Bob Odenkirk Is Pretty Freakin' Far From A NOBODY

Last week, news made the rounds that Bob Odenkirk had collapsed on the set of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off that’s in production for its sixth and final season. A day later, while the actor/writer/director was ruled as being in stable condition at a hospital in New Mexico, the internet swarmed with well wishes from fans, friends, and co-workers. This touched and surprised me as I would’ve thought that most people wouldn’t know who he is. 

Turns out that that was really short-sighted of me. I should thought of the popularity of his Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul character, slimy lawyer Saul Goodman (aka Jimmy McGill aka Slipping Jimmy), or the following of his HBO program with his comic collaborator David Cross, Mr. Show, or the fact that his most recent movie, the action thriller NOBODY, was number one at the box office this summer.

Despite that rebranding of Odenkirk as an action star, he’ll always be a comic genius to me. Although he only appeared as an extra in a handful of sketches, his impact as a writer on Saturday Night Live from 1988-94 was undoubtedly his comedy breakthrough. Working with such names as Conan O’Brien, Robert Smigel, and Judd Apatow, Odenkirk had a hand in creating such crowd pleasers as “Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker,” a sweaty showcase for Chris Farley; “The Five Timer’s Club” (a premise that still pops up on the show), and, most importantly, the “Get a Life” sketch, a Star Trek convention satire in which guest host William Shatner tells a roomful of Trekkies to “move out of your parent’s basements, and get your own apartments and grow the Hell up?” 

It’s one of the funniest SNL sketches ever, and it inspired the Chris Elliot sitcom Get a Life, for which Odenkirk was Executive Story Editor, Shatner’s 1999 book of the same name, and a likewise titled 2012 documentary about Trekdom hosted by Shatner.

Odenkirk’s comedy credits in the ‘90s are numerous with the most crucial being his work on The Ben Stiller Show, The Dana Carvey Show, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. But another breakthrough came in 1995 when he and Cross hosted duo the sometimes mind-blowingly brilliant, sometimes gloriously stupid HBO sketch showcase, Mr. Show with Bob and David. For four seasons, the zany Cross and the shouty Odenkirk wrung many laughs out of Pythonesque premises and silly segues while supporting cast members including Sarah Silverman, Brian Posehn, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Scott Aukerman, Paul F. Thompkins, and the acoustic metal duo Tenacious D (Jack Black, and Kyle Gass) all staked out their future careers.

After Mr. Show finished its original run, Cross and Odenkirk expanded one of their most popular characters into a movie entitled RUN RONNIE RUN in 2002. Unfortunately the project fell short for which Odenkirk blamed the director, Troy Miller. The largely unfunny film didn’t even get a chance at the big screen, and was released straight to video, but that may have been for the best.

Afterwards, Odenkirk toiled in the comedy trenches as a consultant on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, a writer on Derek and Simon: The Show, The Birthday Boys, and Tom Goes to the Mayor (I haven’t heard of those last two either). Alongside those gigs, were appearances as an actor in such better known shows as Roseanne, Seinfeld, Newsradio, The Larry Sanders Show, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Futurama, Just Shoot Me, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, Entourage, How I Met Your Mother, and, uh, let’s just say every single comedy program from the ‘90s to now. I won’t go into his just as extensive filmwork except to say that of the three films he directed, 2003’s MELVIN GOES TO DINNER is highly recommended (the others – LET’S GO TO PRISON, and THE BROTHERS SOLOMAN – not so much).

The real sea change came in 2009, when Odenkirk joined the cast of Breaking Bad in the show’s second season. The aforementioned Saul Goodman (“s’all good, man.”) was originally intended to only be in three episodes, but the man hit the performance out of the park so he became a series regular. Goodman’s slick diction, and loud, garish suits helped make the character a fan favorite, and paved the way for his own show, which began airing two years after Breaking Bad’s final episode.

