HAUNTED MANSION: As Unscary As It Is Unfunny

Opening today at a multiplex near everyone:

HAUNTED MANSION (Dir. Justin Simien, 2023)

20 years ago, there was a movie called HAUNTED MANSION, that, like this one, was based on the Disney dark park ride/tour that I’ve actually been on around a decade ago on a trip to Florida. I never saw the 2003 version, because I dismissed it as yet another lame Eddie Murphy vehicle (there were a lot of those at the time), but I’m wishing I had skipped the new one as it is as unscary as it is unfunny, with a chemistry-less cast giving us some tired-ass ghost story which it wants to be as hip as BEETLEJUICE, but it ain’t even up to CASPER standards.

 

I don’t even care how similar the plot it is to the original, but this time around begins with Rosario Dawson as a plucky single mother, and her son Travis (Chase Dillon) moving into the most rustic and most clichéd-looking, ancient New Orleans house and immediately finding out that there are ghosts there and that once you step inside the house, you’ll be haunted wherever you go.

 

LaKeith Stanfield shows up as an astrophysicist turned paranormal expert, whose wife has recently died as we learn from mawkish flashbacks, with other house guests including a laid-back priest played by Owen Wilson, a gruff history professor portrayed by Danny DeVito, and most obnoxiously, Tiffany Haddish as a medium who attempts to steal scenes, but her arsenal of lame one-liners stops her way short.

 

There’s also the house’s former psychic, Madame Leota (a game Jamie Lee Curtis), and the film’s villain, the Hatbox Ghost (Jared Leto, daring you to recognize him), who our Dawson, and Stanfield-led team go up against in a series of ho-hum hallway chases, and séances, while they bond, and deal with their grief. It’s a thoroughly unimpressive experience, but then I didn’t care for the ride either. The premise is as ancient as the mansion, with the mysteries surrounding the ghosts failing to keep me engaged as well.

 

When one says that a movie has its moments, they usually mean more than the one or two that this has (and spread over 123 min!), but I will say that the cast did their best with the dire material – especially Haddish, who had to spout out sitcom-ish lines about CVS, and Costco; the effects by the usually reliable Industrial Light & Magic were good (but not scary), and, uh, well, that’s all I got for the pluses.

So basically, BARBENHEIMER has nothing to fear from HAUNTED MANSION this weekend.

 

I think screenwriter Katie Dippold (Parks & Recreation, THE HEAT, 2016’s GHOSTBUSTERS) can, and will do better than this rubbish of a re-imagining, which at least will likely end up having a higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes than the 2003 original, which stands at 14%. But it really doesn’t deserve much higher than that.

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INHERENT VICE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at an indie art house near me:

INHERENT VICE

(Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

In a recent interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson claimed he wasn’t a stoner, that he really didn’t get stoned. 

Well, INHERENT VICE, Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 comic-noir novel of the same name, coulda fooled me.

It’s such a rambling, sprawling, shaggy dog story with a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous as The Dude would say, all filtered through hazy clouds of pot smoke that it feels like it could’ve only been made by a filmmaker who’s stoned out of his mind.

Of course, my mention of The Dude doesn’t come from out of the blue. The film’s depiction of a countercultural underdog unraveling connections throughout the seedy underworld of Los Angeles heavily recalls the Coen brothers’ THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998), as well as Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE (1973).

Pynchon’s novel seemed to have those references embedded in it as well, and Anderson puts forth a largely faithful take on the original source material, right down to the exact wording of large chunks of the book’s dialogue.

In his second film for Anderson following 2012’s THE MASTER, Joaquin Phoenix plays pothead protagonist Larry “Doc” Sportello, a long-haired, unkempt sideburns-sporting private investigator living in Gordita Beach, California in 1970. Doc’s ex-girlfriend Shasta (the pretty and appropriately flighty Katherine Waterson) shows up after an absence of over a year, and asks him for his help concerning her current boyfriend, a real estate mogul named Mickey Wolfman (Eric Roberts).

