The Dollar Movie Review

Amazing Grace with Ioan Gruffudd and Albert Finney

2007-05-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

Take Your Favorite Non-Believer to This Movie and Bridge a Gap

How do we address issues of morality… of right and wrong… in pluralistic times? It’s no small challenge and few movies dare tread the issue.

Take the instance of William Wilberforce, the wealthy and religious Minister of Parliament and the principle character in the movie Amazing Grace. Wilberforce mounted a decades-long campaign to end the slave trade in the United Kingdom, roughly 1789 until 1807, when the slave trade was effectively ended by a legislative sleight of hand. A month after his death in 1833, all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated by the Slavery Abolition Act.

All noble stuff, and Wilberforce’s remains rest in an honored place in Westminster Abbey as a result. His contributions have also warranted the Wilberforce, a 102-foot Doric column topped by Wilberforce’s statute in Queen’s Gardens in London.

It is not only Wilberforce’s doggedness that earned him his place in the British pantheon, but, let’s be honest, his Christian-guided morality. (FYI: In his day, Wilberforce was considered an evangelical.)

Because we’re talking about slavery here, one of humanity’s most odious sins, it’s easy even in modern pluralistic times for people outside the Christian tradition to see Amazing Grace and be moved. The movie works.

But like all people, Wilberforce was more complicated than the man carved in stone. He wrote in his diary, “God Almighty has set me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners.” By manners he was referring to what he saw as a rising tide of vice and immorality (there’s that word again).

Along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and other religious officials, Wilberforce pressed King George III to issue his Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice in 1787. By 1802 this became the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which fined and/or imprisoned many people, including free speech campaigners and secular reformers like the firebrand Thomas Paine.

Strictly speaking, Amazing Grace is not a bio-pic and so none of this turns up in the movie, but it does illustrate what makes moderns so uncomfortable with Christianity and with evangelical Christians in particular. In 2007 imprisoning people for free speech violations seems pretty retrograde.

What’s the modern world to make of people who not only seek to change the world for the better, but to change the individual for the better?

Here’s how one pop-culture icon is reacting. The 400th episode of The Simpsons tackles the subject of the Parents Television Council… called Online Christian Soldiers… which it decries for, “keeping the world safe from the horror of free expression” after one of the characters cuts loose a four-letter word on television.

And it’s not just pop culture on the attack. Right now Richard Dawkins, the eminent evolutionary biologist, Christopher Hitchens, and other evangelical atheists are laying the wood to Christians and other theists.

I have it on good authority from Catholic scholars…who always know their stuff on this account… that the logical case against God is stronger than the one for Him. In large measure that’s because the answers to the “why is there evil?’ questions are so unsatisfying. [Although to me, the question of 'why there is good?' is much more challenging. Even that old atheist Jean Paul Sartre never could never mount a meaningful response to that question.]

Christians… who still think in terms of right and wrong… and pluralists are talking past each other. But understanding starts with seeing people as they really are, not as you’ve categorized them.

Christians believe in positive change. But not only do they believe it, they work on it. It was Christian’s sense of morality that led to the end not only of chattel slavery, but debtor’s prisons, and child labor.

Even today, for every NGO working to improve life in the Third World, there are five Christian organizations, many of which have been on the ground longer.

Here’s my review of Amazing Grace: If you’re a Christian, go see it to witness your heritage. To non-Christians and pluralists I say, go see Amazing Grace to get a fuller picture of the power of Christianity to spark the good in men’s souls.

The Last Mimzy with Timothy Hutton

2007-04-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

An Uninspired Trip Down the Rabbit Hole

Hollywood loves a movie that can be easily characterized. So what to make of the hard to classify movie now in dollar theaters, The Last Mimzy?

Is it a family film? A brother-sister sci-fi buddy picture? An homage to Lewis Carroll? An aborted space odyssey? ET but with time-travel? A 90-minute Intel product placement? A reworking of the 1983 Matthew Broderick movie WarGames? An Al Gore eco-tract?

In fact, it’s too much of all those things and not enough of just one or two of them.

The movie stars two young unknowns Chris O’Neil and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn as a brother and sister who discover a curious box in the tidewater on a coastal Washington island near Seattle. Inside the box the children find everyday objects… including a stuffed rabbit named Mimzy… that impart powers to the children which startle their mother (Jolie Richardson) and the boy’s teacher (Rainn Wilson).

But when Mimzy begins to talk with the little girl and the objects seem to cause a huge power blackout in the Pacific Northwest, it seems as if the children have opened up Pandora’s Box.

The power failure introduces Michael Duncan Clark as a Homeland Security agent in charge of tracking down the source of the outage, and frankly he’s just awful in this role.

And the director Robert Shaye, best known as the executive producer of the Lord of the Rings movies, has an unsteady hand at the helm.

The script is by Toby Emmerich, who also wrote the Dennis Quaid thriller Frequency, and there are echoes of Frequency in Mimzy. Emmerich is head of production at New Line Cinema, which explains how this odd little film got made.

In Frequency, Emmerich wrote a very strong role for the father (Dennis Quaid). But not this time. Timothy Hutton, a fine actor, plays the father to the kids but there’s so little for him to work with in the script he comes off rather milquetoast.

Mimzy surprised a few critics. But for me it left me feeling glad I didn’t pay full fare.

My wife probably put it best: Mimzy was more often interesting than entertaining.

The Last Mimzy is rated PG for some thematic elements, mild peril and language.

DMR grades The Last Mimzy a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Because it was clean, The Last Mimzy was upgraded. Without the upgrade, I would have graded it as a B-.

Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith

2007-03-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

Too Much Information

If you’ve ever baked a beautiful loaf of broad but left out the wee bit of salt the recipe calls for you know what Pursuit of Happyness was like for me. There was something missing in a movie that perfect strangers recommended to me as inspirational and emotionally fulfilling.

The movie is about Chris Gardner a whip-smart, but down-on-his-luck Navy veteran in San Francisco in the early years of the Reagan presidency. Chris has made some boneheaded decisions, including marrying his quarrelsome wife Linda (Thandie Newton). But he wants something better for himself and his son Christopher (played by Smith’s real-life son Jaden).

What was the missing seasoning?

It’s not the acting. Will Smith was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award and Jaden’s performance has been widely lauded as well. Supporting actors include Dan Castellaneta, wearing one of William Shatner’s old hairpieces. Dan is better known as the voice of Homer Simpson.

It’s not the direction either. Italian director Gabriele Muccino does just fine. He manages to sympathetically depict the kooks that have tumbled to the left coast while keeping the story focused squarely on Gardner.

The script has real meat in it. Gardner’s plainly a driven man, but he’s not so single-minded or one-dimensional as Ahab going after his whale. Gardner desperately loves his son and wants to give him something more. Gardner’s story is personally affecting; a man trying to better himself under extraordinarily-challenging circumstances.

The problem, I think, is the way the movie was promoted. The climax is missing some punch in part because Gardner was out promoting the release of the softcover edition of his autobiography in October 2006. So I knew back in September 2006, months before the movie came out in December, what happened to Gardner. Gardner’s story was told in Fortune, Reader’s Digest, USA Today, Oprah, 20/20, The View, and dozens of other print and television sources.

In my view, Happyness needed an ending that caught you off guard. I didn’t need to be surprised, but it would have been more forceful without all the advance warning from Gardner's promotional efforts. What's missing from Happyness is a little sensitivity from the promotional staff.

Finally, Happyness has the R-word in it spoken matter-of-factly by Jaden; he’s reading graffiti from a door near his day care. Why oh why does Hollywood feel obliged to do this?

Pursuit of Happyness is rated PG-13 for some language.

DMR grades Pursuit of Happyness a B-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Pursuit of Happyness was downgraded. Promoted more sensitively and sans the R-word, I would have graded it as a B+.

Happy Feet with Elijah Wood, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman and Robin Williams

2007-03-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dance Your Way to the Theater for This Fun.. er.. Movie

Earlier in my career I remember sitting in a video edit suite editing a video for Merck or someone similarly corporate. We had a series of images… no talking head at all… and we were cutting the video to the beats of a driving soundtrack. And I realized, my golly, I’m editing a music video!

I had much the same feeling as I was watching Happy Feet, the Oscar-winning penguin-powered cute-fest finally at dollar theaters. Happy Feet is a 109-minute music video.

Oh there’s spoken dialogue and a sort of quest-for-redemption plotline that links the musical numbers. But the movie frequently bogs down whenever the characters are talking.

Moreover because the sound editors put the soundtrack so far in front of everything else the dialog is frequently hard to hear.

So like any music video the real question is, do you like the music?

Happy Feet has quite a potpourri including: The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Chicago, Rodgers and Hart, Elvis, Earth, Wind and Fire, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Queen, and Xavier Cugat; but the music of Prince and Stevie Wonder figure especially prominently.

The movie concerns one Mumble (Elijah Wood) and emperor penguin and son of Memphis (Hugh Jackman doing Elvis) and Norma Rae (Nicole Kidman doing Marilyn Monroe). Robin Williams performs almost every other voice. In Mumble’s colony, every penguin must find his heartsong and then share it with a mate, but Mumble’s heartsong is a fiercely unpleasant squawk.

His heartsong, as it turns out, is that he can dance like Savion Glover (who performed Mumble’s motion capture dancing). Mumble loves the honeyed-voice Gloria (Brittany Murphy, who can really sing) but the colony, and indeed the whole of the Antarctic is suffering from a chronic lack of fish.

The colony elders blame the song-less Mumble. But Mumble suspects there’s more to it than that and pursues a fleet of factory fishing vessels so as to communicate the colony’s needs to the aliens.

There are several song and dance scenes that are so precious you want to pinch the penguin’s little cheeks. Indeed, it’s said that Prince wasn’t going to allow the use of his song “Kiss,” but was shown an early preview and was so charmed that he wrote an original song for the movie that runs during the credits.

The environmental message is very clear, but director George Miller takes a spoonful of sugar approach that softens the enviro-moralizing.

Special kudos goes to John Powell who composed the soundtrack and made the transitions between the various rock songs so seamless. Many of his arrangements should find their way to the concert hall.

Happy Feet is rated PG for some mild peril and rude humor.

DMR grades Happy Feet a B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Happy Feet was upgraded. Otherwise, I would have graded it as a B.

Casino Royale with Daniel Craig

2007-02-17T20:21:00.000-08:00

Bond is Back

I had low expectations of Casino Royale, the latest edition of the James Bond franchise while it was in production. I like Pierce Bosnan, even if some of his 007 movies smelled like fish on the second day. And reworking Casino Royale, not exactly the shiniest penny in the Bond bank, seemed to be a profitless enterprise. Like many others, I had no appreciation for Daniel Craig who is, after all, a blond.

Instead, Casino Royale is the best Bond in decades. It’s stripped-bare approach crackles with intensity in all but a few scenes. The opening chase sequence, which takes place almost entirely on foot, is an artistic and athletic feat. The script makes Bond a wit, rather than merely cheeky. And they picked Bond Babes who can act. As it turns out, so too can Craig.