For fans, Better Call Saul was a pleasurable extension of the previous program. I actually prefer it to Breaking Bad, and I am a big fan of that show. One strong addition to the world created by Vince Gilligan is Michael McKean as Chuck McGill, the protagonist’s disapproving brother. I was surprised and disappointed that McKean didn’t get an Emmy nod for his intense portrayal of a disturbed yet gifted attorney.

Alongside Better Call Saul, Odenkirk re-united with Cross for a brief run of a Mr. Show sequel of sorts on Netflix. Entitled W/Bob & David, the project featured material that was equal in hilarity to the original, so it felt like a tease that it was only a four episode revival.

So this all brings us to Odenkirk’s most uncharacteristic role to date, Ilya Naishuller’s surprise hit NOBODY. In this movie which has brought about comparisons to the JOHN WICK series, Odenkirk plays Hutch Mansell, a normal, boring guy, with a wife, and kids living in a house in the suburbs outside some unidentified city. After a home invasion, the largely humorless Hutch sets out on a vengeful journey in which he leaves piles of bloody bodies, and retrieves his daughter’s kitty cat bracelet. We also learn that Hutch used to be a CIA trained assassin, which anybody can see coming as it’s a dark thriller trope that goes way back.

The role of Hutch’s Dad gives Christopher Lloyd an amusing chance to get in on the action-packed spectacle, and the film has a fine villain in Aleksei Serebryakov as a snarling Russian mob boss (again a well worn trope). But I got bogged down in all the machine gun fire, and scores of implausibly swift kills that led up to the typical shoot-out finale that’s set in a warehouse (tropey-trope).

Despite my fault-finding, I did enjoy a fair amount of NOBODY, of course, because of Odenkirk. For a guy who began his career as a comedy writer, it’s eye-opening to see him do things we’ve never seen before. An amped up fight scene aboard a parked bus at night is arguably the movie’s peak.

Sure we’ve all seen scenes in which an indestructible badass takes down a gang of attackers, and this doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but it’s a pretty thrilling series of bodily injuries in blindingly quick succession brought on by the least likely edgy vigilante. Odenkirk trained extensively for this movie and it really shows.

It’s great to hear that Odenkirk is on the mend. The online outpouring probably was the result of the list on Twitter of who or what’s trending. Seeing Odenkirk’s name made a lot of folks think the man had passed, and when they found out he was still among the living, they realized how much he meant to them. At least that’s what happened with me.

A couple of days ago, Odenkirk tweeted this:

A very sweet message from a guy whose contributions to the world of comedy are immeasurable. I’m looking forward to seeing him branch out into other genres, but for now, Bob, get plenty of rest, and take your time to recover. Well, maybe not too much time - I’m dying to see Better Call Saul Season 6.

More later...

INCREDIBLES 2: Predictable Plotwise, But Still A Solid Sequel

Opening tonight at a multiplex near everybody:

INCREDIBLES 2 (Dir. Brad Bird, 2018) 

At the screening of this long awaited sequel, there was a mini-featurette before the movie began in which the film’s stars – Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson – stress more than once that while it’s been 14 years since the original, this’ll be well worth the wait. For the most part it is.

Mere months after the events of the first installment, we catch up with the crime-fighting Parr family – Bob/Mr. Incredible (Nelson), Helen/Elastigirl (Hunter), Violet (Sarah Vowel), Dashiell/”Dash” (Huck Milner), Violet and Jack-Jack Parr (Eli Fucile) – as they are trying to thwart a bank robbery by the returning supervillain, the Underminer (voiced by Pixar regular John Ratzenberger).

This results in a pretty thrilling, funny and gorgeously animated opening sequence involving the Incredibles, with the help of the icy touch of Lucius Best/Frozone (Jackson), pulling together to stop a ginormous drilling machine from reaching its Metro Bank destination, and the follow-up is off to a great start.

