comedy

Fuzz Track City: I’ll have another Monte Cristo, please

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In the darkly comic Fuzz Track City, writer-director Steve Hicks riffs on the conventions of the detective genre to celebrate the most offbeat sides of LA.  Our hero could be a hard-boiled detective if he were more alert.  But Murphy Dunn (Todd Robert Anderson) is preoccupied with the death of his partner and the end of his marriage, two numbing losses that stem from betrayals.   It takes all of his remaining energy to order his daily Monte Cristo sandwich at the diner.

Look elsewhere for Hollywood gloss.  As Dunn searches for the MacGuffin, the B-side of a failed rock band’s long lost 45, he never enters a Bel Air estate.  Instead, he pads about the most ordinary neighborhoods of Burbank and Arcadia.  His office isn’t in an art deco office building – it’s in a strip on the run down Lankershim Boulevard.  Dunn doesn’t drive down storied Mulholland Drive or Sunset Boulevard; his bliss is cruising Ventura Boulevard.

Dunn is a lovable loser, still wearing his high school hair and driving his high school beater.  He’s so inexpert with his fists and gun that he needs to get bailed out of a bad situation by his extremely pregnant ex-wife (Tarina Pouncy).  The ex-wife witheringly says “take off those sunglasses – they don’t make you look cool” (and she’s right).     When he becomes the last LA resident to get a cell phone, he treats it as if it were about to explode.

Along the way Dunn encounters a series of oddballs.  One is an agoraphobic vinyl record collector (Josh Adell) who “hasn’t left Burbank in seven years or his house in three” and who scampers about in his tidy whities.  Another is a trailer-dwelling former musician (Dave Florek) whose idea of hospitality is to offer a choice of variously colored mouthwashes.  Abby Miller (Ellen Mae in Justified) brings some kooky originality to the role of the sad sack waitress.  And then there’s the object of Dunn’s schoolboy crush – his high school guidance counselor (Dee Wallace).

As he toys with the tropes of detective fiction, filmmaker Hicks takes us on a leisurely journey through the San Fernando Valley that finally crescendos into an uproarious climax.  It’s a fun ride.

Here’s the Kicker now available on DVD

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Good news. The indie comedy Here’s the Kicker, which I labeled the biggest surprise at San Jose’s Cinequest film festival last year, is now out on DVD.

Please go to the movie’s Netflix page and click SAVE – once it gets enough SAVES, it will become available on Netflix.

It’s hard to write comedy.  Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies.  That’s why it’s worth tagging along on the uproarious road trip in Here’s the Kicker.

Quartet: geezers at the top of their game

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Quartet, an ensemble geezer comedy, is really an excuse for four brilliant actors (Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins) to show their chops.  It’s set in a retirement home for retired musicians.  The residents are preparing for an annual benefit performance, and the long-estranged ex-wife of a resident is moving in.

The most interesting character is the one played by Pauline Collins – a vivacious woman who may have always been ditzy and now has very little short-term memory. In 1996, Collins won a Tony and was nominated for an Oscar for the title role in Shirley Valentine.

Tom Courtenay plays a man still devastated by a bad breakup decades before.  There’s a wonderful scene in which he explains opera to a class of working class teens by comparing it to rap.  Courtenay is best known for The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965), The Dresser (1983), but was excellent more recently in the overlooked Last Orders (2001).

Maggie Smith and Billy Connolly are very good in familiar roles.  The irrepressible Connolly is very funny as a particularly randy old gentleman.  Smith’s character is in her sweet spot – not unlike the sharp-edged but increasingly vulnerable gals she played in Gosford Park, Downton Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  The actors playing the other residents are delightful, including a passel of opera stars from the 70s and 80s, Sinatra’s European trumpet player and more.

This is the first movie directed by Dustin Hoffman, and he did an able job.  He takes advantage of the beautiful pastoral location, paces the film well and, as one would expect, enables the actors to turn in very fine performances.  Quartet is just a lark, but not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.

DVD of the Week: The Intouchables

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The Intouchables is the second most popular movie of all time in France – and it’s easy to see why.  It’s an odd couple comedy that’s a real crowd pleaser.

A very, very rich French aristocrat has become a quadriplegic due to a hang gliding accident and hires a Senegalese good-for-nothing street hood as his caregiver.  The plot, really just a series of set pieces, mines familiar territory as the poor guy learns about living in a mansion (see Down and Out in Beverly Hills) and revitalizes the rich guy’s zest for living.  But it’s really well done and very funny.

The rich guy is played by the great Francois Cluzet (Tell No One), who gives a tremendous performance using only his head and neck.  Omar Sy plays the poor guy and actually edged out The Artist‘s Jean Dujardin for France’s top acting award last year; that’s hard to figure, but Sy is very funny in The Intouchables.  Overall, it’s a very satisfying comedy.

Save the Date: nothing new here

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Save the Date is an utterly unremarkable romantic comedy – and has nothing in common with the smart rom coms that I’m writing about today.  A young woman is barely ready to commit to moving in with her smitten boyfriend when he poisons the romance with an unwelcome public marriage proposal.  Then she meets her soul mate.  There is no reason for her to stay with the boyfriend or to spurn the new guy, hence there is no credible conflict in the story.

It is a waste of its star, Lizzy Caplan, who is quite good in a broader comedy 3,2,1…Frankie Go Boom from earlier this year. If you must see a romantic comedy this weekend, rent Ruby Sparks or The Five-Year Engagement.

DVD of the Week: Sleepwalk with Me

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As Sleepwalk With Me begins, the filmmaker lets the audience figure out three basic things about the main character.  First, he has the perfect girlfriend and, no matter what happens in his life, he will never do any better.  Second, despite her patience after being together eight years, it’s time for him to marry her or not.  Third, he is absolutely unready to make that commitment.

