Let's Not Listen: Film and TV reviews

King of California

King of California

Michael Douglas is looking for spare change...I mean buried treasure

 

If you saw Michael Douglas' King of California character on the street, you'd avoid eye contact and walk quickly past. Having just spent the past two years in an institution, Douglas' Charlie is disheveled and wild-eyed, oblivious to the ideas of authority or boundaries, and talks of little but finding an ancient treasure buried somewhere in West Coast suburbia. But this is a movie, so Charlie isn't mentally ill, he's magical. His unkempt hair and bushy beard are charming. And his eyes aren't rheumy from manic, sleepless nights, they sparkle with life.

Charlie's 16-year-old daughter, Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood), seems to understand that her father is perhaps not yet fit to leave the hospital as she moans in voiceover about how the relatively stable life she's made for herself, trading school for a full-time job at McDonald's to pay the bills, is about to be upended when he comes home. (Mom, who we're told is a hand model for no reason other than to ratchet up quirk value, left a while ago.) Miranda sounds a little selfish, but, of course, that's all going to change – she may have become so distant from her father that she calls him Charlie, but really, as she says, "Who doesn't want to believe in buried treasure?"

You can imagine how it all goes down. Charlie does something kooky, like sells Miranda's car to buy excavating equipment – yep, committed one day, given access to a back hoe the next -- and shrugs adorably when he gets caught. Miranda acts exasperated and even stern, but inevitably rolls her eyes in a sitcommy, "Oh, Dad!" kind of way. The surprising part about writer-director Mike Cahill's debut is that it's not nearly as wacky as its plot should rightly dictate – it's actually rather dull. Miranda's narration is incessant, covering everything from her family's background to purple excerpts from the journal of a Spanish explorer that Charlie's been studying to find clues about lost gold. It's a lot of information that Wood often delivers too quickly to grasp, relegating it to lulling background noise.

And though while what we hear may get complicated, what we see is anything but. Here's Miranda at work, taking calls from Charlie as he further tries to convince her of the treasure's existence. Now they're in some off-limits area, say a private golf course, with Charlie manipulating his GPS device and Miranda looking vaguely concerned. Then they're at their run-down Victorian home, father and daughter gently butting heads over stuff such as whether he's eaten and how she's got too many responsibilities to go off digging for loot in the middle of the night. Golden-tinged flashbacks show poor wee Miranda (Allisyn Ashley Arm) washing dishes as her musician dad (of course he's a musician) plays upright bass with a bunch of other layabouts. The most memorable moments are also the creepiest, involving unattractive, middle-aged swingers in tiny bathing suits at a barbecue, slowly gyrating to Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze" and trying to get Miranda into a thong. It's an integral scene, but yikes.

It's likely Cahill intended all manner of meaning to flow from his script, not only about the specialness of the parent-child bond but also about chasing dreams, believing in people, the existence of treasure just beneath the surface of our junk society. (The spot with which Charlie finally marks his X is in a Costco, which, along with McDonald's, gets as much screen time as the characters.) But the director is too focused on nurturing Douglas' show-pony performance to develop the most important element of story, the relationship between Charlie and Miranda – if you can't feel the love, you can't believe that this otherwise smart and responsible girl would go along with Charlie's ridiculous, usually felonious actions. When, during one of their fights, she yells, "You never listen!" the line seems like it belongs in a different movie. By the time Charlie shows up in the middle of Costco in a wet suit, you'll wish you were in a different movie, too.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
 

The Jane Austen Book Club

Hello. I'd like to trade in my testicles, please.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a movie in possession of a title such as The Jane Austen Book Club will be in want of a male audience. Based on a novel of the same name, the Robin Swicord-written and -directed film is exactly what you'd expect it to be: It's breezy one moment, somber the next, and, of course, full of women, sentimentality, and reaction shots of dogs. And when each showing lets out, it's likely there won't be a long line at the men's room.

The somewhat interesting idea of Karen Joy Fowler's novel is that real people can find in Austen parallels to and guidance for their own lives. But it's a gimmick that was set up to fail. Go too deep with the theory, and you risk alienating viewers who aren't Janeites. Skimp on it, and there's little else to differentiate the story from countless other romantic comedies. Swicord, a first-time feature director, decided on the latter, offering characters and plot turns whose resemblances to Austen are often too superficial to be recognizable.