He plays Bond as a newly-minted 00-agent, a ‘blunt instrument’ who has yet to prove his mettle. This Bond isn’t all smoothness and polish. He’s a little rough at the edges and the movie begins with a spectacular and very public failure that threatens to scuttle his career.

The setup involves terrorism and diamonds. Whatever. Those are just the MacGuffins, as Alfred Hitchcock used to call them; a way to get the story started. The usual Bond set pieces are set in motion; the lavish sets, the distant landscapes and the beautiful women. But it’s leaner than usual. More taut. And that’s to the movie’s advantage.

The one place where the movie grows fat is in an extended gambling scene. I’d rather watch someone install drywall than watch people play poker, so for me this scene limps to its conclusion.

There’s also a gruesome torture scene involving Bond stripped naked. It’s this scene that keeps me from offering a better review grade. Your kids definitely should not see it.

Casino Royale is rated PG-13 for intense scenes of violent action, a scene of torture, sexual content and nudity.

DMR grades Casino Royale a C.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Casino Royale was downgraded because of the torture scene. Minus that I would have graded it as an A-.

Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrell

2007-02-10T14:22:00.000-08:00

Almost True to Life

Some neighbors just buried their tragically-disabled daughter after tending for her hand and foot her entire abbreviated life.

Friends care for their non-ambulatory, non-speaking (but precocious) five-year-old who was severely burned in an accident.

These are the kinds of real-life sacrifices that people make for people they love or care about. And self-sacrifice is the theme of the quirky and original movie Stranger Than Fiction.

The movie concerns Harold Crick (Will Ferrell)… a gray IRS agent living a paper thin slice of life… who begins to hear in his head a narration of his life’s events.

The effect, of course, is very disconcerting for Crick, especially after the narrator (Emma Thompson) says as Harold waits for the bus, “little did he know that this seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.”

Crick goes to see a shrink (the woefully-underused Linda Hunt) who tells him that he’s schizophrenic and recommends a drug regimen.

But what if I really am hearing a narration, he asks, what would you suggest? She tells him to go see a literary specialist (Dustin Hoffman). Together they compile a list of likely authors. With imminent death hanging over him like a cloud, Crick’s life begins to take on some color as he rounds out his life, especially on the romantic front.

If this doesn’t sound like much of a movie, you’re right. Up until the last 10 minutes or so of the movie the depiction of Crick’s life seems so gray and ordinary you wonder if anything the filmmakers can do can possibly pay off.

The answer is yes. The climax is wonderfully moving and affecting. I’m going to own this movie.

Ferrell, believe it or not, brings nuance to the role. And the co-stars, which include Maggie Gyllenhaal (as Crick’s love interest) and Queen Latifah (as Thompson’s long-suffering assistant) are all quite good, Thompson especially so.

My only complaint is philosophical. The fact is, people make extraordinary daily sacrifices for others as a matter of course in the everyday lives. Everyone of us knows people like the ones I described above. Their sacrifice is so common it seems mundane. Crick’s act of sacrifice is spectacular, but momentary. But how would you depict people like my neighbors caring for their disabled child over a lifetime, whose devotion is so complete it seems ‘stranger than fiction’?

It may be impossible to make that movie. But I want desperately to one day see that harder, sadder, more meaningful, real, and joyful movie.

Stranger Than Fiction is rated PG-13 for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity.

DMR grades Stranger than Fiction as a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Stranger Than Fiction was downgraded a full grade because of all the elements that made it PG-13. Minus those elements I would have graded it as an A.

The Fountain with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz

2007-02-02T16:22:00.001-08:00

An Art-House Movie at a Dollar Price

I heard Jerry Herman, who composed Hello Dolly, say that the best day of his life was when Louis Armstrong agreed to sing the title track. It made a hit of the song and the play.

Likewise for Nick Wechsler, the executive producer of The Fountain, the best day producing the movie had to be when Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz agreed to star in this would-be art-house film. Otherwise this headscratcher of a movie would not have been made by Warner Brothers.

Jackman and Weisz bring not only star power but real acting chops to The Fountain. They play star-crossed lovers in three different timeframes; Spain at the time of a Torquemada-like Grand Inquisitor; in the present day; and another time in space (literally).

The non-linear editing whipsaws between each timeframe so fluidly that I don’t think I ever caught up. Normally you would call this kind of time shifting science fiction. But it reminded me of Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffman, too.

Opera or science fiction, I sympathized with the woman who left at the same time I did asking aloud, “Do we get an explanation now?” People smarter than me have taken The Fountain as a romantic poem on themes of mortality. (Like I need to spend any more time thinking about the shortness of life!)

The movie isn’t unwatchable... by any stretch... but I found it unfathomable rather than “deep.” By all means go see it if you like the stars or if you fancy yourself a patron of enigmas. That said, there are some very bloody sequences and the PG-13 rating is well-earned. The Fountain’s not for kids.

The Fountain is rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of violent action, some sensuality and language.

DMR grades The Fountain a C+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. The Fountain was downgraded a half-grade because it was bloody.

I have just removed my review for Charlotte's Web in protest

2007-01-21T14:14:00.000-08:00

I have just removed my review for Charlotte's Web in protest of the decision by the movie's young star, Dakota Fanning, her mother Joy ,and agent Cindy Osbrink, to star in a movie that features the rape of her preteen character.

I will not name the movie. I will not see the movie. And I won't review another movie in which Dakota Fanning stars. Ever.

This movie isn't art, it isn't entertainment, it's pedophilia. And the fact that in real life children are raped is no argument for depicting it. It wouldn't hurt my feelings or slight my reverence for our First Amendment rights if the district attorney where those scenes were shot charged the producers of the movie with child abuse.

Dakota Fanning... who won't be 13 until February 2007... is hardly the first mainstream starlet to act in a movie that presents the sexual exploitation of children, but she's probably the youngest.

Brooke Shields was less than 15 when she was in the 1978 Pretty Baby, a movie wherein her character's virginity was auctioned off. Jodie Foster was about the same age when she played a teenage prostitute in Taxi Driver in 1976.

But there is a difference. Reportedly, Fanning is shown in the nude or scantily clad during the movie and during the rape itself her face is reportedly shown in close-up.

There's a second difference. Pretty Baby was banned in a number of countries, including Canada. Not even 30 years has passed, and Dakota Fanning's movie will be banned almost nowhere.

In other words, our morality and sense of outrage over the sexual exploitation of children has measurably declined. We ruffled our national feathers when Rep. Mark Foley sent salacious instant messages to young Congressional pages, but the depiction of the rape of a child brings an actor early Oscar attention. This is morally wrong.

Hollywood can't stop itself from producing these kinds of films. But Americans of normal sensibilities can respond by actively shunning them, their producers and the actors who star in them.

I hope you'll join me in doing so.

Flushed Away with Hugh Jackman & Kate Winslet

2007-01-18T15:59:00.000-08:00

Sushi Without the Fish

There was something especially wonderful about Aardman Animations and their stop-action clay animation movies like Chicken Run and the Wallace & Gromit movies and shorts, produced by Nick Park.

The stories were inventive and affecting and the characters were handmade; you could literally see the artist’s fingerprints in the clay.

The problem with Flushed Away, the latest CGI release from Aardman and Dreamworks may be that there are too many fingerprints on it. There are four credited story writers and six screenplay writers, none of them Nick Park.

The movie ends up being a kind of California Roll; you know, sushi without the fish.

There’s the makings a good movie here. The cast is dynamite. The storyline is out or the ordinary and the animations are shiny as a newly-minted penny. It's just missing a soul; or maybe just Nick Park.

Flushed Away is about the longstanding enmity between the class amphibia and the order rodentia, which plays out in the sewers beneath London.

Roddy (Hugh Jackman) is a lonely if pampered pet mouse in a posh Kensington apartment who finds himself flushed into a shadow-London with bustling streets, Big Ben, a mini-Thames, even the London Bridge.

There he falls in with lovely Rita (Kate Winslet), a riverboat captain from a family of scavengers who is on a collision coarse with The Toad (Ian McKellen), a grandiose crime kingpin with a scheme for ridding the sewers of mice.

Roddy is horribly clumsy physically and socially in this lower world, but he’s quite taken with Rita and her extended family of seemingly hundreds of mice. Roddy and Rita openly disdain one another, but we no where that relationship is headed. They throw in together to stop The Toad from fully flushing London's sewers.

McKellen plays The Toad the way Sidney Greenstreet might have; big and broad. McKellen's way over the top and having fun. He's joined by Da Vinci Code co-star Jean Reno, who plays The Toad's French cousin Le Frog. A Frog playing a frog. Funny, eh? The versatile Jackman also gets to sing a few numbers.

Flushed Away is rated PG for "crude humor and language."

The DMR grades Flushed Away a B-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Flushed Away was downgraded a half-grade because it was a hair too crude.

Santa Clause 3 with Tim Allen and Martin Short

2007-01-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

An Easy to Swallow Sugar Confection

My mother used to make the candy confection ‘divinity’ each year at Christmas. Her recipe produced sweet, light sugary-goodness. As a kid I’d eat it by the fistful and wonder why, at the end of the season, she didn’t make it more often.

Truth be told, my blood-sugar counts couldn’t have handled it more than once a year.

The Santa Clause movies feature that same kind of treacly sweetness. But at Christmas time I find I have a sweet-tooth.

Judged by the movie trailer, I expected to dislike Santa Clause 3. The infinitely talented Martin Short looked mean-spirited and Tim Allen appeared to be sleep-walking. Instead, I found myself enjoying this frothy holiday confection.

It involves Santa Claus/Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) finding a jealous rival in Jack Frost (Martin Short). The original Santa Clause developed a clever back story for Santa Claus and explained such head-scratchers as ‘how does Santa deliver the goods when there’s no fireplace?’

Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, doesn’t revisit Santa lore so much as it invents new lore for a guild of Legendary Figures that includes Santa and Frost, but also Mother Nature (Aisha Tyler), the Easter Bunny (Jay Thomas), Cupid (Kevin Pollack), the Sandman (Michael Dorn) and Father Time (Peter Doyle). The cast also includes the reliably droll Alan Arkin as Santa’s father-in-law, and Ann-Margret as his mother-in-law.

Frost learns that there is a way for him to assume the mantle of Santa. By trickery he transports himself and Calvin back to the moment when Calvin first slipped into the big red jacket. In a Back to the Future moment Frost gets to the jacket first and Calvin is suddenly living a joyless life as a successful toy company executive.

As Santa, Frost crassly exploits the commercial possibilities of the North Pole. Christmas, it turns out, could actually be more commercial. This is, as I say, a sweet movie so suffice it to say that the movie doesn’t end there.

This is a deeply-talented cast with not enough to do, although the producers somehow managed to fit in musical numbers by Ann-Margret, which was too short, and Martin Short, which was too long. And maybe someone can explain why flatulence jokes… in this case involving the reindeer… are now part of every G-rated movie these days. Sigh!

