'Step Brothers': A Suburban Nightmare

by Brett Parker

Step Brothers, the new comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, is a film that can be called many things: vulgar, hostile, gross, juvenile, insane. I like to refer to it as a scary cautionary tale. Sure, on the surface it appears to be just another reckless and goofy comedy from Ferrell & Co. Yet if you dig deep into the film’s content, you can actually find unsettling predictions for the future of the YouTube generation. If you were to observe today’s average family and the behavioral patterns of it’s teenage offspring, you’ll realize that middle-aged men still living at home-with parents who don’t seem troubled by this-may not be as far-fetched as you think.

The film opens with a doctor named Robert Dobach (Richard Jenkins) hooking up with a woman named Nancy Huff (Mary Steenburgen) at a work convention. As they have a passionate fling, they both discover that they have one unique thing in common: they both have sons in their 40s who still live at home! Nancy’s son, Brennan (Will Ferrell), just got fired from PetSmart and spends his days parked in front of the TV with nachos. Robert’s son, Dale (John C. Reilly), plays video games all day and occasionally composes songs on his drum set. Robert and Nancy soon fall in love and decide to get married. This forces Brennan and Dale to now live under the same roof. This proves to be a dangerous move, considering how these men-children both have the maturity level of a 13-year-old. Like bickering adolescents, they fight, they hurl schoolyard insults, they set ground rules (Dale: “Don’t ever touch my drum set! DON’T TOUCH IT!”), and they even hold an elaborate death match on their front lawn.

Dale and Brennan pretty much hate each other, until the one night Dale wins Brennan’s respect by punching his arrogant jerk of a younger brother, Derek (Adam Scott), right in the face. Brennan hates Derek even more than Dale, so he appreciates this violent gesture. Pretty soon, the deranged duo starts bonding. They watch Steven Segal movies, they break things in the garage, and they unsuccessfully try to turn their beds into makeshift bunk-beds. Pretty soon, Robert gets fed up with the pair’s childish behavior and demands that they find jobs before they are kicked out of the house. This proves to be a difficult task, for Dale and Brennan have zero clue how to act like grown-ups. This is made clear when they wear tuxedos to interview for a janitorial position and end up telling the interviewer to shut her mouth.

So what we have here are two overgrown brats, lacking maturity, character, and manners, who live with parents that refuse to face their problems and continue showering them with money and encouragement. I’d be lying if I said this concept sounded off-the-rails and unrealistic. In today’s America, it seems like the sacred traditions of family life are almost extinct. It’s almost become commonplace for kids to shout, swear, and wine at their parents, all while shamelessly spending their money. The scariest part is how passive-aggressive today’s parents are towards this behavior. They don’t even attempt to teach their kids proper manners and instead keep on rewarding them for nothing. Step Brothers is like a grotesque vision of what teenagers of this generation could one day become, and it isn’t pretty. If a kid is clueless about kindness, respect, and family values, then what’s to stop them from becoming a live-at-home slob like Dale and Brennan? While most people will look at these two as bizarre comic caricatures, I unfortunately know several people who could one day become such disturbing adults.

I know I’m making Step Brothers sound like a suburban meditation in the league of The Graduate and I can assure you it’s the furthest thing from it! It’s just that this deeper angle is the best way I could enjoy the film. At face value, Step Brothers is no better or no worse than your typical Will Ferrell flick. It’s one of those mediocre comedies where every once in a while a giant laugh will come out of left field and surprise you. While Ferrell’s films are strangely enjoyable, he doesn’t pull consistently great laughs from an audience the way Ben Stiller or Vince Vaughn does. He does provide a lot of awkward smiles though. I never thought Chewbacca masks, a Billy Joel cover band, a rap song about “boats and hoes,” and a lumberjack bit could save an entire film, but alas, Step Brothers is proof of that. And be warned, this is the most profane movie Will Ferrell has ever unleashed on an audience. The F-Bombs and sex jokes don’t let up for one second in this movie. I remember knocking Semi-Pro, Ferrell’s last film, for not being vulgar enough. Be careful what you wish for. You might get John C. Reilly liking vintage porn to “masturbating on a time machine!” Were you offended by what I just wrote? Then this definitely isn’t the movie for you!

