Director:Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha
Cast:Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Drew Carey, Jim Broadbent, Amanda Bynes, Jennifer Coolidge, Robin Williams
Release: March 11, 2005
Synopsis: Even in a world populated entirely by mechanical beings Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor) is considered a genius inventor. Rodney dreams of two things, making the world a better place and meeting his idol, the master inventor Bigweld (Brooks). On his journey he encounters Cappy (Halle Berry), a beautiful executive `bot with whom Rodney is instantly smitten, the nefarious corporate tyrant Ratchet (Kinnear) who locks horns with Rodney, and a group of misfit `bots known as the Rusties, led by Fender (Williams) and Piper Pinwheeler (Bynes).

Prognosis: Positive. This one is a rather curious trailer.

There is a lot going on that is wonderful to look at in the background with its intricate widgets and cogs and spokes and industrial machinery that seems to be clicking or whirring but in the foreground my attention turns to annoyance as I get the animated voice of Robin Williams. It wouldn’t be so bad if this was his first time but Williams sounds just like every other character he’s ever done that requires him to be slightly “nutty.” Call this one ALADDIN, part however many times you think he’s done this shtick before.

But, there are great things going on here.

The trailer on the whole, though, makes me think that kids are really going to enjoy the spectacle of it all and, judging by the box office that SHARK TALE did, kids could care less about whether something looks like it was manufactured in an animation studio where neon is considered a primary color or where story is just an inconsequential part of the movie. The animation and yarn here, though, seems rather good.

We first get a look at our protagonist, voiced by Ewan McGregor, as someone who tries to be inventive. In much the same way that the dad in GREMLINS liked to invent wacky gadgets that didn’t seem to work right, this kid seems to get punted from the house after a few don’t do so well. I’m not sure the folks at Fox are actually going to show the kid actually tossed on his ass or whether he’s going to leave on his own but I think the former would be a better move as it’ll teach kids early on in life that you just can’t mooch off your parents forever; let this movie serve as a warning tale to those little Lunchable swilling, fruit punch chugging, scheming little ankle biters.

The kid gets out of the house and leaves for the big city. Like I’ve said before, the backgrounds are busy with animation. It really is fun to watch. Ewan tries to make his way through the city, a task that somehow gets him hooked up with Robin Williams, and that’s where there are hints that Robin is channeling the stock comedic character that is just inherent in any of these “crazy” people he plays. How many times can one person do the same character without someone decrying “Bullshiat!”? Limitless I guess is the number I would say since no one else cares. I do have to say, though, it is something that the kids will like and eat up like mud pies and boogers without even questioning it; they just enjoy that voice and, if it were up to them, Robin’s crazy character would be in every single movie out there. The kids will even howl at the “back of my hand” joke that will no doubt play to their sense of irony.

As we progress further we see that Robin needs to upgrade his body or be fed to the chop shop as his current state of physical being has him dropping parts every which way off his body. The chop shop, I should mention, looks about as foreboding as anything I could think of for a villainous counterbalance to the happy characters we’ve seen so far. Amanda Bynes makes an appearance as someone who is fighting a wave of upgrade fever as it seems that old robots are being sent to be smelted and, without a new body, one loses the ability to live any longer. So really as we get further into this movie there really is a villainous side to it, which I like, but there’s also some genuine sense of urgency with regard to the story being told. Robots are being killed off at a quick clip if the trailer is to be believed and any story that can hint that mass murder is happening on a grandiose scale the better off those little tykes will be when we have to explain what happens in the real world like Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda, and behind the dumpster at 7-11.

What I appreciate, though, about this trailer compared to the old one that ran is that this trailer doesn’t accentuate the whole film’s running time with Robin Williams. This is really an ensemble piece, I mean just look at the names associated with this film, but there really seems to be a balance of Williams’ kookiness with the actual story of this film which seems to be about one group of proletariats’ fight against big, fat, corporate interests. The kids will like it because it just looks cool and it’ll do millions at the box office. If the film is able to work in a fart joke or two you can probably be assured of at least 10 million more dollars can be added to the bottom line. Kids are easy creatures to figure out.

Director: John Schultz
Cast: Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps, Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall, Eric Stoltz, John Leguizamo, Jon Polito
Release: July 15, 2005
Synopsis: Working class New York bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) is always coming up with get-rich-quick schemes for him and his best friend, Ed Norton (Epps), who’s always around to help him get in (and out of) trouble.

