Director: Michael Cuesta
Cast: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Tracy Morgan
Release: July 5, 2006
Synopsis: A wannabe dad (Shawn Wayans) mistakes a vertically challenged criminal on the lam (Marlon Wayans) as his newly adopted son.

Prognosis: Negative. So, on my way to see ICE AGE 2 with the fam I saw the lobby display for LITTLE MAN. I’m no expert and I don’t purport to know such things but the line on the standee proclaiming this new film is from the same dudes who brought us WHITE CHICKS is not one I would choose to use willingly, publicly.

I had the sharp misfortune of watching a part of WHITE CHICKS and I am positive you do not want people to know you’re the masterminds behind that movie. Absolutely positive.

Keenen Ivory Wayans, a true comedic talent who brought us I’M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA and In Living Color when it didn’t suck so much, is the guy behind the directorial lens and I don’t see any mention of this guy’s work which is a little disappointing. That said, though, this movie disturbs me a little.

When we start out the Voiceover Guy talks about a world of crime and for some reason I guess the phrase “world of crime” means being shown a static shot of a prison cell. I don’t know what one has to do with the other but it’s odd. Next, we get Marlon Wayans, a really solid actor when placed into a film like REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, starring in a weird amalgam of a kid and midget. I don’t think I can overstate that it looks weird, really weird.

Tracy Morgan comes in to help play the straight man in the beginning of this trailer as Morgan helps to boost a car that already has a Denver Boot attached to it. Ha ha, very funny, I know, but Marlon tries to play up this whole ruse as best he can, him being this mutant midget of sorts. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be freaked out by this or that we’re supposed to take it at face value but when Tracy and Marlon go into a jewelry store to boost a diamond, with Marlon being transported via a duffel bag, I’m not sure whether to be insulted that we’re supposed to believe this or think it’s hilarious that this is going on.

I’m honestly torn because some part of me is laughing on the inside while another part of me is glued to the screen as I try to figure out why this looks so freaky.

Long story very short, the guys have to recover the very same diamond Marlon stole just a few moments ago as Marlon ditched it in some woman’s bag. Sooooo…Marlon is placed in a basket and pretends to be a baby to infiltrate the household.

I’m still reeling as I try and come to terms with my sense of humor on this one. Supposing that this is the accepted norm I am at least comforted by comedian Fred Stoller’s comments that the kid is adorable in a, “National Geographic sort of way.”

The trailer, for the most part, hits the notes that it has to in order to sell this as a goofy comedy: you’ve got physical humor as you have Shawn and Marlon drinking warm milk only to discover it’s breast milk; you’ve got the obligatory nut shot when Marlon swings for the fences during a game of Wiffle Ball; you’ve got about as close as you’re going to get with a fart joke as there is a struggle to apply a rectal thermometer to Marlon; and there’s the whole wife/mistaken identity situation that has been done before in other flicks and has been rehashed here for our pleasure.

I don’t think I am as willing to break bad on this flick as I am sure that I’m not going to see it. It doesn’t look like my kind of funny but, for some, this might be just the right thing for people come July.

Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Release: August 11, 2006
Synopsis: Director Oliver Stone tells the true story of the heroic survival and rescue of two Port Authority policemen – John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno – who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after they went in to help people escape. The film also follows their families as they try to find out what happened to them, as well as the rescuers who found them in the debris field and pulled them out. Their story shows how the best in people rose above the tragic events of that day.

Prognosis: Negative. I was sitting in grade school, math class, when one of the octogenarians who passed for a comprehensive disseminator of information to our nation’s youth busted into our discussion of fractions to say the Challenger had blown up. Without the Internets in 1986 I had no way of really contextualizing what that moment meant until I went home and had it replayed for me later that day. Fast forward to 2001 and I was just getting into my lat routine in the very tiny country club workout room when the singular television in this 20’ x 20’ space filled with the announcement that some ‘tard had flown his tiny prop plane into the WTC. The news chopper CNN was using showed the image and, honestly, on television, it didn’t look bad. Economies of scale, I guess. It wasn’t until a few more minutes before the scope of what happened was realized: I watched the fast moving second plane slam into the side of the other WTC.

Is it too soon? Do we really need this movie? Can you really make an honest movie that doesn’t feel fabricated or false?

All these questions are valid but I think this is really a matter of whether this movie can be made well. If you can be respectful of the material, more power to Oliver and Co. The trailer gets some of the things right while, I think, in some areas plays too heavy on the schmaltz.

The opening is damn near requisite: you’ve got to have everyone waking up to a Folgers morning, everything crisp and in place. You’ve got the WTC delicately shown in the way way back in a shot of the New York skyline, you’ve got Nic Cage kissing his wife (Schmaltzy Moment # 1) while it’s still dark out, in their bed. I don’t about the rest of you married dudes but I usually don’t get a smiling wife first thing in the morning when I leave for work; I usually have to slide out of my bed like a ninja so I don’t wake her and am usually pushed away for a kiss in the morning because of my dragon breath.

