Madea's Family Reunion
Having never seen last year's surprise hit, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, this was my first (and most likely last) introduction to the world of writer-director Tyler Perry. For those of you who don't know, Mr. Perry initially found fame writing a series of plays centered around a large black woman named Madea whom he plays in a fat suit and an unconvincing wig. I'm sure the effect works better on stage, because in this movie with Perry dressed in drag and surrounded by hundreds of real old women, he looks so out of place it's not even funny. Maybe it'd help if Madea herself was a likeable character, but she came across to me as an abusive, obnoxious felon in the disguise of a sweet old grandmother. Madea is just a plain disturbing character, as her advice to others usually resorts to "kick their ass" or "kill them". The audience I saw this movie with was in hysterics, and couldn't seem to get enough. I was disgusted, and fail to see how anyone can view such a hateful and desperate character as being positive.
The film's plot mostly centers around two sisters - Vanessa (Lisa Arrindell Anderson) and Lisa (Rochelle Aytes). The two women have had a hard existence from the beginning, thanks to their evil gold-digging mother (Lynn Whitfield) who has made their lives a living hell in different ways. The mother looks down on Vanessa, who is poor and a single mother, and has started to fall in love with a kindly bus driver (Boris Kodjoe). As for Lisa, she has all of her mother's attention, because she is set to be married to a wealthy black man named Carlos (Blair Underwood). Problem is, Carlos frequently abuses Lisa physically, going so far as to literally threaten to throw her off the balcony of their apartment if she ever tries to leave him. Lisa's too scared to tell anyone the truth, and the mother wants Carlos' money, so she keeps on trying to find excuses to keep the two together, even though she knows her daughter's life is in danger. Added to the plot is Madea trying to cope with raising a troubled preteen girl that she's been placed into care of (usually through physical abuse and ridicule), and an upcoming family reunion where everyone gathers together and listens to Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou recite poetry about how black people should love each other. And yes, the scene is just as awkward and out of the blue as it sounds, but not as awkward as the final wedding scene that features black women hanging from the ceilings playing harps, and half-naked black men dressed as angels.
Madea's Family Reunion is a movie so misguided it is almost a textbook example of how not to make a good movie. The dramatic scenes are so broad, the acting so over the top, and the dialogue so "scripted" and fake that I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing and listening to. Consider the scene where Lisa and Vanessa ask Madea what they should do about Lisa's abusive fiancee. Madea's advice? Throw a pot of hot grits in his face, then bash him in the head with a frying pan. Only in the world's worst sitcom would someone actually make such a suggestion. It gets even worse when Lisa actually does this to Carlos near the end of the film. The scene is supposed to make us cheer, but it is shot all wrong. It is a moment of intense hatred and evil, not payback. The look on Lisa's face as she hits her fiance in the head with a frying pan is a look of murder and psychotic rage. And then she keeps on hitting him over and over again, and the scene just becomes more and more ugly and awkward. When the audience started cracking up and cheering with each blow, I wanted to stand up and scream "what the hell is wrong with you people"? Even more disturbing is that the film leaves it at that. After viciously cracking her fiance's head open, she goes off to the local church and celebrates with her family, and they all laugh and dance and sing. The message of this moment seems to be if someone is violent to you, be even more violent, and all will be forgiven. No punishment, no police, just a lifeless body lying on the kitchen floor while our heroine goes off and celebrates.Indeed, the entire moral standing of the movie is so screwed up that I don't think even Tyler Perry himself could explain it. Although he spends most of the film looking down at violence, he seems to think it's okay as long as it's a means for revenge or for raising young children. Take the very disturbing subplot of Madea getting foster care of a troubled preteen girl early in the film. The girl is mouthy and rude to her. Madea's advice? Climb into the back seat of the car and punch her, or in a later scene, slap her repeatedly with a belt. What makes it so disturbing is that whenever we see the girl from then on, she's a perfect lady and suddenly is doing good in school and has dreams of being a lawyer. No single explanation is given for this girl's sudden and drastic change from mouthy brat to perfect angel who goes to church every Sunday. The only conclusion I could draw is that she is behaving out of fear of what Madea will do to her if she acts up. The little girl is all but forgotten for most of the film anyway, so I have no idea why she's even in the movie in the first place. The movie seems to want to take multiple stances on its issues. It can't decide if violence is bad or if it's comical. Abuse is abuse I say, and Madea deserves to have her head bashed in with a frying pan just as much as the evil Carlos does.
