Cynical Cinema

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…

Final Destination (4/10):  The first Final Destination movie was two things.  Terrible and great.  In a movie that follows the conventions of the teen-horror genre, it manages to be kind of original.  Sure, there are hot young actors getting into scary situations and so forth.  But Final Destination manages to inject some life into this.  You see, a kid (Devon Sawa) has a premonition about a plane crash.  When he freaks out and demands to be let off the plane, along with several others, the plane does indeed crash.  Then Death has to even the score, and each of those who escaped death on the plane get picked off one by one.  Which means there is no real villain, it’s just Death coming out of nowhere.  Which leads to some crazy, out-of-nowhere, all-of-a-sudden death sings which are genuinely jolting.  The special effects are cheesy and bad, the dialogue is inane, and Devon Sawa is simply dreadful as the lead.  But at least people get killed in really interesting ways.  Final Destination was directed by James Wong.

Final Destination 2 (5/10):  An even more ludicrous plot than the first one, with Ali Larter, the lone survivor from the first movie, locked up in a padded cell, terrified that Death is still coming for her.  When a girl (A.J. Cook) has a premonition about a car accident, she manages to save several people.  Again, Death comes for them, and they enlist Larter’s help to defeat Death.  Then there is some nonsense about a pregnant lady and a birth interrupting the chain of death.  It is an even-more ludicrous premise and idiotic denoument than the first movie.  But what makes this movie better is simply that Cook and Larter are much better actors than Sawa, the dialogue isn’t quite as stupid, and the special effects are better.  Which means those amazing death scenes are that much more jolting.  James Wong is out for this one, and David R. Ellis replaces him as director.  He is slightly less ham-handed, but this movie is still really stupid.  It’s just stupid AND fun.

Final Destination 3 (2/10):  The worst in the series.  At this point, we’re used to the crazy, out-of-nowhere deaths.  We know what to expect.  And of course, they’re still shocking.  But this plot, (now revolving around a roller coaster accident) is amazingly preposterous, even for this series.  After a pretty decent second installment in this series, they have gone back to the people who created the first one.  James Wong is back as director, and brings all of his ineptitude to the table.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the girl with the premonition this time, and she is average at best.  There is a pretty good death scene involving a tanning bed.  But what makes this movie dreadful is…well many things.  Here are a few of them.  The special effects are, once again, dreadful.  The opening scene with the roller coaster is full of shaky cameras, bizarre camera tricks, and nothing cool.  The movie makes references to Abraham Lincoln and 9/11 when the kids start to investigate what’s going on.  A staggering series of leaps in logic that leaves us really angry.  We get even more angry as the death scenes, which are no longer a surprise, drag on.  And on.  And on.  Just kill them already!  We know what’s coming!  In fact, just kill this movie already.

The three movies came out in a package yesterday, courtesy of Alliance Films.  They are available in a bargain trilogy, all on just one disc.  Final Destination and Final Destination 2 are on one side of the DVD, Final Destination 3 is on the other.  There are no special features worth mentioning.  When it hit stores, there was a 2-disc edition of Final Destination 3 that allowed you to change the movie - choose how the characters die, whether they die at all - that was kind of neat.  But the movie was so bad to begin with that there was no possible way I could care about these special features.  Therefore, the best way to get this series IS on a single disc.  If you want to get it at all.

 Oh, and the FOURTH installment in this series is scheduled to be released in 2009.  Which might well make this “trilogy” incomplete.  Perhaps you’re better off waiting for Alliance to release a thirty-one disc box set of all thirty-one installments once this series has finally bled itself dry.  On the plus side - David R. Ellis will be directing the fourth movie, which means it might be pretty good, like Final Destination 2.

It’s pretty clear that Billy Bob Thornton has two careers. One where he takes roles in serious movies and does a decent-to-good job in movies that are generally decent-to-good. (The Astronaut Farmer, Friday Night Lights.) The other career is the one where he takes roles in comedies, and plays really obnoxious, angry, foul-mouthed, possibly drunk characters, with mixed results. These movies can be fantastically funny, like Bad Santa. Or they can be painful, juvenile and idiotic, like School For Scoundrels or Mr. Woodcock (which is being released by Alliance Atlantis this coming Tuesday).

Seann William Scott also has two careers. One, where he plays a sex-crazed, party-animal frat-boy type, in teen comedies that are decent at best. Like American Pie or Road Trip. The second career is the one where he plays smarmy and wimpy characters in more grown-up comedies that are invariable lousy. Like The Dukes of Hazzard, Bulletproof Monk, Evolution, Dude Where’s My Car, and Mr. Woodcock.

This movie is definitely painful. And lousy. And dreadful. And insipid. And ridiculous. And awful. The reason I have found so many synonyms for horrible is that this is the level on which the movie works. You see, Seann William Scott plays a character that was terrorized as a child by his gym teacher, Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton, of course). He grows up to become a self-help guru, and returns to his home town where he discovers that Mr. Woodcock is now dating his mom. And of course, having sex with her, which is apparently the REAL problem. The real problem with the movie is that they think comedy is having people yell synonyms for sex with his mom. Porked! Plowed! Such and such…this is not funny. It is irritating. And so is this movie.

One of the first scenes in this movie is the only funny one. Where Seann William Scott does a book signing for his new self-help book. It’s funny because the whole self-help session is idiotic and painfully stupid. The tree of tranquility, the warm pool of security…all that kind of crap. It’s reasonably funny. Then the movie takes this abrupt U-turn into idiocy. When Scott finds out that Thornton is nailing, banging, having his way with his mom, he goes out of his way to ruin their relationship. Breaking into his house, (which of course leads to him hiding under the bed while he listens to them have sex), trying to set him up, (which of course turns out badly), and a myriad of other things. Staggeringly simple, terribly written, and horribly acted, and I wonder what happens at the end? Does he learn that Mr. Woodcock is actually a very nice person, and accept his mom’s new relationship?

Of course he does. But…where does he come to this realization? Well, the only place that could make this movie any worse. Live, on the Tyra Banks show! The only show on all of television that I hate more than I hate this movie. And I REALLY hate this movie.

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.