Review: "Due Date" is Good Product

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 28 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux

Due Date (2010)
Running time: 95 minutes (1 hour, 35 minutes)
MPAA – R language, drug use and sexual content
DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips
WRITERS: Alan R. Cohen, Alan Freedland, Adam Sztykiel, and Todd Phillips; from a story by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland
PRODUCERS: Daniel Goldberg and Todd Phillips
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lawrence Sher
EDITOR: Debra Neil-Fisher
COMPOSER: Christophe Beck

COMEDY

Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Jamie Foxx, Juliette Lewis, Danny McBride, and RZA

Due Date is a comedy and road movie from Todd Phillips, the director of The Hangover. It is the story of a high-strung father-to-be forced to hitch a ride with an oddball wannabe actor if he wants to make it to the birth of his first child on time. While it isn’t nearly as funny or as outrageous as The Hangover, Due Date is entertaining and offers some pretty hysterical moments of its own.

Architect Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) is on his way home from Atlanta to Los Angeles when he has an unpleasant encounter with another flyer, aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis), who is also going to L.A. Peter and Ethan’s meeting ends up with Peter being placed on the No Fly List. Desperate to get home for the impending birth of his child, Peter is forced to accept Ethan’s offer to hitch a ride with him and his dog, Sonny, cross-country. Thus begins a road trip to hell – the most agonizing, frustrating, terrifying, and physically painful journey of Peter’s life.

Due Date reminded me of another comedy road movie featuring a mismatched pair, Plains, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), the surprisingly poignant film starring Steve Martin and the late John Candy and directed by the late John Hughes. Due Date does have oddly touching moments, but the film really doesn’t deliver on the talents of the people involved, especially Downey, Galifianakis, and director Todd Phillips. It is a mixed bag. Sometimes, it is an action movie; other times, it is a raunchy comedy, and a few times, the film throws out some emotional moments. Due Date is funny, but for the most part, it just feels like big time Hollywood product. It entertains, delivering with the same reliability of an unspectacular Big Mac. Due Date is just average.

5 of 10
B-

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

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Review: Crazy "Old School" Ultimately Plays it Safe

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 119 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Old School (2003)
Running time: 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes)
MPAA – R for some strong sexual content, nudity and language
DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips
WRITERS: Scot Armstrong and Todd Phillips, from a story by Court Crandall and Scot Armstrong and Todd Phillips
PRODUCERS: Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck, and Todd Phillips
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Mark Irwin (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Michael Jablow

COMEDY

Starring: Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Ellen Pompeo, Juliette Lewis, Leah Remini, Craig Kilborn, Jeremy Piven, Seann William Scott, Matt Walsh, and Artie Lange

When Mitch Martin (Luke Wilson) discovers that his girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) participates in group sex, it shatters his life. Under the guise of helping Mitch, his friends Bernard “Beanie” Campbell (Vince Vaughn) and Frank Ricard (Will Ferrell) hatch an idea to start their own fraternity so that they can relive the wild lives they lost when they got married. Of course, Martin reluctantly allows them to use his new house (conveniently located near a college campus) to stage their hijinks. It might be a bad idea for a number of reasons (and a good idea for a movie), not the least of which is that Mitch has his eyes on Nicole (Ellen Pompeo). Mitch had a high school crush on Nicole; she’s attracted to him, but finds their sorority boy activities immature.

Old School is very funny, and I laughed in spite of how dumb this movie is. It would have been even funnier if the movie hadn’t sold out in the end. The kind of guys that go to see a movie like this want the full raunchiness, but this movie plays it safe. By the end of the film, the horny thirty-somethings all return (for the most part) to their domestic tranquility without a notch on their belts to show for their wild times. I know that a lot of (stupid) people feel that movies should validate the American bourgeois’ value system, but this is a frickin’ comedy, and a lowbrow comedy at that, so all bets are off. Let there be no sacred cows; let the husbands screw around on their wives. This isn’t supposed to be smart and life affirming. If it were supposed to be intelligent, Old School wouldn’t have as a character one of the most tired stereotypes of film comedies set on college campuses, the evil dean of students (Jeremy Piven).

