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Grown Ups

November 15, 2010 by

I wonder at what age Adam Sandler will stop playing the same character we’ve seen for the last fifteen years.  While I’m not an anti-Sandler, I simply feel this disconnect with him these days, as if somehow his formula train has passed within the last few years and nobody told him.  Yet, Grown Ups proved to be one of his biggest box-office performers, which is shocking considering it’s his laziest film in a long time.  At 44 years old, the man knows his fan base, and they continue to support him making junk like this.  But watch them turn and abandon him when he dares to act in more ambitious projects that may not totally work (Spanglish, Funny People), but showcase him stepping out of his bubble.

Grown Ups could be the worst film of Sandler’s career.  The pitch is to throw a group of has-been comedians past their prime in a single frame to see what sticks.  In this experiment we have Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Kevin James.  If three of these five can’t sell tickets on their own, let’s throw all of them together.  The studio made a smart move, as the writers need not provide any material, only to watch the dollars pour in.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve hated some of Sandler’s other efforts more than this (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan), but Grown Ups surely tested my endurance for quick-buck filmmaking with a Couples Retreat or Ocean’s Twelve approach of throwing a group of name-actors together and producing a film about them simply hanging out.

In Grown Ups, Sandler has the lead role, the wealthiest and most successful of the bunch, married to a Latin fashion designer played by Salma Hayek.  This of course fits in with all of Sandler’s other films—as his scuzzy, sarcastic and self-absorbed characters have a tag-along wife suited for a Miss America contest.  He’s been significant other to (on film) the likes of Kate Beckinsale, Marisa Tomei, Courteney Cox-Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder, and Bridgette Wilson among others.  And also in all or at least most of these films, the writing must address why this gorgeous woman would be attracted to Sandler’s character.  I’ve always found this footnote of Sandler’s work to be more entertaining than the work itself.

Nonetheless, I need to return to the plot.  Sandler and his family of luxury head off to the funeral of an elementary school basketball coach from Sandler’s youth.  Back in good ol’ 1978, this coach led Sandler, James, Rock, Schneider and Spade to a major championship victory game (a game won on a bad call by the ref).  All the boys reunite for this event.  Sandler delivers a eulogy (as if this coach has zero family present whatsoever), while Schneider performs an outlandish opera piece that is inevitably mocked by his buddy listeners.

Following the funeral, the boys and their families head off to a cabin for the weekend.  Sandler thinks his two snotty brat sons could use some time away from maid-service and M-rated videogames.  Kevin James and his wife, played by Maria Bello (has she really been reduced to this?), are having intimacy problems.  She also still breast-feeds her ’48-month-old’ son.  Chris Rock is husband to his working wife, while he stays home to cook and manage the house.  He also puts up with his live-in mother-in-law who believes him to be wasted space.  Rob Schneider wears a ridiculous hair-piece and makes out with his wife in public (she also happens to be in her 70’s).  That leaves us with David Spade, a loner womanizer who becomes entranced by 2 of Schneider’s 3 daughters that join the group at the cabin (supermodel-looking 20-year-olds, mind you).

The quirks of each character as described above spell out the ongoing ‘jokes’ that proceed through 105 minutes of spellbinding stupidity.  Bello breast feeds her 4-year-old while the guys look on in amazement.  The old mother-in-law displays a nasty bunyon on her foot.  Schneider gets frisky with his old lady in-camera.  James takes and makes cracks about his weight.  Spade lays around naked.  Rock takes condescending insults from his wife.  The five middle-aged guys urinate in a public pool that turns the water navy blue.  And throughout most of the film, the five main actors dish out sarcasm to each other, as if someone forgot to bring the script to the set that day.  All of this adds up to these people learning a lesson about making time for and respecting one another.  How cute.

If I experienced one or two chuckles in this thing, they really have to be considered negligable in regard to the film’s complete laziness.  I will openly warrant several Sandler vehicles a pass, including: 50 First Dates, Anger Management, The Longest Yard, Click, The Wedding Singer, Big Daddy and probably more.  He’s a comic in his own league refusing to grow up.  That’s all fine and good, but don’t try to sell me a complete waste of time like Grown Ups.

