THE END OF THE TOUR: A Hangout Movie About Being Hung Up

Now playing at an indie art house near me:

THE END OF THE TOUR (Dir. James Ponsoldt, 2015)

I have to confess that I’ve never read any of the late David Foster Wallace’s work, but after seeing this thoughtful, insightful and thoroughly moving movie, his highly touted 1,079-page novel “Infinite Jest” has rocketed to the top of my list.

The film is centered around Wallace, played by Jason Segel, being accompanied by journalist David Linsky, played by Jesse Eisenberg, to Minneapolis for the last stop on the promotional book tour for “Infinite Jest” in the winter of 1996.

Linsky is doing a profile of Wallace for Rolling Stone, that he says will be about “what it’s like to be the most talked about writer in the country.” Linsky’s editor (Ron Livingston) approves his pitch to do the piece on the condition that he asks Wallace if the rumors of his heroin use are true.

Linsky is a big fan of Wallace, and wishes that his writing was as successful, as his own novel “The Art Fair” failed to make much of a splash in the literary world. Linsky is even annoyed that his girlfriend (an extremely underused Anna Chlumsky) seems to like Wallace’s work better than his.

“He wants something better than he has, I want precisely what he has already,” is how Linsky succinctly sums up the situation. The two meet at Wallace’s suburban house in Bloomington, Illinois where he lives with two dogs, and their rambling yet consistently fascinating conversation begins.

In the first of many scenes set in diners, Wallace senses Linsky’s nervousness and reassures him by saying that he’s terrified too and that they’ll get through it together.

Then the two Davids bond over a junk food run to a convenience store (“if we ate like this all the time, what would be wrong with that?”), and continue their conversing at Wallace’s house over smokes and R.E.M. on the stereo (I swear that “Perfect Circle” played twice in the background before going on to the next song on “Murmur,” “Catapult” but that’s neither here nor there).

The next day, Linsky and Wallace fly to Minneapolis where they are greeted by the always welcome Joan Cusack as Patty, a perky, quirky book tour escort, who drives the two to Wallace’s scheduled events including a bookstore reading and a radio interview. During their time in town, they also get lost in Mall of America, and take in a movie there: the dumb John Travolta action flick BROKEN ARROW funnily enough.

At the bookstore appearance, Wallace introduces Linsky to a couple of female friends, Betsy (Mickey Sumner), who Wallace used to date, and Julie (Mamie Gummer - you know, Meryl Streep’s daughter) as a groupie turned friend. Wallace and Linsky hang with the two ladies at Gummer’s apartment because she has a TV, but the evening gets a bit tense when Wallace thinks that Linsky is hitting on his ex flame. After a period of barely speaking the following day, their last one together, they hash it out and Linsky finally puts the heroin question to Wallace.

THE END OF THE TOUR, director James Ponsoldt’s follow-up to last year’s much buzzed about THE SPECTACULAR NOW, is a hangout movies about being hung up. As fame approaches, Wallace wants to be seen as a regular guy whose only addiction is television, but Linsky questions this: “You don’t crack open a 1,000-page book because the author’s a regular guy. You do it because he’s brilliant…So who the fuck are you kidding?”

The spectre of Wallace’s suicide twelve years after the events here can’t help but loom over the proceedings, but Segel’s warmth and humor as Wallace is so in the moment that we can forget that he’s ultimately a tragic figure. This is undoubtedly Segel’s most layered and lived-in performance, and it’s probably the most accomplished acting by any of the Freaks and Geeks alumni. Sorry, James Franco.

Eisenberg holds his own with Segel, but his part isn’t anything we haven’t seen him do before. If you want to get a slice of Eisenberg with a twist, see AMERICAN ULTRA.

Scripted by Donald Margulies (DINNER WITH FRIENDS) from Linsky’s 2010 book “Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” THE END OF THE TOUR is somehow simultaneously breezy and deep. It’s like one of those late night talks that feels initially feels laid back, but, in the middle of all the shooting the shit there’s some heavy soul barring going on.