Five women and one man comprise the titular Sacramento book club, and each is a shameless type. Bernadette (Kathy Baker) is the organizer of the group and its eldest member, a currently single, freewheeling sort who's been married as often as Austen published. (That'd be six times.) Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) has just been dumped by her husband (Jimmy Smits) of two decades. Sylvia's daughter, Allegra (Maggie Grace), is a lesbian and extreme-sport enthusiast who immediately clashes with Prudie (Emily Blunt), a young, snooty high-school-French teacher with a severe black bob and an unhappy marriage. And Jocelyn (Maria Bello), the arguable focus of the story, is Sylvia's best friend, a never-married dog breeder who impulsively invites the handsome, chick-flick-ready Grigg (Hugh Dancy) to join the club when he hits on her at a conference.

Grigg agrees, with a caveat: He'll give Austen a chance if she'll try science fiction. The chemistry between them as they argue the merits of each of their preferred styles of literature is obvious, and when Jocelyn asks Grigg how he feels about older women, it seems clear where this is going. But Jocelyn doesn't want Grigg for herself. Instead, she means to set up him with Sylvia, and in this case the unforeseen plot turn is irritating: Jocelyn never lets either of them know about her intentions, leaving both the characters and the audience baffled when she switches from being sly to getting angry at Grigg for not asking Sylvia out. "You need to dance with Sylvia tonight!" she admonishes him before they all meet for a library benefit. But wouldn't you know it, as soon as Grigg shows the slightest interest in her friend, Jocelyn turns pouty. And yet later yells at Grigg for not sufficiently appreciating what a great person Sylvia is. It's a back-and-forth even Elizabeth Bennett would find exhausting.

Swicord's script is woefully underdeveloped, with the passage of time marked with montages of the members reading each book and only cursory subplots for most of the characters. Prudie's may be as hole-y as the others – you can't imagine how the buttoned-down, romantic teacher ended up with a distant, jockish husband – but because of Blunt, this story is the most compelling: Quite the opposite of Blunt's outspoken, nearly boorish character in her breakout movie, The Devil Wears Prada, her Prudie is quiet and mannered, peppering her speech French phrases that make her seem arrogant. But she speaks slowly and avoids eye contact, often running her hands down her bob as if to squeeze out a clear thought from a brain noisy with thoughts of her miserable home life. One of the movie's most realistic and raw moments involves a fight between Prudie and her husband when she thinks he was flirting with another woman at a party, a blonde "with those ridiculous plastic boobs," she cries. "Is that what you go for?" Unfortunately, any credibility in that story line is wiped out with the suggestion that a caveman need only spend an afternoon reading Austen aloud to undergo a Mr. Darcy transformation.   

Blunt may be the standout in this terrific ensemble, but it's because no one else is given material worthy of their talents -- Brenneman cries a lot, Baker tosses off bon mots, and the typically intense Bello is reduced to romantic-comedy giddiness and embarrassing dialogue such as, "Reading Jane Austen is a freakin' minefield!" Dancy gets a pass: Not only is his character supposed to be little more than charming window dressing, the unthreateningly handsome actor is a much better fit as Grigg than in serious leading roles such as in last year's Beyond the Gates. The cast is ultimately wasted on a film that, at best, might have been a Cliffs Notes version of Austen, but more closely resembles a bargain-bin romance.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
 

The Brave One

Damsel no longer in distress

 

Erica Bain "walks the streets" of New York City and relates eloquent meditations about what she observes on her popular radio show. She loves her job, but resists when she finds out that a television station is courting her. "I'm not a face, I'm just a voice," Erica insists to her boss. More than her job, though, the storyteller loves her town, and seems deliriously happy to spend that evening with her fiance and dog at the park. Then they're assaulted, and her boyfriend is killed. Suddenly, New York doesn't seem so shiny. So Erica's new companion becomes a gun.

Neil Jordan's The Brave One is consistently and profoundly unsettling – and not just because it brings Charles Bronson to mind. But star Jodie Foster hasn't undone a career's worth of choosing smart if similarly themed female-in-peril roles to make Death Wish VI: A Woman Scorned, even this movie's plot is remarkably similar to the 1974 Bronson vehicle that kicked off a bloodthirsty franchise. (See James Wan's just-released, critically thrashed Death Sentence to get a rehashing of the story that more properly translates the series' spirit for today's zeitgeist.)

