Review: "Health Inspector" Still the Best Larry the Cable Guy Movie

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 69 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (2006)
Running time: 89 minutes (1 hour 29 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for crude and sexual content, and for language
DIRECTOR: Trent Cooper
WRITERS: Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer
PRODUCERS: Alan C. Blomquist and J.P. Williams
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Kim Marks
EDITOR: Gregg Featherman

COMEDY

Starring: Larry the Cable Guy, Iris Bahr, Bruce Bruce, Megyn Price, Tom Wilson, Joanna Cassidy, David Koechner, Tony Hale, Lisa Lampanelli, and Joe Pantoliano with Kid Rock and Jerry Mathers

Larry (Larry the Cable Guy) is big city health inspector who is happy with his usual beat of greasy spoon diners, low-rent ethnic restaurants, and food stands where his good-old boy charm and down home attitude solves health problems better than a writing a citation. His easygoing job suddenly takes a turn for the worse when his boss, Bart Tatlock (Thomas F. Wilson) who hates him saddles Larry with a rookie partner, Amy Butlin (Iris Bahr), and a new beat.

Larry suddenly has to investigate a mysterious outbreak of food poisoning at the city’s swankiest restaurants that leaves patrons vomiting up their meals or heading for the toilets. Poor Larry only gets so far in his investigation as to infuriate chic restaurateurs and baffle his partner, Amy, but he still finds time to woo a waitress, Jane Whitley (Megyn Price), into a budding romance. However, when his failure to uncover the origin of the mystery illness endangers his job and reputation, Larry goes undercover to solve the crime in the most hilarious ways.

Many viewers know standup comedian Larry the Cable Guy (whose government name is Dan Whitney) from Jeff Foxworthy’s Blue Collar Comedy Tour, or have seen him on the Comedy Central, seen his hit DVD, and/or have heard one or more of his three hit comedy albums. Now, Larry, like numerous characters from “Saturday Night Live,” has a movie, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.

The film is vulgar, occasionally vile, and relentlessly and shamelessly cheap and tasteless. It opens with a shot of the crack of Larry’s butt and of him peeing in the shower, yet Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector is also one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in months. It’s not a romantic comedy. It’s a coarse raunchy comedy starring a comedian who has made a point of being as politically incorrect as possible. If you like Larry the Cable Guy, you’ll like this. If you don’t like Larry’s act, you will utterly hate this… unless you’re willing to give him a chance, and I think it’s worth the reward to give good old Larry a chance.

Health Inspector’s plot is convoluted, but the script is the perfect comic vehicle for a film that has to focus on a stage comic’s particular act. It has enough of the trappings of the crime genre to be a whodunit the way Scooby-Doo cartoons are detective stories. And since Larry the Cable Guy isn’t trying to become Larry the romantic comedy guy, a light crime story gives him room to clown and be himself. The entire mystery that this movie presents moves only as Larry’s act moves it, and that’s okay. Larry is a funny guy.

I’m not going to pretend that Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector is high quality filmmaking, but this is certainly a textbook example of giving the audience what it expects – lots and lots of raucous Larry. Flatulence, toilet humor, redneck jokes, country humor, gay jokes, ethnic stereotypes that will make you cringe, gross out humor, juvenile escapades: Larry does it all with a good-natured wink and a nudge. I’d love a sequel.

6 of 10
B

Saturday, April 8, 2006

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"The Green Hornet" Stings Like a B-Movie

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 47 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux


The Green Hornet (2011)
Running time: 119 minutes (1 hour, 59 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for sequences of violent action, language, sensuality and drug content
DIRECTOR: Michel Gondry
WRITERS: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (based on the radio series “The Green Hornet” George W. Trendle)
PRODUCER: Neal H. Moritz
CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Schwartzman
EDITOR: Michael Tronick
COMPOSER: James Newton Howard

SUPERHERO/ACTION/CRIME

Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Tom Wilkinson, Christoph Waltz, David Harbour, Edward James Olmos, Jamie Harris, Chad Coleman, and Edward Furlong

A masked vigilante, crime-fighter, and superhero, the Green Hornet is a fictional character that first made his debut on radio in 1936. Created by radio station owner George W. Trendle and radio writer Fran Striker, the Green Hornet has also appeared over the years in comic books and movie serials. There was even a 1960s ABC television series probably best remembered for Bruce Lee playing the Green Hornet’s partner/sidekick, Kato.

