CulturePulp.

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Blades of Glory'

From the March 30 Oregonian....



"Blades of Glory" falls somewhere midway down the "good" column in Will Ferrell's comedy filmography. It's about the struggles of the first male-doubles ice-skating team (Ferrell and "Napoleon Dynamite"'s Jon Heder ).

And, as with most of Ferrell's best stuff, "the funny" lies in barely coherent line choices and out-of-nowhere absurdity. "Blades" doesn't hit the non-sequitur genius heights of "Anchorman" or "Talladega Nights," but the cast is great, and several gags hit hard. It's on par with another Frat Pack sports comedy, "Dodgeball."

I've been tearing through David Mamet's terrific new book on Hollywood, "Bambi vs. Godzilla," and he writes the following about modern big-studio comedy:

"The trend in comedy, of late, is towards the nondramatic.... The Ealing comedies have a plot; the late spate of summer comedies have a pretext. They are, not unlike the porno film, a loos assemblage of (in this case) humorous effects or scenes. These hemstitched entertainments are not, per se, bad or indictable.... Their antecedent however, is not the drama but the circus." Or, more specifically, vaudeville.

As Mamet himself writes, there's nothing inherently wrong with this. (In fact, couldn't you level this accusation against "Duck Soup," "A Hard Day's Night" or "The Bellboy"?) I only bring this up because, with "Blades of Glory," I'm finally really starting to see that the "Frat Pack" comedies -- movies starring that loose-knit group of comedians including Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Wilsons Owen and Luke, and Will Ferrell -- are getting in a bit of a structural rut.

Make no mistake: "Blades of Glory" is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. It imagines an alternate universe where ice-skating is a national pastime that plays a bit like pro wrestling with drag-queen flourishes. Ferrell plays Chazz Michael Michaels, an "ice-devouring sex tornado" who plays to the crowd with obscene skate routines and shameless trash-talking. (In one queasy bit, he makes obscene overtures to Nancy Kerrigan; in another, he shows off a tattoo commemorating his sexual conquest of Michelle Kwan.)

But when his rivalry with prissy perfectionist Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) turns violent, both men are thrown out of singles skating for life and tumble into the gutter. Until a fallen coach (Craig T. Nelson) talks them into mounting a comeback in the doubles division -- a comeback that could be triumphant if they can:

(a) beat the creepy brother/sister doubles champs (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler), who keep putting their adorable sister (Jenna Fischer) in tarty outfits to seduce and divide our heroes; and

(b) master Nelson's top-secret skating move, the "Iron Lotus." (The Lotus was only tried once, in North Korea, and the results of that failed attempt are too funny to spoil here.)

I loved Ferrell's nonsensical style of arguing, in which (e.g.) he responds to Heder's "Get out of my face!" with "I'll get into your face!"; and by tiny characters like Jimmy's surprisingly helpful stalker (Nick Swardson); and by the final moments, which owe more than a little to "Grease"; and by the skating costumes, which take their influence from such vital cultural touchstones as "Tron."

However: The basic premise of loser fools tumbling from grace and then triumphing over prissy rivals during a comeback (or raising money to save their orphanage/career/the world/whatever) in a heightened-reality version of a sport or profession has now formed the foundation of the following Frat Pack comedies: "Dodgeball," "Talladega Nights," "Nacho Libre," "Zoolander," "Anchorman," "Kicking & Screaming" and probably a couple more I'm forgetting.

So I guess my question is this: If you're going to string these bizarrely hilarious gags and ideas on the clothesline of a flimsy premise, must it so often be the exact same flimsy premise?
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(93 mins., rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language, a comic violent image and some drug references) Grade: B-plus

'Blades of Glory' (The Oregonian, March 30, 2007)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Host'

Expanding on my PIFF coverage from a few weeks ago....



"The Host" isn't just a terrific monster movie. This South Korean box-office smash is also a laugh-out-loud comedy and a surprisingly angry political satire.

It starts when the U.S. Army dumps hundreds of gallons of toxic formaldehyde in Seoul's Han River. (The officer in charge wants to tidy up the lab, you see.)

Flash-forward to six years later: A giant walking trout-monster -- a literal land-shark -- leaps out of the river in broad daylight -- and starts munching on Korean consumers.

