Fourth Kind (The)

There’s a movie out about alien abductions called The Fourth Kind, as in one more than those Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I know a lot about this subject, having been abducted myself back when I was about nineteen. Okay, so the aliens who kidnapped me were a couple of cabin boys from a Lithuanian freighter that had docked along the East River, and it was a *tad* bit voluntary on my part, but I understand the pain of these folks from The Fourth Kind. Whether they’re from Eastern Europe or Alpha Centari, grabby hands poking at your no-no hole are all the same. 

 For those who are clamoring to actually see any of this type of personal space invasion The Fourth Kind is going to be a terrible disappointment. It has to be the first alien abduction movie to not feature any aliens and only one small abduction, and that takes place off-camera. I know what you are thinking, and, seriously, this sucks eggs. Even the schlockiest of crapola on the SyFy Channel will spring for a rubber mask with big eyes to give us a few (very, very few) chills. Instead, director and writer Olatunde Osunsanmi (WIthIN) has decided to turn The Fourth Kind into a faux quasi-documentary. This wouldn’t seem like such a big “bend-over” deal except that all the ads for the film make it look like this is going to be one huge scary-ass thriller. The previews show requisite creaky doors opening, a couple of close-ups of people screaming in horror, and quick cutaways of folks running through the darkness while the music shrieks like it was torn straight from the soundtrack of Psycho. If only. The only thing that made me want to run away was the snoozy script that left me biting the insides of my cheeks to stay awake through the whole thing. 

     

The story of The Fourth Kind is fairly simple: Psychologist Abbey Tyler (Milla Jovovich;Resident Evil: Extinction) has moved her family to Nome, Alaska after her husband’s recent death and quickly finds out that several of her patients are suffering from intense anxiety and paranoia as well as sharing a common memory of being stalked by a big white owl coming for them in the night. So she tapes these patients while hypnotized and what happens next is supposedly Blair Witch Project scary. The only problem with this is that people went into The Blair Witch Project without expecting to see an actual witch. People coming into The Fourth Kind want to see some honest-to-God fake aliens, and there are none to be seen. Complicating things even further isThe Fourth Kind’s allegation that the unseen entities terrorizing people are more than just aliens from outer space. It seems these critters speak ancient Sumerian, and in the small translatable bit of dialogue uttered by one of the “possessed” victims being taped the visitor identifies itself as God. Hmmm. So suddenly we jump from Close Encounters territory to shades of The Exorcist. 

            

One unusual element to The Fourth Kind is Osunsanmi’s decision to use a split-screen in various parts of the film and have his actors recreate the hypnotic sessions “real” patients, i.e., “characters” had with therapist Abbey Tyler while grainy footage of the (alleged) “actual” taped meetings run simultaneously. Ironically, it is the “actor” actors’ mouthing the identical dialogue as the so-called “real victims” that is more convincing than those in the film who purport to have been abducted. Obviously the “real” footage is as fake as the recreations, but it does help generate a sense of legitimate dread for those viewers who can’t help but be drawn in to the drama. 

    

It’s doubtful skeptics are the ones who will be filling theater seats for The Fourth Kind, so the movie relies on that already built-in audience willing to suspend its disbelief and go with the flow as presented by Osunsanmi and company. Unfortunately, the key role of the “real” Dr. Tyler is played by an unnamed actress who looks like she just stepped out of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. The perpetually vacant stare, her pasty-white face, stringy hair and never-ending flat affect are way over the top, making it hard to believe she could ever be a competent psychologist no matter how many times she’s been on the receiving end of an alien probe. Jovovich is more believable, and actually does a reasonable job convincing us that Dr. Tyler has the balls tom stand up to the local sheriff (Will Patton; The Canyon), whose basic job in the movie is to bully her and imply that he is a heartbeat away from arresting her for the murder of her late husband. 

       

Dr. Tyler’s involvement in the death of her husband Will (Julian Vergov; Fake Identity) is crucial to the bigger story. Was he killed by aliens who have invaded the Tyler home? Did Abbey kill him while under the influence of some otherworldly source? And what, if anything, do her kids know about the events of that night? Son Ronnie (Raphaël Coleman; It’s Alive) is a constant source of hostility and bitchiness which Abbey tends to ignore even if the audience can’t. While fifteen year old Coleman is effective playing a ten year old, “Ronnie” comes across as a punk in need of a swift kick (or anal probe) in the ass. Okay, so maybe he’s mad that his Dad is dead and he has an idea that Mom is responsible, but does he have to be such a shmendrik about it?

