The Green Hornet

We're in the early stages of the downfall of the superhero genre. Of that fact I am certain. I don't hold any illusions that the genre will ever die, and I'm sure it will find a resurgence again one day, but if the first era of superhero began with Batman and ended with Batman & Robin, then the second era that started with Spider-Man seems to be nearing it's end. The Green Hornet is a perfect example of why. Much like we saw in the 90's with The Shadow and The Phantom, studios are now scrapping the bottom of the barrel in search of any properties to adapt. Where once we got X-Men, now we get The Green Hornet. Certainly not a horrible movie, Hornet is still so by the numbers that it is little more than an afterthought of the genre.

The Green Hornet treads familiar waters here. When a young playboy's father is killed, he realizes he's been wasting his life aimlessly chasing women and decides to become a superhero and fight crime. He enlists his father's mechanic Kato to help him, and Kato ends up being the real hero. It's a cross between Batman and Big Trouble in Little China, halfheartedly aping both. Really, the issue is that there is no story here. In retrospect, it feels like the duo never actually fight crime. Sure, they talk about the fact they're fighting crime, and we see newspapers claiming that they're all over the city, but aside from a showdown at the end of the film, they only have one, maybe two moments where they actually tangle with street thugs. instead, much of the film focuses on the banter between The Hornet and Kato. You'd think that would be a good thing in a Seth Rogen film, but sadly that's just as halfhearted as everything else.

The chemistry between Rogen and Jay Chou as Kato is severely lacking. Maybe it's the fact Chou isn't very good with English, maybe it's because Rogen seems out of his element in a film like this, but the comedy is often as weak as the action. The only highlight is Christoph Waltz as the villain Chudnofsky. Chudnofsky is an incredibly generic crime boss, and he knows it. The biggest laughs came from him grappling with the fact that in a world of superheroes, no one finds a businessman in a suit especially frightening. His slow descent into madness is amusing, as is his complete misunderstanding of what makes a supervillain scary. He rechristens himself Bloodnofsky, dresses in a red suit and a gas mask, and looks completely foolish. While it would have been nice to see what Waltz could have done with a really interesting villain, he does enough with Chudnofsky to make him amusingly forgettable, which is kind of the point. The rest of the cast is utterly wasted. Tom Wilkinson is removed from the film almost from the start. Edward Furlong and Edward James Olmos are wasted in roles beneath them. And Cameron Diaz seems to come in from a completely different film. It's clear that she's there just because a studio executive didn't think a superhero movie can work without a love interest, no matter how perfunctory.

Director Michel Gondry seems at times to be at odds with the material he's been given. His ability to film action is clearly lacking. Many scenes are shot too close up or too darkly to make anything out. The few set pieces the film has all feel incredibly generic. But when the film isn't trying to be an action movie, he will throw in flourishes that seem like they deserve to be in a much better film. One moment in particular really made me wonder how they pulled it off. A henchman tells another henchman to find The Green Hornet, and the screen then splits in two without cutting, following both men as they pass the word along. Each person they come into contact with then splits off without the film cutting. The screen fills with numerous different panels, none with any discernible cuts, leaving us wondering how Gondry accomplished the image we're seeing. It's a creative way to illustrate a normally mundane aspect of a film like this. Gondry would throw in little touches like this every once in a while, almost as if he was bored by the material and needed to do something to keep himself challenged. While these moments can't save the film, they make it at times more watchable than it otherwise would be.

With a number of big superhero franchises falling apart (X-Men, Spider-Man, Superman), and an upcoming onslaught of low tier superhero movies (Thor, The Green Lantern), things seem dire for the genre. Certainly not the worst film the genre has produced, The Green Hornet still suffers immensely from a lack of identity. It wants to be Batman, but it needs to be its own thing, whatever that thing may be. It fails at being either, and as a result it just comes across as tired and forgettable. The Green Hornet was once a major property in the days of radio, but the transition to the modern age doesn't suit the character in any way. If studios can't show some restraint in greenlighting movies like this, they're going to make the genre as a whole a lot less special. Movies like The Dark Knight are becoming the exception, not the rule.

