Day 308: Boyhood

"I was never concerned about the state of your soul."

Writer/director Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused) set out to do something truly unique back in 2002. He set out to make a film about one boy's journey through his adolescence, but do it in real time. With a team of dedicated actors, Linklater shot the film Boyhood over a period of 39 days spread out over 12 years. Essentially, what Linklater was able to achieve was nothing short of a miracle, and this film, by all rights, shouldn't even exist. Yet it does, and it is every bit the miraculous piece of filmmaking Linklater likely set out to create. Boyhood is truly as close to perfection as a film can get, and will likely stand the test of time as one of the towering achievements of motion pictures. Read on to find out why...

Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is your typical six-year old boy. He's struggling at school in the way most six-year old boys struggle at school, he's got an older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) that's always giving him a hard time,  and he's got a mom (Patricia Arquette) who is adjusting to life as a single parent since his dad Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), ran off to Alaska to find himself. Faced with few options,  his mother decides to uproot the family and move to Houston to be closer to her mother. She begins taking classes at a community college, and before long falls for her professor Bill (Marco Perella), and joins her family with his.

Over the next 12 years, Mason faces adversity in the form of a seemingly never-ending string of new towns and new friends, as well as new step-fathers, all while just growing up and trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. With their dad finally back in the picture, albeit as a once in a while dad, Mason and Sam continue to grow and discover themselves, all while attempting to navigate the typical trials and tribulations of human life.

The most miraculous thing about Boyhood, beyond its mere existence, is how the film is simultaneously about nothing and everything. The film is heavy on incident, to be sure, but never at the expense of just letting a moment play out to its natural conclusion. At 166 minutes, it should be a labored, bloated behemoth, but it's the next evolution in the kinds of films Linklater has always made, commonly referred to as "hang-out movies." I don't mean this as an insult in any way, shape, or form, but Boyhood is the ultimate hang-out movie because you never tire of hanging out with these characters. Mason's story is my story, is your story, is everyone's story. Anyone who's ever been a child in America can relate to this film, and I imagine a number of universal truths will extend far beyond our country's borders.

The truly remarkable thing about Boyhood is that it's a never-ending string of scenes that you're bound to relate to. Linklater managed to cram a whole lot of living into this film, from baseball games to midnight book releases, from camping trips to boring church services with family, this film seems to cover every possible activity you can think of without ever feeling belabored or required to hit certain beats. The film felt to me like a much more accessible version of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life in that it so perfectly captures the human experience without ever consciously trying to do so. A film filled with moments is much more likely to resonate than one filled with plot twists and turns and other busy frivolities. You'll walk away from this film ruminating on the things that hit the closest to home for you personally, and it will perfectly speak to everyone in different ways.

Arquette and Hawke are both actors I've never really been over the moon for, but they both do career best work here. Arquette fills her character with the right amount of empathy without ever pushing her too far into sainthood or victim mode. It's an incredibly nuanced performance, definitely the best she's done in a very long time. Hawke is similarly great, reveling in playing the fun, hip single dad that gets to show up and have fun with the kids, but always struggling to connect with them in any meaningful way. Hawke very obviously brings a lot of his own personal and emotional baggage with him to the screen, and it pays off beautifully. Lorelei Linklater is also terrific, effortlessly being your average American girl without ever consciously trying to act like one.

It's Coltrane who turns out to be the greatest discovery of all, however. Linklater never could have known when he cast him as a five-year old, what he would grow into, but the director's always had a knack for finding talented young people, and Coltrane is likely his greatest discovery. Coltrane has all that same effortlessness that Lorelei Linklater does, but he also manages, particularly in the second half, to carry the film so adeptly, it's as if he's doing what he was born to do. It's an incredible performance, the kind that can only come from the kind of process used here, and I actively look forward to whatever he does in the future.

As for Linklater, there's no doubt that this is his masterpiece. The only way to score big is to shoot big, and Linklater banked a lot of hopes on this film, and manages to cash them all in by the end. He's never been the flashiest director, and that serves him so well here because he doesn't seek to feed any messages to the audience. He'd much rather let moments happen and allow the audience to come to them. The sheer dedication to the film is what makes his achievement so incredible. That he was able to see even a year into the future, let alone twelve, shows that his vision extended far beyond what the average director would have undertaken. 

Perhaps the greatest thing about Boyhood is that none of the things that I've just spent the last few paragraphs praising is ever present in your mind while you're watching the film. The characters and their journey manage to absorb you so completely that it's not until after it's all over that you sit back and just marvel at how Linklater and his team were able to make it so seamless. Boyhood is nothing short of one of the finest American films of this decade, and will easily stand the test of time and work its way onto best of lists that critics will write a hundred years from now. This is what great filmmaking is all about, and the thing that sets this film apart from all the other "great" films of American cinema is how slowly and stealthily it sneaks up on you. Much like life, it's over before you feel it's even begun. 

GO Rating: 5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 307: The Purge: Anarchy

"Big Daddy, we have two for your personal purge, we're bringing 'em down now."

Last year's surprise hit The Purge was the latest in a long line of thrillers with a great premise and boneheaded execution. The fact that the film's opening weekend total equaled roughly one-half of its total domestic gross was but one indicator that people were intrigued by the concept but turned off by the execution. One of the biggest complaints was how narrow the focus of the film ended up being. For a world where all crime is legal one night a year, why hole up in the suburbs with a rich family who has their home invaded by madmen? 

The inevitable sequel, The Purge: Anarchy, clearly set out to solve that one specific problem by opening up the world and showing how chaotic things would be on this night in an urban landscape. So could this film beat the odds and end up being a better execution of a decent premise, or would it once more drop the ball, failing to live up to its potential? Read on to find out...

On a March night in 2033, the annual United States "Purge" is about to commence. For 12 hours a year, all crime is legal, and though they make it a point to say "all crime, including murder," murder's still the only crime anyone's interested in committing. A single mother named Eva (Carmen Ejogo) is leaving her job as a waitress to go home to her teenage daughter Cali (Zoë Soul), who is wrapped up in watching online videos calling for people to rise up against the "New Founding Fathers" that started The Purge, as they see it as a means of getting rid of the poor and working classes. In another part of the city, a man known only as Sergeant (Frank Grillo) is arming himself to go out and purge one specific person. In still another part of the city, Shane (Zach Gilford) and Liz (Kiele Sanchez) are on their way to Shane's sister's house to wait out the night when their car breaks down (for reasons that are explained, but are no less stupid than if the car had just miraculously broken down) stranding them in the middle of the city just as The Purge commences.

