And the best Summer camp movie is…
Can’t go wrong with The Mighty Ducks at fat camp. Good times and good voting, homeys!
RESULTS
– Meatballs: 5 votes
– Camp Nowhere: 1 vote (what ever happened to Christopher Lloyd?)
– Heavy Weights: 11 votes (hello, third grade flashbacks)
– Wet Hot American Summer: 6 votes (would have been my vote)
– The Parent Trap (either one, even though Summer camp plays a much larger role in the original according to my good buddy Fred: 5 votes
– Friday the 13th: 6 votes (home to the stupidest and horniest camp counselors of all-time)
– Other: 1 vote for Daddy Day Camp (guess someone saw that), 1 vote for Addams Family Values (well played, Cousin It), 2 votes for Little Darlings, and 1 vote for “NOT Wet Hot American Summer. Overrated p.o.s.” (ouch)
Remember when Summer was awesome and we didn’t have to work from July ’til September? Yeah, I’m trying not to think about it either.
Cyrus (2010)
VERDICT:
7/10 Father Figures
Seriously awkward and pretty darn funny.
Cyrus is about a single guy who’s been lonely and depressed for seven years since his ex-wife dumped him, but then one night all that changes when he hits it off with a gorgeous woman at a singles party. He likes her, she likes him, but then he meets her strange, deadbeat twenty-something son who immediately starts messing with his head in the hopes that it’ll break them up and get him out of the picture for good. As you might expect, things get weird.
Simple enough premise, but a good premise all the same. I appreciate a movie that knows its limitations and works with its strengths, wish more movies had that sense.
It’s written and directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, two dudes who are apparently shredding up the indie scene at the moment (did hear good things about their last movie Baghead) and this is very much in that same indie vein. Nothin’ fancy going on here in terms of eye candy, just a lot of simple handheld camerawork that wobbles like gangbusters, gets a bit trigger happy with the zoom function and falls in and out of focus at a moment’s notice. Whatever, the visuals aren’t the point – even though they were making my friend borderline nauseous after a certain point – it’s really about the “script” and the cast with this one.
And the reason I threw quotes up there isn’t because this is a poor script or anything, it’s just that I’d be a bit surprised if there was actually a physical script to work off of. It feels more like the brothers Duplass huddled the cast together, told them the general direction of how the plot was gonna flow, everyone nodded politely, someone yelled “Action!” and then they all sorta winged it. Anyone who’s ever spoken in public knows that the cardinal rule of not sucking is to not wing it, but the reason it works is ’cause this cast seems to know a thing or two about improvising.
First there’s John C. Reilly as our potential suitor, John. Man, I like John C. Reilly, he’s a funny dude and he’s hard not to like even if it seems like he’s all too often playing second fiddle. John’s vaguely pathetic and charming nature seems like custom fit for Reilly and it only gets better when he finally starts to break out of his shell, feel more comfortable in his own skin and get pissed the hell off.
Then there’s Jonah Hill as Cyrus, and I’ve already gone off about how funny I think that kid is. Not to beat a dead horse, but this is just further evidence of why it bugs the hell out of me when people write him off as a Seth Rogen knockoff. And it’s a different role for him, far more subtle than the stuff we’re used to seeing from him and a lot of his best scenes more or less break down to him staring at John C. Reilly and making wildly innappropriate attempts at humor by asking him to not fuck his mom at their first “family” dinner. Also gives him some breathing room to get serious and he nails that, too. So way to go, Jonah.
And rounding out the trio is Marisa Tomei as the object of everyone’s desire, Molly. I’ve never really known what to think of Tomei, but for some reason I’m now totally convinced and I thought she was just fantastic here. Felt very natural, the laid back look suits her quite well and, good lord, has time been kind to that woman.
So the cast is on point, that much has been established, but they’re great because it feels like they’re just shooting the shit instead of reading off a prompter. Granted, the humor here is for the most part very uncomfortable and cringe-inducing, mostly because you never really know what the hell is up between Cyrus in his mom (I was really expecting a bizarro incest plot line, but thank the lord that didn’t happen), but it can also be damn funny and the actors make it feel perfectly natural. Beautiful when that happens.