Elias Koteas (The Haunting in Connecticut) is also on hand, lurking through most of the picture as Abel Campos, a skeptical colleague of the late other Dr. Tyler. What he adds to the mix is a tip of the hat to those who might think that these proceeding are a load of crap. He reminds me of Ohio Representative John Boenner. He’s kind of an a-hole, but is still worth enduring just so you can have someone to kvetch about later. He’s as close to a villain as the movie gets, especially since we never get to actually see the invaders. 
   

The Fourth Kind is the only movie I’ve seen that opens with its star addressing the audience with "I'm actress Milla Jovovich and I will be portraying Dr. Abigail Tyler in the movie… What you are about to see is extremely disturbing." This alone is disconcerting, but what follows with the mixture of “real” (actually real fake) and cinematic is a clever conceit even if it ultimately falls apart by the end. The Fourth Kind tries very hard to make a case for alien abductions but it ends up being more about the smoke and mirrors of filmmaking. If you are planning to go to see The Fourth Kind for chills and thrills I’d recommend you try The Box instead. Now there is a real freak-out, and it’s playing right next door to The Fourth Kind at both the Essex Cinemas and the Cumberland 12.

Michael Jackson ~ This is It

These days it isn’t that hard to grab yourself a fan base. Heck, even Spencer Pratt and his Will o’ the Wisp flesh-colored beard have people who worship him, and that is not so far from adoring a hemorrhoid with a transparent merkin on his chin. My cousin Winona, whose only discernable talent seems to be the ability to breathe with her mouth closed, has a Facebook page with 874 “friends.” Okay, so “friends” may not be exactly the same as “fans”, but considering she lives in a single-wide near an ice-flow along the James Ross Strait in Nunavut, EBF, Canada and spends her days knitting custom yarmulkes for people’s pets, it proves that almost anybody with an Internet connection can find someone to like them. Granted, I’m assuming that at least half of those 874 “friends” are actually human and at least 10% of those have truly met her, so apparently there really is a sucker born every minute. We don’t even invite Winona to family reunions, but that is mostly because everyone in her immediate gene pool knows that it is impossible to tell which of her eyes to look into when trying to carry on a conversation with her. Unfortunately, Winona was born with two lazy eyes, and neither one of them has wandered onto the same path since. My Uncle Dominick, her father, always said the biggest blessing in Winona’s life was that she was born a girl because with those eyes she’d never be able to write her name in the snow, if you know what I mean. Rumor has it she may have drowned the family cat trying to take aim, but that’s a visual I try not to think about.

Speaking of trying to avoid something, I waited until a week after it premiered to see Michael Jackson: This is It because I had about as much enthusiasm for hearing or seeing anything more even remotely associated with Michael Jackson as I do for giving Larry King a Brazilian wax with my teeth. I’m sorry, but I was never a fan of the self-proclaimed “King of Pop.” Maybe that title was part of the problem. I don’t really like people who crown themselves as royalty. It’s not much different than what George Bush managed to pull off in 2004 or Idi Amin did in 1971. I will give him credit though. Calling himself the “King of Pop” may have proved to be a self-fulfilling prophesy; perhaps I should begin referring to myself as the “Queen of the Internet” and wait for the riches to roll in.

You know, liking Michael Jackson has not been an easy task. With everything from his bizarre fetish for cosmetic surgery, the peculiar way he dressed his children in masks whenever they went out in public, his odd penchant for obtaining The Elephant Man’s remains, and, of course, that whole child-diddling issue all act as heavy barriers to my even wanting to bother with acknowledging the talents the man had. He went out of the way to separate himself from the masses with his weird tastes, whether it was by bleaching his skin, wearing those odd militaristic (yet fabulously sequined) costumes in his private life off-stage, or by turning his home into an amusement park where his best friend and companion was a cranky chimpanzee named Bubbles, Michael practically begged to be mocked. It almost seems like he wanted us to think he was crazy. Maybe he was; Jackson’s personal life was a mess and apparently always had been thanks to his hideously abusive father. The days of his “Thriller” fame were only a painful memory of when Michael was a young, sexy, black man long before he morphed into a middle-aged, androgynous-looking white woman. It’s only now, after his death, that the truth about his rampant drug use has been revealed and has clouded his reputation even further.

