Cynical Cinema

I’m watching American Mall right now and my brain hurts. My whole body hurts from being so tense in the ball into which I have curled myself. There is no word I could use to describe this movie other than “painful”. This is a film brought to DVD today, August 12th, by Paramount Home Entertainment, who I don’t hold responsible for this, and by the producers of High School Musical, who I DO hold personally responsible for my current state of agony. This travesty to popular culture is referred to as “a 2008 MTV Original Musical Movie”. Which begs the question for me:

Who, exactly, is the MTV target audience? Judging by The Hills and A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, it is vain, airheaded twenty-something high maintenance bimbos who care more about their hair and their last date than they do the war in Iraq and the state of the environment. That is, if they have heard of Iraq. Or the environment. Judging by Cribs and My Super Sweet Sixteen, it is vain, airheaded seventeen-year-old high maintenance bimbos who care more about the latest shade of nail polish and how cute Zac Efron looked on that Rolling Stone cover than they do about the presidential election or health care policy. Judging by the abundance of Ashlee Simpson and Hilary Duff shows, it’s vain, airheaded 12-year-old high maintenance bimbos who care more about High School Musical and the cute guy who’s friends with their older brother than they do about their grades or any constructive extra-curricular activities.

And judging by The American Mall, their audience is a bunch of bedridden, shallow, airheaded seven-year-old future sluts with the collective IQ of a potato. There is one character in this movie who uses the phrase “wait - backspace!” at least six times. The only movie in the world more idiotic, with a worse message for young girls, is Bratz. The only movie ever made that is more formulaic is Busty Backdoor Babes Volume 112. (Volume 111 actually featured one girl who was NOT a babe - surprise! And that makes it more unexpected and original than this garbage.) And there may not be another movie experience more painful than this one. Well, discounting any movie “starring” Paris Hilton.

The main message of this movie, as I understand it, is that a lovely young girl works at a mall for her lovely young mother. Who looks to be seven years older than her daughter. She has been accepted to university, but she isn’t excited about it, because she wants to be a rock star. And who doesn’t? But she meets a guy - who also wants to be a rock star! Amazing coincidence! And they fall in love! (With him listening to her through a wall, and singing along, and peeping through windows, like an uber-creepy Phantom of the Opera.) But will mom understand that she doesn’t want to go to college? Or that she can become a rock star overnight if the right person just happens to walk by? Will she and her new love form the band that will set the world on fire? OF COURSE THEY WILL.

There are several supporting characters. The star girl’s shallow slutty friends, and the star guy’s lazy stoner friends. Then, there is the Evil Bitch Girl who runs the mall even though she is clearly sixteen years old. Her daddy owns the mall, and she walks over people, and she just wants daddy’s approval and she hates everyone else and she’s so horrible! She’s going to tear the happy couple apart! She’s going to close the good girl’s store! She’s going to…drive me absolutely insane! But she’s not the only one. Every character in this movie is either painfully ordinary or agonizingly irritating. Every scenario is cliched and stupid. And the musical scenes? Enough to make me suffer skin failure.

If you pick up The American Mall, you will be willingly subjecting yourself to the 100 worst minutes on DVD this week. And if your young daughter specifically asks for it, that is great. That will indicate to you that she is already careening down a terrible path, and it’s time to do some serious parenting. She’s headed for almost certain disaster in life, and you might actually have time to stop it. Here’s step one. Don’t let her rent this movie. Rent Brokedown Palace instead and make her watch it. Step two is up to you.

The Backyardigans are a crew of creatures that sing songs for very small children. The Backyardigans High Flying Adventures comes out tomorrow, May 13th, on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment. It features four episodes, “Fly Girl”, “Who Goes There?”, “What’s Bugging You?”, and “Chichen-Itza Pizza”. Each episode features a certain style of music. The songs in Fly Girl are all fifties tunes (like The Wanderer), with new lyrics by the Backyardigans. What’s Bugging You features Rumba music, Who Goes There is set to flamenco, and Chichen-Itza Pizza is set to…get ready…college fight songs! This is a good way for kids to learn about history, but far be it from me to suggest that perhaps Chichen Itza and the Mexican jungle are a location that might perhaps…historically speaking…be best served with the Rumba music, while the episode about the Spiffy Spiffy club could perhaps make better use of the fight songs? Perhaps I’m thinking too much. This is, after all, a show for four-year-olds.

