Open Season 2
Boog and Elliot are back for more crazy adventures. After falling head over hooves in love with Giselle, Elliot’s road to the altar takes a slight detour when Mr. Weenie is kidnapped by a group of pampered pets determined to return him to his owners. Boog, Elliot, McSquizzy, Buddy and the rest of ?the woodland creatures launch a full-scale rescue mission for their sausage-shaped friend and soon find themselves in enemy camp: the world of the pets. Led by a toy poodle named Fifi, the pets do not plan to let Mr. Weenie go without a fight. Can a toy poodle REALLY bring down an 900-pound grizzly bear? Will Elliot ever marry Giselle? Find out in Open Season 2.
My Sassy Girl
Loosely based on the 2001 Korean romantic comedy of the same name, My Sassy Girl follows a young couple that was brought together by unusual circumstances. Charlie (Jesse Bradford, Flags of Our Fathers) finds Jordan (Elisha Cuthbert, 24) drunk and passed out in a subway station. Worried that she’ll be harmed, he makes sure she gets home safely. The two have nothing in common. He has a life plan and a cautious approach; she lives moment to moment and literally throws caution to the wind. Like The Lake House–a remake of the Korean movie Siworae–the plot of My Sassy Girl has been changed enough that it’s its own film. While not nearly as charming as the film on which it’s based, it has its winning moments–especially in the final third of the film when it makes sense why this unlikely pair should be together. As Jordan notes, “We have to stay alive, because we have to see how the story ends.” Bradford and Cuthbert lend charm and likability to their roles. While the plot often asks us to believe in them when they’re placed in situations that are completely unbelievable, the actors make us root for them. There is a surprise tear-jerking ending that is highly contrived. Still, you may want to have a tissue or two on hand.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
The third film in the The Mummy series freshens the franchise up by setting the action in China. There, the discovery of an ancient emperor’s elaborate tomb proves a feather in the cap of Alex O’Connell (Luke Ford), a young archaeologist and son of Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, taking over the role from Rachel Weisz). Unfortunately, a curse that turned the emperor (Jet Li) and his army into terra cotta warriors buried for centuries is lifted, and the old guy prepares for world domination by seeking immortality at Shangri La. The O’Connells barely stay a step ahead of him (climbing through the Himalaya mountains with apparent ease), but the action inevitably leads to a showdown between two armies of mummies in a Chinese desert. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor has a lot to offer: a supporting cast that includes the elegant Michelle Yeoh, Russell Wong, and Liam Cunningham, the unexpected appearance of several Yeti, and a climactic battle sequence that is nightmarishly weird but compelling. On the downside, the charm so desperately sought in romantic relationships, as well as comic turns by John Hannah (as Evelyn’s rascal brother), is not only absent but often annoying. Rarely have witty asides in the thick of battle been more unwelcome in a movie. Rob Cohen’s direction is largely crisp if sometimes curious (a fight between Fraser and Jet Li keeps varying in speed for some reason), but his vision of Shangri La, in the Hollywood tradition, is certainly attractive.
Leatherheads
Leatherheads is a sort of two-fisted homage, simultaneously celebrating the early, unstructured days of professional football and the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s. George Clooney stars as “Dodge” Connelly of the Duluth Bulldogs, a wily (if a bit long in the tooth) player whose team goes bankrupt. His solution is to lure a war hero and star of the college-football circuit, Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski from the American version of The Office) to join the team and, through the sheer force of his celebrity, legitimize professional football. Little does Connelly know that Rutherford’s war record is being scrutinized by reporter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) and what she uncovers may undermine the whole scheme. Leatherheads isn’t seamless–at times the screwball flavor feels forced and Zellweger’s performance is labored–but those few awkward elements only emphasize how zippy and fun the rest of the movie is. Clooney also directed and demonstrates some real flair with editing and letting the fringes of the story be as vital as the main plot. Krasinski, with his goofy handsomeness and a streak of Jimmy Stewart charm, shows real promise as a movie star. Though Leatherheads has plenty of broad slapstick (and most of it is pretty funny), the movie’s real comic richness comes out in offhand gestures and sly revelations of character. All in all, it isn’t Preston Sturges (director of classic comedies like The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story), but it’s in his neighborhood, and that’s a pretty wonderful neighborhood to be in.