[Rating:1/5]

Filed Under: Comedy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Mega Piranha

November 10, 2010 by

Piranhas are found in a handful of rivers  in South America. They are usually slightly bigger than a man’s hand, and are widely feared for their ability to eat a 400 pound animal down to the bone in minutes (they occasionally eat the bones as well). Now, what would happen if they started to grow to hundreds of times their normal size? That’s right. They would choke the river with their bodies and die of asphyxiation, and the worst part of it would be the cleanup. Problem is, that doesn’t make for much of a movie, which is why, when he saw a script with the title Mega Piranha, any director with half a brain would have run the other way. Apparently, Eric Forsberg wasn’t that smart.

This movie has the same basic strategy as the Megalodon films; take something people are scared of and make it even bigger. Except that, unlike sharks, piranhas are feared for their tendency to attack in groups, each one taking many little bites. You might as well make a movie about giant germs. This might be the worst movie I have ever seen, but it’s so much fun to make fun of; an excellent candidate for Deathstalkering. So prep your air tank and leave the cap off your de-skeletonizer ointment as we tear into the bloated, drifting carcass that is Mega Piranha!

It starts the way all monster movies start, with a couple picnicking next to the Orinoco river. They go for a swim and get eaten. So far so good. But then, with no break, Forsberg shows us a boat going down the same river. On board is an American ambassador and some other bigwigs. The piranhas actually attack the boat, sinking it. Mind you, we’re less than five minutes into the movie. We then meet Jason Fitch (Paul Logan), some special forces-type guy (that’s all the explanation we get) who is dispatched by the U.S. Secretary of State to investigate the ambassador’s disappearance. Logan has the body for playing a special forces guy, but we’re going to spend most of the movie wondering who taught him to act. It’s as if he watched 30 seconds of a John Wayne movie and tries to recreate it over and over. He doesn’t say his lines so much as bark them out, and every single line is awkward. He makes Gerard Butler’s performance in 300  look subtle and understated. To his credit, though, he does manage to keep a straight face when he delivers the line “It wasn’t terrorists. It was giant piranha.” Fitch has to sneak out of the Venezuelan base where he is staying in order to do his job without a corrupt colonel interfering. He walks around half-bent over in order to show us that he is sneaking, and that he is a sneaky special forces guy. To further emphasize his sneakiness, Forsberg fills this scene with totally random (and pointless) camera wipes from all directions. These wipes cause the guards to go blind right before Fitch walks by. You can actually see guards start to look at him and then quickly turn their heads away.

Following this death-defying escape, Fitch meets Sarah Monroe, a scientist (former pop princess Tiffany, trying desperately to slow the aging process. You can almost hear her thinking “Oh, and I used to sing to sold-out shows. Sob …”). She tells him that the boat was sunk by piranhas, who are getting bigger by the day because they were injected with a serum called O-Hucares, and they will keep growing exponentially until they are (I’m not kidding) the size of a whale. So Fitch teams up with Monroe and her team of nerdy scientists to fight the potentially world-destroying phenomenon of giant piranha.

The abomination that is the special effects in this movie deserves a section all its own. Also ala Meg, Forsberg relies completely on CGI for the visuals. No miniatures, no

Oh, yes they did.

animatronics, just cheesy, pixelated images, clumsily bolted over the footage. I don’t hold that a film has to have seamless special effects to be worthwhile, but that shouldn’t be an excuse not to try. And even with a limited budget, a resourceful filmmaker can make decent effects. James Cameron and his crew built only six Alien models for Aliens, but with some creative camera work, they made us believe there were hundreds of them. Similarly, our first ever glimpse of a face-hugger in Alien is simply Ridley Scott’s hands in a pair of gloves. CGI has become an excuse for a lot of wanna-be directors to be lazy. Were model piranhas so hard to come by? Would it have been so hard to use a few five-dollar air hoses to generate the thrashing in the water? Was it so prohibitive to rent one helicopter, instead of the computer-generated blob that we see, then use a split-screen to reproduce it?

Then there’s the editing. Countless times, we see the same footage used over again. At one point, when Fitch’s phone battery dies, Monroe tells him to suck on the battery. We actually watch him do this for close to two minutes.