The only trick with Cyrus is that I wish it were more consistent. When it’s on, it’s an easy 8, but I’d say it’s only there for about 60-70% of the time and when it’s off, it noticably drags. The first Act is great and it only gets better when we’re introduced to Cyrus, but then there’s a stint where it’s pretty much just John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei getting hot and heavy without any real laughs and the pacing starts to meander.
But like I said, good stuff all in all thanks to solid performances and a surprisingly honest story that only gets better. Not the funniest movie of the year, but it’s great to see these three do their thing and do it well. Isnt’ it about time John C. Reilly got his due?
I want YOU…to want MEME!
Any Cheap Trick fans in the house? Yeah, me neither.
Anywho, thanks to my blood siblings Filmgeek, Kai and Ruth for tagging me as a verified Versatile Blogger. You guys are the coolest, we should have a birthday party at McDonald’s together. It’ll be so awesome. They even have a Play Place.
So as these things usually go, I now have to dish out seven juicy facts about myself, stuff that lands paparazzi outside my front door when I’m just trying to take my five kids to school, stuff that the LAPD have been after for years. But since I’ve already exhausted every last interesting fact about me in the last 36 memes, I’m making this one genre-specific.
That’s right, my nerds. This one’s about video games (cue the eye-rolls).
7. First system I ever got: Sega Genesis w/ Sonic the Hedgehog 2. That was a kickass Christmas, Santa had no idea of the crack he had just given me.
6. The Top Ten
(10) Gears of War [better memories with the first one even though 2 is better]
(9) Final Fantasy X
(8) Halo 2
(7) Shadow of the Colossus
(6) Metal Gear Solid
(5) Half- Life 2
(4) Knights of the Old Republic
(3) Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
(2) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
(1) Final Fantasy VII [single-handedly renewed my faith in video games]
5. The best kinds of video games are the ones that make you think. Big RPG fan, but who am I kidding, I lost sleep playing that first Modern Warfare game. Nonetheless, most games today – much like movies – are just too damn repetitive and have zero originality to them outside of how much blood and firepower they can throw into the mix. How about something new, guys? Crazy idea, I know.
4. Met all my best friends from college through Halo. Turns out that they all lived on my floor, were all totally awesome dudes that were just as hooked as I was and we ended up winning a campus-wide Halo 2 tournament later that year. Again, I can feel the eye-rolls, but good times all the same. Rest assured, we drank a lot, too.
3. Games I’ve spent an effing ungodly/embarrassing amount of time playing to the point where I practically shut myself off from the world except for the occasional bathroom/food/sunlight break: Final Fantasy VII, Knights of the Old Republic, and Day of Defeat. Great games, but the flashbacks I’m getting right now are making me shudder.
2. The two games that I really considered destroying my television over because they were so hard: Ninja Gaiden for XBOX and Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening. Both great games, beat them both – and I take great pride in that – but FUCK were those two infuriating!
1. Despite all this ranting, I actually stopped playing video games recently after putting 35 hours of my time into Final Fantasy XIII and hitting a wall where I realized the story sucked, the characters sucked, I wasn’t having fun and I likely had another 30 hours in front of me that I didn’t want to waste on something that I nor anyone else was gonna give a shit about. Needless to say, wildly disappointing game, might be the second-worst of the series after X-2, but hey, more time to grind out that screenplay of mine.
Alright, got that out of my system. Hoping at least one of you hasn’t written me off for good after that.
And as for who I’m passing this little ditty along to (AND IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ABOUT VIDEO GAMES):
1. Travis over at The Movie Encyclopedia (I know for a fact that you’re an RPG junkie)
2. The Hatter over at The Dark of the Matinee
3. Darren over at the mOvie blog (dug our Metal Gear convo over at The List, you brought it on yourself)
4. Peter and his Magic Lantern Film Blog
5. And Dan the Man
Guys, you’re all a hell of a lot more versatile than I am and I’m pretty sure I’d take a bullet for ya’s. Now get to it!
In the Bedroom (2001)
VERDICT:
9/10 Constant Reminders
Flat-out unforgettable.