The House Bunny
“I’m an expert in parties and boys. I’m a Bunny! Men write to me from prison–sometimes in their own blood!” So declares ex-Playboy Bunny Shelley, tossed out of the Mansion by a rival for her advanced age (27–”59 in bunny years,” she’s told). As played by the utterly fearless and appealing Anna Faris, Shelley becomes an unlikely post-feminist heroine, who finds a great use for her not-too-considerable expertise: being sexy. With nowhere else to live, Shelley finds herself as the house mother for a dying sorority, the Zetas, who are the audience for the rallying cry above. And the slightly misfit sisters, though wary, end up giving Shelley a sisterhood she could never have built back at the Grotto. To help build up the sorority, Shelley gives the young women her own peculiar tutorials in charm school–helping them raise their campus profile and recruit new pledges in the process. “When I’m done, every girl on campus will want to pledge Zeta!” Ignore her at your peril, girls. If the formula is a bit predictable, the pace is lively and the cast, headed by the wide-eyed Faris, is aces. American Idol contestant Katharine McPhee is a natural on camera, as is Rumer Willis, daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. The supporting cast includes the capable Colin Hanks and Beverly D’Angelo, and a bit too much screen time for the real-life Hugh Hefner, who maybe should have stayed on the set of The Girls Next Door. Still, Faris channels the cheerful, girly determination of Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods–no surprise since The House Bunny was cowritten by Kirsten Smith, who wrote Legally Blonde. Fans of silly romances, hop to it.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
The feverish Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a very busy sequel that might have looked unhinged in the hands of a less visionary director than Guillermo del Toro. Ron Perlman returns as Hellboy, aka “Red,” the Dark Horse Comics demon-hero with roots in the mythical world but personal ties in the human realm. Still working, as he was in Hellboy, for a secret department of the federal government that deals (as in “Men In Black”) with forces of the fantastic, Red and his colleagues take on a royal elf (Luke Goss) determined to smash a longtime truce between mankind and the forces of magic. Meanwhile, Red’s relationship with girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), who can burst into flames at will, is going through a rocky stage observed by Red’s fishy friend Abe (Doug Jones), himself struck by love in this film. Del Toro brilliantly integrates the ordinary and extraordinary, diving into an extended scene set in a troll market barely hidden behind the façade of typical city streets. He also unleashes a forest monster that devastates an urban neighborhood, but then–interestingly–brings a luminous beauty to the same area as the creature (an “elemental”) succumbs to a terrible death. Del Toro’s art direction proves masterful, too, in a climactic battle set in a clockworks-like stronghold tucked away in rugged Irish landscape. But it’s really the juxtaposition of visual marvels with not-so-unusual relationship issues that gives Hellboy II a certain jaunty appeal hard to find in other superhero movies.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
From the director of Dude, Where’s My Car? comes another crazed tale of two friends on a perilous quest–in this case, to eat burgers at the fast food restaurant White Castle. The pair–repressed Harold (John Cho, Better Luck Tomorrow) and freewheeling Kumar (Kal Penn, Love Don’t Cost a Thing)–get extremely high and set off on the road, only to be sidetracked by skateboarding hooligans, racist cops, an inbred tow truck driver, and Neil Patrick Harris–yes, Doogie Howser, M.D. The humor is all over the map, and it would be nice if there were one female character who wasn’t a caricature, but Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle has a loose, gregarious charm, and the movie’s canniness about the cliches of the buddy-movie genre give it a sneaky subversive feel–just the fact that neither of the heroes is white puts a different spin on just about every circumstance. Surprisingly clever, cheerfully stupid.