The stupidities just keep piling up. Once the piranha problem is known, the Venezuelan government actually tries to eradicate the plague by firing lots of missiles into the river. (And you thought W was trigger-happy.) Later, Venezuelan soldiers interrogate a prisoner by smacking him with a phone book. Toward the end, the piranha seem to have not only grown to enormous size, but developed a death wish, as we see them leaping out of the water, and crashing into buildings, resulting in huge explosions! One fish actually impales itself on a light house!

The one thing you can sort-of feel good about in this movie is that nothing was wasted. No good actors poured their talents into a hopeless script. No quality special effects were wasted on a stupid concept. All the components of this movie deserve each other.

There are a couple of lessons we should take away from this. One is that, as we saw in Meg, bigger does not mean scarier. Many things, piranhas included, are scary for their speed, their efficiency, and above all, their invisibility. When they grow to such size that they have to leap out of the water to do anything, and then they explode, it’s stupid, not scary. The other is that incredibly lame monster movies were not limited to the days of the Blacklist. The only thing Mega Piranha has that, say, Invasion of the Saucer-Men didn’t is bad CGI. Hollywood has always spat out tripe, regardless of the political landscape.

As much as I complain about this movie, I have to admit, we had a great time making fun of it. It’s perfect for lampooning. It’s stupid, it’s over the top, there are countless opportunities to insert lines or jokes, and these opportunities are extended by bad editing. And of course, just when you think it can’t possibly ask you to swallow anything more ridiculous than what it already has, it does. From Fitch ninja-kicking a school of piranha back into the river (I’m not kidding) to a school of piranha actually eating an entire destroyer (I’m still not kidding), this is one of those movies you have to see to believe. The one thing that is kind of impressive is how actors say things like “Florida is being attacked by giant fish!” without cracking up. I wonder how many takes they had to do.

[Rating:0/5]

I wanted to include one real mega-piranha, since it’s more interesting than the movie.

Filed Under: Action, Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Blues Brothers

November 9, 2010 by

The Blues BrothersNormally I’m not a fan of musicals.  Every time the plot gets going, the actors out into song for no reason and I have to wait several minutes before we can just get on with the story already.  There’s only so much bad lip-synching and odd choreography a guy can take before shutting things down entirely and spending the evening playing Peggle instead.  Pseudo-dramas like West Side Story are the worst offenders, as I can’t help but wonder why, given that the Jets and the Sharks don’t get along, they somehow manage to pull off two hours worth of singing and dancing instead of just fighting each other and getting things over with.  But I digress.  My point here is to establish some groundwork to lend a bit of context to the following sentence: The Blues Brothers is awesome.  It’s a musical that is keenly aware of how ridiculous it is, and embraces the nonsensical rules of musicals with brilliant, often hilarious, results.

The basic idea is pretty simple, and follows a well-worn path we’ve seen a hundred times before: Jake and Elwood, two brothers who used to be in a blues band before Jake got sent to prison, have to come up with five thousand dollars in three days or their former Catholic school will be forced to close its doors forever.  The catch? Sister Mary Stigmata, whom the brothers affectionately call The Penguin, demands that the money be procured legitimately.  Their solution? Get the band back together and put on enough shows to get the money.

Blues Brothers: Aykroyd, Belushi

Jake and Elwood, on a mission from God.

From that point on, the movie just expands on this basic premise while upping the ante and increasing the exaggerations until the final car chase which is so ridiculously over-the-top one can’t help but be absolutely flabbergasted.  Following their visit with The Penguin, the brothers go to a church service where an energetic pastor played by the legendary James Brown leads the congregation in a rousing chorus so boisterous the choir members are doing backflips 20 feet in the air.  It’s enough to convert even the most hard-hearted heathen, and Jake and Elwood become convinced the Lord is personally sending them on a mission to save the orphanage.  From then on it’s a road trip in the grandest tradition of the genre as the two brothers must not only reunite the band but find a way to scrape together enough cash to stop the orphanage from shutting its doors forever.  The ending is a foregone conclusion, but like all good road trip movies, it’s the journey that is the reward.

