Archive for March, 2002
111 – Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Posted by frothy in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back on March 25, 2002
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
**NOTE: If you have either never seen or never liked any of Kevin Smith’s previous films (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma), you will almost certainly dislike this movie. **
I kind of relate to Kevin Smith. The basic plotline for his breakthrough hit Clerks was a lot like this short play I wrote in the late eighties. No, he didn’t steal it from me (although we’re both Jersey boys!), but still they were eerily similar. Oh, and he’s a huge movie buff, too – check out all of his in-jokes and clever casting. There’s a decided New Jersey edge to his movies, which is always cool.
The characters of Jay and Silent Bob have appeared in each of Smith’s movies, played by Jason Mewes and Smith himself. They’re great characters, because while the plots of the movies change, they don’t. And they’re well characterized, too; even though Jay’s coarse language would put a longshoreman to shame, he’s caustically funny, obscene but hilarious. And Bob – well, he’s silent, except for one soliloqy in each movie. He’s the conscience of the picture, y’see. And Smith’s perfect for his own role.
So finally the two get their own movie, begging the question: Are the characters strong enough to warrant their own film? Could they carry it?
Answer: Hell, yeah.
Jay and Silent Bob, who have been barred via restraining order from hanging out in front of the convenience store in Clerks, find out that a comic book based on them is being made into a movie. Now, you and I might want a piece of that movie pie, but Jay and Silent Bob are more concerned with the plethora of insults being hurled at them on the Internet, mainly by overactive teenagers. So they set off on a cross-country crusade to stop the film at all costs.
Actors who have appeared in previous Smith films, including Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, George Carlin, Joey Lauren Adams, Brian O’Halloran, and Jeff Anderson have roles in this one – in fact, Affleck and Damon play themselves (Affleck has two roles). Other stars, like Carrie Fisher, Judd Nelson, Mark Hamill, and Will Ferrell, have small roles as well. It’s a fast-paced road movie, as the duo run into myriad characters, including the gang from Scooby Doo and a band of female jewel thieves.
Smith tosses everything in here he could think of, although there’s probably more on the cutting room floor that didn’t make it. As I said, there are plenty of inside jokes that reference previous Smith films and parody countless other Hollywood movies (Star Wars, The Fugitive).
Having watched all of Kevin Smith’s movies (and being from New Jersey, which doesn’t hurt in this case), I hardly ever stopped laughing during this entire film! I thought it was a stitch, a laugh riot. It was a lot better than it deserved to be.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: 7
110 – The Heist
If you read these reviews just to find out quickly how I feel about a movie, let me save you some time. This movie is garbage. Pure, unadulterated crap.
Gene Hackman plays yet another veteran criminal (Joe Moore), and like all of the veteran criminals before him, he’s looking to make One Last Score and then get out of the business. He has a crack robbery team, with Bobby (Delroy Lindo), Pinky (Ricky Jay), and his wife Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon). His boss is Bergman (Danny DeVito), a slimy, tough-talking misanthrope. Really, now, who could be scared of Danny DeVito? So he cusses… big, fat, hairy deal.
Anyway, Bergman stiffs the gang for their last job, and insists they pull off another one, after which they’ll get paid for both. Oh, and as an added bonus, Joe has to take along Bergman’s moron son Jimmy (Sam Rockwell). Oh boy, what fun! Naturally, Jimmy’s a complete dumbass, and Rockwell’s performance is so stiff I was afraid rigor mortis would set in before the movie was over. Overbearing, hammy, annoying, and just plain repugnant.
So you have an experienced team of robbers, with the wild card of a dunce tossed in just to gum up the works. Now, this is a caper movie, so there are twists. And twists. And more twists. And doublecrosses and triplecrosses and doublequadruple-lutz crosses, and so on. The plot’s so convoluted that you need a topographic map to find your way out of it – but that doesn’t mean it’s not utterly predictable, too. There are twists, yes, but they’re not terribly interesting twists.
This is a movie bereft of intelligence, originality, or genuine excitement. You get the feeling that the actors are either over the top (Rockwell) or nonchalant (Hackman). And speaking of Hackman, this is a role he could have played in his sleep, and probably is. Such a somnabulent performance! One of his worst ever, and this is someone who’s made about fourteen zillion movies in his career, approximately. He looks tired and old – hey, he’s past 70 now, I think. About time to knock off with the I Am a Tough Cookie bit, Gene. Go play retired old cops or father figures, or something.
Pidgeon, who’s married to the director, David Mamet, does have a real screen presence and managed to brighten up all of her scenes. But she’s about 40 years too young to be playing Hackman’s wife – what is it with old farts in Hollywood getting married to very young characters, anyway? She’s good, just out of place in this movie. Next to her, Delroy Lindo is his usual rock; he’s about the only person here who looks like he belongs in the movie.
Laughable dialog, disinterested or bug-eyed acting, and treacherous pacing make this a must never see.
