Dig, if you will, the pictures in the Screening Room this week!
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
I admit it, I’ve laughed at The Lonely Island videos. “I’m On a Boat?” “Captain Jack Sparrow” with Michael Bolton? “I Just Had Sex?” All funny. “D&*^ in a Box?” Classic. Even the cover of their Turtleneck and Chain album is chuckle-worthy.
The nice thing about those projects is they all last about three minutes or less. With Popstar, Andy Samberg and his best buds (Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone) have feature length ambitions, but only prove that even a slight 86 minutes is excessive.
Samberg stars as Conner4Real, the worldwide pop sensation who hit it big in the Style Boyz with childhood buddies Owen (Taccone) and Lawrence (Schaffer), only to leave them behind when solo stardom came calling. After a smash debut album, Conner’s plans for an encore shape Popstar‘s mockumentary approach to lampooning the absurdity of today’s pop music scene.
The irony, of course, is the very level of that actual absurdity makes parody even more difficult.
Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis had the same problem poking fun at the idiocy of political pandering in The Campaign, and The Lonely Island boys (who both write and direct) can’t find a satisfying thread to connect all their new tunes. There are some hits here, such as “Equal Rights (I’m Not Gay),” an overtly sexual love song called “Bin Laden” and “Incredible Thoughts (featuring the return of Bolton),” but the project feels too much like a soundtrack in search of a movie.
Or, more pointedly, a series of SNL skits dreaming of the multiplex. In that vein, there are guest stars and cameos galore, including Will Arnett leading a priceless sendup of the obnoxious TMZ “newsroom.”
Any music scene mockumentary is bound to live in the shadow of This Is Spinal Tap, and The Lonely Island does acknowledge that challenge with a couple winking homages. But the laughs are rarely sustained and never go to 11 (sorry), and Popstar becomes a fairly forgettable tune.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Let’s say your 8-year-old child (or thirty-ish husband) really wants to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows. Maybe they love the cartoon. Maybe they had a TMNT digital watch back in ’91. And socks. And a skateboard. What’s the harm in indulging?
It’s been a year since Shredder tried to annihilate NYC, but because the green brothers threw credit to their cameraman helper Vern (Will Arnett), they remain unknown to the town they love and saved while Vern soaks up all the glory.
But wait! What if a mad scientist wants to use a teleportation device to break Shredder out of jail? And what if that teleportation device sends the supervillain through time and space to meet with an even bigger, badder villain? And what if the two evildoers hatch a plan to enslave Earth and eliminate the turtles by creating sloppy, fat mutant animals of their own?
So, it’s a rock solid plot that only required about ten minutes of excruciating exposition, but the point is, turtles hate bullies!
How do they feel about objectification and exploitation? I’m going to guess they’re OK with it.
Yes, Megan Fox returns as the foursome’s ogle-friendly reporter/BFF. She has two costume changes within her first full 3 minutes onscreen, but they’re vitally important as they allow her to flirt her way close to the information she needs to sleuth out Shredder’s plan.
How else could she possibly do it!?
I could almost give the film’s banal screenplay a pass as simple, mindless kids’ fun if Fox’s presence matched that child-friendly stupidity in any way. Here’s the real tragedy, though: the great Laura Linney is in this dumpster fire of a film.
The sequel is directed by Dave Green (Earth to Echo) with no flair whatsoever for using CGI to move a story along, or even sensibly portray action. Muddy and confused, the set pieces are rarely if ever compelling enough to keep your attention away from the mind-deadening laziness of the screeplay.
By 92 minutes in, I’d lost the will to live, and there was still another twenty minutes to endure.
You love your kids and your husband, but be good to yourself. Skip this one. Dial up some old episodes on YouTube instead.
Me Before You
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
A textbook tear jerker/romance that somehow manages to miss both of those targets, Me Before You is a pretty, brightly lit, well-meaning effort that lacks courage.
Adapting her own best-selling novel, Jojo Moyes offers director Thea Sherrock’s feature debut a warm story lacking chemistry and hard edges. Lou (Emilia Clarke) – a working girl from a small British town – takes a job as companion to recent quadriplegic Will Traynor (Sam Claflin). Once a wealthy, live-life-on-the-edge playboy, Will now haunts a wing of his parents’ castle. For real. They live in the castle that looms in the background of Lou’s small town.
Not that unemployed waitress Lou is intimidated! Not with all that pluck and salt-of-the-earthiness! And it turns out, all it takes to melt Will Traynor’s cold, cold heart is a wildly mismatched yet huggably bold outfit and some dimples.
Once Lou realizes that Will intends to end his life in a Swiss “death with dignity” clinic in six months, she determines to make his last hours on earth amazing and, thereby, change his mind.
Good for Moyes and Sherrock for addressing a difficult issue. Too bad they treat the end of life question the same way they treat Will’s suffering, his medical needs, and every other messy element in the film – which is to say, they keep it offscreen.
Clarke is an effortless charmer, so it’s unfortunate she keeps her beguiling wackiness dialed up to 11. Attractive and easy to watch as they are, she and Claflin have next to no onscreen chemistry. That particular problem is symptomatic of a film that feels inauthentic – though likeable – throughout.
Blandly inoffensive and colorful are not the kind of adjectives you use to describe a tear jerking romance that stays with you. Me Before You warms an icy heart before succumbing to terminal adorableness.
The Lobster
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
How to describe The Lobster?
Imagining how Charlie Kaufman might direct a mashup of 1984 and Logan’s Run would get you in the area code, but still couldn’t quite capture director Yorgos Lanthimos’s darkly comic trip to a future where it’s a crime to be single.
Shopping alone at the mall? Think again, or be ready to prove your couplehood to authorities.
Singles are sent to The Hotel, where they have 45 days to find a partner or be turned into the animal of their choosing, thus giving them a second chance to find a companion. But even then, they are taught to choose wisely because, “a wolf and a penguin could never be together, that would be absurd.”
These are the big decisions weighing on David (Colin Farrell). After his wife leaves him for another man, David checks in, declares a lobster as his preference for a possible second life, and begins the search for a new mate.
Eventually, it leads him to the woods surrounding The Hotel, where he meets a group of fugitives led by Loner Leader (Lea Seydoux), who explains their equally strict, yet polar opposite social guidelines. (“We dance alone, that’s why we only play electronic music.”) David and Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz) rebel and grow closer, then struggle to exist in one society until they feel safe to enter another.
Lanthimos, who also co-wrote the screenplay, crafts a film which ends up feeling like a minor miracle. The Lobster builds on themes we’ve seen before (most recently in Kaufman’s Anomalisa) but bursts with originality, while every setting, from The Hotel to the woods to the city, looks at once familiar and yet like nothing we’ve ever known.
The ensemble cast (also including John C. Reilly and Ben Whishaw) is uniformly terrific, each actor finding subtle but important variations in delivering the script’s wonderfully intelligent takedown of societal expectations.
It’s a captivating experience full of humor, tenderness, and longing, even before Lanthimos starts to bring a subversive beauty into soft focus. The Lobster pokes wicked fun at the rules of attraction, but finds it’s lasting power in asking disquieting questions about the very nature of our motives when following them.