But what makes The Blues Brothers so enjoyable is the fact that it wholeheartedly embraces its own absurdity, while Aykroyd and Belushi play their characters with such straight-laced seriousness that Elrond himself is probably jealous.  Director John Landis seems to take a “well, why not?” approach to things, and by the end the movie practically defines gratuitous excess.  A car chase through a mall decimates nearly every store and kiosk in sight.  A jilted ex-fiancee uses RPGs and remote-controlled bombs (clearly labelled “Detonate,” naturally) to exact vengeance.  Another car chase involves dozens upon dozens of police cruisers and ends with a small army of cops, SWAT teams, and military personnel tracking the brothers through the streets of Chicago.  The whole spectacle is all the more astonishing considering there is nary a pixel of CGI in sight.

Of course there are musical numbers throughout the film, but the toe-tapping blues tunes powered by greats like Areatha Franklin and Ray Charles keep the energy high and fit perfectly within the strange confines of the ridiculous storyline.  And while I doubt I’ll be loading my Netflix queue up with more musicals anytime soon, I did thoroughly enjoy this story of two brothers on a mission.

Rating: [Rating:4.5/5]

Filed Under: Musical Tagged With: , ,

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

November 3, 2010 by

Star Trek VIThe first episode of the venerable Star Trek sci-fi series was aired on September 22, 1966, and spawned an entertainment tour de force that, despite some rocky times in syndication and various states of cancellation, continues to chug along even today more than 30 years later.  But with the passing of time, the weathering of the starship Enterprise, and the graying of its crew, the original series that started as a gleam in Gene Roddenberry’s eye graced the silver screen for the last time 25 years after it began.  Even though Undiscovered Country is the sixth movie in the sci-fi franchise, it stands tall as one of the best and still holds its own against its spry, modern, younger successors.

In a bit of a twist from previous films, Sulu is never seen together with the rest of the Enterprise crew.  Instead, from the outset of the film, he is in command of his own ship The Excelsior (Note to William Riker: this is called career advancement).  Off exploring space as usual, his ship encounters a gigantic energy surge resulting from an energy explosion on the Klingon moon Praxis which was, as near as I can tell, basically a gigantic Klingon Power Plant.  In a brilliant twist on typical Star Trek lore, the mighty Klingon race is forced to come to the Federation for aid lest they go extinct as a species in less than five decades.  Kirk is then put in the awkward position of playing would-be ambassador to the Klingon high council, an incredibly uncomfortable diplomatic role considering that his son was murdered at the hands of Klingons.  It’s this type of juxtaposition that is the hallmark of Star Trek and all good science fiction, and further propels Undiscovered Country into the upper echelons of Star Trek movies.

Star Trek VI Cast

The gang's all here

The phrase “Action-Packed” has never been apt for Star Trek, save for the notable exception of First Contact, but it wouldn’t be far off the mark here.  After the abysmal Final Frontier, and knowing that this film would be the series’ swan song, director Nicholas Meyer (who also helmed the brilliant Wrath of Khan) ratchets up the intensity on all fronts.  From the uncomfortable dinner scene aboard the Enterprise, where the Klingons and Enterprise crewmen can barely contain their disdain for each other while General Chang (Christopher Plummer) and Kirk try to out-Shakespeare-quote each other, to the amazing courtroom scene (“Don’t wait for the translation!”) to the final showdown between the Enteprise and a Klingon bird of prey, Undiscovered Country is about as intense as they come.  There’s also a bit of mystery, treachery, backstabbing, and old-fashioned fisticuffs thrown in for good measure.  It all comes together quite well, despite a few missteps here and there such as the over-the-top climax which is far too abrupt and logic-defying to go over with much satisfaction.  Believe it or not, even the visual effects are far from terrible, though still mired in typical Star Trek cheese.  Couldn’t they find decent model builders by now?

Star Trek VI Courtroom

The Klingon judicial system: a model of legal efficiency.

Unfortunately what gets sacrificed here, as with some of the other movies, are the characters.  Most of Kirk’s intrepid crew is reduced to goggle-eyed stares at the viewscreen or groan-worthy one-liners.  The story here is about Kirk, and to a lesser degree, Bones and Spock, and unlike Voyage Home no one else is given any significant contributions to the story.  It’s an unfitting sendoff for Sulu, Uhura, and of course Scotty, but given the high quality of the movie as a whole these character missteps are somewhat forgivable.

