Better than your average reality show

American Teen
Review by Nathan Weinbender

“Who were you?” asks the trailer for the new high school documentary “American Teen.” The Jock? The Geek? The Princess? The Rebel? The Heartthrob?

Who was I? Well, I certainly wasn’t a Jock, nor was I, by any stretch of the imagination, a Heartthrob. Certainly I wasn’t a Princess, and, although I wasn’t a conformist, I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a Rebel. So, by process of elimination, that makes me a Geek. Not your typical geek, though: I wasn’t a social outcast, nor was I obsessed with video games or comic books, but I was in the marching band, which I suppose counts for something.

Had my senior year been the subject of a documentary, I could tell you it would have been a drag. “American Teen,” which follows five high school seniors in the small town of Warsaw, Indiana, is, on the other hand, unexpectedly engaging. Its subjects will no doubt seem familiar to anyone who has experienced (or is experiencing) their formidable teenage years, but it’s surprising how compelling they are.

Although the kids in Nanette Burstein’s film embody the simplistic titles that the ad campaigns assign to them, they are, above all else, fascinating. We come to care about them, we can relate with them, we understand their pain and discomfort. They begin as types and eventually evolve into human beings, intelligent and personable, but vulnerable and filled with trepidation.

Take, for instance, Colin, the Jock. He’s the star of the basketball team in a town that revolves around high school basketball. He wants to go to college, but his dad, who moonlights as an Elvis impersonator, can’t afford tuition unless Colin gets a scholarship. Colin, meanwhile, desperate to impress college recruiters, overexerts himself on the court and jeopardizes his team’s chances of winning the county championships.

Then there’s Megan, the Princess. She is the Most Popular Girl in School—she’s head of the student body, she’s on the prom committee, she’s a valedictorian, she’s homecoming royalty. She’s also mean, vindictive, manipulative and spiteful. We resent her until there’s a moment when we learn of a depressing moment from her past, a deep emotional scarring that she can neither comprehend nor cope with, and it causes her to lash out at everyone around her.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Jake, the Geek. He plays clarinet in the band, has very few friends and has never been involved in a serious relationship. He wants, more than anything, to have a girlfriend, someone who loves him for who he truly is. We watch through parted fingers as he courts girls who have no interest in him whatsoever, and his experience with rejection is the most painfully relatable element of the film.

And there’s Hannah, the Rebel, easily Burstein’s favorite subject. She’s artistic, funny, observant, different. She hates Warsaw, hates not fitting in—she wants to flee to San Francisco and go to film school. She’s the girl who you never hung out with in high school, but who seems to be the most appealing person in your class come the ten-year anniversary.

She’s a bold, eccentric personality, but she’s also extremely fragile. Her estranged mother is clinically bipolar, and Hannah quietly wonders if she has inherited the disorder: When her boyfriend breaks up with her, she doesn’t leave the house for three weeks.

This all sounds like it could be fodder for a vapid MTV reality show, but “American Teen” is much more moving and insightful than it ought to be. There is some mandatory tension and a few minor conflicts between characters, but it all seems manufactured. What really resonates are the one-on-one interviews with the kids, which are very intimate, sometimes very moving. If the quality of a documentary is dictated solely by the quality of its subjects, this one is very good.

Grade: B+

A documentary directed by Nanette Burstein. PG-13; 95m.

What Would Jesus Watch?

Two new films approach religion from very, very different angles
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

Hamlet 2

The title “Hamlet 2” is funny. That it is the name of a high school play that inspires riots, protests and First Amendment arguments is funnier. “Hamlet 2,” the movie, alas, is not quite as hilarious as its concept, or as its title, suggests. It’s an affable comedy, weird and goofy and occasionally dirty-minded, that never quite pays off what it sets up: When you’re told that the play-within-the-movie will feature group sex between Jesus and Hillary Clinton, you might expect it to be more outrageous than it turns out to be.

The play—“Hamlet 2,” that is—springs from the demented mind of Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), a former commercial actor (you may remember him from appearances in ads for juicing machines and prescription-strength herpes medications) who has abandoned his dreams of becoming a star and now works as a drama teacher in a Tucson, Arizona, high school.

