Let's Not Listen: Film and TV reviews

Hairspray - Cashback

Somehow, this is way less embarrassing than "Wild Hogs"

The average musical would be a helluva lot better if, when its heroine is belting out a saccharine tune, she got hit in the face with a dodgeball. That's what happens when Tracy Turnblad sings puppy-love ode "I Can Hear the Bells" in Adam Shankman's tremendously entertaining Hairspray, a remake of John Waters' 1988 original via its 2002 reincarnation on Broadway. And she doesn't miss a note.

 

Tracy is a zaftig teen in 1962 Baltimore who wants nothing more than to strut her generous amounts of stuff on the hot local dancing program, The Corny Collins Show. Every day, Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) and her dopey friend, Penny (Amanda Bynes), run home from school to shriek at the TV as the area's most popular kids, including Amber von Tussle (Brittany Snow), do the Mashed Potato with pasted grins in front of the camera. When one of the dancers drops out -- "Only nine months," she responds when Corny (James Marsden) asks how long she'll be gone – Tracy knows it's her chance to get in the spotlight. Her equally oversize mother, Edna (John Travolta), fears she'll be turned down because of her weight, but her father (Christopher Walken) tells Tracy to go for it.

 

That's right: Mom and Dad are John Travolta and Christopher Walken. Together at last! As freakish as Mr. Saturday Night Fever looks in a fat suit and make-up as he reprises the role originated by late drag queen Divine, you may be surprised to find yourself warm to his version of a sweet, shy housewife opposite Walken's adoring – if, as always, a bit creepy – husband. Of course, this being a musical, the cast members weren't chosen only for their acting chops, and Travolta steals several scenes as Edna's coaxed by her daughter to bust a move – not heels nor fake flab keep the actor from quite skillfully shaking his ass. Some of the movie's best moments, though, develop when the couple are together. Imagine Walken comforting his weepy, gigantic male wife. Or the two doing a little soft-shoe in the moonlight.

 

The pair are representative of Shankman's biggest achievement: making a film that manages to be slightly subversive, very goofy, and relentlessly feel-good at the same time. Tracy is a potentially insulin-raising bubble of optimism and cheeriness, believing that she can do anything despite not being skinny and blonde – and she proves it, by becoming one of the Corny show's most popular dancers. But she's forward-thinking, too. When she gets punished in school for "inappropriate hair height," Tracy meets a group of black students, including Seaweed (Elijah Kelley) and his little sister, Inez (Taylor Parks), who use their detention time to dance. The kids aren't allowed to appear with the white teens on the program, instead being restricted to a once-monthly "Negro Day." When Negro Day is canceled altogether, though, thanks to the TV station's manager (a frighteningly skeletal Michelle Pfeiffer) – who also happens to be Amber's competitive mother – Tracy protests, marching with her black friends to try to force the station to integrate.

 

It's a serious theme that Shankman and his writers – Waters, Leslie Dixon, and the stage musical's Mark O'Donnell get credit for the screenplay, with Scott Wittman responsible for lyrics – are able to incorporate smoothly exactly because the rest of the movie refuses to take itself seriously. Every treacly-sounding, show-stopping song (and the film's full of them) hides jokes and political incorrectness among its earnest lyrics. (Penny, who falls in love with Seaweed, sings: "In my ivory tower/Life was just a Hostess snack/But now I've tasted chocolate/And I'm never going back!") One-liners pepper the script, too, always zinging just in time to erase whatever goopiness has been building up.

 

Travolta and Walken aren't the only cast members who are terrific. Blonsky, looking like she could be the daughter of the original's Ricki Lake, is infectiously sweet and great with a tune. But the smaller players are gems as well, particularly the usually blank Bynes, who subtly brings out the innocent Penny's sexiness, and Marsden, who looks more alive as a song-and-dance man than he has in any of his mouth-breathing dramatic turns. And as is the case with many remakes, cameos offer a giggle, too. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all, though, is Shankman, whose previous efforts helming the terrible Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and The Pacifier didn't exactly make him an obvious choice to steer a summer musical. Turned out that he and his crew needed only a little Hairspray to make something unforgettable.