Released in January 2011, The Green Hornet returned the character to the big screen in an over-the-top, superhero action-comedy movie. The movie is like a juvenile boy’s fantasy of what a superhero movie should have: plenty of explosions, numerous car-crushing car chases, and lots of gunfire, with a pretty girl thrown in for an occasional shot of eye candy. And sometimes, this movie is actually fun and entertaining.

The Green Hornet opens in present day Los Angeles and focuses on spoiled, rich, 20-something, Britt Reid (Seth Rogen). His father is James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), the wealthy and highly successful publisher of The Daily Sentinel newspaper. After James’ sudden death, Britt is trying to figure out what to do with his father’s business and his own life when he meets his father’s personal mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou). They hit it off, get drunk together, and pull a stupid stunt. It is that dangerous stunt that gives Britt the idea that he and Kato should become superheroes.

Britt believes that they should become crime-fighters who pose as criminals in order to infiltrate L.A.’s notoriously violent criminal underworld, so he becomes a masked man named the Green Hornet. Britt also decides to use the Sentinel to publish propaganda that will build up the Hornet’s reputation. Britt even hires Lenore “Casey” Case (Cameron Diaz), a sexy secretary to do criminal research that he can use as the Hornet. However, Britt’s activities as the Hornet bring him into direct conflict with Russian super bad-ass, Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), a mobster who wants to control all crime in L.A. But Chudnofsky is willing to kill anyone and any hero who gets in his way.

One of the things that immediately stood out to me about The Green Hornet was that Seth Rogen was probably not the right actor to play the Green Hornet. I could believe in him as the spoiled, party boy, Britt Reid, but not as any kind of superhero or masked crime-fighter. I spent the rest of the movie going back and forth on my feelings about Rogen. That’s the problem with this movie. Some of it works, and some of it is lazy and sloppy; even some of the stuff that works sometimes falls flat.

Rogen co-wrote this film with his partner, Evan Goldberg; the two wrote an incredible script for the film Superbad, a film that flowed seamlessly. The Green Hornet isn’t seamless. You can practically see all the giant, noisy set pieces sewn together to create this Frankenstein of an action-comedy. The problem isn’t that some of this movie is over-the-top; it is that The Green Hornet is nothing but over-the-top. There is rarely a moment of this movie that isn’t about violence and vulgarity and assorted rudeness.

I have to give credit where credit is due. While the film wastes Cameron Diaz and her good character, Lenore, it makes the most of Christoph Waltz’s cold-bloodied turn as the really scary Chudnofsky. [It’s best that we not speak of how the filmmakers under-utilized Edward James Olmos]. The film also has a genuine star in Taiwanese pop idol Jay Chou as Kato.

For some reason, Chou actually has good screen chemistry with Rogen, or at least I think so. When they are together as the Green Hornet and Kato, Rogen and Chou take control of the hysteria and bombast. That is why, here and there, The Green Hornet is more action-comedy dynamite than it is film flatulence.

5 of 10
B-

Monday, June 06, 2011

Review: "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is Really Good Good

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 141 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Running time: 103 minutes (1 hour, 43 minutes)
MPAA – R for language, violence, and sexuality/nudity
DIRECTOR: Shane Black
WRITER: Shane Black; from a screen story by Shane Black (based upon the novel, Bodies are Where You Find Them by Brett Halliday)
PRODUCER: Joel Silver
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Michael Barrett
EDITOR: Jim Page

COMEDY/MYSTERY/CRIME with elements of drama and thriller

Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen, Dash Mihok, Larry Miller, Rockmond Dunbar, Shannyn Sossamon, and Angela Lindvall

New York City petty thief, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey, Jr.) cons his way into an acting audition while running from the police. Before long he’s whisked away to Los Angeles for an even more important audition, this time for a part in a big movie. Harry finds an authentic acting coach in L.A. detective, Perry Van Shrike (Val Kilmer) or "Gay Perry," to help him prepare for his audition. The bright lights of Hollywood pale, however, when Harry, Perry, and Harry’s high school dream girl, Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), find themselves thrust into a murder mystery – one with an increasingly high body count.

