GAME NIGHT: A Fairly Funny Film For February

Opening today at a multiplex near us all:

GAME NIGHT (Dir. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, 2018)

I didn’t have very big expectations for this film, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s follow-up to their directorial debut, 2015’s VACATION reboot, as February has often been a dumping ground for lame comedies in previous years like FIST FIGHT, HALL PASS, IDENTITY THIEF, and lame comedy sequels like ZOOLANDER 2, and HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2.

But GAME NIGHT is a fairly funny farce, that puts its talented cast through the manic motions of a murder mystery party that gets out of hand, and results in a considerable amount of big laughs.

It begins with the meet cute of a young couple, Max (Jason Bateman), and Annie (Rachel McAdams) at a bar’s trivia night, and a following montage shows us how their shared hyper-competitiveness thrives in game after game over the years since.

In the present day, Max and Annie meet up with their friends Kevin (Lamorne Morris), his wife Michelle (Kylie Bunbury), Ryan (Billy Magnussen), who always brings a different dumb blonde, for game nights in the suburbs (the film was shot in Marietta, Georgia, but I don’t think they ever mention where it’s set). Max and Annie don’t invite their creepy police officer neighbor (Jesse Plemmons), who used to come to the get togethers with his wife, but their divorce has made the group hold their games in secret from him.

But then Max’s more successful businessman brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler), shows up in a 1976 Corvette Stingray, which happens to be Max’s boyhood dream car, and blows their cover. Brooks announces that he wants to host the next game night at a mansion he’s rented, and promises that it’ll take the tradition “up a notch.”

Max, Annie, Kevin, Ryan, and his date Sarah (Sharon Horgan) show up to Brooks’ to find that he’s planned an elaborate staged mystery for them to solve, and the winner gets the Stingray.

Jeffrey Wright comes in as a FBI agent distributing files full of clues to the players, but gets interrupted by two armed thugs who burst in and knock him unconscious, and have a violent brawl with Brooks, which the group of friends think is part of the game.

Brooks gets abducted, and the crew, split into their respective couples, set out to investigate the clues and find him. Max and Annie track him down to a sleazy dive bar where they think the patrons are phony criminals with fake guns. Amid real gunfire, they rescue Brooks and in a high speed car chase he tells them that he’s not really an entrepreneur; he’s a smuggler who’s being hunted down for a stolen Fabergé egg, the film’s McGuffin.

While they’re running around through all the zany, and sometimes bloody twists and turns, each couple has their own premise: Max and Annie’s is that they are trying to have a baby but Max has been stressed out by his brother; Kevin and Michelle’s is that it’s revealed that she had a fling with a celebrity before they were married and Kevin obsesses over figuring out who it was; and Ryan’s dilemma is that he usually dates air-heads, but Sarah is a lot smarter than he is.

Some of this stuff is sitcom-ish, and the film has many familiar scenes – the dive bar where Max and Annie are oblivious to being in over their heads is pretty generic feeling, and a climatic race to stop a plane from taking off is one of several overdone elements, as well as one of several fake-out endings, but the sheer amount of hilarious one-liners and gags that land doesn’t let such clichés and convolutions get in the way of the fun.

Like in one clever stand-out set-piece has the cast throwing the Fabergé egg back and forth to one another in an unbroken shot through the hallways, and balconies of a mansion belonging to a mobster (Danny Huston).

Working from a screenplay written by Mark Perez (THE COUNTRY BEARS, ACCEPTED), Daley and Goldstein keep the pace popping with laughs interchanged with genuine thrills while the narrative keeps one guessing what’s real and what’s fake.

GAME NIGHT mostly works as a take-off of the manipulations and expected tropes of many straight-laced-folks-get-caught-up-in-dangerous-underworld scenarios, like when in a brutal fight somebody is thrown and lands on top of a glass table but it doesn’t break like in every other movie (Kevin: “Glass tables are acting weird tonight!”).

On the scale of NIGHT movies, GAME NIGHT is a lot better than last summer’s ROUGH NIGHT, but around the same quality of 2010's DATE NIGHT.

The movie shows that Daley and Goldstein, who co-wrote the HORRIBLE BOSSES movies, and had their hands in the screenplay for SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING (along with four other writers) are getting better at what they do, which is getting a terrific cast to play off each other in the service of a funny storyline. Well, funny enough for February that is.

