Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan mine the catacombs of American Agriculture in Food, Inc.
This documentary detailing the coup by which Big Business overtook the American diet does an admirable job in presenting an easily digestible history of agro-business, following characters both tragic (the grieving mother-turned-food-advocate whose son was killed by tainted hamburger) and comic (an organic, free-range farmer fond of non sequiturs) as it attempts to persuade audiences to re-commandeer their eating habits and restore a healthier, more ethical method of sustenance in the national culture.
Executive produced by Eric Schlosser, author of the classic Fast Food Nation, and with Michael Pollan (of Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food fame) acting as special consultant (both appear extensively as interview subjects and narrators), the film has a substantial pedigree, prominently featuring two of the most visible crusaders for the betterment of the American digestive system. And the natural/healthy foods movements could not have better spokespersons: both men are cool-headed and impassionate in their presentation, as well as exhaustive researchers and unequivocal, plain speakers. That Schlosser is seen devouring a hamburger (“Still my favorite meal,” he says) in the first half hour of the film goes a long way toward dispelling notions of elitism on the part of the filmmakers and their subjects. If anything, the work of Pollan, Schlosser and director Robert Kenner is one of outraged populism, and, unlike the work of Michael Moore, just may be effective in changing minds. Their persistence is never offensively articulated, their confidence is always unwavering and their scholarly insights unimpeachable. With a bit of luck, the other columns of the green movement will unearth similarly engaging and effective figureheads instead of relying on automakers and oil companies to bring a diluted version of their message to the public. They may be short on answers, but at this point the asking of their questions is a worthy enough achievement.
However brilliant its two guides, the film itself suffers from hyperextension, as it fails in truly ruminating on each of its proposed topics. Divided into upsettingly brief chapters, the film surveys a riveting amount of material, but merely skims the surface in most of its presentations. Covering everything from immigrants’ rights to federal oversight and the history of McDonalds, the through line of the film is the rise of multinational corporations and the increasingly nefarious tactics they’ve employed to keep us hooked on the shit they serve while keeping us out of the kitchen. Lawsuits, lobbying and loopholes in immigration policy all contribute to the maintenance of the stronghold that multinational food manufactures hold on the chain of food from the field to the table. That this is the subject of a (semi-)major American motion picture is nothing short of heroic, even if the digital effects employed throughout (an unflattering byproduct of Moore Syndrome) are annoying, the basic decency of the work is unquestionable. If mildly clever digital cartoons (including businessmen on a conveyor belt being ratcheted ominously toward Ma and Pa’s farm) make the difference between Joe Six Pack seeing the movie or staying home, then it would be foolish to say they detract from the film itself. They may annoy, but they do not undermine the message.
Those familiar with the written work (or video lectures and interviews) of Schlosser and Pollan may not find much new here, but Food, Inc. functions well as a square-one document, providing enough information and gung-ho spirit for audiences to leave the theater equipped and primed for action. Fittingly, as the film closes, a series of titles implore audiences to act by shopping at farmer’s markets, eating foods in season and contacting their legislators. This section embodies both the virtue and the flaw of the entire enterprise: the zippy graphics swirl, drop, fade and disappear text across the screen like an eager PowerPoint presentation yet convey useful, pressing information. Could be worse, considering the precedent set by Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock in the past decade, in which the documentary feature has been the most popular and lucrative that it’s ever been. The braying of their contemporaries only underscores how valuable the practiced oratory of Schlosser and Pollan is to the effectiveness of the film.
As with most recent agitprop documentaries, the best Food, Inc. can do is inspire audiences to pursue a more thorough familiarity with the subject via literature or political involvement and consequently become activists in their own right. A documentary like this pleads for its own irrelevance, and rightfully so.
Food, Inc. / USA / 2008 / Color / 94 min. / Directed by Robert Kenner
Thursday, July 23, 2009
KISS KISS BANG BANG
Contemporary Children’s Cinema vs. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Unlike just about everything that passes for children’s entertainment these days, 1968’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is both gloriously weird and genuinely mischievous. While nothing in the film offers up the sublime in quite the same manner as Pixar’s remarkable run of animated films of the past fifteen years (the safest bet for a high water mark in contemporary children’s entertainment), this film, about a crackpot inventor, his adorable kids and their customized jalopy (the onomatopoeically christened Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) redeems its utter lack of sophistication through the sheer glee it generates by simply being odd. But just like a small child’s recitation of a personal narrative, the film loses its way easily and often, strains sweetness too often, is prone to gaps in logic, and is occasionally frustrating in its inability to get to the point. That it is also capable of a jouissance nearly unthinkable in today’s market of kiddie entertainment – unforgivably congested with bratty miscreants and cuddly icons-in-waiting bound for fast food containers – mutes its comparatively trivial shortcomings.
Moreover, the film’s utter lack of willpower and restraint gradually become assets; it is as petulant and impulsive as its target audiences, and for this Chitty Chitty Bang Bang should be applauded and revived. In a brassy confluence of style, the film’s authors managed to find common ground between the absurdism of postwar British Humor, the French le fantastique, and Grimm’s fairytales, with American Tall Tales thrown in for good measure. This isn’t to say that each genre is explicitly pursued through the narrative, or that overt stylistic hallmarks can be easily pinpointed, but merely that the filmmakers successfully drew upon preexisting ideas and themes to such a dizzying extent that they produced something as familiar as it was (and is) bizarre.
Children’s entertainment has since dedicated itself to retellings of folk and classical mythology, or attempts at ironic pop hipness. The former works well with apprehensive parents keen on wholesome entertainment (while boasting a patina of esteem), while the latter is intent on blurring the line between entertainment for children and adults (the “something for everyone” family film.) If adults are to enjoy fare like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, they are forced to indulge more completely the inner tyke; as such films boast no innuendos or cultural allusions with which to stoke the pop culture-infused data banks of the post-pubescent set. Ironically, it could easily be argued that this strategy ingratiates such films with adults even more so than their entendre-packed counterparts, because an escape from the oppressions of adulthood is one virtue that children’s entertainment has to offer the beleaguered parents of its target demographic. Cast in this light, it’s not hard to understand why a bizarre (and, more importantly, innocent) fantasy like Spongebob Squarepants has experienced such enduring success. Likewise, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a considerable box office success in its day, and while plenty of the snide patter that has since been marketed to children has exceeded its modest financial success, it’s not likely that these works will endure as even minor works in the history of children’s films. Instead, the plastic chotchkies bearing the likenesses of their protagonists will exist in landfills far longer than the films themselves will survive in the cultural imagination.
