Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (Book and Movie)

December 5, 2010 by

So it has come to pass. Twenty years after an “idea simply fell into” author J.K. Rowling’s head, we are nearing the completion of a franchise development truly without precedent. Not only did Rowling manage to write an extremely rare heptilogy of novels, and make every one engaging enough to keep readers begging for more, but Warner Brothers Studios is now nearing completion of a truly unique achievement: an actual octilogy of multi-hundred-million dollar films, consistently written and cast over ten years. This achievement deserves mention, even if it’s ultimately just a testament to mindless consumerism. With so many major characters in the epic tale, many of them juveniles, keeping the entire cast together for eight movies must have been a managerial and legal nightmare, to say nothing of churning the movies out fast enough to (almost) keep up with the aging actors. Add to that the level of special effects the story requires and the problems always posed by child actors, and it’s truly amazing any of these films turned out decent.

And I would have to say, that’s just what they are: decent. Nothing more, nothing less. None of them are bad by any means, but it’s impossible for me to watch one without thinking about how much more powerful the book was. The books, unfettered by the logistical problems mentioned above, and free to be as long as they needed, took us to places no movie ever could. Two of the most powerful scenes from Book VII – when Ron destroys the locket, and when Herminoe attacks him afterward – have been reread many times by me, drinking in every word and feeling the raw emotion of the characters. Both of these scenes are pretty flat in the movie. In all honesty, though, I can’t read the more recent books without longing for the early books.

The tone of the stories has certainly changed along the way from Sorceror’s Stone to Deathly Hallows. Check out this excerpt from Stone, chapter 8:

There were a hundred and forty two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with vanishing steps halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn’t open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren’t really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk.

Now listen to Hallows, chapter 1:

“Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort. Snape raised his eyes to the upside-down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, Severus! Help me!”

“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again. “For those of you who do not know,” said Voldemort, “We are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently, taught at Hogwarts.”  There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A broad, hunched woman with pointed teeth cackled. “Yes, Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all about Muggles … how they are not so different from us …”

“Severus … please … please …”

Nobody laughed this time. There was no mistaking the anger and contempt in Voldemort’s voice. For the third time, Charity revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again.

“Avada Kedavra.”

The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked. Several Death Eaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor. “Dinner, Nagini,” said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and slithered from his shoulders onto the polished wood.

We all love stories about more exciting worlds hidden in our own. As we all know, the premise of Harry Potter is that there is a civilization of wizards and witches living in hiding somewhere within our own world. There are enough of them and they have enough power and resources to have their own towns, traditions and unique modes of transportation. Of course, if you’re buying this, you’ll probably buy that there are mutant turtles practicing ninjitsu in the sewer. Why haven’t any of the zillion satellites orbiting the earth photographed Hogwarts? How could an airborne event the size of the Quiditch World Cup go unnoticed by Muggles? If wizards are so powerful, why do they need to hide? The story occasionally posits flimsy explanations for this, but of course, we all know, the real answer is WHO FRICKIN’ CARES? Harry Potter gives us the chance to escape our world completely and enter one of dragons, adventure and the moral clarity that’s hard to find in real life.

Some more questions about Harry’s world: if Parseltounge is such a rare gift, why can any human apparently talk to Aragog the Spider in Chamber of Secrets? Why is Hogwarts full of ghosts, while Harry’s parents and other’s killed by Voldemort are truly gone?  (This one must have hit Rowling about halfway through the series, because she starts ignoring the ghosts as much as possible about then.) Things like this weren’t a problem when we laughed with 11-year-old Harry on magical school grounds, but as Rowling made the books more and more serious and world-changing, we were forced to question them more and more. One of the most irritating features of the movies is that they increasingly portray Harry against a backdrop of skyscrapers. Harry Potter was at his best when we could join him in a closed universe, nothing like our own, and forget our troubles amid the innocent fun of quiddich and wizard’s chess. Frankly, the subject matter of Harry Potter just isn’t worthy of epic battles and mature romance.

