Semi-Pro
Sporting a comically oversized fro so everyone will know the movie is set in the 70s (1976, to be exact), Ferrell is Jackie Moon, a man who used the profits from his one-hit wonder song, "Love Me Sexy", to purchase the struggling American Basketball Association team, the Flint Michigan Tropics. He's not only the owner, but also the coach and a player on the team. When he discovers that the ABA will be merging with the NBA, and that only the top four teams will be picked to go pro, Jackie is realistic, and tries to inspire his team to shoot for fourth place. Unfortunately, Jackie Moon is better at staging stunts to bring people into the stands (some of his promotional stunts include "Free Gerbil Night", and a halftime show where he wrestles with a bear) than he is at coaching a winning team, so he decides to bring in a former NBA player named Monix (Woody Harrelson) to the team. Monix has his own personal demons to deal with, but he believes in the team enough that he just might be able to lead them to an unprecedented victory.
Watching Semi-Pro was an odd experience. The movie would just be meandering along, not exactly being awful, but not impressing me at the same time. And then, from out of left field, a big laugh would come out of nowhere that would almost make me forget everything that came before. The movie seems to be continuously in this starting and stopping motion, giving the film an uneven tone throughout. I don't know if it was a problem with the script, or if there was trouble in the editing room, but the film's tone seems to constantly switch from scene to scene. One minute, the movie will be goofy and over the top, bordering on parody. Foul mouthed sportscasters, crazy stunts, and random out-of-nowhere bear attacks are the name of the game during these moments. Then, a couple minutes later, the movie will completely switch gears, and show the characters in a realistic and sympathetic light. There's a completely out of place subplot concerning Woody Harrelson's character trying to reconcile with a former girlfriend (Maura Tierney) who he betrayed in the past. The movie plays these scenes mostly seriously as if it were a drama, but then it will throw in an equally unnecessary gross out gag right in the middle of it, when the girlfriend's current boyfriend catches her having sex with her former fling, and he starts getting off on it and masturbating. This is a perfect example of the film's "Jekyll and Hyde" mentality that prevents it from ever finding solid ground.
I liked the movie the best when it was being silly and fun. These are mostly the scenes that center on Ferrell's character, who is often so off the wall, he seems to have wandered in from another movie at times. He's loud, brash, optimistic to the point of stupidity, and prone to almost child-like tantrums. In lesser hands, Jackie Moon would be the kind of character I would dread to see whenever he walked onto the screen, but Ferrell somehow makes him work. Most likely it's because he's played this exact same character many times before. He's mastered the big, dumb likable lug character almost to a science by now, but he still manages to get laughs, such as when an escaped bear is rampaging through the stadium, he advises the screaming crowd to find a small child and use it as a shield. I laughed a lot during Ferrell's scenes, and this is why it always kind of disheartened me whenever the movie would focus on another character. The more uplifting storylines, like the one centering around fallen professional sports star Monix, and a Tropics teammate named Clarence "Coffee" Black (Andre Benjamin) who has dreams of professional stardom, are fine but don't seem to belong in the same movie as Ferrell. Instead of being a major character in a story, Jackie Moon almost comes across as comic relief who steps in to liven up the story. This is strange, since he carries a good part of the movie.
For all of its inconsistencies and rapid shifts in tone, Semi-Pro is still watchable, thanks to a breezy pace that doesn't overstay its welcome, and a talented and energetic cast that take on the material with plenty of spirit. Even if the movie didn't seem to be going anywhere for a time, I was still admiring the lead performances of Ferrell, Harrelson, and Benjamin. The main fault lies with the final confused film that wound up on screens. Equally curious is the film's R-rating, which seems to exist for no reason. I'm not saying the movie didn't get the rating it deserved, as the obscenities and four letter words certainly do fly fast and furious in a lot of scenes. It's just that it seems unnecessary. If a movie wants to build itself around harsh language, it has to feel like it's part of the story, or that it's appropriate to come out of the characters. Here, the characters sound like a bunch of preteens trying to sound like adults by throwing in random obscenities into their conversations. It especially seems pointless during the film's later half, when it aspires to be a feel-good, stand up and cheer sports movie.
