Jeff Who Lives At Home review

           Writer/directors Jay and Mark Duplass have a keen sense of finding the drama and entertainment value in the most ordinary moments of our life. These brothers have since been growing in popularity and clout since their humble ‘mumblecore’ beginnings. Mark Duplass now has a regular acting gig on FX’s popular fantasy football sit-com “The League” and last year their third film “Cyrus”, starring Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly, earned them the best reviews of their career, expanding their following outside of their Sundance circles. This year they have returned with another meditation of the mundane called “Jeff who Lives at Home”, a dysfunctional family drama disguised as a slacker comedy.

                Jeff, played by Apatow regular Jason Segel, never seems bothered by anything. Some of that is due to the cannabis in which he is constantly sedated, and the rest is due to his strict philosophy that all things are connected and happen for a reason.  The film begins with Jeff talking into a voice recorde, sharing his thoughts on the M. Night Shyamalan film “Signs” and how its themes of destiny and fate had a profound impact on his world view. After receiving what seems to be a wrong number call for someone named Kevin, Jeff embarks on a personal journey to find this mysterious Kevin and discover what he needs to learn from him. Eventually he runs into his brother Pat, played by Hangover/Office star Ed Helms, who is spying on his wife during her lunch date with a coworker, with whom he suspects she is cheating with. Their mother, played by Susan Sarandon, is also trying to solve her own mystery, as she has been receiving love letters and flirtatious Instant Messages from her cubical at work. As the film progresses these plot threads interweave and connect in a somewhat mechanical but occasionally charming way.

What keeps “Jeff who Lives at Home” from being a total eye-roller is the charismatic performances from the very talented cast. Unlike many of the Duplass bros earlier films, this movie seems much more plot driven and the dialogue seems a bit more scripted, though there are certain scenes that have a kind of naturalism and fluidity that suggests long stretches of improvisation between the actors.  Jason Segal is warm and inviting and works very hard get the audience to consider his gonzo faith in synchronicity.  Scenes shared by Ed Helms  and Judy Greer, who plays his wife, show both actors going to very sincere and uncomfortable places, hinting at the type of realism and vulnerability that reminded me a bit of The Duplass’s first film “The Puffy Chair”.  Susan Sarandon’s turn as the lonely working mother is a delightfully uncharacteristic kind of performance that shows that women her age can and should be in more movies.

What lacks is the sense of weight that a movie this small needs. Since the plot is stretched out between these three different characters and their separate concerns, none of them seem to get quite enough attention they deserve to fully engage the audience. Weirdly enough, Jeff and his mission to find the meaning of Kevin almost becomes a distraction from the other, more interesting plots.  In the end when the movie begins to tie these stories together it takes several conveniences and contrivances to make everything work, not unlike a bad M. Night Shyamalan twist. You get a sense these directors let the story get a bit too big before they realized they had to deliver on their promise to get everything come together.  

                Though the movie doesn’t have the same kind of substance or the heart of something like “Cyrus”, it has its moments of brilliance and enough comic charm to keep you patient. The cast shines in every scene, even as the plot seems to meander around. Also, to see such a sensitive and meaningful roll written for an aging actress like Susan Sarandon is very welcomed and refreshing.  Unfortunately for the citizens of Pocatello the film is only seen in a limited release right now, currently playing in Salt Lake City. While I might not recommend that that you spend the gas money to see it, in a few months down the line you will more than likely be happy to rent “Jeff Who lives At Home” on a Friday night and giggle on the couch with your date.

Grade: B-

Originally published in The Basic Alternative/April-2012

21 Jump Street review

Things have changed since I graduated from high school in 2004. Having now worked a number of years in retail and always having my finger tightly pressed against the cultural pulse, I have noticed the subtle differences in today’s youth verses my teenage experience. Back in those days I was active in the art club,I worked as the entertainment editor of the school newspaper, and I rubbed elbows with drama department. Basically, I was nerd before it was cool.  Divisions between class, race, religion and lifestyles were always clear, and if they were not enforced by the students than they were at least implied. However today, with the rise of the internet, with tolerance and diversity made marketable and the hipster culture coopting nerdiness as a fashion choice, it has become a whole new world out there. This seems to be the driving interest for “21 Jump Street”, a raunchy bromantic action-comedy, based on late 80s television series that launched Johnny Depp into stardom.