Having said all this, I must confess that I still genuinely enjoyed the later books, and genuinely enjoyed Deathly Hallows, Part 1. Splitting this story in half enables the film to at least come closer to the depth and richness of the book. I’m eager to see Part 2. If you’re a Potter fan, you should check this one out. Just do me one favor. Don’t deprive yourself by only watching the movies. PLEASE read the books.

The Book: [Rating:4/5]

The Movie: [Rating:3/5]

Filed Under: Action, Books, Drama, Family, Movies, Mystery Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Batman

December 4, 2010 by

BatmanI was nine years old when Tim Burton rebooted the beloved Batman franchise, replacing the aging Adam West with a much younger (and, for many fans, much more controversial) Michael Keaton and giving audiences their first look at a Gotham City that was dripping with darkness.  Far from the bright palettes and cartoony enemies of the 1960’s TV show, this new Batman was grim, unflinching, and strikingly violent.  It also ushered in a new era for comic book movies and summer blockbusters, and reaping a pile of cash for Warner Brothers that continues to grow to this day.  But was the movie any good, or was it all spectacle and marketing?

The answer is a little of both.  There are few effects-heavy movies that stand the test of time; aside from the original Star Wars trilogy, Kubrik’s masterful 2001: A Space Odyssey, and classics like Jason and Argonauts, modern audiences have little patience for obvious blue-screen chroma key and once high tech effects like stop motion.  Unfortunately, Batman does not hold up quite so well, but this wouldn’t be a problem if the plot and acting were any good.  As it stands, Batman can be seen today as an average comic book film or a sub-par comic book film, but either way it’s not much use outside of a footnote in the annals of summer blockbuster history books.

I grew up on the cheesy but lovable Batman after-school reruns where Batman and Robin battled an endless array of implausible foes while spouting dialog so terrible it made George Lucas look like Shakespeare.  It was campy and fun, and you have to respect a guy like Adam West who acts so badly with such utter conviction.  Burton eschews much of this campiness, but his version of Batman is trapped in movie limbo:  despite the dark and serious tone of the film, we are nonetheless asked to accept wild and outlandish premises that only work when planted firmly in the roots of 1960’s cheese.  Street thugs, crime bosses, and city officials are depicted as two-dimensional caricatures, barking out lines of such obvious exposition that it’s like watching an eighth-grade school project.  Jack Napier, one of the higher-ups in the Gotham crime syndicate, falls into a giant vat of green toxic waste which transforms him into the venerable Joker.  And his plot to take down the city (because what else would a criminal mastermind do) involves contaminating all the city’s cosmetic products with poison that causes victims to die of laughter (no I am not making this up).

Kind of makes the idea of exploding sharks seem almost normal.

Batman: Michael Keaton

Michael Keaton is Batman...striking bewilderment into the hearts of Gotham City criminals.

As if to countermand the potential silliness of some of these plot devices, this Batman is surprisingly violent.  Almost too much for a PG-13 rating, and certainly more than what most parents would be comfortable having their kids watching.  Watching the Joker dance around the room as he gleefully pumps his victim full of lead is a far cry from the classic Wham-Bam-Pow fight scenes of yore.  It serves the character, one might argue, but to me it reeks of overcompensation.  But throughout the film Jack Nicholson’s turn as the Joker is extremely well acted and the character more or less holds his own when pitted against Heath Ledger’s masterful portrayal of the same character in 2008’s The Dark Knight.  Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the bland, charisma-draining performance of Michael Keaton.  Woefully miscast as Bruce Wayne and his crimefighting alter ego, Keaton somehow manages to pump out lines like “I am Batman” with a straight face, though probably because he does it while wearing a mask.  The romance between him and Vicky Vale (Kim Bassinger, trying her best to fend off her 40’s) is as shallow and unbelievable as we might expect from a 1989 comic book movie, and only serves to give Batman a reason to go after the Joker in the end.  After all, what better motivation could a superhero have for fighting the bad guy than to get back his kidnapped girlfriend?