I like that the voiceover for roll call at the NYPD is Nic doing his best to affect an accent that seems trapped between Brooklyn and The Jerky Boys. Kudos to the use of a fast moving shadow and the sound of a jet plane to establish the effect of how many would’ve come by the experience of what happened this day; the ZOOLANDER billboard in the background of one of the shots is oddly memorable.

We’ve already got the drama cranked up to a Lifetime Television level when Nic really pushes the moment as he and another popo are on their way to the WTC, Nic saying, “We’re prepared for everything (dramatic pause) Not this (another dramatic pause) not for something this size…There’s no plan…”

The violins are threatening to turn this trailer into something else besides a promotion for a movie and as Nic, at ground zero, asks for volunteers to go evacuate people the moment seems stuck as no one wants to volunteer and you’ve got a real cheesy thing happening when one guy does it and declares that he’ll do so and then another. Seems fabricated, not really in the realm of verisimilitude.

Cue Nic and a slo-mo moment as he yells “Run!” in that sort of John Rambo lip thing where it tries to be full of impact but looks like someone’s trying hard to evoke emotion out of me.

You’ve got Maria Bello sniffing the sheets of where her husband once slept (SM #2), you’ve got slo-mo of a mother hugging her daughter (SM #3) , you’ve got one of the trapped popo’s involved in a flashback with Maggie Gyllenhall as he’s spooning her and then as he’s writing I [heart] U on a piece of scrap paper (SM #4) and, again, what is being sold? Is it the idea of a dramatic piece or is it a truthful rendering of the events that transpired? I’m not quite sure but the marketing is all over the place on this and the tag line that “The world saw evil that day…Two men saw something else” is enough to make me scratch my head like an ape, wondering what in the hell they’re talking about.

If I was the teacher I would give it back and ask Oliver to work on it some more and give it back to me by next Monday because, as it stands, this is just not a very compelling trailer.

Director: Sam Fell, David Bowers
Cast: Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, Simon Callow, Shane Richie, Geoffrey Palmer, Jean Reno, Douglas Weston
Release: November 3, 2006
Synopsis: Roddy is a decidedly upper-crust “society rat” who makes his home in a posh Kensington flat, complete with two hamster butlers named Gilbert and Sullivan. When a common sewer rat named Syd comes spewing out of the sink and decides he’s hit the jackpot, Roddy schemes to rid himself of the pest by luring him into the “whirlpool.” Syd may be an ignorant slob, but he’s no fool, so it is Roddy who winds up being flushed away into the bustling sewer world of Ratropolis. There Roddy meets Rita, an enterprising scavenger who works the sewers in her faithful boat, the Jammy Dodger. Roddy immediately wants out, or rather, up; Rita wants to be paid for her trouble; and, speaking of trouble, the villainous Toad—who royally despises all rodents—wants them iced…literally. The Toad dispatches his two hapless hench-rats, Spike and Whitey, to get the job done. When they fail, the Toad has no choice but to send to France for his cousin—that dreaded mercenary, Le Frog.

Prognosis: Negative. I’m just not feeling this.

I don’t know why I have such an aversion to this trailer but I don’t have a great affinity for rodents, not really endearing themselves to great connotations in the mind, and the trailer doesn’t grab your attention. It sort of meanders, plods and expects to just ease its way into establishing the premise but that’s not really good when it’s kids you want to hook. Sure, you’re going to get these little rugrats to come out en masse but if you can generate enough buzz what studio wouldn’t want more to come out and be repeat viewers?

When we begin I’m at a loss to really feel excited. Sure, Dreamworks put out that crap flick MADAGASCAR, did great guns with WALLACE AND GROMIT, put out tripe in SHARKTALE, has done well for itself with OVER THE HEDGE but for all the great animated films they’ve put out they’ve been accompanied by solid trailers; they excite when they should, they get in get out and get on with it and they leave you thinking that even though you’re an adult you would like to see that.

I don’t get that here.

I am confounded as to why we start so damn slow. Yes, we have to establish that this rodent gets the rule of the roost but when I am rapping my fingers a third a way into this preview because I am wondering why I’m watching a rat play polo, have a bath and dress himself in a tuxedo that’s not a good thing.

What is a good thing, though, that I can say is when Syd, the dirty mischief maker of the rat-a-tat-tat duo, appears I am pleased because this where we get the first notion that this is a movie for kids: we get some spirited belching. A lot of belching. A lot. Not only do we get sound effects but we get a green puff of belch with every booming punch into the sound field.

The toilet humor keeps going, the very things that kids and adults can agree upon, with our uppity rat trying to flush Syd down the pipes under the rouse of the Porcelain God being a fandangled Jacuzzi of sorts and ends up in a place called, appropriately enough, Ratropolis.

One of the things that confound me is that this is supposed to be a trailer, not a teaser. The crux of what seems to be my biggest complaint of all is that our well-to-do rat ends up coming down into this place that looks like a mash-up of Times Square and Piccadilly Circus but we don’t get any context of this new land. This rat even lands in the “vehicle” of who, ostensibly, is a girl rat who will probably be some kind of love interest but no one says anything for the rest of the trailer.

There has got to be more here but I cannot explain why we’re not shown more than we are. Yes, this film is not coming out until the end of this year but I’ve been teased better than I’ve been trailer-ed in this advertisement.

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