I’ll tell you one thing that scares me: the future content of Will Ferrell’s movies. His movies keep getting crazier and crazier while the ticket sales keep growing higher and higher. The high grosses are just pushing Ferrell deeper into a comic abyss, one that could cause his movies to snap from reality and descend fully into madness. If today we’re seeing him rub his private parts on a drum set, what could tomorrow bring?

A Waste of a Blank DVD: Steel Trap

by Andrew Jupin

My fellow film-savvy friends and I like to get together on Friday every now and again for an evening of what most people would consider to be a 'waste of time'. We purposely go out to the video store and flip through our own collections and try to find a candidate for what we have so lovingly come to call, "Shitty Movie Friday." However, the new release from Dimension Extreme is a movie so bad, so lazily hashed out, so poorly executed that, well, it's barely a movie at all. This is Steel Trap.

Dimension Extreme has been fairly reliable in the past putting out such great titles as Inside and the restored version of Night of the Living Dead. Steel Trap has a very simple premise. A premise that when propositioned to do this disc review, I gladly agreed. A group of people attending a New Year's party are all invited (via text message) to a VIP party on one of the floors below. (Before I forget, the steel trap of Steel Trap is the gigantic, abandoned, office building that the film takes place in.) Once everyone has gathered at the party, they find that they are all part of an elaborate treasure hunt game. As to be expected, once the game starts off, the players are slowly picked off one by one until the killer is revealed and the 'shocking' ending happens.

Honestly, more of a write-up just isn't fair to you. It isn't fair to anyone who reads this. The script if filled with some of the most empty-headed dialogue I've ever heard. Listening to the actors spit out these lines, it sounds like they're reading off cue cards, poorly written cue cards at that. The film itself is very low budget. Not that there is anything wrong with low budget, but as far as the production design goes, it begs the question whether any of the budget was spent on the look at all. For example, the look of the killer is extremely unoriginal. His weapon is taken from I Know What You Did Last Summer and his outfit makes him look like a member of the Blue Man Group. No joke. The actors all do what they can with what they're given, but each one of the characters is a cookie-cutter, stereotyped, two-dimensional waste of space.

The disc comes with a commentary from the co-writer/director, Luis Camara where he more or less sounds like he'd rather be doing anything else. The same goes for the embarrassing making-of featurette where all of the participating crew members all talk about how the production was rushed and how they didn't really have a complete script and that it was written in a week or something and this and that. It's painfully long, this featurette, and I could barely get through it. Especially after sitting through the entire film.

This is unfortunately a major, disastrous flop for Dimension Extreme. The cover for the DVD is even horrible. The girl pictured on the front isn't even in the movie. Honestly, save yourself the waste of time at Blockbuster and just go and rent Inside instead. The most appealing part of Steel Trap was when I took it out of my DVD player.

Steel Trap is out on DVD July 15th.

Smith to the Rescue in 'Hancock'

by Brett Parker

He drinks. He sleeps on benches. He curses. He lives in a trailer park. He has several lawsuits pending against him. He dresses like the Big Lebowski. His name is John Hancock and he’s a superhero. Along with all these other things, he can fly, deflect bullets, and hurl heavy objects. This doesn’t sound like a typical superhero, does it? That’s precisely what makes Hancock so interesting. We’ve seen countless movies about people who discover they have superpowers and find great purpose in using them to help people. Here’s a movie where a guy discovers he has superpowers and finds helping people isn’t all what its cracked up to be.

From reading this description, it’s not hard to see the comic potential in this premise. We can easily imagine Judd Apatow turning this into a goofball vehicle with Seth Rogan flying around skyscrapers. Yet Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) decides to get his Michael Mann on once again and bring out the dramatic potential in this comedic premise. Here he is helped by none other than Will Smith, the highly-liked movie stud who convincingly plays the highly-despised super bum. I don’t know if this was the best way to bring Hancock to the big screen, but it’s certainly very effective as it rolls along. That is until a surprise plot twist reveals itself in the third act. To be sure, it’s a very compelling and creative twist, yet it’s too complicated and rushed to work properly.