The film stars Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, who play Shmidt and Jenko, two kids who didn’t get to go to their prom. Jenko (Tatum) was refused because of his bad grades and Shmidt (Hill) because he could find anyone who wanted to go with him. Later, though being enemies in high school, the two find themselves training together in the police academy and quickly become friends. After they botch a simple drug detainment they are both sent on a secret mission where they are put back to high school to gather evidence on a dangerous new drug that’s been making its rounds among the local teens. While working undercover as students they form new friends and allegiances. Soon they both realize that the newer generation’s politics have turned the tables on the jocks, leaving Jonah Hill’s character with the social advantage over the jock-ish Tatum.

There are a few reasons why “21 Jump Street” works. First of all it doesn’t bother to connect too much with the original source material of the old TV series. The plot follows the same conceit and shares the title obviously, but pretty quickly the movie becomes something of its own with an entirely different kind of appeal. It knows how poke fun at itself and breaks the fourth wall without becoming annoyingly self-aware or trying too hard to be hipper than the audience. The writer Michael Becall and directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller should be commended for rescuing this project that was probably conceived as a lazy marketing strategy (a funny bit of dialogue from the film even suggests this). What could have so easily just been studio-product was turned into a funny self-mocking satire with some interesting things to say.

Secondly, the performances by both Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are great. They have genuine comedic chemistry and their characters both have a clear motivation and arc within the plot. Having not always been a supporter, Tatum in particular has been surprising me more and more as he has grows as an actor. After almost rescuing the confused Ron Howard film “The Dilemma” and keeping me laughing in this, it would seem that he has a unique comedic talent, especially when he lampoons the thickheaded/bighearted characters he began his acting career with. The side performances by Rob Riggle as the over excited coach, Ice Cube as the “angry black cop”, and Ellie Kemper as the horny chemistry teacher, are all chuckle-worthy as well.

My only beef with “21 Jump Street” is that once the third act begins and the plot has to be resolved, the movie begins to shift gears from socially conscious humor to broader slapstick humor based in elaborate action set-pieces. Some twists in the plot don’t pay off as much as the writers think they do and as I watched shoot-outs and explosions dominate the latter half of the film a good 12-15 minutes went by without a laugh. This unfortunately has been a common misstep in over-budgeted comedies.

So considering this franchise was neither required nor demanded to be made into a comedic reboot, the movie should make you laugh enough to feel like you spent your money wisely. If you’re like me and you feel a growing cultural disconnect with the kids who have been raised on iphones and vegan diets in their cafeteria, then you might even find a little insight and honesty behind the laughs. “21 Jump Street” delivers whether you went to school as a nerd or a jock. 

Grade: B

Originally published in The Basic Alternative/ April-2012

Project X review

            After months of tolerating luke-warm studio pictures like “The Vow” or “This Means War” I was wondering if I was becoming soft or just becoming desperate to find enjoyment in anything. I kept finding myself walking out the theaters saying “well, it is what is it…”  That is until I saw “Project X”, not only the worst movie I have seen so far this year, but a movie that will have a fighting chance to place as the number one spot on my years end bottom five.
          Let me first preface this review by saying that I enjoy teen flicks. John Hughes is a personal hero of mine, and “Clueless” is un-ironically one of my all-time favorite movies. Hell, I even enjoy low brow teen party movies. I find myself constantly defending “Superbad”, and I even have a soft spot for movies like “American Pie”, “Can’t Hardly Wait”, and the first “House Party”. With that said, I cannot excuse “Project X” for its laziness, sloppiness, and overall cynical viewpoint towards it’s demographic.
         What is there to say for the plot of “Projext X”? Thomas is turning 17 and his friends JB and Casta want to throw him the ultimate party to hopefully maximize their popularity and score some chicks. With this in mind they spend the better part of the daytime creating an internet viral campaign to get people to come to Thomas’s unsupervised house. They steal some drugs from an unhinged dealer, get some booze, and post signs near the pool that state that all swimmers must be nude. Before you know it, the house is full of inebriated teens, midgets, creepy 40 year olds, and the house dog tied to some helium balloons. Oh yeah, and did I mention it’s all done in a first person handi-cam style? So there’s that.
         This might sound like every teen movie you have ever seen, but these characters are especially despicable people. Oliver Cooper who plays Casta, the supposed “funny guy”, who gets all the supposed “one-liners”, spends the better part of the movie insulting everyone and everything he runs into, being altogether homophobic and profoundly sexist. This in turn basically determines the overall tone of the movie; mean spirited and proud of it. The main character Thomas is blandly passive, wishy-washy and never really learns anything by the end of the movie. Not to mention all the girls in the film are basically brainless underwear models who are only there as concubines to be ogled at. What the movie lacks in stakes, story, characters, or a discernible arc, it tries to make up for in energy and attitude. What we are left with is a meaningless shell of the teen-party genre filled with boobs, booze and explosions.
          Despite the fact that "Project X" was not very funny, I couldn't really tell if it was even trying to be, as there were no real discernible jokes to be had. Instead we had kids dancing, kids making out, kids doing drugs and kids insulting each other for 88 minutes. The funniest part of the film involves a midget punching a line of teen boys in the nards, and that’s not really saying anything. Oh yeah, and half way through, the found footage aspect of the movie makes absolutely no sense. Shots and angles are completely unaccounted for, as we see many sequences underwater and at least three lengthy montages. In fact, the movie looks more like an advertisement at times, which would make sense seeing as the director Nima Nourizadeh has mostly done commercial work prior to this.
           The studio is marketing this as “Superbad” on crack. Sure I guess, if you don’t take into account Superbad’s love for its characters, dialogue driven humor, or its ultimate message about growing up and growing apart. But even as I endured this pile, I sat in my theater seat with the full knowledge that teens and frat-boys are going to violently defend “Project X”. Why is that? Well for one it reaffirms the white privileged teenage fantasy that all the girls will flock to dance music and booze no matter how nerdy you are, and that popping pills and destroying your neighborhood is not only awesome but even excusable by the law if you’re underage. All lies, by the way. Secondly, people will ignore how stupid and painfully egotistic this movie is because it’s loud and it moves, and unfortunately most people would rather watch a bad movie than a slow movie.