Madea's Family Reunion fails in just about every way imaginable. Some scenes are about as easy to swallow as having an ocean liner shoved down your throat (like the opening scene where a guy somehow surprises his girlfriend with rose petals leading to a filled bath and a small orchestra sitting by the tub without her knowing), while others are just plain ludicrous, such as the scene where Carlos and the sisters' evil mother are plotting and say their dialogue with such evil glee that you're surprised they don't chew a hole right through the scenery. All the dramatic moments are played so broad that I quite literally could not stop laughing at some of them, such as the out of the blue poetry session during the reunion scene. The comedic scenes, on the other hand, come across more as being just plain wrong. Take the scene where a small group of dirty old men spot a sexy teenage girl dressed in a revealing outfit, and have her reach far into a cooler for a drink so they can film the act with a video camera, and make leering faces at her behind her back. That's not funny, that's just plain creepy. There's not one single second of Madea's Family Reunion that works the way that Tyler Perry intends it to. Even if the film's title character was played by a real woman instead of a guy in unconvincing drag, this movie still would not work in any way.
I am positively mystified by the audience's reaction to this film who seemed to be eating this stuff up. Not one single second is honest, true, or even entertaining in the slightest. It is a vile, miscalculated, ugly little movie that made me feel worse as it went along. Madea obviously tries to lift our spirits, but I was too busy wondering how any movie could possibly be this bad. I don't know, maybe something got lost in the transition from the stage to the screen. I can't see how, though. For all its messages of peace and love, this movie is a surprisingly hateful and angry little piece of bitterness. Apparently there's more Madea movies on the way, as Lion's Gate Films gave Perry a 7-film deal after Diary became a surprise hit. If the promise of more Madea doesn't make you scared to set foot inside a theater, nothing will.
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Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker) is a low-level hood in the mob who, as the film opens, has just survived a gunfight with some crooked cops after a drug deal goes bad, and has just been charged by his boss to dispose of the weapon used in the fight. He puts the gun in a bag and stashes it in a secret compartment in his basement. Unknown to him, his 10-year old son Nicky (Alex Neuberger) and his best friend Oleg (Cameron Bright, who previously played the evil clone kid in Godsend and Nicole Kidman's reincarnated husband in Birth) were playing hockey in the basement earlier, and happen to see him stash the weapon. Oleg lives in the house next door where his Russian immigrant stepfather (John Noble) frequently abuses both him and his mother, and does nothing but sit around and watch old John Wayne movies on TV. Oleg has had enough of his father's cruelty, and so without anyone knowing, takes Joey's gun from the secret compartment, and uses it to injure his father.
Running Scared is so over the top that it would be downright ludicrous if it didn't take itself so seriously. Here is a movie that paints the city of New Jersey as if it were the lowest level of Hell. Every single person is crooked, evil, vile, corrupt, or a murderous lowlife. The film has an increasingly bleak and horrific tone that carries all the way through the film up to the last 10 minutes when the movie suddenly takes a sharp turn into sunshine and loved ones wrapping their arms around each other. To say that the last couple minutes don't fit the rest of the movie is an understatement. Here is a movie that opens with an action sequence that contains more violence and more obscenities than most R-rated films contain in their entire running time. In the first 3 minutes alone, not only do we get to hear an unheard of number of swear words (the ones that aren't drowned out by gunfire, at least), but also graphic depictions of a man getting his brains blown out of his head and another man getting shot in the crotch. This certainly sets you up for what's to come, but it's only the start, as the film will also force us to watch such acts as a man setting himself on fire, someone getting their ear bitten off, and an extended sequence where 10-year old Oleg is held captive by a pedophile husband and wife who videotape sexual acts with him, and then try to suffocate him with a plastic bag. The fact that this movie got by with just an R-rating is a small miracle, and I haven't even mentioned the psychotic hockey players who gruesomely bloody Paul Walker's face by shooting pucks at him while evil mobsters hold him down to the ice, and threaten to murder the kid.
