Despicable Me 2

Three years ago I was thrown for a loop by how much I enjoyed and was surprised by the original Despicable Me. It made my list of ten favorite films that year and I have enjoyed it every time I have seen it since. Inevitably these days a movie that succeeds on a financial level is going to be franchised. When you invest as much money as it takes to make a major motion picture, you want to cover your bets by having a pre-sold audience. That is why so many films this year are sequels to films from other years. The results are not always satisfying. Despite the huge money windfall, "Iron Man 3" feels like a disappointment. No one expected much from "The Hangover III" and "Fast and/or Furious 6" is what it is. I worry that a sequel might undermine the original charm of a movie and spoil my enjoyment of the characters. That happened with "Cars 2" and I pretend there was only one "Matrix" film so that I can continue to admire it. I really hoped that "Despicable Me 2" would be able to extend the idea of the story and the characters instead of merely using them to grab some more cash. Well, I did not need to be concerned. The creaters of this film have as much inventiveness as they did the first time and the movie has charm to spare.

Gru, the villain turned hero from the first movie, is being recruited to aid a secret agency in fighting an unidentified new evil villain. This allows him to continue to use the wild inventions and creative plot ideas from the first movie but to do so in a reversal of roles. In addition, he is not being won over by the three girls he is now a parent too, he is doing his best to be the best dad he can be, and that makes the secret business a little more complicated. The three girls are as idiosyncratic as they were in the first story, but there are some traditional themes thrown in this time. Margo, the oldest is subject to romantic notions and the protective Father drive kicks in when Gru notices his little girl is noticing boys. There is a great set piece early on in the movie where Gru responds to a booking emergency at his youngest daughter's birthday party. It was five minutes of laughter that sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

The Minions played a substantial supporting role in the first movie and they are more prominent in this film. Personally, they entertain the heck out of me. They combine slapstick with pantomime and character humor to create some truly funny pieces of mental candy. The funny language they speak and the expressiveness they manage to have despite being blank faces with big eyes is a good indication of the animators and writers creativity. If you give people who are artistic and funny enough time, they will manage to find something to please you and the Minions almost always pay off. There are also a variety of extravagant settings and pieces of equipment that they are given a chance to play in and that helps as well. Most of the laboratory design in both Gru's lab and that of the villain, is incredibly complicated and funny and interesting at the same time. 

There is a very successful addition to the cast in the form of Lucy, the rookie partner that is assigned to work with Gru by the "Anti-Villain League". She is a complementary character for our lead and presents a lot of fun possibilities. It also helps that she is voiced by Kristen Wiig and allowed to be a little loopy despite the fact she is presented as a competent agent. There is a personal story arc that works given all the characters, and the imagination of Minion Dave gives us a minute of silly bliss that focuses on Lucy very affectionately. There were a couple of side plots that exist to flesh out the story and give both Lucy and Gru some chances to be funny outside of the main spy plot. It doesn't advance the story much but it does allow the characters top be a little more understandable in terms of their relationship.

Every minute or so there was a minute to chuckle about. I laughed out loud several times and frankly I smiled the whole way through the movie. The two minor criticisms I have of the movie should not discourage anyone from seeing it. First, there were a couple of jokes based on current references, and that is one of the failings of the "Shrek" series. I hope that the writers don't become dependent on topical humor too much. There were several more generic references that did not bother me at all, including an allusion to "Return of the Jedi" in a very subtle form. Another of those effective movie references is escaping my memory at the moment, but it was just as subtle so it should not be a problem. The second issue was the featuring of four or five poop/fart jokes. I know it's a kids film, but they did not do that the first time around. One or two would have been OK, the extras just seemed to push it a little to much in the kiddy direction. This is a great family film that entertained for the whole running time. It may not seem as fresh because it is a sequel, but the jokes were not stale and the characters continue to make us want to spend time with them. No doubt we will be doing so in the summer of 2016. For the moment, enjoy the minions that we have today.

Evil Dead: The Musical

I've been out of town and out of theaters for a little while. While we were traveling, we stopped in Vegas and made it to a presentation of "Evil Dead: The Musical". I'd heard of it but I did not know that it was still in production. It turns out that after its Off-Broadway run, it has cropped up in a number of places and it has found a pretty solid home in the V theater in the Planet Hollywood Hotel. A friend had gone to see it a few weeks ago and I could hardly wait to join the initiated.