Shane Black’s calling card is that he is the screenwriter who created Lethal Weapon, but his name may also be slightly notorious with his connection to Hollywood budget excesses, especially as he once received a then-record $1.75 million for The Last Boy Scout script. He didn’t create the buddy picture, an action sub-genre that remains popular but really ruled in the 1980’s and early 1990’s (one could say that the buddy-cop flick came to life with 48 Hours). Still, Black’s Lethal Weapon screenplay defined the buddy action flick, and Black became one of the most influential writers of action flicks.

Perhaps, we can view Black’s directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as a send-up of the genre he, more than any other writer, helped send into the stratosphere of big-time movie making. Almost a movie within a movie, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang seems like a satire of the buddy flick. Self-referential to the point of being meta-fiction, the narrator, Robert Downey, Jr.’s Harry Lockhart, never breaks the fourth wall, but he knows he has an audience.

With all the twists, turns, deceptions, betrayal, and romance in its plot, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a clever P. I. (private investigator or private eye) farce set in the glamour weird side of Los Angeles – think rich people and Hollywood types. Many of the characters are on the edge of Tinseltown – on the outside looking in. This movie is like Get Shorty, but it’s filtered through Shane Black’s penchant for L.A. crime stories – cops and detectives working a sort of modern day Film-Noir City of Angels – a kind of neo-Noir. This is also like The Last Boy Scout, without the big budget action sequences, but more outlandish and eccentric.

Watching this film, one has to wonder why it works. Robert Downey, Jr. seems slightly miscast, but he’s such a fine actor that he makes this part his own. Val Kilmer is quite good in a part that seems a bit short for what both the character and actor can bring to the film. Michelle Monaghan also seems miscast, but she has excellent comic sensibilities and over the long haul of the picture makes a very good, if not perfect, fit.

For all the style and ambience Black and his cast bring to this movie, what ultimately makes Kiss Kiss Bang Bang an exceptional film is how shrewdly written it is. Black has astutely filled his script with the kind of off-the-wall dialogue, situations, and scenes that hooks an audience ever deeper into the film, very similar to what Quentin Tarantino did in Pulp Fiction. It’s a cunning move that both keeps an audience with a short attention span engaged while putting a nimble move on the detective genre that makes even the jaded sit up and take notice. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it is the droll comedy of 2005. It is also one of the most inventive comic turns on the detective flick (that doesn’t have to rely on parody) in decades.

8 of 10
A

Friday, June 30, 2006

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Review: "Fun with Dick and Jane is Timely and Timeless" (Happy B'day, Jim Carrey)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 189 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
Running time: 90 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for brief language, some sexual humor, and occasional drug references
DIRECTOR: Dean Parisot
WRITERS: Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller, and Peter Tolan; from a story by Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller, and Gerald Gaiser (based upon the novel by Gerald Gaiser)
PRODUCERS: Jim Carrey and Brian Grazer
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jerzy Zielinski
EDITOR: Don Zimmerman

COMEDY/CRIME with elements of historical


Starring: Jim Carrey, Téa Leoni, Alec Baldwin, Richard Jenkins, Gloria Garayua, John Michael Higgins, Jeff Garlin, and Angie Harmon

In Fun with Dick and Jane, an upper middle class couple finds themselves unemployed and broke, even though they always played by the rules to reach their American dream. Desperate, they finally turn to crime to pay the bills.

