The Muppets (2011) Review

Director: James Bobin
Writers: Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller
Genre: Comedy/Musical


3 Cookies

Jason Segel is funny. Muppets are funny too. So, when Segel writes and stars in the first theatrically released “Muppet” movie since 1999, the result is a funny movie. At its best moments The Muppets is comedic genius and at its worst points you’ll shrug your shoulders and wait for the next joke – for the most part, the James Bobin (Flight of the Conchords, Da Ali G Show) directed film settles into a smooth, pleasant rhythm of clever jokes, funny songs, and a ton of Muppet antics.

            The premise is simple enough. Gary (Segel), his girlfriend Mary (a wonderful Amy Adams), and his brother Walter travel to Los Angeles for a vacation where they discover that the Muppet Studios have become decrepit and run down. While visiting the old Muppet Studios, Walter, the world’s biggest Muppet fan, overhears the plan of an evil businessman, Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), to destroy the Muppet Theater and drill for oil. “Maniacal laugh! Maniacal laugh! Maniacal laugh!” The only way the theater can be saved, is if $10 million dollars are raised. So Walter, Gary, and Mary go about the business of getting the gang of Muppets back together, starting with Kermit, to hold a huge Muppet show to raise the money.

            It’s almost impossible to not succumb, at least a little, to the charm of the Muppets. I’m sure there are naysayers out there who claim the Muppets are dumb and overly silly, but the haters simply don’t have a heart. C’mon! It’s the freaking Muppets! How can you not have a good time? Obviously this isn’t a groundbreaking and important masterpiece of cinema, but it’s a damn fun 98 minutes at the movies and a pretty great way to spend your $12 bucks. In fact, getting to see the Academy Award winning actor Chris Cooper perform a rap song is worth the price of admission alone.

            Jason Segel, who is slowly but surely becoming one of America’s funniest and most reliable actors (How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I Love You Man), clearly has a major obsession with Muppets. I mean, it certainly wasn’t a coincidence that his Sarah Marshall character put on a Dracula rock opera with puppets. It’s always fun to watch a movie made by people who so obviously love what they are doing. Segel, who co-wrote the script with Nicholas Stoller, is always a riot when he’s onscreen but knows exactly the right points to pull back and let the Muppets handle the action. And the songs are almost all successful, especially the joyous “Life’s a Happy Song,” and my personal favorite, “Man or Muppet.”

            There are a ton of cameos in this film – everyone from Alan Arkin to Dave Grohl to Selena Gomez shows up, including Jack Black who actually has a pretty significant part. At times, I felt like there was cameo overload to the point where it was annoying, but by the end I didn’t mind it as much. I think the movie acknowledges it’s a movie a few too many times, like when a character turns to the camera and speaks directly to the audience or when someone says an important plot point and then explains that it was an important plot point. And the movie does get a little tedious at times, but always gets back on track quickly.

            It’s not perfect, but for a Muppet movie it’s pretty darn solid. “It’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights. It’s time to meet the Muppets, on the Muppet show tonight!”

The Artist (2011) Review

Director/Writer: Michael Hazanavicus
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Silent


4 cookies
Glass of milk - Michael Hazanavicus
Glass of milk - Jean Dujardin
Glass of milk - Berenice Bejo
Glass of milk - James Cromwell

Thank the movie Gods for The Artist! Or more specifically, thank writer/director Michel Hazanavicus (which is just as hard to say as it is to spell). Just when I thought there were no more original ideas left in the movie world, The Artist comes along and has completely restored my faith in cinema and reminded me why I love movies so much in the first place. It’s one of my favorite movies of the year so far, had me smiling from ear to ear (except when I was crying) for its entire 100 minute duration, and it is all black and white and silent.

What?!?! Did you just say it’s a black and white, silent film?