The scene I most anticipated was the one in which Vince Vaughn’s Beanie Campbell, who so wants to have sex with a co-ed, in spite of his alleged devotion to his wife and two young boys, would finally get a young lass alone with him in his room. What does Beanie do when he gets time with a co-ed? He chickens out, although the girl is quite willing. Still, a film like this is supposed to provide the yucks and lots of vicarious thrills. Beanie should have screwed her brains out. In fact, after that scene, the Beanie character loses all the intensity he had early in the film. Even Luke Wilson’s Mitch commits to a “serious relationship” by film’s end (in a very pat and neatly wrapped dénouement).

I recommend Old School for its many moments of awesome hilarity, but I pity the filmmakers for their lack of balls. This could and should have been so much funnier, so much more rebellious, and so much more subversive.

5 of 10
B-

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Review: "The Hangover" is Simply Fantastic

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 4 (of 2009) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Hangover (2009)
Running time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPAA – R for pervasive language, sexual content including nudity, and some drug material
DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips
WRITERS: Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
PRODUCERS: Daniel Goldberg and Todd Phillips
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lawrence Sher
EDITOR: Debra Neil-Fisher
Golden Globe winner

COMEDY/MYSTERY

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Mike Epps, Sasha Barrese, Jeffrey Tambor, Ken Jeong, Rachel Harris, Mike Tyson, Jernard Burks, Rob Riggle, and Cleo King

It may be a cliché in movies and television series to send characters to Las Vegas for a bit of hedonism. Now, it is also a city where families can have fun and where businessmen can get down to business. Still, Las Vegas has long been the go-to place for many pleasure-seeking men.

The new film, The Hangover, from director Todd Phillips (Old School), takes a quartet of middleclass guys to Vegas for a bachelor party. While their plan for an evening of nightmarish debauchery eventually becomes a waking nightmare, their distress and torment are comedy gold for movie audiences.

Two days before his wedding to his bride-to-be, Tracy Garner (Sasha Barrese), Doug Billings (Justin Bartha) and three pals leave Los Angeles and drive to Las Vegas for a blow-out bachelor party that will be so crazy (they hope) they’ll never forget it. Doug’s friends are Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper), a good-looking, junior high school teacher, who puts on that married life is killing him. Dentist Stu Price (Ed Helms) is an uptight dweeb, who is made all the more anxious by his controlling girlfriend, Melissa (Rachel Harris). Melissa treats Stu like a slave, and he has to lie to her about the Vegas trip. Finally, there’s Tracy’s deranged brother, Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis); pudgy, bearded, and dumber than a bag of hammers, Alan may be as dangerous as he is clueless.

After offering a toast to their diabolical plans on the roof of their Caesar’s Palace, the guys head out for an evening of ritualized Vegas fun (gambling, drinking, whoring, etc.). But the next morning, Phil, Stu, and Alan wake up and discover they can’t remember the events of the previous evening. For unknown reasons, they now share their Caesar’s Palace suite with a tiger (in the bathroom) and a six-month-old baby (in the closet). And they can’t find Doug. With no memories of what transpired and only a day before the wedding, the three hung-over men must retrace their hazy steps, follow a handful of clues, and sift through all their bad decisions in order to find Doug and get him back to L.A. in time for his wedding.

In The Hangover, the surprises are everything, and those surprises are the strange people with which our heroes interacted, the shocking places they’ve been, and the outrageous things they’ve done. Some of those specific surprises involve Mike Tyson, a Vegas wedding chapel, and flamboyantly gay Asian gangster (Ken Jeong), and delightful performances given by Heather Graham and Mike Epps in small roles. That’s to say nothing about the riot that is the end-credit montage.