Marschz (his name is pronounced in a way you wouldn’t expect) has serious delusions of grandeur: He considers himself, first and foremost, an underappreciated, under-nourished genius, although his drama class is made up of only two students, his stage adaptations of Hollywood movies (“Erin Brockovich” and “Mississippi Burning,” for instance) are the laughing stock of the town, and he’s consistently bludgeoned by the school newspaper’s resident drama critic.

Dana lives with his wife Brie (Catherine Keener), a perpetual drunk who resents her husband for being infertile, and a dunderheaded border played by David Arquette. He rollerblades to work every day (no surprise: he falls down a lot), and spends his time watching “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and “Dead Poets’ Society,” dreaming of becoming an inspirational, groundbreaking teacher and studying methods for motivating troubled students.

When he’s told the school is making budget cuts and the drama department is on the chopping block, Dana is devastated, and he decides to write an original play that will save his class and will finally get him some recognition. The fruits of his labor are the “Hamlet” sequel, which opens with the Danish prince going back in time to save his mother from unintentionally poisoning herself. He’s accompanied by Jesus (played by Dana), who has a “lean swimmer’s body” that makes Gertrude swoon (cue the song “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus”).

Because of its content, and because of Dana’s mediocre track record, the school board doesn’t want “Hamlet 2” to see the light of day (“You have Satan French-kissing the Preisdent!” objects the principal). Dana relents, as does his predominately Latino cast, and they band together to keep the play from shutting down. When the incident makes the papers, a brassy ACLU attorney named Cricket Feldstein (Amy Poehler) shows up to defend Dana. “We’ve got a First Amendment case on our hands,” she tells him, adding, “If you’re wondering about the ‘Feldstein,’ it’s because I married a Jew.”

All of this is funny, and I laughed pretty frequently, especially during the opening scenes. But the screenplay, written by Pam Brady and director Andrew Fleming, too often shortchanges its material, promising more in the beginning than it eventually delivers in the end. It sets up interesting supporting characters and never develops them—Keener and Arquette have a few amusing bits before being relegated to the background and eventually written out altogether, and Poehler, who is a real comedic spitfire, doesn’t have enough material to work with (her total screen time here is about six minutes).

The film builds to the big production, which itself is disappointing. We only see two or three scenes from the play, and what we do see, save for the exuberant “Sexy Jesus” number (watch for Jesus moon walking over water), it’s not particularly inspired.

The screenplay has been co-written by Pam Brady, who collaborated on the scripts for “Team America: World Police” and the “South Park” movie, and “Hamlet 2” is nowhere near as clever and biting as those pictures were. It relies more on dumb yuks and pratfalls than satire, which is too bad, because I imagine Brady could have found something truly insightful to say about artistic censorship. If the movie does parody anything well, it’s high school drama teachers.

As Marschz, Steve Coogan is brilliant, and, like the theater director in “Waiting for Guffman,” there’s something inherently amusing about his heedless enthusiasm toward things that are bound to fail, about his ability to over-think and overanalyze everything until molehills are mountains. You’ve gotta admire a guy who actually casts himself as Jesus because he can relate to having a troubled childhood and a domineering father.

I almost forgot to mention Elisabeth Shue (“Leaving Las Vegas,” “The Karate Kid”), who turns up as herself and is one of the movie’s brightest spots. Fed up with the artifice of Hollywood, she’s left showbiz and has followed her dream of becoming a nurse (in real life, Shue is still a working actress). When she’s asked what she misses most about the movie business, she’s quick to answer: the love scenes.

Having seen Dana’s play, she’s inspired to call her agent. “It’s Elisabeth,” she says into the phone. “I’m ready to act again!” Her enthusiasm wanes a little. “It’s Elisabeth...Elisabeth Shue?” She’s a good sport.

Grade: B-

Directed by Andrew Fleming. Written by Pam Brady and Fleming. Starring Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener, Amy Poehler, David Arquette and Elisabeth Shue. R; 92m.

Henry Poole Is Here

Images of religious figures turn up in the strangest places, don’t they? They’ve been seen on the backs of highway signs, in reflections and shadows, on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Now, in “Henry Poole Is Here,” there’s a water stain on the side of poor Henry’s house that, according to his Catholic neighbor, resembles the face of Jesus.

