Road Hard

ROAD HARD (2015)

Starring Adam Carolla, Diane Farr, Jay Mohr, Cynthy Wu, David Koechner, David Alan Grier, Philip Rosenthal, Larry Miller, Illeana Douglas, Dana Gould, Howie Mandel, Brooke Smith, Robyn Cohen, Jim O’Heir and Alison Rosen.

Screenplay by Adam Carolla and Kevin Hench.

Directed by Adam Carolla and Kevin Hench.

Distributed by FilmBuff.  98 minutes.  Not Rated.

Adam Carolla has been complaining for years on his popular podcast about what a drag life on the road is.

In his second self-funded independent film, Carolla stays close to what he knows.  Both this film and 2007’s The Hammer – which is also in our reviews section – Carolla uses his life as the jumping off point.  His characters tend to share many quirks – and career highlights – with Carolla, though they tend to have landed in harder times than their inspiration.

Road Hard, which Carolla co-wrote and co-directed with longtime collaborator Kevin Hench, tells the story of Bruce Marsden, an aging stand-up comedian who once was the cohost of a popular series called The Bro Show and also did a bad reality series called Celebrity Barn Raising.  (Carolla himself had been co-host of The Man Show and been on Celebrity Apprentice.)  His old Bro Show co-host (played by Jay Mohr) has become a big late night star (much like Carolla’s old Man Show co-host Jimmy Kimmel).

However, Marsden has hit on harder times than Carolla ever did, not having a popular podcast and a couple of best-selling books to prop him up.  Therefore Marsden has to hit the road, playing a series of soul-deadening one-night gigs at comedy clubs all over the country, where fans only want to talk about things he did fifteen years before.

Road Hard is a pretty enjoyable look at life behind the scenes in the world of stand-up comedians, but I’m not going to lie, I don’t see it catching on with a big audience that was not already following Carolla.  He makes many of the same points on his podcast, and often more entertainingly.

Part of the problem is that Marsden is just too hang-dog depressed and angry about everything.  While that curmudgeonly streak is part of Carolla’s comic charm (in a recent interview I did with him, he admitted, “I think everyone thinks I’m a douche bag”) it can get to be a bit of overload in a 98 minute film.

Also, sadly, with all this great comic talent, the stand-up scenes were just okay.  Adam Carolla the comic can kill, but Adam Carolla the screenwriter did not give his character enough top-shelf material in the club scenes.

Still, while he’s not exactly a great actor, Carolla is a likeable presence and appears to be a good guy and you want to see him succeed, on film and behind the camera.  Carolla is trying his best to entertain you, and this low-budget production (partially produced through crowdfunding) he is giving his all.  And a lot of his famous friends show up to lend a hand.

Road Hard isn’t a great movie, but it mostly is a fun one.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 6, 2015.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2 (2015)

Starring Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, Clark Duke, Adam Scott, Gillian Jacobs, Kumail Nanjiani, Collette Wolfe, Bianca Haase, Kellee Stewart, Jason Jones, Jessica Williams, Christian Slater, Chevy Chase and Lisa Loeb.

Screenplay by Josh Heald.

Directed by Steve Pink.

Distributed by Paramount Pictures.  93 minutes.  Rated R.

You may be wondering why they are making a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine, five years after the film turned out to be a marginal hit and funnier than most people expected.

Still half a decade on, the original film is pretty much forgotten.  And the original was not that good that the world is automatically a better place with more of it.  So you have to wonder what exactly was the selling point when the filmmakers went to pitch a sequel.

Particularly because they were already coming in behind the eight ball.  The star of Hot Tub Time Machine, John Cusack, who played the lead character, decided he wasn’t interested in taking another dip in the tub.

The female lead, a pre-Masters of Sex Lizzy Caplan, who played Cusack’s love interest, also has skipped the sequel, meaning that arguably the two most well-known actors in the film took a pass.  (Possibly three if you still count Crispin Glover as being well-known, though that may be a bit of a stretch.)

So what is left?  Like they say a large (hot tub) wave raises all ships, so the three sidekicks of Hot Tub Time Machine are promoted to lead roles.  (Cusack is dispatched with a single picture and a vague voiceover explanation that he was off on an “experiential journey” – whatever the hell that is.)

All three are well-respected comic actors.  Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke are all very funny guys.  In fact, you could arguably say that Corddry’s id-saturated role of Lou was the comic highlight of the original film.  However, none of them are really able to carry a film on their own.

Also, Cusack’s long-time collaborator Steve Pink, who co-wrote Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity, as well as directing the original Hot Tub and last years surprisingly strong remake of About Last Night is back on board as the director.  Also the original film’s screenwriter Josh Heald wrote the sequel as well.