A lot of the fun in this movie is recognizing that the boys, especially Phil, Stu, and Alan, are types as much as they are characters, and that while each often acts as we would expect him to, it’s when they do something out of character that The Hangover hits a high point. Still, it would have been good to have richer character interplay, but there’s isn’t much time for soul searching when all a scene requires is that the character put his face in a hooker’s lap. It’s satisfying that Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis are so good at making these character types at least seem like great characters.

The fun in this movie is getting the surprises, and The Hangover is all about shocking the viewer. Considering that one expects shocking things to happen when four ordinary guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party, the genius of The Hangover is that it finds a way to make the predictable always unpredictable.

8 of 10
A

Friday, June 19, 2009

NOTES:
2010 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Screenplay – Original” (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore)

2010 Golden Globes: 1 win: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy”

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Review: "Borat" is a National Treasure from Another Nation

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 48 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Running time: 84 minutes (1 hour, 24 minutes)
MPAA – R for pervasive strong crude and sexual content including graphic nudity, and language
DIRECTOR: Larry Charles
WRITERS: Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham, and Dan Mazer; from a story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines, and Todd Phillips (based upon a character created by Sacha Baron Cohen)
PRODUCERS: Sacha Baron Cohen and Jay Roach
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Luke Geissbuhler (director of photography) and Anthony Hardwick (director of photography)
EDITORS: Craig Alpert, Peter Teschner, and James Thomas
2007 Academy Awards nominee

COMEDY

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, and Luenell

In the film: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, writer/actor/comedian Sacha Baron Cohen takes one his most popular characters from his HBO comedy series, “Da Ali G Show,” the Kazakhstani reporter Borat, and sends him on a road trip across America. Cohen-as-Borat then engages real Americans in this faux documentary prompting them with seemingly innocent questions and his outrageous (and sometimes boorish) behavior into revealing their worst prejudices and attitudes. Along the way, Borat even runs naked through a hotel.

Borat Sagdiyev (played by Cohen in a role that won him a 2007 Golden Globe) is Kazakhstan’s sixth most famous man and a leading journalist for the State run TV network. Borat wants to travel to the U.S., what he calls “greatest country in the world,” and learn things that might benefit Kazakhstan. Camera and film crew in tow and joined by his cameraman/sidekick, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), Borat lands in New York City and heads south encountering the fruit of American citizenry. However, another quest subsumes Borat’s original purpose for coming to America. He is determined to travel to California where he will find and marry Pamela Anderson.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan lives partially in that esteemed sub-genre of film comedies, the mock documentary or “mockumentary,” the most famous example being This is…Spinal Tap. This is, however, firmly a fake documentary in which the documentary filmmakers mean to fool the subjects of the documentary. As Borat, Cohen is relentless and doesn’t give a sucker an even break when dealing with his clueless American subjects. These people apparently have no shame in displaying their petty bigotries and silly prejudices on camera. Were these people not ashamed to show their ugly sides because they assumed Borat was a just a dumb foreigner and his film would only be seen in another country?

Cohen shrewdly picks his targets, discerning the ones who would make great theatre – an example being the rich, Southern white suburbanites who lived in a neighborhood where one street was named “Succession Lane.” The fraternity boys who appear towards the end of the film are a hoot, and they’re carbon copies of the ones I knew when I attended a major, formerly segregated, Southern state flagship university.

Borat is certainly a lout, and his loutish behavior occasionally grates on the nerves, but the vast majority of the time, his encounters with people lead to double-side-splitting comedy. With Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Sacha Baron Cohen proves once again that he is a genius when it comes to revealing the just plain awful, ugly, vain, and intolerant side of people – a side they’re all too willing to display for the camera. Lovers of movie comedy shouldn’t miss this comic social commentary that is worth watching at least twice.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
2007 Academy Awards: 1 nomination for “Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay” (Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, and Dan Mazer; from a story by Sacha Baron Cohen, Peter Baynham, Anthony Hines, and Todd Phillips)


2007 Golden Globes: 1 win: “Best Actor in a Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy (Sacha Baron Cohen) and 1 nomination: “Best Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy

Wednesday, March 07, 2007