Few movie series ever make it to their sixth iteration, and those that do are mostly content to cash in on trends, following the same regurgitated storylines all the way to the bank. But rather than churn out a halfway decent film destined for the VHS bargain bin, Meyer and his crew gave Undiscovered Country all they had and put effort into crafting a work that respects the source material while offering an incredibly pleasing finale to the journey begun by Gene Roddenberry more than three decades earlier.

Rating:[Rating:4.5/5]

Filed Under: Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , ,

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

October 27, 2010 by

Star Trek V: The Final FrontierThe Star Trek movie franchise is one of the most inconsistent string of films in existence. While some franchises are either mostly good or mostly terrible, the Star Trek movies swing like a pendulum from amazing to awful.  Conventional wisdom among Trekkies states that every other film is good, and my experience pretty much verifies this.  The first one in the franchise spends well over two hours chasing Kubrick’s coattails and ends up being a mess of heavyhanded philosophizing, but its sequel, Wrath of Khan, is considered one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time.  And so the pendulum swing begins, with Search for Spock floundering while Voyage Home soars.  The pattern being established, then, things don’t look good for Final Frontier from the get-go, even though it’s directed by William Shatner.  If anyone can do justice to a Star Trek film, it’s Captain Kirk, right?  Unfortunately, the pattern holds true: Final Frontier is a poorly written, haphazardly directed, logic-defying science fiction disaster.

Things begin with a bit of promise, as all the trappings of classic science fiction are present and accounted for:  Mysterious Distant Planet? Check. Strange aliens? Check. Hints at a violent struggle–a system to be overthrown–and an allegorical savior figure, check.  We then meet our intrepid Captain James Kirk (affably played, as always, by the great William Shatner), free-climbing mountains in Yosemite with all the fervor a post-middle-aged guy can muster, and soon find and his pal Bones (DeForest Kelley) him teaching Spock (Leonard Nimoy) how to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat around a campfire.  It’s a tad endearing, and all in all not a bad start for the film.

Star Trek V: Go Climb a Rock

Good advice, Shatner...

It’s not long before things spiral hopelessly out of control, with Starfleet sending Kirk and his aging crew off to the aforementioned Distant Planet to figure out what is going on with Sybok, the man who has taken over the only settlement on the planet.  Why Starfleet would send Kirk on a dangerous mission with a brand new Enterprise that is clearly not ready for a trip around the block, much less across the galaxy, is the first of many such asteroid-sized plot holes in the movie that is just too big to overlook.  Sybok, no doubt cribbing from a few self-help books, persuades all of Kirk’s loyal companions to follow him and turn against their fearless captain.  With the flip of a couple switches, the Enterprise gallivants off to the mythical Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy all because Sybok thinks he will get to have tea with the Almighty. Turns out the mythical Great Barrier is a) about five minutes away, and b) about as impenetrable as a kleenex, meaning Sybok and company sail right through as easily as if they were heading off to Risa for a cup of earl gray.

The final showdown with God has all the drama of a middle school play, but it does give Shatner a chance to ask one of the great questions that has plagued mankind since the dawn of time:

Meantime, those darn Klingons keep causing trouble (wouldn’t you if Kirk had blown up your starship two movies earlier?), and the fabled Enterprise crew is reduced to uttering one-line expositions while staring blankly at the bridge viewscreen.  The movie is an exercise in futility, and the special effects are as cheesy as a jar of Velveeta (though to be fair, this wasn’t entirely Shatner’s fault).  Even though a few lighthearted and genuinely entertaining bits are scattered here and there, it’s like having to sidestep piles of horse manure to pick up some candy at a parade.  As Kirk and his bros enter into a reprise “Row Row Row Your Boat” to close out the film, the best we can do is wish that the film would have also been left ‘but a dream.

