Great actors playing below their abilities

The DVD Beat
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

Nothing much to recommend this week.

Drillbit Taylor
Owen Wilson deserves better than this. “Drillbit Taylor” is so predictable, so mediocre and so old-fashioned that it hardly exists at all. He plays a resourceful homeless guy who’s hired to be the bodyguard for a tormented trio of high school nerds (they very much resemble the protagonists of “Superbad,” only without the insight and wit). Wilson is a likeable actor, and he’s been expertly cast here, but the script leaves him stranded in a sitcom plot and gives him nothing interesting or funny to do. “Drillbit Taylor” is so banal that you’ll have forgotten all about it before it’s even over.
Grade: C

My Blueberry Nights
They say that in order for a narrative to be effective, the protagonist must undergo some kind of change from the beginning of the story to the end. “My Blueberry Nights” ignores that basic rule, and it leaves us stranded on the same emotional plain from start to finish. It stars singer-songwriter Norah Jones as a young woman who leaves her life in New York City behind, wandering the countryside and encountering various sadsacks and outcasts before she finally returns home again, completely unchanged by her experiences. The film is a bare clothesline that desperately needs something of substance to be hung upon it. Jones herself isn’t much of an actress, and she’s surrounded by various Oscar winners and nominees—Jude Law, David Straithairn, Natalie Portman and Rachel Weisz—whose performances aren’t particularly indicative of their talents. “My Blueberry Nights” is directed by the Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai (“In the Mood for Love,” “Chungking Express”), who is making his English-language debut here. It’s possible that something was lost in translation—his earlier films were so passionate and brimming with personality, and this one is hollow at its core. Watching it is like taking a long walk through a very pretty, mostly empty forest, only to discover at the end of your journey that you’ve traveled in one big circle.
Grade: C

Vantage Point
“Vantage Point” is not so much an action movie as it is an exercise in contrived cliffhangers and plot twists. The film is set on a single day in Salamanca, Spain, where the President of the United States is hosting an anti-terrorism summit. When the President is shot and a bomb is detonated in the city square, we see the events over and over again but from a different perspective each time. Who has the best vantage point: The President’s bodyguards, the American tourist with a video camera, the television news producer or the Spanish police officer? There are a lot of manufactured surprises, none of which have any plausibility, and when you finally discover the identity of the assassin, you’ll wish you’d rented “Rashomon” instead.
Grade: C-

Blood, guts, bullets, octane and a thousand exploding rats

Wanted
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Pardon me for liking “Wanted.” I was not expecting to and was sort of ashamed that I did, but I can’t deny that it has a certain twisted, bloody charm.

Here is a film that unabashedly defies common sense and bastardizes the basic law of physics, all in the name of action and violence, and it creates a palpable universe that comfortably exists somewhere between reality and pulp fiction. It operates on a system of cheerfully screwy logic, and it makes as much sense as something this completely senseless can.

I learn that the movie is inspired by a series of comic books, which I could have guessed; either that or a video game. It begins by introducing us to Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), who is a lifeless drone working in a nondescript office building. He hates his job, hates his boss, hates his girlfriend, hates his life. He is, he tells us, “the most insignificant asshole in the world”—that is until he discovers his father was an amazing assassin, and he has inherited the ability to handle a gun the way Michelangelo handled a chisel.

Wesley’s fellow assassins belong to a secret society known as the Fraternity, which was founded a thousand years ago by, get this, burlap weavers. See, they can read messages hidden in the threads, and it produces a kind of binary code that tells them who their next targets will be. They’re like harbingers of fate, killing people because, well, it’s their destiny to be killed. “We maintain stability in an unstable world,” someone says. “Kill one, save a thousand.”

Morgan Freeman is Sloan, the leader of the Fraternity, who politely explains to Wesley his uncultivated talents, such as shooting the wings off flies. Angelina Jolie is the steely-eyed mentor, the aptly-named Fox, who stands in front of Wesley and orders him to shoot around her. Bullets do other amazing things in this movie—they travel extreme distances, they collide and deflect one another, they kill multiple people in a single shot.

This is all very absurd, very violent and very entertaining. “Wanted” has tongue firmly implanted in cheek, and its action sequences are as ridiculous and over-the-top as they probably can be (one scene involving a plague of rats rigged with bombs is particularly inspired). It’s so bombastic and preposterous that its tenacity becomes almost admirable—but perhaps I should stop there.

I may have made “Wanted” sound more valuable than it really is: It’s a whole lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but put your brain on autopilot and you might have a good time.

Grade: B

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan. Based on a comic book series by Mark Millar. Starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Common, Thomas Kretschmann and Terence Stamp. R; 110m.

Shoe-phoning it in

Get Smart
Review by Nathan Weinbender

I wanted very much to laugh at “Get Smart,” and I did, but not very often. This is the type of movie that assembles all the ingredients for a solid comedy but never employs them properly. Much like Maxwell Smart, the film has some impressive weapons in its arsenal, but it just ends up shooting itself in the foot.

