Krampus review

The yuletide horror film has long been a tradition of the scary-movie genre, from 1974’s “Black Christmas,” to 1984’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night.” Michael Dougherty’s “Krampus” takes the twisted-fairytale approach to common Christmas movie tropes and perverts them with the same sense of gleeful menace that Joe Dante brought to his staple of the Christmas horror-comedy sub-genre “Gremlins.”

Adam Scott and Toni Collette play Tom and Sarah, two frustrated suburban parents who’re dreading the yearly visit from their backwards extended family. Sarah’s sister Linda (Allison Tolman) and her gun-toting, loud-mouthed husband (David Koechner), along with their drunken matriarch (Conchata Ferrell) and their two brutish children, complete this RV-driving nightmare family that seems hell-bent on ruining the perfect holiday weekend for Tom and Sarah’s youngest boy Max (Emjay Anthony). When Max gives up on the possibility of his family getting along he tears apart his handwritten letter to Santa Claus and, in doing so, inadvertently conjures the dark magic of the Krampus, a massive horned and hooved beast that turns every Christmas tradition into a deadly trap. Having experienced something similar in her youth, Tom’s elderly German mother Omi (Krista Stadler) tries to warn the group against going outside or letting the fireplace stay unlit. 

Dougherty’s previous holiday-themed cult-horror movie “Trick ’r Treat” was a tryptic, portmanteau narrative that brought together different story elements within the same group of characters, shifting from one plot thread to the other. “Krampus” is a much more traditionally structured three-act story, and because of that has more responsibility to its build-up and its pay-off. The movie’s set-up is pretty loose and given enough to air to inform the characters and comedy. Structurally, National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation” certainly played in similar water, as far as the awkward family dynamics go, but Dougherty’s screenplay never seems to penetrate the surface of these character’s one-note identifiers, underselling the potential for anything more than a mild chuckle. The actors do their best with what little they’re given, but before the horror-element kicks in, the movie’s foundation as a story is disappointingly thin.

Where Dougherty excels here is with his visual flair and his wild imagination when it comes to the effects and movie’ atmosphere. The Germanic pagan design of the “Krampus” himself, along with the wooden faces of his demonic elves are delightfully sinister and brings to mind the playful and practical creature effects of 1980s B-movies such as “Troll” and “Pumpkinhead.” Dougherty is clearly having fun within his limitations and plays the story like a director putting on a perverse puppet show for an unsuspecting audience. Unfortunately, the PG-13 rating dampens the levels of violence and shock necessary for the film to be anywhere near as subversive as it often thinks it’s being, forcing the movie to rely too heavily on its hacky and tepid comedy.

As a mostly-silly genre exercise, “Krampus” is acceptable pop-corn fodder and destined to be a cable-television curiosity. The plot mechanics and characterizations are certainly lazy and it’s never fully commits to the sense anarchy it teases throughout, but it’s filmed with visual confidence and it has just enough schlocky exuberance to keep you entertained.


Grade: C+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal - Dec/2015

Listen to more discussion about "Krampus" on this this week's episode of the Jabber and the Drone Podcast.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty review

                 Ben Stiller, an actor most commonly associated with embarrassing-parent movies, released a remake of a somewhat forgotten 1947 movie called “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” It’s a congenial film about a timid guy who learns to take control of life instead of letting it pass him by. It’s nothing special, but actually, Ben Stiller—when he wants to be—is a pretty talented director. “The Cable Guy” is a massively underrated dark comedy, “Zoolander” is a near perfect farce of fashion culture, and “Tropic Thunder” was the high water mark in modern comedy until it was regrettably dethroned by Todd Phillips’ “The Hangover.”

                …But back to this Walter Mitty business. It’s fine. I mean, it’s sappy, and sentimental, it plays to least adventurous portion of the lowest common denominator, and the product placement is so blatant that it might as well be a feature length commercial for Match.com and Papa Johns, but it isn’t unwatchable.  What it is, unfortunately, is mundane and simple; two words I would have never attributed to Stiller’s previous directorial work.

                Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) is a humble photo developer at Time magazine who often dreams of a better life where he can travel the world like his rock and roll photographer Sean O’ Connell (Sean Penn) and where he can muster up the gumption to ask out his workplace crush Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig). In real life, however, he can’t even get his online dating profile to work, and he hasn’t done enough with his life to complete its comprehensive questionnaire.  When his new boss—a cartoonish, condescending tool, played by “Parks and Recreation” actor Adam Scott—comes in to inform the company that they will be printing the last issue of the magazine, the pressure is put of Walter to locate a missing frame from Sean O’Connell’s negative.  Walter is then forced to track down the techno-illiterate photographer to the ends of the earth in search of the mysterious image.