It’s America, circa 2000. Dick Harper (Jim Carrey) and his wife Jane (Téa Leoni) have a lovely son, Billy, a Latino housekeeper named Blanca (Gloria Garayua) to take care of him, and a fancy two-story home in a swanky neighborhood. After waiting 15 years for that big promotion, Dick becomes Vice-President of Communications at Globodyne, a media consolidation company. This new prestige position allows Jane to quit her horrible job at a travel agency and become a stay-at-home mom.

But the American Dream is about to become a nightmare. Globodyne goes belly up in an Enron-style meltdown, and Globodyne CEO Jack McCallister (Alec Baldwin) leaves his new VP of Communications holding the bag. After months of ceaseless job searching, Dick can’t find another company to give him an executive job. Eventually, because the bank is about to foreclose on his home, he has to take any job he can find, which includes working as a greeter at a giant box store, a Wal-Mart type place named KostMart. Jane even bluffs her way into a job as a Tae Bo instructor.

Neither is good at their new jobs, so Dick, at his wit’s end, suggests that he and Jane start pulling off nighttime robberies. The screwball Bonnie and Clyde eventually have a chance encounter with former Globodyne CFO Frank Bascom (Richard Jenkins), who tells Dick that Jack McCallister siphoned off 400 million dollars from the company before it collapsed. Dick, Jane, and Frank promptly launch a plot to steal Jack’s ill-gotten gains, just as he stole them from Globodyne.

Fun with Dick and Jane is a remake of a 1977 film starring George Segal and Jane Fonda as an upwardly mobile couple who find themselves unemployed and in debt and turn to armed robbery to alleviate their problems. While the original film took place in the post-Nixon malaise of the late mid-1970’s, the new film starring Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni takes place at the turn of the century when the communications and Internet boom of the go-go 90’s hit an awful Wall Street bump and many people found themselves unemployed, in deep debt with mortgage companies, credit card companies, and sometimes the IRS – not to mention having much of their savings and/or personal worth died up in worthless stocks.

The current version actually looks at the Dick and Jane Harper’s situation from two angles. The first is to view the Harper’s disintegration as a satirical comment on materialism. The audience can certainly sympathize with the couple, but at the same time, the Harpers are largely responsible for their situation. They mortgaged their future for an expensive car (a Mercedes), a big home in a “good” neighborhood (the kind where the residents play “keeping up with the Joneses”), and a house full of expensive trinkets, accessories, appliances, and toys, such as a plasma screen TV. Their fall is not only poignant, but it is also quite real. This isn’t some idealized financial fall; people who go deeply into debt for the American dream often fall so low as too literally have nothing – to go from being executives to working lower paying service jobs. In the hands of the capable Jim Carrey and the surprisingly nimble Téa Leoni, the kind of financial “hardship” is actually quite funny to watch.

The second angle or second half of this film is purely a comic caper. Fun with Dick and Jane becomes a screwball, revenge film in which the Harpers gleefully rob various businesses. They even rob an executive (who made fun of Dick) of cash and expensive home furnishings. When Dick plots his revenge against Jack McCallister, the film goes overboard in asking us to suspend disbelief. However, Carrey and company give us such madcap antics that we can forgive the script’s more ridiculous notions.

Director Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) juggles satire with slapstick and pratfalls. He makes an even smarter move by giving Jim Carrey all the space he needs to roam. Carrey is the ultimate class clown, but he is also the consummate actor. Some may not give him enough credit for all that he can do, but in Fun with Dick and Jane, there is both pathos and farce in his performance. Like many of his performances, here, he realizes both the comic horror and monotonous drama of life. He is droll one second, wickedly funny the next, and miserable just a few second after that.

Téa Leoni may never convince anyone that she is a great actress, but she is a superbly capable co-star. Few actors, either male or female, can keep up with Carrey. She does that and brings her character to meaningful life. Too often, actresses allow their characters to be loose appendages to the big male star’s role. Leoni doesn’t go for that, making us believe that this is Jane Harper’s story, too.