The plodding first half of Chitty details the life of a hapless, widowed inventor, Caractacus Potts, (played by Dick Van Dyke) and his affectionate, precocious children struggling to make ends meet in rural Great Britain. That Van Dyke’s distinctly American accent is at odds with his children’s cockney delivery barely registers as just one of the film’s thousand inconsistencies. The few satisfactory scenes in film’s first act all involve Potts' inventions, which include an elaborate Rube Goldberg-like Breakfast machine, an overeager hair cutter, a jet pack, and musical lollipops, the very things that provoke and inflame the child’s imagination. These few ingenious sight gags aside, the first hour or so of the film lack much of interest, but as Van Dyke (keeping a promise to his beloved children) restores an old jalopy for a jaunt to the beach, the film comes to life when the full capabilities of the car announce themselves in a scene of inventively staged, rotating rear-projection. As the car spreads wings and takes flight (naturally escaping from pirates), the family (accompanied by the confection heiress Truly Scrumptious [the unmemorable Sally Ann Howes]) find themselves immersed in a fantasy world, and the audience in a wonderfully goofy frolic.
Though handsomely (if often clumsily) directed by British television veteran Ken Hughes, the film’s overall spirit could more properly be attributed to co-writer Roald Dahl, who deviated noticeably from Fleming’s source novel. Dahl’s trademark brand of dark, yet winsome humor permeates the film’s far more interesting second half, though an early scene set in a candy factory calls his Willy Wonka books to mind. Hughes’ realization of his and Dahl’s screenplay benefits immensely from an aesthetic program which relies heavily on techniques borrowed from the various New Waves gaining traction worldwide at the time of the film’s production: grand, unmotivated tracking shots, quick zooms, wide angle lenses and a quicker approach to editing. The aesthetic eccentricity gives the film a roughhewn, chaotic quality that breathes life into even the most tedious subplots while reaffirming the narrative’s more radical impulses. The anarchic glee of the film is equal parts The Beatles’ Help!, and Tex Avery animation. If the film can claim a single inspiration, it would be that of Richard Lester, whose punchy delivery and schoolboy’s wit feel their way into each scene of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with nary a smirk or wink. The film is at its best when its idiosyncrasies pass by unassumingly, suffused with a characteristically dry British grin and a bouncy rhythm.
As the story-within-the-story develops, the Baron of Vulgaria and his wife, the child-hating Baroness, kidnap all the children, the grandfather, Ms. Scrumptious and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang itself at various points. A collector of wonderful machines, the Baron dispatches two classic bumbling henchmen (variation of the silent film villains fond of tying damsels to train tracks) to procure the car for his collection. The sequences in which our heroes trek through Vulgaria and the Baron’s palace are the highlights of the film. As each of Hughes and Dahl’s creative impulses crescendo, Caractacus masquerades about the palace as a staggering marionette (a ruse designed to distract the Baron) while simultaneously staging a revolt of slave children imprisoned in Vulgarian sewers. The children occupy the palace and assault the distinguished Vulgarian gentry in a gesture of juvenile anarchy reminiscent of the Jean Vigo classic Zero for Conduit. That a film designed for young people can embody the spirit of a classic film without lazy homage intended to tickle the pedantic, cinephilic synapses of older moviegoers, is an odd notion currently, but Chitty Chitty Bang Bang succeeds in nodding to the Vigo masterpiece without attempting to supplant it. Hughes and Dahl don’t see the recurrence as clever, another odd notion in today’s climate of aggregate references and juxtaposition. The slightly altered and certainly modest extension of a narrative situation or creative idea apparently belongs to a bygone era, perhaps because it leaves open the possibility that the creators themselves are not in on the joke, or deceptively expect to pass the transgression by a dopey audience. Today, both audience and filmmaker seek to be on the same page, that is, both in on the joke. The self-consciousness of this attitude masks needless, counterproductive guilt, and has done nothing but detract from the formerly easygoing nature of popular entertainment, becoming especially pervasive (and proportionately repellant) in work made for children.
Late in the film, audiences are also treated to one of cinema’s most memorable maniacs: Robert Helpmann’s Child Catcher, a villain authentically menacing, yet such a caricatured oddity that he fails to evoke real horror. The performance is worthy of canonization as Helpmann’s wide-eyed snarl provokes squeamishness in even the most hardened adults. Something of a dandy, the long snouted Child Catcher is the court officer responsible for sniffing out hidden children in Vulgaria so they may be apprehended and punished by the evil Baroness. Swinging his noise about in search of a child’s scent while merrily prancing through the streets of Vulgaria, the Child Catcher embodies sexual perversion and cold-blooded innocence in equal measure. A forerunner to both Pee Wee Herman and Danny DeVito’s Penguin, the Child Catcher’s anguished squeals – as he is visited by revenge at the film’s end – rival Peter Lorre’s plea for clemency before the makeshift court at the end of Fritz Lang’s M. If the film is granted one legacy let it be this character, who could equally be at ease in an episode of Star Trek, a Tolkien adaptation or a reworking of Alice in Wonderland.
The Child Catcher’s subplot, in which helpless children are tucked away in the attics, sewers and basements of Eastern Europe, pursued by half-crazed monsters, is loaded from a historical perspective, but the goofiness of the overall plot and the film’s pretzelling of time (the Baron’s court borrows elements from at least three centuries of aristocratic European décor and hosts a kind of stateless, pan-European nobility), prevent the adult viewer from pursuing strands of allegory too far.
Sadly, the film sags to lifelessness during nearly of its musical numbers, which grind the viewer’s nerves to tatters through a combination of maudlin sentimentality and poor craftsmanship (a similar blight on the adaptation, three years after this picture, of Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) Exceptions of note include the title song, which is far too charming to ever be cloying, and one of the later numbers featuring a duet between the Baron and Baroness: as the two skip through a ditty of rosy-cheeked marital affection, the Baron attempts increasingly ambitious methods of murdering his wife – including a vintage trapdoor and a faulty chandelier – who cheerfully reappears ceaselessly as though spun from a Looney Tunes sketch. Had there been a few more scenes of such saccharine/macabre antics laced throughout the picture, it would be an irreproachable masterpiece. As is, warts and all, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang beats the hell out of the competition, even forty years later.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang / UK / 1968 / Color / 144 min. / Directed by Ken Hughes / Written by Mr. Hughes and Roald Dahl, from the book by Ian Fleming / Starring: Dick Van Dyke, Sally Anne Howes and Lionel Jeffries
Unlike just about everything that passes for children’s entertainment these days, 1968’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is both gloriously weird and genuinely mischievous. While nothing in the film offers up the sublime in quite the same manner as Pixar’s remarkable run of animated films of the past fifteen years (the safest bet for a high water mark in contemporary children’s entertainment), this film, about a crackpot inventor, his adorable kids and their customized jalopy (the onomatopoeically christened Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) redeems its utter lack of sophistication through the sheer glee it generates by simply being odd. But just like a small child’s recitation of a personal narrative, the film loses its way easily and often, strains sweetness too often, is prone to gaps in logic, and is occasionally frustrating in its inability to get to the point. That it is also capable of a jouissance nearly unthinkable in today’s market of kiddie entertainment – unforgivably congested with bratty miscreants and cuddly icons-in-waiting bound for fast food containers – mutes its comparatively trivial shortcomings.