It’s a miracle, she tells him, but it’s really more of an inconvenience for Henry (Luke Wilson), who wakes up every morning to find strangers congregating in his backyard, clamoring over the stain. Henry is a stern, seemingly impenetrable man, the type who believes there’s a logical explanation for everything. When a character’s poor vision is cured after she touches the stain, he assumes that it’s merely a coincidence.

Why is he such a killjoy? Well, it’s soon discovered that he has an Unnamed Terminal Illness, a fact that we figure out prior to being told. Actually, we’re always just a few steps ahead of the screenplay, telegraphing every new plot development long before it comes.

For instance, what are the odds that Henry and one of his neighbors, a pretty single mother played by Radha Mitchell, will fall in love? And what are the odds that the neighbor’s six-year-old daughter, who hasn’t said a word for months, will be talking by the end of the film? And what are the odds that Henry comes to accept his fate and his spirituality, transforming from a curmudgeon to a sweetheart in a matter of days?

“Henry Poole Is Here” is a completely harmless, good-hearted picture, but it’s so heavy-handed, so sanctimonious, so eager to move us that it soon becomes unbearable. I can imagine a moving, uplifting, intelligent film could have been made from this material, but this script never rises above the basic level of made-for-TV heartstring-tugging. Director Mark Pellington doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word “nuance,” a lot of which this movie desperately needed.

Grade: C

Directed by Mark Pellington. Written by Albert Torres. Starring Luke Wilson, Radha Mitchell, Adriana Barraza, Morgan Lily, Rachel Seiferth and George Lopez. PG; 100m.

Steamy love quadrangles courtesy of a 72-year-old nebbish Jew

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Review by Nathan Weinbender

Like Three Dog Night, I’ve never been to Spain, but having seen Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” I’ll be on a plane tomorrow. If “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” were love letters to New York, this movie is a love letter to the city of Barcelona. It features so many landmarks and attractions that it plays almost like a travelogue video, both of the city itself and of Scarlett Johansson’s lips.

Ah, those lips. Allen’s camera lingers on them so frequently that they threaten to upstage the art, the architecture, the overall beauty of Barcelona. Okay, so I’ll admit to having a sort of schoolboy crush on Johansson, but I don’t think it’s unwarranted: Stand her next to “Guernica,” and I defy you to keep your eyes on the canvas.

Johansson plays Cristina, an aspiring young filmmaker whose future is a big question mark. She knows nothing of traditional romance, nor does she know anything of love, recovering from a series of tumultuous, sensuous relationships that ended badly. Her friend is Vicky (Rebecca Hall, also very beautiful), a neurotic, no-nonsense intellectual who is engaged to an uninteresting businessman because she’s attracted to his love of commitment.

Vicky and Cristina are spending the summer in Barcelona, and, whaddaya know, their sightseeing is interrupted when a suave Spanish man seduces them by offering them a weekend of wine, music and lovemaking. He’s Juan Antonio, a terribly romantic, effortlessly urbane artist played by the devilishly handsome Javier Bardem (hell, he’s pretty, too). He invites the women to come with him to a small town that’s a short flight away. Cristina accepts with little reluctance, while Vicky is more hesitant.

Of course, both Vicky and Cristina fall for Juan Antonio, resulting in a frothy love triangle that becomes a quadrangle when Penélope Cruz (also unbelievably attractive) shows up halfway through. She plays Maria Elena, Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, an intense, fiery, disturbed woman who not only rekindles her love with her former husband but also finds herself surprisingly attracted to Cristina.

All of this is frivolous and lightweight and frequently funny, and it’s actually more compelling than anything Allen has written in nearly fifteen years. He’s emulated Ingmar Bergman in the past, a phase that inspired some of his dreariest experiments, and now he seems to be aping Eric Rohmer with this breezy, scenic souvenir of a film—its intentions are simple and its pleasures mostly aesthetic (come to think of it, all of the actresses in this film have tremendous lips).

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is certainly not one of Allen’s best. It hardly even tries to be one of his best, but I suppose even the greatest artists deserve a holiday once in a while. Considering the general decline in the quality of his last dozen or so pictures, however, this film seems a step in the right direction. Could this movie signal a return to form from one of America’s great living filmmakers? I hope so.

Grade: B+

Directed and written by Woody Allen. Starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Penélope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson and Chris Messina. PG-13; 96m.