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OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY: A Wasted Opportunity To Have Fun With Wasted People

Now playing at a multiplex near us all:
OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY

(Dirs. Josh Gordon & Will Speck, 2016)

As a kid, I believe that I learned from Mad Magazine, and various other satirical sources, the clichés associated with office Christmas parties – i.e. employees getting blind drunk, shedding their work attire, Xeroxing their asses, throwing office equipment out the window, and having sex with people they normally wouldn’t. 

They’re all here in this new raunchy comedy from Josh Gordon and Will Speck, the filmmakers behind BLADES OF GLORY, THE SWITCH, and that failed Cavemen sitcom that was spun off from a series of GEICO ads (not exactly a shining pedigree, huh?).

So if anybody can take those familiar tropes and make them funny all over again, the over qualified comic cast assembled here surely can. You’d think, right?

Nope - despite the best efforts of Jason Bateman, T.J. Miller, Jennifer Aniston, Olivia Munn, Rob Corddry, and a couple of SNL ladies, Kate McKinnon and Vanessa Bayer, this is a forgettable romp with as many uninspired gags as there are predictable plot mechanics.

Bateman, who’s fifth film this is with Aniston, plays the newly divorced Josh Parker, a Data Storage Solutions CTO at Zenotek, a Chicago based tech company run by Miller as branch president Clay Vanstone. Clay’s sister, Carol (Aniston), is the corporation’s CEO, and she’s threatening to close her brother’s branch down or firing 40% of the staff unless they can land a major client, Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance), and score a $14 million contract.

Carol also forbids Clay and his staff from having a Christmas party this year. Of course, they ignore her and plan on throwing the biggest bash ever complete with a live nativity scene with actors, a DJ (Veep’s Sam Richardson), and water coolers filled with liquor, in hopes of impressing their potential client.

If only hilarity ensued instead of a bunch of predictable, unfunny story strands like the one about the IT head (Karan Soni) who hires a hooker (Abby Lee Kershaw) because he lied to his co-workers about having a girlfriend, or the one about Bayer looking for love with office mate Randall Park only to find he has a weird fetish, or the one about McKinnon’s HR manager Mary shedding her PC-obsessed, by-the-book nature and getting her party on.

There’s even the old standby of having two characters, Bateman’s and Munn’s, getting locked out together on the roof so that realize they’re supposed to be together.

Although there’s lots of shots of nudity and abundant profanity, the movie really isn’t that raunch-minded. It’s oddly more concerned with the stakes of trying to save the company via some internet server deal that Munn’s Tracey has been developing while the over-the-top destruction of their office space goes on in the background (in another worn out convention, everyone in Chicago has been invited to the party thanks to social media).

There are intermittent laughs with random one-liners landing and some successful sight gags, but overall this is a wasted opportunity to really have fun with wasted people.

This year seems to have seen every kind of bad comedy there is, so the naughty, R-rated Christmas comedy genre is represented here. I bet the after effect for the cast, who will all undoubtedly go on to better things, will be much the same as for a real office Christmas party, let’s all forget that any of that embarrassing stuff ever happened and get back to work.

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ZOOTOPIA: A Delightfully On Point Takedown Of Racial Profiling

ZOOTOPIA (Dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore, and Jared Bush, 2016)

Earlier this week, I caught up with the #1 movie at the box office right now: ZOOTOPIA, the latest animated family feature from the Walt Disney Corporation. I had been initially dismissive of the film, having skipped an advance screening of it for a weird Neil Young double feature, but I heard that many critics were raving about it being a clever topical takedown of racial profiling so I just had to check it out.

ZOOTOPIA takes place in a world with no humans, only animals, who were once savage but have evolved, and formed a civilization in which they walk upright, wear clothes, and work regular jobs. Ginnifer Goodwin voices our plucky protagonist, a rabbit named Judy Hopps, who dreams of being the first bunny police officer. Thanks to the city of Zootopia’s new Mammal Inclusion Initiative, she gets her chance but is assigned to parking ticket duty by the chief of police, who’s an intimidating buffalo voiced by Idris Elba.