Judging by the animated sequence that accompanies the ending credits (where we watch highlights from the film done in a children's storybook style, which makes it all the more twisted), this is supposed to be some sort of deranged urban fairy tale about a little lost boy who is trying to escape from his evil stepparent, and keeps on running into even worse individuals. I didn't realize this until I saw the credits however, because the movie is so chaotic and fast-paced, I don't think anyone could have picked up on that angle without the help of the cartoon at the end. Writer-director Kramer seems to be channeling filmmaker Tony Scott here, as the movie uses just about every cinematic trick in the book. Slow motion, fast motion, instant replay, rewind and fast forward, jump cuts, shaky cam, black and white, animation...You name the film method, and Wayne Kramer tries his hand at it. In the wrong hands (see Tony Scott's last film, Domino, which was a confusing mess of images and ideas), this style of filmmaking can quickly become obnoxious to me. But, somehow, Running Scared knows how to exploit it in such a way so that it's used constantly but never becomes annoying. This is a very artistic film, and there are many moments that really caught my attention. The most clever and creative is when Oleg has locked himself in the bathroom of the pedophile couple, and is trying to reach help via a cell phone. The evil wife is hovering just outside the door which is covered in glass which distorts the image of the person outside. Although she appears as a human outside, whenever the film cuts to Oleg in the bathroom and we see her pacing back and forth outside the glass, trying to hear who he's talking to, her silhouette appears to be that of a demon or some other sort of monster. It is a very creepy and very effective moment, and I guess it ties into the whole fairy tale theme that Kramer was trying for. Also, the rapid fire film style never becomes so chaotic or messy that the story becomes lost, or that we can't tell what we're supposed to be looking at. There is a method to the madness.
Though the film is generally well made all around, you get the sense that it's just a lot of bells and whistles built around a script that seeks only to shock, offend, and offer gory thrills. That's where Running Scared starts to fall apart. There's very little to the film other than some elaborate action sequences where multiple people get murdered in increasingly violent ways, some bordering on inhumane masochism. The film keeps on trying to shock us, and although the characters never quite become lost in the madness, it does kind of get hard to keep track of everything that's going on when the movie keeps on throwing buckets of blood in our faces. There are a lot of characters in this movie, many of whom exist only to die, and some who seem to come and go as the screenplay sees fit. The film also becomes almost laughable near the end as it has not one, not two, but three climaxes where the Russian kid's life is threatened, and Joey must murder a bunch of more people to protect him. It's like the movie just doesn't know when to stop. Too bad it didn't stop before we get an almost groan-worthy twist on Joey's character which not only goes against absolutely everything we've seen him do up to that point, but also screams desperation for some sort of a happy ending. The ending is actually too happy judging by everything that comes before. This is a movie that gives us an hour and 50 minutes of the overly exaggerated dark side of human nature, and a final 10 minutes of sunshine, rainbows, and fluffy bunnies. It's almost like the director is apologizing for his own movie, and wants us to leave on a high note. Sorry, Mr. Kramer, doesn't work that way.
Poor morbidly obese single girl, Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan), is so unlucky in love that people run away in terror at the very sight of her, and would prefer to shoot themselves with a nail gun through the brain than date her. Her multi-cultural parents who run a Greek restaurant (Eddie Griffin and Meera Simhan) are trying to force her to marry a man she does not love, insisting that her spouse should be multi-cultural as well, specifically a Greek-Indian-Japanese-Jew. Desperate to escape the fate her parents have planned for her, Julia turns to midget love doctor, Hitch (Tony Cox), who "pimps her out" and sends her off on a reality dating show where the Bachelor seeking love rejects the single women by shooting them with a shotgun. The bachelor in question happens to be a charming British man named Grant Fonckyerdoder (Adam Campbell), and he is enchanted by Julia, sparing her life. The two share a romantic evening of beating up and mugging homeless people, and plans are instantly made for the two to be married.
As I mentioned earlier, it's kind of hard to classify Date Movie as a comedy, as it's simply nothing but a series of references to other movies, often playing the references straight, or "spicing them up" with a crude joke that not only pushes the limits of the film's PG-13 rating, but also makes you wonder if Mr. Friedberg and Seltzer hail from another world, and that this is their idea of humor. The films that are referenced during the film's 80 minute running time include...*takes a deep breath*...Bridget Jones' Diary, Pretty Woman, Sweet Home Alabama, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The 40-Year Old Virgin, My Best Friend's Wedding, Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Wedding Crashers, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Legally Blonde, The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Hitch, Meet the Parents and its sequel Meet the Fockers, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars: Episode III, King Kong, Napoleon Dynamite, Kill Bill, and even that hamburger commercial starring Paris Hilton. Celebrities such as Britney Spears and Michael Jackson are also parodied, but they work about as well as the film parodies, mainly because the movie does absolutely nothing funny with them. Not only are the jokes not funny, many of them are usually dragged on way too long, such as when we are forced to watch the family cat suffer from explosive bowel movements, or when Julia has to pop a massive zit, the resulting explosion I will leave to your imagination.