Put another way, in this series of loose chats between these two soul searching writers, there’s one of the best movies of the year going on.

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The Forced Farce SEX TAPE Plays It Too Safe

SEX TAPE (Dir. Jake Kasdan, 2014)

Jake Kasdan’s follow-up to his lackluster 2011 BAD TEACHER, which re-unites that film’s stars, starts promising with Cameron Diaz mommy blogging about how her and her husband Jason Segel were once sex-crazed college sweethearts.

Diaz’s voiceover takes us through an amusing opening montage of flashbacks, featuring Diaz and Segel fornicating every chance they get; everywhere they can on campus. But now, as she laments, they’re married with two children and tons of adult responsibilities, leaving very little time for intimacy.

So Diaz decides to send the kids off to her mother’s, dress up like Roller Girl from BOOGIE NIGHTS, and entice her hubby to try every position in “The Joy of Sex.” Segel loves the idea (“I’m very excited right now!”), and sets up his new iPad to record their sexy-time activities.

After their three hour session, Segel stupidly doesn’t delete the video like Diaz asks him to do, and in the next day it gets leaked out to all the iPads that he’s given away to friends as gifts (he’s a music industry exec – reminiscent of Paul Rudd's character in THIS IS 40 - who constantly buys new iPads to upgrade, you see). As mysterious texts taunt the couple about their video’s embarrassing content, Diaz and Segel frantically scramble to keep their friends, neighbors, and even the postman from seeing it.

This is a perfect setup for some juicy social satire, but sadly SEX TAPE takes turns into severely strained sitcom terrain. Diaz and Segel running around to steal back the offending iPads takes us through several exceedingly stupid scenarios, especially one involving Rob Lowe, no stranger to sex tapes, as a CEO of a company interested in buying Diaz’s mommy blog.

Diaz and Segel deceive their way into the creepy Lowe’s mansion, and while Segel is chased by a trained attack dog while trying to retrieve his iPad, Diaz snorts cocaine with Lowe as Slayer blares on the stereo.

This sounds funnier than it is, as I bet much of the movie would in description, but the sloppy execution creaks resulting in more cringes than laughs.

Rob Corrdry, who always seems to be the sleazy best friend to the male lead in these movies, and Ellie Kemper (The Office, BRIDESMAIDS) tag along as Diaz and Segel’s neighbor friends, whose son (the obnoxiously smug Harrison Holzer) turns out to be the one who discovered the video. Holzer tries to blackmail Segel with the threat of uploading their film to YouPorn unless he’s paid $25,000, so then the plot goes from getting back all the iPads to breaking into the pornographic website’s headquarters to get the video off their server.

For all of Segel’s constant yapping about how nobody understands “the cloud,” and the privacy issue conflicts that the film flirts with, SEX TAPE really doesn’t have any real take on touchy subject of sex in the age of the internet. Its only semblance of a point of view, offered by Segel after finding an eleven inch double-sided dildo in a drawer in Lowe’s home, seems to be that everybody has sexual fetishes that they’d prefer to keep private.

Despite that plenty of Diaz and Segel’s flesh is on display, this forced farce is tediously unsexy. It keeps dangling the carrot of racy fun in front of its audience, then snatches it away again and again. Even when it gets to its HANGOVER style finale – i.e. in which we finally get to see a bit of the shenanigans the whole film has been teasing – the clunky slapstick in each shot sabotages any sense of titillation.

SEX TAPE doesn’t improve much on Kasdan’s BAD TEACHER (soon to have a sequel) and it comes nowhere near the comic heights of the director’s best film WALK HARD. It’s a shame because Diaz and Segel have good comic chemistry together – their excited back and forths made me giggle a few times – but they so deserve a much sharper, way weightier screenplay than what Segel co-scripted with Kate Angelo, and Nicholas Stoller.