Because of a bias against foxes – we see her being bullied as a child by a fox in the opening sequence, and she carries “fox repellant” given to her by her parents – she follows one that looks suspicious to her into an ice cream store, but finds out it’s just a doting dad, named Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman) trying to buy a popsicle for his kid.

When the elephant run establishment refuses service to Nick and his offspring, Officer Judy steps in and calls out the store’s unsanitary conditions, which include an elephant employee scooping ice cream with his bare trunk – heavens! The situation is resolved with Judy buying an elephant-sized popsicle for the thankful father and son.

However, Judy soon finds out that she was hustled by Nick, who takes the huge popsicle and makes it into hundreds of tiny popsicles to sell to business suited rat population. Judy tries to arrest Nick, but finds that she can’t make any of the charges stick.

Defeated yet still trying to prove her worth, Judy gets into a chase after a crook named Duke Weaselton (Alan Tudyk), inside the segmented city within a ciry, Little Rodentia.

This gets Judy in trouble with the chief, but, via the surprise support of the Assistant Mayor Bellwether (Jenny Slate), it leads to the officer bunny getting put on a major case involving a series of missing animals. Turns out that Nick can help with a lead, and the duo hit the trail, which involves a cameo by Tommy Chong as a hippy yax who’s the “emotional life coach” at a naturalist commune, an arctic shrew crime boss named Mr. Big (Maurice Lamarche doing his best Marlon Brando), and, in one of the movie’s funniest scenes, the city’s DMV being run by sloths – get it? 

The well cast Bateman, at his cheeky best, and the equally Goodwin, giving it her all, play off each other well and do a lot towards making this the likable, yet appropriately apt, exercise that it is.

ZOOTOPIA may have made by committee – there are three directors and seven “story by” credits, but its sharp screenplay (credited to only two names - Jared Bush and Phil Johnston) that serves up a lot of on point social satire. Just about every joke lands, and there’s genuine feeling behind its message, which is basically ‘let’s recognize and put a stop to negative stereotyping and discrimination.’

It’s voice cast is energetically up to task throughout – though I could’ve done more with J.K. Simmons’ Leodore Lionheart, the lion mayor of Zootopia, and less with Shakira’s pop star gazelle (named Gazalle, of course), but I know they’ve got to work that teenybopper pop angle in order to sell some soundtracks (you just know that this one won’t push anywhere near as many units as FROZEN though).

A delightful family film that actually has as much depth as it does heart, ZOOTOPIA is a really good sign for the future of Disney’s Animated Classics division. With hope, other lesser animation studios will take note and start to tackle real, relatable issues more in their movies. I’m looking at you, Dreamworks!

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HORRIBLE BOSSES 2: A Tediously Tiresome Thanksgiving Turkey

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 

(Dir. Sean Anders, 2014)

Okay, so yeah, the first film was a fluke – a one-off throwaway that was just funny enough to recommend. But the sequel, opening everywhere today, is a tiresome rehash that wears out its welcome before it even hits the 10 minute mark.

However, up to that point, with its inspired use of the Clash’s cover of Eddy Grant’s “Police on My Back” to take us into a crudely amusing opening scene featuring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudekis promoting their new invention, a bathroom accessory named “The Shower Buddy,” on a morning TV talk show, the movie seems like it could possibly match the original.

But this misguided mash-up of 9 TO 5, which they reference several times so it’s okay to steal from I guess, and BACHELOR PARTY goes downhill fast from there once its incredibly uninvolving and annoyingly familiar plot kicks in.

This time, our returning comedy trio trying to strike out as their own bosses gets screwed over by Christoph Waltz (seemingly loving slumming it here) and Chris Pine (Captain Kirk from the J.J. Abrams’ STAR TREK re-imaginings) as a father-son pair of wealthy, conniving corporate investors who steal the product and re-name it “The Shower Pal” (“That’s a better name, too,” says Sudekis).

So Bateman, Day, and Sudekis plan to kidnap Pine and collect ransom from Waltz, but guess what? Things don’t go down as smoothly as they hope.

In lame attempts to rekindle the comically criminal shenanigans of the first time around, the bickering buffoons visit Kevin Spacey, reprising his role as one of the horrible bosses, in jail for advice; Jamie Foxx, reprising his role as “Motherfucker Jones” in the same seedy bar for more contrived consultation; and Jennifer Aniston, reprising her role as a sex-addicted dentist, who has the most regrettably creepy lines to spout throughout this mess.