The production values are even lower than the original film the musical is based on. This play is done on the cheap. It works pretty well because the story is trashy, the jokes are vulgar and the concept is silly. It is one step up from an elaborate Reader's Theater presentation. The recorded music and the sets are a tip off that your money is going to pay the cast not to build an empire. That's a good thing because the cast is the main reason that the play works. Everyone is enthusiastic and having a good time. The leads have pretty solid voices and if they were not sometimes betrayed by the audio system, you might be able to say they have good chops. Whatever draw backs there were in the singing, are compensated for by the over the top physical comedy the actors put into their parts. They ham it up and dance with vigor and mug for individual audience members. It feels like a lounge act but with a plot.

The songs are all very funny and play off the horror film aspects of the story pretty well. "Cabin in the Woods" is a cheerful upbeat piece that sets the characters and establishes the cheesiness of the production. It is followed by "Stupid Bitch", "What the F*** was That?" and "All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons". You can pretty much get the idea by looking at those titles. The show is not scary, or serious or much more than a series of jokes about all the "Evil Dead" movies. The highlight for me was the dance number "Do the Necronomicon". It clearly invites a comparison of this play to "Rocky Horror". That is a pretty good comparison to make, the movie is self referential silliness that plays well at mid-night. At the end, you'll be standing in the aisles doing the dance your self, although it is a little more complicated than the "Time Warp".

If I had known ahead of time what the perks were of being in the "Spatter Zone" seats, I might have thought of upgrading.  Let me just say if you spring for the upgrade, be sure to wear disposable clothes that you won't miss. At intermission, the character of Dead Scott, (I'm not sure if the pun is intended, I want to believe so) makes sure that if you did not get your monies worth of liquid crimson, that you will not go home disappointed. 

There are bits and pieces from all the films in the musical. Most of the great lines get recycled in an obvious manner by the characters. There is nothing subtle about it, and it isn't even very clever but it is satisfying for all of us deadites. While there is no nudity, it is not really for kids. The language is frequently excessively vulgar. The MC is especially free with the F-bomb and there is a running theater joke based on the play's official photographer that results in audience call outs which encourage the whole assembly to participate. If you love these movies you will have a great time. It does suffer a little loss of steam in the second act but there are a couple of highlights that make the lull less painful. Over all I would rate the whole thing "Groovy".

The Heat

I made a joke in class the other day that the only reason any guy ever goes to see a Sandra Bullock movie is because he has a wife or a girlfriend. Sandy is the Queen of romance in the last fifteen years. When Meg Ryan dumped Dennis Quaid and got her face messed up, the crown was picked up by Miss Bullock and has never been put down since. The joke is funny as long as we ignore "The Blind Side" and "Crash". This movie wants to be an action film with comedy, but in truth it is another romance. Like all of the recent guy bonding films may be referred to as "Bro-mances", this can legitimately he called a "Ho-mance". Sandra is bonding with another woman, and that is the real focus of the movie.

Melissa McCarthey was described in a post I read on line as the female Zack Galifinakis. She was seen as odd and irritating. Despite that comparison, and her presence as a love interest for Galifinakis in "The Hangover III", I think she is much closer to a Chris Farley type. She is a bull in a china shop, but ultimately she has a heart of gold. She is the driving force in the movie and it is her humor that makes this movie work despite it's by the numbers plot. She sells the tough gal character pretty well and the foul mouthed insults are creative enough that when you are laughing at them, they actually sound like something a clever person might say rather than words that a screenwriter forced from her lips.

This is a buddy cop picture with a mismatched pair of protagonists. Bullock is channeling her character from "Miss Congeniality", but it works and in the end her story arc seems credible enough. McCarthey drags her along for the rough humor and plays against her more timid side pretty well. There are some plot lines that are tossed in that go nowhere and are clearly designed to give McCarthey's character some street smarts and Bullock's character some sympathy. None of that is needed because the dialogue is what makes this funny as well as a couple of visual jokes. I got a big laugh from the tracheotomy scene and then the visual of one of the villains turning an earlier interrogation scene around was also amusing. This movie earns it's R rating honestly, there are enough f-bombs to satisfy and Scarface fan who ends up in the audience.