A bunch of thugs break into Eva's house, abducting Eva and Cali and bringing them downstairs to a tractor trailer. The Sergeant sees this happening from his car and though he tries to convince himself to drive off, he gets out of his car and kills the men trying to abduct the women. Seeing that they have no way of defending themselves, he offers for them to come with him, and when they return to the car, they find that Shane and Liz have snuck into his car to hide. After another series of events, the Sergeant's car breaks down, leaving the five stranded on the streets, with the Sergeant about to abandon them to go carry out his mission for the evening. When Eva desperately offers him another car if he stays with them, he takes her offer and they must travel to get the new car.

I would love to tell you that the movie's almost over at this point, but that's only the first act and the very beginning of the second act. Not only is the film 103 of the most bloated minutes I've spent in a movie theater this summer, it's also 103 of the dumbest. This franchise sucks. There's simply no other way to put it. Closing the world up and focusing on one family didn't work. Opening the world up to focus on a bunch of people similarly didn't work. I'm sorry James DeMonaco, there's no way for you to make this premise work. Sometimes a writer has to just say to themselves, "The Twilight Zone is no longer on the air, and my idea sucks if it goes on for more than thirty minutes, so I'll just have to take satisfaction in knowing that I had a great idea that just doesn't work under present circumstances."

Even the anti-Libertarian, left wing zealotry of the first film is amped up here. I had hoped this would be a more frantic film that didn't stop to deal with the implications of the 1% gone wild and the notion of letting someone live because they may just save your life at the end of the film, but DeMonaco was very concerned with shoehorning backstory and history on The Purge into the narrative. There's never a moment when any of this feels organic. At least the exposition delivery system in the first film was mostly done by television and radio reports, so it felt a bit more natural. Here it feels like the flow of the narrative has to grind to a halt any time someone wants to moralize for a minute or ten.

There's more action and more murder and more flames and all of the things that are perfect distractions for the fact that there's simply no story here. There are story lines and story elements, but no story. Survive. That's it. That's the only story. Watch how this group of people attempts to survive. It's insulting to an audience to attempt to make a film that has no story, and hope that all the little Twitter-ready quips you want to throw in about inequality will be enough justification for your movie's existence. It's not enough to have talking points if there's no narrative to weave them in to, and that's indicative of what's really wrong with this film. 

The performances are fine. The actors do what's expected of them which is run, whisper yell, and shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot, but there's no real "acting" happening here. There's also really no one in this movie. I know that the streets would not be overflowing with people on a night like this, but it sort of deflates your argument that the poor have nowhere to go where they can be safe, if every god damned street your movie takes place on never has more than three or four people on it (not counting our band of five "heroes"). I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the absolutely laughable cameo from a character from the first film. That absurd attempt to tie the two films together by more than just The Purge is also emblematic of the filmmakers' contempt for their audience.

There are really no circumstances under which I could recommend The Purge: Anarchy. It's a dumb movie made by and for dumb people. Any one of the films Roger Corman produced between 1969 and 1979 has just as much mindless violence, it's just that when his films took time out to moralize, it was satirical in nature. This film thinks it has something to say, and that's why it's so nonsensical. If there's going to be another one of these (and let's face it, there is), maybe don't set it all on one night. Maybe show how a group of sleazy businessmen have to plan the entire year to pull of a crime that they have 12 hours to get right so they don't go to jail. Something, ANYTHING, other than more non-stop, mindless violence would be better. I'd settle for ninety minutes of rich people sitting in their homes, safe from any danger at this point. At least it wouldn't be an insult to the audience's intelligence. 

GO Rating: 1.5/5

[Images via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 306: Life Itself

"For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand hopes, aspirations, dreams, and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us."

It wasn't an entirely unexpected thing when film critic Roger Ebert passed away in April, 2013. He was very transparent about his battle with cancer from the time he first announced he was diagnosed with the disease in 2005. It was part and parcel with who Ebert was as a writer and a person that he would open himself up to people the same way he had in his movie reviews, books, and various other writings. Always willing to share personal insight, without ever allowing it to overwhelm his opinion on a film, was one of the things that made Ebert the foremost film critic of the modern age. Life Itself is a documentary based on his 2011 memoir of the same name, made by Steve James, a Chicago documentarian whose film Hoop Dreams had Ebert as perhaps its most vocal supporter.

Life Itself was begun five months prior to Ebert's death, and spends a good portion of the film in Ebert's hospital room where he was confined after a leg fracture. Sparing none of the gruesome details of what life was like for him in his final weeks, the film spends most of its time in the past, recounting Ebert's history as the editor of The Daily Illini, the newspaper of the University of Illinois where he attended, despite dreams and talent worthy of Harvard. Ebert is remembered by his friends and colleagues as a ruthless pragmatist who also possessed an incredible talent paired with an equally large ego. Five months after landing a part-time job at The Chicago Sun-Times in 1967, Ebert is given the job of film critic, a bit of a joke position at the paper, but one which Ebert immediately elevates to an art form, thanks in no small part to his 1970 Pulitzer Prize.

Ebert struggles with alcoholism, as well as his ever-inflating ego, before being paired with fellow Chicago critic Gene Siskel of the infinitely more prestigious Chicago Tribune for a movie review program on public television in 1975. The two men were combative, antagonistic, and ultimately incredibly respectful of one another. Once Ebert finally kicked his alcohol addiction, he met Chaz, the woman who would come to be his wife and remained by his side for the last twenty years of his life. Ebert began to mellow, but never lost his ferocious and fiery attitude, becoming a champion of the underdog and becoming lionized by not just the critical community, but  by filmmakers who craved his acceptance of their product.

While it may seem on the surface like a film with very narrow appeal, Life Itself is a story that anyone can relate to, no matter their connection to Ebert or even film in a broader sense. Film was the conduit for Ebert's enjoyment of life, but never took him so far away from all that life had to offer that he couldn't relate to virtually anyone. The film also may sound like a reverential, glorified puff piece made by a man who owes everything to this critic, but it does not shy away from the seamier elements of Ebert's life, whether it be his alcoholism, his ego, his womanizing, or his desire to be close personal friends with people in Hollywood. If anything, it paints him as a real human being to show the less desirable aspects of his life, and as James and Chaz admit, he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

That the film is a tale spun by such an incredible raconteur as Ebert, and realized by a master documentarian like James makes it one of the absolute best films of this or any year. Ebert's life has the makings of a classic redemption story, surrounded by a rivalrous friendship and an amazingly tender love story. As the egotism of his youth and early middle age gave way to the much more humble man he became in his later years, the true impact of Ebert on film as a whole becomes evident. His thumb and the direction in which he pointed it came to be a major selling point for studios and filmmakers, and in a classic superhero arc, Ebert learns that with great power came great responsibility. As he becomes a champion of the next generation of critics, and begins to embrace the 21st century model of blogging and social media, the full weight of his loss becomes noticeably immense.

