woman.

1:02:00
Chris Elloitt to Love interest: “Let’s just say I’ve shed my feminine side… like a snake sheds its fur.” Then he makes out with her. I hate myself, and this movie, and everything.

1:03:00
The giant of the island just said, “I sold one lousy electronic toothbrush to a flying leprechaun.” I wish I was drunk. Or dead.

1:06:10:
Actual funny line: "We've got to stop him from getting his grubby hands on The Filithy Whore!"

1:07:32
I think this is the climax of the movie: Chris Elloitt just rode his love interest like a dolphin, (as in, she swam him out to sea) grabbed a pen from the giant’s pocket protector, but the giant got the upper hand, then the sharkman, Chocki, showed up and saved Elliott. Now, Elliott is choking the giant with his the giant's own leather belt. Now, the Giant's dead.

1:10:00.
There are only 10 minutes left in the movie, according to the DVD case.

1:14:10
Chris Elliott’s father, Bob Elliott, shows up as the boy’s father. Embarasses himself.

1:15:25:
“Oh, Nathanial, your words melt like butter in my brain!” says the love interest.

1:16:45:
Movie over. Brain hurts.

1:16:46
Must kill Brian Smallwood.

Grade: Zero Stars (out of Five)

I AM LEGEND: REVIEW (SHORT)

Emma Thompson, seen only in video-tape flashback, invents a vaccine for cancer. It ends up killing or horribly mutating most of the world, except for one man. This is one of the more plausible developments of the movie, and I wish it was explored more. The whole world wants a cure for cancer, and who wouldn't line up to drink the Kool-Aid? (Side effects include: starring in a Will Smith movie.)

So Will Smith is literally the last man on earth, marooned on the island of Manhattan, the only human who can walk in the daylight. At night, he must lock himself in, and hope that the nightmares- both in his head and outside his house- go away.

It's a hell of a setup. There are many philosophical implications to it, largely ignored during the movie, save some lame talk about "God's Plan." But give Smith some credit, he is incredibly watchable on his own, and it took some gumption to get this story filmed. After all, Cast Away- the only movie that comes to mind for comparison- barely made its money back, and most people remember it purely for the volleyball. Here, most people will remember this movie for the dog, Sam. Lesson learned: never work with animals, or humanized balls.

The movie is gripping, until it isn't- about an hour into the 90 minute movie. The special effects are fantastic, until they're not- about an hour into the 90 minute movie. Sense the theme? Basically, you're talking an original thought spun out about as long as it can be (which is an hour), followed by a standard 30 minute zombie/vampire movie.

This would be fine, if the creatures weren't so damn lame. It is amazing to me that they could spend so much to make us buy the New York of the Future, and shortchange us on the monsters. Simply put, the creatures are digital, they are uninteresting, and they are crappy. I kept waiting for one of the vampires to actually speak, or have a plan more complicated than "Kill the Human", but, alas.

Still, if a movie does one thing better than anyone else ever has, it's worthy of praise. And I Am Legend sets a new standard for New York of the Future. It officially replaces Vanilla Sky for "best creepy deserted New York scene", it makes Day After Tomorrow look like Escape From New York in terms of special effects, and Will Smith makes the Last Man on Earth schtick work. You totally buy that he is real, that the city is real, that the dread is real. The problem is, the monsters aren't real. They aren't scary. They're just kind of silly.

Am I glad I saw it? Sure. Do you need to see it, if you haven't? Nah.

RATING: * * * Stars (out of 5 )

P.S. Small quibble: in New York of the Future, everything is falling apart, except for the Fords, Mac computers, and DVDs of Goodnight and Good Luck. Those are still fine and shiny, so we can be sure to see which brands last longer.