Crazy Stupid Love

Once upon a time, a movie would be classified as a comedy. or a drama, or a war picture or western. In these days in which a science fiction film is presented as a western or music videos are sliced together to create a drama, it should come as no surprise that a movie largely billed as a comedy would also have the poignancy of a heartwarming drama. There is a history of movies that manage to accomplish both things, "It's a Wonderful Life" is the first example that pops into my head. So many movies today are billed as romantic comedies, when there is either to much romance and not enough comedy (Letters to Juliet) or there is comedy without any romance (Bridesmaids). They sometimes try to force a little bit of one or the other into a film so it will be easier to market to the current film audience. "Crazy Stupid Love" is a romantic drama with comedy elements. You can clear see in the trailer that the emphasis is on the humorous, but the movie actually emphasizes the human. It does rely on some basic film cliches in the story telling but the dialogue, and the acting manage to overcome those weaknesses to make the film work pretty well.

Steve Carrell is cast so often in the roll of schmuck, that he has an edge as an actor from the beginning of the story, we do not need to be convinced that there is something of a loser here. 40 Year old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine, Get Smart,  Date Night, all create an atmosphere that allows us to accept his character without much work. The question is never is he believable as a sad sack loser, it is whether or not he can be redeemed into something more worthy. His character in this movie is Cal Weaver, a nice enough guy whose wife confesses to cheating on and wants to divorce him. His pitiful circumstances would elicit sympathy for the most part except he goes overboard on the self pity and and he annoys a local Lothario, who responds by trying to make over Cal. Jacob is played by the always excellent Ryan Gosling. He appears to be a man in charge, and maybe he will be able to rescue Cal from his circumstances. Of course, this is a dramatic story, so there is actually more going on and the plot thickens.

The developments that occur as the story goes on will not surprise anyone who has seen a few movies in the last twenty years. Some plot twists are straight out of a Cary Grant movie, while others will be familiar to fans of John Hughes. There are cliches galore in the way the movie is told. For instance, we get a foreshadowing shot of a dropped photograph with Cal and his wife and the glass has shattered to suggest a division between the two of them. Movies like Babel and Crash, have used parallel storytelling that ultimately comes together at the end to reveal connections between characters and their situations. So those kinds of developments are a big part of the film here as well. Most of the convergence is designed for a laugh, but there are a couple of dramatic lines as well and they do a good job at pulling at the heartstrings.  I think we would be better off if we knew more about why Cal's wife succumbed to an office affair, and  even more importantly, why she wants a divorce. Julianne Moore plays Emily as if she were as sad as Cal is. The only real motive I see for her claim that she wants a divorce is guilt over the betrayal of her husband.

This is an ensemble piece, with excellent work done by all of the actors in the movie. John Carrol Nash is a favorite at our house, he has a small role as a friend of the family and he gets two big scenes that provide excellent laughs, one very subtle and the other over the top. Emma Stone is in one of the parallel stories and she is quite charming and beautiful. The kid who plays the son of Cal and Emily is an actor that I was not familiar with, but he has to be solid because the heart of the movie really depends on us believing some of the feelings he has as his parents marriage is crashing and he himself is facing love.  Lisa Lapira steals every scene she is in with Emma Stone, playing her funny and opinionated best friend. Marisa Tomei is also worth a special mention because she is in a small part that develops the plot, and she is so funny in it that the term comedy can be legitimately applied to the movie.

The climax of the movie occurs in the biggest cliche setting of all. As a Speech Teacher, I can tell you that the events that take place here can only happen in a movie. The town would have to be so small and the residents so patient and caring about the family, for this device to really happen. The thing that saves it from itself is the dialogue. If the words coming out of the characters were not compelling and warm and funny, the movie would be groaned off of the screen. We can forgive the ridiculous nature of the event as shown because we are listening to good actors doing lines that we want to hear, despite the fact that the way events unfold is so darn impossible. It is entertaining as all heck, and the characters are real even if the stories are not. We want them to be true because of the actors and their lines. So we will suspend our disbelief and live with the imperfections because so much of the rest of the movie is what we want; intelligent and heartfelt and interesting.