Rating:[Rating:1/5]

Filed Under: Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , ,

Days of Thunder

October 21, 2010 by

Days of ThunderTop Gun Days of Thunder, from director Tony Scott, is a pretty decent action/drama movie about a plucky, hotshot fighter jet pilot NASCAR driver, played by Tom Cruise, and his bitter journey to exorcize a few personal demons in the cockpit on the race track while trying to balance a newfound romance with a pretty astrophysicist doctor.  Of course there’s a healthy dose of competition from his frenemy-with-a-clever-nickname Iceman Rowdy, and a healthy dose of high-speed flight race scenes, a crash or two, and enough close calls to have your nails digging into the seat.

Ok, so it’s not the most original movie out there, but Days of Thunder is a perfectly passable by-the-numbers late-80’s dude flick.  Tom Cruise plays our unfortunately-named protagonist Cole Trickle with all the vintage Tom Cruiseness you could hope for.  He knows he’s one of the biggest stars in the world, and from time to time the frame can barely contain the sheer amount of smugness on display.  Filling out the cast is a couple of acting giants–the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Trickle’s Luke Skywalker, Nicole Kidman as the no-way-she’s-old-enough-to-have-completed-med-school doctor, and even some B-listers like Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes, and Fred Thompson.  The movie is kind of a who’s who for movie stars in 1990, and for that reason alone, Days of Thunder is worth watching.

Days of Thunder: Cruise, Kidman

Now that's how you do product placement.

The basic idea here is as predictable as one would expect, and if you’re in doubt even for one moment how things will end up when the credits roll, it’s back to movie-watching-101 for you.  Our hero Trickle (it’s hard to even write that without laughing out loud) starts off as a disgraced race car driver eager to get back in the saddle, while his would-be mentor wants nothing to do with race car driving anymore.  But sure enough, Cruise is soon cruising (get it?  No?  You didn’t watch the trailer, did you?) around NASCAR tracks at 190 mph, dodging tires and sparring with rednecks for the elusive checkered flag.  His old mentor gets on his case for taking too many risks, and–you guessed it–Cruise’s newfound racing career is brought to a sudden halt–a trickle, if you will–when he crashes one too many times and ends up in the hospital along with racing nemesis Rowdy.

Will the two solve their differences?  Will the pretty doctor fall for the crazy scientologist?  Will Robert Duvall ever have a role as good as Tom Hagen?  It’s not rocket science, people.  It’s not even finger painting.  But it is actually a lot of fun.  Watching stock cars zoom around, crash into walls, and explode into tiny bits is a joy to behold, and it’s fun watching these A-Listers overact all the way to the bank.  Tony Scott’s fast-paced overblown directorial style is in full effect here, and as long as there’s a bucket of popcorn and 12-pack of Mello Yello handy there’s really nothing no way not to mindlessly enjoy Days of Thunder.

Rating:[Rating:3.5/5]

Filed Under: Action Tagged With: , , ,

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

October 18, 2010 by

I love a good time-travel story.  From the Terminator films, Back to the Future series, and ripping yarns like the 2000  film Frequency, there is something alluring and exciting about the past and future colliding.  Even the recent Star Trek reboot found a few wormholes.  Time travel will always come across in film as a tricky contradicting device full of paradoxes.  In Prince of Persia, the film bases its premise on the possibility that time travel and its power may fall into the wrong hands (as all films of this sort do), but it presents time travel in a limited arrangement.

The plot introduces the Persian empire at the height of its power.  Its king is paraded through the streets where he comes across a defiant young boy who seeks to protect another young man from punishment as a result of thievery.  In fact, it feels very similar to a live-action version of Disney’s Aladdin.  This protective boy, Dastan, stirs up the king’s heart, and the orphaned boy is taken into the royal family as a young prince.  Later on he grows up to become the adult Jake Gyllenhaal, bulked up with flowing dark hair and bronzed skin attributed to multiple trips to the tanning salon.  He is a trained warrior, and trusted commander in the nation’s army.  Dastan’s royal brothers are set to capture the peaceful city of  Almut.  Though Dastan’s skills as a fighter are commendable among his siblings, they feel he is not ready for such a massive attack.  To prove himself worthy, Dastan scaffolds the wall of Almut and lays siege to the city, leading a small band of soldiers to victory before the royal brothers arrive.  Dastan becomes a hero, and as such, takes a handsome dagger from Almut—one with mystical powers. 