Foster's Erica is angry, yes, but she's frightened first. After awaking from a three-week coma to the news that David (Naveen Andrews) is dead, Erica returns to their apartment, still messy with life, and holes up to mourn. When it's time to reconnect with the world, Erica obviously has to not only overcome her grief, but the anxiety that inevitably envelops a crime victim. Jordan highlights this terror, if a little too dramatically: As Erica makes her way down her building's dark hallway, light harshly gleams in through the door and quietly menacing music plays. It's a scene more appropriate for a slasher film, but it's a forgivable indulgence.

Erica admits to her audience that fear is something that's foreign to her, a chosen state of being she formerly associated with "weaker" people. She knows that she's changed and refers to the "stranger" within. But one thing about her remains constant: Erica's still just a voice, not a face – and keeping the latter anonymous is now more important than ever. After being unnerved by situations as innocuous as a skateboarder passing her by on her first day out, Erica buys an unregistered gun. One presumes it's just for protection. And when she later witnesses a murder in a convenience store and shoots wildly at the gunman when he comes after her, Erica is suitably horrified. The next time there's a danger, though, she decides to kill again, later wrestling with the fact that revealing her weapon would have probably been enough to save her. She's not comfortable with what she's doing, but she doesn't stop. 

Foster is unsurprisingly terrific as Erica, projecting her usual toughness while physically looking like a stiff breeze could snap her in half. She knows that feeling shocked doesn't mean turning frozen. Best, she never lets Erica get smug, even as the media's screaming about the vigilante they're sure is a man or as she befriends the detective investigating the case (Terrence Howard, smoothly proving that indignation can be righteous without being arrogant). As Erica finds herself increasingly mired, Foster's expression is tense but about to crumble, with tears always threatening but rarely unleashed.

Of course, The Brave One wouldn't really work if Erica didn't turn into a magnet for crime, but the parade of coincidences that accompany the character's development is a minor script weakness. More impressive is the film's ability to wring your gut. Its violence is pervasive and all the more sickening due to its presence in many forms: It can be graphic, like Erica and David's vicious attack, which included her being slammed against a concrete wall. (The assailants videotape it, a recording that finds its way back to Erica; she also has audio of confrontations that took place while she was out taping ambient sounds for work.) More often, though, violence is implied or impending: A subplot involving a girl and the stepfather who allegedly murdered her mother is heartbreaking, and each time Erica suddenly finds herself vulnerable is another occasion to hold your breath regardless of the fact that she's packing.

The story's revenge factor is undeniable, but Jordan never plays any of Erica's murders for a thrill. Her actions are the desperate grasps of a traumatized person trying to regain a sense of control. She's surprised by them, is never at peace with them, and she eventually comes to the realization that they're destroying instead of rescuing her. Still, The Brave One is likely to get a raucous response whenever a bad guy goes down. You may be disturbed by this, or you may be one of those cheering. Either way, this movie will make you react.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
 

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

Cheese: The new Brussels sprouts



At one point in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, a struggling Chicago actor named James is giving a career-day talk at an elementary school when he starts rambling. "Get this," he tells the stone-faced kids about his latest job. "It was supposed to be a funny show, but I made people cry. Isn't that silly?"

Curb Your Enthusiam's Jeff Garlin plays James – and also wrote and directed – and although he won't make you cry here, he'll probably make you yawn. Garlin's pet project with the unwieldy title feels terribly familiar, with its chatter about minutiae and throwback, accordion-heavy soundtrack making it seem like a Curb episode directed by Woody Allen. But instead of neuroses that are black-tinged and deep-seated, most of Cheese's navel-gazing is genial to the point of being childlike. "Where'd the term 'dealership' come from?" James asks a receptionist when the reality show he hosts plays a joke on a mechanic. "What about tent sales? What is it about tents that make people want to buy cars?" With each scene change, you can picture Garlin cut-and-pasting riffs he's written over the years to form some semblance of a story. Occasionally they're amusing; mostly, though, it's like hanging out with someone who tediously must express every thought that comes to mind. Or a toddler who just learned how to ask questions.

Then again, perhaps that's fitting considering that the 39-year-old James still lives with mother. The two other things that are important to know about James is that he's fat and looking for love. (If watching the plus-size actor in every scene isn't enough to remind you about his weight, someone mentions it at what feels like five-minute intervals.) He seems to find love but not a solution to his dieting problems when he meets Beth (Sarah Silverman), a "hot girl" who gives James her practice sundae when she's watching her sister's ice-cream shop – and soon, uh, asks him to go underwear-shopping with her. (He's as incredulous as we are.)

