comedy

Another visit to Cinequest by Friended to Death filmmakers

by

The indie comedy Friended to Death has its US premiere tonight at Cinequest, and it’s not the first time for the filmmakers. Friended to Death writer-director Sarah Smick and co-writer Ian Michaels brought their Here’s the Kicker to Cinequest in 2011 (Michaels directed that one).  Smick and Michaels also act in both movies.

In Here’s the Kicker,the relationship of a prematurely retired football player and his girlfriend is being battered by their dead-end jobs in LA; (she is a make up artist – in porn films). To save their relationship, he agrees to move back to her hometown in Texas where they can open a salon/saloon: a combo beauty parlor and sports bar. Just as they are leaving on the road trip, he is offered his dream job as a football scout. When is he going to get the nerve to tell her? Along the way, they pick up his obnoxious former teammate and, most hilariously, his dad, who does NOT want to return to alcohol rehab. Many guffaws ensue in this all too rare occurrence – a satisfying American film comedy.

As the girlfriend, Sarah Smick succeeds in remaining sympathetic despite being continually aggrieved – no easy accomplishment. Luce Rains is great as the drunk dad.

According to Ian Michaels at the Cinequest screening, Producer/Cinematographer/Editor Chris Harris made the key decision to cut some early scenes so the road trip could commence sooner. Obviously, that move worked. Here’s the Kicker deserves a wide release.

Good news. Here’s the Kicker is available streaming on YouTube.  It’s also 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.

DVD/Stream of the Week: In a World…

by
IN A WORLD…

Actress Lake Bell wrote/directed/stars in In a World…, the story of an underachieving voice coach who still lives in the house of her dad, the king of movie trailer narration. She’s disheartened when he kicks her out to make room for his new and very young squeeze, but she lucks into a voiceover gig herself and is “discovered” as the hot new talent. In fact, she’s up for the most prestigious new payday when she finds out that her dad is not as supportive as one might expect…

Here’s why In a World… is so damn good – Bell has written a very funny comedy about a generational rivalry and woven it together with a Hollywood satire, an insider’s glimpse into the hitherto under-the-radar voiceover industry and a romantic comedy. The romantic comedy thread, in which our heroine is oblivious to the nice guy who really likes her, is better by itself than most romantic comedies. But we also get many LOL moments among the self-absorbed and back-stabbing Hollywood set. Plus there’s a very sweet story of the relationship between the protagonist’s sister and her hubby – that could stand alone and be better than a lot of indies as well..

Bell gets most of the laughs from the foibles of the characters and from really intelligently crafted dialogue. But she know how to pull off a physical gag, too. At one point, our heroine wants to be kissed by a handsome Hollywood bigshot, but when it happens, his technique is to put her entire nose into his mouth – and her surprise and discomfort is very funny.

Fortunately, Bell was able to cast Fred Melamed, a distinguished voiceover artist, as the father. Melamed has been the voice of CBS Sports, the Super Bowl, the Olympics and Mercedes-Benz. He’s also a brilliantly funny actor. I called Melamed’s performance as the hilariously pompous and blatantly manipulative Sy Ableman in A Serious Man “the funniest movie character of the decade”.

Bell’s previous roles have been secondary parts that have taken advantage of her unconventionally severe beauty. You may remember Bell as Alec Baldwin’s new trophy wife in It’s Complicated. Having written it herself, she finally has a role in which she can show her comic chops. I turns out that she’s a gifted comic actress, with screwball timing, a rich take and a knack for physical comedy.

The rest of the cast is uniformly good. I especially enjoyed Rob Corddry (Warm Bodies) as the long suffering husband of the sister.

In a World… is a complete and winning film and the year’s best comedy. In a World… is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.

Touchy Feely: just watch the trailer instead

by
Josh Pais and Rosemarie DeWitt in TOUCHY FEELY

OK, maybe I just shouldn’t keep expecting writer-director Lynn Shelton to make the first mumblecore movie that I will like.  Touchy Feely begins with a promising premise – a massage therapist (Rosemarie DeWitt)  suddenly develops an aversion to touching the human body, which understandably threatens both her career and her relationship with her boyfriend.  Unfortunately, Shelton takes both the premise and the excellent cast and crashes them into a crater of boredom.