During a celebration, the ceremony is interrupted when a prestigious cloak, laced with an acidic poison, is offered to the king and kills him very quickly.  Dastan, having been asked to offer the cloak before the ceremony, appears to be the traitor with the intent of taking the throne.  Quickly afoot from his own people, Dastan escapes with a princess of Almut, Tamina (Gemma Arterton) captured shortly following the attack.  Tamina’s sole interest is in protecting the dagger Dastan carries and returning it, as it has the power to rewind a minute (or roughly so) in time.  It soon becomes apparent to Dastan that someone, most likely his eldest brother, must have been after the dagger for its power.  The story eventually expands the power of the dagger in revealing an underground stone ruled by the gods that can ultimately lead to a total reversal of history and mankind’s complete destruction.  What else is new?

Caught in this storm of chaos, Dastan seeks out his uncle (Ben Kingsley), the only man he can trust to clear his name and restore order in the kingdom, as well as return the dagger to safety.

Regarding the dagger and its power, I love how the story has found a way to eliminate the paradox of time travel.  The dagger holds a button on it, that if pressed with the proper sand in it (dopey, I know), simply rewinds time back about a minute.  Only the holder of the dagger knows that any change has taken place.  So in essence, there really isn’t any traveling in time—time is simply rewinding itself, and this is the limit of the dagger.  I like the premise, and the limited power there.  But of course the premise takes things to a new level once man’s history is revealed.  The gods apparently had wiped out all of humanity but one young girl who pleaded to live and was granted her survival.  She was given this dagger of power and it has been kept in secret… blah, blah, blah.  The narrative makes a huge leap to potential world annihalation, and once this happens, the story gets incredibly sloppy and stitched together, when it could have stuck to this dagger’s original limit of power.  I’m sure that would have been more enjoyable.

Prince of Persia is based on a video game series I haven’t played, nor ever will I’m sure.  And of course, this coulda-shoulda-woulda blockbuster film from Producer Jerry Bruckheimer (hoping so desperately to turn this into a Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) delivers a very expensive product.  You can see it onscreen, even if a few of the digital shots look a little hammy.  With a lot opportunity here, the film turns to silliness to try and exact the charm of that Johnny Depp adventure.  The problem is that Gyllenhaal is no Depp.  And as much leaping and jumping around as Gyllenhaal’s stuntmen do, as muscle-bound as the actor has become, it doesn’t bring natural charisma or wit to his performance as a side effect. 

The story doesn’t help Gyllenhaal’s cause.  Pirates was silly, yes, but the characters carried the plot.  Once Prince of Persia evolves into a history lesson on the gods’ wiping out humanity, and their intent on doing so again if the dagger is misused, I felt the story crumbling in on itself, as if I could see the writers in the background trying to staple ideas together.  Ultimately, the film gets too big, too silly, and too careless for any of its original ambitions to prevail, and the filmmakers should have realized that a mammoth production wouldn’t sell itself.  Pirates of the Caribbean certainly didn’t.  Bruckheimer had his ace in the hole after all was said and done—Johnny Depp making an icon out of Jack Sparrow.  Unfortunately he failed to repeat that process.  While Persia still isn’t quite the mess that the third Pirates film became, it’s still about as silly and unpolished.  As a marginally enjoyable big-budget diversion, I found this film to be watchable, but I can’t heartily recommend it.

[Rating:2.5/5]

Filed Under: Action Tagged With: , , , , ,

Lord, Save Us from Your Followers

October 15, 2010 by

It's hard to take a documentary seriously when it's billed as "Michael Moore-meets-Monty Python."In this age of digital movie making, instant YouTube publishing, and homebrew editing software that anyone can use, I’m starting to wonder just what qualifies a work of film as a documentary.  In the classic sense, a documentary should investigate a subject in the hope of arriving at some type of conclusion.  And if no conclusion can be found, then at least the documentary should unearth facts, viewpoints, or ways of thinking that are generally missing from the public consciousness.  But when anyone can pick up a camera and start filming, the brute force research and legwork required to produce a quality piece of work is often missing at the expense of graphical flair and story narrative.  Even though Lord, Save Us from Your Followers is an interesting look at faith in America today, it doesn’t function well as an actual documentary on the subject.  In the end it is more of a video-blog of one man’s journey to some sort of spiritual enlightenment or resolution.  An entertaining and at times touching video blog, but nonetheless, it would be hard to draw any meaningful conclusions about religion, or specifically Christianity, after watching this film.

