The Happening

My love for M. Night Shyamalan films has been widely documented. I thoroughly enjoyed The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village. Unbreakable was pretty cool. But I'll be the first to admit that Lady in the Water kinda sucked. So naturally I was really hoping that Night (as he is known on his sets) could pull off some magic in his newest thriller and bring us something as high quality as his earlier works. As I'm sure you've heard by now, The Happening wasn't exactly a return to form: it was down there with Lady in the Water as a cool concept that was badly executed.


The Happening
Writer/Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo


It's becoming harder and harder to stay a supporter of Shyamalan when he keeps pumping out stuff like this. The Happening, according to an interview with the writer/director, was supposed to be a 50's style B-movie reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Birds. That aspect of the movie was all but hidden from everyone besides people who happened to read that article, and it seems like the film suffered greatly in critical reception because of it. I knew what the film was aspiring to be when I sat down in the theater, and it still didn't live up to my newly-lowered expectations.


The most glaring proof of its B-movie nature can be found in the performances from the main characters of the film. Usually-bankable actors Wahlberg and Deschanel gave some of the most rigid performances I've seen in a long time, no thanks to the sometimes-laughable dialogue written by Night himself. I KNOW that Mark Wahlberg is a better actor than what his performance indicated in this film, so there had to be some sort of instruction from Night to make his acting as stiff as possible. If this were made known to the movie-going public beforehand, then perhaps the film wouldn't have been as lambasted as it was upon its Friday the 13th release date. Deschanel looked like she ate some bad eggs for breakfast the whole movie, and I'm not kidding when I say that Marky Mark had the same look on his face the whole movie:


Without giving away the patented "twist" ending (hint: there is no twist ending), I won't go too much into the cause of the mass suicides depicted in the trailer in case you decide to watch this movie and want to be surprised. Wahlberg plays Elliot, a high school science teacher who is having some marital troubles with his wife Alma (Deschanel). When the first event occurs, they meet up with John Leguizamo's character Julian, who is a fellow teacher at Elliot's school, to escape from the city.


The movie started with a mass suicide scene, but never really got going after that. We couldn't care for these characters because they were so distant to the audience due to their (purposefully?) poor performances. Thanks to this factor, the sense of urgency that was necessary for us to feel worried about the characters was nonexistent. Aside from that, the cause of the "events" only seemed to affect certain people, which made no sense to me at all.


It features a standard message of "protect the environment" and falls into the same type of apocalyptic-themed flicks as the recent I Am Legend and Cloverfield. Growing concerns over global warming, rising gas prices, and constant wars seem to be pushing the world into a state of paranoia, and we can only predict that movies with these types of themes prominently displayed throughout will not stop in the years to come. Whether they be government-themed paranoia like Disturbia or the upcoming Eagle Eye, or disaster-themed like War of the Worlds or the others I've mentioned, these types of movies are sure to be on the rise for a long time until we can figure out what to do about fixing some of these problems that are apparent in today's world. Until next time...

Get Smart

If only the title followed it's own advice. Get Smart was a mediocre attempt at comedy that had lowest-common-denominator audience members howling in their seats next to me. If a movie could win an Oscar for "Ruining Humor Ahead Of Time In A Trailer By Showing Too Much," then this film would have won it. Handily. Sadly, it was more of a children's film than a movie targeted toward the people who would have liked it the most: namely, 18-35's and fans who used to watch the show.

Get Smart
Director: Peter Segal
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Champ Kind


What a sweet cast. As far as performances go, all the main players pretty much did the best they could with the pitiful script they were forced to memorize. Carell was likeable and charming, while Hathaway reached her pinnacle of hotness that she had been dreaming of since the days of The Princess Diaries. Aside from that, her acting was passable since she was probably given the most complex role of anyone in the cast. Dwayne "I'm Not The Rock Anymore" Johnson was the typical jock who befriends the nerdy Carell, and he played this role as if he were sleepwalking through it waiting for the producers of the Scorpion King to call him for a sequel. (Incidentally, they didn't.)


The plot follows the government agency CONTROL analyst Maxwell Smart (Carell) as he gets promoted to Agent 86 and partners with Agent 99 (Hathaway) to take down the KAOS, a terrorist group who has infiltrated CONTROL's home base. All of the field agents are compromised because of the break-in, so Max and Agent 99 (who recently had plastic surgery to change her identity) are the only two left to save Los Angeles from destruction at the hands of the mysterious Siegfried (Terence Stamp of Superman II).