History of the Title Sequence

A History Of The Title Sequence from jurjen versteeg on Vimeo.


A brilliant little film showing major innovations in Movie Title in a simple graphic format.

Cowboys & Aliens

When we saw this trailer months ago, it was pretty exciting. James Bond and Indiana Jones in the same movie and they play cowboys. Then you add on a layer of WTF, just to make sure that the geek in all of us is salivating for this. The concept is fun, just saying the title. You would have to do serious damage to screw this up. I am pleased to say that no serious damage is done. This is the movie that you expect it to be, it relies a lot on the appeal of the stars but more than anything, it is the concept that makes this payoff. Cowboys on horseback, shooting guns at aliens in spacecraft.  Yep, it is as simple as that.

One of the reasons I like doing the blog is that I have been burned by professional reviews and critiques on a number of occasions. If a storyline or actor or concept is appealing, I think I should give it a chance. Sure I may end up seeing something that pisses me off, but at least I am pissed off because I made my own judgement. If I stay away from a theater, because some one else"s opinion scared me away, I am putting a lot of trust in that other persons opinion. Once upon a time there were critics that mattered and I would listen to.  I have found though that I am much more satisfied being driven to a film by criticism than being driven away from one. Positive comments have brought me to movies like last year's "City Island". The negative commentary on a film may be accurate but if it contradicts my natural instincts, should I trust it?  There were a number of weak notices for the current film. One clever writer subtitled their Review, "Cowboys shoots itself in the foot." I sure don't want to be disappointed but I also don't want someone else telling me to ignore my core instincts. When they are right, I have only myself to blame for spending money on trash, but if they are wrong and I listened to them, then I blame myself, and them for missing out on something that would have been a pleasure. I can find things to like in most films, when something irritates me I'm glad to share. I don't think people should read my opinions and deny themselves a movie they would enjoy, but I do want others to know how I feel and I am happy to have them share with me. Reviews in mainstream papers and other media outlets could discourage you from seeing Cowboys and Aliens, if they do, you are missing something you probably would have liked.

One of the professional reviews I read said that this movie adds nothing to the western genre and it uses a lot of western cliches to simplify the storytelling. Except for a movie like last years remake of "True Grit", there are nearly zero westerns released most years. I can think of a half dozen over the last five to ten years. So who is going to be overly familiar with those western cliches except old guys like me that used to see westerns in theaters and still watch them on video? My daughters best friend watched "Silvarado" at the house a few weeks ago, she is twenty three, it was the first western she had ever seen. "Cowboys and Aliens" is made for casual viewers of the western genre, not John Wayne enthusiasts or obsessive viewers of Sergio Leone. You get a solid set up of the western conventions, and then a huge twist is thrown in to make it different and fun. The term "mash-up" is being used to describe this film, but I think a mash up is more about genres that make no sense together. This movie is told as if it were a straight action film, and the events could have actually taken place in the old west. Now if Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford started dancing and singing, that would be a mash up. Here, they are conventional western archetypes, put into a different kind of conflict. Very little of this is science fiction. The aliens could simply be a different Indian tribe the cowboys are encountering.

There is a central mystery, several character lines and an action story being told in the running time of the movie. Harrison Ford is so grizzled, he could be playing the Gabby Hayes role in the movie. Daniel Craig is more stoic than Clint Eastwood. My guess is he has fewer lines than just about any Eastwood western ever. Some good character actors get to play in a western movie. Keith Carradine belongs in a movie like this, it would be nice if there was a little more for him to do because he is so good. Walter Goggins is an actor we have found in the TV series "Justified", which is basically a modern western. He is doing the Strother Martin prairie scum part very effectively and has some of the funniest moments in the film. Sam Rockwell is just good in everything he does, his part does payoff here but it would be nice if there were more to it.