The film really hinges on the two most important relationships of his life, one with Siskel and the other with Chaz. The constant tête-à-tête with Siskel as they try to not merely convey their opinion of a given film, but also convince the one is right and the other is wrong, provides the film with much of its humor and some of its heart. His relationship with Chaz tips the scales the other way, giving it most of its heart and even some of its humor. When Chaz reveals, for the first time in this documentary, that she met Roger at an AA meeting, we begin to get a picture of two damaged souls that found the perfect salve in one another. The scenes with Chaz reflecting on Roger's final days are among the most crushing and devastating in the film, and are likely to pierce the heart of even the most hardened and cynical in the audience.

The film also doesn't shy away from the brutal medical procedures he must undergo, giving an unsparing look at the end of his life, driven in part by the fact that Siskel kept his illness a secret from everyone, including Ebert, until the very end of his life. That the film also lined up participants as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Ava DuVernay, Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, and Ramin Bahrani is also a testament to how much Ebert meant to people in the industry. The film is very inside baseball so to speak in regards to its filmic content, but it's also incredibly accessible to those who perhaps don't make their living in the same industry. It's a perfectly balanced film that reflects all of the virtues which Ebert himself would champion, and which are perfectly summed up in his quote from the beginning of my review.

Life Itself is, quite simply, one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. All of us can only hope to come to the same realizations later in our lives that Ebert came to, and that is why it's a film that will appeal to everyone. Ebert's greatest gift to the world at large was his ability to show us that we're all artists at heart, no matter our medium, and that we can love our work as much as we love our lives. The film perfectly encapsulates what a great film should be, and it beats with the heart of a man who loved film above all else except, perhaps, life itself.

The film is available On Demand, via iTunes, Amazon, and most other streaming services, and is also playing in limited release in theaters across the country.

GO Rating: 4.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 305: Tammy

"Muscle shirts are for muscles."

Melissa McCarthy is undeniably one of the most talented comedic actresses of her generation. Unfortunately, she is continually saddled with roles that are basically carbon copies of one another, always playing a loud and obnoxious woman whose hardened exterior masks a sensitive soul, and who also puts off a vaguely homosexual vibe that's countered by ferocious acts of heterosexuality. With her newest film Tammy, McCarthy steps, for the first time, into the role of co-writer, producer, and star, giving off a faint hope that she may be attempting something different for once. Does the film succeed, or is it just more of the same? Read on to find out...

We meet our main character Tammy (McCarthy) as she crashes her already damaged car into a deer. She then drives her busted self in her busted car to work at a fast food restaurant where she is promptly fired for being late again, and when she returns home, she discovers that her husband (Nat Faxon) has been having an affair with their neighbor (Toni Collette). Desperate to get out of her small midwestern town and start over, she goes to visit her mother (Allison Janney) and asks to borrow her car. When her mother refuses, she asks her grandmother Pearl (Susan Sarandon), who has already heard Tammy's story and has packed her bags, and tells Tammy that she has $6000 in cash and is coming with her.

And so the two set off in search of adventure, but after the first night of drunken revelry, Tammy wants to go back home, and Pearl accuses her of being a quitter. Tammy insists that she is not a quitter, and the two set off in search of Niagra Falls, a place Pearl has always wanted to visit. A quick detour in Louisville turns into a longer stay than they anticipated when Pearl makes the acquaintance of Earl (Gary Cole), a local farmer with whom she gets frisky. Tammy and Earl's son Bobby (Mark Duplass) attempt to bond, though Tammy is simultaneously assertive and cautious since she is still technically married. A run-in with the law soon sidelines their trip, threatening to undo it altogether.

Tammy is an incredibly unusual film. It just sort of meanders from set piece to set piece with no real force moving it forward, which works both to its benefit and its detriment. Its beneficial in as much as it is a character piece, choosing to spend more time in conversation and situational humor, and very little time on incident and plot points. In fact, I couldn't really tell you what the plot of the movie is, as it changes so often it's hard to keep track. It starts off as a road movie, then it turns into a heist movie, a reunion movie, a romantic movie, and a life lesson movie. None of this is to say that a film can't cross into a number of genres during the course of its running time, but it really felt more like a season's worth of television episodes condensed into a ninety minute film.

Thankfully it works more often than it doesn't, and is a pleasant enough movie to watch, if for no other reason than it takes McCarthy just far enough away from the kinds of roles she normally plays to be considered different. It's a baby step in a new direction, but it's nice to see her doing something that doesn't follow the exact same trajectory that most of her characters have followed. She is incredibly good at playing those characters and imbuing them with enough pathos to make them endearing, but this film attempts to posit her as a romantic lead, at least for a portion of the film, and the only disappointment is that they didn't just go for it completely. I would also be remiss if I did not mention the advertising campaign for this film, which is total garbage. Centering all of the advertising around her robbery of a fast food joint, which occurs right around the halfway point of the film, makes it seem as if its going to be exactly like the rest of her filmography, and is a total bait and switch. Anyone showing up to see that scene for ninety minutes will be sorely disappointed.

If I haven't come right out and said it by this point, I will go ahead and say that McCarthy is terrific in the film, showing that she's at home in a role that's adjacent to what she normally does. Now someone needs to give her a part that's further away from this so we can really watch her shine. Sarandon is terrific as well, having a blast playing a woman who knows that the end of her life is near, and is ready to chuck caution out of the window and live it up. If anything it made me sad that she doesn't get offered more roles that tap into her versatility. The rest of the supporting cast is aces as well, which is to be expected from comedic powerhouses like Cole, Janney, and Kathy Bates, who shows up to do her Kathy Bates thing late in the second act, and succeeds wildly.