Moreover, the film’s utter lack of willpower and restraint gradually become assets; it is as petulant and impulsive as its target audiences, and for this Chitty Chitty Bang Bang should be applauded and revived. In a brassy confluence of style, the film’s authors managed to find common ground between the absurdism of postwar British Humor, the French le fantastique, and Grimm’s fairytales, with American Tall Tales thrown in for good measure. This isn’t to say that each genre is explicitly pursued through the narrative, or that overt stylistic hallmarks can be easily pinpointed, but merely that the filmmakers successfully drew upon preexisting ideas and themes to such a dizzying extent that they produced something as familiar as it was (and is) bizarre.
Children’s entertainment has since dedicated itself to retellings of folk and classical mythology, or attempts at ironic pop hipness. The former works well with apprehensive parents keen on wholesome entertainment (while boasting a patina of esteem), while the latter is intent on blurring the line between entertainment for children and adults (the “something for everyone” family film.) If adults are to enjoy fare like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, they are forced to indulge more completely the inner tyke; as such films boast no innuendos or cultural allusions with which to stoke the pop culture-infused data banks of the post-pubescent set. Ironically, it could easily be argued that this strategy ingratiates such films with adults even more so than their entendre-packed counterparts, because an escape from the oppressions of adulthood is one virtue that children’s entertainment has to offer the beleaguered parents of its target demographic. Cast in this light, it’s not hard to understand why a bizarre (and, more importantly, innocent) fantasy like Spongebob Squarepants has experienced such enduring success. Likewise, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a considerable box office success in its day, and while plenty of the snide patter that has since been marketed to children has exceeded its modest financial success, it’s not likely that these works will endure as even minor works in the history of children’s films. Instead, the plastic chotchkies bearing the likenesses of their protagonists will exist in landfills far longer than the films themselves will survive in the cultural imagination.
The plodding first half of Chitty details the life of a hapless, widowed inventor, Caractacus Potts, (played by Dick Van Dyke) and his affectionate, precocious children struggling to make ends meet in rural Great Britain. That Van Dyke’s distinctly American accent is at odds with his children’s cockney delivery barely registers as just one of the film’s thousand inconsistencies. The few satisfactory scenes in film’s first act all involve Potts' inventions, which include an elaborate Rube Goldberg-like Breakfast machine, an overeager hair cutter, a jet pack, and musical lollipops, the very things that provoke and inflame the child’s imagination. These few ingenious sight gags aside, the first hour or so of the film lack much of interest, but as Van Dyke (keeping a promise to his beloved children) restores an old jalopy for a jaunt to the beach, the film comes to life when the full capabilities of the car announce themselves in a scene of inventively staged, rotating rear-projection. As the car spreads wings and takes flight (naturally escaping from pirates), the family (accompanied by the confection heiress Truly Scrumptious [the unmemorable Sally Ann Howes]) find themselves immersed in a fantasy world, and the audience in a wonderfully goofy frolic.
Though handsomely (if often clumsily) directed by British television veteran Ken Hughes, the film’s overall spirit could more properly be attributed to co-writer Roald Dahl, who deviated noticeably from Fleming’s source novel. Dahl’s trademark brand of dark, yet winsome humor permeates the film’s far more interesting second half, though an early scene set in a candy factory calls his Willy Wonka books to mind. Hughes’ realization of his and Dahl’s screenplay benefits immensely from an aesthetic program which relies heavily on techniques borrowed from the various New Waves gaining traction worldwide at the time of the film’s production: grand, unmotivated tracking shots, quick zooms, wide angle lenses and a quicker approach to editing. The aesthetic eccentricity gives the film a roughhewn, chaotic quality that breathes life into even the most tedious subplots while reaffirming the narrative’s more radical impulses. The anarchic glee of the film is equal parts The Beatles’ Help!, and Tex Avery animation. If the film can claim a single inspiration, it would be that of Richard Lester, whose punchy delivery and schoolboy’s wit feel their way into each scene of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with nary a smirk or wink. The film is at its best when its idiosyncrasies pass by unassumingly, suffused with a characteristically dry British grin and a bouncy rhythm.
As the story-within-the-story develops, the Baron of Vulgaria and his wife, the child-hating Baroness, kidnap all the children, the grandfather, Ms. Scrumptious and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang itself at various points. A collector of wonderful machines, the Baron dispatches two classic bumbling henchmen (variation of the silent film villains fond of tying damsels to train tracks) to procure the car for his collection. The sequences in which our heroes trek through Vulgaria and the Baron’s palace are the highlights of the film. As each of Hughes and Dahl’s creative impulses crescendo, Caractacus masquerades about the palace as a staggering marionette (a ruse designed to distract the Baron) while simultaneously staging a revolt of slave children imprisoned in Vulgarian sewers. The children occupy the palace and assault the distinguished Vulgarian gentry in a gesture of juvenile anarchy reminiscent of the Jean Vigo classic Zero for Conduit. That a film designed for young people can embody the spirit of a classic film without lazy homage intended to tickle the pedantic, cinephilic synapses of older moviegoers, is an odd notion currently, but Chitty Chitty Bang Bang succeeds in nodding to the Vigo masterpiece without attempting to supplant it. Hughes and Dahl don’t see the recurrence as clever, another odd notion in today’s climate of aggregate references and juxtaposition. The slightly altered and certainly modest extension of a narrative situation or creative idea apparently belongs to a bygone era, perhaps because it leaves open the possibility that the creators themselves are not in on the joke, or deceptively expect to pass the transgression by a dopey audience. Today, both audience and filmmaker seek to be on the same page, that is, both in on the joke. The self-consciousness of this attitude masks needless, counterproductive guilt, and has done nothing but detract from the formerly easygoing nature of popular entertainment, becoming especially pervasive (and proportionately repellant) in work made for children.