The alien stuff is fun, but they do not dwell on scientific explanations, or drool over the technology that has been invented for the movie. Yes the aliens are the antagonists but we do not really need to know much more about them than they are nasty and see humans as little more than insects. This is a shoot em up, with some fun images, a wacky idea and some terrific actors. everybody has fun for a couple of hours and then we go home. My oldest daughter said when the movie was over, "That's exactly what I wanted from this movie." I must concur. If you are interested in the premise and the combination of the actors, you will get what you are looking for. If you want groundbreaking genre transforming cinema, then I guess you might be disappointed. I would only have been disappointed if I had let weak word of mouth keep me out of the theater. It's pretty much exactly what you think it's going to be, and that's why you are there in the first place, right?

Horrible Bosses

Some movies are not designed to be analyzed or valued. They are to be consumed and then disposed of. "Horrible Bosses" is one of those movies that is like a Big Mac, it is not good for you, if you think about it too long you will feel guilty about consuming it, but while you are in the middle of it, it goes down pretty well. Nowadays, most films are in one of two camps; great big blockbuster or esoteric indie material. There needs to be room in the middle for movies that are entertaining to a larger audience but do not require the entire budget of a small South American nation to produce.

This movie is in that middle area. It is made by professionals, it looks good for the most part and it does not involve six months of CGI to make any scenes work. So it has to work on the basis of the premise, the script and the performances. The premise is high concept comedy. Oppressed workers consider killing their bosses to get out of their misery. Murder is often used to comic effect in movies despite being a serious subject and socially taboo. If we buy into the concept that this is just a comedy and that the actions that follow are not an endorsement of the behavior, we should be able to laugh at the complications as they come up.  When I was a kid, I remember watching a Glen Ford movie called "The Gazebo" which focused on the efforts of a largely likable man to hide the body of a murder victim. It was hysterical when I was nine or ten, so that must be the point at which we can distinguish real from imaginary crimes.

There are sufficient plot complications to make the story amusing, although sometimes the complications are a bit of a stretch and do not advance the story. We get plenty of reasons to share the view of our protagonists in the story. The bosses are indeed horrible. The explanations concerning why each of the characters feels murder is the only way out are adequate but not always realistic. It sound silly to discuss realism in what is essentially a Three Stooges movie with an R rating. We don't need too strong a reason to buy into the plan, but if we think there is an obviously rational alternative, it will not be the comedy of desperation but instead the humor of sadism that moves us forward. There are a couple of sustained sequences of humor as each of the three desperate employees participates in  an information gathering break in at their bosses house. On joke from Annie Hall is repeated but with enough of a twist to make it amusing. There is also some broad physical comedy involving a pert, and they manage to get three laughs out of it.

The performers are ultimately going to be responsible for selling this and making us laugh. The three bosses are a little underdeveloped but they are actually played by the three biggest names in the cast. The marketing for the film does point out their presence but it never suggests that they are anything more than supporting players in the movie. The leads are Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day. Bateman is a solid actor who has been in dramatic films but ism largely familiar as a comedic actor. The other two I am unfamilar with but I suspect they are in some comedy show that I have not seen. They seem to be solid at playing the humor for what is in the script pretty well. There are a lot of throwaway lines that have a kernel of humor in them, and they get just enough attention to make us hang on. I had about five or six big laughs in the movie, and a dozen or so smiles and chortles. It is not brain surgery, it is a ninety minute summer comedy that plays well enough to entertain for a while.

We need to continue to have films that play to a broad audience so that our social system continues to function. Shared communal experiences give us something for small talk and common references. You can recommend or warn people away from a movie, but it helps if it is a movie that enough people have seen that they might be drawn to it, and it can't be something everyone will have seen because then there is limited interest in the discussion. I don't mean to suggest this movie will save Western Civilization, but the fact that it exists means that couples can go out on a date. They can share the experience, and they can forget about it quickly if it interferes with their lives. It also means they can laugh together a couple of times and not feel like there is too much riding on that silly ninety minutes.