McCarthy and husband Ben Falcone co-wrote the screenplay, with Falcone making his directorial debut on the film, and he does a serviceable job behind the camera. The one thing that really stands out about his direction is the flattering way in which he shoots his wife. The lighting and angles he use really allow her to shine, despite the tragic wig and costume choices made for the character. He proves to be as adept as Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) at directing female-centric comedy and will hopefully continue to grow the way Feig has with subsequent projects.

Tammy is an unremarkable movie plot, character, and joke-wise, but for a film that is 90% centered around women, it's as good as one can hope for. There's nothing earth shattering happening on the surface, but the fact that it is the first film in a number of months to portray women as complex beings rather than shrill stereotypes (cough, The Other Woman, cough) makes it stand out. It's certainly not all that it could have been, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not a failure, and it's taking McCarthy to places she needs to continue to explore lest she be accused of doing the same thing in every film. It's a baby step in the right direction, but I'll take a any step over feet shuffling any day of the week.

GO Rating: 3/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 304: The Rover

"You never stop thinking about a life that you've taken. It's the price you pay for taking it."

Australian director David Michôd made a name for himself in America with his 2010 directorial effort Animal Kingdom, which earned an Oscar nomination for a fiercely brutal Jacki Weaver. The film was remarkable in the way it pared away everything except character, making that the most important thing in what was masquerading as a crime drama. For his second feature, The Rover, Michôd pares things down even further, jettisoning most of what was already a relatively small cast for Animal Kingdom, and fixing his gaze on a pair of unlikely companions.

The title card that welcomes us into the world of the film simply reads: Australia. 10 Years After The Collapse. Eric (Guy Pearce) travels the Australian countryside, which has been ravaged by the unexplained collapse, pulling his car over to patronize a makeshift bar in what was once someone's home. A trio of criminals, led by an American named Henry (Scoot McNairy) crashes their car outside the bar and the crooks quickly commandeer Eric's vehicle. Eric manages to get their car working again and gives chase, staying calmly determined to reclaim his property despite the weapons his enemies are brandishing. When Eric attempts to attack, he is knocked unconscious, and when he comes to, the criminals have absconded with his car, but left him theirs for some odd reason. 

As he begins his attempt to track down the men that stole his car, the injured Rey (Robert Pattinson) stumbles on his brother Henry's car, and Eric recognizes him as someone that may have information on where his own car has ended up. He takes Rey into the mountains to visit a doctor (Susan Prior), and when Rey's wounds are dressed, he uses a gun he's procured through rather unscrupulous means to tell Rey that he is to bring him to Henry and his car. As they travel the scorched Australian wilderness, pursuing what may not even be a reliable lead, Eric begins to realize that Rey is ill-equipped to handle the realities of this new society, and attempts to tutor him in the ways of survival.

This is a film that is very low on just about everything except for character. There are very few plot points, even fewer major incidences within the plot, little to no dialogue for long stretches of time, and virtually nothing to look at in the barren wasteland through which they traverse. It's a good thing, then, that these two characters are fascinating enough to want to spend 100 minutes with, despite the fact that they do and say very little. Eric is clearly uninterested in sharing any details of his personal life with Rey, whose slow-wittedness makes him something of an open book. Their relationship starts out of necessity, but following a few coldly dished out life lessons by Eric, and a gripping shoot-out in a motel, Rey begins to see Eric as the mentor that his own brother never was for him. 

The interesting thing about the film, however, is that all of this is very much on the surface. You don't need to dig for these themes, as they're blatantly obvious, so it gives you a chance to just sort of fill in whatever blanks make the most sense to you for these characters. The film wouldn't be out of place in the 70s and early 80s Ozploitation movement that gave birth to such directors as George Miller and Ted Kotcheff, both of whom I feel comfortable placing Michôd right alongside, but even despite some moments of shocking violence, it's much more cerebral than a lot of those genre pictures were. Mad Max gave us the post-apocalyptic action, Wake in Fright gave us the over the top violence, and Walkabout gave us the beauty of the Australian outback, so what Michôd decides to do instead is to play on the audience's knowledge and expectations regarding those films, but subvert it by never giving them so blatant a pay-off.

Natasha Braier's cinematography is brilliant in its sparseness, its harsh contrast between light and dark, and in its beautiful stillness. There are so few female cinematographers, so it's always nice to see one excel at her craft. The film's script is very good as well, giving the audience all they need to keep pace with the film, but depriving them of enough to keep them wanting more. Michôd's direction is just as good as his script, always doing less than he needs to, and never succumbing to the temptation to get flashy with his camera moves or editing when it clearly wouldn't fit the style of the film. 

The performances are all excellent as well, with Pearce proving that he's always at his best when doing very little. He has a gift for subtlety that I wish more directors would tap into, since they always seem to want to keep him playing things so absurdly over the top as to be distracting. As good as he was in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, I think that even he would like to leave that performance behind at this point. Pattinson is equally good, much better than I expected, even in spite of the fact that I've always kind of liked him as an actor despite his poor choices in the past. He injects some much needed pathos into the film, and gives the audience a character to latch on to in the midst of a huge number of despicable people. 

The Rover is a very good film, but not one that's going to set the world on fire. It's unsurprising that Michôd is a contemporary of another wonderful Australian director, Andrew Dominik, whose films are unsparing, but which audiences have, by and large, turned their backs on. They don't shy away from the reality of the world that we live in, or once lived in, or certainly will live in, and that's just not the kind of thing people want in a movie anymore. It's a sad state of affairs, but it's comforting to know that these filmmakers are still out there, producing consistently top notch films despite the public's reticence to embrace them. 

GO Rating: 3.5/5

Images via BoxOfficeMojo

Day 303: Jersey Boys

"You think Frankie woulda cut Tommy loose right then. If that's what you think, you're not from Jersey."

The musical Jersey Boys is what has commonly come to be known as a jukebox musical, meaning that none of the songs are originals, they're all from the same songwriters, group, etc. and there's a story thrown in for good measure to tide the audience over between numbers. As reductive as that label has become, it's actually a very apropos description for this particular show since the jukebox was more or less the pivotal music delivery device of the time. Translating the show to film seemed like a no-brainer, considering its popularity, but the choice of Clint Eastwood as director seemed strange to say the least. So would the film do the show justice, or would it the latest victim of lackluster musical to film translations? Read on to find out...