The so self consciously twisted scenarios the fellows get tied up in, via the screenplay co-written by director Anders and creative partner John Morris (who also both co-wrote the currently playing DUMB AND DUMBER TO), just go in circles with a clear lack of momentum.

These guys can be very funny - the stressed out Day and the all too smug Sudekis play off each other effortlessly while Bateman deadpans some choice one-liners - and amid their wacky scrapes I chuckled maybe a dozen times, but there was nothing resembling a big genuine laugh to be found.

If you stitched together these guys’ individual appearances on late night TV talk shows into a feature length 90 minutes or so it would be much funnier than this. Especially as it wouldn’t have the tired as hell kidnapping tropes (code name gags ‘n all) that all fall horribly flat here.

And there’s also the unfortunate and badly timed (because of the Cosby controversy) rape jokes that Aniston’s character, puts forth that left a disgusting taste in my mouth. As well, it’s weird that Pine puts forth some dramatic acting about dealing with his dad Waltz not loving him – in what movie does he think he’s in?

It would be a critical cliché to say that HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 is a cinematic turkey delivered just in time for Thanksgiving, but if they’re going to so blatantly trot out such a lame retread, then so am I.

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Jason Bateman’s Directorial Debut BAD WORDS Mildly Amuses

Opening today in Raleigh at the Colony Theater...

BAD WORDS (Dir. Jason Bateman, 2013)

Because of its ripe premise about a foul-mouthed 40-year-old who uses a loophole to enter a national spelling bee for elementary school students, I was expecting big laughs from Jason Bateman’s directorial debut.

Instead I had to make do with a fair amount of mildly amusing moments provided by the jerkish behavior of Bateman’s Guy Trilby, a guy who delights in humiliating the children contestants he towers over onstage, throwing them off their game so he can clean up with his mad spelling skills.

Bateman travels with his sponsor, Kathryn Hahn as a reporter for an online newspaper, to Los Angeles to complete in the National Quill Spelling Bee, in spite of the protests of Alison Janey as the tournament’s snobby director and all the competing kids’ parents.

Hated so much that they place him in the hotel’s storage closet for the duration of the event, Bateman befriends the cute 10-year old Chaitanya (Rohan Chand of Homeland and LONE SURVIVOR), because these BAD movies (BAD SANTA, BAD GRANDPA, BAD NEWS BEARS) usually have their crusty lead characters thrown together with young ones lacking parental guidance.

Chand is left unsupervised by his parents who are staying in a nicer hotel, so our profane protagonist takes him on a wild night ride by way of booze, soliciting a prostitute (Kimleigh Smith, who may have a few of the best lines), and pulling a public restroom prank involving a stolen lobster.

Of course, the most important set pieces are the nationally televised spelling bee segments hosted by a slick announcer played by Ben Falcone (BRIDESMAIDS, ENOUGH SAID) and Philip Baker Hall as Golden Quill’s respected founder/administrator, another participant who is highly disgusted by Bateman. These scenes actually play with a tinge of suspense, even though we know Bateman is too smart to lose (he even gets the word “Floccinaucinihilipilification” right!).

We get the bare bones of a back story about Bateman (don’t worry – no Spoilers!) late in the game, but it doesn’t fully flesh out the character in a satisfying way making the conclusion come off as way too tidy.

Working from a script by first-time screenwriter Andrew Dodge, first-time filmmaker Bateman shows strengths in story structure and timing, though some scenes felt like they were edited with too many close-ups. Like Harold Ramis told Stephen Tobolowsky on the set of GROUNDHOG DAY, “Comedy lives in the two-shot.”

It also feels like the film is only pretending to be mean-spirited and offensive, like that friend we’ve all had that says rude or ostensibly outrageous things just to get attention, but you know they’re really a softie deep down and it’s all a show.

Still, Bateman has crafted a likable film about an unlikable guy that I chuckled throughout at, and he’s surrounded the crude character with a charismatic cast aping a posse of pissed off people - Rachel Harris in particular, as an angry mother, steals her scenes.

Few are likely to laugh their asses off at BAD WORDS or claim that it’s a modern comedy classic, but those who don't mind (or are fans of) R-rated language looking for a mildly amusing matinee should look no further.