Unfortunately, the new film has forgotten the original film did a terrific job of balancing gross-out humor with bittersweet nostalgic regret.  It doubled down on the gross out and jettisoned the intrigue that Cusack – who as an actor played some of the most interesting youth roles of the 80s – was now playing a bitter middle-aged guy who was still stuck in the past.

Corddry and Robinson don’t have this kinds of gravitas – they may have been around in the 80s, but most of us don’t remember them before the mid-00’s.  Besides, the whole point of Corddry’s character is that he does not believe in self-reflection.  He’s a pleasure-seeking missile, a man with no scruples or shame.

Therefore, without the bittersweet nostalgic regret of the original, the filmmakers double down on the gross out humor.  Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is certainly more disgusting than the first film.  It’s also not nearly as funny.  And honestly, many of the jokes were variations of ones told better in the original.

As with any time-travel series, if the first film goes into the past, the new one will go into the future.  In it, the guys go forward ten years to solve and avoid Lou’s 2015 murder.  (He is shot in the penis.  Ha Ha.  Sigh.)

In order to try to paper over the huge hole in the film where Cusack (and to a lesser extent Caplan) was the filmmakers brought in a couple of hip youngsters – Adam Scott of Parks and Recreations plays Cusack’s character’s estranged son and Gillian Jacobs of Community plays his moody fiancée.

John Cusack was right to skip it.  I wish the rest of them had realized that sometimes you can’t go back again.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 18, 2015.

While We’re Young

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG (2015)

Starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Grodin, Brady Corbet, Adam Horowitz, Maria Dizzia, Matthew Maher, Dree Hemingway, Matthew Shear, Brady Corbet, Greta Lee, Bonnie Kaufman, Peter Bogdanovich and Peter Yarrow.

Screenplay by Noah Baumbach.

Directed by Noah Baumbach.

Distributed by A24.  94 minutes.  Rated R.

Is it merely a coincidence that Ben Stiller has made two good movies in the 2010s – and both of them were written and directed by Noah Baumbach?

Baumbach and Stiller first worked together in the criminally overlooked Greenberg, with Stiller playing a bitter aging failed musician who has to house-sit his rich younger brother’s LA manor, deal with nostalgia and the obsession of youth culture and ends up falling for the brother’s quirky assistant.  Greenberg was funny, smart, heartfelt and incredibly knowledgeable about life in Los Angeles.

Five years later, they take on New York with While We’re Young.  Once again it looks trenchantly at aging – Gen Xers coming to terms with adulthood while clinging to youth.

Stiller and Naomi Watts play Josh and Cornelia, a couple in their early 40s.  Josh is a documentary filmmaker who had a minor hit with his first film a decade ago and is now trying vainly to wrangle together his follow-up film.  He has been working on the film for years and has over seven hours of footage, but no real conception of the heart of the matter.  (Scenes where Josh tries awkwardly to synopses his opus are uncomfortably hysterical.)  Cornelia is a film producer whose father (played by the wonderful Charles Grodin) is a lion in the world of documentary filmmaking, everything that Josh wishes to be, and yet they do not get along at all.

Josh and Cornelia have been unable to have children and after a series of miscarriages have come to terms with the fact that they will never have children – though the way they keep explaining this over and over again shows the decision is a little more raw than they are willing to acknowledge.  Their best friends (Maria Dizzia and Adam Horovitz, also known as Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys, in a surprisingly good rare acting performance) are new parents of the “you’ll never understand life until you have a child” camp, so Josh and Cornelia are drifting away a bit.

Then, one day when teaching a course on documentary filmmaking, Josh meets a twenty-something couple Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), who are auditing his course.  Josh is an aspiring filmmaker and a fan, and quickly Josh befriends the cute, fun, hipster couple.

It is a lot of fun to see the basic differences of the generations.  Josh and Cornelia are obsessed with their iPhones and tablets, Chinese food and downloaded music, high-def TVs and their hip Brooklyn neighborhood.  Jamie and Darby are more freewheeling, living in a Harlem loft, collectors of vinyl and VHS tapes, hanging at street beaches and touring subway tracks, making and eating artisanal ice cream, creating their lives as a collage of outside sources.

However, quickly it becomes clear that the millennials have a bit more of an agenda than they seem, sending both couples into some dangerous waters.

While We’re Young is effortlessly funny and sharply insightful.  Even if it bogs down a bit at the end, it’s still a damned good film.

