Cynical Cinema

Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay hits DVD today, July 29th, from Alliance Films. It picks up right where the last one left off, with the pair having just returned home from White Castle. And now, they are preparing to go to Amsterdam to track down Harold’s new girlfriend Maria so he can profess his love. As they get onto the plane, Kumar makes a reference to the film Eurotrip. He says “this is gonne be just like that movie Eurotrip, only it’s not gonna suck, it’s gonna be awesome”. Well, it turn’s out he’s mostly wrong. While the new Harold and Kumar IS better than Eurotrip, that isn’t saying much. It still sucks.

The opening scene, picking up right where the superior Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle left off, involves a really gross fart joke and an even grosser masturbation scene. It’s not funny, it’s just gross. As far as opening scenes go, this is one of the worst in movies. Now, the film does get (marginally) better as it goes on. There is a good scene at customs that pokes fun at racial stereotypes and airport terrorist profiling. When they get onto the plane, that stereotyping continues, and it’s good for a few more pointed and clever laughs. When Kumar pulls out his smokeless bong in the airplane washroom, however, the laughs end as the incredulity sets in. Rob Corddry, from The Daily Show, provides a few funny moments as the federal interrogator, but again the possibilities for serious social commentary through humour are completely wasted.

Quickly, the pair get arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay, where the inhumane treatment of prisoners is played for laughs, but not clever or pointed ones. And it isn’t funny either. They escape Guantanamo right away, hitch a ride to the U.S. with a boatload of Cuban refugees, get to Miami and go visit a friend. The Cuban immigrants could have provided a pointed satire on American policies on immigration…but they are wasted as well. Instead we get a party with hundreds of hot chicks naked from the waist down. That Eurotrip comparison is getting more and more apt. Harold and Kumar quickly manage to acquire a fancy sports car, and set across the country to finish two gigantic movie cliches - one being clearing their name, and two being to break up a wedding between the love of Kumar’s life and the Bad Guy of the movie.

This cross-country trip is the bulk of the movie, and has some decent moments. There is a lot of satire involving racial politics - the big scary basketball playing black guys who are actually upstanding citizens and orthodontists. The redneck inbreds who have a totally modern trailer equipped with all the modern electronic gizmos. And Rob Corddry, who shows complete insensitivity and utter idiocy when questioning black people, jewish people, Indians and Koreans. But the title of the movie is Harold And Kumar Escape From GUANTANAMO BAY. Guantanamo Bay. One of the most reviled, infamous and easily-lampooned American institutions. So why focus the satire on racial differences, instead of on Guantanamo Bay? Or terrorism? Or the treatment of Arabic-Americans? Or anything that is evoked by the phrase “Guantanamo Bay”? Every single moment that appears to be a set-up for that kind of sharp, intelligent satire is utterly wasted. For example:

Rob Corddry, berating witnesses, uses the phrase “you thought our national security was a joke?” Which is clearly a set-up for a good bit but…nothing. Harold and Kumar are in Gitmo, and they begin to get into a very interesting dialogue with two Middle Eastern men who clearly are terrorists. But just as the conversation reaches the level of interesting, the gay oral sex jokes begin. And then they escape. They are in Guantanamo for what appears to be a total of two minutes. And on their cross-country road trip, the only person they meet who is even close to a Muslim is their buddy who’s throwing the pantsless party. And rather than delve into something deeper, the big joke they get out of this guy is gross full frontal nudity. Hahaha…his penis is gross…

Once again, just as in the first film, the best moments in Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay come courtesy of Neil Patrick Harris, who has a slightly longer cameo in this one. With Doogie Howser, the boys make it through a roadblock, visit a whorehouse, and have drug-induced hallucinations about unicorns. These are the best parts of the film, and the meeting between Harris and Corddry verges on classic. But as far as the rest of the film goes, it’s pretty difficult to appreciate. I understand why it was made - White Castle was a big, surprise success, so it would stand to reason that they would attempt to capitalize by making a second feature. But a little effort in doing so would have been nice.

The effort, in this case, appears to have been made entirely with the DVD. The bonus features are pretty neat. You can watch the movie on a different setting, one that allows you to control the outcome. Some of the changes are throwaway changes - like, you can make the pantsless party a topless party. Why the filmmakers would have bothered re-filming that entire scene with bare boobs instead of bare bottoms, I don’t know…oh wait. I do know why they would have done that. Other options allow you to change the movie so that you’re watching an entirely different movie, one that was filmed long after the first one was over. If you decide not to let Kumar smoke his bong on the airplane at the beginning, for example, you get a twenty-minute alternate version of the movie where they actually make it to Amsterdam and meet up with Maria, and Kumar falls in love with a new girl and gets married.

But the problem is that these are special features that force you to watch more of a movie that already sucks. And I wouldn’t recommend that.

          Just putting Will Ferrell in a comedy means a few things.  First, it will do decent bank at the box-office at worst, and massive bank at best.  Secondly, even if it sucks, it will feature a few great laughs somewhere in the film.  And Semi-Pro has both.  A decent bank at the box office for a crappy comedy, and some seriously great laughs in an otherwise crappy comedy.  Will Ferrell is Jackie Moon, a one-hit-wonder singer with a song called “Love Me Sexy”, which is kind of funny, but not as funny as it should be.  He made enough money with that song that he is able to buy a team in the fledgling American Basketball Association, the Flint Tropics.  The team is playing in a tiny market, to few fans, and Ferrell is constantly dreaming up bizarre promotions to get more fans out to the games.  Since this is a second-rate basketball league, he is also able to play on the team.  As the owner of the team, he can decide this for himself, and he does. 