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The Soon To Be Forgotten Off Season Folly Of IDENTITY THIEF

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

IDENTITY THIEF (Dir. Seth Gordon, 2013) 

Jason Bateman, in his standard exasperated everyman role, takes on Melissa McCarthy as a con artist who’s racked up a huge debt in his name in this uninspired comedy that deserves to be dumped into this sorry season.

Bateman plays Denver-based accountant Sandy Patterson - a name that could be a woman’s name which, of course, equals lotsa laughs - a straight laced family man married to the suitably bland Amanda Peet, who travels to Florida to confront McCarthy, and bring her back to confess her identity theft to Bateman’s boss (HAROLD & KUMAR’s John Cho) so that he won’t lose his job.

In what’s largely a PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES (minus the trains) or DUE DATE-type road movie, Bateman and McCarthy are pursued by drug dealers (Genesis Rodriguez and T.I.) and a skuzzy bounty hunter (Robert Patrick), as they go through by-the numbers car chases, gay panic jokes, and even a night in the woods in which Bateman tangles with a seven foot snake.

With her tacky hair, gaudy fashions, hideous makeup, and constant inappropriate innuendo McCarthy is a broadly drawn archetype that never feels fully fleshed out. Craig Mazan’s (SCARY MOVIES 3 & 4, THE HANGOVER PARTS II & III) screenplay exploits McCarthy’s BRIDESMAIDS persona, but in a manner that’s too sketchy for the character to have any depth.

This makes for a distinct lack of emotional pull and an overriding emptiness when the movie gives up trying to make us laugh, and piles on the sentiment.

Only one moment, set in a cheap hotel room, involving Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet as a rich good ol’ boy who falls for McCarthy has any weight to it.

Otherwise, despite Bateman tossing off a few dry one-liners, and a running gag involving McCarthy's defense mechanism of punching people in the throat, there is very little that even slightly resembles humor here.

It’s also way too long at 112 minutes, something that makes its lack of laughs even more noticeable. The in and outs of its tedious narrative so lost my interest, that I can’t remember what the significance of Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks’ prisoner character was in the rest of this mess.

McCarthy, who has proven her considerable comic talent in BRIDESMAIDS and a stint hosting SNL (I’ve never watched Mike and Molly), will undoubtedly get better chances to bring the funny in future films, so this will soon be a forgotten off season folly that won’t be much of a black mark on her resume.

As for Bateman, the much anticipated Arrested Development reunion reboot can’t come soon enough.

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An Extremely Skippable R-Rated Switcheroo

THE CHANGE-UP (Dir. David Dobkin, 2011)

Let me just start by putting this out there – I like both of these guys.

Jason Bateman is an effective everyman who has shined in a string of lame ass comedies (this summer's HORRIBLE BOSSES isn't bad actually), and Ryan Reynolds can be obnoxious sure, but there's a good actor underneath all that smarm (see last year's BURIED if you don't believe me).

But this gross-out switcheroo puts their likability to the test. The premise of body switching was tired back in the late '80s, and smothering it in profanity and loads of disgusting pee, poop, and porn jokes does nothing to freshen it up.

In the first couple of minutes of the film there's a baby feces scene that unfortunately sets the terrible tone. I won't go into any detail, I'll just say that so much of the movie consists of things that most people would pay not to see.

So we have Bateman as a settled down family man, Reynolds a hard partying womanizer living in Atlanta (the location really doesn't matter except in skyline shots and a few minor references - it could've been set anywhere) who drunkenly one night when peeing in a fountain say in unison "I wish I had your life!"

The next morning they wake up and are in each other's bodies and have to deal with it - and so do we.

Bateman's wife doesn't believe them, and they find that the fountain has been moved so they are stuck in this filthy FACE OFF predicament for a few weeks until they find out where the Zoltar Speaks machine, sorry the fountain, was moved.

The only slightly amusing factor is Bateman and Reynold's mimicry of each other's amped up antics, otherwise this is a profoundly unfunny experience that just makes you feel sorry for everybody involved including Olivia Wilde (COWBOYS AND ALIENS) and Alan Arkin who luckily is only in a couple brief scenes.

This hasn't been the greatest summer for comedies, but this is the lowest of the low. Even if you're looking for a air conditioned reprieve from the current extreme heat, I'd opt for sweating. The stench with that is so much more bearable.