Why, yes I did. Somehow, in this crazy modern movie world of 3-D and motion capture technology and Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 making $139.5 million on opening weekend, Hazanavicus has crafted a silent, black and white film made to look like it’s from the late 1920s. Please! Please! Please! Do not let the fact that this movie is silent and in black and white deter you from going. The Artist is absolutely brilliant and entertaining as hell.

The story opens in 1927 at the opening night of a big silent film production  starring George Valentine (Jean Dujardin), one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Immediately we are transported to a different time, a different world, as we watch an audience watch a silent film and completely love it. On the red carpet, after the premiere, Valentine is posing for pictures when a beautiful, young woman accidentally falls into his arms. The paparazzi go crazy and the next morning every newspaper has a picture of Valentine and the young women holding each other on the front page. The woman’s name is Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) and she uses her newly gained fame to get a small part in Valentine’s next movie. Her roles get bigger and bigger and eventually she becomes a major movie star herself as silent films are replaced by “talkies.” Meanwhile, Valentine fades into oblivion as silent films become irrelevant and Valentine completely loses his luster as a movie star.

And it’s all done completely visually. When dialogue is necessary, a title card flashes on screen with words and Hazanavicus does break the “no sound rule” on two occasions (very cleverly), but other than that, the story unfolds in the characters eyes and actions. This is an unabashed love letter to the magic of movies and it is clearly made by people who love cinema more than anything else in the world. This is a must see film for anyone who claims to be a movie fan.

The casting in The Artist is perfect and the acting is even better. Dujardin is remarkable, conveying such a wide array of emotions without saying a single word; he won Best Actor at Cannes and is a lock for an Oscar nomination. Bejo, who is married to Hazanavicus, could not have been better as Peppy Miller and John Goodman and James Cromwell also give incredible performances as a studio executive and Valentine’s loyal butler, Clifton, respectively. Hell, even Valentine’s lovable dog deserves a standing ovation as it/he gives the best animal performance of the year and turns out to be a major hero of the movie.

The gimmick of shooting a silent film in black and white never feels gimmicky and Hazanavicus pulls off the antiquated style with ease, even shooting the film in the boxy aspect ratio from before wide-screen. It’ll be a hard sell, and the fact that this movie even got made is almost a miracle in itself, but I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who walks out of this movie without a huge smile on his/her face recommending it to friends. We needed this movie – not only to remind us of cinema’s glorious past, but to give us hope for the future as well. 

My Week with Marilyn (2011) Review

Director: Simon Curtis
Writer: Adrian Hodges
Genre: Drama


1.5 Cookies
Glass of milk - Michelle Williams

            My Week With Marilyn is a period piece, set in England, with an Oscar nominated actor playing a famous historical figure. No, it’s not “The King’s Speech part 2,” but it’s pretty obvious that producer Harvey Weinstein is retracting old formulas, and hoping for similar results. Well, Michelle Williams gives a fantastic performance as Marilyn Monroe, just as Colin Firth gave a brilliant performance as King George VI, but as a whole My Week With Marilyn doesn’t even come close to The King’s Speech. In fact, My Week with Marilyn isn’t very good at all; dare I say it’s actually pretty bad.

            The main character of this film is actually not Marilyn, but Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the son of a wealthy art historian who wants to go into the film industry. Colin lands a job as third assistant director on Laurence Oliver’s (Kenneth Branagh) new film The Prince and the Showgirl starring Marilyn Monroe. Soon, Colin gets to know Marilyn quite well, who has recently married Arthur Miller, and develops feelings for her. Marilyn, who is described as “the finest piece of ass on the planet,” by a reporter played by Toby Jones flirts with Colin and they end up skinny-dipping together in a lake, where they kiss.

            The movie is based on the memoirs of Colin Clark, who claims to have gotten to know the real woman behind the “character” of Marilyn Monroe. The amount of truth in Clark’s memoirs, and in the movie is questionable, but the main problem in the film is that while it strives to go deep into the mind of the real Marilyn Monroe, it stays disappointingly shallow. Williams does her best at making Marilyn feel real, but Adrian Hodges’ flimsy screenplay and Simon Curtis’ cursory direction leave the audience with no insight into who Marilyn really was other than that she was hot, a tease, selfish, and depressed.

