?>

Features
Interviews
Columns
Podcasts
Shopping Guides
Production Blogs
Contests
Message Board
RSS Feed
Contact Us
Archives

 

E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | By Christopher Stipp

June 2, 2006

Revenge of The Ratner

Um, yeah, MySpace. Just go there. Go.

So…(clasps hands together once as the sound echoes through the Internet)…120 million.

I won’t begrudge Ratner.

The ‘tard put up a hell of a take at the box office and I think everyone here, including myself, owe the guy a huzzah with a Coke and a smile. I wasn’t one of the people who added to the final number from this weekend; like I mentioned many times before I just wasn’t “hyped” over making sure I saw it opening weekend like I was for the other two installments. It was an odd feeling, to be sure, that the years I spent agonizing over when the actual X-Men movie was going to be made in 1988, following the film’s progression in monthly issues of the local comic book ‘zine at the time before the age of online communities or Wizard, that I really didn’t care about this movie.

Something was missing from this third flick and it might have had something to do, first off, with the wretched looking cast members who weren’t already established (Where in the hell did that porcupine boy come from, was it during Kirby’s tenure at the House of Ideas? Or that chick with the tribal marks on her face, some Mike Tyson femme facsimile?) , the notion that Ratner felt it was a’ight to put his own spin on things by writing his way through his own envisioning of the X-world or it could have even been Fox’s own undoing by demanding whoever was going to make this movie that they hit a release date from the word “Go.” Can you rush a great movie? Not in the eyes of Fox’s accounting department.

By the sheer fact that this movie made lots of money it has legitimized any and all factors that many fanboys screamed about, this one included. Like a president who doesn’t care about your civil liberties the population has spoken with their wallets and have said yes to the machinations of every deadline and decision that was made in this film’s name.

Good for Ratner. I’m here to say that the guy did everything he was supposed to do, created a world all his own by adding new mutants to further his ideas of how this narrative should’ve gone and has made his corporate overlords very happy, regardless of how much he was covering his bases when he mentioned that he knew he was coming late to the game but he was going to do the best he could with what he was given.

I’m glad the movie did well. I may try and actually pay, with my own money, to see this movie but with the beating the movie has taken from peers who I trust I am not sure what to make of a flick that’s been co-opted for the benefit of box office boffo.

Every business has a right to make as much money as it can, where it can so I am happy that Fox can keep on keeping on with its successful business model of financially growing a successful franchise. This is show business after all, kids. Win at any price or any cost, regardless of what a few of us think.

Kudos and huzzah.

In other news, I just could not leave this week without mentioning the passing of Paul Gleason.

Those of you like myself who really came into movies by way of John Hughes came upon Gleason as one of those dudes who really, really, fit the role they were cast in. For all intents and purposes Paul was just a bad ass dude that you loved to hate in the BREAKFAST CLUB. Paul WAS the embodiment, the symbolism, if you will, for those teachers in high school who just lost the idea of what it meant to be a teenager somewhere between their graduation into the real world and the end of their first marriage.

Myself?

I am, and will always be, a stone cold champion of Paul’s work in DIE HARD. Say what you will about Alan Rickman or that ballerina guy who eventually ate it at the end, but it was Paul’s role as Dwayne T. Robinson of the LAPD that really glued all these individual performances together like a canister of Elmer’s paste.

I’m not much to dwell on how crushing this loss is to film’s greatest A-holes but I dare any of you to try and put someone else in these parts and tell me that they would’ve been just as memorable.

Godspeed, Dwayne T. Robinson.

Richard Vernon: Well, well. Here we are. You have exactly eight hours and fifty-four minutes to think about why you’re here. You may not talk, you will not move from these seats. Any questions?
John Bender: Yeah. Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?
Dwayne T. Robinson: We don’t know shit, Powell. If there’s hostages in there, how come no one’s come to us with ransom demands? If there’s terrorists in there, where’s their list of demands? All we know is that whoever shot your car up is probably the same silly sonofabitch you’ve been talking to on that radio.
Sergeant Al Powell: Excuse me sir. But what about the body that fell out the window?
Dwayne T. Robinson: Well who knows? Maybe some stockbroker, got depressed.