Hey Ben, take into consideration the idea of only doing movies with Baumbach.  No more Zoolanders or Nights in the Museum or Secret Lives of Walter Mittys.  You’ve finally found a writer/director who knows how to use your unique talents.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 27, 2015.

Adam Horovitz, Amanda Seyfried, Ben Stiller & Noah Baumbach at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

Ben Stiller, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Horovitz & Noah Baumbach

Examine Life While They’re Young

by Jay S. Jacobs

What happens when hip young professionals in New York City reach their forties and realize that they are no longer as hip nor as young as they had always imagined?

This is the quandary behind Noah Baumbach’s latest film While We’re Young, his second collaboration with actor Ben Stiller. (The two also worked together on the criminally overlooked comedy-drama Greenberg in 2010.)

Stiller and Naomi Watts play Josh and Cornelia, an arty couple (he’s a documentary filmmaker, she is a producer) who have suddenly realized all their friends are devoting their lives to having kids. Unable to have kids, Josh and Cornelia obsess about their jobs and technical innovations to fight the inevitable march of time.

The couple starts feeling younger when they befriend a cute hipster couple in their 20s, Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). Jamie and Darby take them to the hip new happenings and show a refreshing ambivalence about life, rules and status, until it turns out that they have some more devious motives than it originally appears.

Also along for the ride as Stiller’s former best friend in a rare acting performance is Adam Horovitz, better known as Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys. (Horovitz had starred in two indie films – Lost Angels and Roadside Prophets – in the late 80s/early 90s, but has rarely acted in the years since.)

A few days before While We’re Young had its New York premiere, we were invited to participate in a press conference with stars Stiller, Seyfried and Horovitz and writer/director Baumbach.

Adam Horovitz, Amanda Seyfried, Ben Stiller & Noah Baumbach at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

This is the kind of movie that people of different generations can relate to.  At what point did you feel that you were an adult and maybe disconnected with younger people?

Ben Stiller: When I realized all I listened to was the Beastie Boys. That’s all I cared about. (laughs) I feel like having kids. Having kids was the first time for me that I realized I had not think of myself. I’ve never really thought about myself as older, but you start having these more mature responsibilities. Then after you do get to a certain point where you start to realize… like tastes in music, where you just can’t keep up. I remember that years ago, when I started [thinking]: Oh, I’m not aware of that. And it’s just too much trouble to listen to. I’ll try to listen to the stations. Different stations like Alt Nation or something on Sirius [radio], but I always find myself going back to like… Lithium [a Sirius 1990s grunge channel].

Noah Baumbach: The 80s on 8. [A Sirius/XM station that specializes in music of the 1980s.]

Ben Stiller: Yeah.

Your Ben Stiller Show was on MTV when they still played music.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, it was when they started to change over. We were sort of a hybrid. That was a long time ago.

How do you all feel like the advancement of modern technology is affecting the quality of human relationships?

Adam Horovitz: Hold on. Let me text you the answer. (Everyone laughs)

Amanda Seyfried: Good one. It’s true…  Besides negatively, maybe?

Ben Stiller & Noah Baumbach at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

Ben Stiller: I think there is good and bad. I’m on location now working on a movie. Just to be able to FaceTime with my kids is something that is amazing and great. Skyping. I think those things are really incredible. But then there’s that other thing, what Adam was referring to about texting. It’s much easier to hide behind the technology, and not have actual human interaction. A lot of kids in their twenties hardly talk on the phone with one another. Texting is talking to them, I guess. Not that I know what kids are doing. (laughs)

Noah, what do you feel would make a great double feature with this film?

Noah Baumbach: I’m trying to come up with a double show idea. I’m just getting accustomed to the fact that it’s going to be one show. It hasn’t opened yet. We’re already putting it into reparatory. What would be a good one? Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. (They all laugh.)

Ben Stiller: I literally just watched that movie. That’s unbelievable. It’s really creepy. Very good.

Amanda Seyfried & Ben Stiller at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

Amanda, what did you like most about your character of Darby, and are there any lessons you learned from her?

Amanda Seyfried: I really liked that she doesn’t seem to worry about much. There’s this burden that I carry on my shoulders constantly. I’m really actively working on really loosening up and being mindful. She’s got that. I think she’s born with it. So, yeah, I’m learning life lessons constantly from Darby.

The overall film shows that nowadays documentaries often merge the most poignant aspects of life from different people, like the documentary takes significant elements from Darby’s life. What do you think about that in real life, in relation to real art?