Welcome to the jungle

Tropic Thunder
Review by Nathan Weinbender

You’ve no doubt heard the horror stories from the set of “Apocalypse Now.” Francis Ford Coppola’s epic about the horrors of war is one of the greatest American movies ever made, but he had a hell of a time getting it finished—star Martin Sheen nearly died of a heart attack, a typhoon destroyed the sets and filming rambled on for over two years as the budget ballooned uncontrollably.

Coppola himself suffered a nervous breakdown and threatened to commit suicide before the movie was completed. As he famously said of the production, “We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”

“Tropic Thunder” is about the making of a film not dissimilar to “Apocalypse Now” (or “Platoon” or “The Deer Hunter,” for that matter), but what happens to the actors and director in this movie make the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the Coppola picture look like a walk in the park.

The temperamental director, played by Steve Coogan, is fed up with the pretensions of his actors and decides to abandon them in the jungle. In hopes of lending his Vietnam War film an air of realism, he sets up a series of hidden cameras to capture their every move. Unexpectedly, though, he ceases to be in the film’s funniest sight gag, and the actors end up battling a gang of drug smugglers led by a ten-year-old boy.

Of course, the self-absorbed actors are slow to realize that’s what going on around them is real and not a product of Hollywood hokum. Ben Stiller (who directed and co-wrote this film) is Tugg Speedman, the chucklehead action hero from the hit “Scorcher” series; Jack Black plays a heroin-addicted comedian named Jeff Portnoy, whose flatulent routines would make a gastroenterolist cringe. And Robert Downey Jr. is Kirk Lazarus, a lauded Australian method actor who has undergone a pigmentation process that allows him to convincingly play a hard-edged African American soldier.

Now, you may have heard that “Tropic Thunder” has stirred up controversy with advocacy groups across the country, and you probably thought it was due to Downey’s appearance in a more sophisticated form of blackface. No, the hullabaloo has been generated by a very minor element in the film, which involves Stiller’s character playing a mentally challenged man in a film called “Simple Jack.”

In one sequence, Stiller laments being overlooked for awards for playing such a demanding role, and Downey explains to him that his mistake was in “going full-on retard.” Remember Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” or Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump?” Well, they won the Oscar, he says, because they played characters that were only “half-retard.”

It’s the use of the “R-word” that has people up in arms, and, on a basic level, I guess I can’t blame them. It’s a hateful, narrow-minded term, but the characters in “Tropic Thunder” that use it are hateful, narrow-minded people, and the word functions more as an illustration of their ignorance than it does as a joke. The Simple Jack character himself is not meant as an attack on mentally challenged people, but rather as an attack on actors who exploit people with disabilities in order to win acclaim.

Lazarus, the Downey Jr. character, serves the same purpose: How ironic that Hollywood would hire a white actor to play a black man when there are dozens of competent black actors working in Hollywood. And isn’t it strange how far some actors will go to completely immerse themselves in a role? It reminds me of Laurence Olivier’s advice to Dustin Hoffman, who, for a scene in “Marathon Man,” stayed up all night to appear physically exhausted on-camera: “Why not try acting? It’s much easier.”

But I suppose I’ve been tiptoeing around the real issue: Is “Tropic Thunder” funny? Yes, to a point. It has some truly big, inspired laughs in it, but there’s a lot of empty space in between them. This movie also has the same problem as last week’s “Pineapple Express”—the comedic material is mostly on-target, but the action material, which is much less interesting, eventually overtakes the film.

The picture works best, though, as a satire, a clever condemnation of common Hollywood practices that goes straight for the jugular. Movies like “Tropic Thunder” are what we call Equal Opportunity Offenders. It’s brash, crude, foul-mouthed and distasteful, and it gets its jollies from poking nearly every ethnicity and minority in the ribs with demented zeal. See, if you’re offending everybody at the same time, you won’t offend anybody at all.

Note: The movie’s biggest laughs come at the very beginning, opening with fake trailers, ala “Grindhouse,” that advertise the newest projects from the fake actors in the film. The funniest of the bunch is called “Satan’s Alley,” a sexually-charged melodrama about a homosexual relationship between two monks. Alert the Catholic League!

Grade: B

Directed by Ben Stiller. Written by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen. Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jones, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise. R; 107m.

