The Visitor (2007)While I'm a sucker for a lot of different kinds of movies (coming of age, costume dramas, sweeping epics), I wouldn't consider the middle aged thaw out one of them. One that stars yeoman character actor Richard Jenkins, co-stars cutie Haaz Sleiman from what's probably the worst episode of Veronica Mars ever, and has some sort of illegal alien/drumming plot? I'm in. Jenkins, as is his wont, gives subtle and nuanced performance as an widowed economics professor who returns to his New York apartment after years of absence to find Zainab (Dania Jekesai Gurira) and Tarek (Sleiman) living there. He's only in town to present a paper, and, well, it's not like he's using the place, so he lets them stay. In his sophomore feature, writer-director Thomas McCarthy is surprisingly subtle in dealing with both the reasons why Jenkins would do this (he manages to drop them into conversations naturally) and with the immigration/illegal alien plot. By the time Tarek's mom (Hiam Abbass) arrives, Jenkins' gradual warming seems sweet and natural instead of strange and forced. It's not a perfect movie, but it's certainly a nice one to enjoy on a quiet day. B+
So it's too bad that Jenkins turned around and made . . .
Step Brothers (2008)
It's bad to the point where I feel I should be writing a "I Watched This on Purpose" entry after seeing it. I knew it wasn't going to be good, but I went into it thinking, "Hopefully it's not that bad." Surely it had a chance at least being "good for what it is" bad, right? That was the wrong move. It is that bad. Just plain bad. There are a lot of changes that could have made it at least enjoyable bad, like, say, making Dale (John C. Reilly) and Brennan (Will Ferrell) a solid 15 years younger. "But then they couldn't have been played by Reilly and Ferrell!" you exclaim. To which I say, "And?"
You know that comedy trope where something is funny entirely because it goes on for so long, and then it stops being funny because it's gone on for so long, and then it starts being even funnier than it originally was because it just keeps going? This plot of this movie is that joke, stretched out over an uninspired 95 minutes. It's improv gone awry. Remember that scene where they build bunk beds because it will give them so much more room to do activities and then Dale jumps up on the top bunk and the whole thing collapses on Brennan? Funny, right? Not so much. In between Dale sort of bops around in a circle listing off activities they can do in this newly freed space (sadly, I didn't hear "mixed martial arts," which would have been actually funny), while Brennan simply paces around near the beds saying, "So many activities" over and over in a vaguely-OCD manner. Ferrell, not Brennan, just seems so fatigued, like he couldn't even come up with anything better. It reeks of improved filler that exists solely to get us to the big finish, which doesn't nearly have the impact that it could have if a) it wasn't in every ad and b) we were idiots.
What does any of this have to do with Richard Jenkins? He plays one of the step parents along with the overly tanned but otherwise reliable Mary Steenburgen. I like them both, but it is impossible to sympathize with/relate to any of these characters. Why are you allowing your 40 year old children to live with you and act like 13 year olds? With nothing to relate to, there is no heart at the centre of the movie to tie it all together, a key element on the rest of the man-child movies. If it weren't for Adam Scott as Brennan's hilariously overachieving douchebag younger brother, this movie might have no redeeming value. Apatow and co. need to put this arrested development thing away and think of other ways to be funny. And, while they are at it, why don't they about writing funnier, more filled out female characters like Catherine Keener's in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (although consider the casting) and less like poor, poor Alice (Kathryn Hahn) in this outing? D
No comments:
Post a Comment