The humor is also visual at times and it mostly grows out of the characters. There is a sequence that will get some big laughs that is completely contrived, just to give the girls a chance to act out when drunk. It does not really fit with the rest of the movie but it did have some bits in it that will get some big chuckles. It's not quite as hysterical as it wants to be but it is generally very satisfying. There was a surprising amount of violence and sometimes the tone of the movie switches a bit too abruptly. I could have used a little more of Jane Curtain, she has one funny visual bit and then the family scenes are so similar to the ones in "The Fighter" that you wonder how big a stereotype we must be dealing with in those Irish families in Boston.

This is going to be a movie that is very successful and for which a sequel will be created very quickly. I don't need a sequel, but the characters were entertaining enough together that it seems like an easy reach and Hollywood is not going to pass up the low hanging fruit that this moneymaker is going to turn out to be. There isn't much to analyze here. It is a straight buddy cop action/comedy film. The two leads have a lot of appeal and there are enough jokes to sustain it. Your life will not be changed but you will laugh out loud a few times and you won't feel bad doing so.

White House Down

If you are looking for big and stupid with a lot of explosions, you could do worse than "White House Down", like maybe "Godzilla" or "2012". Which would be completely appropriate given the heritage of this film. Roland Emmerich has made some spectacular popcorn movies over the years but he has also made some that did not quite live up to the craptasitic story telling that we know he can accomplish. This movie falls squarely in between. It would like to soar near "Independence Day" but it is closer to "The Day After Tomorrow". Preposterous and derivative it can't quite reach the heights of fun silliness that it shoots for, but it has some passing moments and while a bit overstuffed, it still leaves us wanting something just a little bit more.

In 1998, "Armageddon" did not suffer in the wake of it's earlier in the year, end of the world comet crashing into the Earth cousin "Deep Impact". "White House Down" unfortunately does not compare as favorably with it's previously released story incarnation, "Olympus has Fallen." Part of the reason might be that the enemy is so much more believable in that film, and while there are plot twists, it does not require the highest echelons of government to achieve the destruction of the President's house. There was also a more realistic portrayal of the President in that movie than we get here. Jamie Fox is a fine actor, I watched "Django Unchained" just last night and he can carry a film. In "Ray" he had a personality to convey. As the President in "White House Down", he is a caricature of a leader. We are supposed to buy that he has a fixation on achieving greatness by accepting the word of the Iranian President on military matters in the Middle East. He believes the turmoil in the world is all caused by poverty, and he has unilateral authority to act on the basis of his beliefs regardless of treaties or Congressional oversight. The only personality traits he shows are the Jordans that he dons in the last half of the movie and his insistence in the face of the opposite advice from everyone involved to fly Marine One down low over the Lincoln Memorial. He does get a couple of good one liners in the story, and they undermine his credibility but do add some jocularity to the proceedings.

Channing Tatum gets to play the hero in this story. He gets a little more character development because his precocious daughter is part of the group of hostages that is taken during the attack. She becomes a bigger hero than him because she has a You Tube Channel. Yep, Hollywood is going to glory in the fight against terrorism through the surrogacy of real life media uploads. The big advantage of her video is that it allows the military fighters in the terror group to be identified. Which is then used for no purpose whatsoever except to suggest they are bad guys. They are bad guys who have an ax to grind with the U.S. government. There is an abandoned CIA agent, a racist right wing nut job, and mercenaries of various types. They are brought into the same action for completely different reasons and they form a cohesive unit until they don't. The main character behind the plot has his own agenda, which some of the group knows and some does not. In the long run we are expected to believe that government officials with long careers and a history of honorable service, will become merciless killers of innocents and colleagues alike. Maggie Gyllenhaal's Secret Service functionary is even more naive than the President and her comments often stir unintended laughter.

The five minute car chase on the South Lawn of the White House is one of the more inane sections of the movie. Some explosions kill dozens of people and others merely scatter a few before they take up arms again. The President and The Hero keep running back and forth without much of a plan. The scenario behind the plot is convoluted, and it has inherent flaws in story telling. Nuclear codes are changed, but the identification system for Presidential Authorization stays the same, despite multiple changes in Presidential status.