I so wanted to like it because Diaz and Segel make such a likably attractive yet dorky couple. It's too bad that they're stuck in this throwaway of a summer comedy, one that, much like Ben Falcone's mediocre Melissa McCarthy vehicle TAMMY, overestimates how laughter it can get from its talented cast riffing on top of a bare bones lowbrow premise.

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THIS IS 40 Is Funny But Enough With Your Family, Apatow!

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

THIS IS 40 (Dir. Judd Apatow, 2012) 

Although it’s being billed as “the sort-of sequel to KNOCKED UP,” I’m considering Judd Apatow’s newest to be the third in the Apatow family trilogy. 

We were introduced to married couple Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife of 15 years) and their two daughters Maude and Iris Apatow in KNOCKED UP in 2007, sans Rudd they appeared as different characters in Apatow’s 2009 comedy drama FUNNY PEOPLE, and now they revert back to their original incarnations to take center stage in THIS IS 40.

Set during a week that both Rudd and Mann turn the big Four-O, Apatow’s glorified 134 minute home movie juggles a bunch of fussy threads.

Let’s see, there’s the thread in which Mann is lying about her age - she’s even tells her doctor she’s only 38.

There’s Rudd’s fledging record label thread, staffed with Lena Dunham (HBO’s Girls), and Chris O’Dowd (BRIDESMAIDS), in which he’s trying to revive the career of British rocker Graham Parker (appearing as himself reunited with his great old band the Rumour).

There’s the story-line about the oldest daughter, 13 year old Maude Apatow, getting put on a Facebook “not hot” list by a boy at school, which results in a confrontation with the boy’s mother (Melissa McCarthy).

There’s the subplot about Rudd’s father, the always welcome Albert Brooks, continually borrowing money to take care of his young blonde triplets.

There’s the Mann’s clothing store thread, in which Mann frets over which one of her two employees (Megan Fox and Charlyne Yi) stole $12,000.

There’s the story-line about Mann trying to reconnect with her emotionally distant father (John Lithgow).

In the mix as well is Jason Segel as Mann’s overconfident trainer (returning from KNOCKED UP), Robert Smigel as Rudd’s best friend, and cameos by Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and North Carolina native singer-songwriter Ryan Adams.

Whew! It’s a good thing that KNOCKED UP’s Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl don’t put in appearances – there wouldn’t be room for them.

THIS IS 40 is Apatow’s most indulgent movie, but it’s packed with enough laughs to make it worthwhile for comedy fans. It’s funnier than FUNNY PEOPLE, maybe about equal to KNOCKED UP and 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, and the leads’ likability goes a long way.

Language-wise, it’s a hard R. It may actually be as profane as DJANGO UNCHAINED, albeit in a very different context. A scene with Melissa McCarthy (put her in and consider the scene stolen), maybe contains the most amusing usage of profanity in a comedy this year (stay through the end credits to see an extended version of this scene in which Rudd and Mann are about to lose it).

I hope with this movie, Apatow’s family trilogy is complete. Three movies featuring his wife and kids is enough. With this movie, and the inevitable tons of bonus footage that will surely be on its later Blu ray/DVD release, I really hope he can get all the humor derived from his household out of his system, and find the funny in other things.

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JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing in Raleigh at the Colony Theater:

JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME (Dirs. Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass, 2011) 

This is a day in the life of 2 brothers: one’s a slacker, the other a jerk. Jason Segel, in the title role, is the slacker - a jobless 30-year-old pot-smoking lug whose life philosophy is based on the movie SIGNS. That’s right, M. Night Shyamalan’s SIGNS.

The jerk is a goateed Ed Helms as the older brother, a paint-store salesman whose marriage to Judy Greer (last seen in “The Descendants”) may be in trouble.

Susan Sarandon plays their widowed mother who gets Segel’s day going when she calls home from her cubicle in an unspecified office to ask him to get some wood glue.

Actually it’s a phone call Segel got earlier that really sets the day in motion - a wrong number asking for somebody named Kevin. “What if there is no wrong numbers?” Segel speculates, “What if it’s always the right number?”