Things settle down a bit when the premise is introduced by a couple of new characters, telecommunications CEO Winston Deavor (a slick Bob Odenkirk), and his tech saavy sister, Evelyn (a more energetic than usual Catherine Keener). The Deavors wants to arrange a campaign that will make the use of super powers legal again, and recruit Elastigirl to go off and fight crime in the dangerous city of New Urbrem, while Bob stays home to take care of the kids to his great disappointment.

But while stranded at home, Bob learns that Jack-Jack has an array of super powers (17, he says at one point) including being able to shoot lasers out of his eyes, teleport through walls, turn himself into fire, and change into a scary red monster (sort of a like a fiery Tazmanian Devil) if he’s denied a cookie.

Since Odenkirk’s Winston is such an unabashed fanboy of the Incredibles who knows the words to all of their individual theme songs, he stands out as a candidate for the film’s secret bad guy, but gladly screenwriter Bird knows that would be too obvious.

As for the film’s up front villain, there’s the Screenslaver, dressed in black with big goggles like a cartoon Kylo Renn, who can hypnotize people through their screens. There’s also the thread that the secret baddie (I won’t Spoil their identity) has devised glasses that control the wearer in order to frame them doing acts of evil.

That’s a pretty predictable plotline that’s been done to death, but the action and laughs come so fast and frenetically in the film’s last third, which is set on runaway ship headed to crash into New Urbrem, that it really doesn’t get in the way of the extreme entertainment factor.

Sure, the overall world of the INCREDIBLES doesn’t feel as fresh as it did in 2004 (still looks really cool though), but despite its formulaic flaws, it’s a joy to spend time with these characters again on another fast paced ride. INCREDIBLES 2 is a solid sequel that should please the many big fans of the first one, as it did a casual fan like me. Thanks for the update, Bird, Pixar, and all the great voice talent – see you in another 14 years!

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Feeling Right At Home With The Authentic Tone Of Alexander Payne's NEBRASKA

Opening today at an art house near me:

NEBRASKA (Dir. Alexander Payne, 2013)

At one point in this excellent film, I was reminded of a bit that I saw late night talk show host/comedian Craig Ferguson do last month at the Carolina Theatre about how you can get away with saying practically anything cruel by saying “I’m not judging, I’m just being honest.”

As Bruce Dern’s long suffering wife, June Squibb is reminiscing out loud in a cemetery about folks she used to know in the film’s fictional small town of Hawthorne, Nebraska. In the mist of her blunt takedowns of the not so dearly departed she remarks of her husband’s sister: “I liked Rose, but my god, she was a slut!”

Comic actor Will Forte (Saturday Night Live, MACGRUBER), as Dern and Squibb’s son, snaps “Mom, come on,” but Squibb simply states “I’m just telling the truth” and continues her trash talking walk through the headstones.

It’s a fitting line, for NEBRASKA, Alexander Payne’s follow-up to his much more commercial George Clooney vehicle THE DESCENDANTS isn’t judging its characters, it’s being honest about them. Its simple premise of Dern’s protagonist Woody Grant erroneously thinking he’s won a million dollars sweepstakes because of a piece of junk mail hawking magazine subscriptions superbly sets up a bunch of bluntly funny scenes, made all the more sharper by being shot in black and white.

Working with first time screenwriter Bob Nelson’s words, Payne gives us a road movie in the vein of ABOUT SCHMIDT (my personal favorite Payne), which bleeds through in such moments as Dern revisiting locations from his youth (the auto shop he used to co-own, his former watering hole, etc.). Shades of Nicholson’s Schmidt walking into The Tires Plus store that stands on the site of his childhood home for sure.

Despite the protests of mother Squibb (another SCHMIDT factor as she was the wife in that too) Forte opts to drive his ornery out-of-it father from their Billings, Montana home to the lottery office in Lincoln, Nebraska. They stop in Hawthorne for a family reunion, which includes a terrific turn by Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show, Breaking Bad) as Forte’s older newscaster brother, the soft spoken Rance Howard (a great grizzled character actor who’s been in everything from The Andy Griffith Show to Seinfeld) as Dern’s brother, and Mary Louise Wilson (another recognizable longtime veteran of the big and small screen) as Howard’s wife.