Still, despite all of his peculiarities, there was an amazingly talented person behind the tabloid headlines and Michael Jackson: This is It is a grand opportunity to see the legend devoid of his peculiarities and revealed to be the great musician he actually was. While Michael Jackson: This is It is not what one could call a great concert film, it is a very personal event. Made up of footage from Jackson’s rehearsals for his planned London comeback concert series, Michael Jackson: This is It strips away a lot of the “exotic” hoopla that always followed Jackson and concentrates on the artist at work. Michael is shown working with his dance troupe, his band, and choreographer and director Kenny Ortega (who assembled the footage and brought Michael Jackson: This is It to life) as he works to develop the precision moves and cues he has always been known for in his act. Whatever questions people may have held about him being too frail or drug dependent to perform this comeback should be doused by the picture of the man on-screen. Michael was on fire creatively and physically, able to manage moves no ordinary 50 year old guy could do.

Michael Jackson: This is It is Michael Jackson at his best. There are updated versions of several of his past hits, including a peek at was to be a new 3-D “Thriller” and a salute to his years as the front-man for the Jackson Five.  The most fascinating thing though has to be seeing ~ even in small glimpses ~ the kindness of the man that is usually lost in the hype and mythology that surrounded him in life and now continues since his death. How rare to see an artist of his stature granting those in his circle time on-stage during his show to shine as individual talents beyond being his “background” performers. Truly, Michael had a generous spirit.

I’m sure Michael Jackson: This is It won’t be the absolute last we hear from the deceased singer considering the huge archives of his work that must exist, but this is definitely a fitting tribute to Michael and a gift to his fans worth cherishing. I’ll admit I may not have been one before, but after Michael Jackson: This is It I have a newfound respect for the man even if it does mean I have to admit I was wrong about the man. Better late than never I suppose.

Paranormal Activity

Last weekend my perfect husband and I went to the Essex Cinemas to see Paranormal Activity. Dale Chapman, the always genial manager of the theater, told us that people were coming out of the movie completely freaked out, scared senseless by this supposedly terrifying saga of a young couple haunted by an unseen entity in their oh-so-chic San Diego McMansion. He remembered a gaggle of teenage girls who were so frightened after the 8:00 pm show on Friday that they were afraid to go home for fear of what might be lurking in the dark. Uh huh.

I haven’t seen so much hoopla over a “scary movie” since The Exorcist was first released back in 1973. Now this was a national trauma. People passed out, threw up, broke down and checked in to mental institutions over that religious potboiler. I couldn’t imagine Paranormal Activity was going to be that creepy. Many people have also compared Paranormal Activity to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, but I think that is mostly because both films were shot on the cheap and done in a documentary style. There is one other parallel which is more Blair Witch than Exorcist and that is that it’s what you don’t see which creates the spooky atmosphere. For those looking for out-and-out gore, there’s Saw VI, also currently playing, but Paranormal Activity aims for a more intellectual scare. It’s what isn’t obvious in the night that first time writer/director Oren Peli wants to have you fretting about.

In Paranormal Activity, happily unmarried Katie (Katie Featherston; Mutant) and Micah (Micah Sloat, in an impressive debut) are living a dream lifestyle for a 20-something couple. Micah is an apparently very successful day trader while Katie is a graduate student, living a (seemingly) cushy life without a worry in the world. At least they were until Katie admits to a wee problem she has endured since she was a kid. It seems a malevolent spirit has been reaching out to her ever since her family home mysteriously burned to the ground when she was only eight. Oh my, just a little thing to have kept secret until after she and Micah had shacked up together. So, for the next fifteen years or so she has done her best to ignore the poltergeist on her tail and has managed to do fairly well at it until now. How fortunate for her that Micah lists his two favorite hobbies as videotaping everything he can and pissing off evil ghosties as often as possible. How unfortunate for us that this pretty much constitutes the gist of the rest of the movie.