So Segel leaves his Baton Rouge, Louisiana (the filmmakers' home town) basement dwelling to go get wood glue, but he gets caught up in a seemingly random series of events, most of which are triggered by the name Kevin coincidentally popping up at odd times. “There are no coincidences” I’m sure Segel’s Jeff would say.

While at a business meeting (or so he says) at Hooters, Helms happens to see Segel walking by. Sarandon had phoned Helms earlier asking him to help get his brother moving so, of course, Segel sees this as another sign. Their destinies take a turn when the brothers happen upon seeing Helm’s wife Greer out with another man (Steve Zissus).

They follow and spy on Greer and Zissus (Helms is either too scared or stupid to confront them), ending up at a hotel (after Segel gets diverted by another Kevin sign). This is where the film most successfully balances humor with heartfelt drama. We can see why Greer would cheat on the thickheaded Helms, and we feel Segel’s compassion for his brother’s predicament, as airheaded as it is.

The characters are better drawn and play off each other more believably than in the Duplass brother’s previous films (THE PUFFY CHAIR, BAGHEAD, CYRUS), and the film certainly feels sincere without any cynical snarkiness. Just like Jeff.

I was less annoyed by the brothers’ shaki-cam framing too.

A subplot involving Sarandon and co-worker Rae Dawn Chong trying to figure out who a secret admirer at work is gets a bit cutesy, but it doesn’t detract from the overall charm and likability of this simple story.

Segel’s Jeff loves the film SIGNS because “everything comes together in one perfect moment.”

The Duplass brothers haven’t pulled off perfection here, but this sure is a terrifically unpretentious attempt.

And it’s way better than SIGNS.

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THE MUPPETS: Go Ahead, Call It A Comeback

THE MUPPETS (Dir. James Bobin, 2011)

It’s not surprising that somebody would try to reboot the Muppets. I mean, every other franchise in the world has been dusted off in the last decade so why not Jim Henson’s once wildly popular creations?

And it’s not surprising that that somebody would be Jason Segel, the oafish man-child best known for his work with Judd Apatow and the hit TV series How I Met Your Mother. Segel is a huge Muppets fan, who previously proved he could provide puppetry power in the Dracula musical climax of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, so there’s that.

But what is surprising is that THE MUPPETS is really good.

Segel, with the assistance of co-writer Nicholas Stoller, and director James Bobin, has wonderfully captured the spirit of the Muppets I knew as a kid in the ‘70s and ‘80s, making it feel like the muddled Muppet movies made in the ‘90s never existed.

The film has quite a lengthy, yet quite enjoyable, buildup before we see our old felt friends in which we meet a new Muppet named Walter (voiced by Peter Linz), who lives in a small town (named Smalltown) with Segel as his brother Gary. You see, somehow Muppets can be related to humans – we never see their parents or get any explanation, which is just as well.

Segel, and his longtime girlfriend Amy Adams, take Walter to Los Angeles to visit the Muppet Theater and Muppet Studios, only to them find them to be abandoned cobweb-covered tourist attractions that an evil oilman named Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) is targeting to tear down so he can drill for oil.

So it’s up to Walter, Segel, and Adams to re-unite the Muppets so they can save their old digs. They find Kermit living in a dark mansion alone with his memories (well, and an ‘80s robot that serves Tab and New Coke – nice fitting retro joke, huh?).

Once they convince Kermit to join them, they’re off to find Fozzie Bear (in a sleazy Reno casino tribute band called “The Moopets”), Miss Piggy (now Fashion Editor of Paris Vogue), and the Great Gonzo (currently a corporate CEO of a plumbing empire). Most hilarious is Animal in court-appointed anger management therapy with Jack Black as his sponsor.

With the help of a montage they locate the others (Rowlf the Dog, the Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Beeker, Dr. Teeth, etc.), and they got a back-to-basics ‘hey, everybody let's put on a show' thing a-happenin'.