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HORRIBLE BOSSES: The Film Babble Blog Review

HORRIBLE BOSSES (Dir. Seth Gordon, 2011)

As the most recent in a spate of crude R-Rated comedies, HORRIBLE BOSSES is just funny enough to recommend. Although maybe just as a matinee.

Anybody who clicked on this review surely knows the plot, but I'll state it anyway: 3 guys who want to murder their bosses concoct a plan to do so with comical results.

As the 3 guys we've got Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudekis, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Charlie Day, and Arrested Development's (as well as the everyman in every other comedy movie made these days) Jason Bateman.

The bosses are Colin Firth with a combover as a chemical company coke-head who takes over Sudekis's workplace after his father (Donald Sutherland) dies, Kevin Spacey as a corporate asshole (shades of his likewise character in SWIMMING WITH SHARKS) who denies Bateman a promotion, and Jennifer Anniston playing against her girl-next-door type as a dentist who sexually harrases Day as her dental assistant ("Yours doesn't sound so bad" Sudekis says about Day's predicament).

Think STRANGERS ON A TRAIN + THROW MOMMA OFF THE TRAIN (both of which are referenced in this movie), with a sprinkling of 9 TO 5 thrown in for good measure. It takes a bit to really get going, but when it does the frantic scheming of the 3 leads makes for some big laughs especially from Day doing his patented screaming, not-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer, It's Always Sunny stuff.

Sudekis with his sex-snarkiness seems so much like his character in HALL PASS that I kept expecting him to call his wife back home, and Bateman is playing the same nice-guy notes he has in many a movie, but these guys' recognizable and relatable personas all anchor the movie nicely.

Spacey, Firth, and Aniston have fine funny moments, but none is funnier than Jamie Foxx who steals every scene he's in as a "murder consultant" the guys seek out in a seedy bar when they are looking for somebody to do their dirty work.

Scripted by John Francis Daley (who played protagonist Sam on Freaks and Geeks), and Jonathan M. Goldstein, the film feels oddly restrained at times - like it never quite goes over the top.

However when it busts out a car chase/phone sex climax it's gets mighty close.

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PAUL: The Film Babble Blog Review

PAUL (Dir. Greg Mottola, 2011)

STARMAN meets SUPERBAD in this sci fi comedy that has Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the comic duo from SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ, aiding and abetting an extraterrestrial fugitive voiced by Seth Rogen.

Pegg and Frost, who also co-wrote the screenplay, are a couple of British geeks on an American vacation that kicks off with a visit to Comic-Con in San Diego before making a road trip to alien landmarks from Area 51 in Nevada to Roswell, New Mexico.

There’s a FANBOYS vibe going on as the pair are starstruck at meeting fictional fantasy novelist Adam Shadowchild (Jeffrey Tambor), whose name is a running gag throughout the film – the joke being that only hardcore nerds know who he is.

Right after stereotypical rednecks (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons) harass Pegg and Frost at a U.F.O. themed diner, our protagonists meet Paul – the CGI crafted little green man from another planet.

“He looks too obvious!” Frost protests, but our snarky title character explains that it’s because pop culture has been inundated with his image in case an encounter occurs.

It turns out Paul, a pot-smoking heavy-drinking party animal of an alien, has escaped from his 60 year imprisonment at Area 51 and is on the run from a government agent (Jason Bateman playing it perfectly straight), so Pegg and Frost’s rented RV becomes his vehicle to an undisclosed location for a spaceship pick-up.

Kristen Wiig, in one of her better performances, jumps on board the RV as a half blind trailer park manager who gets converted from her crazy Christian mind set by the outspoken E.T. and is chased by her father (John Carroll Lynch). Also on the chase are SNL’s Bill Hader and the creepy Joe Lo Truglio as clueless FBI agents.

Every sci fi movie ever seems to be referenced in “Paul”. Lines are lifted from STAR WARS, locations from Star Trek to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS are visited, and then there’s the presence of Sigourney Weaver as “The Big Guy” – Bateman’s boss who will stop at nothing to recapture Paul.

It’s a film for sci fi nerds by sci fi nerds. It’s sloppy and choppy, but it has so many legitimate laughs in it that I didn’t care that it didn’t come close to the visually stylish Edgar Wright films that Pegg and Frost cut their teeth on.