Santa Clause 3: the Escape Clause is rated G for general audiences.

DMR grades Santa Clause 3 a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Santa Clause was upgraded a half-grade because it was clean and because I want to encourage more movie producers to cast Ann-Margret.

Open Season with Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher

2007-01-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

Don’t Rush to Put Open Season in Your Sights

When I reviewed Over the Hedge I wrote that it was an animated movie that wanted to be good for you, like a high fiber cereal.

Open Season, another animated movie featuring furry forest creatures has no such ambitions. It’s a cheese doodle and a Diet Coke. It fills 99 minutes but when you’re done you realize that there’s not a lot of movie in this movie.

And they spend way too much time answering the eternal question, “just where does a bear do his business in the woods?” The jokes are kid-friendly enough, they’re just few and far between and take their sweet time delivering.

Open Season stars Martin Lawrence in the Shrek character and Ashton Kutcher as the Donkey character. Open Season isn’t a direct clone of Shrek, but the buddy dynamics and the ‘journey of discovery’ plotline are plenty familiar.

Lawrence stars as Boog, a 900-pound grizzly bear who is the pet of Beth (Debra Messing) and the mountain town of Timberline. He’s the star of small animal show and so house-trained he uses a porcelain toilet. Then one day Elliot (Kutcher), a scrawny one-horned deer turns Boog’s life and Timberline upside down.

In the wake of the mess, Beth does the only thing that makes sense to her. She returns both misfits to the forest above town where they encounter beavers, squirrels, porcupines, deer and other denizens, who mock the pair’s foreign ways. Worse, hunting season is starting soon.

One of the movie’s shortcomings is Lawrence, who’s no Eddie Murphy or Mike Meyers for that matter. Open Season would have gotten instantly better with almost anyone besides Lawrence. Kutcher is surprisingly strong as the mischievous buddy. So too is Gary Sinise as Shaw, a hunter on the lunatic fringe.

Kudos to the producers for casting Canadian native American actor Gordon Tootoosis as Gordo, Timberline’s Indian law enforcement officer.

Open Season is rated PG for "some rude humor, mild action and brief language."

DMR grades Open Season a C+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Open Season was downgraded. Without the potty jokes I would have graded as a B-.

The Best and Worst Dollar Movies of 2006

2006-12-28T11:14:00.000-08:00

It’s the end of 2006 and time for the best and worst lists.

The Dollar Movie Reviewer has been filling notebooks and now he looks back at the Dollar Movies that made him laugh (Cars), cry (The Lake House) and wince in pain (Zoom).

Plus, there’s a bonus list of movies that, er, didn’t make any other list. That’s why I call it the “Didn’t Make any Other DollarMovieReview.net List.”

What about you, is there a Dollar Movie that should be on a list but isn’t? Be sure and comment.

DollarMovieReview.net Top Five Family Films

Cars. The best animated film in a year full of animated films. Pretty to look at and as fun as a ride in a convertible, it doesn’t quite measure up to the Pixar classics.

Over the Hedge. Smart and funny, it needled fat people (like me) a little too much.

How to Eat Fried Worms. A boy’s movie that reminds us, in Hallie Kate Eisenberg’s words that, “boys are so weird!”

The Ant Bully. Like Monster House, Ice Age, and Barnyard, it’s an imperfect animated movie that eventually rewards you.

Ice Age: The Meltdown. As slow-moving as a glacier, but the warmth of the movie helps melt the ice.

DollarMovieReview.net Top Five Film Films for Parents

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Thrills from the opening to the closing credits, just too intense and gruesome for young children.

Invincible. Inspiring as a session with Tony Robbins.

The Devil Wears Prada. Meryl Streep is a force of nature and Anne Hathaway is a breath of fresh air.

The Lake House. The romance and genuine chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves see you through the muddled space-time continuum parts.

Superman Returns. A rousing reworking of the original Superman, it would be on the family list if not for a scene where Superman takes a vicious beating.

DollarMovieReview.net Bottom Five Dollar Movies

Zoom. Don’t let this Tim Allen dog bark its way into your DVD collection.

Lady in the Water. A dripping wet mess from the usually reliable M. Night Shyamalan.

Flicka. The cast can’t bring enough life to this dying horse.

Talladega Nights. I laughed, heaven help me, at this thin movie and equal-opportunity offender.

Failure to Launch. A funny movie that could have and should have been rated R.

Didn’t Make any Other DollarMovieReview.net List

Nacho Libre. You either get it or you don’t. I saw it as a goofy silent movie with plenty of slapstick to go around.

Monster House. Starts strong but wheezes to its finish.

Barnyard. Don’t get me started on the topic of male cows with udders.

Flyboys. A ‘war is hell’ movie that’s satisfying even while it’s ghastly in its depictions of death in war.

The Da Vinci Code. The pacing is steady and the acting is confident. But it never made my heart race. The central premise is offensive to Catholics and others.

The Guardian. It drags and too much time is spent in training, but the movie depicts heroism like it hasn’t been seen since John Wayne quit making movies.

Flyboys with James Franco and Jean Reno

2006-12-21T18:36:00.000-08:00

War is Hell

There was a time when to go to war was a glorious thing and to fight and perhaps die in battle was a mark of honor. Americans probably lost much of their innocence with the Civil War when every casualty was American. But the war that set Europe on the path to cynical existentialism was WWI.

Flyboys chronicles the lives of a group of dewy young flyers who gallantly fought on the side of the French in an all-American air force squadron called the Lafayette Escadrille well before America herself entered the war.

Based on a true story, these flyers hit all the expected stereotypes. There’s the glory-seeking Nebraska farm boy; the spoiled rich kid out to prove himself; the Midwesterner trying to stay ahead of the law; the French-speaking son of a slave who has found a comfortable place in France; the faithful flyer who’s co-pilot is God; the jaded ace; etc. And there’s romance with the girlish French maiden whose family has been devastated by the fighting.

But the story unfolds mainly through the experiences of Blaine Rawlings (Spiderman’s James Franco), who leaves Texas having lost the family ranch. Franco is surrounded by a young cast of mostly unknowns who acquit themselves well. Jean Reno, the French actor of choice among American casting directors, needed more material to work with.

The best moments in Flyboys are the dogfights and there are wondrous times when the screen is filled edge to edge with fragile aircraft battling for air supremacy. Powered flight was just a little more than a decade old when the war started and the pilots easily transitioned from chivalry to the barbarism which so characterized the rest of WWI.

WWI doesn’t need any help being portrayed as a savage, regrettable moment in human history. Nine million people died in a war that few people could identify the cause of.

But the barbarism is painted a little too brightly in Flyboys. It’s my only negative in a movie that liked quite a bit. War is hell. But I don’t have to look at hell to understand or even to feel that.

Flyboys is rated PG-13 for “war action violence and some sexual content.” The rating is well earned. There are some ghastly depictions of death in Flyboys.

DMR grades Flyboys as a C+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Flyboys was downgraded. I would have given it B+ if they would have left out the detailed violence.

Flicka with Tim McGraw and Alison Lohman

2006-12-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

A Grrl and Her Horse

There’s a hysterical scene in Disney’s 1997 movie George of the Jungle where two minor characters ask, ‘what is it with chicks and horses?’ Flicka, a movie concept that’s been around the track a few times over the last 60 years, tries to answer that question.

Flicka is about three kindred spirits trying to understand one another. Spirited young Katy McLaughlin (Alison Lohman) is a mustang who chafes under the iron hand of her father Rob (country singer Tim McGraw). She comes home to the family quarter horse ranch in rural Wyoming for the summer after botching her final paper of the year at boarding school and the school tells her not to return.

Before she tells her parents about her failure, Katy goes for a pre-dawn ride in the Wyoming countryside. There she comes across Flicka, a beguiling black mustang mare full of fury and fight.

Against her father’s best judgment, Flicka ends up on the family ranch and Katy works to tame the horse during nighttime visits.

During the days, a lot of anger and recriminations flair between Katy, her brother Howard (Ryan Kwanten), and their father. But the drama seems forced. Long before Nell McLaughlin (Maria Bello) tells her husband “When are you going to look at your daughter and realize she’s you?” we know that Flicka is Katy and Katy is Rob.

The movie trailer for Flicka made me think that the movie was going to be One Tree Hill on horseback. Refreshingly, it’s not. This is about a girl who falls in love with a horse, not a boy.

A lot of the drama depends on McGraw being a gigantic force of will in his family. But all McGraw’s able to pull off is a sort of general surliness. This is only his third film role, so it’s unfair to say that he’s not terribly good. Instead, let the blame fall on the casting director, director and producers for relying on McGraw to carry so much weight.

Flicka is rated PG “for some mild language.

Dollar Movie Review rates it a B-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Flicka was upgraded. I would have given it a C+ on its own merits. It got the upgrade because Flicka is clean and appropriate for the entire family. It's worth your time and your dollar.

The Guardian with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher

2006-11-30T12:36:00.000-08:00

John Wayne Meet Kevin Costner

About 130 minutes into The Guardian I realized that I was watching a brand new John Wayne movie showing right now at the Dollar Theater. Oh, the Duke’s been dead since 1979 and his last movie was The Shootist in 1976 (which co-starred director Ron Howard). But make no mistake, The Guardian is a John Wayne movie.

It’s about a handful of the 200 or so Coast Guard ‘rescue swimmers’ who do the most heroic darn thing I can conjure up. They go out in the worst weather imaginable, jump out of helicopters and pull people out of the roiling ocean or off pitching boats. Exactly the kind of larger-than-life people that John Wayne used to profile in his movies.

Starring in the John Wayne role is Kevin Costner. Costner plays Ben Randall, an aging and legendary rescue swimmer with hundreds of saves to his credit. His home base is on Alaska’s Kodiak Island in the forbidding Bering Sea. Costner’s marriage to Helen (Sela Ward) is on the rocks because his all-encompassing job rescuing people is drowning their marriage.

After a horrific rescue attempt that claims the lives of two of his fellow crewman, Ben’s commanding officer (Clancy Brown), gives him a choice; retire or recharge as the chief instructor at A-school, where new rescue swimmers are trained. Reluctantly Ben agrees.

A-school is brutal. There’s a 50 percent attrition rate. And the men and women who want to be rescue swimmers are a curious mixture of confidence and humility. Both are present in would-be rescue swimmer Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher), although we don’t see the humility until well into the movie.

The movie runs 136 minutes which director Andrew Davis (Holes, The Fugitive) isn’t able to sustain. As John Wayne knew, this kind of move should be about 120 minutes or less. Davis got some help from his editors, and their trims are noticeable, but it wasn’t enough. There are really only four rescues in the movie. The rest is training sequences and the humbling of Jake. A lot of that could have been shortened.

A little Kevin Costner goes a long way for me. Like John Wayne, Costner mostly plays himself in movies. And when he doesn’t, you get Robinhood: Prince of Thieves. Whether or not you like him more than I do, it’s his movie and he’s in darn near every scene. As for Kutcher, he’ll be Costner’s age before I quit thinking of him as a ‘dude.’