I have no idea how faithful Eight Below is to real events (the film's title claims that it's "inspired by a true story"), but the film's depiction of how the dogs survive on their own is exciting, suspenseful, and downright fascinating. Despite the fact that this is a family film and a Walt Disney Studio production, the film pulls very few punches in its depiction of the trials and hardships that the dogs must endure. It is refreshingly honest, treating the dogs as real animals, not as wisecracking humans in disguise. The dangers they face are real and, sensitive young children and adult dog lovers be warned, not all of the canines live to see the end credits. The filmmakers' decision to treat the story seriously is a rewarding one, as it helps make this seemingly hopeless situation all the more real and heartfelt. A subtitle that appears from time to time that keeps track of the number of days the dogs have been on their own also adds to the tension. But, it is the dogs themselves that ultimately make these scenes work. Though they come up with some clever ideas to survive their situation, they never become so clever that you don't believe an actual animal could think of such a plan. Unlike some other animal movies, they don't develop crude yet complex devices, or teach themselves how to skateboard for the entertainment of the audience watching. Each of the eight four-legged stars also have their own unique, yet believable, personality which helps differentiate them. I don't know if all of this is due to some very talented animal trainers or some very clever editing, and quite frankly I don't care. I want to believe these dogs did all this stuff on their own, because these sequences are just that believable.
It is when the movie switches over to the human side of the story that Eight Below begins to drag a little. Paul Walker will never be mistaken for a master thespian, and has often been accused of simply being a pretty face with little acting talent. While he's not exactly awful in this, I do think his character lacked personality. While he interacts with the dogs well enough, he unfortunately spends most of his scenes with his human co-stars, and whenever he does, he comes across as a bit more wooden and unnatural than he should. Maybe this was somewhat intentional, as the film seems to hint that his character is more comfortable around the dogs than with other people. Still, Walker just does not have the charisma and personality to carry a film. His fellow human stars don't hold up much better, as they either don't get enough screen time for us to get to know them, or they just don't do enough to capture our attention. The only other two actors besides Walker who caught my attention is Moon Bloodgood as his love interest, who is pretty yet somewhat bland in her underwritten role, and Jason Biggs from the American Pie films as the movie's needless and hopelessly unfunny comic relief. Not only does he grind the film to a halt whenever he's on screen, he does not fit into the mostly dramatic tone the rest of the film carries. It's like he walked in from some kind of straight to video teen comedy, and made me want to see him freezing his buns off in the arctic instead of the dogs.
When Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore) enters a local medical center with her hands covered in blood and a story of a carjacking, she is brought immediately to the attention of tough-talking investigator Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson). While questioning Brenda about what happened, she reveals a terrifying part of the story that she strangely did not mention initially to the doctors when she arrived - her 4-year-old son, Cody, was asleep in the backseat of the car when the jacker, a large black man from a local low-income housing project she states, threw her out of the car and drove off with it. Lorenzo knows the housing project area well, as he deals with a lot of the people in that area and he has a lot of respect amongst the locals. However, when the missing child becomes part of the case, he quickly finds himself losing control of his own investigation, as another officer who is also Brenda's brother (Ron Eldard) makes it his personal goal to track the carjacker down, and convinces the police force to initiate a lockdown in the project housing area, keeping everyone prisoners in their own homes until the guilty person is found.
Originally intended to be an Oscar hopeful with a December release date, Freedomland's mid-February release might make some think twice about purchasing a ticket. However, it's not all bad. In adapting his own novel to the screen, screenwriter Richard Price has crafted an intriguing story that pushes a lot of hot topic buttons ripped out of many real life situations. The film tackles such issues as media frenzies around missing persons, race riots, people who use race riots to their own advantage, and overall tensions between different types of people, whether it be race, wealth, or status symbol. Unfortunately, I think Mr. Price bit off a bit more than he could chew, as most of these aspects don't seem to have as much screen time devoted to them as they should have. I'm sure this story works really good in a novel format, but in a movie that runs just shy of under 2 hours, there's just too much plot and not enough time to get all the points across that I think the movie wanted to. And instead of treating these topics with honesty and realism, the movie takes everything so seriously to the point of overblown melodrama. You can tell this was originally intended to be an Oscar bait movie by the number of scenes that seem to scream to be used as clips when an actor's name is called. There are some good performances on display here, but Joe Roth often directs his scenes like there's an important development on the way, even if nothing actually happens.