'The Undefeated'

I like politics and I know that many of the people that read this blog enjoy a good political debate as well. This documentary is clearly going to provoke some strong emotions on the part of viewers, regardless of the point on the political spectrum they fall. I want to talk about it as a movie first but it is a subject that is impossible to separate from from the medium. I have seen a number of documentaries that I have disagreed with politically, but the form that the filmaking took was clever and entertaining. I have also seen documentaries that are nothing more than a political agenda masquerading as films. "The Undefeated" falls into a middle ground for me. It is competently put together and it is a fascinating subject.  If however you are not interested in Sarah Palin at all, then the film is unlikely to keep your attention because it is so traditional in the way that the talking heads are overlapped with the visual images. This is a political film and not an entertainment. That might actually make it superior to a number of other movies because you are never in doubt about the viewpoint of the film maker.

The structure of the movie is simple. It is a chronological look at the political career of the most charismatic political figure on the public stage today. This is a woman that gets attention because she is expressing her views in a clear and interesting way, and she is not shy about who she is. The President was seen in his campaign as charismatic, but I think his charisma is largely a part of the symbolism he represented. As a speaker he is dry, long winded and has a tendency to talk in a condescending manner to his audience( although not nearly as condescending in tone as Al Gore). Palin's charisma is tied into her political philosophy true, but she has personality to burn and it shines on camera and on stage. This documentary uses clips of her speeches and narrative audio tracks from her book to give us an image of the person she is.  We get very limited images from any time before she was in the public arena. In large part the opening section of the movie is more about Alaska than Palin.

The issues that are outlined early on in the state's history, become focal points for the accomplishments of the Governor from the 49th state. There are ethics issues,oil issues and environmental issues that are the highlights of the terms that Palin served in Alaskan government service. So while the movie marches in a straight chronological line, those are the markers along the path that indicate where we are in the story. There is one element that is outside of this basic structure, and that is the opening sequence. For nearly two minutes we are subjected to a string of sound bites and video clips of pundits, celebrities and media figures saying the most vile things imaginable. They toss off the insults casually with little consequence, and the degree to which it becomes part of the political narrative of the media is astonishing. I thought the film might be focused on the way the political media has tried to erase her from the map. There is a John Ziegler film that covers that territory so I should probably seek it out. This movie focuses more on what Palin accomplished as a public servant. Politics is a background but government is the main focus.

Her time as Mayor of Wasilla is covered very briefly but in as much detail as you are likely to need. She was aggressive about growth, focused on limited government and she was re-elected by 75% of the voters in her town. A large portion of time is devoted to the Alaskan  Oil and Natural Resources Commission that she served on. There was quite a bit of corruption there and she rose to public attention statewide because she challenged the way that business was being done. The political enemies that she hurt the most were fellow Republicans. She is clearly not a political hack and is largely involved in this process to do the right thing by her fellow Alaskan citizens. She resigned from the job, which payed in the six figures, to an uncertain future, because she would not put up with the backroom deals that were short changing the citizens. Seven members of  Alaska government regulation agencies resigned in protest of the actions that the then Governor Frank Murkowski was taking in regard to oil company leases.  Later, several legislators were charged with public corruption by the F.B.I.. Palin's campaign for Governor was based largely on reform of these corrupt practices.

Her term as Governor is covered very completely by the documentary. It highlights the reforms she pursued and the substantial accomplishments she achieved. Her success was largely bi-partisan, with near unanimous support of changes from the Legislature. The complexities of the oil leasing business and the tax regulation system are explained in clear and concise segments of the movie. Everything leading up to the naming of her as a Vice Presidential nominee is pretty boiler plate history with a little bias in the manner of the storytelling.  This takes us two thirds of the way through the movie. We have had a largely mechanical description of her rise to power and the success she she made of that power. If it could be used for political purpose, that is not because it was cut in a dramatic way or elements of the story were changed to make it more dynamic. Any political use of the film up to this point would be the equivalent of taking a high school history documentary film and trying to turn it into a political message.