Late in the film, audiences are also treated to one of cinema’s most memorable maniacs: Robert Helpmann’s Child Catcher, a villain authentically menacing, yet such a caricatured oddity that he fails to evoke real horror. The performance is worthy of canonization as Helpmann’s wide-eyed snarl provokes squeamishness in even the most hardened adults. Something of a dandy, the long snouted Child Catcher is the court officer responsible for sniffing out hidden children in Vulgaria so they may be apprehended and punished by the evil Baroness. Swinging his noise about in search of a child’s scent while merrily prancing through the streets of Vulgaria, the Child Catcher embodies sexual perversion and cold-blooded innocence in equal measure. A forerunner to both Pee Wee Herman and Danny DeVito’s Penguin, the Child Catcher’s anguished squeals – as he is visited by revenge at the film’s end – rival Peter Lorre’s plea for clemency before the makeshift court at the end of Fritz Lang’s M. If the film is granted one legacy let it be this character, who could equally be at ease in an episode of Star Trek, a Tolkien adaptation or a reworking of Alice in Wonderland.
The Child Catcher’s subplot, in which helpless children are tucked away in the attics, sewers and basements of Eastern Europe, pursued by half-crazed monsters, is loaded from a historical perspective, but the goofiness of the overall plot and the film’s pretzelling of time (the Baron’s court borrows elements from at least three centuries of aristocratic European décor and hosts a kind of stateless, pan-European nobility), prevent the adult viewer from pursuing strands of allegory too far.
Sadly, the film sags to lifelessness during nearly of its musical numbers, which grind the viewer’s nerves to tatters through a combination of maudlin sentimentality and poor craftsmanship (a similar blight on the adaptation, three years after this picture, of Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) Exceptions of note include the title song, which is far too charming to ever be cloying, and one of the later numbers featuring a duet between the Baron and Baroness: as the two skip through a ditty of rosy-cheeked marital affection, the Baron attempts increasingly ambitious methods of murdering his wife – including a vintage trapdoor and a faulty chandelier – who cheerfully reappears ceaselessly as though spun from a Looney Tunes sketch. Had there been a few more scenes of such saccharine/macabre antics laced throughout the picture, it would be an irreproachable masterpiece. As is, warts and all, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang beats the hell out of the competition, even forty years later.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang / UK / 1968 / Color / 144 min. / Directed by Ken Hughes / Written by Mr. Hughes and Roald Dahl, from the book by Ian Fleming / Starring: Dick Van Dyke, Sally Anne Howes and Lionel Jeffries
Sunday, July 12, 2009
SELLER'S REMORSE
Alison Lohman as a haunted banker in Drag Me to Hell
A largely effective, enjoyably slimy neo-schlock picture from Sam Raimi, Drag Me to Hell takes root at dead center in the vast middle ground that stretches between the modi operandi of the two trilogies that have thus far defined him: the stateliness of Spider-Man and the kitsch-horror of Evil Dead here join forces, although it is the relative restraint of the former that supersedes the crazed, dime store ingenuity of the latter. This tipping of the scales will more than likely make the film more palatable for audiences accustomed to the banality of Spider-Man, but it keeps Drag Me to Hell from realizing the potential for inspired loopiness seemingly promised by both title and author.
Taking modest potshots at the U.S. Banking industry and zero-accountability corporate culture, the plot concerns the ambitious loan officer Christine Brown, played admirably by Alison Lohman, who, in an attempt at gaining favor with her callous supervisor, declines a loan to an aging gypsy woman, and is consequently visited by a vengeful, supernatural curse. While encouraged to identify with the plight of the young, essentially decent former-Midwesterner (Christine is carefully portrayed as a misguided pawn in the corporate hierarchy, sharply contrasted with an unscrupulous coworker) audiences are still treated to the perverse, timely thrill of seeing a banker thrown about her bourgie home by invisible demons or spraying a bloody nose all over her superiors. As Christine’s idyllic life in California begins to fray, she grows increasingly desperate, eventually consulting an astrologer and a medium, seen in prologue being defeated by the same spirits decades before, to cast the goblins out, presumably so she can get back to peddling bad loans and romancing an achingly vanilla blue-blood played by Justin Long.
Over its brisk 99 minutes, we are privy to countless leaking and spewing orifices, insect infestations and violent séances, as Ms. Lohman attempts to rid herself of the gypsy woman’s curse, and therein lay the film’s delights: this is jolly body horror, a happily juvenile (though certainly not stupid) approach to the twin anguishes of embodiment and corporate lending. Fittingly, the film is awash in mucus, blood and vomit (often exchanged between hosts), affirming its lineage of exploitation horror. It is disappointingly dissimilar from its forebears, on the other hand, in that its gags are crafted digitally in several key sequences, giving the bodily fluids (along with the other special effects) a digital sheen that removes any trace of menace from the splatter.
Raimi’s career has thus far been a wild-card, cementing for him an image as a more modest variation on Steven Soderbergh’s one-for-me/one-for-them trajectory: reeling between unassuming efforts such as A Simple Plan (1998) and The Gift (2000) to the epically expensive Spider-Man films (2002-07), his jovial wit behind the camera seems to have no permanent generic home base, which is frustrating for the taxonomically-inclined cinephile. Oddly, he has exhibited much more consistency (in terms of classification at least) in the fifty or so films he’s produced, most of which could easily be squared as horror pictures or (wonderfully) gaudy retellings of classical mythology (1). But whether it’s hacksaws or swords and sandals, Raimi’s trademark is a goofy, chortling sense of humor, unabashedly earnest in execution. The signature is sorely missed in his latest film; a lapse that will, with any luck, be remedied in future efforts.
Shockingly, given its pedigree, the film’s attempts at humor are lifeless and undeveloped, not so much funny as fleetingly amusing. It’s uncertain whether or not Raimi saw the high camp of Evil Dead as risky at this juncture in his career, or simply rushed the picture so he could move on to the next Spider-Man installment. The director does make tentative, if unsuccessful, stabs at the goony slapstick of Evil Dead (a key scene at the end involving a disturbed grave exhibits great potential but yields neither scare nor chuckle) but fails to inject the proper amount of lunacy in these sequences, each of which is far too tight, whereas the Dead films were airy and affable while still managing more than a few genuine scares. This film’s seriousness cannot jibe properly with its oddball wit, to the detriment of the overall result. The film could have worked better played either way – as overtly comedic horror tale or unsettling haunting picture – but Raimi finds himself unable to strike the proper balance in this context, a feat which once was his strength.