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The title character is portrayed by rising young star Anton Yelchin (from Alpha Dog), and when we first meet Charlie, he's just been expelled from a private school for selling fake drivers licenses to the other students. His slightly ditzy mother, Marilyn (Hope Davis), decides that her son should try his hand at a public school. Almost as soon as he steps into the world of public high school, Charlie realizes he's going to have to play against the rules if he wants to make a name for himself in this strange new world. He concocts a plan where he sells prescription drugs to the other students that the many narrow-minded therapists his mom sends him to (who seem more interested in doping Charlie up rather than listening to his problems) keep on trying to put him on. Furthermore, his talent for listening to other people's problems and helping them inspires him to open a counseling service right in the school's restroom, where students can anonymously step into the bathroom stall, and tell him their troubles. Charlie quickly becomes the talk of the school, and he wins the attention of the entire student body. The school's alcoholic and emotionally distant principal (Robert Downey Jr) eventually begins to catch on that the balance of power in his school is starting to shift to this student who came out of nowhere, and becomes further threatened when Charlie begins dating his daughter, Susan (Kat Dennings).
There's nothing in Charlie Bartlett that hasn't been said before, but the way the movie says it in an intelligent and thought provoking manner. This is a movie that remembers when the most important thing in a person's life is to be "popular" and to be seen as someone important in the eye of his or her peers. While this desire exists in some form in nearly every stage of life, it is almost pivotal in those awkward teen years, where nothing else seems to matter. For Charlie, acceptance is especially important. His mother turns a blind eye to his problems, the many therapists he sees seem to think the answers lie at the bottom of a bottle of Ritalin, and his father's sitting in prison on a tax evasion charge. He finds that listening and helping others not only takes his mind off of his own problems at home, but also helps him earn that all-important popularity. With his talking and listening skills, he is able to win over the school bully (Tyler Hilton), and even reach a few teens who couldn't be reached before. One of the film's strengths is that it portrays its characters and situations in a realistic manner. While it is mainly being billed as a comedy, the movie walks along a delicate tightrope as it veers from one tone to the next. Sometimes the change in tone is quite abrupt and jarring (we go from a light-hearted party sequence, to one of Charlie's peers attempting suicide by overdose in the very next scene), but for the most part, editor turned filmmaker Jon Poll does a good job of tackling the film's many sides.
If there's any problem with Charlie Bartlett, it's that it seems to draw inspiration from one too many past films. Its most closest relative is the early 90s Christian Slater film, Pump Up the Volume. It's tone is not quite the same, but many of the plot points are similar. Viewers may also draw comparison to other teen films as Rushmore, or even a little bit of Ferris Bueller. What helps the movie set itself apart is the intelligent screenplay by Nash, and the talent on display. Anton Yelchin obviously relishes his role, as he is able to nail all of his character's personality, quirks, and faults almost to a tee. He makes Charlie Bartlett into someone who is crying out for attention, and has been forced to grow up a little too quickly due to his home situation. As his love interest, Kat Dennings is able to take a somewhat underwritten character, and turn it into a charming performance that makes it easy to see why young Bartlett is drawn to her. The real stand out performance, however, belongs to Robert Downey Jr as a Principal who is probably ill-equiped for his career of managing young minds, and drowns his sorrows in self pity and alcohol. There's a scene late in the film between Yelchin and Downey, where the two have a final confrontation, and Downey's performance here is honest and heartbreaking. He's a deep, rounded character who comes across as being much more than an out of touch adult that a lesser screenplay would have treated him as.