Once we get to the late summer of 2008, the nature of the movie shifts. It does become more clearly a political biography with a battling central figure. The first appearances of   conservative political commentators like Andrew Brietbart and Mark Levin, signal a shift to image building by the film makers. This is where the controversial stuff gets started and the connection to the Tea Party Movement is made. I think it is largely accurate in the conclusions that are reached, but here the agenda is much more deliberately political. If you want Sarah Palin to be presented as an effective political figure, I think it makes more sense to let the V.P. Acceptance speech and the Wisconsin speech on the labor unrest from last April do the talking for her. We can hear the radio folks most days of the week, let's watch Sarah work the crowd at a Tea Party Rally, talk to more of the people who make up that movement. We needed to hear from those candidates that she helped by her endorsements and appearances.  This is one of the places where the skills of the film makers are not up to their ambitions.

The cliches of documentaries are present in the movie in a number of  places. The music is frequently too urgent and dramatic in the background. It sounds unremittingly tense when all that is happening is people are on screen talking. There are a lot of talking heads and they are shot to build energy by pulling in and moving back or shifting from one side very quickly. It was quite annoying. I also don't get why they are all against a white background. They ought to be in their offices, on the steps of the state capitol, or sitting at the microphone in their studios. It seemed a weak film making choice to me. I did like the singing of the Minstrel Boy  hymn at the start and finish of the movie. That did set a tone of combativeness and resolve that the director wants to emphasize about Sarah Palin. There are many interesting transition and signpost images in the film. They work at signalling the subject but they sometimes take us out of whatever drama there is and remind us that this is a movie.

From a values perspective, I probably agree with Sarah Palin  ninety percent of the time or more. I never thought she was stupid but I know people who were convinced she was by the coverage she received in 2008. Her qualities as a foreign policy leader may be less than some, but they are certainly equal to the current occupant of the White House. This film attempts to show that Palin was also a competent and skilled public servant, and a critical voice for a segment of public opinion. It accomplishes that but it is unlikely that doubter will seek this out to discover for themselves her qualities. If you do get a chance to see it, "The Undefeated" is a effective but somewhat tame approach to selling Sarah Palin. I liked it a lot but I wish it had been better executed and I would not mind some red meat to go along with the meal.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Joe Johnston is a director that has made some fantastic movies and my guess is that most people would not know his name. He tried and largely failed to make "The Wolfman" a marketable film  after the original director and the star Benicio Del Toro fell out on the vision of the movie. My favorite of Johnston's films is "The Rocketeer" with maybe "October Sky in second  place. Both of those movies have something that "Captain America" needs in spades, and that is a heart that is set in traditional values. Those movies were set in the past and Johnston knows how to evoke that past really well. The first thirty or forty minutes of Captain America consists of images from America, in the process of fighting World War Two. These are not combat images, but looks at the homefront.  New York City is shown to be a tough place to live but also the sparkling jewel that nostalgia wants us to remember. There was not any 1943 World's Exhibition that I know of but New York did have the World's Fair in 1939 and the invented World Exhibition clearly took it's inspiration from the futurist visions of the 39 Fair. The sleek looks of the future were started there and in the movie we are talking about now, they come to life in the laboratory of the American Project, the munitions plants of the Nazi spawned Hydra organization and the cars and planes that are featured throughout the story. The style of Johnston in those places is reminiscent of the Hugh's factory featured in "The Rocketeer", the lighting and angles are evocative of an earlier time when the world was more direct in the way we saw ourselves.