Stripping and grocery shopping -- a winning combination!

In a romance, the equivalent of a feisty go-getter singing her heart out must be the slow-motion remembrance of an old lover. And Cashback, an Oscar-nominated short that's been stretched to feature length by British writer-director Sean Ellis, can't get enough of it. Woe is Ben, the art student who has broken up with his first girlfriend at the beginning of the film. He's been unable to sleep since the separation and is haunted by her image: In a flowing dress, his fair love laughs as she runs and looks behind her into the camera, sunlit all around, as the score swells. Thinking about her with her new boyfriend, he says, "felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room."

 

Now would be a good time for that dodgeball, but there will be no such relief from Ellis' triteness. Cashback is purportedly about beauty and time and realizing one's goals, but really it just seems like an excuse to show boobs. Not just any boobs, mind you, although the reason for their contribution to the movie is to demonstrate the elegance of the female form and Ben's obsession with trying to capture it. No, these breasts are natural and astounding, belonging to very lucky, very slim young women. But Ben, see, isn't a horndog like his friends. He's an artiste -- who apparently has ever had exposure only to the Playboy-ready, besides the farting male model in his drawing class.

 

Ben (the bland Sean Biggerstaff) sees the majority of these racks after he takes a job as an overnight clerk in a grocery store in an attempt to stave off his insomnia-fueled boredom. During these long nights, he discovers he has the ability to freeze time, which he often uses to delicately undress the female customers or to stare at Sharon (Emilia Fox), a quiet cashier. He draws her without her knowledge and eventually asks her out; a conflict that would occur only in a script nearly keeps them apart, but as Ellis seems to argue with the time-stopping conceit, every action sets off a chain of events that eventually lead a person where they should be.

 

The frozen scenes are rather hypnotic as Ben studies whatever activity has been stopped, and with minor characters such as the store manager and fellow employees played as clowns, the movie is sometimes funny. (A hapless soccer game against a rival store, for instance, is one of the best parts.) But Cashback's few pluses don't outweigh its facile sentimentality, made all the worse by Ben's continual, ponderous voiceover that clue us in to his Psych 101 musings. With each succeeding thought, it feels as if all the oxygen is being sucked out of the room. 

Transformers

After this is over, I'm going to transform
your panties into a hat

There's a Herbie the Love Bug moment in Transformers. A high-school kid just got his first car. He's crushing on a girl who looks 10 years older than he is and doesn't tax her taut body by throwing on a lot of clothes. She needs a ride home; the vehicle flings its passenger door open and plays the Cars' "Drive." Once it's got her inside, it further helps out his owner by motoring them over to a remote spot – and switching the radio to "Sexual Healing."

 

OK, so maybe it's a scene that would make Herbie blush. But what do you expect from a movie based on...toys? Transformers is the latest directorial effort from Michael Bay, so you probably don't need the PG-13 rating to tell you that despite its Hasbro origins, the movie's not for the little ones. But unlike the rest of this summer's something-for-most-of-the-family fare – particularly other fanboy stuff like Spider-Man – the live-action Transformers has an unflattering vibe all its own: It's not for kids, but it's not quite for geeked-out adults, either. It's for the stunted.

 

Bay and his screenwriters, Mission: Impossible III duo Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, are betting that audiences will feel that a heap of CGI sophistication will make up for lack of depth elsewhere. (And they're probably right, alas.) The story is a gibberish-laden shell that integrates the giant robots from another planet, who until now have been kept there in the animated TV series and 1986's The Transformers: The Movie, with humans. Shia LaBeouf trains for his upcoming Indiana Jones role as Sam, the uncool student who ends up with the prying old Camaro that he eventually learns is Bumblebee – though Bumblebee was originally a Volkswagen Beetle – one of the good-guy Autobots. He (it?) and a few other 'bots are here to support their leader, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), as Optimus travels to Earth and hunts for the Allspark, something that's ridiculously important for the Autobots to have.

