John Tucker Must Die

This is your embedded middle-aged male movie critic, reporting from somewhere near the unprotected border between pubescent girlhood and young womanhood. The breaking story: a teen comedy called "John Tucker Must Die."

Sometimes a movie critic just has to acknowledge that he does not fall within a particular film's target demographic. But it can be a fascinating and enlightening sociological expedition to see it with the very audience for whom it was intended. In this instance, that meant watching "John Tucker Must Die" from deep inside a preview screening of about 78 percent teenage girls, 21 percent teenage boys, and 0.4 percent movie critics. I do not know who those other 0.6 percent were, or what they were doing there.

The crowd didn't clap at the end or anything, but they laughed, and sighed a few times, and talked and text messaged each other unceasingly throughout, despite being warned by burly uniformed security dudes upon entering the auditorium that all cell phones were to be turned off before entering. Yeah, right. There were so many little screens flickering all over the theater that it looked like the projector beam was hitting a disco ball.

This is the way a significant minority of viewers will encounter "John Tucker Must Die," because we can already be pretty sure most of them will see it on DVD in an environment where their voice and text conversations will not be hindered by semi-darkness or adults who turn around and tell them to shut the hell up.

Not as mean as "Mean Girls," as raunchy as "American Pie," or as sappy as, say, the Shirley Temple version of "Heidi" (and I have seen them all), "John Tucker Must Die" isn't half bad. It's about two-fifths bad, mostly toward the incoherent ending, but that ratio is... well, not bad.

The title character is the most popular boy in school, John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe, Eva Longoria's boy-toy gardener on "Desperate Housewives"). He's gorgeous, in a Ken doll with eyebrows kind of way, a star athlete, the captain of the basketball team, and he's triple-timing three of the hottest girls in school, none of whom knows he's also dating the others. In other words, he's a typical teenage male sociopath, a slick, winning Ted Bundy who has not yet graduated to full-fledged serial killing.

But when the girls find out he's been cheating on them -- all of them -- they unite to wreak their revenge. There's Carrie (Arielle Kebbel), the blonde white girl who reports for the school TV station; Heather (Ashanti), the henna-haired black girl who's the head cheerleader in every sense of the word; and Beth (Sophia Bush), the brunette white girl who describes herself alternately as a teen vegan activist and a slut. (The language doesn't get any harsher than that -- this is PG-13.) Oh, and if the names "Carrie" and "Heather" don't mean anything to you, you might want to brush up on your high school girl movies.

Bringing them all together is Kate (Brittany Snow), the ugly duckling and socially "invisible" girl who, as is invariably the case in these movies, is so much prettier than the "pretty" popular girls that it's not even funny. In any high school in America, Kate's looks alone would make her Miss Popularity before you could say "First Period Algebra." But this is the movies. Kate's hot mom Lori (Jenny McCarthy) wears a Black Sabbath t-shirt and keeps entering into short-lived affairs with interchangeable jerks Kate has taken to calling by a single name: Skip. Because that's what they always do.

Kate has a negative view of heterosexual relationships, having never actually witnessed a functional one. She is taken in, and made over, by the other girls as part of a series of plots to humiliate and devastate John Tucker in front of the whole school. Meanwhile, Kate becomes lab partners with "The Other Tucker," John's "invisible" brother Scott (Penn Badgley, borrowing Heath Ledger's old hair for the role), with whom she feels a certain kinship. Possibly a kissing kinship. By the end of the movie he's wearing a t-shirt with the word "INTEGRITY" on it, in case you're left with any doubt that he's more her type than his brother John, who will surely grow up to head an overvalued off-shore corporation and eventually be indicted for fraud.

"John Tucker Must Die" is kind of "Carrie" in reverse. While Kate is tarted up to provide suitable nookie-bait for John Tucker, and must invoke iron will to resist his hunky, psycho-skeezy wiles, he is the one who will get the (figurative) bucket of pig's blood dumped on his head in the climactic party scene. That's also the part where, unfortunately, everything rapidly degenerates into a messy free-for-all -- and that's a description of what happens to the movie, not just what happens in it.

Still, for the most part director Betty Thomas, the Second City alumnus, former "Hill Street Blues" cast member and helmer of Howard Stern's "Private Parts" and "The Brady Bunch Movie," gets more out of this material, and her cast, than we had any reason to anticipate. The performances are loose, relaxed and -- dare I say it? -- almost improvisational. What was the last teen comedy in which any lines were underplayed or tossed off casually, instead of the actors practically yelling them into the camera so as to be heard over the banks of mobile phones in the audience? (That's a rhetorical question, please.)