Smart, the bumbling private eye who is always a few steps behind, was first immortalized by the invaluable Don Adams on the Mel Brooks-Buck Henry TV series. In this new big-screen adaptation, Adams is replaced by Steve Carell, who, thankfully, doesn’t duplicate Adams’ quirks but rather channels them through his own understated delivery. Carell has the uncanny ability to walk the fine line between self-assuredness and self-parody; his reincarnation of Smart is so desperate to appear composed that we wonder if he realizes how hopelessly incompetent he is.

He is an analyst for a spy agency called CONTROL, the operations of which are as mysterious as the identities of its agents. When CONTROL is the subject of a massive security breach, there’s no other suspect but an evil crime operation known as KAOS. Smart is promoted as a field agent to bring down the bad guys, and he’s teamed with the lovely Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), whose duties include looking good in snug outfits and getting Smart out of deadly situations.

The plot goes off the rails fairly early—there’s some business involving the President, a symphony concert and a bomb under the piano that’s thrown in at the last minute—but I suppose plot doesn’t really matter in a movie like “Get Smart.” What matters are the performances, the action sequences and the jokes; I can report that the cast is terrific and the action is well-choreographed, but most of the jokes fall flat.

There are some very funny moments in “Get Smart”—I loved the gag involving the defective “Cone of Silence,” and another in which Smart has to pretend to be a deaf-mute at the drop of a hat—but more often than not the film goes for predictable, sitcom-level gags. The movie also doesn’t know how to handle slapstick comedy: Max’s struggles with his technologically advanced gadgets are more painful than funny, and we cringe rather than laugh.

The supporting cast has been impeccably assembled: Dwayne Johnson (having dropped “The Rock” from his name) as Smart’s rival agent; the ever-stoic Terence Stamp as the head of KAOS; Alan Arkin as the Chief. And the action scenes are surprisingly good, especially a climax involving a helicopter, a speeding SUV and an oncoming train. But let us not forget that “Get Smart” is, above all else, a comedy, and it simply never aims high enough with its jokes.

Grade: C

Directed by Peter Segal. Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember. Starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin and Terence Stamp. PG-13; 110m.

Cavemen, hitmen and ladies’ men

The DVD Beat
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

The Pick of the Week
Persepolis
Most animated films are animated because they defy the real world. Animators can put whatever they want on a blank canvas; they have free reign over their creations. Do you think “Kung Fu Panda,” for instance, have been made using human actors? Probably not, and the same could be said for just about every cartoon, from “The Simpsons” to “The Lion King.”

And now we have “Persepolis,” a brilliant animated film adapted from a series of graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, that exists within an animated version of the real world. Her story, an autobiographical coming-of-age tale set during the Islamic Revolution in 1980s Iran, certainly could been made as a live-action feature, but let’s be thankful that the movie has been presented as it has, with lush black-and-white visuals and a dazzling drawing style that is really unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

What this picture does better than any animated feature I have seen since “Grave of the Fireflies” is it manages to give its characters human personalities, and it’s rare for a film to give pen-and-ink creations as much heedless individuality as “Persepolis” does. And it’s amazing, too, how well the animation captures Satrapi’s own rebellious personality, and how it personifies the heart and soul of a child with such a limitless imagination.

It’s too bad that there is the unfortunate misconception that all animated films are mere children’s entertainment, and it will probably cause a lot of adults to avoid “Persepolis.” That would be a real shame, because it is one of the most beautiful, lively and ingenious films, animated or otherwise, to come out of 2007.
Grade: A

Also on DVD
10,000 B.C.
“10,000 B.C.” is a wannabe epic, brimming with awkward dialogue, wooden performances, badly-rendered CGI predators and more historical anachronisms than you can count. It has all the trappings of a big, campy disaster, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t have enough energy to even be enjoyably bad. This movie limps from the starting gate: There’s no story, no character development, no original conflict, no sense of wonder. It meanders aimlessly from one clunky action set-piece to another, none of which have the grace or visual splendor of anything we saw in Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” That film, while hardly a masterpiece itself, at least demanded our attention: It was sort of stupid, yes, but it throbbed with intensity. “10,000 B.C.,” on the other hand, hardly has a pulse.
Grade: D