In all of his movies, Larry is always the same character, just with a different job profession. I suppose Larry is supposed to be a sort of variation on the Ernest P. Worrell character that late comic actor, Jim Varney, made popular in the series of Ernest films back in the 80s and early 90s. The difference here is that the character of Ernest may have been a dumb redneck, but there was a certain sweetness to him and the desire to always do the right thing. The Larry the Cable Guy character is a racist, dim-witted, slob who seems too stupid to even want to do the right thing. He just stumbles upon doing good by accident. This time around, he's a sheriff's deputy in a backwater hick town who mistakes a woman under FBI witness protection as being kidnapped by crime lords. The woman in question is Madeleine (Ivana Milicevic), who is on the run because a crooked business tycoon named Arthur Grimsley (Peter Stormare, sporting the worst fake British accent ever captured in the history of film) is after her and some information she holds that could incriminate him. Larry doesn't trust the FBI agents escorting her, thinking they're crooked, so he snatches up Madeleine, and the two go on a cross country chase trying to figure out the truth behind the whole situation.
I really want to know who the Larry the Cable Guy character is supposed to be intended for. I have not seen much of his stand up act, but judging by his movies, his humor seems too juvenile and immature to appeal to any reasonably intelligent adult. But, I wouldn't even dare let a child watch one of his films, as every other thing out of his mouth is a sexual innuendo, or a play on a sex act. (The scene where he refers to an "evacuation" as an "ejaculation" is one of the film's more subtle and tasteful moments.) When he's not pushing the PG-13 rating to the limit with his constant talk of sexual acts, he relies on gross out humor, usually relying on farts, or other bodily fluids. The scene where Larry has to remove a key that he accidentally swallowed by projectile vomiting, then digging through his own puke to look for the key is the only scene that got a reaction from the audience at my screening, and it certainly wasn't laughter. I was never sure what to make of his character, as the movie keeps on sending us mixed messages. One minute, he's trying to help this Madeleine girl, and the next he's handcuffing her to a toilet. He's supposed to be a big, fat lummox who eventually grows on you, but all he did was make me want to never watch another movie featuring him ever again.
Writer-director Charles Robert Carner obviously didn't think Larry was reason enough to react in disgust, so he adds a couple other things into the mix to ensure watching Witless Protection is as painful as humanly possible. There's a chase scene fairly early on between Larry and the FBI agents at a pig farm that is shot in sped-up motion and handled so ineptly, I almost couldn't believe what I was watching. Everything is shot so amateurishly, and the performances so off, I was shocked that previous works popped up under Mr. Carner's name when I checked his credits on the IMDB. He drags some decent actors down with him as he mishandles each scene in this sinking ship of a movie. Aside from the previously mentioned Peter Stormare, the usually likable dramatic actor Joe Montegna pops up in an off the wall cameo as one of Larry's cousins - a redneck mad scientist with a passion for obese women. Montegna bugs his eyes out of his sockets and talks in a goofy voice, but he can't generate the slightest amount of personality or comic energy. He has shown an obvious knack for comedy, particularly when he pops up on the TV cartoon The Simpsons as the town's resident mob boss, but here he's working too hard for no reason.
The film's title takes itself from the name of a video store in New York where most of the action takes place. It's one of the last "mom and pop" stores that focuses entirely on video instead of DVD. The store is run by kind old Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), who insists the building has history, as a famous jazz musician was born where his store is now. The other two main characters are Mike (Mos Def), who works at the store and sees Mr. Fletcher as an almost father figure, and Jerry (Jack Black), who spends half of his time hanging out in the store, and the other half of the time creating conspiracy theories about and secretly plotting to sabotage a nearby power plant. The story kicks in when Mr. Fletcher leaves on a trip to spy on some of the competing rental stores, leaving Mike in charge. Shortly after this happens, Jerry's planned sabotage of the power plant goes wrong, and he winds up getting electrocuted. This doesn't kill him, rather it causes him to become magnetized. Therefore, the next time Jerry enters the store, the magnetic waves coming from his body wind up erasing all the tapes available for rent. Mike is now in a tight spot, as he has to think of a solution before Mr. Fletcher comes back, and what's worse, one of the store's few regulars, a somewhat loopy woman named Miss Falewicz (Mia Farrow) wants to rent Ghostbusters. The solution? Mike and Jerry film an extremely low budget remake of the movie in question, starring them and some of the other locals, hoping that Miss Falewicz won't notice, as she's never seen the movie before. The plan surprisingly works, and before long, customers are lining up for more of Mike and Jerry's on-the-cheap remakes of popular films.