The sense of accuracy starts with all of the usual things that make a movie work. Let me start with something that I can't remember writing about extensively in any of my blog posts before, costumes. The look of America in WWII is found in a thousand photographs of the times. Check a high school yearbook, or view the family album of your parents, or more likely now, your grandparents, and you will find the distinctive clothing. Steve Rogers, our hero appears in simple street clothes that were visible in those photos. If you have a picture of your dad or grandad in uniform during the war, he probably looks like Bucky Barnes, Captain America's best friend. The tweed of Dr. Erskine fits an academic of the day and the military uniform of Peggy Carter is as sharp as the ones worn by Dinah Shore in "Up in Arms" from 1944. Schmidt's car is not real as far as I know, but it looks like a nightmare of power and Teutonic arrogance that could easily have been made in those times. The Bowler hat with the Sgt' stripes worn by one of Roger's team is of course silly, but it looks like it could be real. This is a fantasy that is being run through a prism of reality and our memory of what the reality was. The costume that Captain America conducts his War Bond sales shows in, is the way a hero would be imagined in a 1940's comic book. When the suit gets changed, the alterations are not dramatic but they are practical and they keep the patriotic spirit that the comic character and the movie need to have to work.

The tone of the movie is set early on by the undefeatable spirit of a young man, desperate to contribute to his country. He is not trying to prove himself to anyone, he wants to be like everyone else, a contributor to the defeat of the enemy. There is a key point in the film when Steve Rogers is questioned and asked if he wants to go kill Nazis like all the other men, his answer is what makes him a real hero. The earnest motives and morals of the American spirit are contained in a young man that is not physically able to match those feelings. This is the sign that he is the right man to give this power to.  Everything that precedes the transformation of Steve Rogers into Captain America, is needed to make this story soar as a real character we can root for and not just another super hero to turn loose on the movie screens of the world this summer. There were some hints months ago that the movie would downplay the American exceptionalism that makes Captain America what he is. There was even talk that the movie would simply be titled "The First Avenger", to broaden the international audience. I don't know how the marketing of this movie is going in the rest of the world, but this movie sells American ideals and spirit. Yes, many of those are ideals shared with other nations, as is indicated by the Captain's team, but it matters that he is American and you cannot disguise that in this story or movie. Just as he did in "October Sky", Johnston manages to get real American ideals on the screen, without having to wave a flag. Unless you take a close look at that big ass shield that Cap is throwing around.

My knowledge of Captain America prior to this film is limited to the few comic books I can recall from when I was nine, ten or eleven. There was a limited movement cartoon version of Captain America that I watched along with all the other Marvel characters in the 1960s. I have been singing the theme song for forty plus years, but I am not an expert on the character.



This is the memory I have and if this is not accurate don't tell me. I want the current film to be my standard for what Captain America is.

There is plenty of action in the movie, but the action all seems to serve the story and reflect the world that these characters are supposed to exist in. The pacing of the film is steady, it is an origins story so it has all the classical elements of the super hero early narrative. They are not in a rush to get to the slam bang action, instead the story builds and leads us into action that we will appreciate all the more when it finally does show up. The two super hero films this most feels like are "Ironman" and "Superman". We get a clear logical development of the powers that we are going to see like we did in Ironman, and it is backed by the down to earth goodness of our hero and the world he comes from like "Superman". Next year Marvel Studios has a Hero all star film coming out called "The Avengers". We have been getting hints of it in the Ironman, Hulk and Thor films of the last few years. The addition of Captain America makes me want to see this movie more than I ever had before. They have great potential with this character and I hope they don't muck it up and let him get lost among all the other heroes.

The actors do a good job in their parts. Chris Evans is cast perfectly in his role as Steve Rogers/Captain America. The effects work used in the first part of the film is a couple of steps beyond what we saw in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". It is much more convincing and less obviously computer generated. Tommy Lee Jones just has to show up and be himself to make his part work, but he does get all the best one liners in the movie so pay close attention when he speaks, all of the verbal humor is in his dialogue. There are some visual jokes but nothing that will take you out of the movie. Everything fits together really well and makes this so far the highlight of the summer (along with Harry Potter).  Watch the credits all the way through for the Avengers teaser but also watch them for the spectacular WWII era art work that is meshed into the film so well. The show tune that is featured in the movie is a perfect fit for the kind of entertainment people would have sought out before Television and the internet. This film recreates a time and place that only the oldest of our parents and grandparents will recall, but it will make it an era that you wish you could have lived in an fought for. It is a comic book tribute to the greatest generation. We can never do them any justice for the burden and sacrifice they bore, but we can cheer on their spirit and the values they tried to save for all of us. This movie absolutely rocks and I can't imagine anyone would not enjoy it.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