Ben Stiller: Gosh, that’s a deep question. That really is. I don’t know. I think Josh in the movie is probably more concerned with this idea of truth in his work and cinema. I feel like, for me, all art is based on other art, to a certain extent. But I think what Noah’s talking about in the film is a very real thing. It’s been going on for awhile. Reality television has blurred the lines in a lot of ways, in regards to what’s real and what isn’t. What’s scripted and what isn’t and what people want to see, in documentaries in particular. They want to be entertained, but I think documentaries that can actually tell you the truth and be entertaining and draw you in – where is that line? I don’t know. I’m not a documentarian. That’s something they have to deal with. It’s probably tougher today, as people now are so used to being entertained by “reality” television. There’s a crossover there and some blurred lines of what is actually truthful. Even great documentarians seem to know how to fashion a story and have it be truthful and still make it dramatic. Those choices are always artistic, creative choices that have to be made by the filmmaker. A lot of times biopics and movies about real life subjects that are dramatic, they are always making those choices. Making scenes that didn’t necessarily happen, but trying to imbue you with the idea of what happened.

Amanda Seyfried, Ben Stiller & Noah Baumbach at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

Noah, what was the process of deciding to make Josh a documentary filmmaker, as opposed to a narrative filmmaker?

Noah Baumbach: Initially, I liked the idea that it was an occupation that they all could have that would be visual. Also something they could collaborate on. The way you capture a documentary film is different. This notion that you’re really just filming life, which is not really what it is, but at least that’s how we perceive it. I didn’t want them to be overtly staging something, so it couldn’t have been a fiction film. It really was more to create a way that each generation’s work could represent them in different ways. That would be something you could see and something an audience could react to. Once I had this documentary idea, though, I had to then engage in these questions of authenticity. They were arguments I engaged in fully with the characters and through the characters, but I didn’t come to conclusions myself. I felt like I was telling the story of a marriage and I needed to find a resolution to that which was satisfying for the movie and hopeful. The other arguments were things that I wasn’t going to ever have an answer for.

There are so many details that distinguish the generations, one of the things is Ann Roth’s costumes. What was the process of working with her on the film?

Noah Baumbach: Ann and I started working together on Margot at the Wedding. [That] was the first one we did together. People don’t know she worked with Mike Nichols throughout most of his career. She did Midnight Cowboy and Klute. She sees the whole movie. It’s not just the clothing. The actors can speak to this. They will come in for fittings, and she’ll have this whole back story and ideas. The first time I worked with her, she started talking about the back story for one of the characters. I thought I would sound stupid if I didn’t know that, because I hadn’t even thought of the back story. (laughs) She had this whole thing: “Maybe she sits on the porch…” It was like a whole other movie, so I just went along with it. But now I’m used to it. I can let her fill in the back story for me. She has a way of dressing people. It’s something, you can’t quite put your finger on it. It transcends whatever the clothing actually is. Somehow she sees the movie. I’ll then see things later in dailies, like texture in a shirt, and I’ll be: I’m so glad that’s there. I didn’t even realize when we picked it. It was important for this movie, too, because we’re dealing with now. We have to true to what’s going on now and what these people would really wear. I wanted it to feel timeless. We weren’t going to really imitate Brooklyn youth culture. We would never catch up if we tried to document what was actually happening now. So with her, we created our own style. She’s the one to do that. She’s great.

Ben Stiller at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

Ben, how do you relate to your character? Do you get skeptical when a younger, less established artist approaches you with a project?

Ben Stiller: I don’t know. That’s a good question. I don’t think the character that Adam Driver plays in the movie would know… he has such a specific agenda and it is such a gray area. In general, when somebody comes up to you, I try to be positive and give them the benefit of the doubt that they have some plan. (laughs) I relate to a lot of the issues that are going on in the movie with the character. I think Noah has a great way of illuminating these little things. These little details about life and interactions between people. What it is to live your life. These little experiences that don’t necessarily get translated into movies that often. Movies are usually about bigger, more dramatic events. Noah will find the drama in these little moments. That’s what to me is so interesting about his stuff. As an actor, it’s fun to get into that: Oh, yeah, I know that. I’ve had that experience. Like that runner in the movie where Jamie’s never picking up the check. Those kind of things, the mini-dramas in our lives that are big to us, because you’re thinking about something like that for the rest of the night.

Adam Horovitz: It was just one time. I was going for my wallet. (laughs)

Ben Stiller: (laughs) Yeah. By the way, I thought of maybe a good companion piece to this movie. [It] would be Albert Brooks’ Real Life.

Noah Baumbach: Oh, yeah.

Ben Stiller: Albert Brooks’ character in that movie is sort of a precursor of Jamie.

Noah Baumbach: Is there still time to change the marquee? (Everyone laughs.) Take Don’t Look Now down. Don’t Look Back [a Bob Dylan documentary buy DA Pennebaker], I guess would be a good movie, too.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, it is kind of a Jamie [type of film].