This bunch of creatures seems to be assembled as though they are all animals who one might find in one’s backyard. Or at least that is what the name of the group would indicate to me. However, they are a penguin, a hippo, a moose, a sheep, I think a rabbit, and another pink polka-dotted creature which might be an insect, but is more likely something created by Dr. Seuss. Like, a capblabber, or a jilskittler, or something. I can’t imagine what it really is. Again, I am thinking too much. It’s tough to write a review from the perspective of a four-year-old, it having been so long since I was one. I just know that these animals do NOT exist in my backyard. Maybe the rabbit. If that’s what it is supposed to be. Or that pink thing, if it’s supposed to be a beetle.

The animation is computer-generated, in a sort of claymation way, and it is certainly much better than the animation of similar children’s shows, like Jakers! And the Wonder Pets, which it has been my pleasure to watch and review of late. And the writing, while not as good as say, Spongebob, is better as well. Also, the music is decent, much better than Wonder Pets, but not nearly as good as the VeggieTales. All in all, the Backyardigans are middle-ground children’s fare at best. They may entertain your children just fine, but if you want to get them good stuff, you’d be better off with Spongebob or Veggie Tales.

So I determined through the Cartier Affair that David Hasselhoff can’t really act. With the Spongebob movie, I learned that he’s not even very good as a self-deprecating cameo. It has been said he is an actor. This is false. It has also been said he is a singer. Mostly by the Germans. If this proves to be false, I will learn that the only thing he’s really good at is getting wasted and eating cheeseburgers, making him Randy from Traier Park Boys.So, in order to find out if the Hoff can sing, I purchased a copy of Jekyll and Hyde: the Musical. This is a Broadway musical that has been filmed live and inexplicably made into a DVD. It can be found in the $2.99 bin at Wal-Mart. I didn’t think it was like Wal-Mart to overprice things that much. Hasselhoff plays both Dr. Jekyll AND Mr. Hyde, so you get twice the Hoff! Which means he sings twice as much, and proves that he may be the most inexplicable star in the world.

It turns out he can’t sing well, OR act. So ladies, please. Send me an email. Is he unusually attractive? I don’t get it. And I certainly didn’t get this musical. It wasn’t just the Hoff – the writers rhymed the word “man” with the word “man”, “murder” with “murder”…perhaps the best line in the musical is “we think you’re odd – don’t try to play God”. But truly this isn’t a movie, it’s a live Broadway production. So the live audience is disconcerting. You’ll hear them laugh after some line from the Hoff, or cheer after some terrible song, and you think “damn studio audiences – that’s not funny!”.

Hasselhoff does, however, attempt to prove his acting chops in this one, as he effects a seemless transformation between the earnest Dr. Jekyll and the hideous Mr. Hyde by messing up his hair and sticking out his bottom lip. This proves fairly ineffective, as he has to pull that bottom lip back in to sing.

Jekyll and Hyde is a musical even Woody couldn’t love.

Across the Universe thinks it is very smart. And in some ways, it is. But in watching it, I was constantly aware of the smug sense of self-satisfaction the people involved obviously felt. The concept of the film is that it is a story that is told through Beatles’ songs. That’s about it. So what it ends up becoming is a loose and poorly connected collection of related stories, barely adequate acting, and some heavy-handed symbolism and satire. (Example: There is a sign painted on a wall in New York that says Cafe Huh? Get it? Example 2: They sing “Revolution”, and as they talk about pictures of Chairman Mao, lo and behold, there’s one on the wall. The rooftop concert. Remember when the Beatles did a…never mind.) The characters all have very convenient names for a movie with Beatles songs as its only means of conveying plot. There is a Lucy, a Jude, and Maxwell, Sadie, Prudence and Jojo. Jojo is convenient for the song Come Together, Lucy appears in a sky with diamonds, and Jude…well, obviously. For some reason, Maxwell never goes on a silver-hammer-aided rampage, and that disappointed me a little. I mean, he WAS sent to Vietnam.