The message in Be Kind, Rewind seems to be one of a community coming together. As word of the homemade remakes get around, more people get involved, and eventually the entire town starts popping up in their movies that covers remakes from the classics like 2001, Carrie, and The Lion King, to more contemporary films like Rush Hour 2. This is what gives the movie a lot of its sweet charms. The screenplay by Gondry wisely does not make the community into a bunch of colorful locals. (Although there are certainly some oddballs here and there.) They're mostly the kind of people you'd probably expect to find in the kind of neighborhood the movie is set in. The movie is sympathetic without ever becoming manipulative or heavy-handed, and it even gives the film a certain strange Frank Capra feel of the little people coming together to preserve what they believe in. That being said, the movie is definitely not conventional by any stretch of the imagination. Aside from its bizarre and implausible premise, the movie has an equally bizarre and quirky sense of humor to itself. Some may find this irritating, and indeed, the film does come dangerously close to drawing too much attention to itself by being weird just for the sake of being weird. For me, the movie managed to avoid becoming obnoxious, because despite it all, it knows where its heart is, and I found much of the humor to be genuinely entertaining and very funny.
A lot of this has to do with the cast, who seem to be completely game. Jack Black and Mos Def make a good odd couple, with Black playing the more comical of the two, and Def playing the long-suffering straight man to his friend's schemes. I have heard other critics saying that Black's performance is annoying in this film, but I personally didn't find him so. He finds the right balance between playing an off the wall character who builds his life around movies and crackpot conspiracy theories, but doesn't go so over the top that I didn't find myself laughing at him. He doesn't seem to be trying too hard, and I actually ended up liking his personality and his continuously positive spin on the situations he finds himself in. Mos Def doesn't get as many laughs as Black, but he seems to know he's not supposed to. He does a good job of balancing out his co-star's energetic performance, with a more subdued one that not only acts as a good counter-balance, but also makes his character extremely likeable and easy to get behind. I also liked Melonie Diaz, who plays a woman named Alma that joins up with the two lead characters movie idea early on, and winds up encouraging them the entire way through. The entire cast has a charm that carries through to the audience, and helps ground the movie a little, no matter how silly it may get.
If there's any visible fault that can be found, its that the film's premise is paper thin. Aside from some scenes dealing with Mr. Fletcher trying to prevent his building from being condemned and torn down, and a later scene when the government gets involved with Mike and Jerry's unauthorized remakes, there's no real sense of plot or conflict. The movie often comes across as a loosely connected series of skits that just barely manage to tell a coherent story. It's to the film's advantage that it contains such a strong, likable spirit, and the humor is often quite funny. Otherwise, I think this movie would barely have been able to get off the ground. I was also somewhat disappointed that the movie doesn't do enough with its own premise. Aside from the Ghostbusters remake (which easily holds the biggest laughs of 2008 so far), we get to see very little of the other ones, as most of the other films are covered in montages or brief glimpses. The end credits inform us we can see more of their movies on the film's official website, and I highly advise you do so after seeing this movie. A slightly less viable complaint is that the movie misses a golden opportunity when Sigourney Weaver pops up in a cameo as one of the government workers who tries to put a stop to their remakes. The fact that she starred in the Ghostbusters movies, and this film doesn't even have a little bit of fun with that seemed like a bit of wasted potential to me. It is funny, though, that she appears in two different movies this weekend, and both times, she barely registers.
