Trailer Trash
Apr. 28th, 2008 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German writer, scientist, downer)
I went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall this past weekend. Usually I need to be dragged or tricked into going to the theatre, but I was honestly looking forward to seeing this film. Of Judd Apatow's many recent productions, this one seemed most capable of accessing the wry sentimentality of his television work ("Freaks and Geeks," "Undeclared") to temper the raunchtastic penis-based comedy of his recent blockbusters ("The 40-Year Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Superbad").
(I saw "Virgin" and "Knocked Up" and I remember laughing at them but I find myself feeling sort of ashamed about it now, like I look back on my hook-up with that mostly-hot but mostly-airheaded freshman during my sophomore year and get the strong urge to take a silkwood shower; I still understand the appeal, but that doesn't make it right.)
Anyway, the movie didn't let me down. Though certain parts were more penis-based than I would have preferred, and the plot borrowed generously from the conventional Romantic Comedy Playbook, the characters were all very likeable and there were enough quirks and quips to keep the scenes fresh. It's a Rom-Com that succeeds where people like Dane Cook and Drew Barrymore have failed spectacularly for the past decade.
As Village_Twins recently said, it's not going to win any Oscars or anything. It's not a groundbreaking, landmark movie. But it is significant, in that it's the first movie I've seen in a while that didn't make me feel like a sucker.
And it's a good thing, too, because the trailers before the movie scared the crap out of me. With apologies to the lazy critic:
Sex and the City: The Movie
This show was the toast of entertainment for a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, partially for inspiring and then deliniating a cult of modern femininity. It was more than a television show, it was a movement. And like most movements, it got old quickly. After about their millionth conversation about shoes and dicks, these archetypes were finally laid to rest. But now these corpses have been exhumed, reanimated and botoxed to the point where they almost look like the cartoons their characters have become. The result ought to be as embarassing for the players as it is for the audience. How humiliating it must be for women in their 40s to go on demeaning themselves in haute couture, soaking up alcohol like gin-soaked floozies and referring to somebody's fiancee as "Big." The producers had better hope that the series' adoring fans are hungry for more middle-aged preening and whining, because nobody else is going to go see it.
The Love Guru
Mike Myers gave us three of the more enjoyable comedies of the past 20 years: So I Married an Axe Murderer, a charmingly twisted love story that never took itself too seriously, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, a hall-of-fame quality pastiche of Bond films, and Shrek, a perfectly sweet fairy tale. Aside from that, he has been living off of tepid sequels, insufferable Saturday Night Live characters and an oversized reputation. "The Love Guru" will boast that it is his first original work in a while, but the truth is that it's merely blatant repackaging of old jokes. He even brings along his little midget friend again, so he can wring a few more laughs out of the tired little-guy-falls-down slapstick. Myers seems to be entering the latter-day Eddie Murphy phase of his career -- which is not a good thing -- and the sooner he realizes that he can't shrug-and-mug his way through movies anymore, the better off we'll all be.
Wanted
There is a scene in the trailer in which James McAvoy's character has to fire a gun and "curve the bullet" so that it avoids hitting Angelina Jolie in the face. Maybe it was just me, but I was kind of hoping that McAvoy would be unable to carry out this ridiculous stunt. (Incidentally: what is the over/under on American fatalities of teenaged morons who try to duplicate this sequence? A dozen? Two dozen?) I think that the producers mean the title to be a double-entendre, referring not only to the characters' illicit activities but to Jolie's sex appeal. But Jolie is so overexposed in every context -- as ambassador, philanthropist, mother, sex symbol -- that it's nearly impossible to watch the action scenes without thinking "Wow! Look what Angelina Jolie is doing there!" "Wanted" appears to be a high-tech comic-book style action picture in the vein of "The Matrix," but it would have helped if they could find a lead actress who could act and a lead actor who doesn't look like he should be selling car insurance.
What Happens in Vegas...
As if to deal the final death blow to ubiquitous tourism marketing slogan, along comes a romantic comedy whose ambition is to make both Las Vegas and romance look as garish and unpleasant as possible. Our stand-ins for this passion play are Ashton Kutcher, looking even more vacuous than usual, and Cameron Diaz, whose face is so tanned, stretched and polished that she looks like she has just been upholstered in fine Corinthian leather. In the trailer, the two leads have an ill-advised, drunken wedding (which happens), then collaborate on a slot machine jackpot (which probably never happens, but even if it did it would be a ripoff of Larry David's feature Sour Grapes), and are then sentenced by Judge Dennis Miller to continued matrimony (which is not only ridiculously improbable but is basically a kick in the American judicial system's collective nuts). Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but mostly it looks like a lot of yelling. My guess is that the two of them end up staying together at the end of the movie, which is just as much of a threat to the sanctimonious notion of marriage as anything the gays are doing.
The Incredible Hulk
Haven't you heard? After 2003's Hulk apparently didn't live up to blockbuster expectations, the studio called "do-over!" So now we have a slightly younger, less bloated cast and a more bloated special effects budget, which apparently went toward creating a preposterously steroidal Hulk. Edward Norton is in this one, and he's usually pretty good. He seems to specialize in mild-mannered guys who have an insidious alter ego, so it's just a matter of time before we see him playing Dick Cheney in "Undisclosed Location." As for Hulkamania, I didn't see the "old" movie and I'm probably not going to see the "new" one. If I want to watch cartoonish creatures beating the crap out of each other, I'll watch WWE Raw.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German writer, scientist, downer)
I went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall this past weekend. Usually I need to be dragged or tricked into going to the theatre, but I was honestly looking forward to seeing this film. Of Judd Apatow's many recent productions, this one seemed most capable of accessing the wry sentimentality of his television work ("Freaks and Geeks," "Undeclared") to temper the raunchtastic penis-based comedy of his recent blockbusters ("The 40-Year Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Superbad").
