Hello Lewis Center! It's a beautiful April afternoon, the sun is shining, it's in the 70's, and frankly, if you're not spending your free time outside, you must not be from around here. These days are rare, and in Ohio they can change at the drop of a hat from sunshine 70's to frigid 40's. Luckily, for those unseasonable days when it drops 30 degrees and starts snowing out of the blue, there's quite a fine selection of movies available for every age group and demographic. Here are three that I saw just recently: an animated dragon adventure, a dark thriller mystery, and a hilarious couples comedy.
How To Train Your Dragon
In these days of three dimensions, when it seems like every movie with a decent budget is being converted into 3D to cash in on the hysteria of “Avatar”, most just aren't up to the task. Whether the film is changed post-production into 3D, or is just converted to cash in on higher ticket prices, the result is usually gaudy and just plain crappy-looking. To truly use this fantastic medium to its best effect, the very concept of the movie must be based on the third dimension, and really the only good examples of this so far have been “Avatar” and “How To Train Your Dragon”.
Dreamworks' “Dragons”, as it is sometimes called, is as delicious a visual experience as you will ever have this year. The story isn't entirely original, but is more than compensated by the sharp, clever writing and great performances by the voice cast led by Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, and Craig Ferguson. Baruchel voices our lead, a young Viking named Hiccup who doesn't quite fit in with his war-idolizing, dragon-killing people. Needless to say, he befriends a dragon, proves himself to his father, and saves his people, all while teaching them a valuable lesson of understanding and cooperation. While, again, the story isn't anything new, it's the visual splendor and characters (both Viking and dragon) that make this a touching, funny, fire-breathing adventure for the adult and child in all of us. A-
The Ghost Writer
Say what you want about Roman Polanski's personal problems, but the guy is still amazing behind the camera. If you've seen any of his other movies you'll recognize his very dark humor, his consistent ability to make you feel just as lost and scared as his hapless protagonists, and then his uncanny knack for kicking you in the head at the end. For those who haven't experienced a Polanski film before, expect the unexpected, and if you think you know what's going on, you're wrong.
The movie follows an author played by Ewan McGregor, known through the movie only as “the ghost”. He lands a contract to be the new ghost writer for the autobiography of a British ex-prime minister named Adam Lang (a never-better Pierce Brosnan). The author's predecessor killed himself (supposedly) because of the stresses of the job and the ghost is there to finish up. The intriguing part is that Adam Lang is a stand-in for Tony Blair, and when waterboarding, the CIA, and Haliburton (Hatherton) begin to pop up, things become a bit familiar to the Bush-era Americans in the audience. All told, it's a dark and stormy political thriller that'll keep you off-balance like only Roman Polanski can.
For a bonus, read up on his real-life issues if you want to fully appreciate the self-deprecating humor of the crowd outside Adam Lang's compound. B
Date Night
Steve Carell and Tina Fey star in this latest entry into the action/comedy genre for married people. They play the Fosters, a New Jersey couple whose marriage has gotten depressingly stale. Phil (Carell) takes Claire (Fey) to a fancy new seafood restaurant in the city in an effort to spice things up, and after claiming a table reservation that didn't belong to them, they end up thrown into the deep end of the mafia, corrupt cops, gun fights and car chases. Fortunately for us, this rather cliché turn of events actually ends up surprisingly entertaining with the help of a perpetually shirtless Mark Wahlberg and the mostly pointless, though reliably hilarious, pit stop at James Franco and Mila Kunis' apartment.
I'm as big a fan of Steve Carell and Tina Fey as anyone, which is why I thought this movie could have been way better than it turned out to be. Don't get me wrong, I was laughing out loud for the vast majority of the movie. However, being a huge fan of The Office and 30 Rock, I expected Carell and Fey to define the movie more, while instead they ended up mostly being constrained by it. We're missing the clueless hilarity of Michael Scott, and the forgettable script doesn't create the touching depth I loved about Carell in “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. And as for Ms. Fey, her real star power lies in her writing; acting according to someone else's ideas just doesn't become her.
Stay for the outtakes during the credits to get a glimpse of the potential hilarity these stars could have unleashed if given the opportunity. C+