The tiny sounds that terrify these un-newlyweds just show how young and impressionable they really are. It also shows how much things have changed in the last thirty years. With a weekly dose of guts and grossness splayed out across the screen (and by this I mean movies like the Saw series and not the latest Lindsay Lohan release), Generations X, Y and Me have become completely desensitized to gore and the shock value of a single head turning around and spewing pea soup at the camera. It’s what they don’t see that scares them. Maybe this explains why today’s group seems to lack the same enthusiasm for sex that mine did in our 20s. You know the saying: “How you going to keep them from upchucking the farm after they’ve seen Paris?” A steady stream of snatching a glimpse (or glimpsing a snatch) of every starlet from Ms. Hilton (who has had more men spend the night in her than every stayed at one of the hotels bearing her family name) to Britney Spears (and who hasn’t speared that thing?), the prospect of what could happen between the attractive Featherston and Sloat when they hit the sheets seems to have been replaced by the notion that watching them cower on the corner of the bed is more entertaining than the obvious.

One thing is clear: this Paranormal Activity is definitely for younger people. Anyone who has been married for more than ten years will attest that waking up at the tiniest noise just doesn’t happen. At my house things creak, go bump in the night, and mysterious rumblings occur regularly, and I’ve become so used to all the racket escaping from my perfect husband while he blissfully snores and farts himself into oblivion that it would take a jetliner crashing into our bedroom to disturb my slumber. And anybody with children will tell you that if they hear weird noises in the dark they aren’t going to get out of bed until one of the kids screams that someone has lost an eye. In real life, only the young and childless are going to believe in the spirits Paranormal Activity has to offer. Perhaps, for them, the movie should have been called Paranoid Activity instead. 

Law Abiding Citizen

I have a friend we’ll call “Gale” to protect her anonymity because her story is one of raw lust, not meant for mixed company or to be shared at dinner parties.  “Gale” is a fifty year old woman with a teenager’s crush on Scottish actor Gerard Butler. Say his name and she squeals like she’s been goosed hard. Say it twice and she’ll have to change her panties she’ll get so excited. So you can imagine when Butler’s latest release, Law Abiding Citizen, opened this week it would be inevitable that I would take my BFF to see the movie, but not before I grabbed a few towels, a bottle of disinfectant, and a roll of Saran Wrap® to ensure the quality maintenance of her theater seat in case seeing Butler’s presence on the big screen proved too overwhelming and “Gale” lost all her bodily functions at his first appearance. If only I could get her to put me in her will I’d put some energy into arranging a face-to-face meeting between the two. That way we’d both win. She’d die happy and I’d be rich. The only loser in that scenario would be Gerry because I’m sure “Gayle’s head would explode upon laying eyes on him and he’d be stuck with brain goo all over his snappy designer duds (not to mention her eyes, really laying upon him somewhere).

Okay. So maybe I exaggerate slightly, but “Gale’s” unfettered fluttering of the heart for the Great Scott is a wonder to behold. I will admit I do find Butler mildly attractive, especially as he was playing the caring and oh-so-sensitive dead husband to Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You. Of course, in that he was a corpse and so his compassion comes mostly off-screen and after a terminal cancer diagnosis, so it makes sense in a way that belies his macho image in other movies like 300, Gamer and The Ugly Truth. Those films seem more in line with what I imagine the “real” Gerard Butler to be like. He probably has a good sense of humor (he’d have to since he spent the entirety of 300 in a leather mini-skirt), an intensity to his concentration (hey, killing hundreds of guys out to get him as he did in Gamer takes focus), and he’s had a string of other women he’s left in his wake (as was implied in The Ugly Truth). That’s an important point: I don’t see Gerard as the marrying kind, at least not in this decade. Just in 2009 so far, he’s been alleged to have dipped his pen in the inkwells of a legion of Hollywood hotties, including Jessica Simpson, Shanna Moakler, Jennifer Aniston, Cheryl Burke, Cameron Diaz, Priyanka Chopra, Josie D`arby, Rosario Dawson, Kola Boof, Naomi Campbell, Cassandra Hepburn, Chiara Conti and a handful of other models and pass-around-honeys that regularly make Page Six for no other reason than that. Dear God, if a woman was as promiscuous as Gerry, she’d either be called the town slut or at the very least she’d be a Kardashian. Meanwhile, man-whore Butler gets a pat on the back from Hollywood and a wink of approval for all his efforts by the tabloids. I just hope he has stock in Church & Dwight Inc., Co. (the makers of Trojan™ condoms).