The film's central premise take place during a nearly half-hour time frame. This is the amount of time covered when the President of the United States (William Hurt) arrives at a public summit and rally in Spain, takes the podium to begin to give his speech, and then is shot down by an assassin's bullet. The chaos that erupts is only heightened when two bombs (one off in the distance, the other right in the square where the President was) go off, killing and injuring hundreds more. Once this scene has run its course, the movie literally rewinds itself, and starts over again from the beginning, only this time showing it from a different perspective. We get multiple perspectives of different people who were there at the event. The first view we get is hard-nosed network news producer, Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver). Then we see things through the eyes of Secret Service Agent, Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid), whose hunt for the truth of what happened is constantly haunted by his own past. We eventually also get the views of a tourist named Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), who just happened to catch something on his handheld camera that might hold some answers, a shady person in the crowd named Javier (Edgar Ramirez), and even the view of the President himself. Each of these people saw something different either in the events leading up to the chaos, or right before it happened. The story slowly reveals itself each time we watch the events through different eyes, and we're supposed to follow all of their stories to the ultimate conclusion of what really happened.
To its credit, Vantage Point is certainly never boring, and keeps things moving at a pace that never once slows down during its tense and quick 90 minute run time. The opening 10 minutes or so that depicts the event in question is some of the most attention-grabbing stuff I've seen in a movie in a while. Director Pete Travis does a great job of showing the carnage and aftermath of the event, despite the film's PG-13 rating. It's terrifying, gritty, and makes us simultaneously intrigued and frightened at the same time. When the film's central gimmick of rewinding time and showing the same event from a different point of view initially starts to play itself out, I was even further intrigued, and found myself getting excited that I had stumbled upon a rare early-year release gem. Although it took a while, that excitement generally began to fade. The movie eventually begins to abandon its own premise, giving us a final 20 minutes or so that doesn't focus on anybody, and just gives us a standard action movie conclusion with plenty of shoot outs, double crosses, and car chases that are shot well, but don't really offer anything new to the long-standing tradition of car chase scenes. I wondered to myself why screenwriter Barry Levy didn't believe enough in his own idea to carry it through all the way. He does such a great job of balancing multiple storylines, characters, and scenarios without making things confusing, that I felt a bit saddened that he threw it all away for a conventional Hollywood ending. Was it studio pressure, perhaps? Whatever the case, the movie never quite lives up to the promise it gives itself.
The true glaring flaw of the film does not reveal itself until about halfway through. That's when we start to realize that the movie is never giving us anything to figure out for ourselves. There is no mystery in Vantage Point, no clues it gives us so that we can try to follow the information to the ending. The movie keeps everything hidden from us, only to reveal it later on for us. During one of the early scenarios, Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes runs inside the news van on the scene, asking to look at their live tapes of the attack. He sees something on one of the tapes that makes his face go white with fright, and when he orders the news crew to freeze the tape, we don't get to see what he's looking at. He just runs out of the news van, and we don't hear from him or find out what he saw until the movie is good and ready to explain everything to us during one of the film's later scenarios. It keeps on hiding things from us, only go explain everything away later on. This approach gives us nothing to work with, so we eventually start to feel like outsiders, instead of truly being involved in the story in some way. Another flaw that eventually comes to light is that in covering the same event over and over, a lot of the tension is eventually lost. It never becomes dull or repetitive, since we're looking at it through fresh eyes, but I eventually found that I just wasn't as excited as I initially was about finding out what happened as the film started to rewind itself each time.
The gimmick of Vantage Point that allows us to see things through the eyes of different characters pretty much ensures that there is no one lead character. Some characters do get more attention than others, though. Dennis Quaid's Thomas Barnes character has the most fleshed out backstory, as we learn why this is his first time on duty with the President in almost a year. The fact that he becomes one of the main central focuses during the film's final half when it ditches its own concept makes him probably the closest thing this movie has to a "hero" that the audience is supposed to identify with. The rest of the characters are given either no background or story at all, or very limited information given about them in their dialogue. The only other character who truly stands out beside Quaid is Forest Whitaker's character is probably the most human, in that he's the only one in the film who finds himself trapped in the chaos that comes across as frightened for his own life, while at the same time wanting to do the right thing. The other performances seem to be mainly there for a pay check, especially Sigourney Weaver as the news producer, whose part is so small you wonder why she bothered to show up in the first place. Even William Hurt as the President doesn't get to play as large of a role as we hoped when we eventually get to learn the truth about his side of the story. Though the performances are never bad, they are often given little to do, aside from the previously noted exceptions.