They have trouble getting a network to broadcast their telethon, as TV executive Rashida Jones tells them: “You guys aren’t famous anymore.” However Jones still gives them a shot, and the gang go full throttle to put on a money-raising spectacular in which almost every Muppet gets a chance to shine.

Bret McKenzie, from Flight of the Conchords, whose series was also helmed by director Bobin , wrote a few catchy songs for the production including the recurring theme “Life’s a Happy Song," and the Linz and Segel sung “Man or Muppet.”

I could’ve done without a few of the song/dance numbers – Amy Adams/Miss Piggy’s “Me Party” is a screen time waster, and Cooper’s rapping on “Let’s Talk About Me” is just plain awful - but for a great deal of its breezy 2 hour running time THE MUPPETS is a lot of fun.

Even the tacked on Segel/Adams rom com subplot (i.e. he forgets their 10th anniversary dinner in the midst of Muppet madness) doesn’t detract from the large amount of pure cinematic happiness on hand here.

I loved how so much of the meta material was laugh out loud funny, really enjoyed the abundant cameos which I won’t spoil, and was impressed at how dead-on the Muppet voices are – especially Steven Whitmire who has been doing Kermit since Henson died in 1991, and has often sounded a little off, but thankfully not here for the most part.

It’s certainly the best Muppet movie since Henson died, but it’s much more than that. Segel and co. have pulled off a tribute that revitalizes the furry family friendly franchise in the most welcome way.

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BAD TEACHER: The Film Babble Blog Review

BAD TEACHER (Dir. Jake Kasdan, 2011)

If you've seen the trailer for this crude Cameron Diaz classroom comedy, you've already witnessed all the best lines and all the relevant plot-points. But since none of that stuff was that great to begin with, it's quite a tiring task to make it through this 90 minute mess of a movie that has maybe 3-4 solid chuckles in it.

Daez plays the foul mouthed, hard drinking, pot smoking, gold digging, and completely immoral title character who gets dumped by her rich boyfriend (Nat Faxon) at the beginning of the movie. She has to return to the job she doesn't give an "F" about, as the movie's tagline goes, teaching at John Adams Middle School (JAMS).

Diaz gets through the day by putting on DVDs for her students of movies about teachers (STAND AND DELIVER, LEAN ON ME, DANGEROUS MINDS, etc.) while she drinks from mini liquor bottles or sleeps at her desk.

As the school's gym teacher, a smirking Jason Segel clearly has the hots for Diaz, but she's got her eyes on a Justin Timberlake as a nerdy substitute teacher. Lucy Punch plays a goofy goody two-shoes rival colleague of Diaz's, who is also after Timberlake's affections.

The sloppy narrative concerns Diaz trying to raise money for breast implants. That's right, that's the plot. She puts on a sexy car wash complete with a rock video (or beer commercial) style montage. She steals standardized test answers so her class can get the highest scores and she can receive a large cash reward. She, uh, does wacky corrupt stuff for her own selfish purposes - you got it, right?

Unfortunately, precious little of this is funny. Diaz doesn't really bring anything but the bare minimum effort to her role, Timberlake is likable but not believable, and only Segel seems to have the right laid-back approach to this lazy lackluster material.

BAD TEACHER feels like a series of deleted scenes on a lame comedy's DVD special features menu. The kind you watch and think 'I can see why they cut that. Because it didn't work.'

That pretty much sums it up - much like its superficial protagonist, BAD TEACHER rarely works.


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Finally Catching Up With FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL (Dir. Nicholas Stoller, 2008)

This is one I really wish I had seen when it came to theaters last spring. The raving reviews and accolades have piled up so much that by this point it can’t possibly be as funny as all that, can it? Almost comparable to the hype of THE DARK KNIGHT being immediately called one of the greatest films ever, this got an instant comedy classic stamp on it and I’ve seen it appear on several premature “best of 2008” so, yeah, my expectations couldn’t help from hitting the ceiling.