I think most of my disappointment with Get Smart stems from my opinion that the supposedly "funny parts" of the film weren't even that funny. What is happening to comedy these days? Are summer trash like The Love Guru and You Don't Mess With The Zohan the kind of quality that we've come to put up with at the theater? I think we as the American people deserve better when we shell out 10 dollars to see a movie. I think we deserve to actually laugh throughout a "comedy" and not just nod and say to ourselves "oh yeah, I remember seeing that in the trailer." Correct me if I'm wrong, but comedy should be funny.


The problem with Get Smart (in my humble opinion) was the same problem with Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - the script was abysmal. The directing was fine, the special effects were OK, the production design, lighting, cinematography, score - I didn't have a problem with any of that. But they needed to get a script a little more fresh than something a 12-year-old could have written. I know that the show was based on slapstick-type humor, but at least it had a little intelligence to go along with it. If you've ever seen a movie before, you knew exactly what was going to happen in Get Smart at least 10 minutes before it unfolded on the screen. Branz criticized me for being too hard on it, but I think the American people deserve a bit more credit than that. I'd like to believe that we are capable of comprehending some abstract thought, making hinted-at plot connections on our own without everything being spelled out, recognizing basic themes when they are presented to us, and all the other little things that go along with appreciating films and what they can do for us. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that you need a college education to make these type of cognitive leaps.


Anyway, the movie was probably worth a rental. There were some humorous sections (Mel Brooks co-created the show and was an adviser for the film), but overall it just wasn't funny enough to make up for its predictability. If you have children, you are a child, or you will be having children in the near future, then there's a distinct possibility that you might like Get Smart. Otherwise, wait for it to hit TBS in about 9 months. Until next time...

The Incredible Hulk

Refusing to pay exorbitant movie ticket prices in NYC, I finally got around to seeing The Incredible Hulk yesterday. The short review - I liked the parts without the CG best. Above average for a comic book movie, but only slightly.

The Incredible Hulk
Director: Louis Letterier
Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, William Hurt


Director Louis Letterier (Transporter and its sequel) turned this movie into a crisp, action-packed version of what Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk never tried to be. That previous film was a more introspective piece that most people hated because it didn't feature enough action and Hulk-Smashing. Letterier and Co. set out to rectify those problems in this movie, which is a completely unattached film that has no bearing on its predecessor - meaning you don't have to see the "first one" because this one isn't a sequel.

Action-packed though it was, The Incredible Hulk was too driven by CGI in my opinion. The Hulk isn't one of my favorite superheroes (by a long shot), so I'm automatically slightly biased against him. I also didn't really like Ang Lee's Hulk because the CG was too ridiculous (not to mention the fact that his Hulk fought a giant cloud in the final battle and he leapt across states as a method of travel). That being said, if I was a ten-year-old kid, I would have LOVED The Incredible Hulk. There was a LOT of smashing and destruction and explosions and all the things that one would assume would make this movie great. Surprisingly, however, these parts of the movie didn't really do it for me. I don't know if it was because everything was so blatantly CG that I couldn't get any real enjoyment out of it, or if was all too dependent on imagery from other films (King Kong and Cloverfield come to mind) - but something was a little off for me. [Note: I loved Transformers, which was full of CG destruction, so I'm not quite sure what the difference is with this. Hmm...] I'm fully aware that its near impossible to make a Hulk movie without heavily relying on special effects, but that's what I wish they would try to do next time (if there is a next time).


Anyway, the acting was pretty good from Norton, who was a great Bruce Banner. He was awkwardly gangly and nerdy enough that you believed he was a scientist. Liv Tyler, aside from her sometimes-creepy resemblance to her father, was a great Betty Ross. William Hurt wasn't the best General "Thunderbolt" Ross I've seen on film (that would be Sam Elliott from the 2003 flick), but it would be hard for anybody to follow Elliott's performance. Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno's cameos were well-done and funny. I do admire Marvel's ability to lock down high quality actors for superhero movies, a genre which was once laughed at but is quickly becoming Hollywood's go-to moneymaker. Ed Norton, Robert Downey, Jr.? These are really good actors here, folks. I hope they continue with this trend for their upcoming releases.


I didn't know anything about the villain, Abomination, before going in. Tim Roth was OK as the power-hungry bad guy. His character, however, was bent on destroying Hulk for no reason other than he feels that Banner doesn't deserve the power he has. Kinda lame, but whatever - no need to dwell on the bad. I did that enough in my Indiana Jones review.


My favorite part about The Incredible Hulk (just beating out the Brazil chase scene) was that they didn't obsess over the origin story. They showed the gamma radiation accident that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk during the opening credits, and then jumped straight into the action-chase through Brazil right after that. There was no excessive hour in the beginning before we got to see Hulk in action, and I loved that the filmmakers recognized the recent trend in comic book movies and tried to distance themselves from it.