The film opens in Belleville, New Jersey in 1951, where small time hood Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) works for crime boss Gyp DeCarlo (Christopher Walken). Tommy spends his nights performing with his brother and Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) as The Variety Trio. Tommy's best friend is Frankie Castellucio (John Lloyd Young), a hairdresser's apprentice with a great singing voice. When Tommy gets pinched and sent to prison, he encourages Nick to cultivate Frankie's talent and give him singing lessons. Frankie's talent and confidence grow just in time for Tommy to get out of the clink, and Nick to go in. Tommy invites Frankie to join the group in Nick's absence, and very quickly he makes Frankie the lead singer. 

The only problem is that trios have become passé, and the band will need a fourth member to become a marketable group. Tommy's friend Joe Pesci (Joseph Russo) tells him about a friend of his that just wrote the hit song "Short Shorts" for The Royal Teens, Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen). Gaudio impresses Frankie with his songwriting, and after some negotiating, is invited to join the band. Frankie and Bob have a drive that Tommy doesn't seem to have, and they soon land a deal with a record producer named Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle) who loves Frankie's voice, but relegates them to a backup role. After a year of schlepping in this capacity, they finally get the money together to pay for the studio and record a demo Gaudio's written called "Sherry." Frankie changes his last name to Valli, the group changes their name to The Four Seasons, and the rest is history. 

Jersey Boys is not a film for everyone, but those who connect with it will connect with it a very strong way. The thing that is most interesting about the film is the artificiality of it all. Eastwood revels in shooting most everything on a set on a studio backlot to anchor the film in the style of the films made during the time period in which it is set. It's a bold move that paid of handsomely, but the total artifice of it all will be a major turn-off for most audience members. Everything about the film feels fake, from the wigs and costumes, to the rear projection during driving scenes, and just about everything in between. It's not afraid to feel like a film, which is something that most modern audiences reject at first sight, but those of us who appreciate theatricality in film will adore the film. It will also play like gangbusters to the over fifty set who are more than a little nostalgic for the time period and music, a generation raised, like Eastwood, on movie made on backlots with a ton of glitz and glamour, all of which is very knowingly false. 

Several things about the film really work well, namely the way that Eastwood handles the story's multiple narrators. Direct address to the camera opens the film, and is ever-present from that point on, but it's a fantastic way of bringing the audience into the world of these characters. It's a very Jersey movie, which shouldn't be all that surprising, but anyone that was raised in and around the Italian households of New Jersey will instantly recognize the glaring stereotypical flourishes such as a clock in Frankie's parent's home flanked by pictures of the Pope and Frank Sinatra. In other words, this movie couldn't be more New Jersey if it called you a stunad and popped you right in the balls. 

Having said all that, the film is a mess, but what a glorious mess it is. The domestic drama, particularly between Frankie and his wife Mary (Renée Marino) is needlessly melodramatic, but it's pitched to the rafters and ends up feeling of a piece with the entire film. There are also large sections of the film, sometimes twenty minutes at a time, when there's no music in the film, and that should be a death sentence for a musical, but the film never lags, and always continues moving forward, even when it takes a substantial step backward in the narrative a little past the midway point of the film. It also helps that the bulk of the film is set before the band becomes famous. Too often in these biopics, there is a rush to get to the stardom and excess of it all, but this film knows that it's bread is buttered under the streetlights on those Jersey street corners, and gives the film a uniqueness not present in most other jukebox musicals. 

The film's biggest revelation by a mile is Vincent Piazza as Tommy. The New York born actor is a force of nature, completely at home in the world of the film and in Tommy's shoes. The way he carries himself, the way he talks to the other characters, as well as the audience, with an air of being above everyone else, makes him a marvel to behold, and were he not such a strong center for the film, it might have failed entirely. Erich Bergen as Bob Gaudio and Michael Lomenda as Nicky are also fantastic, perfectly inhabiting their characters and keeping things moving forward at all times, despite some absolutely preposterous facial hair on Bergen for the entire second half of the film. Walken is also fantastic, as to be expected, getting a chance to do his Walken thing without being a distraction.

As for John Lloyd Young, he looks like Frankie and sounds like Frankie, and that's just about good enough. He doesn't feel at home in front of a camera, and seems to be holding back too much at times, afraid to go too far over the top, but it's almost always to his detriment. He is very good, but anytime he's not singing, he looks lost. The script by the show's book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice blurs enough of the lines between fantasy and reality to be considered strong without crossing over into great. The details they skirt or condense will be lost on anyone not intimately familiar with the history of The Four Seasons, but that's okay because they keep things brisk and light all the way through. 

If it's said once, it's worth saying a dozen times, Jersey Boys is not a film for everyone, but those who connect with it will cherish it, warts and all. It's not without its flaws, but its flaws make it so lovable and enjoyable. It seems like a cop-out to say this but this is a very specific film made for a very specific audience, and those that don't fall into that category will likely find very little, if anything, to enjoy about it. This is an old-fashioned yarn spun by a director who knows a thing or two about the good old days, and this is a perfect way to recapture them, by simply pointing out that all the things people love about this time period were as artificial as they accuse today's films and music of being. It's an interesting thesis, and one I didn't expect to find in a film like Jersey Boys, but I'm glad it's there, no matter how many layers of artifice are covering it up. 

GO Rating: 4.5/5

[Images via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 302: How To Train Your Dragon 2

"What you're searching for, Hiccup, isn't out there. It's in here."

2010’s How to Train Your Dragon, coupled with 2008’s Kung Fu Panda, was the film that more or less brought respectability to Dreamworks Animation. Prior to that, the studio was basically known for the Shrek franchise and a whole mess of interchangeable films where the characters all made the same face. HTTYD was a fantastic blend of character based humor and stunning animation, which more or less did away with the endless series of pop culture references that made Dreamworks a bit of an also-ran compared with the more sophisticated work of Pixar. When Kung Fu Panda got a sequel three years ago, it was, in my humble opinion, the perfect sequel in that it expanded the world, developed the characters, and introduced a formidable new threat. Everything seemed to be lining up for How To Train Your Dragon 2 to follow in that film’s footsteps, so could it do just that, or would it be a crushing disappointment? Read on to find out…

Picking up five years after the events of the first film, How To Train Your Dragon 2 finds the citizens of the small medieval island of Berk enjoying their newfound harmony with their former dragon enemies. The hero of the first film, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is charting new territory on the back of his dragon Toothless, seeking to change the opinions of others across the land in regard to dragons. When he comes across a group of dragon hunters led by Eret (Kit Harington), he discovers a nefarious plot by a human named Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) to trap and control all of the dragons in the land.