Adam Horovitz & Amanda Seyfried at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

Adam, was it easy for you to connect to your character, and what really attracted you to the role?

Adam Horovitz: Thank you very much. Well, Noah asked me to do it. So I said yes. Noah asked me to do it and I love the movies that he makes. I love these guys and what they do. When someone like Noah says will you do it, you just do it. Not anything, but some things. I did [feel connected to the character]. Being in a band, as you put out records, as the years go by, new music, whole new styles of music come out. There’s always a thing: do you follow that? I feel like you never follow specific things. So it was interesting to be the guy who didn’t follow the thing in the movie.

What are your future plans now that the Beastie Boys are done?

Adam Horovitz: (long exhale) Well, we’re going to see the movie tonight.

Noah Baumbach: Party afterwards.

Adam Horovitz: The guy is coming tomorrow to look at my dryer between 12:00 and 6:00. (Everyone laughs.)

Ben and Noah, this is your second time working together. Greenberg was a very LA-centric movie, this film is definitely a New York story. How do the settings and cities that you film in become characters in the films?

Ben Stiller: Yeah. I think [it was] definitely very different. The experience of making the movies was very different, I felt. I was using the word laconic, is that right? There was probably a more laconic, laid-back feeling when we were making Greenberg in LA. They are both were very small crews and Noah works in this very focused way. But the energy of both places are so different. I feel like that is what is captured in both movies. I really liked the energy Noah captured of LA in Greenberg. This movie is a much more New York-centric movie and has that feeling to it.

Noah Baumbach: In both cases, I wanted the city to exist as it would around our fiction within it. I like that feeling movies where you feel real life around something that’s clearly scripted. The challenge of course becomes how do you get Ben Stiller in the world without people ruining your takes? We put poor Ben on the streets in LA…

Ben Stiller: (jokes) How do you put Ben Stiller into the take without him ruining your take?

Noah Baumbach: People went like this to the camera (makes horns hand sign). People still do this when you go by if they see the camera. Somehow it announces them.

Amanda Seyfried: Trying to make their mark.

Noah Baumbach: In Greenberg, we would hide in a van with a black curtain. We knocked the window out. We would put Ben was on the street, have him go grocery shopping and mail letters. In this one, when you see him and Adam crossing Park Avenue, that’s real Park Avenue. That’s actually just going on. The subway and stuff. It’s a challenge, but I always feel it’s worth it when it happens. When you make it to the end without somebody doing this. (Makes horns sign again.)

Ben Stiller: So often in movies you see that where they set 100 extras on the street and everybody is walking around with briefcases and they are all actors…

Noah Baumbach: Everybody is looking at their watch.

Amanda Seyfried: Everything is so deliberate.

Ben Stiller: That is the worst, when you see extras and the acting happening. Noah really likes to keep it open. It’s interesting, because you are a director of real life and there is a lot more energy that way.

Noah Baumbach: For sure.

Ben Stiller & Noah Baumbach at the NY Press Day for “While We’re Young.”

Noah, you started your career as a filmmaker here in New York, and in the movie, Adam Driver’s character is starting his career in the city, as well. Do you think New York is a place that can still cultivate you artists?

Noah Baumbach: That’s a good question. Not if you read those articles in The Times about the Time/Warner building and just about the way real estate is being bought here. I think it can be, but it’s obviously a different challenge than what it was. However, people seem to do it. Every year you feel like: Oh, this is it, they’ve ruined it. The new New School Building. That’s it! The one that looks like an air conditioning vent on Fifth Avenue and 14th Street. That’s the worst. I thought that’s it. We’re done. How can we thrive in this environment? But, somehow New York still wins out, I feel like. People find ways to be here. But obviously, I wish it were easier.

Were you conscious of not too heavily emphasizing the us vs. them aspect of the characters within the story?

Noah Baumbach: Well, like I was saying when we were talking about Ann Roth, from a design prospective, we did what was interesting to us. When Ben was rollerblading, Amanda gives him the rollerblades, the feeling was if they’re not rollerblading now, someday they will. We were just doing it the way that felt right for us. When I was writing it, I invested in all sides of the arguments. People assume maybe because I’m in my 40s, I’m going to take the side of the 40-somethings. But I tried to have as much fun with showing what’s not working in the marriage, or Ben’s ten-year investment in his documentary. I’m certainly not showing that as this guy has it figured out. The young people were crazy. I felt like both sides had merit when I was writing it. Beyond that, I felt like people will take away what they take away. I’ve gotten used to that in my movies. I feel like they are often interpreted in ways that I’m surprised by. But I generally like that.