We first see John Hancock passed out on a park bench with two empty bottles of Bourbon lying nearby. A little kid wakes him to announce that a carload of bank robbers are involved in a high-speed chase with police. As Hancock groggily flies to the rescue, we can see why he’s so despised by the public: he wrecks highway signs, crashes cars, and does considerable damage to the Capital Records building by placing the robber’s car right on top of it. We learn that this is a pattern in Hancock’s crime fighting career: he has a reckless attitude that causes massive property damage and huge headaches for the people around him. It doesn’t help his reputation that he hurls profanity and insults at concerned citizens (WOMAN: “I can smell that liquor on your breath!” HANCOCK: “Cause I’ve been drinkin’, b---h!”).

One day, Hancock rescues a businessman from being hit by an oncoming train (wrecking the entire train line in the process). This businessman turns out to be a PR man named Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) who finds a strange sympathy for the misunderstood and disgruntled superhero. Ray decides to pay Hancock back by giving him a PR makeover, turning him into an adored and proper superhero ala Superman. Part of Ray’s strategy is to put Hancock in jail for all his property damage so the public can miss him. While in jail, Ray visits to teach him manners, give him a new suit, and help him to realize the depth of his calling. Hancock goes along with his plan and things do indeed look up for the reluctant hero, until secrets from Hancock’s past are revealed by Mary Embrey (Charlize Theron), Ray’s wife, which brings everything to a head.

Hancock is a movie that glimpses what a great superhero dramedy would look like without ever becoming one itself. It’s funny, dramatic, and deep, but we truly wish it was way more funny, dramatic, and deep. We never feel the film is completely at ease with all of its different tones. Like Hancock himself, the film can be sharply funny one minute and deeply sad the next. The film has an undeniable edge in its execution and I applaud the filmmakers for not making apologies for Hancock’s behavior. I only wish the gags were more drop dead hilarious and the dramatic payoffs more shattering.

Hancock demonstrates once again that Will Smith is a true movie star whose very presence can elevate a film. It seems risky to have one of the nicest celebrities on the planet play one of the most cynical and hardened superheroes to ever grace the silver screen, but Smith fully immerses himself into the role and hits all the right notes. His star image serves the role well, for it helps us to find sympathy for this disillusioned and depressed man. Sure, he’s funny and entertaining in his super exploits, yet it’s the sadness in his eyes that makes our hearts follow him every step of the way. There’s a small yet important scene where members of a prison anger management group encourage Hancock to talk a little about himself. “I’m John…and I drink and stuff” is all he says, yet the way the prisoners react and the look Hancock shoots them speaks oceans about the character’s defensiveness and conflict with humans. Smith is able to find sad complexities within the role that feels a lot more effective than having Hancock be a buffoonish goofball.

Of course the film’s direction changes dramatically when Mary reveals to Hancock big secrets about his past. Hancock suffers from amnesia. All he knows is that he woke up in a hospital bed 80 years ago in Miami and knows nothing about what happened before that night (I found a small amusement in the story of how he got his name). Mary happens to know everything that happened to him before that night. Everything she knows and how she knows it is one of the wildest plot developments we could’ve dreamed up for this film and I’m still kind of hung up on whether or not it works right for this material. I will try not to reveal too much, only to say it’s a worthy and interesting way to explain Hancock’s story, yet it doesn’t seem entirely thought through or explained very well. We find ourselves asking more questions than Hancock is, when it should be the other way around. At first, I realized this twist gives Hancock a very important choice to make, but before he has any chance to make it, a noisy action development takes place that diminishes any credibility this twist could possibly have (If any of this sounds confusing, it will all be cleared up once you finally see the film. Or maybe it won’t…that’s my point!).

Despite all the confusion and tonal shifts, Hancock is still worth checking out. Its worth seeing Smith’s thoughtful and hilarious performance. Its worth seeing Berg try to stage a superhero comedy like his mentor, Michael Mann (who has a nice cameo in a boardroom scene). It’s worth seeing Charlize Theron having something a thousand times cooler to do than just being an ordinary housewife. It’s worth hearing the wonderful musical score by John Powell that wonderfully reflects the intimate sadness of the Hancock character. It’s worth seeing the talented character actor Eddie Marsan (Miami Vice, The New World) play Hancock’s quirky nemesis. And when all is said and done, its worth knowing that even superheroes can feel lonely and depressed sometimes.