That filmmaker is co-writer/co-director Mike Birbiglia, a standup comic whose screenplay is based on his autobiographical one man show.  His protagonist’s unpromising career as a comedian is feeding his ambivalence to marry a woman whose career has already stabilized.  As he feels more and more relationship and career pressures, he develops REM Behavior Disorder – a rare and particularly dangerous form of sleepwalking.

The sleepwalking, of course, sets up some funny moments, as do the stumbling start to the standup career, the girlfriend angst and the usual maddening set of parents.  In a comic triumph, Birbiglia gently and intelligently milks the laughs out of each situation while never losing focus on the fundamental truth of each situation.

The girlfriend is beautiful, good-hearted, smart, sexy and full of life.  She is played impeccably by Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under. Starting Out in the Evening).  Veterans James Rebhorn and Carole Kane are excellent as the protagonist’s bickering parents.  Here’s a nice touch:  the pioneer scientist of sleep disorder science himself, Stanford professor Dr. William C. Dement, provides a funny cameo.

Lay the Favorite: purported to be a comedy

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What a disappointment.  Lay the Favorite, opening this weekend, sports a fine director, Stephen Frears (The Queen, High Fidelity, The Snapper), and a promising cast (Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Carroll Lynch).  But the story fails, and it’s just not funny.

Willis plays a Vegas sports gambler who apprentices a naive young thing (Hall).  They face the ups and downs of sports betting, his embittered wife, a welching better (Lynch) and a sleazeball bookie (Vince Vaughan).  Nothing in the story rings true.  Rebecca Hall, so good as the classy smart girl in Vicky Christina Barcelona, plays Florida trailer trash – even wearing Daisy Dukes throughout the whole movie – and it just doesn’t work.  Worse, Vince Vaughan takes his usual wild man to an even more manic level, which falls flat.

Skip it.

DVD of the Week: Dark Horse

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In this engaging indie dramedy by writer-director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness), an epic underachiever falls in love with a heavily medicated depressive.

This guy has not moved out from his boyhood room in his parent’s house. He gets a paycheck from his dad’s company although the office assistant does his work while he spends his day bidding for collectible toys on eBay. He drives a bright yellow Hummer that blares the sappiest pop music. Yet he feels completely entitled, is surly to his enabling parents and bellows like a wounded water buffalo when his genius remains unrecognized.

This guy is remarkably unsympathetic. Still, Solondz ‘s clear-eyed and unsparing portrait is not mean-spirited and, eventually, becomes even empathetic. In particular, Solondz makes able use of dream/fantasy segments to explore the yearnings of the characters.

Jordan Gelber is excellent as the hapless blowhard protagonist. The cast (Selma Blair as the girlfriend, Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow as the parents) is quite good, too, especially Donna Murphy as the office assistant and Aasif Mandvi as the girlfriend’s ex.

I saw this at a screening with Todd Solondz, and he said that Dark Horse is a reaction to the Apatowesque man-child movies. In those films, the underachieving slackers are endearing goofs. Here, the underachieving slacker is realistically unattractive, but has a realistic vulnerability and fundamental humanity. Solondz says that the protagonist, at last, finds life in death.

Dark Horse has the trademark Solondz quirkiness, but without the trademark perversion. As with most Solondz films, I’m still thinking about it several days later.

Note: In Dark Horse, Walken and Farrow appear to be watching Seinfeld. Instead of paying the fee to license a snippet of the real Seinfeld, Solondz got Jason Alexander, Estelle Harris and Jerry Stiller to read Solondz-written faux Seinfeld dialogue.

DVD of the Week: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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As you can see from the trailer, this story of aged Brits seeking a low-budget retirement in India looks like enjoyable fluff with a great cast.  I was expecting a fish-out-of-water comedy, but found much more than that.  Besides dealing with the culture shock issues (which are plenty funny), the characters each forge their own journeys of self-discovery.

Of course, the cast is a superb collection of British acting talent:  Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith,  Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey).  Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire is their genial and scattered host.

Nighy is especially brilliant as a guy trapped too long by his own profound decency.  Dench delivers an equally outstanding performance as a woman determined to make her own way for the first time.  In another acting gem, Tom Wilkinson follows a thread from his secret past and uncovers a moving revelation.

But those are just the highlights.  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is justifiably the biggest indie hit of the year.

DVD of the Week: Bernie

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BERNIE

This is one very funny movie. Playing against type, Jack Black is Bernie, an assistant funeral director who is the kindest, most generous guy in a small East Texas town. Bernie becomes entangled with the most malicious town resident, the rich widow played by Shirley MacLaine. We are used to seeing Black playing venal and devious characters, but Bernie is utterly good-hearted. He has built up so much good will in the community that when he snaps and commits one very gravely wrong act, he is still locally beloved. Black also gets to show off his singing voice on some heartfelt gospel hymns.

But the real main character is really the East Texas town of Carthage. Director Richard Linklater has the local residents (some played by actors) tell the story in capsule interviews. Through this chorus, we see how the locals view Bernie and the widow, and we learn a lot about the local values, customs and colorful language. Linklater is from East Texas himself and clearly revels in sharing the culture with us. It’s very, very funny.

The plot takes one improbably funny turn after another – but it’s a true story, which makes it even funnier. You can look it up in the New York Times [major spoilers in the article]. During the end credits, we even see Jack Black conversing with the real Bernie at Bernie’s current residence.

(I’m not embedding the trailer, because it doesn’t make clear that Jack Black’s character is not the winking, edgy guy that he usually plays. Just see the movie.)

Bernie is on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.