The Heist: 2
109 – Sexy Beast
Posted by frothy in Sexy Beast on March 20, 2002
Gal (Ray Winstone) is a British ex-safecracker who’s living the high life in a pampered villa in Spain. The old gang he ran with back in the day wants him to pull off another job, so they send Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) from London to encourage the relaxed former bad guy. But Gal’s out of the game, y’see, and he says no. Repeatedly. Retired, he says. Done, he says. Trying to go legit, he says. Don’t they always try to go legit? And then the Big Boys want them to pull of One Last Heist, or some such nonsense? And so the old fart straps on his hoodlum scowl and gets to work. They never stay straight, these guys.
So much of the dialog in this movie is utterly incomprehensible, at least if you’re not from England. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the British speak English? The Cockney dialects are unintelligible, at least at the beginning. I suspect that once you get used to the accents, you can pick up at least some of the words, but for my money this is a movie that should have had extensive subtitles. As a point of reference, in Snatch (2001), Brad Pitt’s character was an Irish gypsy who spoke a completely unrecognizable dialect – it was so muddled that even the other characters had no idea what he was saying! This movie’s a lot like that, only the joke’s on the audience, not the characters.
It’s violent, and it does have its twists, which are both usually good points in a movie of this genre. The movie received quite a bit of acclaim when it came out in the theaters because of Kingsley’s performance (this ain’t Ghandi, a role he perfected with an Oscar in 1982); however, I don’t see his work as fine acting – I see it as overacting. He’s hammy, not nuanced. People see a lot of energy, which Kingsley surely brings, and assume it to mean the guy’s acting up a storm. Well, chewing scenery is acting up a storm, too – just not good acting.
The rest of the cast is relatively faceless, including Amanda Redman as Gil’s ex-porn-star wife (I just wanted to use the words “porn star” in this review somewhere!). None of them stand out above the others; Kingsley only stands out on the basis of name recognition. I’m a little amazed that this received the praise it did, particularly for Kingsley himself. It’s not solid entertainment at all, and not worth the bucks to see it, although the plot does scamper along pretty well. But because of the poor enunciation (for Americans, at least), the complexities of the plot never come to light, frustrating the viewer.
Sexy Beast: 5
107 – Don’t Say a Word
Posted by frothy in Don't Say a Word on March 2, 2002
This movie, starring Michael Douglas as Nathan Conrad, a prominent psychiatrist as a man who must retrieve a number from a patient in order to save his adorable kidnapped daughter, probably should win some sort of award for Dumbest Movie Title. It ranks up there with Don’t Look in the Basement, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and Don’t Tell Her It’s Me (all real titles). The title’s not terribly descriptive, but it fits in with the plotline itself, which is pretty faceless.
Douglas must be used to these roles by now, the domineering, I’m-in-charge, alpha male. He’s played a powerful lawyer (Disclosure), a powerful financial genius (The Game), a powerful drug czar (Traffic), and the powerful leader of the free world (The American President). He basically sleepwalks through this movie, phoning in a pretty lethargic performance that adds no nuance to the character.
In fact, the movie’s a lot like Mercury Rising, which starred Bruce Willis as a renegade FBI agent protecting an autistic boy who had broken a supersecret government code. Will Nathan get the code from his traumatized patient in time to save his girl’s life? With this type of movie, that question’s no more than pure rhetoric. If you’re at Point A and can see where the end of the movie (Point B) is, then the only way the movie can distinguish itself is to provide a gimmick. That gimmick is that the code that these evil bad guys (led by a superficially menacing Sean Bean) need is locked in the screwed-up mind of Elisabeth Burrows (newcomer Brittney Murphy), who isn’t autistic but is so traumatized by the murder of her father years ago that she hardly speaks to anyone and reacts violently when approached. On top of all of this, Nathan’s stock pretty wife Jessie (Skye McCole Bartusiak, looking like Sela Ward) is stuck in their apartment with a broken leg. (And you know, when a character has something slightly off-kilter about them, that quirkiness will play a role in the movie, somehow. It’s like when a guy has a lisp – and then it turns out that the bad guy has a lisp, too. These things are hardly ever put in for no reason, you see.)
Once we’ve established that the Bad Guys have the daughter and that the wife is stuck in bed with a cast, then we know Nathan must solve it on his own. To make sure, the Bad Guys tell him not to go to the cops. They don’t need to say this, though; the Hero never goes to the cops. Too dangerous. Who’d believe him? And so on. So our stalwart, prominent psychiatrist goes it alone, for only he may save the day. Snore.
Maybe it’s Douglas, and maybe it’s the shallowness of the supporting cast, but in so many of his movies the other actors seem to melt away. Sometimes it’s because he’s off the wall, a ham who doesn’t chew the scenary so much as swallow it hole and regurgitate it onto your TV. (It’s the Michael Douglas show! No wait; that was a different Mike Douglas.)
The wonderful thing about characters with mental issues is that you can make those problems do whatever the script requires, with no real nod to logic or cohesion. These characters can be manipulated to fit any plot stupidities, including the dopey actions of the main characters. Don’t Say a Word falls easily into this mold. And any movie that leans heavily on one gimmick isn’t much of a movie, unless the characterizations and performances are well above par for the genre. They’re not.
This is drivel best relegated to the bargain bins at Blockbuster. From start to finish, there’s not one true note to be found. Suspend your disbelief? You need to suspend it and then kick the chair out from underneath it. This movie doesn’t approach credibility; it’s a mere tourist in the land of reality.
Don’t Say a Word: 3
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