Funny People

There are few film going pleasures more delightful than to see an actor that no one expects much from giving an amazing performance. Everyone expects great things from Jack Nicholson or Meryl Streep, so it's not as satisfying when they do knock it out of the park. But when someone like Adam Sandler comes along and gives us - for my money - the performance of the year, it's something to really savor. Sandler has been great before in Punch-Drunk Love, so I knew he had this in him, but he buries his great work under piles of dumb comedies and bland melodramas. Yet even in films like Anger Management, you could tell there were layers to his performance that the film itself did not complement. Freed from all shackles, he is finally able to deliver the most fully formed character of his career.

Adam Sandler became popular at the exact moment that his brand of humor would have most appealed to me. I still consider Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison to be among the best comedies of the 90's.That said, after Little Nicky my interest in his comedy waned; I grew up and Sandler didn't. Yet he played such an important part in my early film going experience that it was hard to let that go. I still try and catch his movies from time to time, and I secretly hope he one day is able to leave behind his comedies and become a more respected actor. So my bias was certainly there to want a great performance out of him. In Funny People, he plays George Simmons, an Adam Sandler-like comedian who has reached the zenith of his career but has let fame get to him. With no real friends and no family, he is forced to deal with his diagnosis of Leukemia alone. He goes out to a comedy club to perform (his jokes consist of such winners as "what will you all do when I am gone, who will amuse you?") and quickly bombs. He is followed by Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), who rips into Simmons. Simmons decides to hire the young comic as his assistant/friend/confidant. It is from their relationship that the plot - and the humor - flows.

What struck me most about Sandler's performance was how completely unlikable he was willing to be. A real sticking point for me with a lot of big name actors is their unwillingness to be unlikable on screen. They always make the most unsavory characters redeemable, lovable even. Not Sandler. He embraces the inherent misanthropy in Simmons, making him a bitter, angry, vile person with no real sense of how to treat other people. He's like a funnier Daniel Plainview. And yet he earns our sympathy through the tricks of director Judd Apatow. Apatow fills the film with a sense of a lost past for Simmons. Sandler has had probably half his life recorded for audiences at this point, so the film uses much of that footage to gives us a history of Simmons. Perhaps the best use of such footage is from when Apatow and Sandler were roommates back before either was famous. The two would make prank phone calls and have a fun time together. This footage opens the film, and while very funny, it gives us such a strong sense of that human connection that Simmons has lost over the years. Where he once could enjoy life with his friends, fame and money have stripped that from him.

The film also wouldn't work without Rogen to balance it. He is at the opposite side of the career spectrum of Simmons, and we get the sense that he and his friends are living a similar like to Simmons and his friends pre-fame. We are asked to wonder whether they will be able to overcome that which destroyed Simmons, or whether they will follow in his footsteps. We can already see seeds of a similar life path and jadedness in the character played by Jason Schwartzman, but Rogen seems like a levelheaded enough person to avoid it. It is these wonderful character dynamics that make the whole piece really shine.

For me, Funny People was a perfect confection of humor, drama, acting, characters, story, themes - everything I could want from a motion picture - for the first hour and a half. Really just perfect. But it's a two and a half hour movie, and as a result, it starts to lose its power with the final hour. Apatow has always been a self indulgent filmmaker, and it has worked in his favor before. Here he goes too far, unfortunately, and it honestly could ruin the whole experience for a lot of people. As he did in Knocked Up, he casts his wife and two children in the film. Here, however, they become the central focus of the film for the final hour, taking the focus off of Simmons and his relationship with Ira. This segment was vital to sending home the message of Simmons being doomed to stay the unhappy person he is, but it could have been done in about twenty minutes or so. When Leslie Mann breaks out a home video of her and Apatow's daughter in a school performance of Cats, it's clear that Apatow has gone far off into his own head.