Our troubled hero this time around is Andie (Briana Evigan). She's been hanging out with a dangerous gang of street dancers, and the woman she's been living with since Andie's mom died is at the end of her rope, threatening to send her to live with family in Texas if she doesn't straighten up and fly right. Andie's last chance is to take classes at the Maryland School of the Arts. The head of the street gang Andie used to hang out with (Black Thomas) feels betrayed, and her former friends dump her right before a big street dancing competition is about to come up. Fortunately, there's a lot of misfits and outcasts at the school just like Andie who happen to love street dancing. The local cute guy, Chase Collins (Robert Hoffman), introduces Andie to some kids that the school doesn't know what to do with, and with his help, the two start a new group to participate in the big street dancing competition. Of course, first they'll have to win the respect of Andie's former friends, and make Chase's snobby brother, Blake (Will Kemp), realize that street dancing can be just as beautiful as professional ballet.
To say that Step Up 2 the Streets' plotline is not exactly gripping would be an understatement. It's not just that we've seen it all before, it's that the characters are so feeble in their construction, it's impossible to really get involved. As is to be expected, the dance sequences are really the only moments where the movie comes to life. Just like in the recent How She Move, head choreographer Hi-Hat knows how to kick the energy level up a couple notches by displaying some wildly inventive and exciting routines for the performers. The film's opening dance sequence on a subway train is particularly exciting. The actors were obviously cast for their beautiful bodies and abilities on the dance floor, and it's during the musical sequences that the cast truly comes alive. When they're stuck reciting the awful dialogue given them by writers Toni Ann Johnson and Karen Barna, they sometimes look nervous or like deers trapped in headlights. Both Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman make for attractive leads, but their best efforts can't breathe any real life into their characters that are as flat as the actors' stomachs. The same goes for the rest of the heroes, who are introduced in a montage sequence, then pretty much stay in the background for the rest of the movie, only taking center stage during the dance numbers.
When he was 15-years-old, David Rice (Hayden Christensen) had a near-death experience. He fell through some shallow ice into the water, and only survived became he somehow teleported himself out of his dire situation and into a public library. Realizing the power he had, David used it to escape from his alcoholic father (Michael Rooker), and start a life of his own. David now lives the high-life in New York City. He uses his powers for his own personal gain, teleporting anywhere in the world, as well as warping himself into bank vaults to swipe some quick cash. Despite his big city lifestyle, David still longs for the girl he left behind back in his hometown of Ann Arbor. So, he heads back home, and reunites with an old flame named Millie (Rachel Bilson). Not long after the two go on a whirlwind tour of Rome, David not only discovers that there are others with the same ability as him who call themselves Jumpers, but that there is also a religious extremist organization chasing the Jumpers down, as they believe their power is unnatural in the eyes of God. The extremists are led by a man named Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), and David soon finds himself in a war between the two sides when he meets a fellow Jumper named Griffin (Jamie Bell). His only choice is to fight for his own life, and protect Millie, who gets dragged into it all.