Mickey’s wife (Serena Scott Thomas) and her lover, are working on what Shasta calls “a creepy little scheme” to have her rich husband committed to a mental institution so that they can make off with his fortune.

From there, Phoenix’s Doc gets hired by The Wire’s Michael Kenneth Williams as a member of the “Black Guerilla Family” gang to find a white supremacist, named Glenn Charlock (Christopher Allen Nelson), who happens to be one of Mickey’s bodyguards.

After following a lead that ends up with our extremely high hero getting knocked unconscious at a Massage parlor named Chick Planet, Doc is questioned by his long-time cop nemesis, Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin, going big and succeeding), a thick-necked, flat-topped, hippie-hating hardass member of the LAPD.

Luckily, Benicio Del Toro as slick marine lawyer Sauncho Smilax swoops in to get Doc released, but, unluckily, Shasta and Mickey have completely disappeared into thin air.

As if things weren’t complicated enough, Doc takes on another case that’s possibly related, involving the death of surf-rock saxophonist Coy Harlingen (a whispering Owen Wilson) as his widow Hope (Jena Malone) thinks he’s still alive.

From there, Doc visits with his special lady friend, Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball, played by Phoenix’s WALK THE LINE co-star Reese Witherspoon, gets interrogated by FBI agents (Parenthood’s Sam Jaeger and Veep’s Timothy Simons), and, most amusingly, does cocaine with Martin Short as an coked-up dentist. Doc’s trail keeps leading to some sinister entity called “Golden Fang,” which is either a mysterious ship for running drugs, an Indo-Chinese heroin cartel, and/or a syndicate of dentists. I’m still not sure which.

Making her film debut, indie singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom serve as the film’s onscreen narrator Sortilège, a minor character in the book but here the custodian to descriptions of Doc’s inner thoughts, somewhat surreally I might add.

Which means that one minute, Doc is driving with Sortilège riding shotgun telling us about “the long, sad history of LA land use,” and the next minute she’s gone. The freshness of Newsom's delivery of Pynchon's prose enhances the dry sections of the film considerably.

The fading of the sunny idealistic ‘60s into the scary, smacked out ‘70s is conveyed strikingly through Robert Elswit’s always stunning cinematography (Elswit has shot 6 of Anderson’s 7 movies), which gives both dark, dank interiors and sun-bleached exteriors a great burnt-out look, and the score by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood mixed with well chosen songs by Neil Young, Can, Lex Baxter, and the Chuck Jackson Motown classic “Any Day Now,” perfectly evokes the era as well.

Unfortunately INHERENT VICE is no masterpiece. It’s frustratingly low energy at times with scenes that linger on and on. Many critics are calling it “incoherent vice” (there’s a joke I bet will be made at the Oscars) for understandable reasons, but while I sometimes stared at the screen and thought that it was a meandering mess, I was more often struck by the brilliance of many of its moments.

I’ve seen it twice now, and I enjoyed and “got it” a lot more the second time. Phoenix's performance, which initially bothered me as being half-assed, seemed more nuanced (I could see that he was really using his full ass), and I felt more of a poetry to its slow pace than before.

Being the first ever adaptation of a Pynchon novel – books that many have said are unfilmable - is no small feat, and I can’t imagine anybody doing a better job with this particular material than Anderson.

Folks who aren’t Anderson or Pynchon fans going in aren’t likely to be won over, especially at its long-ass length of 2 and a half hours, but those who are hip to its vibe and can get into a groove with its stoned tone are likely to think it’s a gas, man. Sorry, to lay that outdated lingo on you, but I bet deep down you dig it.

More later...

Vince Vaughn & Owen Wilson Goofing On Google Doesn’t Go Very Far

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

THE INTERNSHIP (Dir. Shawn Levy, 2013)

Using the tried and true tropes of the slobs versus snobs/underdogs become winners formula, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson take on the ginormous corporation that is Google in this slightly funny, but completely disposal comedy.