The soundtrack really works. Did any of the songs really impact the trajectory of the story?

Noah Baumbach: The two songs that were in the screenplay were the 2pac “Hit ’Em Up” song, the hip hop that Amanda and Naomi had to learn to dance to that specific song. Amanda I think still performs it.

Amanda Seyfried: Half of it. The other half is tough.

Noah Baumbach: And “Eye of the Tiger” was also in the script. Some of the music came from thinking about the tastes of the characters. Particularly, continuing the technology joke that the younger people are analog and the older people are up to the moment digitally. I felt like the younger people also would play music from Ben and Naomi’s generation, so that was like thinking of “All Night Long,” the Lionel Richie song, or Psychedelic Furs. They were again presenting this culture back to the older people in a new forum that suddenly makes them think: That was a good song. That actually did happen to me with “All Night Long.” I really sold that song short. When I was a teenager, I did not like it. I did not like that record at all. Now I think it’s great. (laughs) Either agree or disagree, feel free to nod or be like [no]. But I love it.

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 27, 2015.

Photos ©2015 Jay S. Jacobs/PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL (2015)

Starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup, David Strathairn, Richard Gere, Diana Hardcastle, Tamsin Greig, Tena Desae, Lillete Dubey and Subhrajyoti Barat.

Screenplay by Ol Parker.

Directed by John Madden.

Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.  122 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

I know that it was not intended this way, but the film title The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is sadly extremely apt.  I understand that the filmmakers were just trying to come up with a cutesy way of pointing out this is indeed a sequel, however the cold hard fact is that everything about this new movie is, indeed, second best.

The original The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a surprise hit a few years ago, a story of  several bored British retirees finding a new life and purpose in India.  It was a sweet, unexpected story, and definitely tailored for an underserved demographic, ending up taking in an astonishing $137 million dollars worldwide – pretty impressive for a film starring mostly elderly British actors which was filmed for about $10 million.

That kind of success can only mean one thing – sequel – so it is no surprise that the follow-up is arriving three years later.  Sadly, they did not take into account that the original film pretty much told all the story that it needed to tell.  The second film does not so much feel like a continuation of the original story so much as a repeat, without the freshness and verve of the first go around.

Which is not to say that The Second Best Marigold Hotel is a bad film, it’s just not much you haven’t already seen in the first, and the few added parts – a wedding, a few unnecessary extended Bollywood musical numbers and a brief trip to San Diego – don’t add that much.

There have been three years between films, though it does not say exactly how much time has passed in the film’s world.  (It tends to seem to be less than three years, though.)  The main characters are pretty much holdovers from the first film, with some new characters mixed in.  (Also, arguably the first film’s most interesting character, played by Tom Wilkinson, died in the first film, and is not even mentioned in passing in this second go-around.)

In the second film, exuberant hotelier Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel) has made the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel a success with the help of dour British matron Mrs. Donnelly (Maggie Smith).  They want to open a second, bigger, more luxurious hotel with the help of an American hotel chain, therefore they fly to San Diego to meet with the CEO (David Strathairn).  They come back to India, expecting a hotel inspector to show up at any time.  In the meantime, Sonny must juggle the plans for the new hotel, his upcoming nuptials with his unnaturally patient fiancée (Tena Desae) and the sudden appearance of his handsome nemesis (Shazad Latif) and Sonny’s disapproving mother (Lilette Dubey).

Even though Douglas (Bill Nighy) left his wife to be with Evelyn (Judi Dench) at the end of the last film, they still haven’t quite gotten together, leaving them to rerun the whole “will-they-or-won’t-they” dance that they played out last time out.  Douglas’ ex-wife (Penelope Wilton) returns to India get a divorce, but they can’t agree on a reason for the split.

Marge (Celia Imrie) the local cougar has two local men fighting for her hand, but she can’t decide if she is interested in either man.  The two terminally playing the field types (Ronald Pickup and Diana Hardcastle) try to decide if it is worth it to give monogamy a try.

New guests include an American wannabe novelist (Richard Gere) with eyes for Sonny’s mom and a British woman (Tamsin Greig) looking into the hotel for her mom.  Richard Gere, who is in his mid-sixties, still sticks out as awfully young to be in a film about the romantic travails of eightyish Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith.  (Then again, so are Bill Nighy and David Strathairn.)

The film shows older people finding new purpose in life and living in exotic locations, which is entertaining enough.  It probably would seem a lot better if we hadn’t seen pretty much the same thing a few years ago.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 5, 2015.