In the Bedroom is about an aging couple in Maine and their teenage son who spends his Summer fishing for lobsters, weighing the pros and cons of returning to college in the Fall and figuring out how serious he is about his relationship with a single mother twice his age. For the most part, everything’s peachy, but all that changes when a member of the family is murdered in cold blood, ripping their lives apart at the seams and forcing them to cope with grief that refuses to disappear.
The first time I saw this was about six or seven years ago, and – I don’t think I’m alone on this one – I haven’t been able to shake it since. I was too young to see it in theaters when it first came out, but I distinctly remember it being the first movie that I’d heard absolutely nothing about, then seemingly overnight it became the movie to see, everyone followed suit and no one could stop talking about it. After watching it for a second time two nights ago and immediately recalling all the reasons why I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for the past six or seven years, it’s easy to see why this picture spread like wildfire and continues to stand as a testament to the power of great film making regardless of budget or blockbuster publicity.
But it’s a hard movie to write about, mostly because I’m gonna have to pussyfoot around some of the more seminal aspects of the story for the sake of all you out there who haven’t seen it, but also because the extent to which one can convey an experience like this through text, along with all the difficult questions it raises, does not do it justice. I don’t know, how can you convey grief? How do you get over it? How do you live?
All tough questions, questions I sure as hell can’t answer, questions that no one has a foolproof solution to, and they’re a cornerstone to why this movie is so damn affective.
When the wheels are finally put in motion and this family in placed in a tragic set of circumstances that no one ever expects, all we can do is wonder what’s going through their heads as they try to go about their daily lives, try to move on, try to pretend nothing ever happened to the general public, to each other and to themselves. Whether they’re mowing the lawn, returning to work or spending a weekend with their friends with smiles on their faces, you don’t need to hear them say it to know that despite how hard they try to put on a show, the only thing on their mind is the void in their life that won’t go away. It takes a long time for things to vocally come to the surface – and when it rains, it pours – but the ever-present silence speaks volumes in ways words truly can’t.
It’s written and directed by one Todd Field, and even though I kinda crapped on his last movie, Little Children, the guy is the real deal. My favorite kinds of movies are the ones grounded in real people dealing with real problems, and that’s just what he’s created here. His script and direction are perfectly subtle, universally human and they complement each other beautifully, if “beautiful” is even the right word for this story. Really makes me wish I liked Children more (damn omniscient narrator…), but I cannot wait for Blood Meridian all the same.
But so much of why it all works is due to the absolutely phenomenal cast.
The parents are played by Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek, two individuals who arguably deserved the Oscars far more so than the people who got them (Denzel for Training Day? So tired of IOU awards). Just like with Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People, it’s equally harrowing and fascinating to see the different ways in which people cope with loss, a married couple living under the same roof no less, and even though Spacek is nowhere near the mega bitch that Moore was, they both give outstanding performances that bare everything they’ve got. Their presence makes everything seem far more genuine than it already is and I don’t know how Tom Wilkinson hasn’t gotten the physical credit he’s been due all these years. Such a great actor and the same goes for Spacek (even though Oscars are old hat for her).
The son is played by Nick Stahl, and I don’t know why he hasn’t done more worth noting outside of The Man Without a Face and Sin City, ’cause he’s darn good here. Frank is a great character, one you like immediately, and Stahl seems to play him pretty naturally. Along with Marisa Tomei‘s turn as his girlfriend – who isn’t half bad either, even though I’m still not sure what to think of her as an actress – they hold their own even if they do get kinda overshadowed by Spacek and Wilkinson. Still, good characters.
And William Mapother (who could solve world hunger and would still be Ethan from Lost to me) is one royal sonofabitch as Tomei’s ex-husband. Dude’s just got that look about him.
But going back to the beginning, I could dedicate an entire blog to this movie and it still wouldn’t come anywhere close to matching the gravity and power of seeing it for yourself. In the Bedroom is simple yet complex, difficult yet penetrating, and even if you’ve never experienced a personal loss to the degree that this family does, you will remember this movie. Easily one of the best of the past decade, way better than A Beautiful Mind ever was.
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (2010)
VERDICT:
7/10 Portraits of the Artist
A fascinating movie about a guy I didn’t even know existed.