The monster was designed by Weta Workshop, which did design work on "Lord of the Rings." And as directed by Bong Joon-ho, the creature attack is one of the best ever staged -- a ballet of mass panic with pulsing music matching the monster's rhythmic gait. It's brilliant, terrifying and weirdly funny.

It also leaves you wondering: Why was the monster fully revealed in the first 10 minutes of the movie?

The answer: because it's a prelude to the real horror -- as "The Host" turns into a satire of government misinformation and corruption that plays like "Godzilla" crossed with "Dr. Strangelove."

After the attack, a dim-bulb single dad named Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) gets a cell-phone call from his 13-year-old daughter. The girl was dragged underwater by the monster and presumed dead -- but she's actually hiding in the beast's sewer lair.

It's joyful news: The monster is stupid, the call can be traced, and the Army's already on the scene. But Park can't get government bureaucrats to believe him and mount a rescue.

"She's deceased, but she's not dead!" Park screams. A flunky replies that a cell-phone trace is "not something we do for just anyone." Instead, officials get hung up on the idea that the monster spreads a virus -- and do little more than detain anyone they think might be infected.

Soon, Park enlists his bickering family of losers in a vigilante hunt for the monster. And the movie does an incredible job juggling laughs, suspense, and a deep-seated distrust of bureaucracy.

"The Host" is wildly entertaining; anyone who loves the genre will get their geek buttons pushed hard by this flick. But what makes the movie an instant classic is that it's also, in its dark heart, a furious lampoon. I love how the creature constantly shows up after the appearance of consumer products like money, beer and packaged snacks. One of the funniest and most biting scenes comes early, when an impromptu grief memorial dissolves into pratfalls and wailing, all captured by a huddle of television cameras.

And while the idiocy of the South Korean and American governments is initially played for laughs, it gets less and less funny as the story becomes more and more tragic. "The Host," in its own silly monster-movie way, is actually kind of a call to arms -- demanding that people wake up, take responsibility for their lifestyles and (above all) ask tough questions of their government and mass media. Failure to do so is more destructive than any land-shark.

Land shark of doom (The Oregonian, March 9, 2007)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Starter for Ten'

Expanding on my PIFF coverage from a couple of weeks ago ...

 
It's 1985. An earnest young dork named Brian (James McAvoy) throws on his dead father's corduroy blazer, ditches his drab English beach town and heads to Bristol to study poetry.

It's not the smoothest of transitions.

Brian yearns to be clever, but his hard work and endless ingestion of quiz shows have made him a "general-knowledge god" full of facts and trivia -- which is impressive, but not terribly witty and certainly not wise. (His poetry teacher accurately describes him as "particularly passionate and maybe a little gauche.")

Once he's at college, he starts making mistakes right out of the teen-comedy playbook -- lusting after a posh tart (Alice Eve) and overlooking the smirking activist who pines for him (Rebecca Hall). He also joins the most violence-prone quiz-bowl team in history. And he runs afoul of his less-ambitious friends back home, who worry that college is going to turn him into a ? well, the word rhymes with "banker."

There's nothing in "Starter for Ten" you haven't seen before; frankly, it hews a little too closely to rom-com formula for its own good. But at least it's a variation with half a brain, some low-key charm, a few good laughs, and a terrific soundtrack that includes The Cure, New Order, The Smiths and pretty much every other English band that got overplayed in '80s dorm rooms.

Director Tom Vaughan is working from a script by David Nicholls, who's adapting his own novel, and the movie's pleasures lie mostly in their good taste and light touch. All the movie's archetypical characters -- sensitive romantic hero, bimbo, buffoon, blue-collar ruffian, &tc. -- are just a little more human and fleshed-out than usual for this sort of film.

And the actors play them mostly beautifully. McAvoy was the best thing about that horrible "Narnia" movie (he was the faun, Mr. Tumnus), and he's a solid anchor here, never overplaying his character's doofy naiveté.

Also, if you're inclined toward women of the smart/sly variety, you will exit the theater with a massive crush on Hall. She's the daughter of British theater director Peter Hall, and you may remember her as Christian Bale's long-suffering wife in "The Prestige." Here, she comes off as a sort of college-aged, raven-tressed, human rights-obsessed Emma Thompson, only cooler.

Clever, what? So jolly (The Oregonian, March 9, 2007)