Although the film does not always work, when it does, it works well. I like it how the story does not take any sides in the issue of race. Both sides are wrong, and both sides manipulate in order to get their point across. There are a number of strong scenes, the most memorable of which is when Edie Falco's character has a quiet interrogation of Brenda. She starts talking about her own missing son, which led to her forming her group for missing children, and slowly turns it into her questioning Brenda about what happened that night. The performances from both Falco and Moore in this scene are real and genuine. In fact, all of the lead performances are strong all across the board. Sure, Samuel L. Jackson could play the role of the pissed off black guy in his sleep, but no one does it better than him, and he's still able to find ways to make her performance not seem like a complete rehash of past roles. Julianne Moore also takes on the difficult role of Brenda with seemingly great ease. We have our suspicions about the character almost from the beginning, but she is still able to make her sympathetic to us all the way through her character's development. And, when Joe Roth isn't trying to force Oscar clips upon us, the film is tightly directed and edited. It has a rapid pace that never becomes confusing, and actually helps to enhance the tension and mood of the scene.
This time, Ford plays Jack Stanfield, a high level security specialist who has developed one of the most complex anti-theft computer devices for the bank that he works for. We spend the first 15 or so minutes of the film watching a regular day in his life, both on the job, and at home with his wife, Beth (Virginia Madsen from Sideways) and two children - 14-year-old daughter Sarah (Carly Schroeder) and 8-year-old son Andrew (Jimmy Bennett). Jack's normal life is thrown out of sync when a group of high tech thieves force themselves into his home, holding his entire family hostage. Led by Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) the thieves want Jack to crack his own security system, and deposit the money from the bank's wealthiest clients into his own secret account. Fearing for the safety of his own family, Jack complies to the demands of the villains, but he is constantly on the look out for ways to escape the ever-watching eyes of the thieves who have bugged his house and even his clothes with hidden cameras and microphones so they can follow his every move. As Bill Cox's evil plan falls into place, Jack quickly realizes that he must find a way to fight back, or else risk losing everything.
Firewall is the kind of movie that pretty much tells you the direction the plot is going to take almost from the opening scene. The characters drop many hints at important plot developments yet to come, such as the fact that Jack's son is allergic to peanuts, or that the family dog has a knack for running away and has a GPS collar so they can track his location. Almost from the instant this information is revealed, you already know that it's going to play some sort of role in the story to come. The film also contains many red herrings to try to throw us off, some of which are never fully wrapped up or developed, such as Robert Patrick's character of a shady and slimy guy at Jack's job that he does not trust. The film also contains numerous plot holes and lapses in logic, particularly the fact that the villains' have missed a very obvious problem in their plan when everything else in their plot seems so calculated and meticulously thought out. And could an I-Pod really be used as a back up hard drive for a database at a bank? Talk about your product placements!! Firewall is a movie that becomes increasingly ludicrous as it unfolds. (Gotta love the car that seemingly explodes into flames for no reason after it hits someone during the climax sequence.) Yet, it's constantly fast-paced, never boring, and as long as you don't apply a lot of thought to it, can be fun sometimes. But, come on, we've seen this all before, and done much better at that.
Because of the one-note nature of the characters, very few of the actors are given a chance to do anything interesting with their characters. Virginia Madsen is beautiful and likeable as always, and as mentioned earlier, Paul Bettany seems to be having a ball playing his first evil character in a film, and gets some very dryly funny lines throughout. Harrison Ford gets a couple funny lines, too, though I don't know if they're intentional. There's a moment late in the film where he says "I'm going to find my dog" with the same level of seriousness as if he was saying, "I'm going to save the President's life" that had me rolling with laughter. Harrison Ford plays the same overly heroic and noble hero that he usually plays, while his family really don't do anything but sit in the bedroom, looking scared or concerned. Bill's henchmen are a shallow bunch that we learn little about, other than their first names. The only semi-interesting character besides the villain is Jack's young secretary, played by Mary Lynn Rajskub from TV's 24, and even she does not seem as developed as much as she should be. (Would be nice to know why she was so trusting of Jack's character after he barges into her apartment with a gun, and practically forces her down into a chair.)