And yet, I love that a filmmaker would make a movie for himself first and foremost. Apatow's passion for these characters and their world shines through in spite of (or perhaps because of) that final hour. It's not a film for everybody, and especially not a film for those expecting the usual Sandler comedy, but it was the perfect film for me. It's a real shame that Sandler won't be remembered come Oscar season, because I really feel that he rises above other comedians turned dramatic actors of late (Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell) and delivers a brilliant performance. The real heart breaker, though, is that this film won't make as much money as his usual fare, and he will go back to starring in low rent David Spade or Kevin James comedies. I hope that the great actor hiding within Sandler doesn't stay hidden again for long, but when movies about man-babies and mermen make more money than thoughtful comedy-dramas, I guess it's only inevitable.

Observe and Report

I find my biggest difficulty in reviewing movies is that I have a hard time coming to an immediate and fully formed opinion of something. Most films, especially great ones, take time to fully grasp. When I saw There Will Be Blood, I did not review it because I didn't know what to make of it yet. I now think it is among the greatest films of the decade. I find myself at a loss for where to begin on my Adventureland review, a film I just saw and absolutely loved. So it is with luck that I am able to examine Observe and Report with a bit of distance, having seen in a while back and let it sit with me for a few months. Had I reviewed it at the time, I know I would have focused too much on a few problems it had at the expense of some really great stuff. By no means a great movie overall, it is one that deserves a fair bit of credit for being something you don't see a lot of in mainstream films today: ballsy.

Now, there are two kinds of risky movies: those that make you say "I can't believe they just did that," and those that you actually can't believe they just did that. An example of the first kind is There's Something About Mary, which pokes you with a stick to get a response. Observe and Report is an example of the second, a film which breaks the stick in half and beats you with it. Both have their place, and this film is certainly not for everybody. That said, there is a cathartic feeling to be had when witnessing something that is, at times, wonderfully transgressive.

The film follows Ronnie (Seth Rogen) as he patrols his local mall in search of a flasher run amok. But Ronnie is a man with serious mental issues, more akin to Travis Bickle than Paul Blart. He pines for oblivious makeup saleswoman Brandi (Anna Faris), gets into feuds with a local Indian vendor (Aziz Ansari), and antagonizes detective Harrison (Ray Liotta). It's a film not as much about plot as it is about tone, and the tone can be downright unpleasant. Director Jody Hill made a name for himself with The Foot Fist Way and the recent HBO comedy Eastbound and Down, and he is known for examining unsympathetic characters in funny ways. Here he does it again, and either you can accept it or you will hate the whole movie.

For me, I found it pretty easy to accept such an unbalanced protagonist. I had a harder time accepting Seth Rogen as that character. I am all for actors playing against type, but Rogen is perhaps a bit too likable as Ronnie. It's the only part of the movie where I felt they were trying to tone down the viciousness of the comedy by having someone a bit safe play the part, as opposed to using someone like Danny McBride, who seems like he was meant to play the part and would have done it absolute, unflinching justice. But then, perhaps that would have been beyond the pale for most audiences. Rogen does have a vulnerable side to him that works especially well in the scenes with his mother, so it is a bit of a trade off.

People might expect Anna Faris to be a standout, but she is relatively minor in the film and often a bit grating (albeit intentionally so). The real supporting standout is Michael Pena of Crash fame. Who knew he had this in him? His character is hilarious but initially extremely ancillary. It is a pleasant turn of events when he suddenly comes to the forefront and steals the film from everyone else. He turns out to be just as screwed up as the rest of the cast, but in such a fun way he almost seems to be from another movie. His final scene in the film is one of the most memorable, as well as a wonderful visual experience. I could see Pena becoming something akin to John C Reilly, a man known for his brooding turns in dramas that finds his real calling in comedy. Let's hope so, because he really is wonderful here.

I keep saying this film finds comedy in breaking conventions, but I fear that by saying that I have already taken away a bit of the film's power. You don't expect this film to go the places it does. Ultimately, I need to explain what it is about this film that makes it stand out, and that transgressive comedy is what makes it unique. It can be uneven at times, but when it works, it really works. I usually don't say people absolutely need to see a movie I only give 3 stars to, but this is a film that demands to be grappled with, flaws and all. You will definitely want to talk about it after. I've had about 6 months to think on the film, and I can't shake the fact that Observe and Report has perhaps the funniest, most unexpected moment I have ever see in a film. I do not say this lightly. In fact, that's a statement I don't think I've ever said before. But there it is: I laughed for so long after one scene in this movie that the film was over before I completely regained my composure. And what's so wonderful about it is that I know that for every person laughing hysterically, there will be another shaking their head is shock as they head for the exit.