PAUL is fast-paced foul-mouthed fun with an infectious silly tone that never lets up. Although you can see many of the gags coming, they’re still funny when they land thanks to the playful platform provided by Pegg, Frost, Rogen, and director Greg Mottola.

Though I don’t consider myself a STAR WARS fanatic, Trekkie, or sci-fi junkie to any extreme, my inner star-child was greatly amused by these alien antics.

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UP IN THE AIR: The Film Babble Blog Review

UP IN THE AIR (Dir. Jason Reitman, 2009)

George Clooney's third film of the last quarter of 2009 has "the last movie star" (Time Magazine's words - not mine) in a much more recognizable role than his last 2 efforts. It's not just because he's not a mustached military man or an animated fox, it's that he has a more recognizable character arc: slick professional who believes he has all the answers glides through life until realizing that there's emptiness to it all which he desperately and clumsily tries to remedy.

This is also the character arc of director Jason Reitman's first film THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, which UP IN THE AIR closely resembles at times especially in its opening introductory montage. Clooney's voice-over narration, accompanying aerial shots of many American cities, tells us that he is a corporate downsizer.


Clooney flies all over the country to conduct formal sit-downs with employees to tell them that they are being laid off. He is very good at his job and prefers the 322 days of the year that he is on the road to the 43 that he is home in his sterile white walled rental unit of an apartment in Omaha.

Clooney's frequent flyer lifestyle is threatened when his boss (a lightly bearded slightly jaded Jason Bateman) brings in a young consultant (Anna Kendrick) who has plans to replace the face-to-face meetings with video conferencing. Bateman sends Kendrick on the road with Clooney so she can be shown the ropes.


Clooney hopes this will show her the flaws in what he believes to be a flawed inhuman media method, but you just know that both will be taught essential life lessons by one another.


In a hotel bar meet-cute earlier, Clooney literally charms the pants off fellow frequent flyer Vera Farmiga. She nicely compliments his no-strings-attached philosophy and provides a counter balance to Kendrick's wet behind the ears romantic idealism.


After Kendrick's boyfriend back home dumps her by way of a text message, Clooney can't help but to make a wise-crack: "That's kind of like firing people over the internet." Farmiga offers, with much more sensitivity, some solid advice about how it won't feel like settling by the time somebody is right for her.

These relationship insights blend into the travelogue mosaic of cards being swiped, more aerial shots, and the many firings, yet we just know that they form the crucial crux at hand. 


For example Clooney has the annoying task of taking along a cardboard cutout of his sister (Melanie Lynskey) with her fiancée (Danny McBride) to be photographed at famous landmarks for a wedding collage - this draws our attention to his ostensible freedom in contrast to his sibling's ostensible stability with neither coming out on top.


The first half of UP IN THE AIR is breezy and amusing, but the second half descends into mawkish sentimentality with soul searching acoustic balladry in the background broadcasting what we're supposed to be feeling. Clooney's charisma is so pleasantly palpable that he makes the film appear better than it is while we're watching it, yet its superficial effect evaporates once we leave the theater.


Still, most audiences are sure to find this film a likable lark. It's well made and has a shiny gloss to it that often outshines its predictability. It also benefits from not having a neatly tied up conclusion - sometimes it's best to leave some things right where the title says they should be.

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Judging Mike Judge's EXTRACT

EXTRACT (Dir. Mike Judge, 2009)


The filmography of Mike Judge is very small (just 4 films over 13 years) and very odd.

Best known as the creator and voice of Beavis And Butt-head and King Of The Hill, his movies have a obvious bent towards working stiffs and the threat of stupidity taking over the world (see OFFICE SPACE and IDIOCRACY).

EXTRACT is cut from the same cloth as Judge's cult classic OFFICE SPACE, but it's a jagged uneven piece of that cloth.

As the protagonist Jason Bateman is not just a cog in the system, he owns his own company - an extract manufacturing plant. A freak accident on the factory assembly line that leaves one of his employees (Clifton Collins Jr.) with only one testicle, leaves him with a huge lawsuit that could potentially ruin his company. 