Sergeant Al Powell: In fact, I think he’s a cop. Maybe not LAPD, but he’s definitely a badge.
Dwayne T. Robinson: How do you know that?
Sergeant Al Powell: A hunch, things he said. Like being able to spot a phony ID.
Dwayne T. Robinson: Jesus Christ, Powell, he could be a fucking bartender for all we know.


LITTLE MAN (2006) 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.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

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.


WORLD TRADE CENTER (2006) 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.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

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.


FLUSHED AWAY(2006) 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.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

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.


YOU, ME AND DUPREE(2006) Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast: Owen Wilson, Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson, Michael Douglas
Release: July 14, 2006
Synopsis: The story of a newlywed couple (Hudson, Dillon) whose relationship problems boil over when the groom’s unemployed best man, Dupree (Wilson), moves in with them for a brief period and seems to have no intention of leaving.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Positive. So, I can relate to this.

Having a tenuous grasp on a job is just commonplace here where I live in the Southwest. Not only do I have to contend that since I live in a state that says either myself or my employer can terminate employment at any time for any reason (“Did I wear too much Aqua Velva today?” “Is the color of my Swatch watch going to be the beginning of the end for me?) I had a boss who once called me at home after the birth of my second child not only asking where I was but, after calling in to reiterate what was common knowledge, was given a lecture that even though my newborn was fragile his business interests were fragile and if I wanted a job I would recognize that. I didn’t stay there much longer. It is this reason that I can see why Owen “The Buttercup Stallion” Wilson would find himself in such a dire situation after being canned to attend Matt Dillion’s wedding. I don’t think I’d fall that fast, that quick, but this looks like a fun slip n’ slide ride at the theater.

The trailer, initially, goes through the motions of setting up the premise of the flick. Voiceover Guy does his due diligence in really hamming it up when we see the lush Hawaiian setting that is Matt Dillion and Kate “Overreact To Act” Hudson’s nuptials. You’ve got the word “perfect” tossed around here, there and everywhere before you almost feel you want to shout “I got it already!” before it moves on to establishing how Owen fits into this “perfect” situation.

Now, I wasn’t that plussed with STARSKY AND HUTCH and was marginally satisfied with his performance in THE WEDDING CRASHERS (It was really Vince’s movie to steal) so I am hopeful when Owen recounts what has happened to him since being canned for going to his buddy’s wedding. His protest to Dillion when asked if he’s living in his car is comedically rendered when he says he has a 10 speed and then gets hit by a car.

I think it’s important to state, however, that after we’re rushed to the moment when Hudson is told that Wilson is going to move into their house for a few nights, knowing full well that this wouldn’t be a movie if it were just for a few nights, it is Wilson’s holding of a mounted moose head as he thanks her which I think is a nice, humorous touch.

It is Wilson’s movie, though, as Dillion seems to just be the straight man in this vehicle and the gags keep coming when Owen barges into the room where a love is about to be made, sending Kate barreling onto the floor in surprise as Owen chants that the toilet downstairs is “on the fritz” and then follows that up with opening the bathroom door whilst on the bowl saying, “We’re going to need some matches.”

And, the capper, involves Wilson placing a tie on the doorknob of Dillion’s house as Kate, incredulous, ignores it and lets herself in the front door only to scream, leave, and then announce, “That butter dish was a wedding gift, Carl.”

It’s not as wild as Dillion’s THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and it feels little more tame than MEET THE PARENTS but I think this movie will do well with the middle-of-the-road audience and, I would assert, means some nice profits to come.

Comments: None

Leave a Reply

FRED Entertaiment (RSS)