Cynical Cinema

“There’s nothing stock about a stock car.” 

Tom Cruise has made a career out of making chick flicks that are disguised as movies for guys.  Top Gun, make no mistake, was a chick flick.  It just involved fighter planes and badass behaviour so that we guys could enjoy it as well.  By the time of Jerry Maguire in 1996, however, we had learned our lesson.  Sure, it involves football in some way, but it also involves Renee Zellweger.  And we know what that means - romance, crying, and girly stuff.  So, the question we have to ask ourselves is whether we, as guys, are willing to sit through the romance to get to the fighter plane or football stuff.  And in the case of Days of Thunder, the car-racing, fast-driving fast-living stuff.

And now that this film is out on Blu-Ray, I am going to say yes.  We are willing to sit through the romance.  We are willing to put up with porcelain-faced Nicole Kidman (who, at this earlier part of her career, looked a lot hotter, and a lot more like a real person than like an escaped member of your mom’s doll collection).  And we are willing to put up with Tom Cruise flashing his 1,000-watt smile all around the room at everyone, until such time as he is put in the hospital, and we worry whether that magnificent smile will be forever wiped off his face!  OK…we can tolerate all that.  For a few reasons.

One is that Nicole Kidman is certainly hot.  Not much of an actor, but hot.  Another is Robert Duvall, who is certainly not hot.  A tremendous, incredible actor, but not hot.  Then there are all those people who pop up here and there in the movie and make us think - wow!  These guys were around this long?  And then you think - oh, of course they were.  John C. Reilly, Cary Elwes, Fred Thompson.  Good times.

The main reason, of course, that we are willing to sit through Kidman and Cruise and romance and sad-sackery is that we get to see cars racing each other.  And that is also the main reason that the Blu-Ray works here.  Women can watch Tom Cruise smile at Nicole Kidman on scratchy, beat-up Beta tapes and be happy.  So Days Of Thunder will work for them in any format.  For us guys, however, it’s the car racing that makes this movie worth watching, and it’s the Blu-Ray format that makes the car-racing so awesome.  Surround sound, high-def - they weren’t built for smiling and crying and Nicole Kidman.  They were created for racing and crashing and Robert Duvall.

The Promotion comes out today, September 9th, courtesy of Alliance Films. It’s a remarkably understated film, considering the two lead actors - Seann William Scott (Stiffler from American Pie) and John C. Reilly (Dewey Cox in Walk Hard). Scott is the assistant manager at a grocery store, and when the store expands, he figures he’s a shoo-in for the full manager job at the new location. We are to assume that the difference in salary between a grocery store assistant manager and a full manager is massive. Apparently, the assistant manager can barely afford the produce on his own shelves, whereas a full manager can afford to buy a house and a Rolls Royce. But soon, Scott has competition for that manager’s position, from John C. Reilly who is another assistant manager who has just arrived from Quebec.

The Promotion quickly becomes a rivalry between Reilly and Scott, where they subtly attempt to subvert each other in the eyes of the Big Bosses, a bunch of suits who are in town to pick a new manager for the new location. And the key word there is “subtly”. The Promotion is reminiscent of many other movies, most of them dreadful, like Employee Of The Month. And thankfully, this film stays away, for the most part, from cheap laughs and over-the-top stupidity. That doesn’t mean The Promotion is great. Or even good. Frankly, it’s pretty average. All it really means is that it’s better than Employee Of The Month. Yeah…

John C. Reilly is a serious comedic talent.  Normally relegated to the Will Ferrell backburner in movies like Talladega Nights, he has been given a chance to star and to shine in Walk Hard:  The Dewey Cox Story.  And shine he does.  Reilly is easily the best part of this movie, with his understated performance meshing perfectly with the surprisingly understated movie.  As far as parodies go, the people who make all those Epic Movies and Date Movies and Meet The Spartans could take notes from flicks like this one.  Understatement is often far funnier than garish, over-the-top gross-out parody.  There are some terrific lines in Walk Hard, lines like “I’m chopped in half pretty bad here”, which would probably NOT be considered understated were we not inundated with the likes of Scary Movie Eleven and Epic Movie.

 The thing about Walk Hard is that it works on only one real level.  And that is, if you have already seen Walk The Line, the Johnny Cash biopic with Joaquin Phoenix.  If you missed that one, you will miss a lot of the hunour in Walk Hard.  The father’s constant refrain of “the wrong kid died”, the numerous occasions where sinks get destroyed, and the tumultuous relationships Dewey Cox has with various women.  And there are other references the movie makes which only the hardcore music-history and music-DVD fan would understand.  A Brian Wilson moment where Dewey is clearly losing his mind after too much acid, and asks for a twelve-thousand voice choir of Benedictine monks, or some such thing.  A Bob Dylan moment, which is a direct parody of a press conference Dylan gave in 1965 after going electric at Newport.  (That entire press conference, by the way, is available on a DVD called “Dylan Speaks”, and is a must for any Bob Dylan fanatic.)  But these are references the regular public wouldn’t get. 

The stuff they would understand is stuff about Elvis and Buddy Holly and the Beatles.  I think it is safe to assume that the general public, if they are even in passing familiar with this music, know that Elvis was the King, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, and the Beatles went to India for spiritual guidance from the Maharishi.   But that’s about all there is for the casual observer, which might help to explain why this movie didn’t find a larger audience upon it’s release.  Oh, it did OK, but it is superior in many ways to those Will Ferrell movies that do gigantic bank every time they are released.  Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, Elf…Walk Hard is better than all of these, but just sadly inaccessible to many people.  The one thing though, I think, that everyone would be able to agree on is that the songs are terrific.  Every song sounding exactly like the era which it is meant to parody, every one hilarious and smart.  That might be the best way to determine if you will like this movie.  Listen to the soundtrack, and if it amuses you, so too will the film.