Knocked Up

With Knocked Up, writer/director Judd Apatow solidifies his status as the best thing to happen to comedy in years. I don't think we've witnessed a filmmaker ascend as quickly and as strongly in the comedy genre since the heyday of Mel Brooks in the late 60's and early 70's. After his double-header of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared on TV, Apatow switched to the big screen and gave us The 40 Year Old Virgin. Those all profited from lowered expectations, as no one really knew who this man was or what tricks he had up his sleeve. But there's no catching us off guard this time, Mr. Apatow, and that's what makes Knocked Up so delightful: you expect it to reach those lofty heights achieved by his previous works, and largely it does.

What's surprising about Apatow's oeuvre is how simple his premises can be. To go into detail on what Knocked Up is about might seem a a bit redundant: it's in the title. Yet how can he continually create winners out of such simple, one sentence premises? The answer is all in the characters. These aren't one note slapstick caricatures that you're supposed to laugh at, but very real people that you want to laugh with. The story of a lovable loser named Ben (Seth Rogen) getting his one night stand Alison (Katherine Heigl) pregnant is really more about showing us what these two people are made of than simple hijinks. They're also surrounded by Alison's sister Debbie and her husband Pete (Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd), as well as Ben's friends Jason, Jay, Martin, and Jonah (Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Martin Starr, and Jonah Hill). Every one of them is a delight to watch and add flavor and nuance to such a simple idea of a story. Much like he did in Virgin, Apatow makes the film as much about the relationships between all the secondary characters as about the plot.

Seth Rogen as Ben is a revelation. He's been paying his dues for years in small parts in films as varied as Anchorman and Donnie Darko, as well as staring in both of Apatow's TV shows. He's not the type of guy you think of when you think lead actor, but there was never a moment here where I doubted him or didn't buy him as the lead. Perhaps part of this has to do with the way he's portrayed as a secondary character who is thrust into the limelight; even he is slightly surprised to be the focus of the story. Early on you see Alison and Debbie getting into a nightclub, and off to the side is Ben, unassuming and barely noticeable. Yet this is his story, and he comes to embrace the curve life has thrown him with both charm and determination. If there's any remaining doubt that Rogen can pull off a staring role, look no farther than his scenes leading up to the birth where, when trying to look out for Alison and his unborn child, he tells everyone who is being a hindrance to screw off. This isn't just some goofy stoner anymore, but a man who wants very much to make sure his child will be brought into this world safely and correctly.

The rest of the cast is all wonderful. Heigl fits her role perfectly and you can kind of buy her eventual love for Ben. Paul Rudd is always reliable as the goofy sidekick, and his one liners are among the best in the film. But he also gets a chance to stretch, and he is able to be both repulsive and sympathetic at times. Leslie Mann is an actress I have never warmed up to, but being Apatow's wife, I've accepted that she will always get roles in his films. So color me surprised that she was quite great in her role. She could be shrill on occasion, but mostly I got her character and appreciated the way she balanced out Rudd. As for the guys playing Ben's friends, they always leave you wanting more of them. They pop in just long enough to give you a laugh and an insight into Ben's life before disappearing again. They aren't as well developed as the friends in Virgin were, but then they aren't meant to be as much of a focal point as those characters were.

I think the best argument for what's so great about Knocked Up is that, at easily over two hours, it is a film that should have worn out its welcome well before it's over. Yet these characters are so inviting and engaging that I didn't want to leave their world and would have stayed there for far longer if given the chance. It also didn't hurt that it may have the best laugh to minute ratio of any film so far this year (who knew Munich references could evoke so many laughs?) After such a lackluster May filled with bad sequel after sequel, it's nice to find something so refreshingly funny and original out there.