There’s some salty language in the movie and a lot of pillow talk and casual sex between Jake and his girlfriend Emily Thomas (Melissa Sagemiller). Needless to say, there’s images of dead bodies floating in the water, too.

The Guardian is another example of why we go to the Dollar Movies. It’s hardly perfect, but for a dollar or so, there’s plenty of entertainment for your money and your time.

The Guardian is rated PG-13 “for intense sequences of action/peril, brief strong language and some sensuality.”

DMR grades The Guardian a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. The Guardian was downgraded. I would have given it an B+ except that the language and the sensuality are too strong for young children.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

2006-11-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

Your Dollar Will Stretch ‘till it Screams in Delight
DMR Gives Dead Man’s Chest an A

Sometime during a fantastic three-way sword duel (a ‘triuel’?) it became clear that Dead Man’s Chest is more than a mere billion-dollar blockbuster, it’s a ripsnorter of a swashbuckler. A breathless rock’em sock’em three-hour thrill ride.

I don’t remember ever seeing a ‘triuel,’ but it isn’t the novelty that makes that scene (and others) so memorable. Instead the triuel moves in and out of the foreground pulsing with energy and finding new ways and places for the three to clash swords while spilling out laughs all along the way.

Dead Man’s Chest is much better than the first POTC, but also less satisfying. After all, the movie has to get us from POTC 1 to POTC 3. So you can count on a cliffhanger just as you’re wondering how it can possibly be resolved. Unlike POTC 1 there’s a real… if twisty… plot in Dead Man’s Chest and the stunts and laughs don’t all rely on Johnny Depp’s considerable appeal this time around.

The story brings back all the familiar characters: Capt. Jack Sparrow (Depp) Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Norrington (Jack Davenport), Governor Weatherby Swann (Jonathon Pryce), and Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook).

The movie opens with Elizabeth being stood up at the altar. Her affianced, Will, has been arrested by Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), a new character with no apparent scruples. The arrest turns out to be a matter of leverage. The real object is Capt. Jack, or rather the compass around Jack’s neck.

Meanwhile, Capt Jack is dealing with troubles of an otherworldly nature. Bootstrap Bill… Will’s un-dead father (Stellan Skarsgard)… delivers a startling message to Capt. Jack from the no-less-un-dead Davey Jones; pay up or join the crew of Jones’s ship, the Flying Dutchman. It seems Capt. Jack had made a devil’s bargain with Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) 10 years before to raise the Pearl. As Bill leaves, a sore appears on Jack’s hand. A walking death is stalking the wily Capt. Jack and even he might not be able to wangle his way free.

Davy Jones and all his unfortunate minions are gruesome characters, part sea creatures, part human, and no longer subject to the constraints of mortality. Jones has a beard of sea anemones that along with the rest of his face was entirely computer generated. Such creations can be rather soulless, but between the animators and Nighy’s performance, Davey Jones seems as real as a dead man with sea anemones growing on his face could be.

Is it worth your dollar? I would have paid full price to see POTC: Dead Man’s Chest.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of adventure violence, including frightening images.”

DMR grades Dead Man’s Chest an A.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Dead Man’s Chest was downgraded. I would have given it an A+ except that it is too violent and too intense for young children. So don’t bring them. The crew of the Flying Dutchman may also be too ghastly for children and others. My wife is convinced her parents would find it so.

Monster House

2006-11-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

Not Quite Scary Enough to be Really Therapeutic

DMR Gives Monster House a B

My Scoutmaster growing up had a little bit of Ol’ Nick in him and he liked to scare us. He was a cop and we made an annual field trip to the municipal jail. That put the fear of God into us! I remember a camping trip to an honest-to-Pete ghost town when he told us murder stories before forcing us to… one by one… touch the Victorian-era iron fence that surrounded the tiny weed-choked graveyard.

Ah, there’s something so therapeutic about a good scare when you’re 12.

I was hoping for something like that from Monster House. I anticipated a nice taut preteen scarefest from Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, the film’s executive producers. Instead I got something a little more slack from Jason Clark and Ryan Kavanaugh, who also shared executive producer’s credits.

The story takes place on Halloween and the day before. It opens when crazy Old Man Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi) falls dead (apparently) onto D.J. (Mitchel Musso) after coming unhinged in a fit of anger. D.J, who lives across the street, has allowed an object to trespass on Nebbercracker’s lawn and Nebbercracker really lets him have it. D.J., who had long watched the suspicious goings-on across the street, confesses to his best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) and the sophisticated love interest Jenny (Spencer Locke) that he’s killed the old man.

Kids in the neighborhood always knew about Nebbercracker and his home. No trike, no kite, no ball is safe anytime it gets near the sidewalk or the trees of the Nebbercracker home, Old Man Nebbercracker would see to that. More strangely still, even the grass seems to suck down mislaid objects.

The day before Halloween, D.J.’s parents (Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara) head for a dental convention leaving Zee (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an irresponsible babysitter in charge. With Old Man Nebbercracker apparently dead, the house seems to be coming viciously alive, just in time for trick or treaters.

Monster House makes use of the motion-capture technique used to such great effect in 2004's The Polar Express, which was directed by Zemeckis. Motion-capture involves actors putting on suits studded with sensors that digitize their movements, including even facial expressions. The intent is to give movement a more human-like look and to simplify the animation process.

But oddly it’s the ‘human interactions’ in the movie that are sometimes less than compelling. There’s a strangely stilted scene between D.J. and Chowder playing basketball early in the movie. Twelve’s an awkward age, but not that awkward.

That’s not the fault of the technology, of course, but of the writers. That scene is balanced by one in which D.J. and Chowder, competitive for Jenny’s attention, dash into the house to save her. Man if I had a nickel for every time I dreamed of saving a girl when I was 12!

Monster House is rated PG for “scary images and sequences, thematic elements, some crude humor and brief language.”

DMR grades Monster House a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Monster House was graded straight up.

Worth Watching Press Release

2006-11-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

Hey gang:

Here's my first press release for the blog. Let me know what you think.

Warm regards,
Paul

DollarMovieReview.net Launches With Backlog of Dollar Movie Reviews

Cheeky, valuable, interesting, and loaded with links to dollar and first-run theatres and other critics, DollarMovieReview.net is a reliable guide to what’s really worth watching at the nation’s dollar theatres.

SALT LAKE CITY---DollarMovieReview.net… the first website devoted to reviewing movies showing at the nation’s dollar theatres… is now live with a backlog of movie reviews including Talladega Nights, Invincible and How to Eat Fried Worms.

“Dollar Movies reward the patient with a big screen experience for a fraction of what they cost only a few weeks before,” says Paul Jones, the Dollar Movie Reviewer.

Reviews at DollarMovieReview.net are quick-reading, with an easy-to-understand letter grade. DollarMovieReview.net includes links to the nation’s main Dollar Movie chains, along with the major first-run chains. There are also links to other reviewers including Movie Mom, Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert.

“All these movies have been reviewed before, of course,” says Paul Jones, the Dollar Movie Reviewer. “But DollarMovieReview.net brings a fresh voice, a blogger’s sensibility… and because Dollar Movies are particularly popular with children and families… a family-friendly eye.”

Just because these movies have a second life, doesn’t mean they’re worth watching. “Cheap doesn’t necessarily mean good,” Jones says. “The highest praise you can give a dollar movie is that you’d come again, because your time is more valuable than the dollar. The most disparaging thing you can do at a Dollar Movie is to walk out on a movie. You’re saying it’s not worth your dollar, and worse, it’s not worth your time.”

DollarMovieReview.net’s review criteria is entirely subjective, but there are some hallmarks. “I love movies,” says Jones. “And like any critic I look for movies with artistic merit. But I’m also a father of young children. So I grade these movies on a curve. Elements in movies like sex, violence, profanity and the like (all things that, frankly, didn’t bother me as much when I was still single) don’t fare as well in my reviews. Moreover, kid-friendly movies will get the benefit of a doubt in my reviews; a kind of ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy.”

DollarMovieReview.net believes that it’s possible to make movies that are engaging and entertaining without being course or debasing. “Pixar has done it with every release,” Jones says. “I see part of my job as to encourage better movies.”

“I once heard Gerald Molen talk about his experiences as a Hollywood producer,” says Jones, “and he mentioned that the only R-rated movie he'd produced was Schindler's List (for which he won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1994). Someone piped up and said, what about Rain Man? He said, when he started the movie, it was a PG or PG-13 movie, not an R movie. The director, Barry Levinson, had made choices during the course of the production that turned it into an R movie.”

“I believe Hollywood is capable of producing splendid movies,” says Jones. “But too often the first sensibility of modern Hollywood screenwriters, directors, producers and actors is to make movies that cheapen and degrade. When filmmakers make those kind of choices, DollarMovieReview.net will say so.’

###

Everyone's Hero

2006-11-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

A Swing and a (Near) Miss
DMR Grades Everyone's Hero a B

For about 12 years I worked for two different media-savvy children's charities. During that time I spent more than a few hours brainstorming ideas for bringing to the world an animated children’s movie or TV series that would feature those charities. It never worked out. We had some interesting ideas, especially when it came to the charity tie-ins and promotions. Our problem was the stories that came out of development just weren’t up to snuff. We were forcing it. Our second problem was that we didn’t have a force of nature like Christopher Reeve driving it.

Everyone’s Hero, directed by Reeve, was his last project before his unfortunate and untimely death. As a movie, Everyone’s Hero has some of the same earmarks of the stuff I was involved in. It’s a tad on the precious side and the story tries too hard. It’s a nice movie, but not a great one.

That said, my 4-year-old loved it. She laughed, she was sad, and she was triumphant, all at the right moments. This is a G movie intended, and best suited, for younger kids.

Everyone’s Hero is about a 10-year-old boy named Yankee Irving (Jake T. Austin) who lives in the Bronx and is a huge Yankees fan. It’s the Fall Classic and the Yanks are facing the Cubs in the 1932 World Series. The Yankees are led by Babe Ruth (Brian Dennehy) who has a favorite bat named Darlin’ (Whoopi Goldberg).

The owner of the Cubs determines that the difference maker is Darlin’ and he orders his conniving pitcher Lefty Maginnis (William H. Macy) to steal the bat. Yankee’s father Stanley (Mandy Patinkin), who works for the Yankees, is accused of the theft and is fired by the manager (Joe Torre). But with the help of a talking baseball named Screwie (Rob Reiner), Yankee figures out that it was Lefty who stole Darlin’ and proceeds to Penn Station to track Darlin’ down so his dad can get his job back.

Yankee does just that, but how to get it to the Babe who's now in Chicago for the rest of the Series?

Like I said, Everyone's Hero tries too hard. There’s a scene with good-hearted hoboes, for instance, that really doesn’t advance the movie. And another one with the family of Negro Baseball League player Lonnie Brewster (Forest Whitaker), that seemed forced. Another scene that features Brewster’s team The Cincinnati Tigers and a lesson for Yankee on how to hit a ball, is much more fun.