(I saw "Virgin" and "Knocked Up" and I remember laughing at them but I find myself feeling sort of ashamed about it now, like I look back on my hook-up with that mostly-hot but mostly-airheaded freshman during my sophomore year and get the strong urge to take a silkwood shower; I still understand the appeal, but that doesn't make it right.)
Anyway, the movie didn't let me down. Though certain parts were more penis-based than I would have preferred, and the plot borrowed generously from the conventional Romantic Comedy Playbook, the characters were all very likeable and there were enough quirks and quips to keep the scenes fresh. It's a Rom-Com that succeeds where people like Dane Cook and Drew Barrymore have failed spectacularly for the past decade.
As Village_Twins recently said, it's not going to win any Oscars or anything. It's not a groundbreaking, landmark movie. But it is significant, in that it's the first movie I've seen in a while that didn't make me feel like a sucker.
And it's a good thing, too, because the trailers before the movie scared the crap out of me. With apologies to the lazy critic:
Sex and the City: The Movie
This show was the toast of entertainment for a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, partially for inspiring and then deliniating a cult of modern femininity. It was more than a television show, it was a movement. And like most movements, it got old quickly. After about their millionth conversation about shoes and dicks, these archetypes were finally laid to rest. But now these corpses have been exhumed, reanimated and botoxed to the point where they almost look like the cartoons their characters have become. The result ought to be as embarassing for the players as it is for the audience. How humiliating it must be for women in their 40s to go on demeaning themselves in haute couture, soaking up alcohol like gin-soaked floozies and referring to somebody's fiancee as "Big." The producers had better hope that the series' adoring fans are hungry for more middle-aged preening and whining, because nobody else is going to go see it.
The Love Guru
Mike Myers gave us three of the more enjoyable comedies of the past 20 years: So I Married an Axe Murderer, a charmingly twisted love story that never took itself too seriously, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, a hall-of-fame quality pastiche of Bond films, and Shrek, a perfectly sweet fairy tale. Aside from that, he has been living off of tepid sequels, insufferable Saturday Night Live characters and an oversized reputation. "The Love Guru" will boast that it is his first original work in a while, but the truth is that it's merely blatant repackaging of old jokes. He even brings along his little midget friend again, so he can wring a few more laughs out of the tired little-guy-falls-down slapstick. Myers seems to be entering the latter-day Eddie Murphy phase of his career -- which is not a good thing -- and the sooner he realizes that he can't shrug-and-mug his way through movies anymore, the better off we'll all be.
Wanted
There is a scene in the trailer in which James McAvoy's character has to fire a gun and "curve the bullet" so that it avoids hitting Angelina Jolie in the face. Maybe it was just me, but I was kind of hoping that McAvoy would be unable to carry out this ridiculous stunt. (Incidentally: what is the over/under on American fatalities of teenaged morons who try to duplicate this sequence? A dozen? Two dozen?) I think that the producers mean the title to be a double-entendre, referring not only to the characters' illicit activities but to Jolie's sex appeal. But Jolie is so overexposed in every context -- as ambassador, philanthropist, mother, sex symbol -- that it's nearly impossible to watch the action scenes without thinking "Wow! Look what Angelina Jolie is doing there!" "Wanted" appears to be a high-tech comic-book style action picture in the vein of "The Matrix," but it would have helped if they could find a lead actress who could act and a lead actor who doesn't look like he should be selling car insurance.
What Happens in Vegas...
As if to deal the final death blow to ubiquitous tourism marketing slogan, along comes a romantic comedy whose ambition is to make both Las Vegas and romance look as garish and unpleasant as possible. Our stand-ins for this passion play are Ashton Kutcher, looking even more vacuous than usual, and Cameron Diaz, whose face is so tanned, stretched and polished that she looks like she has just been upholstered in fine Corinthian leather. In the trailer, the two leads have an ill-advised, drunken wedding (which happens), then collaborate on a slot machine jackpot (which probably never happens, but even if it did it would be a ripoff of Larry David's feature Sour Grapes), and are then sentenced by Judge Dennis Miller to continued matrimony (which is not only ridiculously improbable but is basically a kick in the American judicial system's collective nuts). Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but mostly it looks like a lot of yelling. My guess is that the two of them end up staying together at the end of the movie, which is just as much of a threat to the sanctimonious notion of marriage as anything the gays are doing.
The Incredible Hulk
Haven't you heard? After 2003's Hulk apparently didn't live up to blockbuster expectations, the studio called "do-over!" So now we have a slightly younger, less bloated cast and a more bloated special effects budget, which apparently went toward creating a preposterously steroidal Hulk. Edward Norton is in this one, and he's usually pretty good. He seems to specialize in mild-mannered guys who have an insidious alter ego, so it's just a matter of time before we see him playing Dick Cheney in "Undisclosed Location." As for Hulkamania, I didn't see the "old" movie and I'm probably not going to see the "new" one. If I want to watch cartoonish creatures beating the crap out of each other, I'll watch WWE Raw.