'WALL-E': Intergalactic Gem & Animation Triumph

by Brett Parker

When it comes to family-friendly animated movies, I’m usually not the guy to talk to. I think the last time I actually paid to see one in theatres was when I took my Mother to see Shrek 2 for her birthday. Don’t get me wrong, I have great admiration for the technical skill that goes into the craft (especially from the Pixar folks) and I think most animated flicks of today’s era are full of wit and smarts, making kids of today look awfully lucky. I know plenty of grown-ups who still pay to see these family films in theatres, yet somewhere along the line, I truly lost the urge to go. I guess I like my entertainment grown up and my heart doesn’t respond to cartoon characters like it used to. What can I say? This lost boy grew up.

Yet there was something about WALL-E that made me want to check it out on opening weekend. This one looked considerably different from all the rest. Maybe it was the fact that the Outer Space imagery looked mystical and captivating. Maybe it looked as if it could touch my soft spot for goofy robots. Maybe it was the film’s promise that there would be a minimum of dialogue, eliminating potential for a buffoonish script. Or maybe it was just because the character of WALL-E looked like such a fun-loving little guy that you’d want to spend an entire movie with him. I was very excited to discover that WALL-E delivers on all these promises from the previews and that it will stand the test of time to become an animated classic. This one’s the real deal.

The film opens 700 years into the future. Planet Earth is covered in excessive amounts of garbage, leading humans to abandon the planet and live in a luxury starship at the edge of the galaxy. Earth’s clean-up is left in charge of WALL-E Units (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth class), little robots designed to gather and compact trash into small cubes. A malfunction occurs causing all the WALL-E units to break down, except for one who happens to be the liveliest of the whole bunch. This WALL-E robot spends his days single handedly carrying out his clean-up mission, all while gathering small pieces of garbage treasure that he cheerfully collects in a small cooler (these treasures include a rubix cube, bubble paper, a jewelry box, etc.).

WALL-E appears to be a robot with a soul, capable of such emotions as fascination, curiosity, and as we come to learn, loneliness. Being the sole occupant of Earth is starting to affect WALL-E’s personal state. As he watches an old VHS copy of Hello Dolly!, WALL-E begins to yearn for a romantic loved one to complete him. He finds a candidate one day when a giant spaceship arrives on Earth to drop off EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), an advanced robot with noticeably feminine features. Its love at first sight for WALL-E and the little guy is able to strike up a friendship with the female robot, hoping it will turn into something more. But then things grow complicated when EVE discovers a sign of plant life in WALL-E’s treasures. She takes the plant and is retrieved by the spaceship that brought her to Earth in the first place. Not wanting to give up his only love, WALL-E hitches a ride on the spaceship and is soon whisked away through the galaxy towards the mother ship where all human life now exists. It is on this ship where WALL-E will discover how unhealthy and lazy humans have become, what his plant means for the future of the human race, and whether or not EVE truly loves him back.

In a lesser movie, the robots would have goofy character voices that strain for laughs and the plot would cater to the intellect of a five year old. WALL-E is way too smart for that. It has the charms of a silent comedy and the ideals of complex science fiction. There is virtually no dialogue for the first half-hour, we simply sit back and observe WALL-E taking simple pleasure in finding junk and trying to convey his feelings toward EVE. Only electronic clicks and squeaks are used to give these robots some kind of voice and it feels a thousand times more effective then if cartoon dialogue was written for their scenes. Buster Keaton would’ve been proud. WALL-E also works as a fascinating science fiction film thanks in no small part to the wonderful outer space imagery that surrounds the film’s second and third acts. So awesome are these scenes of stars and spaceships that we feel a child-like sense of wonderment and awe towards space we haven’t felt in a very long time. Sci-Fi nowadays has grown very bleak and uninspired, so watching WALL-E is like feeling a burst of imagination and whimsy that made us love Sci-Fi in the first place. This is especially felt in a beautiful scene where WALL-E uses a fire extinguisher to fly around the stars with EVE outside of a starship. It’s a dazzling scene that not only would’ve made Kubrick proud, but shows us why we see movies on the big screen in the first place.

Of course the film would probably not work quite as well if it weren’t WALL-E himself. Not since E.T. has a little screen creature had such a likeable cuteness about him with a muted curiosity that is wonderfully amusing. People have noted that WALL-E bears a strong resemblance to Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, yet I think WALL-E outdoes the former in both screen presence and heart. It’s fascinating how WALL-E can convey so many complex emotions in such a limited metal body. A pair of binocular eyes and robotic claws is really all there is to WALL-E, but he is still one of the most colorful and compelling animated characters ever created. The way his hollow binocular eyes strongly resembles human eyes is astonishing. It’s also fascinating to note how even though WALL-E and EVE essentially resemble advanced robotic parts, the animators are still able to highlight that they are both male and female beings.