I guess it is because of Gerry’s public persona that I found Law Abiding Citizen a bit of a stretch from its first frame forward. In it, Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a happily married husband and father to a six year old girl. I mean, really? My first thought was “I didn’t know this was going to be a science fiction flick” but before I could even whisper this incredulity to “Gale” intruders broke in and killed the mother and kid and left Clyde for dead without us ever getting to know exactly why the murderers chose the Shelton family to slay. A motive would have been nice, but then again, this picture is all about Clyde’s motives, so the mother and daughter are quickly dispensed with and the action flashes forward to three years later and the execution of one of the two killers. The other, thanks to a plea bargain deal made with Assistant District Attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx; The Soloist), gets only ten years in prison even though Clyde begged to testify against the guy. Einnie meenie chilly beanie and we flash forward again ~ this time ten years (and the movie is only 15 minutes old). Amazingly, none of the principals seems to have aged a day in that quick decade despite all the stress, though I think my Sour Patch Kids® tasted like they had just passed puberty about now.

Now Nick’s been promoted to DA and he and wife Kelly (Regina Hall; Superhero Movie) are no longer kissy-huggy newlyweds. Now they are parents to nine-year old daughter Denise (Emerald-Angel Young; tv’s “Life on Mars”) and sniping at one another like old pros. As for Clyde, apparently he’s been watching all the Saw movies over and over because he is cooking with gas when it comes to having made plans for the newly paroled child-killer.  Violence ensues and when the police show up to arrest Clyde he, naturally, strips naked so Butler won’t break his streak of exposing his ass-crack in all of his movies. I think he and Ewan McGregor are practicing the old Scottish game of ‘Butt Bingo’ to see who can show the most anal roughage throughout their career. But I digress.

From this point Law Abiding Citizen takes a whole other turn and becomes some sort of high-minded vengeance flick in the tradition of Death Wish. Clyde rails on about the nightmarish mistakes the justice system continues to make and how he blames the District Attorney and judges involved in his case and that of his family’s killers as perfect examples of how easily manipulated people can be. When a female judge sympathizes with him and offers him bail, he lets loose a diatribe of profanity against her for not throwing the book at him. Later, she learns just how serious he was when he told her he’d prove to everybody just what an “empty-headed c**t” she really is. You’ll understand exactly what I mean by that when you see the movie, but you can pretty much take that literally, if you get my drift, and I know that you do.

The tension and excitement that keeps Law Abiding Citizen at the top of its game comes from the well-edited (Sarah Farrand; Grace) and superbly directed (F. Gary Gray; Be Cool) behind-the-scenes team as well as the chemistry between the principals, Foxx and Butler. An effective score by Brian Tyler (The Final Destination) also ratchets up the suspense and hits all the right notes to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The mystery of how an incarcerated wing-nut in a maximum security prison is managing to commit a series of remarkably designed and executed murders without ever having a single visitor or phone call from someone acting as his accomplice will keep you wondering right up to the last reel just how he is pulling this off.

I’m surprised Law Abiding Citizen hasn’t gotten a lot more buzz than it has. It certainly deserves an audience. Granted, the plot does ask that you suspend your belief more than once ~ coincidences are too...well, coincidental, to be believed anywhere but in the movies ~ but Law Abiding Citizen is still bloody good fun and definitely worth a look-see.

Where the Wild Things Are

Contrary to what you may think, Where the Wild Things Are is not a documentary about the goings-on in my boudoir. Nor is it an expose of what you are going to find in Khloe Kardasian’s lingerie hamper, though there are critters in the movie Where the Wild Things Are that probably resemble what you’d find in her underpants if you looked at them under a microscope.

Believe it or not, Where the Wild Things Are is a(n alleged) children’s movie, although with a well-deserved PG rating I would hardly encourage anyone to grab their six year old and rush out to see it. This thing is downright creepy ~ Blair Witch Project creepy ~ without the swearing, but still managing the low-budget feel and wilderness motif that makes a big city gal like me long for room service and fluffy towels.

First, let me give you the gist of what Where the Wild Things Are is about. It is essentially a simple tale spun off from a ten sentence (!!!) 1963 bestselling book written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak about  a boy named Max (debuting Max Record) who has a fight with his mother and is sent to his room where he spends the evening envisioning himself as the king of an island of monsters. Eventually he gets homesick (and hungry) and wants to come home, wrapping up his punishment and imaginary adventure just in time for dinner. The End. Okay, so it’s ten lines. You can’t expect Shakespeare, but apparently you can expect generations of kids to grow up on this book like it is the pre-adolescent equivalent of the Talmud or something.