But they don’t really take on Google, so much as kiss its ass by portraying it as a tech world Mecca that those well below retirement age, such as with the 40-something Vaughn and Wilson out on their asses after their boss (John Goodman) closes their company, would dream of having as their workplace.

As the not-so-tech savvy yet slick talking salesmen who wormed their way into an internship with the search engine empire, Vaughn and Wilson are looking to re-ignite the comic spark that made their previous collaboration, 2005's WEDDING CRASHERS, a huge hit, but like a lighter that you keep flicking but can’t get a full flame going, this effort should be tossed into the waste bin.

That’s not to say there are some legitimate laughs here and there, Vaughn’s power-riffing and Wilson’s way with a one-liner made me chuckle every now and then, but it’s as if they reached the minimum quota of sure-fire funny and thought it would suffice.

The funny bits are all up front such as a Skype interview Vaughn and Wilson do from a library with The Office’s B.J. Novak, in which the duo dance around their disqualifications amusingly, and the film also shoots its wad early by placing its Will Ferrell cameo (as a sleazy mattress salesman that Wilson briefly works for) in the first 15 minutes.

Not much interesting happens in THE INTERNSHIP after the mild chuckling dies down.

Vaughn and Wilson get together with a scruffy group of outcasts including Josh Brener, Dylan O'Brien, Tiya Sircar, and Tobit Raphael to compete against several other teams for the coveted award of employment at Google, and the challenges they tackle (creating a new app, developing call service skills, marketing a pizza restaurant) are dull sitcom-ish scenerios.

Max Minghella (THE SOCIAL NETWORK) is the chief antagonist, as the leader of a rival group of interns that he verbally abuses, and The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi as a snooty internship program leader looks down on our supposed heroes, but is mainly there to be a straight man to Vaughn.

In the obligatory scene in which the group needs to loosen up so they hit a bar for some partying shenanigans, there’s a predictable run-in with a group of blonde frat types headed by Brian F. Durkin, who the Woody Allen-ish Brener zings by calling Biff Tannen (a BACK TO THE FUTURE reference – will the kids today get it?) while he's hitting on a stripper (Jessica Szohr).

It’s another instance where the film feels like just an amalgam of set-pieces from a bunch of ‘80s comedies, like STRIPES and BACK TO SCHOOL.

There is the difference that while Bill Murray in STRIPES (and all his roles of the period) had what A.V. Club writer Phil Dyess-Nugent recently called his “signature fake sincerity” going on, and Vaughn, despite his motor-mouth show-biz hipster speak, actually is sincere.

Murray would tell you that you’re the best, schmoozing you all up, but then he’d be out the door once you’re on his side (or not).

Vaughn, in this movie, when he wants Mandvi to like him and be his friend, he means it and he won’t take no for an answer. It’s endearing, but hardly a trait that elevates this lame enterprise.

Director Levy has made a career out of mediocre comedy fare like this (See: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, THE PINK PANTHER remake, the NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM movies, or, better yet, don’t see them), so this one’s suckiness is no surprise.

With its bright primary-colored atmosphere, free food (Vaughn takes ample advantage of this perk), and its unconventional work environment, Google does indeed look like a worker’s paradise. However, the half-assed conventions of this movie just reduce it to a stylish backdrop behind a couple of wiseacres trying in vain to get down with youth computer culture.

If you love these guys and have to see THE INTERNSHIP because you thought WEDDING CRASHERS was the greatest movie ever, at least opt for a matinee. This almost 2 hour infomercial for Google and the continuing comic relevance of Vaughn and Wilson is seriously not worth a full price admission.