Shelton made last year’s Your Sister’s Sister (also with DeWitt), which was really good for about 58 minutes, until it petered out in a senseless musical interlude and a montage of rainy bike riding.  In Touchy Feely, the massage therapist addresses her affliction by moping and yakking and encountering Ron Livingston and moping and yakking some more.  There’s a fun thread about her quirky uncle’s dental practice, but that’s entirely disconnected from the protagonist’s story.

DeWitt was exceptional in Your Sister’s Sister and uniformly excellent in Rachel Getting Married, Promised Land and Margaret – and Touchy Feely is not DeWitt’s fault.  The fine actors Ellen Page, Scoot McNairy (Argo), Alison Janney and Josh Pais are similarly wasted.

Now I tend to like character-driven, talky movies.  But I don’t like to watch self-involved twits obsess over their own avoidable, First World problems.  That pretty much describes the mumblecore genre, especially when the male characters have bedhead.  (This movie could have been even worse – the Gigli, Ishtar or Moment by Moment of mumblecore – had Greta Gerwig played Alison Janney’s role.)

There’s one really funny scene in Touchy Feely – where Alison Janney introduces the painfully awkward Josh Pais to Reiki.  Other than that, just watch the trailer – it’s much better than the movie and it will cost you less than three minutes of your remaining lifetime.

Touchy Feely is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and XBOX Video.

Inside Llewyn Davis: unlovable loser

by
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

In Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen Brothers take us back to the Greenwich Village folk scene just before the emergence of Bob Dylan. Oscar Isaac plays a talented folk singer who is always a day late and a dollar short – and it’s all his own fault.  His self-absorption sabotages his career and his relationships. Unfortunately, to paraphrase The Wife leaving the theater, we don’t care enough about the protagonist to root for him, and he’s not hateful enough to make us root against him.  And that’s why Inside Llewyn Davis isn’t a great movie.  (In contrast, Sideways is a great movie about another guy who is making his own bad luck – but we care about THAT guy.)

What Inside Llewyn Davis does right is to take us back to the Village in 1961 – the music is great and so are all the period details,  Oscar Isaacs is quite good, and there are some stellar turns by Justin Timberlake, F. Murray Abraham and character actor Stan Carp as Llewyn’s senile dad.  And Inside Llewyn Davis is often very, very funny.

Inside Llewyn Davis was perhaps the most critically praised film at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival and is on the Best of 2013 lists of most critics – but not mine.  It’s watchable for the period and the humor, but the main character just doesn’t engage us enough.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Much Ado About Nothing

by
Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Director Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) takes a break from pop with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. It’s set in current times (with iPods and cupcakes) and filmed in black and white at Whedon’s Santa Monica home. It worked for me.

Whedon told NPR “Some people won’t see Shakespeare because they don’t believe there’s characters in them, they think it’s, you know, homework.” Whedon’s version brings out the screwball comedy sensibility of the tale. Indeed, there’s really nothing uniquely 16th century about the plot: one couple is perfectly matched but they think that they despise each other, another couple is head over heels in love and a mean, unhappy villain wants to break up the romance. As the primary couple who wage “a merry war” of wit, Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker keep up with the quick-paced barbed patter and show a gift for flopping-on-the-floor physical humor. Nathan Fillion hilariously deadpans the malapropisms of Dogberry, here the dimmest supervising rent-a-cop in English literature.

[Note: There’s also some serious home and party decorating/staging porn for the HGTV set.]

It’s all good fun, and there’s no need to review the play before enjoying it. In fact, I’m adding it to my list of Best Shakespeare Movies.  Much Ado About Nothing is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and other VOD outlets.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Heat

by
THE HEAT

We’ve all seen cop buddy comedies before (Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and scores of copycats). In the The Heat, the odd couple is Sandra Bullock (as the arrogant and fastidious FBI agent) and Melissa McCarthy (as the earthy and streetwise Boston cop). There are some especially well-written bits in The Heat, especially when Bullock’s prig finally explodes into a completely inept torrent of profanity and when McCarthy’s cop belittles her commander’s manhood for what must be the zillionth time.