 

So when the movie opened last week, a flock of the young’uns who work at the Essex Cinemas were all in a froth wanting to see it. They were practically devastated when I arrived on Friday afternoon and I told a quartet of concession cuties on duty that I was there to see Law Abiding Citizen instead of Where the Wild Things Are. They were hoping I’d be their envoy to witness the first showing so I could report back immediately afterward on just how wonderful it absolutely had to be. It’s just as well I missed that premiere because I also missed the Jim Jones’ special Sendak Kool Aid® recipe apparently the rest of the world was drinking back in the day. Not only had I never read the book I had never even seen it except in passing while strolling through various bookstores over the years. Now, my penance for living a hedonistic lifestyle and using birth control had caught up to me and I was being forced to face my ignorance of all things popular amongst the elementary school set. Granted, director Spike Jonze (creator of tv and film’s Jackass series) does make some changes to Sendak’s original story (there’d have to be in order to stretch his ten lines into a 95-minute film), but the tone and the monsters are transferred from page to cinema without losing any of their original charm, if you want to call it that.

Personally, I didn’t find these critters all that charismatic, but it’s probably because I am a pragmatist. When Max meets his new pals late at night, illuminated only by firelight, they are grunting and growling and the biggest of the lot is on a rampage of destruction  ~ not exactly an introduction I’d find enticing for making friends. Worse yet, as soon as Max is sized up by the group, the female monster, Judith (voiced by Catherine O'Hara; Away We Go), not only suggests eating him, but also chastises him for probably having “crunchy, little bird bones” that will be a problem to swallow. What the hell kind of a ‘good time’ image is that for an impressionable four or five year old to think about? Their parents might as well take the kids to see Saw VI for that kind of educational experience. Oh sure, by morning, things lighten up in more ways than just having the sun come up, and everyone is having a “rumpus” of a good time demolishing trees throughout the forest Where the Wild Things Are, but I found myself more concerned about whether Max was going to get covered in ticks from riding on the backs of these hairy beasties or if the creatures would all die once their woods were clear-cut in another week or so of this senseless deforestation. It’s never clear how long the monsters have lived on this (imaginary) island, but I imagined the desert that head monster Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini; tv’s “The Sopranos” of course)  and Max travel through was probably last week’s State Park.

Nothing much happens in Where the Wild Things Are that doesn’t happen in any human home populated with a pre-teen herd. The monsters bicker, they play, they collaborate on projects, and then they turn on one another. Okay, so Carol does rip his best friend’s arm off, but doesn’t that happen all the time with kids? At least he sticks a tree branch in the open wound as a replacement limb. Limb? Ha, I kill myself.

The problem I have with Where the Wild Things Are has to do with the subliminal messages it sends to kids that today’s parents seem to be missing. Maybe parents are so cowed by their children they don’t even realize bad behavior when they see it anymore. I don’t know what world they ~ or Max’s mom (Catherine Keener; The Soloist) live in, but if I was Max’s mother and he got up on a kitchen counter in his dirty shoes and screamed “FEED ME, WOMAN!” at me he’d get himself locked in the nearest broom closet without dinner or consciousness before he had a chance to run away. Instead, she squirms and begs him to be quiet for fear that her date (Mark Ruffalo;  What Doesn't Kill You, in a throw-away three or four line role) in the living room might hear. Please, Louise! I’m sure her date would be just as happy to see her sell the kid to a circus freak show than get saddled with this little candidate for a Ritalin Ranch somewhere in Idaho, so if she knocked him off that counter he’d just ask for a little more wine and a lot more coochie by evening’s end.

Max is 100% a juvenile delinquent in the making. In the first ten minutes of the movie the kid is off the hook with his rage and destroys his sister’s personal property when he trashes her room, he mouths off at mama, runs away from home, commits grand theft when he steals a sailboat, then vandalizes the vehicle by carving his name into its beautiful teak wood hull. He barely meets the monster squad before he lies through his teeth and even commits identity fraud. Hmm. I’m not sure he’s the one we should be worried for so much as about. He has the potential to become another Jeffrey Dahmer by the time he turns 16. I mean, think about it, after all, this is his funky fantasy, and he’s the one dreaming about how tasty the meat of human flesh will taste coming off the bone. Where the Wild Things Are, indeed. 