I have a feeling that if Tim Burton were to be able to re-make his original film today it would be more in line with Christopher Nolan’s mature, dark, and introspective Batman Returns and The Dark Knight. But back in 1989 audiences were hardly accustomed to plausible superheroes with innter turmoil and realistic villains, and in that sense I can kind of understand the motivation for straddling the line between comic book absurdity and dark reflections of reality.  But ultimately Batman is a lot of spectacle without much substance to back it up.

Rating:[Rating:2.5/5]

Filed Under: Action Tagged With: , , ,

Faster

November 30, 2010 by

“I can’t.”

“God can’t save you from me.”

“Where’s the exit?”

“Steel plate.”

“Your dad is sorry.”

“That’s a long dark road you’re headed down.”

“Where’s the old man?”

Sorry to spoil half of the main character’s dialogue in Faster, but I couldn’t resist.  Ah, good ol’ gritty revenge sagas for bulky action stars of few words—you gotta love ’em.  Dwayne Johnson should generally be pleasing his action fans with Faster, as everything but “The Rock” splitting up his name brings him back to that brawny star his followers have missed since 2004’s Walking Tall.  Now he’s out to settle the score against the men who made a snuff film out of his brother’s and his own murder.  Did I lose you?  I promise this isn’t science-fiction… for the most part.

Director George Tillman, Jr. attempts to strip down excessive vigilante tales and bring the premise to its most basic of elements, so much so that his lead characters don’t even have names—they’re rooted in archetypes, acting as functions of formula or machines driving the plot.  The film opens with Driver (Johnson) being released from prison while his face practically has ‘bloodthirsty’ written all over it, and he simply requests for the exit.  He sprints away from his incarceration to an auto lot where his wheels of vengeance await, a 1971 Chevelle all spruced up and film-ready.  Driver has a list of perps to take out one by one.  Who will stand in his way?  Enter a scruffy Billy Bob Thorton as Cop.  You wouldn’t believe he’s ten days away from retirement, has a wife and son who want little to do with him, and he’s a dope addict trying to scrape by until he’s home free.  Cop is partnered with another detective, Cicero (Carla Gugino) to track down Driver, or at least follow up on his trail of dead bodies.  Not only are the cops on Driver’s trail, but an assassin labeled Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) has been dispatched to stop Driver in his tracks before the body count gets too high.

Driver has been driven to kill (forgive me) after a bank robbery went bloody sour, and he watched his older brother bite the dust.  Even Driver himself took a gunshot to the back of his skull, but not before he declares: “I’m gonna kill all of you.”  I’ll let the movie tell you how he survived a bullet to the head.  Armed with a .454 Casull, unlimited ammo, the look of a hungry grizzly bear, and a list of names, he’s ready to find some bad guys.  Tillman counts the passing days throughout the film as Dwayne Johnson covers lots of ground killing lots of bad guys, and finds little to no interference from the law, even with his giant shaved mug covering every flat-screen television in America.

I can find a lot to like in Faster, but I question what Tillman is after here.  Revenge tales come and go all the time, so why try and flatten leftovers?  If you’re going to take the last remaining current action star, which is really a debatable title for Johnson these days, why don’t you try and make him memorable?  Why divulge in archetypes?  I think he is going for a grittier tone sans all the visual extremes of Tony Scott’s bloated, yet engaging Man on Fire.  But Johnson is playing more machine than Schwarzenegger ever saw in his day.  His character is far less interesting than Thorton’s and Jackson-Cohen’s.  Johnson gets little to do and his fans will be hard-pressed to find an action sequence that isn’t abrupt and to the point, allowing The Rock to do little more than grimace and pull the trigger.  His physicality is constantly paraded in front of the camera and yet never utilized.  This is most definitely a point-blank film featuring nearly zero glaring, complex action sequences, and because of this, those expecting the return of Johnson laying the smack down, may have their hopes up a bit too high.