The film is not a remake of the original film, rather it is a prequel of sorts that is supposed to tell how the bungling Clouseau (Steve Martin) became an Inspector in the first place. A famous, yet openly hated by many, soccer coach (Jason Statham) is murdered during the victory celebration at a big playoff game, and his famed Pink Panther ruby ring is mysteriously stolen in the process. The hot-tempered and scheming Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) intentionally plans to put the most incompetent officer on the case, so that he himself can take over the case when the bungling officer inevitably fouls up, solve it, and win a prestigious award and fame. Clouseau happily takes the promotion to Inspector and the case, unaware of Dreyfus' plans to make him a fool in front of the whole world. Of course, Clouseau is already a fool, causing chaos and mayhem literally wherever he goes, often without realizing that he is the cause of it. Teamed up with a French detective who is secretly monitoring and reporting Clouseau's actions to Dreyfus (Jean Reno), the clueless Inspector begins his search for the truth and the long list of suspects, which includes pretty much everyone on the soccer team (since they all hated him), and the coach's American pop superstar girlfriend, Xania (Beyonce Knowles).
Intended to be released last August and forced to sit on the shelf for six months after a series of disastrous test screenings, The Pink Panther is every bit the clunker that most fans of Blake Edwards' franchise pegged it to be from the beginning. I myself cannot claim to have much knowledge of the film series, as I have not seen many of the films. But, I can say with complete certainty that even if you walk in with no pre-conceived opinion on the original films, you will be able to see this film for what it really is - a great big insult to a classic series. There is not a single bright spot in the film's entire dreary 90 minute running time. It is simply a series of unfunny and misdirected gags that you can predict coming from a mile away, and are even less funny than you think they're going to be. That's because Shawn Levy does not know how to film slapstick sequences. The scenes are slow and poorly paced instead of fast and frantic like they should be. Most of the jokes fail because they are just plain not funny in the slightest, but some fail because they simply don't make any sense. In one scene, Clouseau is using the Internet, and clicks on a button on the screen. This causes his computer to literally explode, and then all the lights in Paris go out. There is no set up, that's the entire scene in itself. Ho ho.
Although Steve Martin is obviously enjoying himself in his role and seems to think he's a screaming riot, watching his performance is kind of like watching a stand up comedy act die right there on the stage, and the comedian somehow deludes himself into thinking he's bringing the house down. His antics did not crack a single smile with me, and I downright hated him before the film had hit the half hour mark. He is not a likeable fool, he is simply annoying. Martin and the film bring many other talented actors down with them like a sinking ship. Jean Reno is supposed to act embarrassed by Clouseau's screw ups, but sometimes I couldn't tell if he was acting or not. And Kevin Kline, who is actually a very gifted comic actor, is positively horrid as the scheming Chief Inspector who just can't get rid of Clouseau no matter how he tries to shame him. He seems to slip in and out of his fake accent at various times, and his performance is more pathetic than comedic. It's like he knew what he was stuck in, and just didn't even bother to try. And fans of Beyonce Knowles will have to simply wait for Dreamgirls to come around this December, as her role here is nothing more than a glorified 10 minute cameo used mostly to promote the film's soundtrack.
Before long, Chris is seen as one of the family, and is even offered a high level job at the company that Tom's father owns. It is during this time that he meets Nola (Scarlet Johansson), a struggling American actress trying to make it in the London theater world, and Tom's future fiance. Tom's family is not as thrilled about Nola as they are about Chris, but there is a definite attraction between her and Chris which begins a secret affair. Nola is hesitant to betray the man she's promised herself too, but when Tom breaks off their relationship, it becomes harder for the two to deny their passionate feelings for one another. The deeper Chris goes into the relationship, the more he will rely on deceit - not only to guard his secret, but to also protect this new lifestyle he has come to enjoy.