So how was the plot/story for The Incredible Hulk? Here's where we get into the interesting stuff. As some of you may have heard, when Ed Norton signed on to be a part of this movie, he was told that he could contribute creatively as well. So he took Zak Penn's (X-Men 3) script and rewrote it from page one, knowing that most of the sets and things had already been built. He added a lot of dialogue, changed more dialogue, and fleshed out the Bruce Banner character more with extra scenes and character motivation. Marvel then agreed to film this newly-written version of the movie.

So they did. When it was all filmed, they put the whole thing together in a rough edit and Marvel decided they wanted to go with a quicker, more action-oriented film that deleted a lot of the character pieces that Norton had written. He got pretty pissed, because they told him he could have this control and then they took it away from him, and somebody leaked it to the press that this controversy was brewing. Now that this was all out in the open, there was no chance of Marvel and Norton negotiating reasonably without people following their every move. Worried about his already-notorious reputation for being a control-freak-pain-in-the-ass on set, Norton conceded to Marvel's decision to make a more commercial version of the movie.

So what did the studio cut that Norton wanted to remain in? A suicide attempt scene at the beginning of the movie caused a little bit of unease because this was supposed to be a family-friendly movie and suicide is a bit heavy for that. Also, the scene featured in the trailer with Banner talking to the psychiatrist was Norton's, and they cut that along with some more flashbacks that Ed had worked into the script. Fear not, though - the Blu-Ray release will feature 70 minutes of footage that we didn't get to see in the theater. Read that again - that's over an hour of stuff! I guess we'll have to wait a few months to see which version is "better."


I love all the stuff that Marvel is doing with all of their cross-promotion between films and dropping references to things yet to come. Not to ruin anything (since it's been shown in the TV spots for the movie), The Incredible Hulk features a scene with Tony Stark (Iron Man) and General Ross talking about forming a team. This, coupled with the bonus post-credits scene from Iron Man, obviously leads us toward the planned 2012 release of The Avengers movie. Also, this version of the Hulk features multiple references to super-soldier serum, which should incorporate into Marvel's Captain America movie scheduled for release in 2011. Cool.

As far as comic book movies go, I'd place this just above the middle of the pack. It was better than Elektra and Fantastic Four, better than Ghost Rider and 2003's Hulk, but not nearly as good as Spider-Man 2 or X-Men 2. Take that as you will - but if I were you, I'd wait to see some other summer movies in theaters and not give up money that you could be spending on a Dark Knight IMAX ticket. Until next time...

Solaris

Greetings to all. It's been a while since I've written anything about an older movie, so I'll take this opportunity to provide a little retrospective look before we get into the rest of the summer blockbusters.

Solaris
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: George Clooney


In my opinion, good science fiction films are few and far between. Aside from the obvious franchises (Star Wars, Star Trek, the first Matrix) and the occasional brilliant standalone (Children of Men, Minority Report), we certainly aren't living in a Golden Age of Science Fiction. Solaris wasn't brilliant, but it was a lot better than 90% of the genre that's been presented to us in the past 10 years. Steven Soderbergh (The Ocean's 11 Trilogy) reunited with George Clooney to bring us a meditative, competent look at a near future that is surprisingly personal in a genre full of harsh isolation.


Much of the credit of the film's success has to be given to the production designer and the cinematographer, who crafted a world that seems futuristic but not TOO over the top and captured it in a smooth style that I wish we saw more these days. The lighting was especially noticeable (in a good way) and the contrasting styles between the gleam of the ship and the shadows of the flashbacks complement each other in a very cool way.


Since most of you probably haven't seen this (the marketing for it was terrible if I recall correctly - I had no desire to see it in 2002 when it was released), I'll give you the rundown. The plot revolves around Chris Kelvin (Clooney), a psychiatrist who is still dealing with the loss of his wife. He receives a strange video message from a friend, requesting that he comes to the space station Prometheus and help the crew return home. They've been studying Solaris, a pulsating cloud in space, that apparently won't allow them to return and has been seriously messing with their minds. Kelvin begrudgingly accepts and heads into space, only to find that all but two crew members are dead. That night, his wife appears on the ship - and that's all I'm giving you.


The movie is a great study of the psychology of exploration, the meaning of death, and is a very personal look at Kelvin's character as he tries to make sense of these strange happenings. George Clooney did a great job, subtle and emotional at all the right times. The wife, played by Natashca McElhone (The Truman Show), was also exceptional. Be warned - there's a little too much Cloon-ass for my taste, but the ladies might enjoy it.

There's not much else I can say without giving away key plot points; it had a couple cool twists that I didn't see coming. All I can say is that if you're a fan of sci-fi, give this one a shot. It's not action-packed, there aren't any space blasters or anything like that - it's a slower, visual film that deserves more than it got thanks to bad advertising. Until next time...