Silverman is initially a bright spot in this exceedingly loose film, but her character is impossible to like. The same can be said of the majority of the well-connected Garlin's guest stars: Second City alumni such as Bonnie Hunt, Amy Sedaris, and Dan Castellanata show up, though their main direction was apparently to act weird so Garlin can scrunch his eyebrows together at them.

James does little but meander from rejection to rejection throughout the film. He's dumped personally, he's dumped professionally. None of these turns are given much explanation, despite the fact that, clocking in at a meager 80 minutes, the script had plenty of room for some. Every time someone tells James what a loser he is, though, he never raises more than an affable fuss over it, which makes the character's problems feel all the more contrived. Hearing about a remake of Marty for the Tiger Beat generation, in fact, seems to upset James more than the idea that his life is tanking. This sub-sub-plot at least leads to Cheese's funniest scene – which involves a secondslong upstaging by teen pop star Aaron Carter. Now that's silly.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

The Brothers Solomon

Lame and Lamer

It's hard to defend Bob Odenkirk's Let's Go to Prison. The 2006 comedy coasts along on don't-drop-the-soap cliches and would be completely sparkless if it weren't for its star, Will Arnett. Even then, you have to really be a fan of the Arrested Development-broken actor to let his comedic subtleties trump the movie's broadness. It's in his eyes: A striking blue-green, they lend a delusional, slightly maniacal sparkle to Arnett's off-kilter good looks, which has allowed him to perfect characters brimming with misplaced cockiness. But close up, those pretty peepers could just as easily belong to a frightened little girl. Odenkirk knows this, and zoomed in on them tightly and often to add laughs that the script just wasn't going to deliver.

The pair team up again in The Brothers Solomon, but this time neither the director's go-to move-- which peppers the too-long opening credits as Arnett spies each name -- nor the comedian's general charms can save the project. Written by Saturday Night Live veteran and co-star Will Forte, this dreadful movie focuses on two Dumb and Dumberer-like brothers whose father (Lee Majors) slips into a coma. John (Arnett) and Dean (Forte) were homeschooled and still live together, and though both want to settle down, their lack of early socialization has turned them into clueless daters. They're not terribly picky – on a networking website, they describe their ideal woman as "female" -- but their strategies keep them single. Dean, for instance, tries to impress a date by showing her father "the ultimate respect" and kissing him on the lips. (Yes, there's a saliva bridge as he pulls away.) John likes to hang around the supermarket and buy women groceries like normal guys buy drinks at a bar. When he picks up someone's tab and you see him, in khaki shorts and a sport coat, seductively fingering a banana as he looks over at her, it's kind of funny. But when he stops her from leaving the store and says, "I don't mean to be rude, but I just bought your groceries," it's rather unsettling. 

The brothers need to step up their efforts, however, when their dad's doctor tells them that a patient has a better chance of surviving when he has something to look forward to – so they decide to have a baby. Using the ever-versatile craigslist, they find Janine (SNL's Kristen Wiig), a woman who's willing to rent out her womb for cash. She doesn't mind that John and Dean are bumbling; naturally, she comes to the realization that despite their weirdness, they're "really sweet," as she tries to convince the hot neighbor (Malin Akerman) John wouldn't mind impregnating. Janine's boyfriend, James (Chi McBride, Arnett's Let's Go to Prison suitor), however, has an anger problem as it is, and isn't too thrilled about the two goofy white dudes suddenly hanging around his girl.

Cringingly, you get the feeling that the filmmakers thought it would be hilarious to cast McBride as James, because how crazy would it be for the petite, blond Janine to have a big, black boyfriend? That's about consistent with the general depth of ingenuity here. The script is a painful exercise of potluck humor: You get a bit of Airplane!-esque wordplay, some Simpsons randomness, a lot of awkward pauses a la The Office. What Forte is especially fond of, though, is the incredibly tired fake-out admonishment (starts out stern, ends in a compliment). The jumble of styles would be a momentum-killer even if the jokes did work, but an overwhelming number don't. The brothers are supposed to come off as endearingly hopeful – when Dean asks about one of John's disastrous dates, he replies, "Well, it wasn't exactly an A+. More like an A" -- but it's usually just excruciating. Particularly Arnett's scenes: Any longtime SNL viewer can't be surprised when one of its players humiliates himself on the big screen. But watching an actor who was crucial to Arrested Development's critical (if not commercial) success reduced to smiling stupidly through fart gags is more uncomfortable than anything Ricky Gervais could dream up.   