But here’s why you will enjoy The Heat. Melissa McCarthy’s line readings are brilliantly hilarious. Her gift for dialogue makes everything and everyone in this movie much funnier. Her performance elevates the entire movie. In fact, every person who has talked to me about The Heat has laughed when describing it. It may not be that original, but it’s sufficiently well made and McCarthy is sublime.

The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.

Don Jon: guffaws and self-discovery

by

Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote/directed/stars in Don Jon, the story of a Guido whose pursuit of a stunning hottie (Scarlett Johansson) is stymied by his porn addiction.  With help from an older woman (Julianne Moore), he recognizes what will really make him happy.

It’s just a light comedy, but Gordon-Levitt has a very smart take on romantic comedy – one that takes some unexpected turns until a moment of self discovery.  Gordon-Levitt is getting good parts (Inception, 50/50, Looper, Lincoln) and big paychecks (The Dark Knight Rises), so he doesn’t have to write his own stuff – but I’m glad that he gave us Don Jon.

Tony Danza is pretty funny as the Guido dad.

Populaire: witty French rom com from the Mad Men era

by
POPULAIRE

The witty French Populaire cleverly dresses up a conventional romantic comedy with a Mad Men-esque 1959 setting and the flavor of absurdity. The result is a pleasing confection that triggers some chuckles, if not guffaws.

A very attractive bachelor hires a very attractive but clumsy young woman as his secretary. As in any rom com, they’re clearly meant for each other, but they must battle through his obsession that she win a speed typing championship that is – and here is the absurdity – portrayed as just a rung below the World Cup in public prominence.

Populaire takes full advantage of its 1959 setting to spoof the fashions, decor and culture of the period, including a wickedly cheesy cha cha cha performance. It’s harmless and good-hearted fun.

(The radiant Berenice Bejo (The Artist) sparkles in a small role.)

The Family: when a very violent family settles into a new neighborhood

by
Michelle Pfeiffer in THE FAMILY

In the dark comedy The Family, the family of an American mafioso has been relocated to Europe under the witness protection program.  However, they are so violent that they keep blowing their cover and have to move again.  Here, they have just failed to fit themselves in to the sunny French Riviera and have been moved again to chilly Normandy.

The recurring joke in The Family is that these people escalate almost every human interaction into severe violence and that all the family members are highly skilled.  The mafioso is played by Robert De Niro, his wife by Michelle Pfeiffer, and both very ably deliver the deadpan comedy.  But the best performances (in the best written roles) are by Dianna Agron (Quinn in Glee)  and John D’Leo as the couple’s teenagers.  Tommy Lee Jones is also VERY briefly in the movie, as are Vincent Pastore and Dominic Chianese of The Sopranos.

Luc Besson (The Professional, District B13), the French director who celebrates American action movies, gets to make an American action comedy set in France.  I enjoyed The Family much more than I thought I would because I expected another lame culture clash comedy and instead got a darker comedy.  Still, it is what it is – a broad comedy – but a competent one.

I Give It a Year: a twist on the rom com

by
I GIVE IT A YEAR

In a twist on the usual romantic comedy plot, I Give It a Year starts out with the perfect wedding, and then traces the couple’s (Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne) adventurous first year of marriage. They have married after a brief infatuation, and it turns out that they aren’t a great fit. It becomes rapidly apparent that she is more well suited with her new client (Simon Baker), and his true soul mate is his ex-girlfriend (Anna Faris).

Of course, this is a romantic comedy, so be prepared for some silliness and some implausibility. But I give it credit for an original story, and it’s mostly entertaining, with some moments of hilarity. Anna Faris is brilliant in her character’s earnest but futile attempt to master the acrobatics required in a three-way sexual encounter. And it’s very funny when the young groom realizes that the honeymoon photos that the bride is showing her parents includes some naughty bits.

I especially enjoyed the fine dramatic actress Olivia Colman (Tyrannosaur, Broadchurch, The Iron Lady) playing broadly against type as the worst imaginable marriage counselor (she interrupts a session to take a call on her cell phone and scream abuse at her husband). As in the very best comedy, Colman plays it absolutely straight as she, in turn, violates every professional precept.