This is Metcalfe's first starring role in a motion picture, and while Snow is the real star here, he displays a sense of humor about himself that's beyond anything required of him on "Desperate Housewives," which is tipped more toward soap opera acting than comedy -- with the fine exception of Felicity Huffman. The scene where he has a meltdown at a basketball game, brought on by slipping him estrogen pills, is played just right -- broad, but not smack-us-in-the-face-with-a-halibut broad.

My favorite moment was also the one in which my movie-critic cover was inadvertently blown. Scott tries to tell his BMOC brother that he probably isn't Kate's kind of guy. "She likes old school Elvis Costello, listens to obscure podcasts, and she reads Dave Eggers," he says. "She's deep." Baritone laughter erupted from... two adult males in the crowd. Other than that, stone silence. But that's a funny line. And I'm happy to say, from the way it's delivered, you can bet Betty Thomas knows it's funny, too.

The Apartment

There is a melancholy gulf over the holidays between those who have someplace to go, and those who do not. ''The Apartment'' is so affecting partly because of that buried reason: It takes place on the shortest days of the year, when dusk falls swiftly and the streets are cold, when after the office party some people go home to their families and others go home to apartments where they haven't even bothered to put up a tree. On Christmas Eve, more than any other night of the year, the lonely person feels robbed of something that was there in childhood and isn't there anymore.

Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a definitive lonely guy, in ''The Apartment,'' with the ironic twist that he is not even free to go home alone, because his apartment is usually loaned out to one of the executives at his company. He has become the landlord for a series of their illicit affairs; they string him along with hints about raises and promotions. His neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) hears the nightly sounds of passion through the wall and thinks Baxter is a tireless lover, when in fact Baxter is pacing the sidewalk out in front, looking up resentfully at his own lighted window.

When Billy Wilder made ''The Apartment'' in 1960, ''the organization man'' was still a current term. One of the opening shots in the movie shows Baxter as one of a vast horde of wage slaves, working in a room where the desks line up in parallel rows almost to the vanishing point. This shot is quoted from King Vidor's silent film ''The Crowd'' (1928), which is also about a faceless employee in a heartless corporation. Cubicles would have come as revolutionary progress in this world.

Baxter has no girlfriend and, apparently, no family. Patted on the back and called ''buddy boy'' by the executives who use him, he dreams of a better job and an office of his own. One day he even gets up his nerve and asks out one of the elevator girls, Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), but she stands him up at the last moment because of a crisis in her relationship with the big boss, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). She thought her affair with Sheldrake was over, but now apparently it's on again; he keeps talking about divorcing his wife, but never does.

The screenplay, executed as a precise balance between farce and sadness, has been constructed by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond to demonstrate that while Baxter and Miss Kubelik may indeed like each other--may feel genuine feelings of the sort that lead to true love--they are both slaves to the company's value system. He wants to be the boss' assistant, she wants to be the boss' wife, and both of them are so blinded by the concept of ''boss'' that they can't see Mr. Sheldrake for an untrustworthy rat.

The movie has been photographed in widescreen black and white. The b&w dampens down any jollity that might sweep in with the decorations at the Christmas parties, bars and restaurants where the holidays are in full swing. And the widescreen emphasizes space that separates the characters, or surrounds them with emptiness. The design of Baxter's apartment makes his bedroom door, in the background just to the left of center, a focal point; in there reside the secrets of his masters, the reasons for his resentments, the arena for his own lonely slumber, and eventually the stage on which Miss Kubelik will play out the crucial transition in her life.

Other shots track down Manhattan streets and peer in through club windows, and isolate Miss Kubelik and the phony-sincere Mr. Sheldrake in their booth at the Chinese restaurant, where he makes earnest protestations of his good intentions, and glances uneasily at his watch.

By the time he made ''The Apartment,'' Wilder had become a master at a kind of sardonic, satiric comedy that had sadness at its center. ''Double Indemnity'' (1944) was about a man (MacMurray again) who trusted that one simple crime would solve his romantic and financial troubles. ''Sunset Boulevard'' has William Holden as a paramour to a grotesque aging movie queen (Gloria Swanson), but there was pathos in the way her former husband (Erich von Stroheim) still worshiped at the shrine of her faded greatness.

Wilder was fresh off the enormous hit ''Some Like it Hot'' (1959), his first collaboration with Lemmon, and Lemmon was headed toward ''The Days of Wine and Roses'' (1962), which along with ''The Apartment'' showed that he could move from light comedian to tragic everyman. This movie was the summation of what Wilder had done to date, and the key transition in Lemmon's career.