To be fair, there are a few mildly amusing moments, including the trial runs the brothers put themselves through to prepare for the child ("The baby's lost, and you gotta find it. Go!") and their attempt to spend time with some kids by staking out a playground ("We're trying to coax that little girl into our car, but her mom's being a real pain in the ass," John tells a cop). But the movie's incompetence is mighty enough to snuff out its laughs. Even the outtakes aren't funny, which is the final proof that The Brothers Solomon isn't exactly an A+ -- more like a D.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Them - Halloween

You don't know who they are in Them, a thriller from writer-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud – which makes the film feel more like an experiment in nerve-rattling minimalism than the true story it's purported to be.

 

After a frightening but ultimately useless intro, Them focuses on a French couple who realize they've come under attack in the middle of the night. Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) is a schoolteacher living with her scruffy writer boyfriend, Lucas (Michael Cohen), in a cavernous if rickety mansion in Middle of Nowhere, Romania. (Perhaps they're married, but with exchanges such as, "Are you sleepy, Mr. Sleepy?" they're newlyweds at best.) After dinner one evening, she spends some time grading papers while he goes to bed. But soon Clementine is waking Mr. Sleepy up, because Messrs. Intruders are outside making a racket and perhaps stealing her car. They investigate but soon shut themselves in, forced to take cover by aggressive beings armed with a flurry of flashlights and what sounds like evil noisemakers.

 

The remainder of the film's 77 minutes is spent as the couple alternately hides, searches, and is chased, while both they and the audience see no more than flashes of attackers who seem to be human but have that all-seeing, supernatural serial-killer third eye. It's quite similar to the recent Vacancy – Bonamy even resembles that film's star, Kate Beckinsale – and though it gets points for being less graphic, Them is overall a weaker film. For one, the couple may be trapped in their home, but this is a place the size of Cleveland – long spooky hallways or not, whenever the characters take five minutes to walk from a bedroom to the front door, you imagine that there has to be an inner sanctum among all the rooms that would allow the victims to more effectively hide. Pacing is also a problem: Relying too frequently on long, silent scenes of waiting and lurking about, the directors aren't good judges of when quiet tension gets boring, making the story one in which a whole lot of nothing happens.

 

If you haven't seen Vacancy – or are sick of by-the-numbers slashers – Them is a relatively enjoyable and often spooky sit. (Clementine's car in particular gets a few Christine-worthy scenes.) The big end, though – well, it may not be what you've been dreaming up, but it's not exactly a Sixth Sense-impressive  reveal, either. And after such a measured buildup, a film that makes you go,  "That's it?!?" is perhaps worse than one that was just bad all along.

One imagines that the appeal of remaking a movie is the relative brainlessness involved. Grab a ready-made script and a DVD of an old fave, and the hardest part about creating a film is over. Now it's time to pick your cast, dress 'em up, and point 'n' shoot.

 

The new Halloween, by that standard, is a surprise, then – though maybe not to fans of writer-director Rob Zombie's earlier, much maligned work, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. Zombie's "reimagining" of John Carpenter's overrated 1978 classic is, for once, a true claim. The general timeline of the Michael Myers story remains largely the same – Mikey debuts as the Li'l Murderer one Halloween night as a child and returns to his hometown after escaping a mental facility as an adult – but Zombie shifts the movie's magnifying glass to expand on the biggest mystery of the original: What set this kid off? (And, admittedly less important but more infuriating: Why the hell couldn't a teenage girl fight off a six-year-old who was merely standing in front of her?)

 

Halloween opens with a scene in the Myers' kitchen the morning of Oct. 31: Mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), no doubt tired after a night of stripping, is cooking breakfast for her three children while fighting with her wheelchair-bound boyfriend, Ronnie (William Forsythe), who pelts her with threats such as, "Bitch, I will crawl over there and skull-fuck the shit outta yeh!" The baby's screeching and her slutty teenage daughter, Judith (Hannah Hall), is mouthing off, but Michael (a Kurt Cobain-coiffed Daeg Faerch) merely kisses the baby hello and proceeds to eat. Of course, he had to wash his hands first – they had gotten quite bloody when he killed one of his pet rats.