The idea, as director/narrator/star Dan Merchant tells us, is to find out why Jesus’ gospel of peace has resulted in such extreme viewpoints in our country.  Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, David Koresh, James Dobson…all have espoused a particular brand of Christianity, but all are fairly divisive when expressing their viewpoints or political opinions.  How can this be, asks Merchant, and how can we rectify the Culture War that supposedly exists in our society today?  His solution is to dress up in a white jumpsuit with all manner of religious extremist bumper stickers and paraphenalia, cobble together a camera crew, and interview people on the street about what they think of Jesus, Christians, and Christianity.

Lord Save Us from Your Followers - Dan Merchant

Dan Merchant, stirring the melting pot.

His results are about what one would expect–some people think Christians are mean-spirited, others think they are kind and loving.  Some think Jesus was the son of God who died for our sins, and others think he was more along the lines of a troubadour with an impressive array of parlor tricks at his disposal.  Also chiming in are Al Franken, Michael Reagan, Rick Santorum, and other prominent figures in American politics and media, each with a position on the issue or at least a personal story to tell.  Excerpts from speeches by Presidents Bush and Obama, as well as prominent media figures like Jon Stewart and Bono, also add some good perspective into the mix as well.

The most interesting, and ultimately effective, segments are when Merchant talks to  secular radio host Shelia Hamilton in Portland, Oregon, about her station’s involvement with the Christian relief organization World Vision, his exploration of the Christian response during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and his time spent with Night Strike, a ministry that serves homeless people in Portland.  In each of these instances he discovers that, despite the politicking of some outspoken leaders in the Christian community, the ground-level view held by many in the secular world is that Christians are nice, decent folks who are willing to lend a helping hand or two when the going gets tough.  It’s these bits that are comforting and reassuring, and help dissipate the pharisaical air of so many national Christian figures.

Lord Save Us from Your Followers - Sister Mary Timothy

Sister Mary Timothy, who has a less-than-positive opinion of most Christians...

Unfortunately, for every morsel of genuine insight in this movie there are a dozen flashy gimmicks and Michael Moore-style empty-headed stunts that do nothing except to draw attention and generate a few laughs or crocodile tears.  A few statistics are thrown out here and there, like the fact that 9 out of 10 individuals in America profess a belief in God, but a cheesy Family Feud-style game show pitting Christians against Atheists sheds light on nothing and only serves as a distraction from the main argument of the film.  Anecdotal evidence, gleaned from dudes on the street or interviews with mid-level politicians, should never be confused with actual research.  But actual research is rarely flashy and, darn it, just takes so much time.

A large segment near the end of the film is dedicated specifically to the mainstream Christian treatment of the gay community–or at least the perception of mainstream Christians by a handful of gays and lesbians.  In a bit that seems oddly self-serving, Merchant sets up a fake reverse confessional at a gay and lesbian festival in Portland, and invites people to hear his confessions and apologies on behalf of all Christians and their treatment of the GLBT community.  Discounting all serious theological arguments that many decent, level-headed Christians have to the GLBT lifestyle, Merchant sanctimoniously offers his apologies to the gay community and promises to offer love and support rather than condemnation and ridicule.  It’s the kind of stunt that might generate a few DVD sales, much like Michael Moore driving around Washington D.C. with a megaphone, but ignores the deeply-held convictions of many individuals on both sides of the fence.  Editorializing should have no place in a documentary, but sadly, it is far too often on bold display here.

The film does serve as a somewhat compelling wake-up call for Christians who might need to swallow a taste of their own medicine from time to time.  It is certainly worth watching, and should be required viewing for Sunday School classes (if for no reason other than to generate a discussion), so long as it is accompanied by a healthy-sized grain of salt.

Rating:[Rating:3/5]

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