Kill Me Three Times

KILL ME THREE TIMES (2015)

Starring Simon Pegg, Sullivan Stapleton, Alice Braga, Teresa Palmer, Callan Mulvey, Luke Hemsworth, Bryan Brown and Steve Le Marquand.

Screenplay by James McFarland.

Directed by Kriv Stenders.

Distributed by Magnolia Pictures.  90 minutes.  Rated R.

It seemed like finally, two decades hence, we’d made it past the Quentin Tarantino-wannabe films.  You know, those blood-stained movies populated by cheerfully amoral, cold-hearted, dim-witted criminals and femme fatales who violently scheme and blunder their way through double crosses and misadventures, raising eyebrows and the body count as they offer droll commentary on the heartlessness of the world?

Well Kill Me Three Times feels like director Kriv Stenders (whose last film was the family-friendly Red Dog) finally saw a bootlegged  download of Pulp Fiction and said “Eureka!  I wanna do that!”

And then, to make things a little more inexplicable, he decided to film it in a gorgeous remote section of the Australian coastline.

I will give him this.  The setting is absolutely spectacular.

Too bad it’s also the most enjoyable part of his violence-fetish movie in which a lot of very unlikeable people do terrible, bloody things to each other.  All the while the camera voyeuristically captures every splatter of oozing body fluids as if the filmmaker were taking glamour shots.

There are eight characters in this film and each one is either murdered or nearly murdered at least a few times in the running time of the film.

The actors themselves are terrific, a very capable group who are unfortunately using their talents to portray characters who are much less interesting than the people who inhabit them.

The story sort of centers around a Simon Pegg as a hard as nails hit man who descends upon the small beach community and finds himself drawn into a few not-very-well-thought-out murder plots.  The role sounds like a meaty one for comedian Pegg and he throws himself into it with gusto, however the overwhelming mean-spiritedness of the script tends to curdle the periodic genuinely funny lines.

Pegg’s hitman is the outsider here – in fact, he turns out to often be simply be an innocent bystander who stumbles into this nest of vipers.

The main storyline revolves around Alice (Alice Braga), a gorgeous woman who is cheating on her abusive husband (Callan Mulvey) with a hunky local kid (Luke Hemsworth).  The husband is the one who brought the hit man into the mix, asking him to find proof of the wife’s infidelity, and when it is found, to kill her.

However, he does not realize that his sister (Teresa Palmer) and her sad-sack husband (Sullivan Stapleton) are also planning on knocking Alice off, in an insanely convoluted insurance scam.  Then there is the corrupt local sheriff (Bryan Brown), who is less interested in who is getting killed than he is in finding a way to profit by blackmailing the killers.

All of these people (besides the hit man) know each other, have hidden agendas and secret alliances with each other, and are more than willing to double cross each other for money or spite.

It all sounds more interesting and labyrinthine than it really is.  Eventually you come to expect each and every plot turn.  In the end, you really don’t care who lives or who dies – or even if anyone lives – which is not a good place for any film to find its audience.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 9, 2015.

ONE BIG HAPPY — Season: Pilot — Pictured: Elisha Cuthbert as Lizzy — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)

Elisha Cuthbert

One Big Happy Sitcom

by Landyn Gerace

Elisha Cuthbert’s acting career has swerved from horror films (such as Captivity and House of Wax) to movie comedies (such as Old School and Love Actually) to TV dramas (such as 24 and The Forgotten).  Now, the Canadian actress has now taken on one of television’s hottest new comedies – NBC’s One Big Happy, produced by Ellen DeGeneres and Liz Feldman – in the lead role of Lizzy.

In the show, Cushbert’s character decides to have a baby with her longtime best friend, Luke (Nick Zano). Shortly before learning of their pregnancy, Luke falls in love with a woman named Prudence (Kelly Brook) and decides to get married after knowing each other five days. The three are now in a whole new family dynamic as they prepare to bring a baby into the world.

Shooting before a live studio audience for the first time in her career, Cuthbert says it was very interesting.

“It’s funny when you shoot in front of a live studio audience. It’s all very thrilling to be honest,” she added.

ONE BIG HAPPY — Pictured: “One Big Happy” Vertical Key Art — (Photo by: NBCUniversal)

Not only did she have the pleasure of shooting a live show, Cuthbert along with the other cast and crew members filmed One Big Happy in the Warner Brother Studios, in close proximity to the taping of Ellen DeGeneres’ daytime talk show. As a producer of One Big Happy, DeGeneres was able to make visits to the set and see what the cast and crew were working on.

“Any time Ellen is around it causes quite a frenzy, rightfully so…. It was amazing, she was really supportive,” says Cuthbert.