A few years ago we stayed up till all hours of the night to go to a Mid-night screening of the first Transformers movie.  The toys were well after my childhood and came mostly before my kids time. Also, they were girls and we had a lot of pound puppies and unicorns around the house. We did not know what to expect except space robots that turned into vehicles. That movie turned out to be loud and stupid and much more fun than it had any right to be.  Shia LeBeuof was starring and we barely knew who he was much less how to say his name. Megan Fox was just a picture on a poster, who knew she was about to become an "It" girl. Here we are six years later and I'm sorry to say, Shia is a household name, but not yet a great actor, Megan Fox has dropped off the radar, and the Transformer movies are as stupid as they ever were but they have lost the charm they once contained.

Many on line sites have been very supportive of this film, especially in comparison to the second movie. As far as I was concerned they both had the same weaknesses that made them inferior to the first film. The stories are overly complicated, the action is bigger, louder and less clear. The humor in the movies has gotten overdone and does not seem genetic to the films or the characters. "Dark Side of the Moon" starts well, goes off the tracks and then recovers a little with some spectacular scenes of Chicago being destroyed. Other than that it has little going for it.

I always knew the formula for Michael Bay photography and storytelling. I've seen almost all of his movies and those that he has produced but not directed himself. After watching "Team America", it is hard to get out of the formula and just concentrate on the story. Since the Transformer Movies largely consist of the same story repeated over and over, there is not enough to distract from the overdone slow motion, sun drenched heroics with matching score. It has become a exercise in watching the cliches and wondering if they will stick out too much. They stuck out plenty in this movie, but fortunately we waited until enough other films were in 3D that we could see this in a standard screening. Otherwise the visual hokum would be intolerable. This movie has been out for three weeks and I was surprised at the number of people there for a weekday afternoon screening. It was not packed but the audience was enthusiastic. The kids behind us were not taking any of it seriously, but they did suck in their breath at some robot punches and they cheered the destruction of the appropriate Decepticons.

John Malkovich is in this movie for no reason whatsoever. Francis McDormand is also in the film and while she is a little more relevant as character, I am not sure why they needed her as an actress. She brings little of the steely resolve she is known for, she is slumming in an underwritten comedy part. However compared to Malkovich, her part is complex. He has no relevance to the story, adds nothing interesting to the film, and his mugging which can be hysterical in the right movie (Burn After Reading) was just annoying here. John Turturro was on the radio the other day promoting another project and he sounded so bright and engaging. It is sad that he has to pay the bills doing nothing work like this. There was a humorous story line with his character in the first movie, but here it is stretched to buffoonery.  The one great appearance in the movie is by Buzz Aldrin, a real American Hero. The Apollo program is integrated into the story in a clever way, and then all the inventiveness goes out of the movie.

There is nothing wrong with a dumb summer movie, but this one just feels redundant and convoluted. I like watching stuff blow up as much as the next guy, but there ought to be a reason for it. Here the only reason is to get your money. We get a sucker punch joke about Obama being the one to award Sam his medal, and there is a quick Star Trek joke based on Leonard Nimoy's voice work in the movie and a line from some of the Star Trek films. Except for the set up and Buzz Aldrin, this movie makes only a token effort to be better that the widely flogged Revenge of the Fallen, and is not close to the first movie in gee whiz charm. Enjoy it for what it is but don't expect to remember anything about it afterwards, it is quickly digested. I hope for better with a couple of upcoming big summer flicks.