Also good in smaller roles are Alec Baldwin and Richard Jenkins. Baldwin does a tart turn as the consummate Southern-born and bred businessman who uses his employees like slaves and then steals their wages. Jenkins is like a gleeful child as Richard Bascom, making the most of his screen time.

I liked the screenplay’s good mix of social satire and ludicrous comedy, though I regret that the entire film couldn’t be a satire. As fun as the revenge portion was, Fun with Dick and Jane was on the way to being an outstanding and dead-on commentary on corporate greed and crass materialism. Still, I enjoyed watching Jim Carrey, Téa Leoni, and their supporting cast make chaotic and zany comedy out of the material they had.

7 of 10
B+

Saturday, December 24, 2005

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"All About the Benjamins" Right On the Money

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 42 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

All About the Benjamins (2002)
Running time: 95 minutes (1 hour, 35 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong violence, pervasive language, and brief sexuality
DIRECTOR: Kevin Bray
WRITERS: Ronald Lang and Ice Cube
PRODUCERS: Matt Alvarez and Ice Cube
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Glen MacPherson
EDITOR: Suzanne Hines

ACTION/CRIME/COMEDY

Starring: Ice Cube, Michael Epps, Tommy Flanagan, Carmen Chaplin, Eva Mendes, Valarie Rae Miller, Anthony Giaimo, Roger Guenveur Smith, Anthony Michael Hall, and Bow Wow

Bucum (Ice Cube) is a Miami-based bail enforcement agent (bounty hunter). Reginald “Reggie” Wright (Michael Epps) is a conman and frequent quarry of Bucum’s. Reggie’s failed to show up for a court date, so Bucum is out for him again. Bucum spots Reggie exiting a small market where he’s just picked up a lottery ticket for his girl, Gina (Eva Mendes). During the chase, Reggie ducks into a van to hide. What he doesn’t know is that the vehicle belongs to the brother/sister criminal team of Julian Ramose (Roger Guenveur Smith) and Ursula (Carmen Chaplin). The siblings are involved in a double-cross/heist of $20 million in diamonds for their boss, Williamson (Tommy Flanagan). They discover Reggie in their van, and though he eludes them, he leaves behind his wallet, which, of course, contains the lottery ticket.

When Reggie and Gina discover that the ticket Reggie lost is the winner of a $60 million jackpot, they convince a reluctant Bucum to help them find Reggie’s wallet and the ticket before he brings Reggie to jail for missing that court date. One thing complicates it: Bucum also wants to find the $20 million in uncut diamonds and bring down Williamson for two reason: for his own reputation and to trump the cops.

All About the Benjamins is simply a very good buddy action movie. It doesn’t have the self-referential coolness of The Last Boy Scout, nor is it the trendsetter that 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon were, but it’s an engaging B-movie crime flick complete with violent hoods, sly conmen, and a rebellious bounty hunter out to get paid even if he has to take his cut off the side

Ice Cube isn’t a great actor (or a very good one for that matter), but he always gets an “A” for effort. He plays that belligerent Bucum as not quite an unstoppable badass, but as more as guy whose smartness “the Man” underestimates. Mike Epps does a neat turn as the conman Reggie who never seems to run out of one-liners, though this is not a good acting effort on his part. He overacts, badly at times, but his comic sensibilities somewhat save the performance. This was Eva Mendes’ first shot as an action movie chick, but even here she shows the excellent comic timing, acting ability, and star quality that earned her some nice supporting roles next to big stars (Denzel Washington in Out of Time and Will Smith in Hitch). Also look for the usually small, but nice appearance by Roger Geunveur Smith.