Well, after watching it on DVD I can say that it definitely was far from a letdown with many laughs and likable characters though not exactly the experience Richard Roeper gushed about: “I want to just get down on my knees and declare my undying love for this movie”. Boston Globe critic Ty Burr also seemed a bit over the top when he wrote: “it delivers belly laughs that explode from the meeting of wit and shock”. But to be honest, I believe that if I had seen it on its original release I probably would’ve gotten carried away and might have said some similar things too.

Sure, it has a flimsy sitcom premise – boy loses girl, boy goes on Hawaiian vacation in order to get over girl, boy runs into girl with her new boyfriend who happen to be staying at the same resort, crude wackiness ensues etc. but the whole deal is as affable as its protagonist. The boy is Jason Segel whose persona as a hapless schmuck he began perfecting on the late great one seasoner Freaks And Geeks.

He’s an LA musician who writes incidental music for a CSI-derived TV drama starring his girlfriend (Kristen Bell). Bell tells him that their 5 year relationship is over in a scene that sets the tone by featuring Segel refusing to put clothes on as his heart breaks: “Oh, would you like to pick out the outfit that you break up with me in?!!?” Segel, who wrote the screenplay, appears to have no shame portraying a guy who feels nothing but shame as he cries in the nude and shakes uncontrollably in emotional pain while eating from an oversized bowl of cereal.

After some comic consoling by his best friend (SNL’s Bill Hader who spends most of the film as a head on a laptop) he makes that fateful trip to one of the world’s most famous vacation spots and, yep, he has to face his former love in the arms of a major pop star played by the sleazily charming Brit Russell Brand.

 Luckily there’s Mila Kunis (That 70’s Show, voice of Meg Griffin on Family Guy) as a flirting hotel clerk that may be the key to helping him recover (you think?), Paul Rudd as a perpetually stoned surfer, Jonah Hill as Matthew the Waiter who is obviously hiding a man crush on Brand, and a Christian newlywed couple (30 Rock’s Jack McBayer and newcomer Taylor Wily) who are definitely not having a good go at consummating their marriage.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is another in the series of Judd Apatow produced flicks about pop culture obsessed immature men coping with growing up as they endure a plethora of awkward sexual circumstances - i.e. THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, KNOCKED UP, and SUPERBAD. It helps that this has a few somewhat plausible female characters and an actual moral code beneath the scatological silliness.

None of things realy matters though as what folks were raving about is simply how freakin’ funny this flick is. It is certainly much funnier than many comedies, especially recent rom coms (a genre this film seems to want to reconstruct by way of ‘just add more dick jokes’) so maybe those people were on to something. But “comedy classic”? Let’s just give it some more time and I'll get back to you.

Post Notes - Bonus Material With A Shout Out: 

There is not much difference between the unrated extended version and the theatrical cut on the DVD except for some excised lines and a mildly amusing Kristen Wiig (SNL) yoga class scene. 

The gag reel is, like the movie, funnier than most flicks’ flubs while the patented Apatow “line-o-rama” has a lot of great alternate lines like Segel’s reaction to Kunis’s over-reaction to seeing her ex-boyfriend: "You were like David O. Russell when he was yelling at Lily Tomlin!” Jonah Hill has some good unused ones too: “I think it’s cool though, you just come and eat dinner by yourself. I wouldn’t do it, I would rather stay in the room and jerk it, if you know what I’m saying? Don’t tell anybody I said that.”

The shout-out goes to the great barely known comic actor Bill Hader who was in a couple of other possible future comedy classics over the last few months. 

Though many would classify them as bit parts - his turns as Private Miller in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS and studio executive Rob Slolom in TROPIC THUNDER, which had him hold his own up against Tom Cruise, are great sideline roles. With hope he will get some more substantial film work alongside his current gig at SNL but with projects like NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 and something called CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS on his cinematic horizon, I wouldn't hold my breath.

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