Definitely, Maybe
The ads for “Definitely, Maybe” make it look innocuous and contrived, and it is, but only to a point. This is a surprisingly intelligent and genuinely sweet romantic comedy, and it gives us a cast of characters who are more interesting and much smarter than the predictable story they inhabit. The movie begins with a father (Ryan Reynolds, surprisingly good here) and daughter (Abigail Breslin): He is in the midst of a divorce with his wife and her mother, she is a precocious ten-year-old who wants to know how her parents met and fell in love. He recounts the story to her, but disguises the identities of the three women who were in his life at the time, one of whom is his future wife. It’s a nice twist on a time-worn formula, “a love story mystery,” as the Breslin character so accurately describes it. Also refreshing are the three potential candidates—Elizabeth Banks as the college sweetheart, Rachel Weisz as a political journalist and Isla Fisher as the best friend—who are all bright, warm and attractive women. “Definitely, Maybe” doesn’t require much thought, nor does it register much emotion, but it’s a solid example of the genre. As far as romantic comedies go, if the pinnacle is “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and the nadir is “Fool’s Gold,” this movie is right in the middle.
Grade: B-

In Bruges
Two contract killers arrive in an antiquated town in Belgium, where they’re told to wait for further instructions. One of the men, Ray (Colin Farrell), wants to indulge in booze and women, while the other, Ken (Brendan Gleeson), would rather visit art museums during the day and stay in bed and read at night. When Ray and Ken discover why they’re in Bruges and who they’ve been sent to kill, the film becomes much more interesting: How will these men come to terms with their own sins and mortalities, and how much should we sympathize with them, even though they submit to the most depraved of human instincts? Farrell and Gleeson are really superb here, creating two of the most complex and interesting hitmen in film history. Their characters exist on so many different plains at once—they’re thoughtful, funny, ruthless, violent, vulnerable and deeply wounded—yet they never let us see the seams of their performances. The film does eventually lose its way, succumbing to tired thriller elements in its last act. But even in its final scenes, the movie bursts with creative fervor, and it has a dogged determination that’s hard to dismiss. “In Bruges” wants to be brash and violent and quirky, and it is all of those things, but it certainly isn’t without a brain.
Grade: B+

Bad karma

The Love Guru
Review by Nathan Weinbender

“The Love Guru” is an abysmal comedy, and it’s made all the more depressing because it has Mike Myers at its helm. Here is the case of a funny, intelligent writer trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator, wallowing in cheap scatological gags and scummy bathroom humor that, as far as I can tell, only a fourteen-year-old boy could appreciate.

What possessed Myers to write this movie? What made him think anyone would find it funny? Disillusionment, I suppose. In the span of 90 minutes, it assaults us with bad puns, double entendres, weird pop culture references and beleaguered jokes about every bodily function imaginable, none of which are the least bit amusing. It contains sequences so stupid, disgusting and misguided they had me pining for the scene in the second “Austin Powers” film where a stool sample is mistaken for a cappuccino.

Myers, who has played some brilliant comic characters in the past, here plays Guru Pitka, who will, I can safely say, not be remembered as one of his finer creations. Pitka is an expert on the ways of love, and his routine consists of spouting off goofy mantras and making acronyms out of unlikely words (he wants people to experience intimacy, or “into-me-I-see”).

In hopes of cementing his reputation as the world’s foremost self-help authority (he’s second to Deepak Chopra), he is recruited to jump-start the failed relationship of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ star player (Romany Malco). If he succeeds, the team will likely win the Stanley Cup, and Pitka himself will land a coveted spot on Oprah’s TV show.

There are a few supporting characters designed to divert us from the paper-thin plot, but they’re given very little to do. Jessica Alba is badly miscast as the owner of the Leafs, who, through a series of ridiculous plot machinations, falls in love with Pitka. Justin Timberlake plays an often-shirtless French-Canadian goalie named Jacques “Le Coq” Grande—an apt nickname, considering the unzipping of his pants is always accompanied by a loud “thud.” Timberlake has so much fun with the role you’ll wish he had a better dialect coach and a stronger script to work with.

And Ben Kingsley, in what appears to be an attempt to have his Academy Award officially revoked, plays Pitka’s cross-eyed spiritual advisor, the unfortunately-named Guru Tugginmypudha of Harenmakeester. At one point, he orders his students to fight one another with mops soaked in his own urine. Mahatma Gandhi he ain’t.

All of this, I suppose, could have been the groundwork for a solid comedy, or for a parody of Hinduism, Bollywood musicals, professional sports or our obsession with self-help therapy. But “The Love Guru” falls victim to its own puerile inclinations, draining the premise of any possible wit and replacing it with tired gags involving erections, flatulence, oral sex, manure and elephant copulation.

Mike Myers is a great comic mind; he has made some good films in the past and no doubt has other good ones in him. The first installments of the “Wayne’s World” and “Austin Powers” series were terrific, and they benefited from the discipline, intellect and wicked satire that “The Love Guru” greatly needs. Guru Pitka himself is a pathetic character, and Myers seems to know it, as he spends most of the film mugging and straining for laughs. He’s like a desperate stand-up comedian who applies silly accents and facial tics to distract the audience from his own lousy material.

Grade: D-

Directed by Marco Schnabel. Written by Mike Myers and Graham Gordy. Starring Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Verne Troyer, Meagan Good and Ben Kingsley. PG-13; 89m.