6 of 10
B

Monday, February 20, 2006

Review: Go Have Fun with Pulp Fiction-Inspired "Go" (Happy B'day, Sarah Polley)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 47 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Go (1999)
Running time: 102 minutes (1 hour, 42 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong drug content, sexuality, language and some violence
DIRECTOR/CINEMATOGRAPHER: Doug Liman
WRITER: John August
PRODUCERS: Matt Freeman Mickey Liddell, and Paul Rosenberg
EDITOR: Stephen Mirrione
COMPOSER: BT and Moby

COMEDY/CRIME/DRAMA

Starring: Sarah Polley, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, Desmond Askew, Timothy Olyphant, William Fichtner, Breckin Meyer, and Taye Diggs

Some have compared it to Pulp Fiction, and Go, a film from Doug Liman (Swingers), certainly bears some similarities to Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning film. Go is alternately a dark, teen comedy, a delirious action movie, a snarky crime caper, and a candy coated Tarantino movie for the late teen/early 20’s set.

On first glance, Go seems to tell the story of the events that happen after a drug deal. The real launching point is simply the changing of work shifts between two young working stiffs at a small grocery store. From there, Go is three interconnected short movies, in which many of the characters from each short movie encounter one another. In that sense, it is similar to Pulp Fiction, but only stylistically and superficially.

In one story, Ronna Martin (Sarah Polley) tries to raise rent money by selling ecstasy to two men (Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf) looking to buy from her co-worker, Simon Baines (Desmond Askew), who normally deals drugs. When Ronna is forced to ditch the drugs, she has to scam Simon’s supplier, a nasty little thug named, Todd (Timothy Olyphant), to whom she now owes some drug money.

Meanwhile, in the second story, Simon tears through Las Vegas with four buds. Simon and one of his pals, Marcus (Taye Diggs), find themselves in an awful mess at a strip club and on the fun from the owners.

In the third story, Adam (Wolf) and Zack (Mohr) find themselves in a predicament over drugs with the police. Their situation becomes more precarious when an undercover officer shows special interests in the two buddies, and the drama doesn’t let up when the two later become involved in a hit and run.

Go is a comedy, although there are times when it seems too dangerous to be funny, but even those tense moments unravel and reveal themselves to be uproarious situations. John August’s script is filled with over the top moments that make sense in a strange way instead of simply being over the top or just too much. It’s outlandish and absurd, but stunningly well put together. The movie plays at being very violent, but it’s mostly cartoonish, as if the film won’t quite acknowledge how painful violence can be. Or maybe, this is just part of the hedonistic life the film portrays. It’s all done in fun, and at the end of the day, all the players get to walk away from their various little “car wrecks,” though maybe an occasional fatal mistake would teach them all a lesson. Well, maybe not. They’d be slacking, doing drugs, and playing with guns the very day after burying a homie who shot himself playing with a gun or overdosing on ecstasy.

I give Liman much credit for directed this very funny film. It’s slick and glossy, but incredibly well executed. On the surface, it might seem like a rave culture version of Pulp Fiction, though it does owe more than a nodding acknowledgement to that film. However, it’s a modern, violent physical comedy where each actor and filmmaker has to hit his marks. Liman plays with incredible timing, and most of the time he gets it right. One misstep, and the film falls apart. Luckily, the film doesn’t begin to shake to pieces until the very end, but up until the closing scenes, Go is near flawless and near perfect. I’ve rarely laughed so hard at something so obviously meant to be eye candy. But Liman’s film is gourmet candy, thoughtfully concocted by a director determined to give his audience a good show. Most Tarantino clones were content simply to copy, whereas Liman and screenwriter John August were determined to give us a lurid taste of pulp fiction made from their own very best recipe.

7 of 10
B+

Review: "Cop Out" Loves the 80s

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 69 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Cop Out (2010)
Running time: 107 minutes (1 hour, 47 minutes)
MPAA – R for pervasive language including sexual references, violence, and brief sexuality
EDITOR/DIRECTOR: Kevin Smith
WRITERS: Robb Cullen and Mark Cullen
PRODUCERS: Polly Cohen Johnsen, Marc Platt, and Michael Tadross
CINEMATOGRAHER: David Klein (D.o.P.)
COMPOSER: Harold Faltermeyer

COMEDY/ACTION/CRIME

Starring: Bruce Will, Tracy Morgan, Seann William Scott, Rashida Jones, Guillermo Diaz, Cory Fernandez, Jason Lee, Kevin Pollack, Adam Brody, Michelle Trachtenberg, Ana de la Reguera, and Sean Cullen

The combination of international box office star, Bruce Willis, outrageous jigaboo comedian, Tracy Morgan, and indie director, Kevin Smith (Clerks.), seems too odd to work. There recent buddy cop movie, Cop Out, however, is funny – surprisingly, shockingly funny.

