Cynical Cinema

Mike Myers is a comic genius. His ability to create memorable characters is limitless, and every movie franchise he touches turns to gold. The Scottish dad in So I Married an Axe Murderer. The big fat Scottish guy in Austin Powers. The fun, green, fat Scottish ogre in Shrek. OK…maybe he can only create memorable Scottish characters. And Wayne from Wayne’s World…and Dr. Evil.

Remember the second Austin Powers movie? How it was virtually scene-for-scene the same movie as the first? And the third one was just a lame follow-up, where it was one long recycled “British people have bad teeth” joke? With Shrek 3, Mike Myers proved once again that while his ideas start out great, they have very little staying power. Shrek 3 is one big long ogres like farting and they smell bad joke. We get it. He’s an ogre. It’s what they do. Justin Timberlake makes an appearance in the film as a would-be king whose relevance to the movie is questionable at best. Shrek is no longer the most interesting character, the donkey and the cat are now tiresome, and I started to wish I could watch the spinoff movie starring the gingerbread man. THAT guy is still funny.

Shrek 3 is not a case of too much of a good thing, it’s a case of too much of the same thing. Much like that Shrek song, All-Star, by that band Smashmouth, it gets pretty irritating the third time around. Although I will say this. The film looks absolutely amazing on Blu-Ray. The Blu-Ray edition is being released September 23rd, Tuesday, by Paramount Home Entertainment.

When The Love Guru hit theatres the same week as Get Smart, I had a bet with my colleagues about which movie would be bigger. Both opening week and in the long run. I picked Get Smart. They picked the Love Guru. I think there is something about Canadians that wishes success upon Mike Myers even when that success is neither earned nor deserved. Mike Myers has done five movies. Ever. So I Married An Axe Murderer, Wayne’s World, Shrek, Austin Powers, and 54. Then he made thirty-one sequels, either bona-fide sequels or ripoffs of his previous work. The Love Guru falls into the latter category, and it gets released on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow, September 16th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. And it’s dreadful.

It actually makes me cringe to write the following words: The best thing in this movie is Justin Timberlake. Ugh. I feel like showering now. But it’s actually true. He is reasonably entertaining as a French Canadian hockey goalie who is a whiz with the ladies. His overblown French accent and his idiotic love for Celine Dion are worth a smirk or two. But Mike Myers, as the Indian guru Pitka, is doing the same role he has always done. Basically, he figures that putting on an accent (in this case an Indian one) is funny enough to carry a movie. He then figures that Verne Troyer simply being a tiny guy is funny. And that having an elephant walk around is funny. Or that two elephants having sex with each other is funny. In this movie, none of these things are funny. They are obnoxious.

Jessica Alba, once again, plays the hot woman. Just showing up is enough for her, because she is hot. Just like showing up is enough for Verne Troyer, because he is short. And for Mike Myers as well, because he has an accent. Get it? This really is one of the worst movies of the year, with almost no laughs and definitely no charm. Skip The Love Guru. And wait until Mike Myers makes his sixth movie. Oh, by the way - I won the bet. By a large margin. The Love Guru cost 62 million dollars and made 32 million. Opening weekend, 13 million. Get Smart opened with a 39 million dollar weekend, and has made 129 million dollars so far. With a production budget of 80 million dollars. Case closed.

I tried. I really, truly tried to like Southland Tales. I liked The Rock in it. That’s right - The Rock, the wrestler, I liked him. I liked Seann William Scott - Stiffler from American Pie, the guy who has only ever played a drunken frat boy, I liked him. I liked Bai Ling -the Chinese actress who was recently busted for shoplifting. I also liked Jon Lovitz (Newsradio), Cheri O’Teri (irritating name), Christopher (there can be only one) Lambert, Justin (my music is obnoxious) Timberlake, Mandy (look how big my eyes are) Moore, Sarah Michelle (I have two first names) Gellar and John (remember me) Laroquette. I liked them all! I liked the camera work, I loved the layout of the scenes, I enjoyed seeing what was coming up next. I was desperate to like Southland Tales. The movie begged me to like it, and I said OK movie, I will try my very best to do so, just don’t let me down. And the movie did not let me down. But I can’t recommend it because it is awful.

Here is a plot synopsis, as best I can make out. Perhaps once you have read this you will understand. World War 3 has begun. There have been nuclear bombs set off in Texas, so the Americans have responded by bombing Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Korea, Afghanistan, and possibly Belgium. The US army is running out of oil. It is the near future, but George Bush is still preisdent. (In fact, at one point they use actual file footage of Bush speaking.) As the oil runs out, a mad scientist invents a way to get energy directly from the ocean. He is either bent on world domination, or he’s crazy, or he’s just a nice old man with evil advisors. Still don’t know. The Rock shows up on a beach. He has amnesia. He is a famous actor, but he doesn’t know that, and he hooks up with Sarah Michelle Gellar, who is a porn star. He has a wife that he has forgotten, however, and she is Mandy Moore, who is the daughter of the man who is running for vice-president of the US in the elections on the Republican ticket. There are cameras everywhere, and one of the major election issues is bill 69, which would restrict the ability of the government to invade the privacy of people. Take a breath for a moment.

We continue: Seann William Scott is a cop who has a twin brother who is a left-wing extremist, and he has kidnapped his twin in order to pose as him in a large conspiracy that will see him, posing as his brother, commit a double murder with racist overtones, that will be filmed by The Rock before he finds out who he really is, and this will be released to the media to discredit both the cops and the Republicans all at once. There is musical montage, a music video, a song-and-dance number, a soap-opera going on in Mandy Moore’s family where some people are sleeping with some other people, there is a world domination theme, there is drug trafficking, somehow related to this machine in the ocean that produces energy and also perhaps some variation on Soylent Green. Everything in the country is sponsored by either Hustler or Budweiser, and the grand finale of the movie involves a giant Zeppelin, a riot, a fireworks display, a rift in the space-time continuum, and a flying ice cream truck.

So…yeah. Southland Tales is about all of this, and none of this. The movie is two and a half hours long, and to cram all this stuff in and make us care, or understand, it would have to be eleven hours plus. There is just way too much going on. And yet the movie seems to have a rather laguid pace, like it isn’t hurrying anywhere. It feels good to watch it. It is visually impressive. The writing is very good. There are some great lines, and great moments. The little old lady from Poltergeist is in the movie, and she has a great moment at the bottom of a staircase straight out of that movie. The little old smart guy from The Princess Bride is in it a lot too, and he throws it to that film with the word “preposterous”. Kiss Me Deadly, the classic 1955 film noir, is playing on the TV in the porn star’s room. The porn stars have their own TV shows and energy drinks. There are so many cool actors doing cool things. Justin Timberlake is awesome. And yet - there really is no movie here. You can sit there for two and a half hours. You might be entertained, you will be mildly stimulated, and you may even think you are enjoying yourself. But when the movie ends, you won’t know what it was about, you won’t care, and six minutes later you will have forgotten everything about the film. It’s heavy on style, but the substance is almost non-existent.