I have no doubt viewers will still be interested in a low-rent, gritty film that’s delivering Johnson into R-rated territory.  This stripped-down thriller seems to taking things a little bit seriously, yet also feels self-aware.  Tillman presents us with tools to get the bloody job done and he does so.  I suppose I was looking for a little more flare and intrigue.  Did I buy into Faster?  Who cares.  I had a good enough time to remember it for another half hour.  Here’s hoping another filmmaker finds Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on that rare day where he has a thirst for action movies, and let’s hope that filmmaker doesn’t hold back.

[Rating:2.5/5]

Filed Under: Action Tagged With: , , , ,

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)

November 23, 2010 by

Harry Potter Deathly HallowsI’m not the world’s most aredent Harry Potter Fan.  I read the first three books partly out of a sense of generational obligation, and partly out of mild curiosity, but always found their Lord of the Rings-lite sensibilities to be more than a bit uninteresting.  They were entertaining and charming, but midway through Goblet of Fire I gave up and went back to George Orwell and Tolkien.  I just wasn’t too interested in Harry Potter’s adolescent crises amidst the magical world of Hogwarts and bludgers and muggles…oh my!  Well, not in reading about them anyway.  I did enjoy the movies, as they tended to distill the essence of each book into an easily digestable cinematic experience, and all of them have been pretty solid film offerings unlike some other book-to-movie adaptations.  I also appreciated that the themes of the books and movies tended to mature with the characters and, subsequently, their audience.  There’s only so many Quidditch games and slug-vomiting potions a guy can take before he takes the advice of his 6th grade D.A.R.E. instructor and just walks away.

But the most recent movies like Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince (not to mention the ending of Goblet of Fire, which I thought was a bit of a cheap move on Rowling’s part, but dark nonetheless) have seen the tension factor ratcheting up higher, the implications of the conflicts grow ever wider, and the characters dealing with some serious life-and-death stuff.  Add to that some examination of spirituality and romance, and the Harry Potter series really has come a long way since magical chess games and diatribes on the correct pronunciation of Wingardium Leviosa.

Deathly Hallows: Harry, Ron, Hermione Grown Up

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all growed up.

And so we have the stage set for the final chapter in the Harry Potter series.  Doing away with the concept of exposition entirely, since if you don’t know who these people are by now you have no business watching, the film gets right down to business with Potter and his friends on a mission to escape a posse of evil Death Eaters sent by Lord Voldemort, J.K. Rowling’s counterpart to Dr. Claw.  They all meet up at the Weasleys, the most ill-conceived safe house location ever (unless Hagrid and company were hoping Voldemort and his goons would overlook the most obvious place in the world for Harry Potter and his friends to hole up for a while) and take pains to evade detection by the most powerful evil wizard in the world by having a gigantic wedding party for a pair of secondary characters whom we are supposed to know or care about.  Soon Harry, Ron, and Hermione set out on the ultimate teenage wizard road trip/collect-a-thon as they try to locate seven Horcruxes–objects where Voldemort has stored up bits of his eternal soul.  Destroying these will bring an end to evil once and for all and allow Harry to finally get some much-needed closure about his parents’ murder too.

It’s actually kind of refreshing to have a Harry Potter movie focus so much on the three main characters.  Hogwarts is nowhere to be found in the entire film, and instead Potter and his friends set out to make the ultimate travel brochure by visiting every last gorgeous landscape and sweeping vista to be found in the entire United Kingdom.  As they magically transport from one locale to the next, they deal with a lot of relationship issues and even have a bit of good old-fashioned romantic jealousy come between them (even though Ron and Hermione are about as believable of a couple as Anakin and Amidala) while seeking out the Horcruxes and delving deeper into the mystery of the Deathly Hallows.  We are also given much more insight into the characters of Draco and Lucius Malfoy, and begin to ask some serious questions about Professor Snape as well.  It’s this type of three-dimensionality that this final installment offers that sets it high above so many other entries in the fantasy genre.