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould is a documentary about the extraordinary and private life of – you guessed it – classical pianist Glenn Gould who rose to overnight fame in the ’50s, changed the way people thought of Bach forever and eventually became a victim of his own gift by the time he died at all-too-young age of 50.
Like I said, I’d never heard of the guy until this week. I don’t know if I’m the only one in that boat or what, but the reason for my ignorance probably has something to do with my thinking that I’m one cultured sonofabitch ’cause I know that Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” is the tune they jam out at every college graduation, I liked Amadeus a lot, and…well, that’s about it.
Yeah, I never really listen to classical music, not that I have anything against it and I’m sure I’d get a lot more work done if I was more prone to choose Bach over Beck while typing these reviews, but what can I say, it’s just not my thing. Then again, it ain’t exactly easy for me to say “No!” to a free movie ticket, so in I went with open ears and an open mind and eventually found myself far more engaged that I thought I would be about a subject I could ordinarily care less about.
The nutshell bio on Glenn Gould is that he was born in ’32, started playing the piano like it was his job at the ripe age of 10, played his first show in New York at 23, got a recording contract the next day, put out his first record in ’55, no one had ever heard anything like it before and it blew their knickers clean off. So he did the touring thing for another eight years, more knickers were lost, then he realized that he hated entertaining folks in public, gave it up entirely to pursue other musical paths by his lonesome in Toronto for the next two decades, and that’s when things get interesting.
The beauty of Gould – regardless of whether or not you’ve heard of him – is that it is truly something else to watch someone who is so naturally talented at something, music or otherwise, that their brilliance comes effortlessly. I remember taking drum lessons in college and marvelling at my teacher as he played things I could hardly wrap my head around like it was second nature, like the instrumet was an extension of his body, and it’s that same sense of wonder that made Gould so famous and such a captivating musician to watch. Even for someone like me who knows jack crap about the piano, it’s wild to watch him just fall into an utter trance and get lost in the complexities of the music he’s playing.
But that’s not even the interesting part. Even to his closest friends – of which there were few – Gould was a living mystery of sorts who never really let anyone in, whose only true connection in life lied with his music and only seemed to distance himself more with age. Whether it be Tom Hanks or Lindsay Lohan, I’ve always been fascinated by the ways in people respond to fame and it’s almost heartbreaking to watch Gould’s persona and connection to the outside world gradually deteriorate as the art ends up consuming the artist. It’s not a VH1 True Hollywood Story, it’s just a guy trying to balance his life and his talents as everything else falls to wayside despite his best efforts to salvage it all, and it’s borderline tragic yet entirely consuming.
But I’m not gonna lie, up until Gould decides to quit touring, I was dozing off like a pro during this movie. Could be the side effects of my new 8 to 4 work schedule, but I found myself prying my eyes open like Alex DeLarge a couple times and I don’t think I’ve slept through a movie since I saw Phenomenon in theaters, and that was the night after sitting on a plane from Japan for twelve hours. So, yeah, might not be engaging right off the bat and it was at a steady 6 for a stretch there, but bring a coffee, it’s worth sticking with.
Nonetheless, Genius Within isn’t for everyone. The pacing’s not so hot, it’s an awfully “high brow” experience, and even though I can appreciate Gould and his abilities as a pianist, I’m still far from being a convert. It doesn’t come out for another couple months, but, hey, with an open mind and the right attitude, you just might totally dig it. Gould was an amazing talent who led one interesting life and he’s a guy you should know about, Bach fan or not.
Stand by Me (1986)
VERDICT:
9/10 For Flinching
One of the all-time great Stephen King adaptations.
Stand by Me is about four best friends from a small town in the ’50s who find out about the location of a local boy’s dead body and set out on foot to find it and get famous by reporting it to the authorities before a group of thug townies get word and take the credit first.
If there’s any one example of why Rob Reiner deserves ever last ounce of credit that he’s garnered over the years as one of Hollywood’s most prominent directors – as if Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, Misery and his stint as “Meathead” weren’t enough – Stand by Me is it. There’s a lot of reasons for that statement, all of which I’ll get to in due time, but the big kahuna for me is that it’s a Forever Movie, a resoundingly universal story that rarely ever gets produced and one of the few cinematic experiences that blew me away when I first saw it in Junior High and still floors me double time as a “grow up”. There are movies that make me tear up and pretend I’ve got something in my eye, there are tons of movies that make me laugh my ass off from start to finish, but when it comes to movies that tap into both these emotions while genuinely making me feel like a kid again, the pickin’s are a-slim.