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CARS 2: The Film Babble Blog Review

CARS 2 (Dirs. John Lasseter & Brad Lewis, 2011)

CARS and its new sequel opening today, CARS 2, are the most commercial and formulaic films of all the Pixar productions. But that doesn't mean that they suck - no, they are both fairly entertaining animated kids flicks. It's just that this new entry in the franchise has a major problem that can be stated simply: too much Larry the Cable Guy.

Way too much.

As Tow Mater, the rusty redneck tow truck friend to Owen Wilson's Lightning McQueen, Larry the Cable Guy (man, I hate typing that - he'll be LCG from here on) has been promoted to the lead character here.

LCG gets mistakenly caught up in a secret spy mission involving Michael Caine as a British agent Aston Martin model (obviously 007-ish), and his partner in espionage Emily Mortimer, also a sleek European car outfitted with snazzy gadgets.

Meanwhile, Wilson is competing with John Turturro as an arrogant Italian race car in the first World Grand Prix to determine the world's fastest car. This takes us to the gorgeously rendered locations of Tokyo, Paris, and London which often distracts from the flimsy predictable plot. And, oh yeah, Eddie Izzard voices a army green SUV billionaire who's promoting a green gasoline substitute fueling the vehicles in the Grand Prix.

So Caine and Mortimer with the scrappy help of LCG work to take down the bad guys trying to discredit the threat to traditional gasoline. If you can't guess the identity of the mysterious villain way before it's revealed then you're probably not paying attention.

That, or Pixar has succeeded in dazzling you enough that you don't care.

LCG was fine in small doses in the first CARS, but its a major malfunction to make Mater the central dominant character. His one note bucktoothed presence grated on me in every scene, and the tired premise of  his dumb luck reeks of comic desperation, which is very surprising in a Pixar film.

No Pixar palette should ever attempt to balance the likes of Michael Caine and Larry the Cable Guy (felt I should type it out this time).

As I said, CARS 2 isn't awful, it's just awfully average for a Pixar film. There are some fun sequences, but after the heights of the last several years (RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, UP, TOY STORY 3) this sequel feels like treading water. 

And with its over abundance of country bumpkin crap via one of the un-funniest and irritating comedians of all time, it barely keeps afloat.

Oh yeah, there is a amusing TOY STORY short called "Hawaiian Vacation" before the movie so that, at least is one discernible plus.


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MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: The Film Babble Blog Review

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Dir. Woody Allen, 2011)

At first glance, Owen Wilson looks like an unlikely Woody Allen surrogate.

Yet in Allen's best film since VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, it's an inspired piece of casting that works. Wilson puts real effort into the character of Gil Pender, a Hollywood hack screenwriter who wants to give real writing a try, and finish that difficult novel he's been tinkering with for months.

On vacation in France, Wilson's fiancée (Rachel McAdams) accuses him of romanticizing the past - particularly Paris in the '20s, an era he would most like to live in. Wilson clashes with McAdam's conservative parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy), and her friends including a wonderfully snobby Michael Sheen, so he takes off on a walk around the city taking in the sights.

At the chimes of midnight, an old timey car pulls up, and the drunk passengers plead with Wilson to get in. After some hesitation, he joins them.

Somehow this takes him back to, you guessed it (or saw the trailer), Paris in the '20s. It's a rollicking party of an era where everybody he meets is famous figure of the arts. At a party, with piano accompaniment by Cole Porter (Yves Heck) no less, he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill).

There's also Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, Marcial di Fonzo Bo as Pablo Picasso, and the best one of all: Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali.

Wilson meets a fetching model (Marion Cotillard) who he falls for on the spot. So every night back in the present, he makes the excuse to McAdams that he wants to go out on a walk, and goes back to hobnob with history. The predicament of choosing the past over the present becomes a sticky one, as there's the possibility of another love in the form of Lea Seydoux as an antiques dealer "in the now."

There's a wonderful wit and whimsy to how Allen plays this all out. It's his warmest film since, uh, I can't remember when.

In other words, it's the most satisfying Woody Allen film in ages.