 

After he's forced to go trick-or-treating alone that night – a scene that's set, camp-free, to "Love Hurts," the movie's sole ridiculous musical cue in a soundtrack filled with KISS, Rush, and, naturally, the original's haunting score – Michael decides to take care of the family turmoil by offing Ronnie, his big sis, and her boyfriend. (And Zombie takes giant steps toward realism by having him attack his victims when they're distracted, say, or asleep.) At this point, Michael's face is nearly constantly covered, mostly with a clown disguise but, in a touch that's both spooky and a nice wink, digging out the iconic Mike Myers mask to terrorize Judith. He'll spend the bulk of his incarceration crafting and hiding behind such concealments, pointing out perhaps a little too psychobabbly too his mother, "It hides my ugliness."

 

The first half of Zombie's Halloween is spent on Michael's childhood crimes and his time in the detention center, mainly his sessions with his frustrated therapist, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). And though the nightmare-family rationale may be cliched, this look into Michael's childhood is quick-moving and fascinating. Faerch's performance is a little rough around the edges considering the young actor's experience – he'd probably be in trouble if the masks didn't help him project "evil" -- but with his apple-cheeked face and the baby voice he uses when Michael's around his mother and the baby, the kid is still creepy as hell. The best part of Zombie's addition to the plot, though, is what makes the entire movie worthwhile despite a plodding second half, and that's the director's stylistic flair. Nearly every shot feels carefully crafted, but like in The Devil's Rejects, there are a handful here that are mini-masterpieces of visuals and sound, particularly the aftermath of one of Michael's detention-center murders: With the ambient noise silenced, a whooping siren accompanies the slow-motion reaction as the camera eyes a nurse's bloody hand, Michael being restrained, and his mother silently screaming. It's hypnotic.

 

When the film skips to Michael's adulthood and his escape, however, it switches to straightforward homage – and falters. Now played by Tyler Mane, Michael is gigantic and no doubt intimidating, but his quick succession of murders when he returns to his hometown feels gratuitous and, worse, illogical: One liberty Zombie took with the latter half of the story regards the reason he's hunting Laurie (an annoyingly cutesy Scout Taylor-Compton in the Jamie Lee Curtis' role), and killing off all her friends doesn't quite go along with it. Zombie also eschews typical teen-slasher cheesiness, an asset that turns into a liability during this segment. Refusing to rely too heavily on the trendy whipped-around camera, Zombie often trains on each murder victim, always bloodied but never cartoonishly gory. The seriousness makes the mayhem feel realistic, yes, but also brutal and nearly voyeuristic, inching toward torture-porn territory. It's hard to feel entertained. Yet even as when the new Halloween proceeds as a scene-by-scene re-creation, you can feel Zombie's effort in each unique camera angle and dark-but-not-done-before atmospherics. For once, this is remake, not a regurgitation.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com
   

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - Balls of Fury

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

 

It’s a little hard at first to believe Billy Mitchell, the subject of the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It’s not because the Florida restaurateur and hot-sauce shill, now in his early 40s, was once crowned “Gamer of the Century” after setting records on a number of classic video-arcade games—most notably Donkey Kong, on which he recorded a seemingly unbreakable high score of 874,300 in 1982. Nor is it because he’s still proud of those achievements and was happy to talk about the good ol’ days with Seth Gordon, the film’s director.

Rather, what’s difficult to believe is that the character of Billy Mitchell you see onscreen actually exists. Now that reality shows and mockumentaries have hardened us to the truthiness that’s out there, your natural reaction to Mitchell may be that the dude’s been coached. The hair: long but tidy and businessman-slick, accompanied by a trimmed full beard. The clothes: skinny black pants, dark shirts, and patriotic ties for a monochrome look that says “I love the ’80s.” And, finally, the attitude, which involves not only referring to himself in the third person but announcing things like, “No matter what I say, it draws controversy. Sort of like the abortion issue.” Come on.

But Mitchell persistently uses that same self-important tone whether he’s talking about the “absolute brutality” of Donkey Kong or going on about what it takes to be a winner in life and, well, it would have taken some serious craftiness on the filmmakers’ part to fashion a person who wasn’t an inherent ass into the Mitchell you meet. The King of Kong also isn’t a nostalgia trip but an update. Mitchell had been sitting pretty on his record for more than two decades when a challenger emerged in 2003. Steve Wiebe, a 35-year-old father of two, had just been laid off from what he expected would be a lifelong job at Boeing (his father had worked there) when he discovered that he was pretty good at Donkey Kong. Desperate for a purpose, he looked into the game’s best score and decided to try to beat it on his home machine. Fate was not on his side: As the film shows, Wiebe was always the frustrated-but-amiable loser, gifted in sports and music but never quite able to become the No. 1 anything. He even lost his job the same day that he and his wife bought their first house.

