comedy

DVD of the Week: Quartet

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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.

Quartet is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Vudu, YouTube and other VOD outlets.

Much Ado About Nothing: it’s not homework, it’s a screwball comedy

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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 quickpaced 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.

DVD of the Week: Celeste and Jesse Forever

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I really enjoyed Celeste and Jesse Forever, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg as best friends who have been married, are now working on an amiable divorce and are still best friends. The screenplay is co-written by Rashida Jones (Paul Rudd’s fiance in I Love You, Man) and, once you accept the comic premise that this couple is made for each other but not as a married couple, everyone’s behavior is authentic. Sure, he wants to get back with her when she isn’t in a place to do that – and, then, vice versa – but the characters resolve the conflict as they would in real life. Here’s a mini-spoiler – this movie is just too smart to end in rushing to the airport or disrupting the wedding or any of the other typical rom com contrivances.

The supporting characters are funny without being absurdly zany (except for one pot dealer). Chris Messina pops up in Celeste, as he did in the other smart actress-written comedy Ruby Sparks, and does a good job here, too. I’m certainly looking forward to Rashida Jones’ next screenplay.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: Jim Carrey gets to be funny again

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In The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Steve Carrell plays the title character, a schlub who has lucked into Vegas headliner success as a magician and has developed narcissistic entitlement, along with some destructive spending habits.  Steve Buscemi plays his long suffering partner.  Their prop-driven act, with its Siegfried and Roy schtick, is challenged by an emerging street magician a la David Blaine (Jim Carrey).  Laughs result when the clueless Burt Wonderstone sabotages his own successful act and must come to terms with his own limitations; this being show biz, there’s a lot of unabashed backstabbing.  There’s also a brief but very funny poke at celebrity charity in the Third World.

As we remember from his breakthrough performance in 1994’s The Mask, there are things that Jim Carrey can do that no other performer can.  His movie vehicles since The Mask, however, have tempted him to preen and wink at the audience.   Here, he has a well-written role that is perfect for his rubber face, physicality and sheer force of character, and he takes it to the max. It turns out that, while he can make us wince in a Jim Carrey movie, Carrey can make us belly laugh in a Steve Carrell movie.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone benefits from a deep cast.  The very game and able Olivia Wilde plays the exploited intern.  James Gandolfini plays a deliciously ruthless and self-interested casino tycoon.  The great Alan Arkin just gets funnier as he ages.  And Jay Mohr is delightful in one his best recent roles, a hopelessly unsuited comedian named Rick the Implausible.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is fluff, but it’s fun fluff.  And a showcase for Jim Carrey.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD/Stream of the Week: We Have a Pope

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WE HAVE A POPE

It’s Papal Conclave Week here at the Movie Gourmet, and my weekly DVD pick is last year’s Italian comedy We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam) – also available on Netflix Instant.  In We Have a Pope, the papal conclave elects a Pope, but just as he is about to be introduced to the faithful, he cries out and shrinks from the balcony.  He is having a severe panic attack, and the Curia secretly sends for a psychiatrist to get him in emotional shape for a public appearance.  After some awkward attempts at individual talk therapy (with the therapist and patient surrounded by cardinals), the Pope-elect bolts from the Vatican and runs off on his own, pursued by frantic Pope-handlers.

If this premise weren’t funny enough,the psychiatrist himself can probably be diagnosed as a narcissist and becomes obsessed with organizing the cardinals into a volleyball tournament.   Another shrink diagnoses every patient with parental deficit.  The cardinals are a quirky and flawed bunch, and the Vatican bureaucrats are suitably sinister.

The troubled Pope is played by the great French actor Michel Piccoli (Contempt, Belle De Jour, La belle noiseuse).  Piccoli embues his character with humanity and authenticity –  he is not a weak or crazy man, just a good and able guy who is unable to shoulder great responsibility at this stage of his life.  Writer-director Nanni Moretti plays the shrink and is himself very funny.

We Have a Pope makes a fine double feature with the sober documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, currently playing on HBO.

Cinequest: Oh Boy

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Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy Oh Boy hits every note perfectly.  It’s the debut feature for writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, a talented filmmaker we’ll be hearing from again.

We see a slacker moving from encounter to encounter in a series of vignettes.  Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity.  He has no apparent long term goals, and even his short term goal of getting some coffee is frustrated.

As the main character wanders through contemporary Berlin, Oh Boy demonstrates an outstanding sense of place, especially in a dawn montage near the end of the film.  The soundtrack is also excellent – the understated music complements each scene remarkably well.

Oh Boy plays again at Cinequest on March 9. 

Cinequest: Congratulations!

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In the very funny deadpan comedy Congratulations!, a squad of stolid cops search for missing ten-year old in his own house – and move into the home, too.  Writer-director Mike Brune sends up the police procedural in the vein of Airplane! (and Brune makes no secret of his admiration for the Zucker brothers).  The dough-faced John Curran is superb as the police detective who determinedly leads the search behind the couch and under the coffee table.

Filmmaker Brune cleverly finds new ways to sustain the joke throughout the movie, until an absurd climax and a very funny final shot.  Fittingly for such a subversive film, Brune shot the film at his parent’s suburban Atlanta home while they were vacationing.

I saw Congratulations! at its world premiere at Cinequest. Congratulations! plays again at Cinequest on March 5.

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.