Ideally, this thing would hit susceptible audiences late at night on cable television, as it functions better as a pleasant surprise that exceeds mild expectation than it does as a mid-career effort by a Hollywood titan ostensibly at the height of both influence and craft. It has the labored charm of a late-blooming cult classic, and it’s not unlikely that it will be considered as such in the future. As of now, however, it clashes when placed alongside Raimi’s bona fide midnight romps, which still exert power enough to fill convention houses and midnight screenings to capacity. Though financially successful beyond expectation, there is little here to inspire fervent devotion among genre fanatics, and it’s possible that the box office tallies will work against the film as it’s scrutinized by future generations of splatter buffs – not to mention film critics.
Taking into account all of the moronic pictures utilizing 3-D technology that have paraded through theaters during the past few years, it’s a pity that Raimi opted out of employing the latest innovations in multidimensional cinema, as this film is one of the precious few that could conceivably be improved by 3-D: the leaky wounds, pus geysers and dislodged dentures would be the stuff of inspired, William Castle-esque schlock if sent hurtling toward audiences. Such a move could have redressed the effects of the aforementioned glossy carrion on display throughout the film, because, unfortunately, it remains the Achilles’ heel of digital effects that they’re inept at portraying the corporeal or simple detritus, instead casting physical monstrosity in texture-less polygons and thereby sapping them of the ability to frighten and unnerve, the coveted results easily achieved by the same practical effects (latex, pea soup and raw meat) used by exploitation mavens for more than half a century. Computers have been a serviceable facilitator of science fiction for nearly two decades at this point, and they are certainly the future of horror as well, but a premature embrace of the technology and its limited capacities threatens to neuter an old-fashioned, spooky picture like Drag Me to Hell until these practices are up to the task. Perhaps all this film needs is time enough for its unconvincing special effects to signify quaintness, thus endearing it all the more to the horror throng. This is unlikely given the bland characterizations and pulled punches endured throughout this conspicuously PG-13 outing, but the throng can dream… and wait.
Speaking of, Dead-ites and Raimi fanatics will no doubt anxiously await the finished product of Raimi’s forthcoming remake of the first Evil Dead film, but Drag Me to Hell is, unfortunately, a spotty, inauspicious warm-up, one that is hopefully not a harbinger of what’s to come.
Drag Me to Hell / USA / 2009 / Color / 99 min. / Directed by Sam Raimi / Written by Mr. Raimi and Ivan Raimi / Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao and David Paymer
NOTES:
1 – The former includes The Grudge (2004), The Boogeyman (2005) and 30 Days of Night (2007), while the latter is comprised mainly of syndicated television series such as Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), Legend of the Seeker (2008-2009), Hercules: The Legendary Journey (1995-1999), and the forthcoming Spartacus: Blood and Sand. The third Evil Dead film, Army of Darkness (1992), which Raimi directed and co-write, combined elements of both genres quite successfully.
A largely effective, enjoyably slimy neo-schlock picture from Sam Raimi, Drag Me to Hell takes root at dead center in the vast middle ground that stretches between the modi operandi of the two trilogies that have thus far defined him: the stateliness of Spider-Man and the kitsch-horror of Evil Dead here join forces, although it is the relative restraint of the former that supersedes the crazed, dime store ingenuity of the latter. This tipping of the scales will more than likely make the film more palatable for audiences accustomed to the banality of Spider-Man, but it keeps Drag Me to Hell from realizing the potential for inspired loopiness seemingly promised by both title and author.
Taking modest potshots at the U.S. Banking industry and zero-accountability corporate culture, the plot concerns the ambitious loan officer Christine Brown, played admirably by Alison Lohman, who, in an attempt at gaining favor with her callous supervisor, declines a loan to an aging gypsy woman, and is consequently visited by a vengeful, supernatural curse. While encouraged to identify with the plight of the young, essentially decent former-Midwesterner (Christine is carefully portrayed as a misguided pawn in the corporate hierarchy, sharply contrasted with an unscrupulous coworker) audiences are still treated to the perverse, timely thrill of seeing a banker thrown about her bourgie home by invisible demons or spraying a bloody nose all over her superiors. As Christine’s idyllic life in California begins to fray, she grows increasingly desperate, eventually consulting an astrologer and a medium, seen in prologue being defeated by the same spirits decades before, to cast the goblins out, presumably so she can get back to peddling bad loans and romancing an achingly vanilla blue-blood played by Justin Long.
Over its brisk 99 minutes, we are privy to countless leaking and spewing orifices, insect infestations and violent séances, as Ms. Lohman attempts to rid herself of the gypsy woman’s curse, and therein lay the film’s delights: this is jolly body horror, a happily juvenile (though certainly not stupid) approach to the twin anguishes of embodiment and corporate lending. Fittingly, the film is awash in mucus, blood and vomit (often exchanged between hosts), affirming its lineage of exploitation horror. It is disappointingly dissimilar from its forebears, on the other hand, in that its gags are crafted digitally in several key sequences, giving the bodily fluids (along with the other special effects) a digital sheen that removes any trace of menace from the splatter.
Raimi’s career has thus far been a wild-card, cementing for him an image as a more modest variation on Steven Soderbergh’s one-for-me/one-for-them trajectory: reeling between unassuming efforts such as A Simple Plan (1998) and The Gift (2000) to the epically expensive Spider-Man films (2002-07), his jovial wit behind the camera seems to have no permanent generic home base, which is frustrating for the taxonomically-inclined cinephile. Oddly, he has exhibited much more consistency (in terms of classification at least) in the fifty or so films he’s produced, most of which could easily be squared as horror pictures or (wonderfully) gaudy retellings of classical mythology (1). But whether it’s hacksaws or swords and sandals, Raimi’s trademark is a goofy, chortling sense of humor, unabashedly earnest in execution. The signature is sorely missed in his latest film; a lapse that will, with any luck, be remedied in future efforts.
Shockingly, given its pedigree, the film’s attempts at humor are lifeless and undeveloped, not so much funny as fleetingly amusing. It’s uncertain whether or not Raimi saw the high camp of Evil Dead as risky at this juncture in his career, or simply rushed the picture so he could move on to the next Spider-Man installment. The director does make tentative, if unsuccessful, stabs at the goony slapstick of Evil Dead (a key scene at the end involving a disturbed grave exhibits great potential but yields neither scare nor chuckle) but fails to inject the proper amount of lunacy in these sequences, each of which is far too tight, whereas the Dead films were airy and affable while still managing more than a few genuine scares. This film’s seriousness cannot jibe properly with its oddball wit, to the detriment of the overall result. The film could have worked better played either way – as overtly comedic horror tale or unsettling haunting picture – but Raimi finds himself unable to strike the proper balance in this context, a feat which once was his strength.