Everyone’s Hero is rated G for all audiences.

DMR rates it a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Everyone’s Hero got that upgrade. Without the upgrade, I would have given it a C+.

Invincible

2006-10-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Invincible with Mark Walberg

A Touchdown for Cynical Times

I needed a little pick-me-up when I walked into Invincible, a little go-juice, a tonic, a bracer, a cordial for cynical times. And I got it. Invincible is an inspiring movie, well-told.

It concerns Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg), an underemployed substitute teacher and bartender in South Philly having a hard time making ends meet. One night after he stops to play a little mean-street tackle football with his buddies, his wife (Lola Glaudini) up and leaves him. Her note, revealed late in the movie, is as cruel as a Philly winter. When his meager teaching contract is not renewed, Vince is forced to borrow from his dad to meet rent.

At the same time, the Philadelphia Eagles are coming off a miserable season and they hire Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear) away from UCLA. Vermeil announces in his first press conference that the Eagles will hold open tryouts, gambling that that sounds inspirational rather than desperate to the tough Philly fans, who notoriously once threw snowballs at Santa Claus.

The people that show up are a motley bunch; too old, too slow, too fat, too inept, too stupid. “More stupid than I’m used to,” one TV sportscaster remarks to his cameraman. But there is one bright spot, Vince Papale, who runs a remarkable 4.5 40. All the more remarkable because Vince, who is 30, never played a down of college ball, and just one year of high school football.
At the end of tryouts Vermeil asks only Vince to come to summer camp.

In the neighborhood bar where Vince works the regulars go wild.

Like Philly fans, film critics are a fickle lot and inspirational movies don’t always fair well with them. But I like to be inspired. It’s only when someone does the impossible that we realize it can be done. The sports world has treasure trove of these kinds of stories and Disney is making its way through them one by one with Remember the Titans, Miracle, The Rookie, Glory Road, and now Invincible.

There’s a formula in each of these movies to be sure, but for my dollar none of them ever turn formulaic. The Beatles made a lot of great music with just three chords and a steady beat. The mark of a good movie isn’t originality, per se, it’s whether or not the story invites you in and the characters make you care.

Invincible made me care. Wahlberg still has some growth ahead of him as an actor, but his charisma is undeniable. Max, who owns the bar where Vince works, is delivered with masculine compassion by Michael Rispoli. Scenes with love interest Janet Cantrell (Elizabeth Banks) were clean, with only implied sex.

Invincible is rated PG “for sports action and some mild language.”

DMR rates it an A-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that choose to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Invincible got that upgrade. Without the upgrade, I would have given it a B+.

How to Eat Fried Worms

2006-10-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

A Tasty Dish of Fun for the Young and the Young at Heart

DMR Grades it a B+

When An Inconvenient Truth came out, Roger Ebert wrote, “You owe to yourself to see this film.”

In that spirit I say to all the 7-11 year old boys within the reach of this blog: “Don’t miss How to Eat Fried Worms or Hallie Kate Eisenberg will come to your school and kiss you on the lips in front of all your friends!”

That’s right, it’s that good.

Poor Billy (Luke Benward) is the new kid in school and he’s taunted from the first moment he arrives by the class bully Joe (Adam Hicks). In a moment of bravado, Billy flicks onto Joe's face one of the worms that just tumbled out of his lunch thermos. The worms in the thermos, of course, came courtesy of Joe and friends.

Joe wouldn’t be any kind of bully if he took that insult lying down, so he intimidates Billy into a contest of worm eating the following Saturday. Billy must down 10 worms in disgusting concoctions by 7 pm or the loser has to walk the school’s hallway the following Monday with their pants full of worms. Yech!

Joe doesn’t know it, but Billy has the world’s weakest stomach. He vomits in car trips, on waterslides, when his pre-school brother has food on his face, everywhere. The contest begins and Billy manages to will himself through, even though Joe’s team finds new and ever-more disgusting ways to prepare the worms.

There’s worm omelets, flattened-worm PB&Js, green worm spinach slop, spicy stewed worms, marshmallow worms, and the namesake fried worms. Ah, the inventiveness of boys with time on their hands.

As Erika (Eisenberg) says, “boys are so weird.”

There’s lots of kids in this movie and Benward and Hicks are particularly good. Some of the young supporting actors were less so, but in a kids’ movie I usually blame that on the director.

The movie is fun and funny and it ends in honor. I’m no longer a boy, but I found the worm-eating stunts surprising easy to stomach. Adult actors included Tom Cavanagh and Kimberly Williams as Billy’s parents, Clint Howard as an uncle to one of the boys on Billy’s team, plus James Rebhorn, a veteran character actor, as Principal ‘Boiler Head’ Burdock.

How to Eat Fried Worms is rated PG “for mild bullying and some crude humor.”

DMR rates it a B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. How to Eat Fried Worms got that upgrade. Without the upgrade, I would have given it a B.

The Ant Bully

2006-10-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

A Cub Scout-Ready Romp
DMR Grades it a B+

Fellow blogger and new friend Rob Merrill described The Ant Bully as a boy’s movie. “I should take my scouts to see it,” he told me.

With that framing I wasn’t sure what to expect from it. 'Tom Sawyer' was a boy’s book. The fine 2003 movie Holes was a boy’s movie.

But for every Holes or Tom Sawyer, there’s 10 pieces of schlock passed off as boy ready. So what kind of movie would The Ant Bully be, Holes or a piece of schlock?

Well, neither, actually. The Ant Bully is a nice dollar movie, worth your buck and your time.

It’s the story of Lucas Nickle (Zach Tyler), no longer the baby his mom thinks he is, but not yet a teen either, and harassed by the local bully and his geeky gang of toadies. After the bully takes a chunk of Lucas’s underwear in a vicious wedgy, the friendless Lucas turns his squirt gun on the ant hill in his front yard in frustration.

By contrast, the ants aren’t friendless. Instead, they live in a colony with a rich heritage, a spiritual grounding, its own culture, and a complex social order where everyone has a respected role. After Lucas attacks a second time with the hose, the colony’s leadership asks Zoc, the colony’s militant wizard what he would do. Zoc (Nicolas Cage) suggests a counterstrike at Lucas, who the ants call The Destroyer. They get the OK from the Head of Council (Ricardo Freakin’ Montalban!) and they make a strike on Lucas that night in a way that recalls Hamlet, believe it or not.

Using his own potion, Zoc shrinks The Destroyer down to ant size and he’s brought to account before the colony and the Queen Ant (Meryl Streep). Zoc is calling for Lucas’ thorax, but the Queen instead counsels mercy; Lucas, she rules, must instead become an ant under the tutelage of Hova (Julia Roberts), whose approach to The Destroyer is tender and motherly.

Much peril lies ahead for human and insects and many lessons are learned. The boy part of the movie is especially pronounced in the final reel when boy and insects join forces to battle a overzealous exterminator (Paul Giamatti).

The Ant Bully’s animation is first-rate and well imagined. The only that keeps it from being a top-rated movie is that the story is a little loose and the editing a little haphazard.

The Ant Bully is rated “PG for some mild rude humor and action.”

DMR gives it a grade of B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. The Ant Bully got that upgrade. Without the upgrade, I would have given it a B.

Barnyard

2006-10-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

Farmland Fun for the Whole Family
DMR grades it a B+

Barnyard is a surprisingly tight, funny animated film for the whole family built on the premise that once the humans aren’t looking, the animals are walking on two legs, talking, making fun of us, and partying like it’s 1999.

Barnyard wasn’t particularly well reviewed, but the rule of thumb with dollar movies is that the longer a film stays in first run, the better the audience likes it. Barnyard opened August 4, the same day as Talladega Nights, and came to the dollar theaters about 60 days later. Someone besides the critics liked this movie.

The story involves a barnyard full of animals overseen by the gravel-voiced Ben (Sam Elliot) a male cow with udders. All the other cows… male and female… had udders, too. Critics have drawn all kinds of conclusions about those udders, but rather than see them as a sign of some kind of transgendered farm I just sorta went with it.

Ben has an irrepressible adopted son named Otis (Kevin James) who’s feeling his oats. By day he’s out ice block surfing and by night he’s ‘boy tipping’ or fronting the house band in the barn and flirting with Daisy (Courteney Cox), the cute widow with a calf on the way. Meanwhile, dad is leading by example, taking responsibility and keeping watch for a pack of junkyard coyotes under the leadership of Dag (David Koechner).

Circumstances force Otis to assume responsibility for the first time, much as they had for his father before him. As Ben reminds Otis, “A strong man stands up for himself. A stronger man stands up for others.” Much as I admire the sentiment, that sentence is anthropomorphic nonsense given the situation, but again, I let it slide.

I won’t reveal any more of the plot, but the movie is basically ethay ionlay ingkay in overalls.

The movie has an astonishing amount of singing and dancing, enough so that Barnyard could have been a musical. Most of the music isn't on my iPod, but it did include Sam Elliot crooning Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” during a crucial sequence. Curiously, (for a kids movie) the movie makers chose to include the lyrics, “you can stand me up at the gates of hell..."

The cast, which also includes Danny Glover, Wanda Sykes and Andie Macdowell, does fine, but Koechner deserves special notice because he brings unusual menace to his character.

Like I said, critics weren’t kind to Barnyard, but I liked its message of personal responsibility, teamwork and, for that matter, the joys of adoption. But it is edgy in places and tends towards political-correctness.

Barnyard is rated “PG for some mild peril and rude humor.”

DMR gives it a grade of B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Barnyard got that upgrade. Without the upgrade, I would have given it a B.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

2006-10-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

Not so much a guilty pleasure as a guilty laugh.
DMR gives it D.

Like anyone, I have regrets.

I regret that I don’t already have a graduate degree. I regret that I don’t eat more fruits and vegetables, and I regret laughing so hard during Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Talladega Nights is surely a crowd pleaser, but it’s only an OK movie. The pacing’s often episodic, and there are plenty of strained or false notes. The language, which includes the “R-word,” is bad. And if the movie would have made as much fun of Muslim prayer as it does Christian prayer, there would be riots in the Arab street.

Yet still I laughed.

The movie is about Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell), born in a muscle car as his daddy sped past the county hospital. His father is an irregular presence after that, but after an appearance at career day at Ricky's school, he tells young Ricky that “if you’re not first, you’re last.” Ricky, along with his childhood friend Cal Naughton Jr (John C. Reilly) make that their life's code and as adults they find themselves as NASCAR teammates.

With Cal’s help, Ricky wins races and endorsement deals, including one for the official tampon of NASCAR! But Ricky’s aggressive way of winning doesn’t bring a NASCAR team win, and the owner (Greg Germann) is upset. On the same night Bobby gets unceremoniously fired for totaling a car… and deliriously stripping to his tighty whities because he thinks he’s on fire… his wife (Leslie Louise Bibb) leaves him for Cal.

The question becomes, can Ricky make his way back to the winner’s stand?