Wilson's delivery of Allen's choice one-liners is infectious, and he quotes from the greats, such as Faulkner's "The past is never dead, It's not even past." convincingly enough to make one forget the man-child of "Hall Pass" from earlier this year.

The film is at its most radiant when it's in those sequences set in the past. In a neat little twist, Cotillard dreams of living in the 1890's; turns out everybody has their dream era.

One personal thought is that I wish the Woodman would've filmed this in black and white. It's not just because the opening montage of shots of Paris was strongly reminiscent of the opening of MANHATTAN, I feel like B & W would've brought out something more in the photography, the depictions of both present and 20's Paris, and the performances of the people playing historical personalities.

As I said that's just a personal quibble. I'm just an aficionado of the man's B & W work so don't mind me.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS isn't gonna to make me rearrange my top 10 Woody Allen movies, but it's a lovely lark that I predict even non-fans would enjoy. I think most people can relate wishing for a simpler more inspiring time to live in, and I think they'll be greatly amused with this simple and inspiring story.


More later... 

HALL PASS: The Film Babble Blog Review

HALL PASS (Dirs. Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, 2011)

At a preview screening of this film the audience in the packed theater cheered during the trailers when the cast of the upcoming THE HANGOVER PART II hit the screen.


I knew right then that this crowd was going to absolutely love what was ahead. And they did from start to finish of HALL PASS – they laughed loudly at every sex joke, masturbation joke, drug/alcohol joke, every single scatological shenanigan, every utterance of profanity, everything. 


So much so that I missed a lot of dialogue, but, hey, I’m not complaining about that.


I more than got the gist that the premise - Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live) are long married yet still juvenile horndogs who are given a week off from their marriages by their wives Jenna Fischer (The Office) and Christina Applegate – was just another excuse for the Farrelly brothers to again bombard the populace with their brand of extremely cheap humor.


From OLD SCHOOL to the oeuvre of Judd Apatow, the boy-men-who-can’t-grow-up-genre has been so much better served. There are a few laughs here and there – the familiar Law And Order sound effect greets the day 1-7 segment titles, and there are a fair amount of decent (though not laugh out loud funny) one-liners, but they are a rarity among the hundreds of groaners throughout.


There’s an odd mixture of a supporting cast: Stephen Merchant (who’s usually not far away from Ricky Gervais), J.B. Smoove, Joy Behar (!), Alyssa Milano, and most ridiculously Richard Jenkins as a too tan gold necklace sporting swinger who guides the 2 men in their quest to get laid while their wives are out of town.


Predictably Fischer and Applegate are themselves tempted by convenient suitors so the film tries to grow a heart in its last third, but by then I was so worn out by the tiresome cramming of foul gags into every scene that I really didn’t care how it turned out – who scored, who realized the supposed strength of their love, who got punked –none of it mattered to me.


But then, I may be in the minority because from what I witnessed at that screening, there’s no denying that it’s a crude crowd-pleaser that will probably be a big hit. To me, however, it just confirmed that the Farrelly brothers are still on my short list of my least favorite film makers.


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THE DARJEELING LIMITED: More Or Wes Worthwhile

Peter (Adrien Brody): He said the train is lost.
Jack (Jason Schwartzman): How can a train be lost? It's on rails.
Film geeks from all markets can rejoice as Wes Anderson's latest opus THE DARJEELING LIMITED today enters its nationwide release. 

Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and a new addition to the Anderson repertory company, Adrien Brody, are brothers who haven't seen each other in the year following their father's death.