After informing his father, Stoick (Gerard Butler) of the plot, Stoick tells him of the legendary terror that Bludvist has reigned over, and encourages his son to stand down and focus his attention on learning to lead the people of Berk. Hiccup does not listen, and goes to attempt to reason with Bludvist, but soon finds himself face to face with another human amassing hordes of dragons. This human, however, has much more harmonious designs for the dragons, hoping to unite dragons and humans in peaceful harmony, a standing that Hiccup readily supports, which isn’t surprising considering that this human is his long lost mother (Cate Blanchett).

As far a ticking off boxes on a list of things that successful sequels do and do well, How To Train Your Dragon 2 most definitely ticks them all off. The characters, for the most part, grow and change, the stakes are raised, there’s just enough of the familiar to balance out the new, and our hero faces his greatest challenge of all, and rises to meet it. If I have any complaint at all, it’s that at times, particularly in the film’s somewhat bloated second act, feels as though it’s making sure all those boxes get checked off. It seems almost catty to ask certain things of a sequel and then begrudge the film when it rises to meet those challenges, but the sense of adventure and the organic feel of the first film are mostly gone here, sadly, replaced by an overwhelming urge to do something different without ever stopping to think if this particular set of circumstances is really the best they could have come up with.

My only other complaint about the film is regarding the villain. In a film that is as lily white as a world dreamed up by Joseph Smith himself, to make the only villain in the film a person of color, voiced by a person of color, does seem like an oddly out of touch thing to do. I acknowledge that this world was established to mirror the United Kingdom to some extent, and it would feel just as odd to attempt to shoehorn in characters of color just for the sake of having them in this world, but to use them in this way is just as offensive, if not more so.

Now, before I start to sound as though I didn’t enjoy the film, let me assure that I did enjoy it a great deal. Seeing it in IMAX 3D was worth the additional ticket price because the animation is second to none among films released in the past two or three years. The action is top notch, the pacing is good overall, particularly in the first and third acts, and the story earns its big, emotional reveals all too well. As I said earlier, it makes the most of every opportunity to have the characters grow and change, and deals with the notion of rising to meet your responsibilities incredibly well. It’s a solid story, told in a tremendously inventive visual way. In fact, it is pretty much the equal of Kung Fu Panda 2, which I certainly do not mean as a slight against this film. I think that both sequels take their characters and story on a journey forward, and honor the past without repeating it.

The voice work is also very good, and though Jay Baruchel still sounds like he’s fourteen years old, he manages to use such youthfulness to his advantage, particularly in light of his character’s journey. Butler does unusually strong work for an actor who seems to have come into his career on cruise control. Harington & Blanchett are worthy additions to the cast, as is Hounsou, despite the film’s decision to hamstring him with a horrendous stereotype of a character. The likes of Kristen Wiig, T.J. Miller, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse are more or less wasted, as their characters don’t add much to the plot, but a bulked up role for Craig Ferguson’s character paid of handsomely thanks to Ferguson’s tremendous comic timing. 

All in all, How To Train Your Dragon 2 is about as good a sequel as one could hope for from Dreamworks, or any major animation studio for that matter. Even Pixar’s sequels have been lackluster, with the Toy Story films being the exception that proves the rule. That they took the time to consider the characters and how they would have grown since the events of the first film is miracle enough in this day and age, but to couple it with eye-popping animation and great voice work makes this succeed far more often than it fails. It’s not all that it could have been, but it’s also so much better than it could have been, and sometimes, that is enough cause for celebration.

GO Rating: 3.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Top 5 Reasons Why "Gremlins" Is A Better Movie Than "Ghostbusters"

June 8, 1984 was quite a day to be alive. Two classic comedies with twisted sensibilities were released that day, and though Ghostbusters was the bigger hit, and the more revered of the two, Gremlins is still one of the best horror-comedies ever made.

Credited with being one of two catalysts, along with Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, for the creation of the PG-13 rating, Gremlins was something of a phenomenon that summer. Grossing $148 million dollars on a budget of just $11 million, the film was a legitimate four quadrant hit.

Though it's thought of today as more of a cult hit than the much more popular Ghostbusters, there are a number of reasons it's actually the better film. Here are just five of those reasons...

1. It's Much Darker. MUCH Darker

While both films are undeniably comedic, Gremlins is rooted in the tropes of the horror genre. It shows the small town of Kingston Falls as a sunny suburban landscape early in the film, the very picture of Americana, but once the Gremlins attack, we see the town obliterated. It's a subtle jab at the idealized world of the 1950s, and it hits home because it leaves the audience feeling as though they're not safe anywhere. There's also Kate's horrifying description of her dad's Santa Claus prank that goes tragically wrong, the laboratory sequence that introduces the Gremlins themselves, and of course, that famous kitchen fight between Mrs. Peltzer and a gluttonous gremlin, all of which add up to make one of the darkest blockbusters of all time.

2. Phoebe Cates Is WAY Hotter Than Sigourney Weaver

This is not a slight against Sigourney, she is still one of the sexiest women on the planet, but we're talking about Phoebe Cates here. The ultimate dream girl, Phoebe perfectly balances girl next door good looks with unrivaled sexiness. It's also a quasi-reunion for Cates and her Fast Times at Ridgemont High co-star Judge Reinhold, which helps to remind us that she was at the center of one of the best nude scenes in movie history. The only downside is that the winter setting keeps her covered up for most of the film. What we wouldn't give to combine Phoebe with Sigourney's Zuul costume.

3. Joe Dante Is a Better Director Than Ivan Reitman.

Ivan Reitman is a legend, that's an undeniable fact, but Joe Dante is a much better filmmaker. There's never any doubt that Ghostbusters is a comedy, but Gremlins deftly walks the line between horror and comedy, and plays on conventions of both genres to further confuse the audience. The fact that all of his work prior to Gremlins had been on horror films such as Piranha and The Howling made him the perfect choice to balance the comedy in Chris Columbus' script with horrifying and hilarious imagery. Though both men have had shoddy track records of late, it's hard to deny that, purely from a technical standpoint, Dante's the much more skilled director.

4. It's One Of The Most Film-Literate Films Ever Made.

That's executive producer Steven Spielberg riding through a shot in a wheelchair early in the film, in a scene that also includes a reference to HG Welles' The Time Machine (you can see it in the background there). These are but two of the dozens of references to other films or film ephemera sprinkled throughout the film. Add in references to E.T., Indiana Jones, It's a Wonderful Life, Forbidden Planet, and even Dante's own The Howling, and you've got the makings of one of the most referential, yet still original, films of all time.