The first thing worth mentioning is that the script by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans is flat-out phenomenal. The thing is, Stephen King is an absolutely incredible writer and I feel like, more often than not, his voice tends to either get lost or butchered when translated to the screen. Now, I’ve never read the short story this was based on (even though I read the other three stories in the said collection it’s from, which is strange of me), but you don’t have to know the text verbatim to know King when you hear him, and Gideon and Evans did a kickass job of keeping him loud and clear.
Honestly, everything about this script is unreal.
I LOVE that this movie is rated-R. The truth is, 12-year-old boys don’t talk like they’re in The Mickey Mouse Club, they talk about the breast sizes of the girls in The Mickey Mouse Club, they use “shit” like a comma, they insult each other’s mothers like they just walked into a roast and, good lord, is it funny. If this were PG-13, it simply wouldn’t work. It would be sugarcoated as sin, the characters wouldn’t feel as authentic as they do and I wish there were more writers like Gideon, Evans and King who would realize this and follow suit. The closest thing as of late was Kick-Ass, and as far as I’m concerned, that does not count. No kid talks like that.
But the real heart of Stand by Me are the characters and every last one of them are just as fantastic as the next. I can only imagine how tough it must be to develop four unique, entertaining and equally memorable main characters to drive a plot, but the proof is in the pudding with this one.
For starters, this movie is the best thing that’s ever happened to Wil Wheaton’s, Core Feldman’s and Jerry O’Connell’s carrers, but since River Phoenix had My Own Private Idaho, we’ll just leave him out for now. Wheaton plays our protagonist, Gordie, and he does an incredible job, handles some seriously heavy scenes like a pro, is so damn easy to fall in love with and he’s also got the second best line of the movie:
Ace: What are you gonna do? Shoot us all?
Gordie: No, Ace. Just you.
So badass.
And the same goes for Feldman who’s awesome as the resident maniac with a mental vault jam-packed with one-liners, Teddy. And a completely unrecognizable O’Connell plays the dimwit of the group, Vern, and I don’t think O’Connell’s ever made anyone laugh as much in his entire life as he does here in just two hours. Just wait ’til his comments during the Lardass story – kid had me howling.
The only questionably weak link of the bunch is River Phoenix as Gordie’s best friend, Chris Chambers, the peacekeeper of the group and the one supposedly destined for failure in life. Being the general shoulder to lean on, River occasionally hams it up a bit when it comes to being openly emotional with his friends or consoling them in times of need, and while it does feel a bit forced at times and I can’t say that I’ve ever had conversations with my friends in the way Chris does with his, I really wish I did and that’s what saves it. When I think back to when I was 12, I would have killed for a friend like Chris that I could actually talk to instead of just joke with, I think everyone would have, and even though he might not seem like the most realistic of the foursome, he’s easily the most necessary.
That River had some skills, man. What a shame.
And in my humble opinion, Kiefer Sutherland is one of the biggest and best mother-effers in movie history as our head townie thug, Ace. Kiefer’s just got that naturally evil look about him and he puts it to effortlessly good use with each new straight-up evil remark or action that goes above and beyond what any of his cronies are capable of. God, what an asshole, but damn is he good.
Throw in some Richard Dreyfuss and John Cusack cameos for good measure, and you’re all set.
If you’ve never seen Stand by Me, see it. Doesn’t matter who you are, you will love it, and that’s a recommendation I hardly ever give. It’s funnier and more profound at 23 than it ever was at 12 and it’s right up there with Dead Poets Society and Searching for Bobby Fischer in terms of how easy it is to connect with and how swollen it made my Adam’s apple. It’s not just one of the all-time great King adaptations, it’s not just the best coming-of-ager out there, it’s one of the all-time greats, period. Also has the best final line in movie history:
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
Amen to that.