          The rest of the team doesn’t seem to resent this, however, because they really don’t care about their careers or the game.  They just want to be minor-level local celebrities, which gets them the occasional free beer and every now and then gets them laid.  Which, for them, is good enough.  They do have a substantial talent on the team, however, in Clarence “Downtown” Withers, a Dr. J type player who changes his name before just about every game.  And when it is announced that the
ABA is going to be merging with the NBA, and that the top four teams in the league will get to join while the others will fold, the Tropics all of a sudden have something to play for.  Inclusion in the NBA, which is everyone’s dream.  So Ferrell hires a loose-cannon ex-NBA player (Woody Harrelson) to help get the team over the hump. 

          In the meantime, he keeps devising these crazy promotional schemes to draw people to the arena to watch the games.  These schemes provide the bulk of the laughs in the film, especially the scene where Ferrell wrestles the bear.  This scene (to start out, anyway) is remarkably underplayed by Ferrell, and really works.  So do a few others, but overall the movie doesn’t.  It doesn’t work because it doesn’t do anything.  It doesn’t go anywhere, it just muddles it’s way through a story we’ve all seen a thousand times - an underdog misfit team decides to play well, and fights their way to glory…with hilarious results.  And in doing so, they throw in a bunch of used-up sports movie cliches from Slapshot, Major League, Bull Durham, and a host of other sports comedies that are much better than this one. 

          In the end, I would actually recommend this movie, because the few laughs that are in there are very good, and because Ferrell, Harrellson and Andre Benjamin (who plays Clarence Withers) all do extremely well with the thin comedy they are handed.  And also because, on some level, this movie is interesting, historically.  Semi-Pro actually seems to feel some empathy and some reverence for the
ABA, which merged with the NBA in 1976 and saw the Spurs, the Nuggets, the Pacers and the Nets join the big league.  And although Semi-Pro seems to think that just having an afro in the 70s is funny, it still manages to find some kind of a heart under the poorly executed comedy.  Not a great movie, but not Ferrell’s worst by a long shot.  Semi-Pro is being released tomorrow, June 3rd, by Alliance Films.

I was struggling on Saturday night. Struggling to watch the Sens-Leafs in HD, while my girlfriend had her friend over. While Jen is usually pretty good about hockey, especially Senators games. But Ashley was extremely insistent upon watching whatever was on MTV. MTV! I decided that the best thing to do was to compromise in some way, and that was to find a movie that was not the hockey game, but that HAD to be better than whatever was on MTV. The girls seem to like documentaries - the last time Ashley was over I made sure she never shopped at Wal-Mart again by showing her Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price. This time, I thought I would put on the new documentary “Everything’s Cool”, an insightful look at Global Warming. But there were previews. And the girls decided, on the fourth preview, that the movie being previewed looked far better than the documentary I had suggested. The movie was called The Ten, a humourous look at the ten commandments. So, grudgingly, I switched the DVDs. And put on The Ten. As that movie started, the girls saw another preview that caught their attention, and asked if I had THAT movie, maybe we should watch that one. (THAT movie? It was “Everything’s Cool”!)

I put my foot down. I am not putting the DVD I just took off back on because you saw a preview for the one movie on the other disc, because then I would be switching discs all night and perhaps end up creating some kind of sci-fi situation where I am stuck there, in my living room, going from one DVD menu to another for the rest of eternity. So I skipped the rest of the previews and just pressed play. And we watched The Ten. Which is OK. But not fantastic. Just a little bonkers and kinda funny. Some of the hottest women alive are in this movie - Jessica Alba, who I really don’t think is that hot (kind of cabbagepatch kiddy, as far as I’m concerned) but who seems to be the #1 Hottest Chick Alive according to the rest of the world. And also my personal favourite, Famke Janssen, who I really think is the hottest woman on Earth. In a cougar-ific kinda way. (Check out Deep Rising. Horrible film, hottest wet-T-shirt Famke Janssen scene ever.)

The movie is basically ten short vignettes about each of the ten commandments. Paul Rudd (who was fantastic in Knocked Up) oversees the vignettes, introduces them and runs his own little bizarre drama as we move from one to another. Famke Janssen is his wife, and he is cheating on her with Jessica Alba. Some really cool actors show up in the film as well - Liev Schreiber, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Janeane Garofolo, and Winona Ryder in some inspired casting. (She appears in the Thou-Shalt-Not-Steal vignette. Get it?) Each vignette gets more and more bonkers, as they connect to each other in a bizarre sort of way. There are three really excellent ones. The Thou-Shalt-Not-Steal one is great, as Winona Ryder falls in love with a ventriloquist’s dummy, and steals it…it’s insane. So too is the Schreiber bit where two neighbours keep trying to one-up each other by buying more and more catscan machines. Totally demented. But very little is as demented as the animated “Lying Rhino” sequence, narrated by a bunch of junkies, done in full, almost-X-rated, Felick The Cat style animation.

There are a couple of duds as well, but overall each segment is pretty watchable if not excellent. This film is not for the squeamish, as my girlfriend squirmed uncomfortably for the entire duration of the “Covet thy Neighbour’s Wife” segment, where Rob Corddry and Ken Marino converse very seriously and intensely about rape in prison, and how if you are one man’s prison wife, there is an assumption that you will not let yourself be raped by others…it’s definitely an over-the-top scene, but it made me laugh. Most of this film did, and it is definitely worth renting. (In the end, if you have to make a choice, as I did, between this one and Everything’s Cool, choose the latter. But if you can watch both, do it.)