5. It's Got The Better Sequel

In the annals of sequeldom, Ghostbusters 2 is rightly considered one of the worst. It's basically just the first movie all over again, just without the jokes. Gremlins 2: The New Batch, on the other hand, is a scathing satire of sequels, corporations, and even its predecessor. Director Joe Dante was given carte blanche to make whatever film he wanted, and he made a film that is brilliantly subversive. He takes down corporations, but also has a sympathetic corporate overlord character. He got Leonard Maltin to appear in the film, trashing the first one, and then being eating by Gremlins. He had Gizmo get "pushed too far," and become a Rambo-esque action hero. It's a truly brilliant film that improves upon the original in every way, and continues to be one of the most sadly misunderstood sequels of all time.

The Fault in Our Stars

"The world is not a wish granting factory."

The book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is one of those books that everyone rants and raves about, but the subject matter (teens dying of cancer) keeps people such as myself away. The main reason I stayed away was not that I couldn't handle an honest look at the world from the perspective of a teenage girl dying of cancer, subject matter that hits somewhat close to home. It's that I couldn't handle any sort of attempt to sentimentalize or deify children forced to grow up too fast. Too often in these sorts of stories, the children possess a wisdom beyond their years because their entire lives are crammed into one-quarter or less of the average lifespan, so the author will seek to make them life lesson spouting machines rather than fully fleshed out characters worth giving a damn about. 

When a feature film was announced, it seemed as good a time as any to test that theory. Could this story buck the trend and seek to deal honestly with a very real, very scary, and very human set of circumstances, or would it be just another in a long line of romantic stories that backdoor the same old familiar beats through the guise of a horrendous tragedy? Read on to find out...

Fair warning, I cannot address anything that happened in the novel which was left out of the film, so bear that in mind as you read this. If your response to something I may have gotten wrong or simply misconstrued is "they explain that in the book," there's no way I could possibly have known that. 

Hazel (Shailene Woodley) was thirteen years old when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer which soon spread to her lungs. Pulled back from the brink of death thanks to an experimental medication, Hazel has managed to survive for four more years when the story opens, though she is forced to be on oxygen 24/7 due to her weak lungs. She is suffering from a severe bout of depression, which her father (Sam Trammell) and mother (Laura Dern) try to cure her of by encouraging her to attend a support group at a local church run by the overly cheery Patrick (Mike Birbiglia), a testicular cancer survivor. Though Hazel attends simply to appease her parents, one day she meets Augustus (Ansel Elgort), a charming 18-year old whose cancer claimed his right leg before going into remission. 

Augustus is smitten with Hazel, and begins to make it his mission to cheer up a girl who seems to have resigned herself to the fact that she's going to die by simply being miserable all the time. Hazel, in return, shares her favorite novel with Gus, written by a reclusive author (Willem Dafoe) that Hazel has been trying unsuccessfully to contact for years. When Gus manages to establish contact with the author, he and Hazel are invited to come to Amsterdam and have the ambiguous ending of the book explained to them in person. Gus uses his "Genie Wish," the film's version of the Make-a-Wish foundation, to enable this to happen, but just before the trip Hazel takes a turn for the worse. The film then has another eighty minutes or so until it's over. 

The problem with The Fault in Our Stars is that it is the worst sort of pandering, wish fulfillment storytelling imaginable. By making Gus a character who is utterly without fault, the film becomes nothing more than another Young Adult novel that seeks to use escapism to fool impressionable young girls into thinking that no matter what their circumstances, the perfect man will eventually come along and cure all your problems (even cancer!) Now while the film has the common sense to not have Gus literally cure Hazel's cancer, the absurd lengths to which they go to present him as a towering pillar of virtue led me to believe that it wasn't out of the cards that he might have a vial of cancer-curing serum hidden somewhere in his house. The film is just another in a long line of seriously misguided attempts to show that teenage girls simply need a perfect man to make them complete. 

This is a dangerous road to travel, and the fact that the film goes out of its way to show that Hazel comes to certain realizations that are incredibly mature and wise on her own, she might never have convinced herself they were true had it not been for the unconditional love shown to her by Gus. They even go so far as to give her mother a moment of absolutely disgusting selfishness, that is perhaps not outside the realm of possibility for a parent facing the death of their child, which only serves to show that she's never known true love of any kind before. It's downright despicable, and audience members fooled into swooning over the love story, or impressed by the honesty of the jokes the characters crack at their disease's expense, are completely missing the forest for the trees. The real message at play here is far more disconcerting, and certainly one which the average teenage girl will pick up on much more readily: You're not complete without a man.

Perhaps the book does a good job of steering things away from this line of thinking, but I doubt it. That message rings out loud and clear, and the gaggle of crying moms and teenage girls at my screening only further cemented that. The fact that there were tears was not surprising, it's when the tears came that spoke volumes about what message got through to the audience. Without delving too far into spoiler territory, I can say that no one was crying over how empowered Hazel felt at the end of the film.

One other scene worth noting is a trip to the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam, where Hazel and Gus share their first kiss. The heavy-handed insertion of various Anne Frank quotes such as "I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite indepedent of anyone" certainly doesn't help matters, but again, there's something more nefarious at play here. When they kiss, the entire room, filled with visitors to one of the most sacred spots in the world, where the Holocaust truly hit home, stop gazing at the history around them and applaud these two young lovers. Stop. Just stop. It's really quite despicable when you think about it, and shocking that they would so baselessly mine a tragedy like that to make teenage girls swoon. 

Thank goodness Woodley and Elgort are both fine young actors, otherwise this would have been a complete waste of time. Woodley continues to grow as an actress in interesting ways, and always seems to make the best choices in regard to line delivery, so I must applaud her for that. Elgort is similarly good, though the terrible caricature he's portraying does him no favors. They have real chemistry, and I continue to look forward to whatever they do in the future. Dern is fine as well, despite her character being drawn with the broadest brush imaginable, and Dafoe does good work in his two scenes, making a fine villain for a young adult film, not afraid to face the wrath of the throngs of angry teenage girls sure to despise him for the rest of time. 