Prognosis: Positive. This movie is perfectly pitched for its demographic.

Young people are into Cedric the Entertainer (and I henceforth am not going to use the last part of his “name” from this point forward) but, obviously, there are going to be more than a few people who have no idea who or what The Honeymooners were all about when this movie drops.

Cedric, quite honestly, makes a great Ralph Kramden. He is inept in his own way and the trailer is good at showing how this translates into a warped sense of his own abilities as a person and I seriously believe his portrayal as bus driver; in this day and age, and especially when I lived in downtown Chicago, I’ve seen guys like this. As the trailer opens and he’s jamming out as if he’s in his own car and forgetting the fact that he’s behind the wheel of a city bus is visually amusing. Then, we get to hear him talk. To listen to him rant about the man who invented the thong you get the idea rather quickly that the man’s mind runs on a one way track and this is just who he’s going to be. This kind of writing could smell dangerously pungent for the average moviegoer but the trailer movies quickly from scene to scene and I appreciate its speed with which it does it. Comedies have to be based on something amusing and dimwittedness is not an entirely lame premise.

We next get a look at his equally inept, if not to a greater degree, buddy Norton. There is something about Mike Epps that I find more amusing in his style of comedy than I do in Cedric. I am not sure if it is in Mike’s cadence or his physicality as he moves but to hear him talk about how he’s a sanitation engineer, comparing his position to a specialist like a brain surgeon or even “Spider-Man,” is funny because he seems so serious about it.

Now, Gabrielle Union, his wife, seems like an unlikely choice. I am not sure where in the screenwriter’s playbook it stipulates that if you’re chunky or husky that you’re automatically entitled to a hot looking chick as a girlfriend/wife, but it is the movies so what the hell do I know. I am sure, however, that the mother-in-law character seems to be the one in the right as she makes her distain for Cedric more than abundantly clear. I believe that more than I do that Gabrielle would end up with a dude like Ralph. Again, it is the movies after all.

So, Norton and Ralph are trying to get rich quick. A majority of the trailer is spent showing how these guys plot and scheme to get to financial freedom and a couple of the bits that are shown how they do it (trying to race the family pet at the dog track, calling up an old date and asking her to pay part of her bill back, just to name a couple) are funny enough that I can see how some would actually see this as a greater indication for how good the rest of the film is going to be. This seems to be a comedy of small set pieces.

To assume that the film is going to be homogenously funny based on a couple of laughs might be a wrong assumption to make, a movie based on a single motivation of the principal characters like this one hardly ever makes for a pleasurable 90 minutes of comedy, but I do have to commend the makers of this trailer for making a breezy enough advertisement for a film based on an old television show.

Also, and I have to make mention of this, in the last moment of this trailer as Ralph and Norton hang precariously on the side of a building, holding onto life by their fingers, Norton makes a confession to Ralph that really sets the tone for the camaraderie these two guys have. Too often you get trailer makers trying to be witty or glib as they end a trailer but the punch line here is actually enough that it’s slightly ribald and has a certain edge to it.

I wasn’t expecting much, believe me, going into this trailer but after I dote upon its strengths versus its weaknesses I actually feel good in asserting it had more of the former than it did the latter.

Director: Lawrence Guterman
Cast: Jamie Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Bob Hoskins, Traylor Howard
Release: February 18, 2005
Synopsis: A decade after the legendary Mask of Loki wreaked havoc on the life of an unsuspecting adult, the magical mask finds its way into the possession of a child in the family comedy Son of the Mask. When cartoonist Tim Avery’s (Jamie Kennedy) new son is born with the Mask’s spectacular powers – to the dismay of the family’s jealous dog – it turns the household upside down and launches a kid versus canine battle for control of the Mask. But unbeknownst to them all, Loki has come looking for his mask and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it back.

Prognosis: Negative. Ok, people, informal poll: Who here enjoyed THE MASK? No, not the one with Sam Elliot and Cher about the kid with the peanut head but that other one that exposed, but really not enough wink wink nudge nudge, the talent of Cameron Diaz and that of Jim Carrey? Yeah, me too. It was one of those you just remember and dote on every now and then, especially if you were one of those a-holes who went around endlessly sound-biting every catchphrase from the film.