Couples Retreat

Starring:

Vince Vaughn (Four Christmases)

Jason Bateman (State of Play)

Jon Favreau (I Love You Man)

Malin Ackerman (The Proposal)

Kristin Davis (Sex and the City)

Kristen Bell ("Gossip Girl")

Faizon Love (A Day in the Life)

Kali Hawk (Pushing Thirty)

Peter Serafinowicz ("The Peter Serafinowicz Show")

Jean Reno (The Pink Panther 2)

Directed by:

Peter Billingsley (as Producer; Iron Man)

Written by:

Jon Favreau (The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest)

Vince Vaughn (The Break-Up), and Dana Fox (What Happens in Vegas)

 Anyone married for more than a few years will appreciate the laughs to be found in Universal’s Couples Retreat. The comedy stars Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, and a slew of other fine actors as thirty-something couples circling towards forty and treating it like a death sentence. For Bateman, cleverly dubbed “Jason”, the problem he and his wife Cynthi (Bell) have been facing is their inability to conceive a child after years of trying. It’s reached a point now that they are considering divorce and their decision to participate in a couple’s therapy program is a last-ditch effort that is the impetus for them to invite all of their closest friends to join them on a trip to a tropical resort called Eden even though the other three couples agree to tag along simply to enjoy the spa, surf, and sun at this exclusive spot (actually Bora Bora). Naturally, it turns out that despite that plan, everybody discovers new ways to relate to one another and even the one couple that doesn’t go together ends up finding the real meaning of their bond before the end credits roll. Awww.

Peter (“You’ll shoot your eye out, Kid!”) Billingsley, who started life as a child actor and became a national icon thanks to TNT’s annual 24-hour marathon of his 1983 A Christmas Story, does a fine job in his directorial debut. Even though the film doesn’t focus much on the couples’ children, Billingsley does great with the little nippers who play Dave (Vaughn) and Ronnie’s (Akerman) sons. They actually get some of the biggest laughs of the movie even though they have the least airtime. I couldn’t help but think how odd it must be for him, now 38, to be on the other side of the camera and steering the careers of children who are starting out in the business at an age when he first started.

The film is fairly scatter-shot in its approach to story-telling as it jumps from couple to couple and addresses the problems each face. One thing that becomes more apparent with time is that it never really does make sense that these people would be friends in the first place. Besides social, educational, and class differences, the couples seem to have very little in common. While the movie lingers almost tediously over the hemming-and-hawing done by Jason and Cynthia’s friends about whether to join them of this expedition, it does nothing to establish how and why they became pals. Since we already know they are going to go on the trip the movie wastes lot of lost time listening to folks gab about their financial woes and the burden of having kids. No offense, but I think people came to see this movie to get away from thinking about these real life issues and to get to the island, not spend time being reminded about how crappy things are outside of the Cineplex. Too bad, scripters Favreau, Vaughn and Fox didn’t put half as much effort into working to convince us that these folks actually had friendships strong enough to make them want to vacation together. Personally, I can’t think of many people I’d be willing to plunk down thousands of dollars to go on holiday with, and that includes my own perfect husband. Separate vacations are heavenly. There, my (dead) Ann Landers words of wisdom for the week.

The real standout in this otherwise obvious sitcom bloated to big-screen size is the appearance of British actor and comedian Peter Serafinowicz as “Sctanley…with a ‘c’”, Eden’s fey version of Fantasy Island’s Mr. Roarke. Sctanley is the sort of character one rarely sees these days, the prissy descendent of Edward Everett Horton or even Charles Nelson Reilly. Wound so tight he could produce a diamond in thirty minutes if you shoved a lump of coal up his rear end (but getting it there would be a whole other movie), Sctanley is both the island’s angelic host and its tempting demon, depending on who the guest happens to be, and that is where the challenge lies for at least one in our tour group while for the rest the real work lies in their therapy sessions, delightfully played for laughs with a series of peculiar therapists taking the lead, all building up to the grand entrance of the main guru himself, Marcel (Reno), who is as full of himself as Octomom is full of fertile eggs ready to go.

Couples Retreat is not a particularly great movie. It’s a tad too reminiscent of last year’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the year before that’s The Heartbreak Kid to feel altogether fresh.  And, seriously, it’s not on a par with the last Vaughn/Bateman/Favreau/Billingsley boy’s night out together in The Break-Up, but it is still pretty funny, and it has plenty of eye candy to keep you distracted during the slower moments. That’s one of the benefits of filming in paradise ~ lots of skin. Overall, it is what it is. You pay a few shekels, you get some laughs, and by the next day you’ll barely remember what it was you saw, but ~ what the heck? ~ It is a fun couple of hours and you will come out feeling better than when you came in. Is that so wrong?    