I'm willing to go along with all of the malarkey if the entertainment value is high enough. It just does not reach that point here. Nothing in the characters ever reaches the joyful audacity of Nic Cage in "The Rock". There are some flares of temper and frustration, but Tatum can't carry the maniacal glee of Cages scenery chewing and none of the terrorists has any fun lines at all. I did enjoy the tour guide and the line about "Independence Day" did get me to laugh at loud. The manipulation is not just obvious, that can be forgiven, it was just artless and that hurts the entertainment quality of the movie.

R.I.P. Richard Matheson - 'Twilight Zone' Writer Dead At 87

R.I.P. Richard Matheson - 'Twilight Zone' Writer Dead At 87

I read his short stories and books when I was a teen and loved the Twilight Zones he was connected to. A great legacy.

World War Z

So I am used to zombie movies that function in a slightly different way, that being said, this film works pretty darn well. There were stories about behind the scene problems and re-shoots on the movie. Originally this was to have been released last Christmas. The CGI Zombie attack clips on the walls surrounding Jerusalem seemed to undermine the idea of the film, making it look a little odd.. In the end those film clips make up a small portion of the movie and they work well enough to give us the idea of how a massive group of infected /dead people could suddenly be a threat rather than something to just be avoided. The script problems don't seem to have effected the tension level and the PG-13 rating is not as off putting for a horror action film as I thought it might be. This is definitely not a gore movie but it is a tight action film that provides plenty of suspense and enough creepiness to keep the average film goer satisfied for it's running time.

It is probably fortunate that I am unfamiliar with the source material. Everyone who has read it says it would be impossible to make as a single film, so clearly there has to be a simplification and an "inspired by" qualification of the movie. The zombies here are much like the infected humans in the "28 Days/28 Weeks" mode, they are Fast and Furious (although they don't steal cars or look like Vin Diesel, OK, some of them do). In most of the zombie films I've seen, the survivors try to hunker down and ride it out. They are subject to stress and fear and it is usually the internal strife that causes the drama in the film. Ultimately, they have to escape or fight and some live but most die. There never seems to be much hope for the world after the whole thing starts. In this story, we see the outbreak take over very rapidly. I still have some questions about how that could be the case when most of the incubation time takes a few minutes. I'm not sure who boarded all those zombies on flights, but I guess the airlines were desperate enough that as long as a person was ticketed they could get on a plane, in spite of wanting to bite everyone else in line.. TSA is once again shown not to be very effective. The logic aside, when the big cities start to see the spread of the infection and the rapid growth of the dead population it is pretty scary.

Brad Pitt is the hero of our story. He is a U.N. Health Specialist. It is never quite clear what his specialty is or why his assistance is so necessary that a special operation is arranged to save him and his family. The family set up is solid and the outbreak is handled smashingly well. The opening act of the movie pulls us in quickly and those other pesky questions seem irrelevant. There are three pretty effective chase sequences that feel very intense. The first one features a series of car crashes that are realistic, sudden and perfectly imaginable in the circumstances. Along the way, the family picks up a boy that they take on responsibility for as one of their own. All of this mostly moves to the background once the second act commences. The second act consists of a series of chases and attacks in a variety of situations. Some of them are simple and one of them is very elaborate. The influence Pitt's character has seems to be substantial even in the parts of the world that are cut off or over run. It does seem at times as if the story gives him cache when it is convenient and none when it suits the story for dramatic purpose. This is not a story of survivors holding out against the oncoming hordes, it is a globetrotting race against time and every stop features some new wrinkle to the plot.

As you may have noticed, there are a lot of chases and escapes and attacks. It may seem a bit repetitive after a while. Each one is staged differently so they don't seem too recycled, but there is only so much you can draw out of the concept.  The attack on the plane was one of the most innovative and the result does stretch credulity quite a bit. Still it gets us to the third act where we begin to see some plot ideas from earlier in the movie begin to gel. The film seems set up to allow the story to continue, so don't be too surprised that the zombies are not wiped out and a cure does not seem likely. The trick here is a little bit different and I thought it made the movie work a little better in the end. The action in this act is a lot more direct and visible since it is contained in a well lit location and we have clear objectives that are being pursued. If this was the section of material that had to be re-written, then they did a solid job making it work in terms of drama and action.