In the end, Across the Universe ends up being nothing more than a series of music videos set to Beatles songs, with the occasional staggeringly cheesy my-first-video-editor-kit special effects. And yet, somehow, against all odds, it works. It should not work. I should not enjoy this movie. In fact, I kept kicking myself, over and over, every time I realized I was having a good time watching. Which, at the end of the two-hours-plus run time, left my non-kicking leg extremely bruised. I can’t explain it. I really don’t understand why it was good. It just was. Bono shows up as a guy in a cowboy hat and a handlebar mustache to lead a rousing rendition of I Am The Walrus. Eddie Izzard, as Mr. Kite, appears in a cartoon music video that looks as though it was shot by the Monty Python animation department. And Salma Hayek shows up in a nurse uniform to do backing vocals on Happiness is a Warm Gun.

In the end, the movie’s main failing is that it is WAY too long. This would have been a terrifically entertaining one-hour movie, but at more than two hours, it requires a commitment. Also, the best covers of the Beatles songs come near the beginning - a fantastic version of I Wanna Hold Your Hand, sung by a lovesick lesbian teenager, and a heartbreaking version of Let It Be set during a riot in Detroit. Also great is the take on Revolution. The only moment in the movie where you feel and see the song the way the Beatles intended. Song to skip: I Want You/She’s So Heavy. This is painful in that same heavy-handed sort of way. It’s a draft board, see, and Uncle Sam is singing I Want You…to join the army…and then the soldiers are singing She’s So Heavy while carrying…the Statue of Liberty. You want to scream at the television. Come ON! There are many other songs worth skipping as well. And the dialogue is dreadful. The guy at the unemployment line in England says “I was going to retire when I’m 64.” Get it? Or the explanation for the presence of Prudence in the apartment: “She came in through the bathroom window”. We GET IT. Now STOP.

I know, it seems like I’m ragging on this movie, and, in point of fact, I am. Nothing about it adds up. It should really be awful, and it IS awful. But somehow, it came together enough to entertain me reasonably for at least an hour. Get it? Came together? Whooo, I could have written this film. I don’t know how I could have written a more ambiguous review, but there it is. This movie is terrible. And you might just enjoy it.

When I rented Romance and Cigarettes, I did so because of the cast and director. John Turturro directed this film, and it stars James Gandolfini, Kate Winslett, Susan Sarandon, Mary-Louise Parker, Mandy Moore, Eddie Izzard, and two of my favourites - Steve Buscemi and Christopher Walken. Based on that cast alone, I picked it up and watched it. So imagine my surprise when James Gandolfini, in the first scene, Tony Soprano, began to sing. Yes, Romance and Cigarettes is a musical! A bonkers, insane, weirdly entertaining musical. Everyone sings, and the musical numbers feel unnecessary, but they are the most entertaining part of the film. The basic premise is that Gandolfini is married to Sarandon, but cheating on her with the much-younger Kate Winslett, who has never looked sexier in a movie. Sarandon catches him, and effectively ends their relationship, which has an effect on the children (Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker and Aida Turturro - who plays Ton’y sister on The Sopranos…weird).

Gandolfini’s character is named Nick Murder, a strange name, and he comes off as a modern, filthier Ralph Kramden. His buddy at work, Steve Buscemi, is a modern, much filthier Ed Norton. Every character is a bizarre weirdo, and they each have twisted and strange relationships with each other. And the movie is filthy. There is a weird but effective scene where Winslett talks to Gandolfini in an incredibly dirty phone call while Sarandon sings Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart. Christopher Walken, as “cousin Bo” (of course) has several of the best scenes, including a demented take on My Delilah, which ends with him using a knife to stab his wife, then singing into that knife as though it is a microphone. He is one of the strangest of the cast, in that he talks almost exclusively in movie lines and song titles. Mandy Moore’s creepy take on the song “I Want Candy” is mercifully cut short.

Overall, Romance And Cigarettes is fun and exuberant while still being tragic and sad. There are parts that are downright gloomy, which sort of takes away from the more entertaining moments. But watching these terrific actors, especially Walken, do their thing is more than enough reason to rent this film. It is not perfect, or even great, but it is more than enough fun for a Sunday afternoon.