It was also a key film for Shirley MacLaine, who had been around for five years in light comedies and had good scenes in ''Some Came Running'' (1958) but here emerged as a serious actress who would flower in the 1960s.

What is particularly good about her Miss Kubelik is the way she doesn't make her a ditzy dame who falls for a smooth talker, but suggests a young woman who has been lied to before, who has a good heart but finite patience, who is prepared to make the necessary compromises to be the next Mrs. Sheldrake. The underlying seriousness of MacLaine's performance helps anchor the picture--it raises the stakes, and steers it away from any tendency to become musical beds.

What's particularly perceptive is the way, after her suicide attempt, she hauls herself together and actually gives Sheldrake another chance. Like Baxter, she has not been forced into job prostitution, but chosen it. One of the ways this is an adult picture and not a sitcom is the way it takes Baxter and Miss Kubelik so long to make the romantic leap; they aren't deluded fools, but jaded realists who have given up on love and are more motivated by paychecks. There is a wonderful, wicked, delicacy in the way Wilder handles the final scene, and finds the right tender-tough note in the last lines of the screenplay. (''Shut up and deal'' would become almost as famous as ''nobody's perfect,'' the immortal closing lines of ''Some Like it Hot.'')

As it happened, I watched ''The Apartment'' not long after Jack Lemmon's death, and looked at Blake Edwards' ''The Days of Wine and Roses'' (1962) and James Foley's ''Glengarry Glen Ross'' (1992) at the same time. The side-by-side viewings were an insight into Lemmon's acting, and into changing styles in movies. ''The Days of Wine and Roses'' has dated, in my opinion; the famous greenhouse scene looks more like overacting than alcoholism. Wilder's ''The Lost Weekend'' (1945) was made 17 years earlier but feels more contemporary in his treatment of alcoholism. ''Glengarry Glen Ross'' contains probably Lemmon's best performance. His aging, desperate real estate salesman is deserving of comparison with anyone's performance of Willy Loman in ''Death of a Salesman,'' and it is interesting how Lemmon, who famously began with directors asking him to dial down and give ''a little less,'' was able here to hit the precise tones needed for the David Mamet dialogue, which is realism cloaked in mannerism.

In observing that ''The Lost Weekend'' hasn't dated, I could be making a comment about Wilder's work in general. Even a lightweight romantic comedy like ''Sabrina'' (1954) holds up better than its 1990s remake, and the great Wilder pictures don't play as period pieces but look us straight in the eye. ''Some Like It Hot'' is still funny, ''Sunset Boulevard'' is still a masterful gothic character comedy, and ''The Apartment'' is still tougher and more poignant than the material might have permitted. The valuable element in Wilder is his adult sensibility; his characters can't take flight with formula plots, because they are weighted down with the trials and responsibilities of working for a living. In many movies, the characters hardly even seem to have jobs, but in ''The Apartment'' they have to be reminded that they have anything else.

17 Again

Mike O'Donnell's wife wants a divorce, his kids are remote, he didn't get the job promotion he expected, and everything else in his life has gone wrong since that magic year when he was 17, a basketball star, in love, and looked like Zac Efron instead of Matthew Perry. He's obviously a case for treatment by a Body Swap Movie.

Revisiting the trophy case at his old high school, Mike encounters a janitor who, from the way he smiles at the camera, knows things beyond this mortal coil. If only Mike could go back to 17 and not make all the same mistakes. In "17 Again," he can. He falls into a Twilight Zone vortex and emerges as Zac Efron. They say be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. Mike should have been more specific. Instead of wishing to be 17 again, he should have wished to go back 20 years in time.

Yes, he becomes himself trapped inside his own 17-year-old body. Same wife, same kids, same problems. As Old Mike getting divorced, he'd moved in with his best friend, Ned (Thomas Lennon), and now he throws himself on Ned's mercy: Will Ned pose as his father, so Young Mike can be his son and help out his kids by enrolling in the same high school again? Ned, who is a software millionaire and middle-age fanboy, agrees, especially after he falls helplessly in love with the high school principal, Jane (Melora Hardin).

Young Mike becomes the new best friend of his insecure son, Alex (Sterling Knight). Then he meets Alex's mom, Scarlet (Leslie Mann), who, of course, before the vortex was his wife, and before that his high school bride (Allison Miller). She thinks it's strange that he looks exactly like the boy she married at 17. He explains he is the son of an uncle, who I guess would have to be Old Mike's brother, so it's curious Old Scarlet never met him, but if she doesn't ask that, why should I?