Talladega Nights is an equal opportunity offender. Although it's not really mean-spirited, it takes aim at homosexuals, heterosexuals, NASCAR fans, NASCAR crews, the French, the Waffle House, concerned grandparents, Tom Cruise, untamed grandchildren, dodgy fathers, and darn near everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line.

And still, I regret to say, I laughed.

Talladega Nights is rated PG-13 for “for crude and sexual humor, language, drug references and brief comic violence.” And believe me, it’s a well-earned PG-13.

Dollar Movie Review gives it a grade of D.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Because of its language, situations, and numerous course moments, Talladega Nights was downgraded. Without the downgrade, I would have given it a B-.

Check Out Our New Logo

2006-10-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks:

This is my first non-review posting. On the top right you'll see the blog's new logo designed by a friend (and new father!) David Borrink.

I'm still new enough to Blogger and (for that matter) blogging, that I haven't figured out how to get the logo into the header. If you know how, please let me know.

No matter how you feel about it, I hope you'll also give me your feedback on the logo.

Thanks,
Paul

Zoom

2006-10-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

Unless your kids are jonesing to see Zoom, save your dollar for a better movie.
DMR gives it a D+.

I can hear the bullet points from the pitch meeting now: “Let’s get Tim Allen, Courteney Cox, Chevy Chase, Rip Torn and a couple of young actors from hot TV shows like The OC and 24, with a script from the guy who wrote Elf, and make a comic X-Men for kids.” Not an original premise, but not a bad one either.

Unfortunately, all that talent gets flushed down the toilet in the uninspired kids movie Zoom.

The problem isn’t that the script isn’t original. There’s not too many truly original stories left; the Greeks, Shakespeare and Harold Lloyd have seen to that. The problem is that the movie is badly executed starting with a weak and confused script and extending to the direction. The principal actors, all of whom are skilled comedians, are stuck with wildly lame dialogue and situations. Worse, they tried to fix it in “post” with scattershot editing and unimaginative special effects. The result is lipstick on a pig.

Zoom isn’t unwatchable. Its problem, from my point of view, is that I measured it against what it could have been and it came up well short by comparison.

Zoom is rated PG for “brief rude humor, language, and mild action.”

Dollar Movie Review gives it a grade of D+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Because Zoom is clean and sans offensive language and situations it received a one-half grade bonus. Without that bonus, I would have graded it as a solid D.

Superman Returns

2006-09-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

A movie for people who like their heroes to be truly heroic.
DMR gives it an A-.

While watching Superman Returns lines from William Ernest Henley’s heroic poem ‘Invictus,’ kept running through my head. That is when I wasn’t seeing Norman Rockwell’s ‘Homecoming Soldier,’ or hearing Bette Midler sing ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’ Superman Returns is the most heroic film I’ve seen in recent years.

Remarkably, in this cynical age, the filmmakers play it absolutely straight and without apologies, and I applaud them for it. It’s as refreshing as homemade lemonade. This is a Superman who knows what he’s about and goes about doing it with will and discipline, even when confronted by deadly Kryptonite. More astonishing still, Superman pulls it off without becoming a one-dimensional cardboard cutout. He has depth and complexity because he knows himself, not because he is morally conflicted.

That said, if you prefer your heroes with a twist of irony or a chaser of existential angst, you may not find Superman Returns as refreshing as I did.

The setup is that astronomers on earth had identified Superman’s planet and as the movie opens he is returning from Krypton having found only himself during his five year absence. Back in Metropolis, Lois Lane is living with a stand-up guy, and they are raising a young son together. Lex Luthor is out of prison because Superman didn’t show up for his parole hearing.

And Earth? Well, as ever it needs a savior. Past versions of Superman have been jingoistic, but in this version Superman is resident of Metropolis but a full citizen of the world, saving people and stopping crime everywhere. The villain, of course, is Lex Luthor, played with polish by a chrome-domey Kevin Spacey.

The plot is familiar; a retread of the 1978 Superman movie. Lex uses Krypton technology to destructively create a new continent, all of it tainted by radioactive Kryptonite. Of course Lex and Superman tangle. The pleasant surprise is that there’s no silly spinning of the planet in reverse, no deus ex machina to save the world again. afterwards, in a wonderfully-touching scene reminiscent of Spiderman 2, the people of Metropolis demonstrate what Superman means to them. It honestly gave me a lump in my throat.

The movie is loaded with dramatic rescues and some beautiful flying sequences. There’s also a romantic pas de deux between Lois and Superman, but it’s left unresolved. Lois is loathe to leave a good man and Superman is too much of a gentleman to force the issue. Imagine a movie advocate moral choices like those in 2006!

Brandon Routh spends more screentime as Superman than Clark Kent. When he’s Clark he seems to be channeling Christopher Reeve, but he’s his own Superman. Comparing him to Reeve probably isn’t fair, but it seemed to me that Routh had less charisma.

Spacey has reached the point as an actor where I’d darn near pay money just to watch him read the phone book. Kate Bosworth was strong as Lois Lane, but as Jimmy Olson, Sam Huntington tried too hard.

I have only one small quibble. There is a scene where Superman, weakened by Kryptonite, is beaten pretty badly by Luthor and his men. It’s almost certainly too intense for the many young children who will see the movie. The MPAA gave Superman Returns a PG-13 rating “for some intense action violence.” I grade it as an A-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Superman Returns was graded straight up.

The Devil Wears Prada

2006-09-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

A smart fashion comedy even for people who shouldn’t dress themselves.

DMR gives it a B.

I showed up at the local dollar movie theatre for The Devil Wears Prada in a pair of discount chinos, a black Carhartt belt, New Balance 853s and a green poly/rayon shirt from The North Face; I’m not exactly fashion forward. Still, I enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada, a movie set at a chi-chi fashion magazine.

The Devil Wears Prada is a fish-out-of-water story featuring Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, a serious… and fashion-challenged… journalist fresh from college. Unable to get work as a reporter, she happens into a job as the second assistant to the editor at "Runway," a fashion magazine. Everyone tells her that a million girls would kill for the job, something she finds incredible. The job is high on perks and prestige but low on money and deadly to one’s self-worth, since her boss is the barracuda editor Miranda Priestly, played with icy fierceness by Meryl Streep.

Actually that’s not right. Streep doesn’t so much play Priestly as she wears her skin, skin which is always wrapped in dresses, shoes and accessories from fancy-pants designers.

At first Andy struggles to keep up with Miranda and she maintains a mocking detachment from the world of fashion that seems about as deep to her as one of the gossamer gowns featured in the pages of "Runway." Eventually she drops her detachment and her inner fashionista appears; the little fish finds she can breathe the rare air just fine.

But while the rewards are great, being at the beck and call of Miranda comes at a fearsome price. Her friends tell her she’s changed and she suspects they’re right. As her phones rings with yet another call from Miranda, Andy’s boyfriend says, “the person whose call you always take, that’s the relationship you’re in.”

Streep could certainly get another best actor nomination for this movie, which would be number 14, but surprisingly it’s not her movie. The movie actually belongs to Anne Hathaway, who still seems like the fresh-faced newcomer even though she’s been in a dozen movies now. Hathaway’s unguarded freshness is letter perfect.

Also good is Stanley Tucci, who plays Nigel the art director. Tucci could have played him the way Jeremy Piven played the flamboyantly gay Versace salesman in Rush Hour 2. Piven stole that scene, but had Tucci played it that way it would have been too broad for The Devil Wears Prada. Tucci strikes just the right note as Andy’s friend and confidant.

The Devil Wears Prada is “rated PG-13 for some sensuality.” There are several scenes with Andy in bed with her boyfriend and another bedroom scene with a second love interest. The swearing is relatively mild. Because of the quality of the performances, the story and relatively mild language, I grade it as a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. The Devil Wears Prada was graded straight up.

Click

2006-09-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

Click is a crusty movie with a soft, gooey center.
DMR gives it a C.

I’ve come to expect certain things from an Adam Sandler movie. There will be some salty language, often including the “R-word.” There will be a strong female lead, although her part won’t always be well-drawn. There will be a number of coarse moments and jokes that go nowhere. The co-stars will often include likeable but unexpected actors from a bygone era, sorta like the average Love Boat episode. There will be several angry, confrontational scenes. Rob Schneider will make a ridiculous appearance. And no matter how crusty the movie tries to be on the outside, there will be a soft, gooey center.

Click, roughly a retelling of “A Christmas Carol,” has all those Adam Sandler movie earmarks. It stars Sandler as overworked New York architect Michael Newman, who’s being pulled in so many directions that he feels like he’s disappointing everyone including his long-suffering wife (Kate Beckinsale) and kids, his boss (David Hasselhoff), and his under-appreciated parents (Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner).

One stressful night Michael makes his way to Bed, Bath and Beyond for a universal remote. Behind a subtly-marked sign that says ‘Beyond,’ he finds Morty, played with devilish glee by Christopher Walken. Morty has a deal for Michael, a free ‘universal remote’ that controls more than Michael knows.

The script is by Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe, who also penned the similar Bruce Almighty. As they demonstrated I think better in that movie, you have to be careful about what you wish for. Power, fame, success, money, ambition, all those things that seem so seductive in the wee small hours, might just be a devil’s bargain. With the universal remote close at hand, Michael finds himself fast-forwarding through his life, unable, once he finally slows down, to remember the small pleasures and everyday events that make life truly rich.

Before he knows it he’s come to an early end of his life, materially successful, but bloated, and unhappily divorced. In a last desperate measure he tries to stop his son from fast-forwarding through his life, too.

Like I said, Click is a movie with a soft, gooey center. It’s a good movie that wants to be bad. So the question is, can you get past the crusty exterior? That’s no small trick. I can’t ever remember, for instance, a movie that showed a dog humping something so often. I pity the poor PA that had to audition the dogs for the role.

In terms of the performances, Sandler seems unable to bring the depth of emotion to Click that Jim Carrey brought to Bruce Almighty. Beckinsale is slumming as Newman’s wife Donna, and Hasselhoff is quite funny as Newman’s boss Ammer. Sean Astin, who appears onscreen several times in a red Speedo, is used mainly as a punchline. And Winkler and Kavner are solid as Newman’s mensch-like parents. A special shout-out goes to Jennifer Coolidge, a supporting actress who gets a lot of work and delivers again in Click.

Click is rated PG-13 for for "language, crude and sex-related humor, and some drug references." Believe me, it's a legitimate PG-13.

I give Click a grade of C.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Click was downgraded a full grade. Without the swearing, and all the course stuff, especially with the dog, I would have given Click a B.

The Lake House

2006-09-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Lake House brings romance back to time travel movies.
DMR and Beloved Wife (BW) give it an A-.

Woman, research shows, use more of their brains than men, they feel emotions with greater intensity and acuity, and they can articulate their emotions more clearly.

Knowing that, my focused male brain tells me that I have no business reviewing The Lake House, the romantic time-bending movie with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. But time travel, that’s pretty cool, and Keanu was in the Matrix trilogy and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Plus, there are plenty of memorable time travel movies and Sandra Bullock’s certainly likeable. How bad could it be?