The real miracle that Match Point pulls off, however, is that it is able to explore the dark side of human nature without asking us to sympathize or without overly humanizing the characters' motives. At the same time, the characters, no matter how desperate and twisted their morals become, never become so hateful that we don't care about them. Allen achieves this tricky balance by showing us the world through their eyes, and by allowing us to share in their twisted rationalizing of their own actions. The film never asks us to understand what they're doing, it just gives us their reasoning. The lead character of Chris is a particularly interesting study as we see him change from a washed up almost-celebrity, to a man of high society, to a man who does not know what kind of life he wants anymore. He is at a constant struggle with himself to keep his life in balance, even though he himself is not sure if it is what he wants. Compare this to the film, Derailed, which came out a couple months ago, and also dealt with a man who was trying to keep his life together despite an affair with another woman and an increasing web of lies and deceit. Whereas Derailed treated the story as some sort of cartoon revenge fantasy where the lead character turned into a gun-toting vigilante that we were supposed to cheer for, Match Point is too smart for that. The lies and the resulting pain are all the more real and crushing because the screenplay treats its characters like real people.
Rather than being slavishly faithful to the original 1979 film, the 2006 version takes the opening 20 minutes of that movie and extends it into feature length. The film takes place during the course of a single night as Jill receives an increasing number of ominous phone calls. She's not sure what to make of them at first. She thinks they're simple pranks being played on her by her fellow classmates. But, as the ominous clues start to build (the live-in housekeeper mysteriously vanishes half-way through the night, she sees the car of her best friend who came to visit her earlier in the driveway, even though the friend left over an hour ago), Jill becomes more fearful and begins to feel that she is being watched. The film makes good use of its enclosed surroundings and a growing sense of paranoia. This was a surprise to me, as the film's opening moments that showcase Jill's school and personal problems led me to think this was going to be a brainless teen horror yarn like I Know What You Did Last Summer. While I wouldn't quite label the movie as being intelligent, it did some things right that I wasn't expecting.
The movie wants to be an 80-minute game of cat and mouse as the unsuspecting Jill is watched from the shadows by the murderous stranger who slowly makes his presence known as the film goes on. While a good idea, the film is not always successful at stretching out its thin premise to feature length. There are just too many scenes of Jill wandering around the house doing nothing, too many false alarms, and way too many scenes of Jill talking on the phone. It gets to the point that you almost think the phone company deserves a credit in the cast. It certainly doesn't help matters that the highly manipulative musical score is constantly trying to creep us out, even when we know there's no reason to be. It doesn't matter if Jill is talking to her best friend at school, or if she's grabbing a bite from the fridge, the film's soundtrack makes it sound like every action the characters make is ominous and mysterious. Because the movie is constantly trying to creep us out with false alarms literally ever 5 or 7 minutes, we almost start to roll our eyes. That's why it always comes as a surprise when that rare effective moment comes along.
Due to the movie's isolated structure, Camilla Belle is pretty much forced to carry the entire movie on her own. At this, she is not entirely successful. While she's not a terrible actress, she seems to get a bit too afraid a bit too soon into the movie. And her reaction to the stranger telling her over the phone that he wants to see her covered in blood seems to suggest a rather inappropriate "ew...icky" rather than the sheer horror one would think would greet such an announcement. The rest of the cast mainly get one or two scenes each, so they fail to make any sort of impression. The only actor who stands out is Lance Henriksen who provides the phone voice of the stranger. (When he finally shows up during the last 10 minutes of the movie, he's played by a different actor.) He doesn't have very much dialogue, but he's appropriately unnerving in his line delivery.
The film chronicles a 20-year relationship between two young sheep herders (yes, they're "gay sheep herders", not "gay cowboys" as everyone else calls them) that meet initially in 1963. Ennis (Heath Ledger) is the strong silent type, while Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the more wild, rowdy type. They've been hired to tend sheep on Wyoming's Brokeback Mountain as the film opens. Spending their days alone together in the mountains with the sheep and the dogs, the two men strike up a bond that eventually turns physical as time goes on. When their job ends, they must return to their normal lives. Ennis marries his fiance, Alma (Michelle Williams), while Jack catches the eye of a beautiful rodeo queen named Lureen (Anne Hathaway) who is the heir to a big business in Texas. However, the two men never forget their time on Brokeback, and make periodic meetings every couple years to take "fishing trips" together. Ennis' wife discovers the truth about their relationship early on, but must hold back her feelings for the good of their growing family and children.