Meanwhile on the home front Bateman isn't getting any action from his wife (a blank slate Kristen Wiig from SNL) so he drowns his sorrows at a nearby hotel sports bar whining to his best friend - bartender Ben Affleck. Affleck, bearded and be-wigged and seemingly having a better time than anyone else in the movie, spouts out awful advice, and recommends pills as solutions. 

Bateman is attracted to a new intern (Mila Kunis) and confides to Affleck that he wouldn't care if his wife cheated on him as long as he could get it on with Kunis. Affleck refers Bateman, heavily drugged, to a small time gigolo (Dusty Milligan) whom he hires to go to his house in the guise of a pool cleaner in order to seduce his wife. 

Okay! This is where I give up on the plot summary as recounting it is almost as bad as it was watching it. What started out promisingly becomes a test of endurance. Instead of waiting for laughs I found myself anticipating the flimsy unpleasant premise to get even more flimsier and unpleasant. 

When Gene Simmons of Kiss showed up as a sleazy lawyer (one of the film's most inspired notions actually) I expected him to make good on his threat to slam Bateman's balls in the conference room door. Why not? It's not like the film had any loftier aspirations.

There are a number of genuine laughs in EXTRACT, just not enough to add up to a great cutting comedy. Kunis's character as a hottie grifter (no Spoilers there, that's revealed in the opening scene) offers no surprises and no character is likable enough to care about. 

I've liked Bateman in just about everything I've seen him in (especially Arrested Development), but here he's a pretty bland and not particularly sympathetic everyman.

I cringed more than I laughed during this movie I'm sad to report. Judge's previous works were indeed odd with a twisted, yet had likable affinity for those struggling to climb if only to another rung on the ladder of success.

EXTRACT is just odd and twisted - which would be fine if it was just funnier.

More later...

STATE OF PLAY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Taking a break from the heat on my Vegas vacation I found a theater (United Artists Showcase 8) not too far from my hotel and decided to take in: STATE OF PLAY (Dir. Kevin McDonald, 2009) Literally hitting the ground running with a foot chase through a rain drenched Washington DC night resulting in multiple murder, this adaptation of the six part 2003 British miniseries never lets up from its riveting opening. In the cold light of the next day we are introduced to a scruffy haggard looking Russell Crowe as a ace old school reporter (the type who brags about using a 16 year old computer) who buys coffee to get info from the police and makes jaded quips like: "I'll need to read a few blogs in order to form an opinion." A nice timely touch is to then pair him up with a blogger (Rachel McAdams) for his newspaper's online division. Crowe's long time buddy, a congressman played surprisingly solidly by Ben Affleck, is exposed as having had an affair with one of the previous night's victims (Maria Thayer - only seen in photos and cellphone footage) and, of course, something sinister lies in the shadows with an evil corporation possibly pulling the strings. Yes, it's a conspiracy movie with a "trust nobody" vibe that has many allusions to one of the all time greats, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN with its Washington DC backdrop, intense walks and talks, doors slammed in journalist's faces, and even a shadowy parking garage sequence. The Watergate hotel gets more than just a visual shout out too. Crowe gets many terse tongue lashes from his English editor played beautifully by Helen Mirren in the cluttered newsroom of the fictional "The Washington Globe" (same typeface as The Washington Post in case one misses the connection) while he and McAdams go from lead to lead. For the up to par supporting cast we've got Robin Wright Penn as Affleck's estranged wife, Jeff Daniels as a smarmy Senior Representative, Viola Davis (DOUBT) as a no nonsense pathologist, and a stand-out Jason Bateman as a bisexual fetish club promoter addicted to OxyContin. There are contrivances and clichés galore but the movie moves so fast with such entertaining zeal that none of that matters. Crowe puts in a cantakerously crafted performance that's strong enough to conceal that we are given virtually nothing of backstory of his character, while McAdams appealingly works those "dewey eyed cub reporter's eyes" (as Mirren sneeringly calls them at one point) uping the ante from her previous one note roles like the love interest in WEDDING CRASHERS. There is spare but weighty commentary on the fate of print media in the era of the internets - particularly the likening of bloggers to bloodsuckers (ouch!). Through this all the supreme structure of the film is what really makes it tick. It's played straight with a tightened pace that doesn't ever fall out of focus. Maybe it's not quite in the league of the classic 70's political thrillers it pays ample homage to, but STATE OF PLAY is a worthy addition to the conspiracy cinema canon. More later...