That’s why it makes me wince with every moment that this trailer goes on and on. I’ve really only seen a handful of really bad trailers since my start here in the Park and this, I think, qualifies as the very worst one.

So, since that’s been said, I’m not going to trounce every little thing and misstep this trailer takes. I will a little, but it’s better if we can’t learn why no one will want to see this hunk of cinematic crap.

The trailer opens up with that little aqua treasure chest from the first film. That’s actually good to start off with because it visually reminds people of the original.

Next, the little dog from the first film somehow gets a hold of the mask as it beaches itself in a small creek. Again, visual recognition seems to the key order of the day.

We now see the little pooch running back to a house that seems like it was done over by Dr. Seuss and LeRoy Neiman. It’s not until later that night when the dog sticks his head in the mask, turning him into the Tex Avery version of the little guy we saw years ago. Ok, it’s cute, kids will like that. So far, really, this isn’t too terrible.

Then, we get Alan Cumming, dressed to the 9’s as Loki but looking like an extra from the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE production in the 80’s (I think he’s playing Transvestitor) and I start to worry.

Next shot is of a mother and baby inside the baby’s room but that’s no baby. It’s a freak. A CGI freak and it looks like a freshman year Computer Design Basics 101 mid-term. Then, as if you didn’t know the baby wasn’t real and couldn’t inflate its own head like it does, the next shot is of a real baby and we are somehow supposed to…believe…they’re…the…same…kid. The fun doesn’t stop as Jamie Kennedy talks to the real baby, trying to get it to say daddy, but it looks at him and says “Mother” in what is perhaps the most masculine voice I’ve ever heard in animation or in life.

From there, friends, this rollercoaster is on its way down with nowhere to go after that.

The kid morphs, again, into weird CGI mode literally bouncing off walls and looking like one of those creepy kids from POLAR EXPRESS.

Alan Cumming gets back into his part as Loki, demanding the mask back, looking like something Janet Jackson was wearing last year at the Super Bowl, and it just doesn’t make any sense. Much like how in the next scene the dog is shown trying to get the baby for some nefarious reason; it’s all green faced because it’s wearing the mask but the baby is able to do weird things as well and I’m just confused.

Kennedy gets the mask at one point, as you could’ve already guessed, he apes and cribs from Carrey’s mannerisms in a way that’s not flattering but really more like flattening. This whole trailer, especially at the end with another look at the freak child, has a sheen of awfulness about it and it pains me to know that this will be released into the world, like a viral infection.

Director: Dave McKean
Cast: Stephanie Leonidas, Gina McKee, Rob Brydon, Jason Barry, Dora Bryan
Release:January 25, 2005 (Sundance)
Synopsis: MirrorMask centers on Helena, a 15 year old girl in a family of circus entertainers, who often wishes she could run off and join real life. After a fight with her parents about her future plans, her mother falls quite ill and Helena is convinced that it is all her fault. On the eve of her mother’s major surgery, she dreams that she is in a strange world with two opposing queens, bizarre creatures, and masked inhabitants. All is not well in this new world – the white queen has fallen ill and can only be restored by the MirrorMask, and it’s up to Helena to find it. But as her adventures continue, she begins to wonder whether she’s in a dream, or something far more sinister.

Prognosis: Positive. I’m a Jim Henson fan.

Years of appreciation for the Muppet Show and Sesame Street will do that for a kid. Also, and this fact, THE MUPPET MOVIE was actually the first theatrical film I ever went to. I was a little enough scamp that I remember actually feeling panicked when the lights went out. Were they supposed to do that? I hadn’t a clue but it freaked me out. So, it’s as Gaiman’s MIRRORMASK opens that I’m feeling hopeful if nothing else that this may be something the kids may enjoy. Well, maybe, if you’re the kind of parent who lets their kids smoke a fat spliff after a rough day at kindergarten.

The opening scene is dark, foreboding, oozing trepidation and has some rather trippy imagery. Nonsensical would be the word I would choose. It looks like a Tim Burton amusement park and I’m not disappointed with that estimation either.

A big giant eyeball sits on a spider’s body as a woman, who is only heard and not seen, says she doesn’t know where she is. As far as I can gather it appears to be an Alice in Wonderland kind of situation. There are freakish animals and an equally freakish vibe running rampant all over this place. There is an odd catlike animal that has a humanoid face, the sets appear to have been used in SKY CAPTAIN (yes, I know everything was CGI in that movie which is the point), and the action that seems to be happening in this thing is fluid in ways that make you stare, wondering what acid was dropped to think this stuff up. It really is amazing.