Though its premise is ripe for high drama, Brokeback Mountain fails because the movie is emotionally distant for the most part. Ennis and Jack are not interesting people, nor do they possess any real spark during their scenes together, so I never once believed their forbidden relationship. Both of the men lack any real character to their personalities. Just because Ennis is the strong and silent type doesn't mean he has to be completely dry and mumble most of his words to the point that you sometimes can't understand what he's saying. But that's exactly how Heath Ledger plays him. All of Ennis' scenes basically revolve around a few basic emotions - silent and steely, angry and bitter, violent and drunk, or passionate and lustful whenever he's around Jack. He keeps on repeating these same motions over and over throughout the entire movie, so you pretty much see everything the character has to offer before the film's hit the 45-minute mark, and we've still got an hour and a half left to go in the movie by that time. Jack, while being the more interesting of the two (he actually tries to show some form of complex emotion), also fails to grab our attention because the movie doesn't bother to develop him enough. He pops up every now and then, runs off with Ennis for a "fishing trip", pouts about how they can't be together all the time, then goes back to his wife at home. The movie keeps on repeating the same motions over and over again almost like clockwork. By hitting the same emotional notes over and over, Brokeback Mountain quickly becomes a repetitive experience.
The film is also sloppily edited. Not only does director Ang Lee seem to linger a bit too long on nature shots and scenes where absolutely nothing happens, but the scenes seem to have no coherent flow or reason. The movie often jumps from one scene to the next with no warning. Sometimes it even feels like a scene isn't over yet, but it moves onto the next scene anyway. A very good example is a scene where Ennis is walking to a bar in a bad mood after having an argument with his wife. He almost gets hit by a truck as he crosses the street. The driver of the truck yells at him, Ennis gets mad, and forces the driver out of the truck. A violent fistfight erupts between the two men, but the movie doesn't even bother to finish the scene. We see the two men fighting, and suddenly, the film jumps to a completely different scene without any warning. There is also a pointless scene where Ennis picks a fight with a couple of drunk bikers at a Fourth of July celebration. The movie keeps on adding scenes that have little to do with anything, so we wonder what the point is in the first place. There were many times when I thought the movie could be developing its characters further (especially some of the more underwritten ones like Jack's wife, Lureen), but instead, we get scenes where we get to see Heath Ledger leaning against a wall and smoking for about a minute and a half.
It seems that one of the people involved in this ring is a family man, and said family has just placed an ad for a nanny to watch over the kids while the workaholic parents ignore them. Going against the wishes of his superiors at the FBI and his wife (he lies, and tells her he's going to a safety mascot convention), Malcolm dons his "Big Momma" disguise once more, and poses as an applicant for the nanny position so he can get some information on the father, and his role in the crime. While Malcolm initially thinks he can just blow the family off and concentrate on his private investigation, he quickly learns that this is one messed up family, and that they desperately need the guidance of his Big Momma personality. The parents are strict, overly orderly workaholics who schedule every single second of their family's day, the eldest child is a rebellious goth dating a "bad boy", middle daughter needs help with her dance routine for a cheerleading squad, and the youngest toddler son is apparently suicidal since he enjoys jumping from high ledges and falling on his face over and over repeatedly. Even the family dog is emotionally depressed after witnessing its mate dive into a wood chipper to fetch a ball. Malcolm will teach them how to be a family again, and they will supposedly teach him the importance of family, even though I have no idea how since he blows off his wife who is going to give birth any day to go undercover as Big Momma, but she forgives him anyway for no reason whatsoever.
I have to say, the very second "Big Momma" stepped onto the screen, I had a hard time convincing myself that anyone could mistake him for a woman, unless everyone around Malcolm has the intelligence of Jell-o pudding. He looks, talks, and acts nothing at all like a woman. Rather, Big Momma looks like a stand up comic from a sketch show impersonating a woman for laughs. In a 5 minute sketch setting, the character would probably work. But looking at Big Momma for 85 of a 100 minute long movie was just way too much. I kept on asking myself how the character of Malcolm could be fooling anyone, especially since he routinely slips out of character within ear shot of the family he's supposed to be investigating, yet no one ever notices. Since the Big Momma character is forced to carry almost the entire film, the movie fails, because we never once believe what we're looking at on the screen, even though we're in on the joke. We don't buy the concept that this guy could fool anyone, so therefore, we don't buy anything that happens afterward.
