by Daniel Erenberg
My excitement for the summer movie season this year has been curiously subdued. I’ve been seeing pretty much everything that’s coming out, but I’m finding it difficult to care about any of them. The only film I’ve seen this summer that I’d consider seeing multiple times was Star Trek. And I probably only have one more viewing of that movie left in me. Meanwhile, looking ahead, I can only really muster up the energy to get psyched for Judd Apatow’s Funny People and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve seen the last two weeks:
Away We Go
It’s nice to see Sam Mendes, the director of dense Oscar-bait like Revolutionary Road and American Beauty, tackle a small-scale comedy piece like this one. It’s also nice to see respectable publishers/novelists like Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida trying their hands at penning a screenplay. And it’s also nice to see wonderful TV actors like John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph cast in demanding starring film roles like the ones they’re provided here. Unfortunately, all of this niceness just adds to a nice little movie. There are some funny moments, mostly provided by Krasinski and Rudolph, without much help from the much broader supporting turns from usually reliable actors like Allison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but it doesn’t add up to much. Even when the film tries to get dramatic and profound, with occasional slightly too long, unconvincing monologues, it still retains an annoying sense of ironic detachment that saps away any tension that may have been built. It’s a nice movie. Very nice. But I’ve already forgotten most of it.
Grade: B
Drag Me To Hell
Evil Dead fans were worried when they found out that Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre that made him would be too lightweight when it received a PG-13 rating from the MPAA. They needn’t have worried their gross little heads. This is a balls-to-the-wall, bizarre, campy, utterly awesome and, occasionally, horrifically gross horror film in the classic Evil Dead tradition. A gypsy with decaying dentures curses Alison Lohman after she denies her a bank loan. And the fun begins. You can almost hear the laughter Raimi and his co-screenwriter brother Ivan were spewing while writing this insanity.
Grade: A-
The Hangover
Well, audiences (and many of my friends) have already decided that this is the great comedy of the summer, and I’m going to beg to differ. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a very solid comedy, consistently funny pretty much all the way through. Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms all give fantastic individual performances, even if they never quite gel as an ensemble as much you’d hope. But there’s something sort of throw-away about the whole venture and, worse, old-fashioned. In the days when the biggest comedies in the world were your Meet The Parents films or Austin Powers franchise, this would have been very welcome, in the same way director Todd Phillips’ Old School was at the time. But, in a post-Apatow comedic landscape, something seems weirdly dry about this one, with the exception of the presence of Galifianakis and his unpredictable comedic presence. It’s a good film, but time’s gonna tell whether this really is the great comedy of the summer. It already loses for great comedy of 2009, as Adventureland and Observe and Report have already kicked the pants off of it.
Grade: B-
Land of the Lost
What is the audience for this film? It isn’t for kids, what with the never-ending sex jokes, Danny McBride’s wonderful fervor for saying the word “tits,” and Will Ferell’s potty-mouth. It isn’t for adults, what with the repetitive and immature humor, and the lack of any recognizably interesting plot. All I know for sure though is that it definitely isn’t for me. This was a POS of the highest degree. The only way I could handle sitting through it was my own personal undying love for McBride’s comedic persona, which he handily recycles here from much better projects like Eastbound & Down and The Foot Fist Way. Avoid.
Grade: D-
Up
Not the utter masterpiece that last year’s WALL-E was, but not ridiculously far-off either. The extended montage of our main character’s entire life about five minutes in is one of the great achievements of modern animation and the film is as thoughtful and consistently funny as any Pixar project. It does drag a bit in the middle, but is kept buoyant with observant humor (especially, I suspect, for the dog owners in the audience), before peaking again in the exciting final third. Pixar’s tenth good film in a row. They just don’t miss.
Grade: B+
Tags:
movie reviews
land of the lost
up
drag me to hell
the hangover
away we go
June 15, 2009 at 6:25pm ∞