It’s almost getting to be a tired phrase by saying “Pixar has done it again,” but what else can you say when after churning out picture after picture of supreme animation and creativity, they now have created a sci-fi wonderment for the ages? The film has the crisp and slick attention to detail their animation always has all while approaching a fountain of ideas. Almost all animated movies convey general moral messages that are meant to influence younger viewers and remind older ones. Pixar is always able to do this with a subtle finesse as opposed to countless other pictures that cheaply shove it in the audience’s face. What really impressed me about WALL-E is the richness and depth of the film’s message. The humans on the starship are portrayed as overweight and lazy consumers who are like zombie slaves to technology and advertising. It isn’t until signs of plant life turn up that the humans are intrigued by the simple pleasures of Earth and living. I applaud the filmmakers for highlighting to viewers that they should rise above our technological and consumer cultures to get back to the simple pleasures of our planet. How brilliant it is that the filmmakers have taken our anxieties and issues over the abuse of the environment and have brought insightful depths to it in an animated medium. This could be the most lighthearted post-apocalyptic film ever made.

What’s even more redundant than saying “Pixar has done it again” is to exclaim that an animated film is “fun for all ages.” But let me tell you something: at any other time, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a theatre playing an animated family movie. I went to WALL-E out of a peculiar curiosity and the film exceeded all of my expectations. Forget animated conventions: if you love dazzling visuals, sci-fi spectacles with heart, and even old school cinematic romance, buy a ticket for WALL-E. This is not only destined to be the best animated film of the year, but probably one of the best overall films of the year.

New to DVD: My Blueberry Nights

by Andrew Jupin

Way back in March, our very own Sean Weiner was able to review Wong Kar Wai's first stab at an American feature, My Blueberry Nights, and just like his review's title proclaimed, the film got a little lost in translation. Sean wrote,

"Wong’s Americana holiday emerges a bit touristy. Signature characters of past films turn stereotypical when reborn Yankee. And as subtitles are removed from the WKW experience dialogue falters, posing a debasing question, 'Were the subtitles a fundamental part of the magic?'"

It is true, in fact. There is something to be said about the poetic coma one finds themselves in when diving headfirst into one of Wong's masterful, seductive tales all the while reading subtitle after gentle subtitle. The unfortunate thing here is that his dialogue more or less makes the actors-- who do just about the best they can with the material-- come off as cold and robotic.

The story is fairly simple: Norah Jones plays Elizabeth, a broken-hearted New Yorker who sets off on a road trip to forget her dastardly boyfriend who has dared to share dessert with another woman. Throughout her travels, her mind is fixated on heartthrob restaurant owner, Jeremy, played by Jude Law. She travels from this place to that, searching for herself and trying to forget her past, all while encountering a broken-hearted policeman (David Strathairn), a newly-widowed woman (Rachel Weisz) and a troubled gambler (Natalie Portman).

Does she solve her problems? Does she straighten her life out? Does she wind up back in New York with Jeremy? The truth is, it doesn't matter. As Sean put it,

"Wong’s ninth full-length feature references his previous, particularly this time, 1996’s cult romance Chungking Express. The relinquished keys of broken lovers still wait to be claimed at local eateries. Lovely, lonely damsels once again misshape their doos while snoozing on tabletops. And, perhaps the paramount WKW recurrence, tunes continue to echo through their storyline as time-diluting sets of leitmotifs; this time most notably is Cat Power’s recent title track The Greatest."

The fact of the matter is, it's the same Wong Kar Wai that we all know and love; accept this time, it's in English and the truth is: we don't really want to fully understand what they're saying. We just want them to wander aimlessly, stare at themselves in reflections and speak out loud as if it doesn't matter whether or not anyone is there to listen to them.

The DVD out Tuesday from Genius Products is relatively bare-boned. It comes with a behind-the-scenes featurette, a conversation with Wong himself and the most thrilling of all DVD features: the still gallery and the...wait for it...theatrical trailer! At most this is a rental and even at that, you can find better.

My Blueberry Nights is available on DVD as of July 1st