In a plan initiated by Wilson they meet up to take a train ride in India to bond and take "a spiritual journey" - also suggested by Wilson. They lug a huge amount of luggage with them on this trip - of course we get the symbolism there - baggage, right? Along the way they fight, embrace, engage in odd enforced rituals, and wonder where the Hell they are really going and what they are going to achieve. It is easy to wonder that about the film as well but Anderson's visual mastery is absorbing as usual, his soundtrack choices exquisite (including The Kinks and music from Satyajit Ray's films), and the acting superb so it's best to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

It is hard though, maybe impossible to not think of Owen Wilson's real-life suicide attempt when his character here had nearly killed himself by crashing his car on purpose and spends the film with his head wrapped in bandages. What makes it so difficult to separate the art from the non-fiction is his character is given practically no back story. In fact we are given so little to go on with just about everybody on the screen - Schwartzman is a published writer but of what type and is he respected or a hack? 

I can't recall at all what Brody or Wilson's occupations are and the info given on their parents is pretty vague too - their Mother (played by Anjelica Huston in a quiet but effective manner) became a reclusive Nun at some point but again we are given little motivation. They seem to have an unlimited amount of fundage to back their trip and to buy expensive trinkets so maybe their family was old money - who knows? These people don't appear to have any life except what we see on the screen but maybe that's the point.

Not fully thought out narrative threads and a pungent lack of pay-offs aside this is still a worthwhile night at the movies. Anderson may be treading water in some respects but it's his own water and he stays afloat more than he sinks. The train of the films title winds down the tracks unconcerned with any existential meaning or the lack of it and that's how moviegoers should be too when they get on board.

Postnote: I didn't realize before seeing the film last night that the 13 min. prequel HOTEL CHEVALIER (reviewed on the post The Darjeeling Prequel - Now Playing On My iPod Nano 10/1/07) was going to be played before the main feature theatrically. It gave me the chance to re-evaluate the short and I admit I liked it a lot better on the big screen as opposed to my previous iPod postage stamp sized viewing. Go figure.

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Keepin' Cool With The AC Breeze & New Release DVDs