A slimy Stacy Keach as Dern’s former auto mechanic partner makes it well known that he wants a cut of Dern’s winnings, as do ne-er-do-well nephews Devin Natray and Tim Driscoll, who have some of the film’s funniest moments especially in a scene where they mock Forte for how long it took him to drive the 750 miles from home to Hawthorne (Driscoll: “Two goddamn days from Billings!”).

It's a career best for Dern, once one of New Hollywood's shining lights of '70s cinema, who definitely deserves an Oscar nomination for his role as the ole codger drunkard, but Squibb steals large chunks of the movie with her fearless bluster. A scene in which she tells off the folks, “vultures” she calls them, clamoring for their cut of Dern's supposed winnings with a resounding f-bomb alone should get her a nomination nod from the Academy.

It's also great to see another side of Forte, as a somewhat beaten down smalltime stereo salesman dealing with a recent break up with his girlfriend of two years (Missy Doty). Forte's effective everyman embarking on a trip to bond with his father, and for a change of scenery resonates beautifully.

Speaking of scenery, the wide lonely spaces of the spare Midwestern settings that surround these sad characters look stunning through the lens of cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, who also shot Payne's SIDEWAYS and THE DESCENDANTS. Anyone's who's traveled across country through the empty terrains of America will get the ambience Payne is going for.

I felt right at home with the authentic tone of NEBRASKA. It has more genuine laughs than most comedies, and more heartfelt humanity than most dramas. It's a near perfect piece of major Payne that makes most of its indie competition this year look pretty shallow. And you know, I'm not judging - I'm just telling the truth.

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A DVD Delight & A Few Disses for April 2004

And now for some new release DVD reviews. One which I found delightful, the other two I am dissing:

MELVIN GOES TO DINNER (Dir. Bob Odenkirk, 2003) 

I wish there were more movies like this these days! Thoughtful character-driven comedies are getting harder and harder to come by. It's like an updated MY DINNER WITH ANDRE times 2! Four people (Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Annabelle Gurwitch, and Matt Price) with loose and not-so-loose connections to one another by chance meet for dinner at a posh LA eatery, and discuss everything from the supernatural to relationship etiquette with funny insights aplenty.

Based on the stage play by Blieden (who plays Melvin) and gracefully directed by Bob Odenkirk (of Mr. Show fame) the core cast is enhanced by amusing cameos from David Cross, Fred Armisen, Jack Black, Melora Walters, and Odenkirk himself. Highly recommended.

The DVD has a few great extras: a hilarious short film about an ill-fated film festival appearance by the filmmakers and some of the cast and two different commentaries that are as funny and interesting as the film itself.

DVD DISSES:

MONA LISA SMILE (Dir. Mike Newell, 2003) 

A chick flick even a chick-flick lover would hate. It would be too convenient to label it as a female DEAD POET'S SOCIETY; it's more like a trumped-up Facts Of Life episode. Watch only if you want to see such new hopefuls as Maggie Gyllenhall, Kristen Dunst, Ginnifer Goodwin, and especially Marcia Gay Harden being wasted in a dreary one dimensional period piece. Julia Roberts fans should be used to this type of thing though.

SECONDHAND LIONS (Dir. Tim McCanlies, 2003)

In less than 3 minutes the premise is set: Haley Joel Osment is dropped off by his scamming Southern-Belle Mama (Krya Sedgewick) to spend the summer with his eccentric uncles Michael Caine and Robert Duvall who mysteriously have a treasure of millions of dollars hidden somewhere on their farm property. 

Incredibly hokey yarn that even tries to work in a PRINCESS BRIDE style back-story in the form of Caine's tensely told tales to Osment while Duvall overacts like a sleep-walking lovesick winner of the SNL game show sketch “Who's More Grizzled?” You could do worse than to sit through this pleasant pap but then you could do a lot better. A whole lot better.

More to come...