            Eddie Redmayne gives a lackluster performance as Colin Clark and I was annoyed basically every time he was on screen. Kenneth Branagh, in a performance generating a considerable amount of Oscar buzz, is trying really hard to impersonate Laurence Oliver but in the end falls short. Judi Dench does what she can with a small, basically throwaway role as an actor in The Prince and the Showgirl. And Emma Watson is absolutely awful as a costume girl who Colin goes on a date with in a very poorly contrived and weakly executed subplot.

            While this may have been the most exciting week of Colin Clark’s life, it was really an inconsequential week for Marilyn Monroe and it’s disappointing that the acting of Michelle Williams is wasted in what I wish was a much larger and insightful story about who Marilyn really was. There are a few chuckles along the way and it breezes by easily enough at a mostly painless 99 minutes, but My Week With Marilyn misses the mark big time. Williams will almost certainly score an Oscar nomination for Best Female Actor, but she is really the only legitimate reason to spend your money on this film. 

Cookie Clip of the Week: Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Tower Heist (2011) Review

Director: Brett Ratner
Writers: Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson
Genre: Comedy/Action


1.5 Cookies

Eddy Murphy is back to his funny old ways in Brett Ratner’s latest hack-job Tower Heist, problem is he barely shows up for the first 30 minutes, and when he does, he isn’t given enough to do. The marketing for Tower Heist centered on the idea that Ben Stiller and Eddy Murphy are the two stars, but really Tea Leoni has just as much, if not more screen time than Murphy. I felt a little jipped, but maybe that’s how you’re supposed to feel at a Brett Ratner movie.

The plot involves Josh Kovacs (a less than stellar, Stiller), the building manager for an upscale New York City apartment complex called the “Tower.” When Josh and his staff at the Tower fall victim to a Ponzi scheme put on by one of the buildings richest residents, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), Josh puts together a team to rob what he thinks is a safe in Shaw’s apartment and get even.

It’s a simple enough zeitgeist premise, with an above average cast, (Stiller, Murphy, Casey Affleck, Alda, Broderick, Leoni, Gabourey Sidibe, Michael Pena) that this should have, and could have been a very good comedy-caper flick. Unfortunately, Brett Ratner is, to put it bluntly, an awful director, and Tower Heist fizzles from the start. It’s so formulaic that it makes you cringe, and the jokes are far too few, and hit-and-miss, that there is not enough laughter to ignore the movie’s lack of a brain.

Granted, there are a few clever scenes, such as a scene where each member of the amateur team of thieves assembled by Stiller steals an item from different stores in a mall. Being a Ratner movie, of course one of the characters steals a bra and panties from a Victoria’s Secret. Michael Pena has a great time playing one of the dumber members of Stiller’s team of thieves and Gabourey Sidibe steals every scene she’s in as a Jamaican maid who can’t find a guy “that can handle her.”

Tower Heist always seems to be building to something big but it never fully delivers. Ratner, who was just fired as producer of the Academy Awards for using an anti-gay slur at a press conference, continues to make unintelligent films with big production designs that are not nearly as much fun as they should be. I’ve been debating over who I hate more, Brett Ratner or Michael Bay, and I think it may just be a tie.

The ending of Tower Heist feels rushed and unsatisfying which pretty much sums up the whole movie. It doesn’t make you want to rip your eyes out, and there have been worse movies made this year, but it’s forgettable fluff that should have at least been forgettable fun fluff.

Melancholia (2011) Review

Director: Lars Von Trier
Writer: Lars Von Trier
Genre: Drama/Science Fiction/Idiocy

1 Cookie

When Melancholia debuted at Cannes in May, the film made a big explosion, not only for what it is, but because its director Lars Von Trier said in a press conference that he is a Nazi and he understands Hitler. I think it’s important to separate the person from the artist, but in the case of Melancholia the artist is almost as horrendous as the person. The Cannes Film Festival kicked Von Trier out, the first time in history someone was expelled from Cannes, but his film became a tremendous success. I have never seen any of Von Trier’s previous work so I judged Melancholia strictly on its own merit, and frankly, I was not impressed.