It's that damned script, though, that really stinks of horribly manipulative trickery. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, whose credits include a 2009 double feature of 500 Days of Summer and The Pink Panther 2, it suffers from horribly protracted misery mixed with a healthy dose of unwarranted proselytizing. It's the very worst of what can come of a book adaptation. The lackadaisical direction by second time feature film director Josh Boone does no one any favors either. It's shot with all the flair of a Lifetime movie, and would likely have been right at home on that network, whose stock in trade is this sort of calculative dreck.   

The Fault in Our Stars is pure garbage. It has made me as angry at a film as I've ever been, and it has everything to do with the fact that it thinks it's honest, real, and true, when it is in fact the exact opposite. This is a terrible film to let your tween and teen daughters watch, as it will only bolster the nonsensical belief that they're not complete without the perfect man to show them the world and how much beauty it holds. This is nothing more than another in a long series of stories designed to make them feel less than by pointing out the things they need to come to the realizations that will make them an adult. It's despicable, and I'm honestly shocked that so many critics and audience members are falling victim to its subterfuge. If it walks like a lion, and roars like one, don't be surprised when it tears your arm off while you're busy being entranced by its beauty. 

GO Rating: 0.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 300: A Million Ways To Die In The West

"Ow! That came out of my penis! "

In the pantheon of bad decisions, the choice by Fox to give Family Guy a second chance at life in 2004 ranks somewhere between Blues Brothers 2000 and Napoleon invading Russia, and I'll leave it to you to decide where it falls between the two. Seth MacFarlane is funny to a point, and seems to have a genuine love for pop culture, but his attempts to rebottle lightning came off as just that. As his properties become increasingly drenched in flop sweat, he turned his attention to Hollywood and produced the very funny but slight 2012 smash hit Ted (which has a sequel in the works, because no one ever learns).

For his follow-up, he's dusted off the dustiest genre of them all, the Western comedy, which hasn't had much success in the 41 years since the release of Blazing Saddles, yet nevertheless, here we are. Could A Million Ways To Die In The West prevail against insurmountable odds, or would it drown in a sea of bodily waste jokes? Read on to find out (as if you don't already know the answer to that)...

Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane) is a sheep farmer living in late 19th Century Arizona, a place where death is waiting around every corner at the hands of the eponymous ways. Following an act of cowardice, Albert's girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) breaks up with him and takes up with mustache shop proprietor Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), leaving Albert a mess. Even his friends, the pious shoemaker Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) and his prostitute fiancé Ruth (Sarah Silverman) are no help, so Albert decides to head further west to San Francisco. On what is to be his last night in town, Albert meets Anna (Charlize Theron), a new woman in town whom he saves during a bar brawl.

Albert and Anna become fast friends, and Anna agrees to beard, I mean pretend to be Albert's new girlfriend, to make Louise jealous. After a confrontation at the fair, Albert challenges Foy to a duel one week from that day, and Anna agrees to help him learn how to shoot a gun in preparation of their duel. Little does Albert know that Anna's husband is Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), the fastest gun in the west, and that he is headed to town to track down his wayward wife. 

A Million Ways To Die In The West suffers from a severe lack of identity. MacFarlane seems to want to make more than just another cheap comedy, so he makes a point of spreading the jokes out to make room for horse chases, sweeping montages, and the like. The problem is that he just can't help himself, and has to constantly insert lower than lowbrow humor into the proceedings whenever he seems to be getting bored. Therefore the movie suffers from not so much peaks and valleys as valleys and chasms. As a result, the film becomes a total waste of time, money, and effort. MacFarlane has always had issues balancing sharp satire with lowest common denominator jokes and randomly inserted incongruous pop culture references, and here he seems to be trying so desperately not to rip off Blazing Saddles that he legitimately doesn't know what else to do. 

The film also fails to live up to a title as seemingly open ended as A Million Ways To Die In The West, by presenting perhaps a dozen or so ways to die in the west, but I suppose A Smattering Of Ways To Die In The West just doesn't sound all that interesting. People have been writing the western's obituary for decades now, particularly since Clint Eastwood so elegantly brought it to a seeming close with Unforgiven, but it's a genre ripe for parody. It was ripe for parody in 1973 when Mel Brooks inelegantly spoofed just about everything about it, but it still seemed like there were a handful of satirical buttons to push, and honestly MacFarlane seemed an inspired choice to push them. It's just too bad he couldn't think of anything to do beyond the title and a few rants that lose their effectiveness thanks to the bluntly stupid way they're presented.

MacFarlane isn't an actor. As much as he wants to be one, he just isn't, and though his easy-going charm lends itself well to certain kinds of roles, incongruously placing that same personality in the old west isn't funny in and of itself. The film wouldn't have worked any better with someone else in the lead role, so it's hard to lay too much of the blame at the feet of his performance, but this film has his name all over it, including no fewer than four credits in the opening titles, so it's similarly impossible to absolve him. Theron and Neeson are both very good, but utterly wasted on terrible material, and the film gives Ribisi, Silverman, and Seyfried nothing to do. NPH comes the closest to absolving himself of a nothing role, but his late film hat-shitting antics tarnish any goodwill he managed to build up prior. 

The script for the film is atrocious, and where just about everything wrong with the film begins and ends. It's a completely tone deaf assortment of set pieces, none of which are funny enough to sustain a laugh that lasts longer than a split second. There are a couple of funny moments in the film, but the various trailers and commercials gave them all away, so if you're not even mildly amused by them, don't even bother checking out the film. Thankfully it looks nice, and cinematographer Michael Barrett does an admirable job of making the film look like a comedy, despite the disconcerting lack of comedy in the film. There are also at least five cameos, two of which are completely wordless throwaways, though one of the two that hasn't been spoiled is actually hysterically funny, but comes too late in the film to act as any sort of redemption. 

Is A Million Ways To Die In The West the worst movie of all time? No, not by a long shot. Is it the worst movie of the year? No, there's been far too much fierce competition for that title already. MacFarlane is a talented guy, but he needs to stop holding out hope that anyone will take him seriously as an actor or director. He's good at one thing, infusing often sharp social satire with random pop culture references that come fast and furious, and succeed roughly 25% of the time. The moment he steps away from that formula, he flops about like a literal fish out of water. He may be guilty of trying to cram in four jokes where just one will suffice, but he often finds a way to make at least one of them funny. This film is completely absent that formula, and while that may appease a small segment of the population crying out for him to do something different, it will do nothing to appease his fans or convert his detractors. As a result, this film is just a total mess, and there are roughly a million better ways to spend your time and money, give or take a couple hundred.

GO Rating: 1.5/5

[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]