Cop Out focuses on James “Jimmy” Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan), two longtime NYPD cops who have been partners for nine years. Their investigation of a drug ring goes bad when a bad-ass supplier named Juan Diaz (Cory Fernandez) shoots up a neighborhood and escapes. After getting suspended, Jimmy and Paul end up playing cops again after an eccentric thief named Dave (Seann William Scott) steals a rare, mint-condition baseball card that belongs to Jimmy. The hunt for the card leads them back to Juan Diaz and his older brother, Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz), a merciless, baseball memorabilia-obsessed gangster. Poh Boy will return the card if Jimmy and Paul retrieve a stolen car, but it is what’s inside the car the changes everything.

In a way, Cop Out is an homage or send-up of 1980s buddy cop movies like 48 Hrs. and Lethal Weapon and also cop action comedies like the Beverly Hills Cop franchise. Even the musical score for Cop Out is composed by Harold Faltermeyer, who composed music for the first Beverly Hills Cop film and Top Gun. And Cop Out works… in a sort of off-kilter way. Kevin Smith, whose films are often steeped in pop culture, creates the right mood and squeezes all the right essences and flavors from his cast and from this story until he has a 1980s throwback cop action/comedy that is thoroughly entertaining.

I find Bruce Willis to be so cool, and his resourceful, tough guy screen persona is pitch-perfect to play a cop – even a cop in a peculiar comedy like Cop Out. Tracy Morgan isn’t just another black comedian. His act stays fresh because of his ability to freestyle peculiar and absurd behavior, mannerisms, and dialogue. That’s why he’s more shocking than annoying.

Cop Out’s screenplay does waste a few good characters: the oddly lovable Poh Boy, his delightfully evil brother, Juan Diaz, and the kooky thief Dave. There are some other characters in this story that should have been dropped from the screenplay in order to give this trio more screen time.

Anyway, Cop Out is not just another standard, idiotic, buddy cop movie. The unusual and peculiar pairing of Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, plus a few good supporting characters make this profanity-laden comedy a joy to watch over and over again. I wish for a sequel.

7 of 10
B+

Saturday, August 21, 2010

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Edgar Wright Did Action in Comic "Hot Fuzz"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 132 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux


Hot Fuzz (2007)
Running time: 121 minutes (2 hours, 1 minutes)
MPAA - R for violent content including some graphic images, and language
DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright
WRITERS: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
PRODUCERS: Nira Park, Tim Bevan, and Eric Fellner
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jess Hall (DoP)
EDITOR: Chris Dickens

COMEDY/CRIME/ACTION/MYSTERY

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, Timothy Dalton, Martin Freeman, Paul Freeman, Bill Nighy, Lucy Punch, Anne Reid, Bill Whitelaw, Stuart Wilson, and Edward Woodward

The director/co-writer (Edgar Wright), co-writer/star (Simon Pegg), and co-star/sidekick (Nick Frost) of Shaun of the Dead return in Hot Fuzz, a send up of America cop movies, with a British twist.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), the finest police officer in London, has an arrest record 400% higher than any other officer on the force. Because that makes everyone else look bad, Angel's superiors transfer him to the sleepy, seemingly crime-free village of Sandford. There, he is partnered with the well-meaning but overeager police officer PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), who is also the son of Sandford’s amiable police chief, Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent).