Still, to be fair, this review will feature in part the perspective and voice of my Beloved Wife (BW) of the last nine years. No, she hasn’t seen it yet, but nine years is long enough to know how she would react to most things. Except, of course, when I’m wrong.

BW: The movie starts a little slow and the premise takes a little while to build, but Keanu and Sandra have real chemistry. You can really tell that they get along on and off screen.

Dollar Movie Review (DMR): That chemistry is vital to The Lake House, because they spend very little of the movie physically together. Sandra stars as a newly-minted doctor fresh from several years in a stunning modernist house built over a lake in Wisconsin before moving to Chicago for her residency. As it turns out, the home was built by Keanu’s dad, a famous architect played by Christopher Plummer, whose reputation was established after building the eye-catching home. Keanu grew up there and moved back in 2004. When he gets there he finds a letter in the mailbox from the previous tenant, Sandra, who asks that he forward any mail. But there’s a curiosity; he’s living there in 2004 and her letter dates from 2006.

BW: Boring! When are we going to talk about their relationship?

DMR: Go ahead.

BW: Both Keanu and Sandra are hurting and try to bury the hurt in their work. They both have lost beloved parents, and Keanu’s relationship with his father is strained. That’s because Keanu has sold himself short by becoming a developer of cheesy suburban townhomes. And in moving to Chicago for her residency, Sandra is leaving behind a relationship with a lawyer who loves her but isn’t right for her. I had a girlfriend like that who married her second choice and it was pretty loveless. That’s why I always… Oops, words count here, don’t they?

DMR: Once they get past their initial skepticism, they devise little tests like sending a scarf back in time through the magic mailbox just in time for a late season snowstorm. In so doing Keanu figures out that he can meet her in the past, which he does.

BW: But that isn’t where it goes. It’s not like Back to the Future where Marty is in the car with his mother before the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

DMR: That’s true, Marty kisses his mother and it’s nasty. Whereas when Sandra and Keanu kiss in his timeframe they both feel great longing.

BW: That’s really one of the cutest moments in the movie, the two of them dancing to Paul McCartney’s “This Never Happened Before.” We should get that.

DMR: It is nice. Of course their relationship has to end. Sandra realizes that she can’t keep living for the future. So she takes up with her old lawyer boyfriend Morgan who has moved to Chicago…

BW: He was nothing special…

DMR: … and leaves unanswered a stack of letters from Keanu. But circumstance make her realize that Keanu had tried to catch up to her and in so doing had died in her arms.

BW: …but she didn’t realize who he was at the time.

DMR: After two years of go-slow romance, it becomes a race against time to see if she can save him.

BW: It’s a sweet movie. I liked it a lot.

DMR: But is it too sweet? Were there enough tears?

BW: I cried enough. What did you think?

DMR: I wish there was a DeLorean in it, or a Flux Capacitor.

The Lake House is rated PG for "some language and a disturbing image."

The Dollar Movie Reviewer and beloved wife give it an A-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. The Lake House, which is almost free of offensive language and has only implied sex, was graded straight up.

Lady in the Water

2006-09-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

Shyamalan needs to spend more time watching Hitchcock.
DMR gives it B.

Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest effort is a fable brought to film. I figured that much out. But after watching the movie and thinking about it, I have no idea what the lesson might be.

It could be about the power of one person to redeem others, like Christian teachings about Jesus. It might be about the need for greater community in an increasingly pluralistic and crowded world. It might just be about a grudge Shyamalan obviously has with movie critics. (In the interest of full disclosure, I liked his movies The Sixth Sense and Signs a lot and I admired The Village and Unbreakable.)

It’s a fable because the plot elements are so incredible and yet the characters take them at face value, like in a movie musical when the characters break into song and no one seems surprised when there’s a full symphony backing them up.

OK, so it’s a fable. “Should I see it,” you’re asking? Well, the movie is scrupulously clean: there’s no swear words, no sex, and while violence is implied, it’s not depicted. The Lady in the Water comes to dry land naked, but she’s always shown with a shirt or towel on. Your average Wal-Mart circular is more titillating. The Lady in the Water rated PG-13 for “some frightening sequences.” But frankly it could easily be rated PG.

The performances are fine. Bryce Dallas Howard has a one-note part as the title character. Most of the heavy lifting in the acting department comes from Paul Giamatti, who’s very good. His performance reminded me a great deal of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Shyamalan, who appears in his movies ala Alfred Hitchcock, takes his largest role to date. He, too, does fine.

But for me the movie was missing something. It certainly didn’t have Shyamalan’s trademark 'gotcha' surprise. Lady in the Water has atmospherics, but I never found it scary or even eerie. Considering how confused I am by the film, it could certainly have been more approachable.

The movie all takes place in one apartment building, much like Hitchcock’s masterful Rear Window. Shyamalan copies a couple of Hitchcock’s establishing shots, but he isn’t able to duplicate the tension of Rear Window. Much to my chagrin, there’s no one like Grace Kelly in Lady in the Water, either.

I think Shyamalon strives to be like Alfred Hitchcock and I’ll happily cheer him on. Who made better scary, non-gory, more accessible movies than Hitchcock? But before we can mention them in the same breath, Shyamalan needs to head back to screening room to watch some more Hitch.

Lady in the Water is rated PG-13.

I give it a grade of B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Lady in the Water received that bonus in my review. Without it, I would have rated it as a C+.

Cars

2006-09-05T15:28:00.000-07:00

The best Dollar Movie of the summer.

DMR grades it an A.

Cars is a feast for the eyes that is by turns heartwarming and tender. It’s the best movie to show up on a dollar screen this summer and nearly as good as Pixar’s Finding Nemo.

Some critics have suggested the storyline of Cars isn’t as strong as other Pixar movies like Monsters Inc or The Incredibles. I agree. But that’s like saying Reggie Jackson wasn’t as good a hitter as Willie Mays. True enough. But if I was picking players for my baseball team I’d have a place for Mr. October.

Cars is about a charismatic hotshot young racecar named Lightning McQueen in the NASCAR-like Piston Cup in a world where all sentient life is a vehicle of some kind.

McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, finishes the final race of the season tied with two other cars, The King, an old-school racer (Richard Petty), and Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton), the perennial second-runner itching to replace The King. To settle the tie, McQueen, The King and Hicks meet in a grudge match race a week later across the country in California.

McQueen heads west in his reliable car hauler Mack (John Ratzenberger). But in a middle of the night mishap, McQueen rolls out of his trailer and creates automotive havoc in the fast-fading and forgotten desert town of Radiator Springs, miles off the Interstate but squarely on Route 66 in ‘Carburetor County.’

As punishment, McQueen is sentenced to community service to repave the strip of the 'Mother Road' that he ruined, and which runs smack through the middle of the Radiator Springs. He tries to finish his sentencing ASAP in a slipshod way, but the town won’t accept it. In getting it right, McQueen is drawn into the lives of the ‘towncars’ with whom he finds friendship, inner peace and even enlightenment.

The towncars include: Paul Newman as 'Doc Hudson,' the senior member of the town with a carefully shaded past; Tony Shalhoub as 'Luigi,' the Ferrari-worshipping tire dealer; Larry the Cable Guy as 'Mater,' the rust-bucket tow truck; Cheech Marin as Ramone, the lowrider paint shop owner; Bonnie Hunt as 'Sally Carrera,' the proprietor of the Cozy Cone Motel; and George Carlin as 'Fillmore' as the local hippie drop-out and brewer of ‘organic’ fuel.

The cast also includes broadcasters Bob Costas, and National Public Radio’s Tom and Ray Magliozzi, racers Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Mario Andretti, along with Jay Leno and Jeremy Piven. It’s a deep and talented cast and only Owen Wilson disappoints. His laid-back style, so funny in other movies, doesn't generate much traction in Cars.

From the first frame… set on a monster Southern racetrack, to the desert locales in and around Radiator Springs… the movie is astonishing to look at. The race sequences are so true to life that only the eyes in the windshield give it away. The desert scenes, by contrast, are better than real. They mix “eco-porn” shots of the red rock country of Utah, with the iconic saguaro cactuses of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The resulting visuals are a striking, if unlikely, mixture of Randy Owens race care lithos and a Nature Conservancy donor’s premium!

Cars is rated G for general audiences.

I give Cars an A.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. If the story and Owen Wilson had been better, I would have given it an A+.

Nacho Libre

2006-08-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

Nacho Libre is a goofy-little slip-on-a-banana-peel sort of a movie that I found endearing, a kind of Fatty Arbuckle movie for the 2000s.

Nacho Libre is about an acolyte-cook, played by Jack Black, at a church-sponsored orphanage who begins to wrestle in the amateur Mexican lucha libre circuit so as to provide the orphans with better meals.

Nacho induces a homeless man (Hector Jimenez) to join him as his tag-team wrestling partner and dons a mask to protect his priestly identity. Jimenez is as thin as the gruel that Nacho has been serving at the orphanage, so it’s no surprise that their team doesn’t win any matches. Still, after every fight the lovable losers get a piece of the box office and the orphans eat better. With their success, if you can call it that, a larger fight looms.

Naturally there’s a number of fight sequences in the movie and plenty of comic violence. But it’s all slapstick. I can imagine Nacho Libre as a silent movie except for the fact that the music… with the score by Danny Elfman… is absolutely dynamite.

There’s also a ‘love’ story subplot with Nacho and a nun-teacher at the orphanage, played by the lovely Ana de la Reguera. Nacho writes her a funny love letter inviting her to renounce her vows and join him in marriage. Just before the big fight, he also sings a Jack Black-style rock ballad in de la Reguera’s honor. But since the two never do renounce their vows or consummate any kind of physical relationship, it’s not exactly your standard movie romance. Heck, even in a silent movie the hero would have gotten a chaste little kiss. But not here.

Nacho Libre is Jared Hess’s sophomore effort, and we learn something about both him and Jack Black.

For Jack Black, the rule of thumb is becoming; go see any movie in which he sings. Kinda like the rule of thumb that any movie in which John Travolta dances is worth seeing, Staying Alive being a notable exception.

For his part, Hess shows that his filmmaking style has little to do with his budget.

Those shots of the austere Southeastern Idaho landscape in Napoleon Dynamite… and his willingness to fill the screen with ordinary-looking people who make their homes there… wasn’t just planks-on-cinderblock college-budget chic. Nacho Libre was filmed entirely in the Mexican State of Oaxaca with a much larger budget. But as with Napoleon Dynamite, Hess makes both the striking Oaxacan landscape and the people who inhabit it characters in his movie.

Nacho Libre is “rated PG for some rough action, and crude humor including dialogue.”

I grade the movie as a B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Nacho Libre received that bonus in my review. Without it, I would have rated it as a B-.

The Da Vinci Code

2006-08-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

A lot of ink has been spilled over Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code and Ron Howard’s movie version of the same. Since 'brevity is the soul of wit' here’s my review in a mere five words:

Tularemia Roll Fry Of Voodoo.