 Grade: F

Originally Published in The Idaho State Journal/March-2012

This Means War review

             A chick flick for guys too? Well certainly that is the general aim for the post-valentine’s day release of “This Means War”.  Directed by McG, “This Means War” wants to be the ideal date movie. We have car chases, shootouts and Bourn-esque fisticuffs for the boys and a high concept love triangle for the girls. The movie features Chris Pine and Tom Hardy, probably most well-known to the world as the new Captain Kirk in 2009’s “Star Trek” reboot and the anticipated villain Bane in this summer’s upcoming “Dark Knight Rises”. Both actors share a few things in common; neither of them are movie stars yet--despite being involved with money making franchises--both are charismatic good looking men who haven’t really broke into the role of the romantic lead, and lastly, both of them have some serious nerd-cred due to their involvement in the aforementioned franchises.  So what does McG do to widen their appeal? He has thrown them in a rom-com action highbred with Reese Witherspoon, who has the unlucky job of bringing in the entire female portion of the audience who has never been to Comicon.       

                Chris Pine and Tom Hardy play FDR Foster and Tuck, longtime best friends who both happen to work as special-op spies for the CIA. Reese Witherspoon plays Lauren Scott, a single 30-something that just can’t seem to get back into the dating world (yeah, I had a hard time with this one too). Lauren’s obnoxiously crass and wildly intrusive sister makes her an internet dating profile, and after she notices interest by the recently divorced and handsome Tuck (Hardy), she decides to try it out. Not long after Lauren and Tuck’s first date she runs into FDR (Pine) in a video store, where he tries to pick her up with his sexy knowledge of Hitchcock movies (No, really…This is actually in the movie). It doesn’t work but eventually he follows her to her job, where she is a product researcher (Get it? It’s clever because she has to decide on the quality of competing products.*wink wink*). There, he basically forces a date out of her by threatening embarrassment. Eventually the men find out they are both trying to date the same chick, and even though she doesn’t know they are competing for her love, she has to pick them based on their strengths. Being trained CIA  operatives who have too much money and downtime, Tuck and FDR play a game of “Spy vs. Spy” where they use their secret-agent training, to sabotage the each other (Yes , they play the song) while bugging every apartment and date to glean information from Lauren to better their odds (Nope, not creepy at all).

                Making his ridiculous name with movies like “Charlie’s Angels” and “Terminator Salvation”, McG is the type of director who sits beside the style-over-substance and bro-centric likes of other filmmakers such as Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Tower Heist) and Michael Bay (Transformers, Bad Boys). And like those guys he is the kind of director who is loved by the studios for making disposable genre fodder that can easily win its weekend, but who is equally hated by critics for pandering to the lowest common denominator. “This Means War” might be his best movie yet, and that’s not really saying much. Though the movie has its moments of pop-corn friendly entertainment and something approximating charm, ultimately the screenplay’s desperation to pull in both demographics leaves the characters empty and the plot locked into a no-surprises track down cliché express.