In high school, Young Mike again becomes a basketball star, befriends Alex, and attempts to defend his Gothish daughter, Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg), against the predations of her jerk boyfriend, who as a hot-rodding jock traveling with a posse is, of course, the last guy in school who would date, or be dated by, a moody girl who wears black.

I've seen Body Switches before (Tom Hanks in "Big"). The first act of this movie seemed all retread. Then it started to dig in. There are twin romances; as Shakespeare demonstrated, one must be serious and the other farcical. Young Mike is still seriously in love with his wife, Old Scarlet, and she is powerfully attracted to this boy who's a double for her first love. She thinks that's wrong. He knows it isn't but how can he explain?

Meanwhile, best buddy Ned courts Principal Masterson, who for the first time in his life has Taught Him What Love Means. Before her, ecstasy was owning Darth Vader's costume. I will not describe what happens the first time they go out to dinner, except to say that it's comic genius, perfectly played by Melora Hardin and Thomas Lennon.

I attended a screening held by a radio station, which attracted mainly teenage girls who left their boyfriends behind. When Zac Efron took off his T-shirt, the four in front of me squealed as if there were buzzers in their seats. Now that he's a little older, Efron has a Tom Cruiseish charm, and a lot of confidence. Why Matthew Perry was cast as his adult self is hard to figure; does your head change its shape in 20 years?

"17 Again" is pleasant, harmless PG-13 entertainment, with a plot a little more surprising and acting a little better than I expected. Mike is dispatched into that vortex by the bearded old janitor with a delighted smile. The janitor (Brian Doyle-Murray) is quite a convenience, supplying vortexes when needed. If his smile reminds you of anyone, he's played by Bill Murray's brother.

Tropic Thunder (It's Zoolander all over again)

Oh my God, SO bored. This is like day 14 with no work to do at work, and I'm at that point where I feel like I've seen everything on the internet that I would possibly want to see. And it's a gorgeous, cool, sunny day outside, making matters worse. How does this bring us to Tropic Thunder? Well, really just that it underlines for me how unexcited I am to write about this disappointing movie, but am turning to it as a way to fend off complete boredom.

My friend was super into seeing this from the ads, so I saved it for him. The movie opens with an ad for Booty Sweat, an energy drink from hip-hop star Alpa Chino, then has three fake trailers for movies by its stars. The first and least funny is the sixth sequel in which the earth becomes a steaming fireball, starring Stiller's character, Tug Speedman. The second is a parody of those Eddie Murphy comedies where he plays all the characters, with Jack Black's character, Jeff Portnoy. The last is a gay-monk movie, obviously based on Brokeback Mountain, called Satan's Alley. Surely you recognize that name as the title of the musical Travolta stars in at the end of Staying Alive. That one is starring Robert Downey Jr.'s character, Kirk Lazarus. We then have credits, and join our three actors in a Vietnam movie that is going badly. The director [Steve Coogan] is way over budget, and gets an angry call from Tom Cruise as Les Grossman, this big gross hairy blowhard studio head. Nick Nolte, playing the author of the book their movie is based on, suggests that the only way to really save this thing is to get the actors out there in the real jungle. This is exactly what they do, and one second later, the director is obliterated by a land mine, leaving them all out on their own.

Eventually it starts dawning on everyone—except Speedman—that they've really just been left in the jungle. They bicker. Portnoy, who is using heroin, has his stash taken away and essentially goes into withdrawal on the trip. Lazarus is a method actor and has had his skin surgically darkened to play a black man. He also keeps in this voice and persona he thinks a black man would have—and is often called on this by the real black guy on the mission. We periodically cut back to Hollywood for more of Speedman's agent, played by Matthew McConaughey, and Les Grossman, the best thing in the movie. Eventually the guys get into a real adventure and have to enact a rescue, that [sort of] satirically turns into the exact kind of adventure scenes reminiscent of their movies, and it ends.

So you're sitting there, laughing fitfully, thinking "This is not nearly as funny as I'd hoped it would be," and certainly isn't as satirical or movies or Hollywood or anything. Once it was over, my friend and I agreed that it was pretty much Zoolander, but in a different locale with a different idea. Only, Zoolander was better. A lot of the things I was looking forward to in this movie were, if not busts, then just seriously deflating. The Hollywood satire had no more bite than anything you might see on E! The whole thing of Downey playing a black guy had almost no content to it and pushed next to no buttons. Almost everything even commenting on this was in the trailer. The whole angle of mentally disabled people being mocked [there were protests outside my theater the night the movie opened] was a big nothing. Seriously, Tom Cruise was the best thing in the movie—at least he was really fun. It was all so middling and everyone so rote that my friend was inspired to say "I can't believe I'm saying this, but you actually look forward to when Tom Cruise comes on, because then you're seeing someone who knows how to act."