That’s not a Creole dish made with a summer rabbit, it's an anagram, which are to great effect in the movie. See if you can figure it out before you come to the end of the review.

The Da Vinci Code is a big movie, shot in France and the UK, and filled with stars from two continents.

It’s also a sprawling movie. In the movie exhibition business they have an expression called ‘popcorn movies’ that refers to movies like, say, National Treasure wherein patrons buy a lot of concessions to go with the movie. I don’t know if The Da Vinci Code is a popcorn movie or not, but be smart and don’t try to make it a ‘large Coke movie’ unless you have a particularly patient bladder.

That said, the filmmakers didn’t have much of a choice. The book is plot thick. So hats off to both Howard and the screenwriter for finding middle ground.

The plot of The Da Vinci Code is well known. An American symbologist (don’t ask) played by Tom Hanks, is implicated in the death of a French professor in the Louvre. But with the help of a cute French police officer (Audrey Tautou), he cleverly avoids arrest for a crime he didn’t commit.

While in the Louvre, Hanks and Tautou are drawn into a kind of treasure hunt for the Holy Grail. Hot on their tracks are a police detective played with Inspecter Javier-like determination by French actor Jean Reno, and a fanatic albino monk named Silas (Paul Bettany). All three parties converge at the countryside villa of Sir Leigh Teabing, a lifelong Grail-hound played by Ian McKellen, who apparently gets to be in every blockbuster movie.

Hanks, Tautou, McKellen and Bettany escape to London where they pick up the trail of the Grail in the cathedral where Sir Isaac Newton is interred. But is the Grail something that can be held in the hand?

Howard does a fair job directing the movie and the performances are uniformly good, albeit Bettany's accent is a little too Inigo Montoya-ish to be taken entirely seriously. But I have two objections to Howard’s direction. If you read the book, you know it’s almost impossible to put down. And while the pace of the film is steady as a heartbeat, it never made my pulse race.

Howard also chooses to depict Bettany’s fanaticism several times by showing him flagellate himself while naked. Everyone who read the book (and everyone else, for that matter) knows what's coming for Bettany's character, so to keep depicting his fanaticism that way was gratuitous.

There’s a lot I’ve glossed over and plenty to anger Christians, especially Catholics.

Nonetheless, I took The Da Vinci Code, (book and movie) to be a yarn, and a good one at that, but not an actual conspiracy, or history, or truth.

Decoded my anagrammatic review of The Da Vinci Code is; “a lot of movie for your dollar.”

The Da Vinci Code is rated PG-13 for “disturbing images, violence, some nudity, thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content.”

I grade The Da Vinci Code as a C.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Without the excessive self-flagellation I would have graded it a B+. My grading relies on the fact that I was able to separate the central premise of The Da Vinci Code… which pointedly undermines one of the great religions… from the movie itself. If you can’t do the same, you probably won’t like The Da Vinci Code.

Over the Hedge

2006-08-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

I wanted to like Over the Hedge so much that I saw it 1½ times; the first time with my wife and daughters and the second time alone. Daughter number two still isn’t ready for movies, so she and I bonded in the adjoining toy store shortly after the second reel began.

What I hoped to see in Over the Hedge was something that could give Shrek a run for its money. After all, my unofficial role in reviewing these kids movies is as promoter. I want them to be so good that audiences can’t get enough of them and Hollywood is forced to make more.

Instead what I saw was a movie that tries to be good for me, like kale or oat bran or something else loaded with antioxidants and high in nonsoluble fiber.

Over the Hedge starts with a fast-talking raccoon named RJ (Bruce Willis) who, in a fit of late-winter hunger pangs, raids the food cache of Vincent, a hibernating bear voiced with rumbly grumpiness by Nick Nolte. But RJ gets greedy. Just as he’s about to become bear chow, he talks Vincent into a week-long extension if he can replace Vincent’s transfat-laden stores, little red wagon and all.

RJ makes his way to the distant exurbs and insinuates his way into a post-modern family of foraging animals who are surprised to wake up from hibernation to find their forest home now surrounded by 'Rancho Camelot.' High jinks ensue. The family is led by Verne (Garry Shandling) and includes Hammie, a hyperactive squirrel voiced by Steve Carell, a Skunk voiced by stand-up comedienne Wanda Sykes, plus an all-Canadian cast of possums and porcupines that include William Shatner, Avril Lavigne, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara.

The performances are all first-rate, especially Carell. And wasn’t Shatner born to play possum? Allison Janey is also effective as Gladys, the harsh and obsessive home owner’s association president.

The production values are very high and the story has an actual plotline and believable characterizations. This isn’t a movie that tries to be beautiful, but there are several visually good-looking scenes. Plus, there are laughs for both the kiddies and the adults.

But too often, especially in the early going, Over the Hedge tries not to be a kid’s movie so much as a satire meant for the parents in the theater. There’s nothing wrong with satire, in a kid’s movie or any movie. But the satire in Over the Hedge was a little too pointed for my taste. For instance, when the worldly-wise RJ is explaining the human’s obsession with food to his new family.

I get it, we’re all too fat. One of the Girl Scouts and her mother in the movie were too fat, as was the ‘Verminator.’ In the interest of full disclosure, I’m too fat. The news tells me there's 'an epidemic of obesity' every day. Do I really need a cartoon to pile on too? What happened to Mary Poppins and ‘a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down?’

Oh, right. Sugar’s too high in carbs.

Over the Hedge is “rated PG for some rude humor and mild comic action,” by the MPAA, whatever ‘mild comic action’ is.

I give it a grade of A-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. In this movie a B- became an A-, for instance. It could have been an A if they would have spent less time poking fun at fat guys like me.

Failure To Launch

2006-07-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

The reviewers at the Internet Movie Database gave Failure to Launch a mediocre rating of 5.5 out of 10. Maybe the movie caught me off guard, or maybe it’s just because I’m a sucker for running gags, but I liked it.

It’s light, the performances… even Terry Bradshaw’s… were good and the running gag involves various wild animals, including a geographically-displaced chuckwalla, biting the World’s Sexiest Man. And what’s not to like about that?

Failure to Launch stars Matthew McConaughey as Tripp, a happy-go-lucky 35-year-old yacht salesman who’s too comfortable and maybe too emotionally damaged to leave home. His mother, played by Kathy Bates coddles him and his father, played goofily by Bradshaw, just wants the house back for his own odd purposes. So they hire Sarah Jessica Parker (Paula) a professional interventionist experienced in such matters to induce him to leave home.

Of course everything seems to be going fine. Paula’s well-refined methods have Tripp ready to leave, but she is also falling in love with him, a professional no-no. Of course, everybody in the theater knew where this movie was going (dollar movie theater patrons are pretty smart, after all) because, as we all know, ‘the course of true love never did run smooth.' But getting there was fun.

Considering how bankable Parker and McConaughey are, Failure to Launch turns a lot of the movie over to the co-stars including Zooey Deschanel (Elf), Justin Bartha (National Treasure), Bradley Cooper (Alias), Bradshaw and Bates. BTW, when are we going to see Kathy Bates in another role like Misery, where she's so convincing as a menacing psychopath?

All that said, Failure to Launch could have been a Rock Hudson-Doris Day romp — light, funny and clean—but it’s not. The PG-13 rating… for sexual content, partial nudity and language, including the "R-word"… is legitimate. It’s not appropriate for young teens.

Because Failure to Launch too often aims low, Dollar Movie Review grades it as a solid C.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. In my view, Failure to Launch was a solid B without the strong language, the sexual content and Bradshaw's oft remarked-upon bare butt.

Ice Age: The Meltdown

2006-07-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Going to Ice Age: The Meltdown, was a little like going to the library. I don’t mean it was quiet. Libraries aren’t really quiet anymore.

No, Ice Age 2 was like the library in the sense that the kids I saw it with were entertained just enough to keep them from playing their PSPs. The pace is rather glacial.

The movie, which only shows brief glimpses of the genius of Pixar or the ironic humor of the Shrek franchise, is not a dud by any stretch. There are two pretty good setpieces and the makings of a third. The movie also has a couple of touching moments. And the intercuts with Scrat, the hardest-working squirrel since Rocky, are all funny, even inspired.

The cast from the first movie returns with Ray Romano (Manny), John Leguizamo (Sid), and Denis Leary (Diego) in the lead roles. Queen Latifah adds some spice as Ellie, a Mammoth raised as a possum. But Ray Romano plays better when you can see his sad face. The kids probably didn’t care, but Leguizamo’s spitting lisp wore a little thin for me. Unfortunately, Leary’s Diego, the saber-tooth cat, has been declawed since the first movie.

There are the mandatory nods to other movies. I saw MI:2 and Matrix, for instance. And there are the mandatory fart jokes. Nothing else tells you the writers are phoning it in quite like fart jokes. There’s also an unfunny ‘mean kids’ segment that goes nowhere s l o w l y.

In short, Ice Age: The Meltdown is a perfect example of why we go to Dollar Movies. It’s not a great movie, but at a Dollar Movie price it’s a “good-enough” movie.

Ice Age: The Meltdown is rate PG for mild language and innuendo by the MPAA.

DollarMovieReview.com grades it as a B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: Movies targeted at young kids, that don’t gross out or offend too much get a full grade bonus. A C+ became a B+ in this movie, for instance. How much is too gross or offensive? I decide on the fly.

The Dollar Movie Reviewer

2006-07-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you love movies. I've definitely spent many, many meaningful hours in movie houses across North America. And I've spent too much time watching duds.

Like Brad Pitt, I'm a dad now and I'm tired of "thinking about myself." With a wife and two little girls, it's harder than ever to justify the time and expense of the duds. That's why I go to 'Dollar Movies.' If the movie's a dud, I don't feel bad about walking out on it. And if it's good? Well then I figure I just saved $6 or $7 a head (or more)!

So in The Dollar Movie Review in most cases I'll be reviewing movies that have demonstrated some staying power. Most of them are hits. A few are movies which my local Dollar Movie theater operator figured might have some staying power in my market.

I review these Dollar Movies on a curve. Elements in movies like sex, violence, profanity and the like (all things that, frankly, didn't bother me as much when I was still single) won't fare as well in my reviews. Moreover, kid-friendly movies will get the benefit of a doubt in my reviews; a kind of 'thanks for trying' attaboy. It's possible to make movies that manage to be engaging and entertaining without being coarse or debasing. Pixar does it all the time. And I want to do my small part to encourage better movies.

That raises one final point. I once heard Gerald Molen talk about his experiences as a Hollywood producer and he mentioned that the only R-rated movie he'd produced was Schindler's List (for which he won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1994). Someone piped up and said, what about Rain Man? He said, when he started the movie, it was a PG or PG-13 movie, not an R movie. The director, Barry Levinson, had made choices during the course of the production that turned it into an R movie.

I believe Hollywood is capable of producing splendid movies. But too often the first sensibility of modern Hollywood screenwriters, directors, producers and actors is to make movies that cheapen and degrade. When filmmakers make those kind of choices, The Dollar Movie Review will say so.