Ideally, this thing would hit susceptible audiences late at night on cable television, as it functions better as a pleasant surprise that exceeds mild expectation than it does as a mid-career effort by a Hollywood titan ostensibly at the height of both influence and craft. It has the labored charm of a late-blooming cult classic, and it’s not unlikely that it will be considered as such in the future. As of now, however, it clashes when placed alongside Raimi’s bona fide midnight romps, which still exert power enough to fill convention houses and midnight screenings to capacity. Though financially successful beyond expectation, there is little here to inspire fervent devotion among genre fanatics, and it’s possible that the box office tallies will work against the film as it’s scrutinized by future generations of splatter buffs – not to mention film critics.
Taking into account all of the moronic pictures utilizing 3-D technology that have paraded through theaters during the past few years, it’s a pity that Raimi opted out of employing the latest innovations in multidimensional cinema, as this film is one of the precious few that could conceivably be improved by 3-D: the leaky wounds, pus geysers and dislodged dentures would be the stuff of inspired, William Castle-esque schlock if sent hurtling toward audiences. Such a move could have redressed the effects of the aforementioned glossy carrion on display throughout the film, because, unfortunately, it remains the Achilles’ heel of digital effects that they’re inept at portraying the corporeal or simple detritus, instead casting physical monstrosity in texture-less polygons and thereby sapping them of the ability to frighten and unnerve, the coveted results easily achieved by the same practical effects (latex, pea soup and raw meat) used by exploitation mavens for more than half a century. Computers have been a serviceable facilitator of science fiction for nearly two decades at this point, and they are certainly the future of horror as well, but a premature embrace of the technology and its limited capacities threatens to neuter an old-fashioned, spooky picture like Drag Me to Hell until these practices are up to the task. Perhaps all this film needs is time enough for its unconvincing special effects to signify quaintness, thus endearing it all the more to the horror throng. This is unlikely given the bland characterizations and pulled punches endured throughout this conspicuously PG-13 outing, but the throng can dream… and wait.
Speaking of, Dead-ites and Raimi fanatics will no doubt anxiously await the finished product of Raimi’s forthcoming remake of the first Evil Dead film, but Drag Me to Hell is, unfortunately, a spotty, inauspicious warm-up, one that is hopefully not a harbinger of what’s to come.
Drag Me to Hell / USA / 2009 / Color / 99 min. / Directed by Sam Raimi / Written by Mr. Raimi and Ivan Raimi / Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao and David Paymer
NOTES:
1 – The former includes The Grudge (2004), The Boogeyman (2005) and 30 Days of Night (2007), while the latter is comprised mainly of syndicated television series such as Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), Legend of the Seeker (2008-2009), Hercules: The Legendary Journey (1995-1999), and the forthcoming Spartacus: Blood and Sand. The third Evil Dead film, Army of Darkness (1992), which Raimi directed and co-write, combined elements of both genres quite successfully.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
DUDES GONE WILD
The Hangover, reviewed
Batchelor party becomes recon mission as three uber-dudes are forced to retrieve the groom-to-be from the clutches of Vegas after he disappears mid-debauchery in Todd Phillips’ The Hangover.
Justin Bartha plays the groom, excised from most of the running time, and Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis play the three amigos scouring Vegas for their fallen comrade. Cooper is the straight man, the balance between Helms’ neurotic clicking and Galifianakis’ autistic jabbering, and the overall dynamic of the film suffers as only the latter two deliver any sort of juice. After a curiously and unironically morose title sequence (one wonders if we were meant to believe initially that a film advertised as the ultimate Vegas comedy would actually turn out to be an existential thriller by the Coens or John Dahl), The Hangover introduces its characters posthaste – each united by an expediently proffered need to escape their emasculated lives – and gets them to Vegas within fifteen minutes.
The nonentity played by Bradley Cooper is the ostensible star of the whole thing, and perhaps the most relatable to the target audience’s idealized self: good-looking, with a bit of money and taste for wine, women and song. He is the lovable, hunky scoundrel, full of common sense and sex appeal: the utterly straight man. Both the screenplay’s languid character beats and Cooper’s hollow performance erase the character from memory almost immediately, and his continued presence onscreen only perturbs when it could and should facilitate the story or underscore the insanity of his costars. One hopes, on the other hand, that Galifianakis and Helms form a lifetime cinematic bond and remain inseparable onscreen until they’re remaking Grumpy Old Men in forty years. Each playing a variation of an established persona – Helms’ high-strung, if naïve, drone on NBC’s The Office and Galifianakis’ absurdity-spouting standup creation – the two strike a hilariously off-kilter tone throughout as comic foils, reminiscent of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber, albeit on Ritalin and Ketamine, respectively. Their antics, particularly those involving Galifianakis and an infant, appear largely improvised, whereas all hilarity provided by the script feels labored and unconvincing by comparison. We can only hope that Helms and Galifianakis each find a better forum for their work in the future.
The rest of the film’s (presumably scripted) jollies involve a swishy Asian gangster, a bumbling drug dealer, a dimwitted hooker and two of Vegas’ finest on a taser bender. If it seems disingenuous merely listing the supporting players as the film’s roadside attractions, it is in keeping with the spirit of The Hangover, which ambles lazily from loony character to zany situation and back again without much in the way of transition or rhythm. Accordingly, trotting out Mike Tyson, as himself, mid-film, feels desperate, the same sort of pretzled irony that makes Chuck Norris jokes so tedious: Dude, it’s Mike Tyson... in the movie! Playing himself! That’s so random! There’s something very safe about this kind of rote transgression; ten years ago a Mike Tyson cameo could have been a ballsy move in a mainstream Hollywood comedy, but at this historical remove it’s about as benign as a guest appearance by Mr. T or MacGyver.
Unfortunately engineered to be exactly as daring as is permissible for a contemporary studio film and not a single degree more, Phillips’ proudest visual achievements are parodies of notable Vegas movies, though the referenced films (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Casino, Rain Man) exhibited much greater insight concerning the pleasures and terrors of sin city. If the film had a more modest set of ambitions for itself, its failures could be forgivable, but the film is so loud and bombastic in its self-definition as a comedy of ultimate excess that it buckles under the strain of its own ambitions, which Galifianakis and Helms prove unable to support, though not for a lack of trying.