It’s Complicated (2009)
VERDICT:
6/10 Viagra Junkies
Funny, but would have been funnier if I had menopause.
It’s Complicated is about a single ex-wife and her newly-married ex-husband who, after ten years of being bitterly divorced, find themselves staying at the same hotel for their son’s college graduation and, thanks to a whole lot of booze, strike up an affair with each other that neither of them saw coming. The ex-husband is all about it since he’s kind of fed up with his new wife and her demon child, but the ex-wife is torn about the whole darn thing, and then she starts going steady with her architect who has no idea about what’s going on with the two, and things get…dare I say it…complicated.
HI-OH!
Was up ’til four AM last night thinking of that one, folks. It’s all downhill from here.
Now, if I were about thirty years older, had a gaggle of kids under my belt, a horribly low sperm count and a beer belly the size of a powder keg, something tells me that I’d be grabbing for an oxygen tank from laughing so hard at this one. But being the spawnless, virile and skinny twenty-something that I am, it ain’t exactly hitting close to home in any way shape or form.
Then again, it is a Nancy Meyers movie, and since she’s also the gal behind Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday and both Father of the Brides (which are both pretty good, actually), it’s to be expected. It’s lighthearted stuff that’s generally aimed toward all the baby boomers in the crowd, but it’s nevertheless pretty enjoyable thanks to the pretty kickass trio of Meryl, Alec and Steve.
No, it’s not the best thing she’s ever done, but since it’s Meryl and Meryl can do no wrong, she’s good as our unlikely slut (her words, not mine), Jane Adler. Whatever, Meryl’s just the bomb, there’s no getting around it, don’t really know what else to write here. Not a terribly memorable role, but she does manage to get her hands on some doobage at a certain point, and anyone who’s seen Adaptation knows that Meryl plays one awesome burnout.
And guess what, so does Steve Martin. Even though it’s the same kinda forgettable story for his role as Meryl’s architect friend, Adam, I’m a big fan of the guy to begin with and he sure has his moments once he starts toking up.
It’s also too bad that this is apparently Alec Baldwin’s last movie role. Granted, The Cooler was the last thing he did that came anywhere close to his career-defining ten-minute cameo in Glengarry Glen Ross, but this just feels like an odd note to end on even if he is pretty funny as Meryl’s ex, Jake. I don’t know, it seems like his career has been completely revived since he became Jack Donaghy and I don’t know why he’d choose this as his swan song. Strange days in Hollywood, gang, but I’m thinking he’ll come around.
But once the boring first half-hour wraps up and folks start sleeping around, It’s Complicated isn’t half bad. Has some pretty entertaining awkward scenarios, a solid cast even though they don’t have to do a whole lot and a decent enough script that gets better as it goes on and works more than it probably should have since it really had me clueless in regards to how it was all gonna end up.
Other than that, can’t think of a whole lot else to report back on. But, hey, it is what it is and it’s about time I banged out a short review. Enjoy it while it lasts.
A dollar well spent.
My 14-year-old cousin just sent me this in response to the Jedi poll.
My 14-year-old cousin is the man. Anyone think they can top this?
And the best Jedi is…
Folks, we have our first tie. This is effing huge, I think I just peed a little. The people have spoken and the best Jedis are…
YODA AND QUI-GON JINN!
But since I have no idea how to post two pictures side-by-side, Ackbar will do.
Well now I definitely need to watch Episode I again because I am fucking flabbergasted at how much love Qui-Gon got here. Yoda’s a no-brainer, but for a guy who didn’t even last an entire movie (even though he did arguably have the best fight scene of the series), I am terribly confused.
Strange days, these are.
RESULTS:
– Luke: 5 votes
– Vader: 6 votes (blasphemy…)
– Old Ben: 9 votes (apologies to all the McGregor fans in the house)
– Yoda: 12 votes
– Qui-Gon: 12 votes
– Maul: 3 votes (dude would not shut the hell up)
– Mace: 0 votes (blame the purple lightsaber)
– Other: one vote Star Wars Kid (awesome) and one vote for Paul Newman (I’ll send someone a buck through PayPal if they can manufacture a picture of Paul Newman with a lightsaber for me).
Good voting all the same, folks. This SW marathon really needs to happen.