It wasn't awful—I was never bored and I laughed a few times. It's just that, given all of the ideas and all the stars and the whole concept, I had really hoped for a lot more. Stiller is fine as a director, but he still way overplays his fake acting, and everyone else doesn't make much of an impression. That is to say—here's a movie in which Robert Downey Jr. doesn't even really make AN IMPRESSION, and that's saying something. Hopefully Hamlet 2 will be good.

Pineapple Express

This is one of those movies I started a review of but eventually deleted, having no real insight to offer on it, but then my friend told me that it's my duty to point out homo subtext in movies, and besides, reviews of movies in theaters draw more readers in than boring old movies on DVD. So, fine.

Seth Rogen, who stands a very good chance of luring me into a tempestuous affair before I run back to Aaron Eckhart, begging for forgiveness, plays Dale Denton, a process server who spends his days driving around, getting stoned, serving papers, and listening to talk radio. Can you imagine a comedy with a lead character who gets drunk and drives around? Anyway, Dale needs more bud and calls his dealer, Saul, who supplies him with the new brand, Pineapple Express, which is like "God's Vagina" and which only he has access to. Dale is about to split when Saul convinces him to stay for a bit, guilting him that no one wants to be friends with their dealer, they just do business and split. But after a while, split Dale does.

That night, Dale is parked outside a house where he sees a man get shot. Freaking, he throws his roach out the window, and takes off. The killer, Gary Cole as Ted, and his assistant, Rosie Perez as cop Carol, recognize the brand of weed—and you'll recall that only Saul has it. Dale runs to Saul's, they both panic, grab a huge bag of weed, and take off. They spend a funny panicked night in the woods, and wake sleeping in each other's arms. They then have to walk out of the woods, leading to the oft-noted scene of them playing leapfrog that is often mentioned in context of this film's [largely illusory] "indie sensibility." It's a bummer, because my notes were full of all the tiny homoerotic touches, like the way they sleep curled up together, but of course I threw those out when I decided not to finish the review.

Anyway, they arrive at the home of Red, played by suddenly-everywhere Danny McBride, who excels at playing obnoxiously ignorant putzes. Both my friend and I agreed that as lame as The Foot-Fist Way was, it clued us much more closely into McBride's brand of humor. Turns out Red is going to turn the duo in to the bumbling thugs that are after them, which results in a hilariously awkward fight all over the house. Blah, blah, the whole thing goes on with the guys constantly on the run in various locations and navigating several different situations.

Along the way they go over to the house of Dale's high school girlfriend [she's a safe 18], where the group has to take refuge as the thugs invade and instigate a shootout. I thought this whole scene with the disapproving parents, was hilarious and wouldn't have minded if the whole family was involved for much longer than they were. They realize that they have no money and sell drugs to young kids! Toward the end, Dale refuses to smoke any more and says "have you noticed we're not real productive when we're stoned?" which is the one "message" moment of this movie, and I definitely appreciate that they left it at that.

Throughout Dale and Saul have been in a blissful "romantic friendship" [as they say in Brideshead Revisited], very much along the lines of the adolescent homoerotic love of Superbad [written by the same people], but toward the end they have what is essence a lover's quarrel and split. During this time comes one of the movie's funniest moments, in which Dale and his girlfriend are crying as they reconcile on the phone, but her suggestion of marriage makes him cry with the heebies. The two friends reconcile when one comes to rescue the other, and this is enacted through a Blades of Glory-style physical comedy piece that looks as though they are having lusty anal sex. Once again, like in Superbad, the emotional climax of the movie is the character's declarations of love for one another. All of this is accompanied throughout by the oft-repeated line "Bros before hos," meaning that you should put your male friends before relationships with women, and I understand how that with into the whole homoerotic vibe here, but it was repeated to the point where I found it to become a little offensive. I obviously have no problem with romantic friendships between people of the same sex, but I find it unfortunate that it is so often accompanied by denigration of the opposite sex. Which is not to mention the fact that not all women are "hos." Once or twice is one thing, but it was repeated so often here it kind of becomes a theme of the movie, which is unfortunate. Regardless, I suppose it's good that straight guys are coming to a place where they can recognize a certain homoeroticism to their friendships without worrying that it automatically makes them gay. Anyway, there is a bombastic climax that parodies action movies, accompanied by overblown comedy gore, and eventually it's all over.