When I say that Jumper dives head-first into its own premise and never looks back, I mean it. The movie keeps on throwing intriguing ideas and concepts that could be interesting, but never does anything with them. It doesn't care who the Jumpers are, how they came to be, or even how their power came to be. When David teleports for the first time early on, his reaction looks more like that of a person debating what to pick up at the grocery store. Likewise, when Millie encounters David for the first time in 8 years, the movie doesn't even allow her to be awed or even relieved by his arrival. Considering the last time she saw the guy was when he nearly drowned, only to have his body seemingly disappear without a trace, I'd say she handles the situation of him suddenly walking back into her life rather well. They take off for Rome moments after being reunited, but never really gives them a chance to get close together, as the movie keeps on throwing them into action sequences that are so tightly shot and poorly edited, they're sometimes hard to follow. We don't learn much about the militant religious group chasing David down, either. We know that they're against the Jumpers, because they think they're unnatural, but the movie never goes any deeper than that. The villains exist simply to chase after and shoot at the heroes with bizarre high tech weaponry that the movie also never explains how they came upon. With all the gadgets and futuristic weapons the evil Roland has at his disposal, I kept on waiting for Jack Nicholson to pop up, and ask where he got all those wonderful toys.
A lot of the film's problems seem to stem from a lot of heavy editing that happened before it hit theaters. Running by at a very breezy and fast-paced 88 minutes, the movie rushes ahead, never really developing the characters or the numerous plotlines. The movie does offer hints at some drama that is never fully realized, and makes me wonder if it wound up on the cutting room floor. There's are scenes that hint that David's father is truly sorry for the way he used to treat him, and desperately wishes to reconcile with him. Nothing is truly done with this, and it seems like a wasted chance for some human emotion amidst all the teleporting and fighting. Also underdeveloped is the plot concerning David's mom (Diane Lane in a small cameo), who walked out when he was only five, and is later revealed to play a much bigger role in the story in a plot twist that I will not reveal here. Just like everyone else, David never gets a chance to react to the film's revelation, and treats it with casual indifference. To its credit, the film obviously had a healthy budget to allow a lot of exotic scenery, setting up situations in places like Rome, London, Tokyo, and Egypt. It's too bad the characters "jump" out of these places almost as soon as they pop up most of the time. If we can't attach ourselves to the plot and the characters, the filmmakers could have at least let us marvel at the scenery. Other than an extended action sequence in the Roman Coliseum, it never truly takes advantage of it.
It's one thing to not care about what's going on or the characters, it's quite another to just not even like the characters. I did not like David, who often comes across as a smarmy, egotistical, arrogant jerk. While I sort of like the idea of a lead character with super powers using his abilities for his own needs in a way, David is just too hard to root for the way he's been written. We never want to see him escape from his current situation, or make amends with Millie. It also doesn't help that Hayden Christensen (an actor who has often been accused of wooden and forced performances) has all the personality and charm of a brick wall in this movie. Either the director told him to react to everything with as little emotion as possible, or the guy really doesn't know what he's doing. In the other lead roles, Rachel Bilson and Jamie Bell are pretty much cast adrift by a screenplay that cares little for their characters. Bilson never comes across as anything but a pretty face running alongside David, and Bell's character is surprisingly underwritten, considering how important he seems to be for David to learn more about what he is. As for Samuel L. Jackson, it quickly becomes ridiculous how thinly written and uninteresting his villain character is, and how little he actually has to do with anything.
The background story concerns a man named Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathaim), who discovered that mythical creatures from far-off magical realms dwelled in the woods that surrounded his home. Some of the creatures could only be seen when they wanted to be, while others were invisible to the naked eye, and could only be seen with the aid of a magical device known as a Seeing Stone. As time passed, Arthur built friendships with the many fairies, goblins, and griffins that lived right outside his home, began to study them, and wrote down everything he learned about the different beings in a private journal he called "Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You". However, not all of the magical inhabitants of the woods were his friend, and a shape-shifting Ogre king named Mulgarath (Nick Nolte) wanted to use the book's information to learn the weaknesses of all the other creatures in the forest, so that he could rule over all the magical inhabitants. Arthur was forced to create a magical barrier around the house to protect the book and the secrets it held, and mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.