                Not too unlike the “Twilight” franchise we have a female wish fulfillment fantasy where a rich classy single lady has two handsome men literally fighting for her. This Lauren character, played as well as possible by Witherspoon, becomes increasingly unlikable as she seems quite ambivalent to the idea of lying and cheating on both men throughout the whole movie. And as far who she picks in the end, well I won’t spoil it, but I will give you a hint. See if you can notice which male lead gets more screen time, more character development, and more dialogue. But at least unlike the odious “Twilight Saga” this movie has a sense of humor about itself, and a really good cast who does their best to elevate this pathetically pedestrian material.  In the long run this is the type of movie that you will most likely come out of feeling okay with because it has been carefully designed to do exactly that. It’s a quick hour and a half of brain-candy and will be digested and forgotten just as quickly. 

Grade: C-

Originally Published by The Basic Alternative/Feb-2012

Chronical review

               Today on a very special episode of Degrassi, our clumsy teens survive a radioactive explosion they uncover deep within the ground. Soon they begin to develop superpowers and make a pact to tell no one about it. Actually, all snark aside, the subject of this February release is something refreshingly ambitious and most of the way successful, considering it was released during the time of the year when most genre movies are at best forgettable and at worst barely-watchable. “Chronicle” is the debut film by the 25 year old director Josh Trank and the 26 year old screenwriter Max Landis (son of “American Werewolf In London” director John Landis).  Though neither of them have been working in the industry long, with this weekend-winning calling-card they prove to be a young creative force to be reckoned with.

                The film revolves around three high school friends who share a secret together.  The main character Andrew, played by Dane DeHaan, is a bullied nerd from a troubled family. Being misunderstood and disenfranchised, Andrew decides he is going to film all of his daily experiences, no matter how mundane or humiliating they might be. His popular cousin Matt, whom he commutes to school with, seems to be his only friend, but even he doesn’t seem to want Andrew around too much. This all changes the night they get exposed to radioactive energy from a glowing structure they find behind a barn-rave with the senior class presidential nominee Steve.  After the explosion the camera jumps a few days into the plot, where we see the three teens practicing their new telekinetic powers in the back yard with a baseball. Quickly, they learn that the more they use their powers the stronger they become, and like Spiderman has taught us, “with great power comes great responsibility”.  However, if you’re a disaffected dweeb who has to dodge bullies every day, then it might be more power than one can be responsible for.

                This movie aims to cover a lot of ground and it wants to address many issues. Of course there is the obvious reinterpretation of the superhero/supervillian concept. Max Landis’s script spends a great amount of screen-time within the mind of the main character. As we watch Andrew transform into a megalomaniac we buy into it because we have followed him so closely for so much of movie.  The film also evokes some post-Columbine undertones just below the surface of the science fiction plot; a depth I was not prepared for and was pleasantly surprised by. The film also explores a kind of naïve bonding between young adolescent males. As they ignore the women in their lives to explore and experiment with their powers together, they seem to be exploring something else within the subtext. Whether overt or suggested, it’s the layers within “Chronicle” that gives it the extra nudge of effort and consideration that we usually don’t get in special effects movies anymore. However, with that said, the movie is not without its problems too.

                Every now and then the center of consciousness changes within the film, making the unfortunate framing device of the found footage conceit less believable. These kinds of multiple perspective shifts become increasingly jarring as the movie goes.  (Here is pro-tip for young filmmakers who want to explore this style; if you have to introduce another character who also happens to film everything she does, then you are probably overreaching.) In fact at times it becomes obnoxious and mechanical to see how many ways they can come up with having a camera in the scene. Sometimes it works and sometimes it feels like they are trying to solve a writing problem. Also, there a few places where the CGI leaves a little to be desired, especially when basic things like Lego’s and rubber balls aren’t always convincing. Lastly, the word ‘dude’ pops up a bit more in the dialogue than I would prefer.   Though not without its flaws, “Chronicle” is a thoughtful science fiction movie that taps into teenage angst in a unique way.  Successfully it connects its central characters with the type of outsider’s who pay to read comics like X-Men for the much needed support and familiarity. Here is a movie that doesn’t win its audience with star power or a franchise affiliation, but with solid storytelling. Though the roots of “Chronicle” are evident, it seems to be doing the same old thing in a fairly new and inventive way.

Grade: B

Originally Published in The Basic Alternative/Feb-2012