It was all quite funny, but once it's over it kind of fades away in one's mind and ultimately kind of ends up being a B+. Good, but unmemorable. This was directed by David Gordon Green, indie darling who rose to prominence with George Washington, released a few less well-received movies, and now jumps to the mainstream here. His name has led to much discussion of the "indie sensibility" he brings to this film, which to me is just so much hot air and wishful thinking. Everyone is good, Rogen we're familiar with, McBride is wonderful and hilarious, but the real shock is James Franco, returning to comedy. I never saw him on Freaks and Geeks, but he's wonderful here, charming, natural and funny—and really the only time he has seemed like an actual human being.

Anyway, it's cool, it's funny, it's got homo not-exactly-sub subtext, and it all fades away a few hours after it's over. To me, Superbad is the much better, sweeter, more focused and more affecting of the two, but this one'll kill a few hours in a pleasant fashion.



SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

Sure, although if you haven't seen Superbad, give that one priority.

Paul Blart:Mall Cop

I don’t watch TV, so I was kind of surprised by how totally cute the relatively svelte Kevin James was in Chuck and Larry. I kind of like the schlub type, to an extent. Then this movie promised James with a mustache and in a uniform, so when I was recovering from foot surgery and wanted to see something light n’ stupid, to this film I went. I was, however, unprepared for just how very light n’ stupid it was.

We begin with Blart doing pretty well on the test to join the New Jersey police force, which is his dream, but failing at the last moment as he is hypoglycemic, and suddenly falls asleep. He lives with his mother and daughter from his marriage to a Hispanic woman, who married him only to gain citizenship, and left him the second she got it. His mother and daughter encourage him to join an internet dating site, because his life is empty without romance. He is very excited about the pie his mom made for him, and slathers it in peanut butter before eating it. I suspect that some of this was intended to be humorous in some way.

At the mall he rides around on Segway and displays how very seriously he takes his job, portrayed throughout as absolutely pathetic, as he is disrespected by mall employees, customers, and his fellow guards. The humiliation he endures, for how seriously he takes his job and his weight, is unrelenting for the film’s first half hour—during which the plot is going NOWHERE—and kind of crosses the line into outright cruelty for me. Hey, why not have somebody piss on him? Why not have him slip, because he’s fat, and fall face first, mouth open, into a steaming pile of turds? That would be REALLY funny!

Meanwhile he’s smitten with this vacuous blonde, Amy, who works at a kiosk in the mall selling hair extensions. She is polite, but seems to have very little interest in him, but you know, fat people are pathetic and desperate for affection of any kind, so Paul is happy to suffer any indignity for the slightest bit of attention from this woman. She is, by the way, skinny as a rail, because as you know, it is NOT POSSIBLE for ANYONE, even an overweight man, to find an overweight woman attractive. Sorry, not possible! There is an overlong, totally unfunny, and flat-out dumb sequence where Paul gets drunk and makes a fool of himself at a karaoke bar. God, if only someone had puked on him, it would be comedy gold!

Finally the “plot” kicks in, where the security trainee Paul has been working with turns out to be the mastermind of a criminal operation to steal credit card numbers from the mall’s machines. Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have told you who the mastermind was, because it’s SUCH a surprise. Then the movie becomes a kind of Die Hard spoof as Blart inadvertently takes down the bad guys one by one and saves the mall.

This is where I expected Blart would redeem himself, and use his smarts to outwit the intruders, but sadly he remains as dunderheaded as ever, and most of his capturing of the villains is pure blundering that just happens to work out. The movie specifically goes out of its way to do this, in one scene having Blart momentarily disable an opponent by throwing something in his eyes, but then standing there like a fool, unable to take advantage of the situation. It’s kind of hard to get behind the redemption of this foolish schlub when he saves the day almost purely by accident, and is just as much a schulb by the end as he was at the beginning. And it starts to bring up questions such as “Why did I want to see this movie in the first place?”

One also ends the movie, in which [spoiler!] Blart ends up getting the girl at the end, wishing one could step on the screen and advise her to thank him politely, but decline any further contact. He even declines his dream job on the New Jersey police force to retain his job at the mall! Ladies, step away from the loser.