Even as the film fails to provide enough laughs across its running time, it is refreshing in its utter disdain for all manifestations of maturity, which gives it a defiant leg up on the recent spat of “bromance” comedies, making them appear duplicitous in contrast. In the past few years, Judd Apatow has reinvigorated the lovable loser to his greatest proportions in decades, having grown the archetype outward in both directions, simultaneously leaving it relentlessly crass and hopelessly (painfully) maudlin. In a sense, what Phillips does is much harder: he makes movies, often very funny movies, about privileged white males behaving like regressed, adolescent versions of their privileged white selves. Lovable losers they are not; rather, they are aggressive, hormonal and largely unsentimental frat types carefully driven down a peg or two for comic relief while still emerging as sympathetic heroes. This is not a feat worthy of canonization, and The Hangover’s homophobia and sexism should not go unnoticed, but one can’t help but admire a body of work that revels so thoroughly in its own stink, bereft of the sentimental concessions that mar far superior works. Phillips’ films have thus far lacked the saccharine anesthetic that dilutes the sting of Apatow’s work, making them a pleasant alternative to the chick-flicks in cargo shorts that have become so lucrative and ubiquitous in recent years. Somewhat ironically (at least at first glance), The Hangover has resonated with female audiences, perhaps as a result of this refusal to placate or condescend to them as a demographic ripe for conquest, the obnoxious, market-driven ploy that hampers the efforts of Phillips' contemporaries (1).
Despite the dramatic trappings that require him to punish all transgressions and reaffirm the family life as the ultimate aim for American males, it is to Phillips’ credit that he never truly betrays his instincts. He provides a hurried sense of domestic tranquility with a largely uninteresting denouement, but the associations he’s provided between betrothal and misery are not so easily ameliorated. Helms’ character drowns in the P.C. universe constructed for him by the emancipated, domineering and unfaithful (the portrait implies the conflation of all three traits without getting too specific) fiancée played by Rachel Harris, while Cooper describes his married life as utter hell at the slightest provocation. Galafianakis remains blissfully unaware of romantic entanglements, and indicates only the most rudimentary understanding of sexuality (his characters’ poor imitations of adult behavior at time recall a more subtle variation of Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardiner.) It’s not insignificant that the only character content to exist within his long-term monogamous relationship disappears for all but ten minutes of the film’s running time.
The film could, perhaps, be read as a journey of domesticity reclaimed by its malcontents, but the actual search at the story’s core is merely pretext for three men behaving badly (or struggling to recall the previous evening’s bad behavior), as opposed to a semiotic field worth mining. Whereas most recent mainstream comedies (romantic and otherwise) seem to believe earnestly in the normalizing, stabilizing power of domestic partnership and true love, Phillips is far more at ease detailing the hideous side of interpersonal commitment and the consequent regression of grown men to the earlier, unbound stages of their development. This commitment to the noncommittal has its cringe-worthy excesses –Helms triumphantly jettisons his feminazi (the shrew whose freedom has been achieved at the expense of his own) at the film’s end to woo a hooker, overcoming his disgust at the latter’s low socioeconomic status, and thereby indulges the privileged white male’s most idiotic fantasy of social, sexual and economic transience – but it is mostly harmless. While there is much to be said for the place of stability and domesticity in the overall development of young men, The Hangover’s lack of pretension in this arena is refreshing. Here is a film that is unafraid of its desire for a purely homo-social civilization, and it is absolutely shameless in the most fantastic sense. Phillips understands that ruminations on the lure of family life are not quite the best proposition for screen comedy. His more talented peers would be well-advised to take note.
Despite a plot twist (leading up to Phillips’ most hilarious directorial flourish: a pitch-perfect Rain Man homage/parody) requiring big casino winnings, there’s nothing to convince the audience that the film couldn’t have happened anywhere. For all of its supposed (and heavily advertised) Vegas-ness, The Hangover is more or less After Hours in the desert: not a bad idea in and of itself, but the result feels like the film missed an opportunity to make an indelible Las Vegas comedy. It narrowly avoids coming across as merely a 80-proof episode of Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, which is about the extent of its achievements. Sadly, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trifles are far funnier, cleverer and more enjoyable than this would-be romp, which never fully exploits Vegas for all its worth. Vegas may be the ideal setting for rutting white guys, but these dudes fail to capitalize on its true possibilities.
The Hangover / USA / 2009 / Color / 100 min. / Directed by Todd Phillips / Written by John Lucas and Scott Moore / Starring: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha and Heather Graham / Warner Bros.
Notes:
1 – Though its presumptions are based solely on the grosses of the film’s opening weekend, the article located at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-bigpicture9-2009jun09,0,1401760.story cites the enthusiasm of female audiences (though somewhat anecdotally) as one reason for the film’s unexpected financial success.
Batchelor party becomes recon mission as three uber-dudes are forced to retrieve the groom-to-be from the clutches of Vegas after he disappears mid-debauchery in Todd Phillips’ The Hangover.
Justin Bartha plays the groom, excised from most of the running time, and Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis play the three amigos scouring Vegas for their fallen comrade. Cooper is the straight man, the balance between Helms’ neurotic clicking and Galifianakis’ autistic jabbering, and the overall dynamic of the film suffers as only the latter two deliver any sort of juice. After a curiously and unironically morose title sequence (one wonders if we were meant to believe initially that a film advertised as the ultimate Vegas comedy would actually turn out to be an existential thriller by the Coens or John Dahl), The Hangover introduces its characters posthaste – each united by an expediently proffered need to escape their emasculated lives – and gets them to Vegas within fifteen minutes.
The nonentity played by Bradley Cooper is the ostensible star of the whole thing, and perhaps the most relatable to the target audience’s idealized self: good-looking, with a bit of money and taste for wine, women and song. He is the lovable, hunky scoundrel, full of common sense and sex appeal: the utterly straight man. Both the screenplay’s languid character beats and Cooper’s hollow performance erase the character from memory almost immediately, and his continued presence onscreen only perturbs when it could and should facilitate the story or underscore the insanity of his costars. One hopes, on the other hand, that Galifianakis and Helms form a lifetime cinematic bond and remain inseparable onscreen until they’re remaking Grumpy Old Men in forty years. Each playing a variation of an established persona – Helms’ high-strung, if naïve, drone on NBC’s The Office and Galifianakis’ absurdity-spouting standup creation – the two strike a hilariously off-kilter tone throughout as comic foils, reminiscent of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber, albeit on Ritalin and Ketamine, respectively. Their antics, particularly those involving Galifianakis and an infant, appear largely improvised, whereas all hilarity provided by the script feels labored and unconvincing by comparison. We can only hope that Helms and Galifianakis each find a better forum for their work in the future.