 

Of course, the evil Decepticons also want it. And they almost had it: Megatron (Hugo Weaving), the baddest of the bad, came searching for the Allspark back in the 19th century, only to accidentally freeze and later be discovered by Sam's great-great-grandfather, an explorer. Before he was totally paralyzed, though, Megatron etched out a map to the Allspark on Grandpa's glasses, which are currently in Sam's possession. Why did the Autobots wait until 2007 to gain control of the Allspark? Apparently it took that long for the Decepticons to figure out how to hack the government's security system (and, uh, attack U.S. soldiers in the Middle East) and defrost Megatron – or something like that.

 

All you really need to know, though, is that the shape-shifting androids are in a battle of good vs. evil, and it's just an excuse for a lot of explosions, gunfire, childish humor, and a couple of completely unnecessary hot women. (How important are the actresses' looks compared to the movie's logic? Sam's love interest (Megan Fox) somehow gets a wardrobe change while everyone else is knee-deep in Armageddon.) The action is mind-numbing rather than stupidly invigorating, filmed primarily in Bay's messy style of thrashing cameras and dizzying edits. What Bay and his technical crew do get right, on the other hand, is what most of the audience members probably came to see: the alien stars morphing from their disguises as helicopters, trucks, whatever each stealth situation calls for into their badass (or goodass) robot selves. From machine to 'droid and back again, their transformations are quick and fluid, often seamlessly occurring during a mere leap. The bombs may not impress you, but at least this will.

 

If only the script weren't unbearable. Despite a 144-minute running time, the story gets choppy. (Days turn instantly into nights, while lines such as "I had fun" refer to nothing we're privvy to.) The characters are mere mouthpieces. (Sam's immediately comfortable with his new world, rattling off details of the planet's possible doom to others; Fox's Mikeala is summed up above.) And the jokes are painfully adolescent. (Ha ha, that robot is peeing – something – on a government official! That dude is picking his nose!) The package would be passable for kids – if they were the movie's intended audience. But our inner children deserve better.

copyright 2007 themoviebabe.com

Ratatouille

Ratatouille's hairy version of vermin isn't anything like Mickey and Minnie. Which means that the latest animated Pixar offering has a similar, if much less significant, problem as Transformers. In
the same way that some parents may roll their eyes at a movie that turns their childhood heroes into urinating clowns, grown-ups may not be thrilled about watching rats – even friendly ones with opposable thumbs (!) -- swarming buildings and getting their paws on restaurant food. But will children be interested in a 110-minute story of a rodentian Rachael Ray?

 

It'd be a dicey proposition if it weren't for Mr. Incredibles. The newest creation of writer-director Brad Bird, now the darling of Pixar, is Remy (Patton Oswalt), a France-based rat with a refined palate and desire to "add something to the world," despite his family's insistence that their kind was meant to take. Neither Remy's gruff father (Brian Dennehy) nor dimwit brother, Emile (Peter Sohn), understand why he won't just eat garbage like the rest of them. Remy wants to be a chef, but Dad tries to scare him straight, telling him that the human world is too dangerous and that he should abandon his dream of leaving the clan. Remy's father does finally recognize his son's talent for identifying the ingredients of a concoction by sniff – and puts him to work as a poison detector.

 

When the family and their horde of friends are discovered in an old lady's house – in a surprisingly violent scene, a carpet of them fall through the ceiling when she goes crazy with a rifle after spotting Remy among her spices – they get separated while escaping. Remy negotiates through gushing pipes (another frightening sequence, though the inky waters look damn good) and ends up safe beneath a once five-star-rated French restaurant. Since he assumes his family is dead, he takes the advice of his sudden companion, the ghost of his idol, rotund chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett), to sneak into the joint and spice up the kitchen.