                Wallter Mitty goes on a journey. But it’s not just a geographical journey, you see; it’s a journey of life, love and self-discovery, which would be fine, if we had any investment in his character at all. Ben’s performance as Mitty is thoroughly wishy-washy and one dimensional. The arc of his development through the story, even though it is being literally forced in the most absurd ways possible, is never clear or satisfying, and that’s a problem for a film about self-discovery.

                There’s an aesthetic choice by Stiller to blur the line between reality and fantasy. Walter’s day dreams seem to manifest into full plot by the middle of the picture, only to drift back into believability whenever the movie sees fit.  I have no problem with this sort of ambiguity in theory. Certainly, Terry Gilliam made good use of this idea in films such as “Brazil” and “The Fisher King”. But Stiller seems to use this trope not as a way of expressing the needs and hopes of Walter, but rather as a lazy device to move the story along. And in the end, because he can’t keep track of his own narrative rules, the character’s goals are empty and the romantic resolution with his crucially underdeveloped love interest feels unearned.

                Walter backpacks a snowy mountain, he’s saved from a shark in below-freezing waters and he skateboards down a winding street in Iceland, but in all of this action the movie never lifts out of its mopey, naval-gazing tone and embraces the adventure of its premise.  Photographed like a Nissan commercial, and paced like a travel channel special, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” probably aims for the life-affirming warmth of “Stranger than Fiction” or the lovelorn idiosyncrasy of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, yet, with all the depth of a motivating office poster, at best, what it ends up being is something closer to a dude-centric, “Eat Pray Love”.

Grade: C -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2014

Frozen review

               Despite the fact that Disney is still remembered for its quality family entertainment, it has been some time since their primary animation studio has produced anything of lasting relevance. Sure, Pixar, their digital-animation sister company, has occasionally been able to approximate the glory days when  Disney could so perfectly balance sentimentality with  sincerity, in a narratively compelling way, but with the expansion of their ever-splintering markets, the studio’s proper animation department has been on a steady decline for last 20 years.

                “Frozen”, a 3D reworking of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”, cleverly plays on the nostalgia of the classic Disney musical by simulating the Broadway infected melodrama of films like “Beauty and the Beast” and  “The Little Mermaid”, as well as the visual aesthetics of older selections from their repertoire like “Cinderella”.  But does “Frozen” manage to carve out a niche for itself among the pantheon of Disney standards or is it simply an empty pastiche?

                This loose adaptation of Anderson’s fairytale tells the story of two sisters who are emotionally separated after the enchanted snow-bender Elsa (Idina Menzel) almost kills her younger sister Anna (Kristen Bell) in a childhood accident. Years later, after Anna's been healed and her memory of Elsa’s powers have been wiped, they are reunited at Elsa’s coronation. When Anna announces her hasty engagement to the young Hans (Santino Fontana), Elsa again reveals her hidden powers in an argument, causing her to leave the kingdom in embarrassment, unintentionally cursing the land to fall into a summertime snowpocalypse.  With the help of a burly traveler named Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and an enchanted snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad), Anna must find where her sister is hiding and convince her to end the oppressive cold weather and come back home.

                Many elements of the trademarked Disney magic is recognizable in this digitally animated princess story. The characters motivations are clear, the animation is visually impressive but never too busy or over-designed, and the musical numbers, though tinted in modern-pop, occasionally reach the emotional heights of the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman collaborations of the early 90s. Without out a doubt, there is no shortage of charm in this movie.  Where the film does lack is in its plot construction and storytelling.

                Much of movie’s conflict has to do with finding mechanical ways to separate or main characters and bring them back together. Because Elsa isn’t the actual villain in this peace, and her character is as distant to us as she is to her sister, we neither fear her nor strive for Anna’s yearning to reconnect. When the final act starts and the true antagonist is revealed it’s already too little too late to properly build adequate tension into the story. The side characters introduced in the middle of the film are cute enough, fun to watch and they keep things light, but the film could have definitely benefited with a more substantial B-plot following Elsa as she is snowbound in her ice castle, away from everyone else.

                As captured in any of the behind the scenes footage of how the old Disney masterpieces were made, you can see that every screenplay was closely scrutinized and subject to multiple drafts and storyboard sessions before they were approved by Walt or any of his fruitful successors. For all of the nostalgic posturing and magical evocation in “Frozen” it ends up feeling more like Disney’s greatest hits than an original piece unto itself. But that isn’t to say that the experience, as surface-oriented as it may be, isn’t totally enjoyable while you’re in the moment.

                What’s important about the success of this film is that people want to like it even if it isn’t nearly as timeless as the movies it’s trying to be.  Though “Frozen” doesn’t totally put Disney back on track it’s at least an admirable step in the right direction.

               

Grade: B -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2013