The rest of the film’s (presumably scripted) jollies involve a swishy Asian gangster, a bumbling drug dealer, a dimwitted hooker and two of Vegas’ finest on a taser bender. If it seems disingenuous merely listing the supporting players as the film’s roadside attractions, it is in keeping with the spirit of The Hangover, which ambles lazily from loony character to zany situation and back again without much in the way of transition or rhythm. Accordingly, trotting out Mike Tyson, as himself, mid-film, feels desperate, the same sort of pretzled irony that makes Chuck Norris jokes so tedious: Dude, it’s Mike Tyson... in the movie! Playing himself! That’s so random! There’s something very safe about this kind of rote transgression; ten years ago a Mike Tyson cameo could have been a ballsy move in a mainstream Hollywood comedy, but at this historical remove it’s about as benign as a guest appearance by Mr. T or MacGyver.
Unfortunately engineered to be exactly as daring as is permissible for a contemporary studio film and not a single degree more, Phillips’ proudest visual achievements are parodies of notable Vegas movies, though the referenced films (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Casino, Rain Man) exhibited much greater insight concerning the pleasures and terrors of sin city. If the film had a more modest set of ambitions for itself, its failures could be forgivable, but the film is so loud and bombastic in its self-definition as a comedy of ultimate excess that it buckles under the strain of its own ambitions, which Galifianakis and Helms prove unable to support, though not for a lack of trying.
Even as the film fails to provide enough laughs across its running time, it is refreshing in its utter disdain for all manifestations of maturity, which gives it a defiant leg up on the recent spat of “bromance” comedies, making them appear duplicitous in contrast. In the past few years, Judd Apatow has reinvigorated the lovable loser to his greatest proportions in decades, having grown the archetype outward in both directions, simultaneously leaving it relentlessly crass and hopelessly (painfully) maudlin. In a sense, what Phillips does is much harder: he makes movies, often very funny movies, about privileged white males behaving like regressed, adolescent versions of their privileged white selves. Lovable losers they are not; rather, they are aggressive, hormonal and largely unsentimental frat types carefully driven down a peg or two for comic relief while still emerging as sympathetic heroes. This is not a feat worthy of canonization, and The Hangover’s homophobia and sexism should not go unnoticed, but one can’t help but admire a body of work that revels so thoroughly in its own stink, bereft of the sentimental concessions that mar far superior works. Phillips’ films have thus far lacked the saccharine anesthetic that dilutes the sting of Apatow’s work, making them a pleasant alternative to the chick-flicks in cargo shorts that have become so lucrative and ubiquitous in recent years. Somewhat ironically (at least at first glance), The Hangover has resonated with female audiences, perhaps as a result of this refusal to placate or condescend to them as a demographic ripe for conquest, the obnoxious, market-driven ploy that hampers the efforts of Phillips' contemporaries (1).
Despite the dramatic trappings that require him to punish all transgressions and reaffirm the family life as the ultimate aim for American males, it is to Phillips’ credit that he never truly betrays his instincts. He provides a hurried sense of domestic tranquility with a largely uninteresting denouement, but the associations he’s provided between betrothal and misery are not so easily ameliorated. Helms’ character drowns in the P.C. universe constructed for him by the emancipated, domineering and unfaithful (the portrait implies the conflation of all three traits without getting too specific) fiancée played by Rachel Harris, while Cooper describes his married life as utter hell at the slightest provocation. Galafianakis remains blissfully unaware of romantic entanglements, and indicates only the most rudimentary understanding of sexuality (his characters’ poor imitations of adult behavior at time recall a more subtle variation of Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardiner.) It’s not insignificant that the only character content to exist within his long-term monogamous relationship disappears for all but ten minutes of the film’s running time.
The film could, perhaps, be read as a journey of domesticity reclaimed by its malcontents, but the actual search at the story’s core is merely pretext for three men behaving badly (or struggling to recall the previous evening’s bad behavior), as opposed to a semiotic field worth mining. Whereas most recent mainstream comedies (romantic and otherwise) seem to believe earnestly in the normalizing, stabilizing power of domestic partnership and true love, Phillips is far more at ease detailing the hideous side of interpersonal commitment and the consequent regression of grown men to the earlier, unbound stages of their development. This commitment to the noncommittal has its cringe-worthy excesses –Helms triumphantly jettisons his feminazi (the shrew whose freedom has been achieved at the expense of his own) at the film’s end to woo a hooker, overcoming his disgust at the latter’s low socioeconomic status, and thereby indulges the privileged white male’s most idiotic fantasy of social, sexual and economic transience – but it is mostly harmless. While there is much to be said for the place of stability and domesticity in the overall development of young men, The Hangover’s lack of pretension in this arena is refreshing. Here is a film that is unafraid of its desire for a purely homo-social civilization, and it is absolutely shameless in the most fantastic sense. Phillips understands that ruminations on the lure of family life are not quite the best proposition for screen comedy. His more talented peers would be well-advised to take note.
Despite a plot twist (leading up to Phillips’ most hilarious directorial flourish: a pitch-perfect Rain Man homage/parody) requiring big casino winnings, there’s nothing to convince the audience that the film couldn’t have happened anywhere. For all of its supposed (and heavily advertised) Vegas-ness, The Hangover is more or less After Hours in the desert: not a bad idea in and of itself, but the result feels like the film missed an opportunity to make an indelible Las Vegas comedy. It narrowly avoids coming across as merely a 80-proof episode of Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, which is about the extent of its achievements. Sadly, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trifles are far funnier, cleverer and more enjoyable than this would-be romp, which never fully exploits Vegas for all its worth. Vegas may be the ideal setting for rutting white guys, but these dudes fail to capitalize on its true possibilities.
The Hangover / USA / 2009 / Color / 100 min. / Directed by Todd Phillips / Written by John Lucas and Scott Moore / Starring: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha and Heather Graham / Warner Bros.
Notes:
1 – Though its presumptions are based solely on the grosses of the film’s opening weekend, the article located at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-bigpicture9-2009jun09,0,1401760.story cites the enthusiasm of female audiences (though somewhat anecdotally) as one reason for the film’s unexpected financial success.
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