 

Bird may not have created anything as exciting as superheroes or an iron giant when he developed Remy, but the rat's culinary adventures are both sophisticated and kid-friendly – without, mercifully, the usual two-tiered paradigm of lots of face-plants and potty-humor for the little ones while grown-ups get assaulted with pop-culture references. Instead, the story's kept simple while the visuals are extraordinary. As Remy takes rather entertaining steps toward his goal, plenty of worthy life-lessons are served as well: Not stealing is a big one, but there are more subtle messages about the importance of family (OK, that's a yawner) and how not everyone can do whatever they want, but that those with talent need not feel inhibited by their circumstances to succeed (not only a wise teaching, but one that's ingeniously woven).

 

Lifelike delicacies may be served in Gusteau's place, but the eyes get a feast elsewhere as well, particularly in skyline views of Paris glowing at night that are amazingly realistic. Bird also loads the film with clever passing details, such as the goings-on in apartments that Remy scampers above or the back stories of the more zestily painted minor characters, such as a severe cook named Horst (Will Arnett) who's given a brief montage of the various reasons he gives for having spent time in prison. ("I killed a man with this thumb.") What Ratatouille is not is a showcase of belly laughs, which is a bit of a disappointment if you compare this film to its predecessor, The Incredibles. But it's charming, original, and solid – not a description that will make your kids beg you to see it, but like the patrons eating Remy's dishes, they never have to know.   

1408

I have had it with these motherfuckin' ghosts
in this motherfuckin' room!

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom (Derailed) and written by a trio of scripters, 1408 is based on a short story by Stephen King. It's not nearly as nightmarish as King's The Shining nor as unrelenting as the similarly themed Vacancy in its scares. But amid the culture of Saw-imitating torture porn, this taut psychological thriller stands out as an instant, mind-bending classic.

1408 begins, appropriately, with a dark and stormy night. Ghost-hunting author Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is making his way in the pouring rain to stay at a rural bed-and-breakfast whose owners claim is haunted. He's been seeking such places to research his travel books that center on the phantasmagoric -- "Five skulls," he rates the B&B – though he doesn't actually believe in spooks himself. Until, that is, Enslin checks into the titular forbidden room at New York's swanky Dolphin Hotel.

 

The hotel's manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), strongly suggests he change his mind about going into 1408, claiming that 56 patrons have died in there, none of them lasting more than an hour. He bribes Enslin with an expensive bottle of booze and offers him access to the hotel's copious files on the "natural" deaths that occurred in the room but haven't been publicized. "My training is as a manager, not a coroner," Olin says. Still, Enslin insists, and Olin escorts his as far as the elevator doors on the 14th floor. The room is initially unremarkable, with Enslin describing its details into a tape recorder with a yawn in his voice. Then the clock radio blasts on by itself – the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" has never sounded so creepy – and the time scrambles to 60:00 and starts counting down. Enslin gets a little worried.

 

1408 is a series of freakouts from there, with the writer seeing things such as phantoms jumping out the window, a crazed knife-wielder coming at him, and the bathroom turning into a hospital hallway where his dead father is sitting in a wheelchair. ("Like I am, you will be," dad tells him with a smirk. Ack.) There are mental games, too – a room-service attendant calls and responds to Enslin's questions with perky, unrelated answers, and later phones again with skin-crawling information about how he can go about leaving. It's all very "Hotel California."

 

Hafstrom arguably has his main character lose it a little too easily, but Cusack never turns cartoonish as Enslin talks to himself, charges around the room, and in general desperately tries to figure out what's going on and how the hell to get out of it. King's story is expanded to include an ex-wife and a dead daughter, details that work well to give the seemingly one-note fright fest layers and keep things chilly. As with the best of King's work, nothing is overexplained, and the ending is left intriguingly open. Enslin's mind may get checked at the door of 1408, but yours won't.