All of this is accompanied by phony uplift and an illusory sense that all is now right with the world, although nothing has really changed. Blart’s relationship with Amy is also a bit uncomfortable on all sides. Mostly for the aforementioned fact that the film positions Blart as a great guy that struggles with his weight, but is not nearly so generous to women. No, women must still be skinny and gorgeous, if they are to be attractive at all. And since Amy is such a pretty vacuum, the implication is that Blart likes mainly because she's beautiful and thin, which is apparently all you need in a woman. Maybe Amy really sees past Blart's weight to his true soul and loves him for who he really is, but the reality is far less likely, making it seem a little distastefully disingenuous to make it seem like she’s just delighted to run off with Blart at the end. Overweight people, the movie says, simply cannot find other overweight people attractive. This is of course on top of all the ribbing the movie has made on Blart’s weight. It’s the Shallow Hal of the new decade.

Anyway, not really worth expending this much effort on. The movie is admirably less violent than it could have been [perhaps helping to explain the large numbers of kids in the audience. Those kids will learn that fat people are intrinsically funny, and that overweight men can be attractive, but overweight women cannot. Not really that funny and leaving you with the feeling that you just paid $12 to watch a long sitcom, this one is best left to history.



SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

I wouldn’t, unless you have a lot of time to kill.

Bedazzled

This is a British comedy from 1967 that was remade with Elizabeth Hurley and Brendon Frasier a few years back. I had an opportunity to watch that one on an airplane where I was stuck in my seat and had nothing else to do, and I still turned it off after just a few minutes. The original was just re-released on DVD, and received a rave review as being extremely clever and funny, so my friend who prefers to watch only movies that are worthwhile [snore] suggested we watch it for one of our movie nights.

It begins with a rather hip 60s credit sequence in which we find out that the music here was written by Dudley Moore, and the screenplay by Peter Cook, from a story thought up by the both of them. This was directed by Stanley Donen, director of the non-musical sequences of Singin’ in the Rain, as well as other things we'll talk about later.

So we see Dudley Moore as Stanley in church, asking God for just some small sign of his existence. Peter Cook as Satan sees him at this moment. Next we have a little establishing story of Stanley in this diner he works at, where Eleanor Bron is a waitress named Margaret. Stanley is desperately in love with Margaret, but is too shy to bust a move. He runs out after her when her shift is over to ask her out, but chickens out and sees her getting into some futuristic car with another guy.

So Stanley goes home to hang himself. He doesn’t succeed, and at that moment Satan shows up. He promises that Stanley can have anything he wants so long as he gives up “a tiny little thing you probably didn’t even know you had,” his soul. Satan, who is known in the world as Mr. Spiggott, is quite up front about being the devil, and here you start to get that droll British humor where every line is delivered in an absolutely flat everyday voice, and it’s only after a few seconds’ thinking that you realize what they’re saying is actually quite funny. For example, Spiggott hands Stanely the contract, and Stanley asks why he is referred to as “the damned.” “It’s formal words,” Spiggott says. “Legal jargon.” We see that Spiggott lives with personifications of the seven deadly sins. He promises Stanley seven wishes in exchange for his soul and Stanley signs.

All of his wishes revolve around getting Margaret. First he wishes to be intelligent and articulate. So he becomes this windy intellectual and Margaret is charmed, they repair to his house and listen to Brahms, and have an odd scene where they explore how lovely it is to touch things. But when Stanley moves to touch her [actually he pretty much grabs her and throws her down] she cries rape and his wish is over.

So he comes out of his wish, which he can do at any time by blowing a raspberry. Spiggott shows him what the real-life Margaret is doing right then, which is looking for his body in a pond [for in reality he is dead]. So then Stanley wishes that he could be married to Margaret and for her to be very lusty—and in his wish she is lusty, but for this hot boy toy she has, virtually ignoring her husband, Stanley. All his wishes go like this, with each of them playing different roles each time, and there always being some angle that Stanley didn’t think of that Spiggott exploits to ruin his wish.

So between all the sequences where Stanley gets his misguided wishes come scenes in which he hangs out with Spiggott, becoming friends with him and learning about his history. A lot of these scenes revolve around the regrets the devil has and how his dearest wish is to get back into heaven. One of my favorite scenes is where Spiggott is telling Stanley about what it’s like in heaven, how you just sit around doing nothing but worshipping God all day. Then he says [these are not direct quotes], “Okay, I’ll be God,” he hops up on a mailbox, “and you be an angel. Just dance around me and make up songs about how great I am.” Stanley dances around, saying “Oh God, you’re so great,” to which Spiggott-as-God matter-of-factly says “Thank you very much.” Stanley goes on until he finally says, “You know, this is getting really boring,” and Spiggott says “EXACTLY.” So Spiggott becomes more sympathetic and fleshed-out as the story goes on. One other area of constant amusement is how he’s always committing the most petty evil, like making parking meters go expired, switching phone connections, and my favorite, removing the “wet paint” sign from a fresh green park bench. At one point Stanley shows up just as Spiggott is smashing bananas ready for shipment to stores, and he asks “What are you doing?” to be told “Oh, routine mischief.”