From dope to dopey

Pineapple Express
Review by Nathan Weinbender

“Pineapple Express” combines elements from ‘70s stoner comedies and ‘80s action flicks and approaches them with the no-nonsense practicality and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric of Judd Apatow movies. Here’s proof that we have come a long way since Cheech and Chong, but perhaps that’s not saying much. Perhaps that’s not saying anything at all.

Now, it’s true that the two main characters in “Pineapple Express,” produced by the ubiquitous Judd Apatow, are potheads and that they are high through most, if not all, of the film. But there’s a point halfway through where one of them, surveying the damage they’ve caused, wonders if, hey, maybe we wouldn’t be in so much trouble had we not smoked so much weed.

That’s what druggies refer to as a moment of clarity, and it’s what separates our super-high protagonists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, from the cinematic stoners of yore. I wish Cheech and Chong had had as much mental wherewithal, because only then would one of them have observed that, hey, maybe we wouldn’t have made so many awful comedies had we not smoked so much weed.

Rogen plays Dale Denton, a pothead process server who spends his days serving subpoenas, getting high in his car, visiting his high school-aged girlfriend during her lunch period and chilling with his spacey drug dealer Saul (Franco). During a routine visit to Saul’s for a toke or two, Dale buys a bag of choice marijuana called Pineapple Express. It’s so good and so rare, Saul tells him, that smoking it would be “like killing a unicorn.”

Later that night, as Dale gets high in his car, he witnesses a murder committed by a drug kingpin named Ted Jones (Gary Cole) and a female cop (Rosie Perez). He flees the scene, leaving behind a smoldering joint that Jones manages to trace back to Saul. This is the point in the film when the violent action material kicks in, and it’s also the point when the movie loses its footing.

The action sequences in “Pineapple Express” are jarring, so violent and aggressive that they don’t fit within the context of a comedy. Too many scenes smack of desperation, as the characters run around frantically and beat up on one another in frantic attempts at cheap laughs. The climax is especially miscalculated, so overblown and overlong that it seems to drag on forever—when we should be engaged and laughing, we feel overwhelmed and exhausted.

What does work in the film is the witty rapport between the characters. The script, written by Rogen and Evan Goldberg (they previously penned “Superbad”), is brimming with dialogue that is not only funny and inventive but completely real. Rogen, basically playing himself, does little here that we haven’t seen him do in other movies, while Franco is a breath of fresh air—his squinty-eyed, deadpan performance is engaging enough to carry the film through its dreariest patches.

“Pineapple Express” has been directed by David Gordon Green, who specializes in quiet, meditative, low-budget dramas. His work here is strictly by-the-numbers (I likely wouldn’t have mentioned the director had it not been him), and having recently re-watched his debut feature “George Washington,” I’m reminded of what a terrific filmmaker he can be. If this movie has any impact at the box office, here’s hoping that Green gets a more consistent script for his next Hollywood effort.

Grade: B

Directed by David Gordon Green. Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny R. McBride, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson. R; 111m.

Dead and buried

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Movies like “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” should be seen (if they have to be seen at all) on Saturday afternoons when you have nothing better to do and the theater’s ticket prices are reduced. It’s as disposable and brainless as you might expect, but it’s not even all that fun, just a lot of hackneyed action sequences and empty special effects.

Brendan Fraser returns as Rick O’Connell, who, like a low-rent Indiana Jones, once traveled the world to plunder ancient temples and dueled with undead monsters of the ancient world. Now he lives retired in England, while his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, filling in for Rachel Weisz), writes bestselling adventure yarns based on her exciting adventures from the previous “Mummy” films.

The O’Connells are lured to Shanghai when they discover their son (Luke Ford) has uncovered the long-lost tomb of, you guessed it, the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li). The Emperor is preserved with his massive army of terracotta soldiers, and—let me see if I have this right—they will all come to life and, I dunno, take over the world if a precious artifact called the Eye of Shangri-La falls into the wrong hands.

This movie could have been goofy fun, but it has a surprising amount of dull patches. The story goes nowhere interesting, the action sequences are photographed and edited so that they’re sometimes incomprehensible and none of the actors seem to be truly enjoying themselves. “Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” is a throwaway film, and it’s hardly worth writing anymore about it. Besides, it’s a Saturday afternoon, and I have better things to do.

Grade: C

Directed by Rob Cohen. Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Milar. Starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford and Isabella Leong. PG-13; 112m.