The one gripe I have, a reservation really, as this trailer unfolds is the girl who finally appears on camera. She looks a little too out-of-place. The creatures around her appear to be more appropriate to the setting than she does. Her movements are a little wooden, her expressions slightly unbelievable. Though, to her credit, she does show flickers of wonderment in a few cut-scenes. What’s more is not only does the music fit precisely to the kinetic visual style, but there seems to be a mixed media approach to the presentation. Sets seem to be art projects, like a David Mack comic book, with splashes of precise detail and blatant absurdity all meshed together in one moving picture.

From animation to live action to CGI to print work there seems a lot to keep the eyes occupied. I’ve never been one to get into what Neal Gaiman was ever doing in comic books. Death seemed to be for fans of Tori Amos and for girls who wanted to dress up in white pancake with black lip liner and 1602 seemed like a series that was really supposed to be good but instead kind of felt like a forced reality where the Marvel universe was just transposed over this fake kind of time. I was not pleased.

Here, though, there is something I really want to see and I hope it can deliver on its tease.

Director: Mike Bigelow
Cast: Rob Schneider, Eddie Griffin
Release: August 12, 2005
Synopsis: In Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Rob Schneider is seduced back to his unlikely pleasure-for-pay profession, when his former pimp T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) is implicated in the murders of Europe’s Greatest Gigolos. Deuce must go back to work in order to clear his good friend’s name. Along the way, Deuce must compete against the powerful European Union of Prosti-dudes and court another bevy of abnormal female clients including the beautiful Eva, who suffers from acute obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Prognosis: Positive. It pains me to a great extent to admit I liked the first film.

It was one I really went in with bad feelings for and left thinking it wasn’t as painful as it should have been. Rob can definitely carry a film, no question, but there should be some serious things in place to minimize not only the cost of producing a film like his but projecting how much it needs to make in order for it to be considered a success. Obviously, what Rob is able to do is bring X number of people on average to see his films. The guy can bring in fans, and his brand of comedy is not exactly what I like, but I can see how many young males gravitate to it. It’s part slapstick part freak factor. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the way he expresses his comedy.

The opening to this trailer is great. You have opera playing in the background to get you in the European mood, there is the shot of the old European buildings and alleyways, but when you see a woman standing inside a window display only wearing her bra and panties it’s a homerun to the sect of boys who know we are being shown Amsterdam.

We get more chicks to oogle at, definitely not a selling point for any feminista in the audience, but Rob then appears in one window in his boxers as he pulls up his pants, obviously contrasting to those things that one does want to see naked in Amsterdam. It’s not high comedy but it’ll do.

Eddie Griffin is back as Rob’s pimp of sorts and he is in high octane loudmouth assery as he explains, loudly, in a restaurant that Holland was the place where chicken and waffles were created and that black people all over the world will be forever grateful for that. Rob then mentions how the Dutch also started the slave trade. Eddie’s quick bon mot to this revelation, to me, is funny.

“New Clients”

Ok, it’s real hit or miss with some of the freaks he is going to get paired up with this time. There is the tall woman (wasn’t she in the first one), a cute one with wicked awful teeth, and one with a nose that seems straight out of Pinocchio. Also, there’s even a cat who grabs Eddie’s wang and doesn’t let go which, I guess, is still a funny gag to some.

Green Day’s “American Idiot,” last heard in the WEDDING CRASHERS trailer, plays through this thing and because that song has some connection to Rob’s ugly American personality, in more ways than just one, the music is oddly apropos.

I do have to say that one woman, in particular, takes the take for making me laugh the most. Rob offers wine to a woman he is entertaining for the evening. She takes a big slurp and, as she does, you immediately notice the woman has had a tracheotomy. Your brain then makes the connection that the spray of wine that douses Rob as he sits there is coming right from that poor woman’s throat and, to add a little somethin’ somethin’, Rob leaps up and tries to plug the leak. I cringed and laughed at the same time.

It takes a dip at the end of the gag when he says “check please,” a device not unlike the annoying record scratch to connote some kind of shift in behavior, but redeems itself quickly as trach girl belches and a line of wine shoots Rob in the face. Again, cringe and giggles.

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