While all this is going on, something of the homo is developing between them. At one point Spiggott lets Stanley sleep in his bed, and this is the first time Stanley mentions that “you’re the only one who’s ever taken an interest in me.” Spiggott then sends Lust in to his bed with Stanley—in the form of Raquel Welch, who, much as I love her, was not very good. During a later conversation, Spiggott mentions to Stanley how he sees God “nestling in your trousers.” Then, at the end, another mention that Spigott is “the only one I can talk to.” The tenderness that grows between them is quite sweet and, coupled with the reality that this relationship is much more secure and loving than the one Stanley shares with Margaret, is enough to make me list this movie in the “Homo Movies” section, even though it is not explicitly about gay people. Oh, which is not even to mention Barry Humphries, future Dame Edna, as the personification of Envy, here portrayed as a bitter queen who lies waiting in Spiggott’s bed. Oh yeah, and then that bit about the lesbian nuns.

When I told my friend that Donen directed the non-musical sequences of Singin’ in the Rain, he made a crack about “which no one remembers,” but I was surprised to see that there is a very advanced visual sense here, with most shots visually interesting and some of them amazingly beautiful. I’m sorry I couldn’t pull out any screen shots for you, but I had to return the movie before I could make it to my computer. One of my favorite shots has to do with a bunch of nuns in black-and-white habits spread out across a vivid green lawn, jumping up and down. But the visual sense is very intelligent and serves to tell the story, for example in a series of shots filmed through glass panels in a door; you’ll notice that Spiggott is in the upper left quadrant, and Stanley is in the lower right, visually suggesting Spiggott’s dominance and schematizing their relationship. When talk turns to sex there are shots along a pool cue as it shoots the white cue ball… lots of visual intelligence like that. Donen also directed On The Town, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Charade and… Saturn 3!

One last thing. In one wish Stanley wants to be lusted after by women, so Spiggott makes him into a pop star. He sings this song called “Love Me,” which is fine enough, but then Spiggott comes on after and sings the title song, this moody low-key number in which he drones “I don’t love you… you don’t move me… go away…” and more, which is okay in itself, but is notable for basically anticipating a great deal of the pop that came into vogue in the 80s. The whole thing about low-key emotion, songs of disaffection sung in a flat, monotone voice against a murmuring background, the singer in a suit, barely moving, became what groups such as Pet Shop Boys and New Order and Depeche Mode and any number of others were all about. Maybe there was a lot more music like this song in vogue in 1967 [I assume so, and that this song was parodying it], but if not, we have to credit this movie with foreseeing the music of an entire decade, a decade in advance. I haven’t been able to find out if that is included in the music Dudley Moore wrote for the film.

Okay, so now to the less positive. Both me and my friend found this movie, overall, to be simultaneously funny and not funny at all. It is very clever verbally, with certain lines very carefully written to provide little jokes right as a certain visual onscreen, or to supply little puns that are so subtle they are easy to miss. For example, during the wish where Stanley’s wife is horny—for someone else—Spiggott, playing croquet, hands his “blue balls” to the caddy. And there are a million little things like that sprinkled throughout the movie, as well as just the general deadpan British demeanor and droll way of putting things. So on that level it’s very funny, but there’s a whole layer of jokes on a more literal level that were just kind of, well, stupid. For example, during that same fantasy when Stanley’s wife lusts for someone else, he keeps bringing her gifts that she ignores—jewels, furs—until he finally brings her the Mona Lisa, and there’s a joke about how it’s the real one. I can’t remember more [I blocked them out], but suffice to say that there is this very sophisticated verbal and tonal humor going on at the same time as this very base and cringeworthy obvious and lowbrow humor.

And finally, the fatal blow; Stanley’s seven wishes just get really boring and routine. So Spiggott is going to find a loophole in every one, we get it, and we get it after four wishes [actually we get it after two, I’m trying to be generous], leaving three left to sit through. This movie is only 104 minutes, but seemed much longer. Similarly, even though Cook and Moore are essentially playing different roles in each wish, after a while they all sort of become the same, and the entire thing gains a sheen of tedium.

Overall, the good and clever and funny and interesting outweighs the bad, making it definitely worth the rental, but the thick vein of lowbrow humor and the overall tedium of the whole concept conspire to keep it from becoming the brilliant film it might have been.



SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

Yes, although it doesn’t quite live up to its potential.