Pitt was the only recognizable actor in the cast so that must be where the money went (OK, David Morse is in it for about 80 seconds but his exposition was so vague that it did not matter ). Everyone else was just fine but only one other character is given a chance to shine a little bit in the movie. The Israeli soldier Segan is just as tough as Pitt's character and doesn't have any back story, but she manages to broaden our interest in the rest of humanity by her willingness to fight on despite a dramatic turn of events. You can see that this is a big movie, there are cities being torn apart and naval ships put at the disposal of some of the survivors. Plane crashes and nuclear explosions seem to occur every few minutes and the production design was usually convincing. It's a crackerjack entertainment that has some big gaps in it's plotting but it overcomes those weaknesses with some effective tension and suspense sequences. I still think I will be heading over to my son in-law Drew's house when the Zombie Apocalypse shows up. He is better armed than Brad Pitt is and I think our chances would be stronger in the long run. Besides if Brad shows up, we'll know where all the zombies are, right behind him.

Monsters University

After the debacle that was "Cars 2" it would be understandable that Pixar fans would be concerned about an unnecessary sequel to a fantastic original film. While the sequel route worked with "Toy Story", it certainly did not feel like there was more follow up story for Monsters Inc. Fortunately, instead of inventing a new challenge for the characters in the original film, they have chosen to visit their roots and explore the characters from an historical perspective. This preserves the world in which we first met Sully and Mike but it allows us to see them from a different perspective. I think it was a wise choice. While "Monsters University" lacks some of the dynamic story telling and emotional heft of the first movie, the prequel wisely sticks to character development and humor. The plot is less important than the jokes and the personalities of our two friends and assorted other characters.

Billy Crystal puts so much into the character of Mike Wazowski, that he feels new and fresh despite the fact that we already have one movie story behind us (or is it in front of us?). Mike seems to be the smart kid with big ambitions who just seems to not quite fit in. We get to see where his dream comes from and how he doggedly pursues it. Along the way, some old rivalries and new friendships are started. College is the place where people go to reinvent themselves and Mike has every intention of doing just that. He longs to be a "Scarer" at Monsters Inc., and excels at his academics at the same time that he continues to struggle with his place in the school. John Goodman is back and he plays it more like a second fiddle this time. It is Mike's story, and although he has important story moments, the plot ultimately depends on Mike. This is where the characters meet and it is great to see how they manage to become friends in spite of some of the things thast seperate them in the beginning.

While it is not quite "Animal House" the story does center on the antics of a group of outsiders trying to fight the powers that be. The humor is closer to "revenge of the Nerds" with little touches of the Disney/Pixar magic thrown in. The tables set up in the quad that solicit the freshman to join a club or activity are very funny. There is a reference to some of the usual college traditions, like football chants and good luck touching of school icons. Anyone who has gone to a college that has a real campus life will recognize the stereotypes and the obligatory processes that student struggle with. Most of them are handled hilariously here. Early efforts in the classroom fall away to the usual Fraternity hijinks that make a movie like this work. Imagine trying to establish a coll persona and having your Mom pop up to take your picture. 

Once again the animation is top notch but there was nothing spectacular in the vision of the movie that draws attention to itself. The challenges that the competing fraternities and sororities have to go thru are all similar to something that might be done in the non-monster world. The main differences were not the ideas but the fact that the participants were monsters. There are some funny bits based on the idea that the monsters will have an allergic reaction to some of the obstacles or that there is a massive monster librarian. To me the thing that was most effective about the animation was how much emotion they could get onto the face of a one eyed creature. Mike is very expressive despite having half the tools and none of the unique characteristics of the other creatures. There are plenty of nods to the original film along the way and everything seems to fit together pretty well.

I was a little surprised at how the major conflict at the end was resolved. There is a consequence to trying to take a shortcut and Mike and Sully both learn that, but they learn it cheerfully. The end credits contain a series of visuals that bridge the story and turn what might have been a disappointment into a triumph. Also, there is a stinger joke and if you leave before the credits are done you are going to miss a pretty good laugh. Monsters University is not an instant classic like "Ratatouille" or "Up" or and of the "Toy Story" movies, but it is an immensely charming entertainment that has clever humor and is integrated well with characters that we already know.

As always, a Pixar feature is accompanied by a short that has plenty of whimsy and charm. It is not laugh out loud funny as some of the older Pixar shorts are. This one tells a sweet little story about two umbrellas that catch each others eye and the struggle they go through to meet. It is five minutes of mild pleasure that looks like it mixes computer animation with actual footage of the real world (although I simply think that is the excellence of the Pixar design fooling us).