Chicago (2002)
VERDICT:
8/10 Murder Ballads
Catchy. As. Hell.
Chicago is about a no-name dame in the 1920s whose dreams of becoming a Vaudeville star get fast-tracked when she bumps off the loverboy who tried to leave her high and dry, then gets sent to the big house with one of her idols and has her naive, devoted husband to hire an A-list lawyer who’ll keep her from the gallows and make her the Windy City’s favorite front page sympathy case while he’s at it.
When it comes to musicals, sure, I can dig it, but let’s just say that it’s been a good long while since I’ve actually been excited to see one. Loved going to see Phantom of the Opera as a kid and I still find myself whistling “Be Our Guest” after recently revisiting Beauty and the Beast, but then there’s that copy of Moulin Rouge on the bookshelf that I still haven’t watched since my co-worker lent it to me six months ago.
And therein lies my problem, folks.
See, I like musicals, but when it comes to prioritizing my Netflix queue, I can’t think of a single instance where a musical edged out…well, anything really. But then a day comes when my good buddy Fred starts giving me the business (understandably) for continually awarding the top spot on the queue to movies that only a raging nerd like myself would be interested in seeing, so I hold off on Battle Royale for another week and decide let him take the reigns. Lo and behold, Chicago comes in the mail a couple days later, we watch it, I’m hooked from start to finish, I’m singing all the songs like an idiot, I want to watch it again, I feel shame.
Dead serious, gang. I never thought I’d be that guy who cuts off the iTunes playlist in the middle of a party so that he can hit up YouTube and gush over “All That Jazz” while everyone stares in disgust, but that’s what happened this past Saturday and I really think it’s turning into a problem. But so much of what makes this movie the blast that it is are the show tunes, all of which are just out of freakin’ sight and simply refuse to get out of my head no matter how much I want them to five days after later.
It’s one of those rare situations where, naturally, some songs are better than others, but there really isn’t a weak link in the bunch. It starts off with a bang, it doesn’t let up and it’s simply one fantastic number after another. But despite how good they are from an audial standpoint, how great and funny the lyrics are and how surprisingly good the cast is at singing them, they end up being twice as good thanks to Bob Fosse’s choreography and Rob Marshall’s absolutely kickass direction.
Everything Marshall does well here can essentially be summed up in the “Ventriloquist Act” scene with Zellweger as the puppet and Gere as her master, but it’s crazy how expertly choreographed every damn aspect of the movie is even outside of the dancing. The way he flawlessly cuts back and forth between reality and the stage acts, all while keeping in tune with the song and how it’s being played, is really something else and must have required some serious foresight in pre-production. Very impressive.
And with the exception of Renee Zellweger as our femme fatale of the hour, Roxie Hart, the whole cast is at the top of their game. She’s good in the “Roxie” number, but I’m just not a fan of Renee, probably has to do with that perpetually-sucking-on-a-lemon look of hers.
But Queen Latifah is the bomb as Mama, John C. Reilly was a solid choice as poor old Mr. Hart, and Richard Gere is awesome awesome awesome as Roxie’s lawyer, Billy Flynn. Never been a huge fan of Gere’s, but after this and being extremely surprised by how much I liked him in Runaway Bride (I know, I never expected to write that either), I’m slowly coming around. Dude is a total riot and I love it when big timers just loosen up and have fun.
And then there’s Catherine Zeta-Jones, and she does kinda steal the show as Velma Kelly. As much as I will always love Meryl Streep’s stoned-out performance in Adaptation and Kathy Bates skinny dipping in About Schmidt (God, I love that woman), Catherine’s the whole package here. Lord, can she sing, dance and bring that vixen attitude like no other. Hard to take your eyes off her, and I can totally see why she got the Oscar, but still, I think I would have given it Kathy.
Coming from a skeptic, someone who probably never would have seen this on his own free will, I gotta say that Chicago really was a whole lot of fun. The story does end up taking a backseat to all the music and dancing in the long run, but since the music and dancing really are so effing good, it’s pretty darn easy to just sit back and enjoy the show without getting all nitpicky about it. Would see it again in a heartbeat and it sure has made Moulin Rouge that much more appealing.
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