The nerds went wild over the competition anyway. The nerve center of the gaming world is Twin Galaxies, an organization with “referees” who police the virtual world by recording game statistics and player rankings as well as creating codes of conduct. Its founder, a slightly weird and vaguely bummish man named Walter Day, is tickled by the unexpected rivalry, as are the assortment of eccentric characters—mainly refs and other record-holders—included here, most of whom pretty much admit that they’ve got nothing else going on in their lives. Again, the high degree of geekdom that Gordon presents knocks you off-balance a bit: Is this meant to be merely a let’s-laugh-at-the-freaks project, a real-life Napoleon Dynamite?

Mercifully, the answer is no. The King of Kong genuinely unfolds into a classic and very funny underdog story, yet because of the bizarre subject matter—and bizarre subjects—it never feels clichéd. Better yet, Gordon makes you understand that the competition really isn’t a joke to these guys: Wiebe submits a tape that shows him beating Mitchell’s record (and in which Wiebe’s young son repeatedly and hilariously demands, “Wipe my butt! Stop playing Dooooonkey Koooooong!”), but when his score is disqualified by Twin Galaxies, he twice travels to compete in person at a sanctioned machine. (Yes, there’s a conspiracy, and it’s strangely compelling.) But Mitchell, even after sneering about how setting a world record at home doesn’t mean a thing, well, let’s just say that the talent he shows off best here is running his mouth. The players’ motivations, and therefore their humanity, eventually trump their initial caricatures as it becomes clear that neither of them want to hold the world record just because. As with any other sports film, there’s tension and snarkiness and thrills and even, unfortunately, tears, although this bit of melodrama is kept to a flash. “It’s not even about Donkey Kong anymore,” Wiebe says as the competition is about to boil over. And you believe him.

And that's the 1,498 reason why this was a bad idea

 

Balls of Fury has nearly all the elements that make The King of Kong a success—a nerdy pseudo-sport, characters that can politely be described as eccentric, an obsession with the ’80s—yet the music to Donkey Kong will stick in your head longer than this disaster. Born of Reno 911! creators and stars Robert Ben Garant (writer-director) and Thomas Lennon (writer-co-star), Balls of Fury barely even counts as a one-joke movie, considering that the sloppy former table-tennis champion who serves as its main sight gag isn’t very funny.

Cringingly unsuccessful Jack Black wannabe Dan Fogler is Randy Daytona, a one-time Ping-Pong prodigy whose defeat in the 1988 Olympics resulted in his gambling father’s death. Nineteen years later, Randy is still digging Def Leppard and headbands but no longer competes, instead eking an existence out of performing Ping-Pong-related stunts at a dinner theater favored by the elderly. One day, an FBI agent (George Lopez) enlists his help in catching Feng (Christopher Walken), some kind of criminal table-tennis overlord who killed Randy’s father. In order to get close to Feng, Randy needs to be invited to his underground competition, which means receiving training at the hands of a blind Chinese man (James Hong) and his lithe-but-fierce niece (Maggie Q).

If you’re waiting to read about the funny parts, you just did. Garant and Lennon bring a vague sense of Reno 911! silliness to Balls of Fury, but set against the series’ best episodes, it feels like the first draft from a couple of guys who drunkenly slurred “Let’s make a movie!” after stumbling home from karaoke night. How else could they defend what feels like dozens of jokes about prostitutes? And a love interest—poor Maggie Q—who literally hates Randy in one go-nowhere scene and is kissing him in the next? And here’s an easy game: Guess what’s coming when the FBI guys say that

a communication device needs to travel with Randy “the old-fashioned way.” Gas, groin kicks, and a random pet panda—ha ha, it’s dead!—are also dragged out for so-called laughs.

Fogler, all hair, chub, and unfunny mugging, is as unpleasant as the attempts at humor are exhausting. Even Walken can’t redeem a minute of this mess, though his contribution might have been a little amusing had the trailers not given it away. Allow me to throw one of Balls of Fury’s lines right back at it, courtesy of Randy’s boss when he gets fired: “Get your stink out of my theater.”

 

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