Danny is a huge action movie fan and craves the kind of action he sees in his beloved American action movies – two of his favorites being Bad Boys II and Point Break. Danny is hoping that his new big-city partner might just be a real-life “bad boy,” and that Nick Angel will help him experience the life of gunfights and car chases for which he's longed. While Nick is dismissing Danny's childish fantasies, a series of grisly accidents rocks the village, convincing Nick that Sandford is not the peaceful paradise it at first seems. As the mystery deepens, Nick may be able to make Danny's dreams of explosive, high-octane, car-chasing, gun-fighting, all-out action a reality, but it may come at a high cost for both men.

As comedies go, Hot Fuzz is a pretty special movie, primarily because, outside of comic horror movies, this is one of the few instances that a film uses graphic violence and gore in a way that is so clever and hilarious. In fact, Hot Fuzz is a beautiful send up of the American high octane action flick, and the film is so disarming. It’s not just disarmingly funny, but the entire thing is beguiling in the way droll British humor and dry wit can be. Yet, Hot Fuzz is as relentless funny and subtly manic as any joke-a-minute American gross-out comedy.

Simon Pegg is terrific as the tightly wound professional police service officer, and Nick Frost is brilliant as the sweetly naïve Butterman. They are, however, just the tip of the iceberg in a film made of superb and witty supporting performances constructed from a good script and directing that, for the most part, hits the right notes. The film falters here and there and has several noticeable extended dry stretches, but at its heart, Hot Fuzz is delicious lunacy and outrageousness in the service of a good cause – comedy.

7 of 10
A-

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Review: "Yojimbo" is One of the Great Crime Comedies

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 133 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Yojimbo (1961) – Black & White
Running time: 75 minutes-U.S.
DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa
WRITERS: Ryuzo Kikushima and Akira Kurosawa; from a story by Akira Kurosawa
EDITOR/PRODUCER: Akira Kurosawa
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Kazuo Miyagawa
Academy Award nominee

COMEDY/CRIME with elements of drama

Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yôko Tsukasa, Isuzu Yamada, Daisuke Katô, Seizaburô Kawazu, Takashi Shimura, Hiroshi Tachikawa, Yosuke Natsuki, and Eijirô Tono

Akira Kurosawa’s darkly comic film, Yojimbo, is without a doubt one of the great screen comedies. Despite it’s violent moments, the film is a hilarious tale wherein all the vices and all the things about man that we think of as wrong, are on display: wanton lust, naked greed, blatant envy, crude deception, consistent hypocrisy, murder, rage, and a whole lot more.

In the film, Sanjuro Kuwabatake, (Toshirô Mifune), a crafty ronin (masterless samurai) finds himself in a small village divided by two merchants, who more or less operate criminal gangs. Sanjuro decides that the only way to rid the town of the rivals is to get them to kill each other. Thus, he pretends to work for both sides, feigning indifference and interest in each side’s offer for his service, while they steadily kill each other. Two things complicate Sanjuro’s plan. The gun-slinging son (Tatsuya Nakadai) of one of the merchants arrives in town and, having the lone firearm in the village, easily begins to bump off rivals. The second thing is that Sanjuro frees an imprisoned wife and reunites her family which causes the gunslinger, Unosuke, to closely scrutinize Sanjuro’s role in the town.

Kurosawa’s film is one of the great contributions to cinema, one that so impressed American directors that Yojimbo was the template for many American hit films including the Clint Eastwood western, A Fistful of Dollars. The film is on the surface hilarious, but on a deeper level is a careful examination of motivation, selfishness, and desire or want. Kurosawa also composed the film with brilliant wide shots that encompass a feeling of openness. This method seems to give the story and actors room to breath and to stretch, and that allows the story’s ideas to fully develop.

If I had to point to one thing that stands out about the film (and there are actually many), it is the energetic performances of the cast. They demonstrate such timing and rhythm that the performances are almost like a dance routine. Through voice, facial expressions, and movement, they truly bring Yojimbo to life.

10 of 10

NOTES:
1962 Academy Awards: 1 nomination for “Best Costume Design, Black-and-White” (Yoshiro Muraki)

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