The Happening
You’d expect the end of the world to be no day in the park, but in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, a day in the park is where the end begins. One otherwise peaceful summer morning, New Yorkers strolling in Central Park come to a halt in unison, then begin killing themselves by any means at hand. At a high-rise construction site a few blocks over, it’s raining bodies as workers step off girders into space. And all the while, the city is so quiet you can hear the gentle breeze in the trees. That breeze carries a neurotoxin, and what or who put it there (terrorists?) is a question raised periodically as the film unfolds. But the question that really matters is how and whether anybody in the Middle Atlantic states is going to stay alive. The Happening is Shyamalan’s best film since The Sixth Sense, partly because he avoids the kind of egregious misjudgment that derailed The Village and Lady in the Water, but mostly because the whole thing has been structured and imagined to keep faith with the point of view of regular, unheroic folks confronted with a mammoth crisis. Focal characters are a Philadelphia high-school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg, excellent), his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and math-teacher colleague (John Leguizamo), and the latter’s little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez). Instinct says get out of the cities and move west; most of the film takes place in the delicately picturesque Pennsylvania countryside, with menace hovering somewhere in the haze. There are no special effects (apart from a wind machine and some breakaway glass), but the movie manages to be deeply unsettling in the matter-of-factness of its storytelling. Especially effective is its feel for what we might call the surrealism of banality. One warning sign that someone has been infected by the neurotoxin is irrational or erratic speech and behavior, yet Shyamalan has a genius for dialogue that sounds normal and everyday as it’s spoken, yet flies apart grenade-like a second later as its logic (or illogic) sinks in. Then there’s Deschanel’s eye-rolling dodginess about the messages some guy has been leaving on her cellphone. Or the fellow (Frank Collis) who addresses his greenhouse plants as though they were his children–has a stray toxic zephyr wafted his way, or is this just his idea of normal?
Gridiron Gang
In Gridiron Gang, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson once again displays far more cinematic charisma than one could expect from a former professional wrestler. Sean Porter (Johnson, Be Cool), a football player turned juvenile detention counselor, wrestles with a seemingly insolvable problem: The vast majority of young men who leave detention fall right back into crime. Seeking a way to give these not-yet-hardened kids a taste of self-esteem and discipline, Porter persuades his superiors to let him teach the kids football–and then take on high school teams. Though based on a true story (documentary footage over the closing credits reveals that some dialogue was lifted straight from the real Sean Porter’s mouth), Gridiron Gang is pure underdogs-overcome-adversity formula. A formula is not necessarily a bad thing; when executed with skill and commitment, fulfilling a classic story mechanism can be perfectly satisfying, and Gridiron Gang qualifies. But it’s Johnson who carries it through, demonstrating–in the most unlikely of roles–a surprisingly gentle touch. Johnson manages to be manly without overbearing machismo, earning not only respect but empathy.
Good Luck Chuck
In a perfect world, Good Luck Chuck would’ve captured the humor of Superbad and the raunch of the American Pie films. But what we’re left with, instead, is a raunchy film with an anemic storyline. Cursed as a child with a hex that prevents him from finding true love, Charlie “Chuck” Logan (Dane Cook) finds that the women he dates find the men of their dreams immediately after they’ve dumped him. For a guy who enjoys dating beautiful women, it doesn’t seem like such a horrible thing. But then he meets and falls for beautiful and klutzy Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba). Charlie wants to have a meaningful relationship with her, but how can he make her fall in love with him without losing her to some unknown man waiting to sweep her off her feet? Good Luck Chuck isn’t an original movie; Cook and Alba make for an attractive couple that exudes warm chemistry. And Alba proves that while she may be famous for her body, she’s quite adept at physical comedy. Dan Fogler doesn’t fare as well. He has the thankless role of playing Charlie’s obnoxious best friend Stu, a borderline perv plastic surgeon who proudly displays a set of Pamela Anderson’s breast implants in his office (which, coincidentally enough, is located right next door to Charlie’s). The dialogue is crass and the direction is all over the place. Everything is played for laughs, but little actually is very funny in this comedy. This movie actually could’ve used a bit more good luck. And lots more wit.