Zombieland

Starring:

Woody Harrelson (Seven Pounds) 

Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland)

Emma Stone (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past)

Abigail Breslin (My Sister’s Keeper)

Bill Murray (City of Ember)

Directed by: 

Ruben Fleischer (Gumball 3000: 6 Days in May)

Written by:
 Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick ("El show de Cándido")

Zombieland is gutbusting fun. Don’t let the blood and gore scare you away because this is a hoot-and-a-half of a comedy and you’ll be missing a great road film if you let a few irritable bowel movements (as in those exploding from folks’ internal places to the external world) gross you out. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg make one terrific mismatched couple left to fend off the victims of a worldwide plague which has turned most all of humanity into raging flesh-eating zombies. Known only by the names of their hometowns (since getting too familiar isn’t advisable in a world full of mindless killers), Tallahassee (Harrelson) and Columbus (Eisenberg) roam the interstate looking for other survivors, or, in Tallahassee’s case, at least a fresh case of Hostess Twinkies®. Hey, when the world’s gone to crap, you set your sights low.

Sometimes finding what you want though can lead to its own complications, and those come in the form of sister act Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). Can the nervous nerdy virgin from Columbus woo the tough-talking, ass-kicking Goth gal from Kansas in this new world order? Naturally, but it’s the getting there that’s all the fun, especially when the quartet decides to move into the Beverly Hills home of Tallahassee’s personal idol, actor Bill Murray. Look for an extended cameo by Murray himself in what has to be one of his funniest bits ever, trapped at the mercy of Harrelson’s fanatic fan, a guy who just can’t get over meeting his real-life hero in person, thus proving that there are  way scarier things in the world today than brain-eating corpses. But we’ll have a much better example of this in theaters in another few weeks when the Michael Jackson documentary, This is It, opens. 

Fame

Starring:

Kay Panabaker (Happy Campers)

Naturi Naughton (Notorious)

Kherington Payne ("So You Think You Can Dance")

Megan Mullally ("In the Motherhood")

Bebe Neuwirth ("Law & Order: Trial by Jury")

Debbie Allen (Next Day Air)

Asher Book (Eight One Eight)

Cody Longo (Bring It On: Fight to the Finish)

Walter Perez (Coup de Grace)

Charles S. Dutton (The Express)

Kelsey Grammer ("Hank")

Collins Pennie (Fired Up!)

Anna Maria Perez de Tagle ("Hannah Montana")

Paul McGill (Man on Wire)

Paul Iacono (Return to Sleepaway Camp)

Directed by:

Kevin Tancharoen ("The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll")

Written by:

Allison Burnett (Untraceable)

If you are old enough to remember Alan Parker’s 1980 version of Fame then seeing what director Kevin Tancharoen calls his “re-imagined tribute” to the original will probably feel less like an homage than a grave-robbing because this Fame is one lame shame. I’m sorry, Kiddos, but it is just the plain cold truth, and it hurts me to say so. You have no idea how much I wanted to love this movie. I was actually looking forward to this version of Fame coming out because I had high hopes that it would recapture the magic of that fragile coming-of-age film set within the walls of the prestigious School of the Performing Arts in New York City. Unfortunately, inspired by the blandness of the High School Musical series, any semblance of reality has been sanitized into oblivion.  None of these kids swear, do drugs, smoke, drink, carry guns, or live in abject poverty. Unlike in the original, nobody frets about an unwanted pregnancy or (God forbid!) actually gets an abortion. The sexual orientation question is also taboo even though coming out was a big deal for one of the kids in 1980’s Fame. Apparently these days no gay people dance, sing or act. The arts have butched up considerably in the past 29 years.

Unlike the Parker film, this Fame is packed with well-known stars as faculty members, but the students are all unknowns, and with one notable exception will probably remain that way. Naturi Naughton rocks as the classical pianist who longs to sing hip hop despite her daddy’s stern objections. I know, it’s not much of a plotline, but Naughton proves she can act, sing, and look pretty all at the same time. In other words, she is the female Zac Efron in this movie. Well, Zac Efron is really the female Zac Efron, but you get the idea. The rest of the kids looking to “live forever” probably will have to settle on doing so in SyFy or Lifetime channel movies, and the way the networks rerun those stinkers over and over again they really will live forever or at least it will seem that way. I guess it’s something.