Flash forward to the present, and a new family who are direct descendants of Arthur Spiderwick have moved into his long-abandoned home. Recently divorced mother, Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker), is looking for a fresh start, and brings her three children to the home to begin a new life. The children include twin sons, Jared and Simon (Freddie Highmore in a dual role), and older daughter Mallory (Sarah Bolger). Jared is a rebellious and somewhat moody child, prone to causing trouble. That's why the family doesn't believe him when he starts complaining of hearing something moving around inside the walls of the house, or catching very brief glimpses of what looks like a tiny person just out of the corner of his eye. Doing his own private investigating of the house's unexplored regions, he stumbles upon the attic where Arthur Spiderwick studied the creatures, and discovers the Field Guide within. Breaking the seal upon the book somehow alerts the creatures that it has been found, and the evil Mulgarath begins to send out his armies to surround the house and discover a way past the barrier that was placed years ago. Jared is eventually able to convince his two siblings of what's going on right outside their front door, and with the aid of a tiny house-dwelling creature named Thimbletack (voice by Martin Short), he will have to learn the secrets behind the ancient writings if he wants to protect his family.
Based on a series of childrens fantasy adventure novels by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, The Spiderwick Chronicles doesn't quite reach the heights of the Harry Potter series, but it's definitely a step up from some recent failed franchise attempts like Eragon, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, and The Golden Compass. Having not read the original stories, I cannot say how accurate the screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick (Charlotte's Web), David Berenbaum (Zoom), and John Sayles (Silver City) is. What I can say is that the movie does a great job of holding our attention with a skillful blend of mystery, adventure, and fast-paced action that never seems to let up, but never becomes so overbearing that the movie starts to lose itself to chaos. The film's opening prologue scene centering on Arthur Spiderwick and his research definitely sets up a wondrous, if not ominous, tone that the movie successfully carries throughout. This is a family adventure film that does not talk down to children, nor does it shy away from them being placed in life-threatening danger. Mulgarath and his army of monsters are willing to kill our heroes if it means getting the book, and they come pretty close many times throughout the film. And yet, the movie is wise enough not to dwell on the dark nature of the story, featuring a generous amount of wonder and discovery to balance it all out. This is primarily a movie about discovering other worlds that exist right outside your front door. It's a theme that just about everyone can relate to at some point in their life, and the film exploits that natural desire of discovery wonderfully.
Obviously, any film that builds itself around special effects is in danger of letting the effects work take control of the film, dragging the story and the characters down with it. This is fortunately not the case here, as director Mark Waters (Mean Girls, Just Like Heaven), keeps the attention focused on the three young leads, while making sure that we get enough time to admire the creature design. With the focus on the human cast, it almost makes you wish there were better actors in the lead roles, which brings me to my main complaint. While the performances are adequate and never offensive, I kept on thinking it could be better. Popular child actor Freddie Highmore (August Rush, Finding Neverland) has the daunting task of not only playing two characters, but also attempting an American accent (he's British in real life). You can tell that he's trying, but he never quite completely convinces. As sister Mallory, Sarah Bolger can come across as being somewhat shrill, though she never annoys. The most disappointing performances, however, are the two main vocal performances from comic actors Martin Short and Seth Rogen (who gives his voice to a cowardly hobgoblin that befriends the children named Hogsqueal). They're supposed to infuse the story with comedic energy, but never quite earn their laughs.
While I could have wished for a better cast to tell the story, the way the story has been told left me very engaged. The effects work, while not exactly what I would call "realistic", is still effective, and I liked the designs of a lot of the creatures. Seeing the griffin make its first appearance almost made me wish it had appeared in the movie sooner, and afterward, made me wish the movie had used it more. Most of all, though, I admired the way that the film did not talk down to its audience. Though the ad campaign tries to pass it off as a rollicking adventure for kids, there is a sort of bittersweet undercurrent to the story, a lot of it having to do with the broken family at the center of the film. Though seldom seen, the childrens' father plays a large role in the story. Most of the concern with those critical to the movie, however, comes from the dark fantasy elements, including shots of the kids being dragged along the ground by invisible monsters, and having bloody claw-shaped wounds suddenly appear on their arms and legs. It's nothing that will send kids in the upper single digits or close to hitting 10 running out of the theater, but very young children would probably be better off at home.