"Doing da ying and yang, da flip and flop, da hippy and hoppy (yodels) Yo da lay he hoo! I have today's forecast. (yells) HOT!" - MR.SEÑOR LOVE DADDY (Samuel L. Jackson) DO THE RIGHT THING (Dir. Spike Lee, 1989) He said it! It was been unbearably hot this week so the best thing to do is to get the air cranking, tear open a few Netflix envelopes, and devour some DVDs. Here's some I've seen lately and while for the most part they are a dire lot they did provide some diversion from the sweltering Summer sun. Let's start with : NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (Dir. Shawn Levy, 2006) From the trailers I saw for this last Christmas (sorry Holiday season) it looked to me like yet another Ben Stiller as punching bag enterprise but this time aimed at kids with lots of CGI. Well, that's pretty much what it is but it's better than I expected with more than few really funny moments and a great supporting cast. Abundant back and forths (some improvised) between Stiller as a hapless failed inventor turned security guard and Robin Williams dominates the lively proceedings. Williams plays a life sized Teddy Roosevelt in battle mode mannequin, who as I'm sure you know if you've even glanced in the direction of this movie, comes to life with everything else in the museum at night. Not so life size are the miniatures cowboy Jebediah (Owen Wilson - uncredited for some odd reason) and Roman warrior Octavius (Steve Coogan) who make good with their bit parts - sorry for that lame ass pun. Wait - lame ass puns dominate this movie so I'll leave that in. Anyway Ricky Gervais somehow pulls off some amusing walk-throughs without having a single genuinely funny line while oldtimers Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs pull no punches (literally) but the real shining player here? 3 words - Dick. Van. Dyke. Nice to see the man atone for years of bland TV and forgettable cameos by sinking his teeth into his role as Stiller's smooth retiring night guard mentor. Lots of critics have dumped on NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (it has a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and I agree with the consensus that the CGI doesn't impress like it used to and that the humor may be way too broad at times but I still think it's a decent family film. Even if that's all that it is. THE NUMBER 23 (Dir. Joel Schumacher, 2007) Sometimes I watch movies that I know are going to be horrible. It’s that I want to know just how and in how many ways they are horrible. I guess the genre here is psychological suspense though there’s nothing either psychological or suspenseful in this convoluted Jim Carrey vehicle. For the first 10 minutes or so Carrey is his usual glide through life wisecracking self until his wife (Virginia Madsen) gives him a book about the supposedly mystical number of the title. He of course becomes obsessed with 23 seeing it everywhere – in his birthday, address, social security #, etc. He cites examples (as does the opening credit sequence does to drive home the meaningless point) like “Ted Bundy was executed on the 23rd of January” * and even writes “9,11, 2001 - 9+11+2+1=23" in pen on his arm. Before long he makes the connection to not only the saxophone (the saxophone has 23 keys!!!) playing detective of the book to some murdered girl and others who have had similar deadly numerical obsessions helping the movie make its red herring quota. Schumacher’s films all have an overly glossy look – something he perfected in the era of high impact rock videos and magazine ads – and this is no exception. Nothing resembling real life here. This time he tried to disguise the stylized emptiness with the contrived “depth” of a cultish pseudo-intellectual theory. Consider it an extremely dumbed down Pi (which cinematographer Mattthew Latique worked on too!). How many ways is this movie horrible? I’m think-ing of a number… * Actually he wasn’t! Bundy was sent to the electric chair on January 24th, 1989. Ah-ha! DISTURBIA (D.J. Caruso, 2007) So I feel old and unhip because it took until his hosting of Saturday Night Light earlier this year for me to take note of Shia Lebeouf. I mean the kid is apparently really hot these days - magazine covers, TRANSFORMERS, and he's even going to be the son of Indiana Jones next Summer. Lebouf was called by Vanity Fair the next Tom Hanks (who was called the next Jimmy Stewart in the 80's) has here what was billed as REAR WINDOW for a new generation. Uh, okay. Well, underneath the teen angst veneer the premise of Hitchcock's classic is just a clothesline to hang cliche after cliche on. Under house arrest instead of being wheelchair bound Lebeouf out of boredom spies on his neighbors - mostly Sarah Roemer - the cliched perfect girl next door until his binoculars wander to the cliched suspicious activities of...oh you know the plot! It's not really so odd how it's not that we can guess everything that happens way before it happens - it's that it seems like the film makers knew we could guess them and still made no attempt to actually trigger true suspense. The house of the serial killer is one of those that only exists in the movies - so full of secret compartments, passageways, shrines, and a well lit sanitized freezer room - he must have gotten the Murder Maniac special at the local real estate office! I shouldn't be so hard on this movie though - it's just another PG-13 thriller throw-away for the weekend multiplex crowd. I'll also admit though that Lebeouf is talented - he rises above this dreck at every unsurprising turn. Now let's just see how he handles that bullwhip. SOME RANDOM BABBLE : Isn't it funny how Eddie Murphy who reportedly walked out of the Academy Awards last March because he didn't get the statue for DREAMGIRLS turned down the sequel to DADDY DAY CARE and actual Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. stepped in to play the same role in DADDY DAY CAMP? Isn't that funny? Isn't It?!!? Oh, nevermind. Don't ask me what's funny about UNDERDOG - because I got nothing. If they ever make one of those VH1 biopics about The Kids In The Hall they really ought get that guy who's supposed to represent Verizon (or is it AT&T? Cingular?) in those damn Alltel commercials to play Dave Foley. I mean the guy - Scott Halberstadt - would nail it I bet. The new celebrity-reality show The Two Coreys featuring the present day antics of former teen movie stars Corey Feldman and Corey Haim is airing now on A&E - The Arts & Entertainment Channel. This is definitely ironic because The Two Coreys is neither art nor entertainment. Discuss... If it seems like the Coen Brothers are overdue for a movie and it sure does to me - their all too brief Buscemi bit in PARIS, JE T'AIME was such a tease - well, soon (November) we've got - NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. It's got Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly McDonald, and Josh Brolin. Despite the fact it has been a while since the Coens have done a film based on their original screenplay this seems promising. More later...