Johnny Depp is amazing. On paper, some ideas seem idiotic. Edward Scissorhands. So…there’s a guy who has scissors, where his hands should be. And…he loves a girl, and clips some hedges. Sound good? Or as moronic as Pirates of the Caribbean. We’d like to make a movie out of a Disney theme park ride. After all, you can only do so many remakes of movies and TV shows, right? And Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. So, there’s this barber, who murders people. Violently, with lots of blood and gore. Oh, and he will sing first. And it will star Johnny Depp. What? But Depp has proved that he can turn even the most half-baked bad idea into something great if he has something to work with. And that something, in Sweeney Todd, is Tim Burton. Ever since the two collaborated on Edward Scissorhands, they have been the greatest actor-director tandem of the past two decades. The Scorcese-DeNiro team of the new millenium.

Sweeny Todd is not their best film together. (That would be Ed Wood.) By the way, did anyone out there know that Tim Burton directed “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”? Watch it again. Knowing that now, it’s easy to see. OK. I’m endorsing Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. On with the Sweeney Todd review. This movie is dark. But then, it’s Burton. The sets that represent London at it’s grimiest and most malevolent could have been lifted from The Corpse Bride or even Batman. And they are strikingly bleak and gothic, as is Depp himself. His Sweeney Todd is as bizarre looking a character as there is in a movie. So too is Helena Bonham Carter, who plays the woman who helps Depp murder dozens of London residents. Speaking of Carter - the cast of Sweeney Todd, apart from Depp and Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) is almost entirely taken from the Harry Potter movies. Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall…my familiarity with them as Harry Potter regulars gave an even creepier edge to this film.

And Sweeney Todd is certainly creepy. Based on the gigantic hit Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim, it’s the story of a barber named Benjamin Barker whose wife is taken from him by an evil judge. The judge then throws this barber into prison and makes off with his wife and daughter. Benjamin Barker, released from prison, makes his way back to London where he has now re-invented himself as Sweeney Todd, a maniacal killer who will stop at nothing to avenge his family. Helena Bonham Carter is Mrs. Lovett, a baker who makes the worst meat pies in all of London. She tells Todd about the fate of his family, and helps him plan his murderous revenge. However, that revenge is, to borrow another movie phrase, a dish best served cold. Sweeney Todd will have to bide his time before he can have his satisfaction. But his murderous psyche can’t be contained, and before long he is killing just about anybody. Anyone who sits down in his barber chair who won’t be missed gets the ol’ slice and dice from the straight razor.

The slaughter of these people is absolutely brutal and bloody in a horror movie sort of way. And if Sweeney Todd were not a musical, and this murder was taking place without the singing, it just wouldn’t work. But for some reason, here it does. As a by-product of these killings and the mounting bodies, Carter, in her meat pie downstairs, discovers a terrific way to kill two birds with one stone. The delightful idea that she can both find a way to dispose of the bodies AND stop buying meat to make her pies at the same time. Everybody wins! In an interesting sub-plot, we learn that Todd’s daughter is being held prisoner by the evil judge in London’s version of Rapunzel’s tower. The young man who helped Todd return to London is in love with her, and they conspire to break her out and run off together. There is also a creepy old woman who keeps showing up and cackling. Perhaps the best supporting turn in the film comes courtesy of Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat himself, who plays a rival barber and quite the sinister character himself. His demise, while untimely, is perhaps deserved and certainly unpleasant. But in a weird way, kind of funny.

When watching Sweeney Todd, one is constantly aware that it is a Broadway musical. But that is not a bad thing. The songs are terrific, the staging is precise and fantastic, and the movement of the characters in the individual scenes is magnificent. The main reason this works is that there is what seems to be an intentional disconnect between the audience and the subject matter. We can’t really identify with any of the characters, but we are not really supposed to. Just like watching a musical on the stage, where the singing itself creates that separation, so too does the movie keep us at arm’s length. Which is ideal. We don’t want to become too invested in these characters. With whom would we side? With Depp, who is murdering dozens of innocents, with Carter, who is serving them as pies to other innocents, with Rickman, who is evil and malicious as the judge? The only characters who are in the least sympathetic in the film are Todd’s daughter and her would-be lover. And in the violent, bloody climax, they are the lone gleam of hope for happiness in the entire film. But Sweeney Todd is not supposed to be a happy movie. It is supposed to be a good movie. And it certainly is that.