Saturday, August 09, 2008

Behind The Eight Ball

I know I keep trying to get back to this on a regular basis...but honestly, between potty training a three-year-old, dealing with the constant bodily fluids of a two-month-old, rehearsals for a show and "normal" daily life, I don't have much energy at the end of the day for writing. But I'll keep plodding along as best I can when I feel like I can.

My wife and I are fortunate enough to have very flexible work schedules and a set of parents (mine) who live in town and allow us to go to the movies often enough to be able to see most things we want. Its how we've hit Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II: The Golden Army and a few others. We were going to try and hit The X-Files: I Want To Believe on opening day, but things got crazy and we had to change plans (the bad reviews and my wife not being too into going didn't help matters),

But we have seen two other films recently...

Those that know me well, know I enjoy bad movie musicals. Yes...I own DVDs of Xanadu, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Can't Stop The Music. Well...we can now add Mamma Mia! to that list. I've never seen the stage version, but I can see how in a theater with the events happening live the show could be infectious and get you dancing in the aisles by the end. The movie not so much.

The basic story is about a girl who is getting married and decides she wants to know more about her unknown father. She figures out that its one of three men that her mother dated many years ago and invites all of them to the wedding. Mom is unhappy to see them and mayhem ensues. As the story progresses various songs by the 70s pop group ABBA are shoe horned in to advance the story (or stop it in its tracks).

Setting aside the aspect of "time" as a major complaint (if Donna, the mother played by Meryl Streep, got pregnant during the age of "flower power" as stated in the film's dialogue then her daughter Sophie should be at least 10 years older than she is in the film if that takes place during the internet age), the film is a complete mess. Speaking on a technical level it has no finess and seems to have been directed (and edited and shot) by someone who had never seen a movie before. Shots don't make sense between cuts or transitions. You can easily tell when the actors are on location and when they're in the studio.

The cast is just odd. While most of them handle themselves just fine, hearing Pierce Brosnan warble his way LOUDLY through "S.O.S." makes one long for the big musicals of the 1950s where Marni Nixon could dub Audrey Hepburn's singing voice and no one could tell the difference. Half the time the songs seem to exist just so one could say "Hey, doesn't Colin Furth do a good version of "Our Last Summer?" or "Wow, Christine Baranski really fits the lyrics of "Does Your Mother Know!"

Mamma Mia! is goofy fun that will have the songs of ABBA rattling around your head for a while. That's not entirely a bad thing, but there are better ways to get the songs in your head.

I honestly had no expectations for Pineapple Express. Really. I barely had any idea what it was about beyond it being a film about two stoners caught up in a mob war. To me that could easily be a modern day Cheech & Chong film. And that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Unfortunately, either I've become too old to enjoy those types of films or Pineapple Express was so far removed from what I thought it was that I couldn't "get it". Seth Rogan and James Franco star as a process server and his pot dealer. When Rogan witnesses a murder on the job and leaves behind the joint he was smoking, the killers (a drug kingpin and his payroll cop and bodyguards) are able to track him down when he runs to Franco for help in his paranoid delusion.

The film tries to walk a line between being a comedy about two very high guys who don't quite understand the situation and may actually be so paranoid that they may be over thinking what's really going on and an action film about two guys caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The blend isn't very successful. As the film progresses, the action film takes over more and more and gets so silly it stops being funny (Rogan gets his ear blown off, another guy gets shot so many times and survives).

I wanted to like the film as I like the cast. Rogan and Franco are pretty good playing their parts. Gary Cole is in "bad guy" mode (he seems to have three modes: bad guy, actor and comedian) so you know what you get there. Rosie Perez isn't too annoying. Ed Begley, Jr. and Nora Dunn are wasted (no pun intended) as the parents of Rogan's high school senior girlfriend (a plot point that borders on creepy even if the point is to show how his character still hasn't grown up yet).

As for the comedy...well...there's only so many laughs one can get from two stoned people having a conversation and most of those have been mined in previous (and better) films. The only time I laughed out loud could be the point where the film really takes its turn from one type to the other. Franco rescues Rogan from the police by pretending to get hit by the police car carrying Rogan and then stealing it when the cop gets out to investigate. As they're eluding another cop car via a chase, Franco can't see out the windshield because of all the slushie that got poured on it when he was hit. So Rogan suggests he kick the windshield out. Had this been an action film, Franco would have kicked out the glass and kept driving. Here he gets his foot caught in the glass and winds up driving around with his foot sticking out the middle of the windsheild. Its the only funny moment in an otherwise unfunny film.

Or maybe I'm just turning into the cranky old guy who wants those damn kids to get off his lawn.

Be seeing you.