Deathly Hallows: Draco Malfoy

Draco Malfoy, who doesn't know the meaning of the phrase "bad hair day."

It’s an engaging tale well told, and as dark and grim as the series has ever been.  A couple beloved characters have been dispatched over the various entries in the series, but in Deathly Hallows it seems no one is safe from the Grim Reaper’s scythe.  The film even has some genuinely disturbing parts too, and is certainly not a movie for kids.  Women are tortured and sacrificed, bodies are mutilated, and we see Potter and his friends go to some very dark places in order to do what needs to be done.  It’s a world of ambiguity and grey morality, and offers some thought-provoking questions on what it means to simply do the right thing.

In the nine years since The Sorcerer’s Stone was unleashed into theatres, Harry Potter and his friends have been on some absolutely incredible journeys.  It’s almost sad to see things finally coming to an end, and as such I didn’t mind at all that this final film was split into two parts (Part 2 is scheduled to blow the doors off the box office in summer 2011).  We’re in the homestretch now, and even though Deathly Hallows is a striking departure from the rest of the series, it is a fitting beginning to the graceful swan song the series deserves.

Rating:[Rating:4/5]

Filed Under: Science Fiction Tagged With: , , ,

Bubba Ho-Tep

November 19, 2010 by

Bubba Ho-TepBruce Campbell practically defines what it means to be a B-movie star.  His CV includes some of the best low-budget material of all time, and even to this day his iconic portrayal of Ash in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy is one of the best cheesy horror movie performances you can find.  Maybe it’s his deadpan seriousness, or his masterful delivery of tongue-in-cheek ironic comedy, or maybe it’s all about the chin.  But whatever it is about Mr. Campbell, he has one of the most loyal and devoted fanbases of any Hollywood star, and is perfectly suited for a movie about a geriatric Elvis impersonator battling a reincarnated Egyptian mummy for control of his eternal soul.

Well, maybe not an Elvis impersonator.  Campbell’s character Sebastian Haff could very well be Elvis for all we know.  As Haff tells it, the King himself was tired of living the life of a rich and famous rock star, so he switched places with the best Elvis impersonator he could find.  When Haff kicked the bucket in 1977, the world assumed it was the real Elvis, which left the true real Elvis still alive.

It’s this kind of quirky logic that keeps Bubba Ho-Tep firing on all cylinders throughout its 90-minute run time.  Campbell plays Elvis to the hilt, giving us an utterly believable portrayal while delivering lines like “Your soul suckin’ days are over, amigo!” with such conviction that one can’t help but root for the guy.  Perfectly complementing Campbell’s grumpy Elvis is Ossie Davis, one of Elvis’ friends at the nursing home who is convinced he is JFK.  Yeah, I know.  Trust me, it all makes sense when you watch the movie.

Bubba Ho-Tep: Elvis, JFK

Elvis and John F. Kennedy, together at last.

The plot seems so terrible at first glance that it’s easy to dismiss the movie outright.  Even the idea of spending an evening watching two grumpy old men fight a reincarnated mummy king is enough to make me want to go fetch my high school calculus textbook for a bit of escapism.  But it’s the heart and soul that Campbell and Davis bring the movie, not to mention whip-smart direction by Don Coscarelli and dialog so funny it had me nearly shooting rice krispies out my nose, that makes Bubba Ho-Tep shine.  And for all its strangeness, there is a heartfelt sincerity at work here as these two men with virtually nothing left to live for find a strange sense of purpose and fulfillment in going head to head with an evil reincarnated mummy king.

The special effects are as cheesy as they come, the groan-inducing dialog is razor-sharp and eminently quotable, and the acting is as good as B-grade films can possibly hope for. Bubba Ho-Tep is the kind of movie that is perfectly suited for Bruce Campbell, and it was a pleasant surprise that caught me off guard but lured me in right away with its pitch-perfect blend of dark humor and genuine emotion.

Rating:[Rating:4/5]

Filed Under: Comedy Tagged With: , ,

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: , ,
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