            The film opens with a prologue of apocalyptic images, imaginatively shot   and foreshadowing the inevitable fate that will befall earth at the end of the movie. A giant planet called Melancholia is hurdling towards earth and if it hits, all life on earth will end. Von Trier chooses to show us earth’s destruction in the first 15 minutes, which takes away the suspense factor of wondering if Melancholia will actually hit earth, but clearly Von Trier isn’t concerned with suspense because he is telling a story about two sisters and how they deal with earth’s impending doom. I liked the prologue – the next two hours, not so much.

            The movie is told in two parts, each named after one of the two sisters, played by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg (who don’t look anything like sisters). Dunst won the Best Actress award at Cannes but I think her performance is decent at best, with a lot of overacting and comatose staring. Gainsbourg out acts Dunst but is never really given a chance to shine because of Von Trier’s sloppy direction.

            Part one centers around Justine’s (Dunst) wedding party, put on by Claire (Gainsbourg) and her rich husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). The groom is Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), and Michael and Justine trounce into the party two hours late after being stuck in a limo. Claire is angry with Justine for being late to her own party, but once she arrives the bizarreness begins. It turns out that while Claire is the sane, levelheaded sister, Justine suffers from severe depression and is basically a nut job. In the span of the wedding party, Michael declares her love for Justine, Justine gets a job promotion, Justine leaves the party to pee on a golf course, Justine quits her job, has sex with another man, takes a bath, and finally Michael packs his bag and ends the marriage after one night. “What did you expect?” is all Justine can say. Almost nothing about the wedding scene makes any sense. Characters are not developed and the incredibly strange family dynamic is never really understood.

            After the torturous wedding party, comes part two, which involves Claire, her husband, her son, and Justine hanging out in a big house, acting depressed and waiting to see if the world will end or not. The audience is forced to wait with them, and the wait is long, tedious, and boring. Claire is scared about Melancholia, John tries to convince her the planet won’t hit earth, but Justine claims that “she knows things” and that “there is only life on earth, and not for long.” Eventually John kills himself when he realizes earth is doomed. Justine says mean things to her sister and Claire is sad. Claire’s son never seems to care that his dad is dead and that he is about to die as well. Finally, after what seems like an eternity of long, hand held shaky shots of the sisters looking depressed, and Kirsten Dunst lying naked in the woods for no apparent reason, Melancholia hits earth, there is an explosion, and the movie ends. Thank god.

            Like Terrence Malick’s film released earlier this year The Tree of Life, Von Trier’s Melancholia is an overlong, pretentious snooze fest that thinks it’s much more important and meaningful than it actually is. Malick and Von Trier are both directors with strong visions and audacious aspirations, but they both seem to have forgotten that form does not make a successful movie when there is no substance.

            I think hand held cameras can work marvelously – they don’t in Melancholia. Instead of giving the movie a real life feel, it simply makes the audience nauseous. Many critics have praised the films “beauty,” but all I saw was ugliness and some HD shots of a big lawn and horses. Richard Wagner’s operatic score repeats and repeats to the point where I almost wanted to cut my ears off upon hearing the same melodramatic tune being played over and over again. Maybe Von Trier realized the audience wouldn’t know what to feel unless he added an overdone, obnoxious musical score to accompany the overdone, obnoxious images onscreen.

            Melancholia is disjointed, incoherent, and unintentionally laughable. Von Trier may have an artistic vision, but he is certainly not a good storyteller, at least with this film. Some people will love it, some people will hate it, there will be many who don’t really know what to think. Hopefully the Academy will see Melancholia for the arrogant piece of trash that it is, and we won’t have to worry about anyone involved with it taking home golden statues.