Alongside Ellen DeGeneres is Feldman, another well-known producer of the NBC comedy.  Cuthbert spent a good amount of time getting to know Liz Feldman prior to filming. From dinners to going out with friends, the two had plenty of time to discuss ideas for Lizzy’s disposition. Both Cuthbert and Feldman agreed on giving the character a quirkiness to her serious personality.

“We hit it off pretty quickly…. Sometimes type A characters are written so uptight that they’re not loose enough to have fun. I didn’t want to go down that path with the character and Liz didn’t either,” says Cuthbert.

ONE BIG HAPPY — Season: Pilot — Pictured: Elisha Cuthbert as Lizzy — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)

Lizzy has the Type A personality but can be goofy at the same time, making it more fun for Cuthbert to portray.

One of the easiest parts of working on the show for Cuthbert has been working with her friend of many years, Nick Zano. Zano plays best friend Luke, and also played a part in Cuthbert landing the role. Like mentioned before, this is her first time working in front of a live studio audience and at first, Cuthbert was very skeptical.

“He was really the one that gave me confidence to do it. He’s so easy to work with. He’s so collaborative and supportive,” she said on her costar.

After working together on Happy Endings and having the same manager, Zano thought his close friend in real life would be a perfect fit for his close friend on screen.

Although the chemistry between Cuthbert and Zano is clear on screen, Cuthbert’s character Lizzy doesn’t have as easy of a relationship with the love of Luke’s life, Prudence, played by Kelly Brook. Being from England, Lizzy believes Prudence only agreed to marry Luke to stay in the country and has a hard time adjusting to her free-spirit ways. The two are often seen arguing over who can take better care of Luke and Prudence’s role in the baby’s life is questioned.

ONE BIG HAPPY– “Out of the Closet” Episode 102 — Pictured: (l-r) Nick Zano as Luke, Elisha Cuthbert as Lizzy — (Photo by: Greg Gayne/NBC)

Cuthbert says, “I think she cares about Prudence, but I still think there’s a lot of that – how much does she trust her?”

After the completion of the first season, Cuthbert looks forward to see how Lizzy handles her pregnancy in possible future episodes and how Luke and Prudence will cater to the soon-to-be mom. While the cast and crew waits to hear about whether the series will be renewed, Cuthbert is feeling positive. She also knows that with time, the fear of shooting in front of the live audience has gone away, but the nerves still remain.

“The nerves do not go away, which is why it makes it so special and why the energy is so unique in front of an audience,” Cuthbert says. “I feel like the episodes that we put out were strong. We’ve got nothing but really great responses in a short period of time.”

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 26, 2015.

Photo Credits:

#1 © 2015 Chris Haston. Courtesy of NBC Universal Television. All rights reserved.

#2 © 2015. Courtesy of NBC Universal Television. All rights reserved. 

#3 © 2015 Chris Haston. Courtesy of NBC Universal Television. All rights reserved. 

#4 © 2015 Greg Gayne. Courtesy of NBC Universal Television. All rights reserved. 

Hot Pursuit

HOT PURSUIT (2015)

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, John Carroll Lynch, Robert Kazinsky, Joaquin Cosio, Richard T. Jones, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Gaffigan, Vincent Laresca, Matthew Del Negro, Michael Mosley, Benny Nieves, Michael Ray Escamilla, Abigail James Witherspoon, Harley Graham, Bryce Romero and Joe Camp III.

Screenplay by David Feeney and John Quaintance.

Directed by Anne Fletcher.

Distributed by Warner Brothers.  87 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

It’s a dead giveaway that you’ve just sat through a pretty lame comedy when the filmmakers decide to supplement the laughs with a series of cast bloopers over the end credits.  It’s not that these outtakes are not funny – though usually they aren’t – it’s just that they telegraph a desperation to wring out a bit more comedy from the film, humor that apparently was not in the actual script.

Think I’m being harsh?  I’ll tell you what: Name me a single film that ended in this style that was actually genuinely funny on it’s own terms.  Think about it a bit, I’ll wait.  You got one?  I didn’t think so.

Though this little gimmick was hugely popular about a decade or so ago, it has slowly but surely fallen into deserved disfavor.  I can’t even think of the last time I saw it done before Hot Pursuit dragged out the old technique, probably at least a year or so.

Not that I needed to be told that I’d just seen a pretty bad comedy with Hot Pursuit, but that just cemented the fact in my mind.

The worst part is, the movie didn’t have to be so uninspired.  Hot Pursuit has two extremely likable lead performances by Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara which are stranded with a very lackluster script.  It’s not even really actively bad so much as being… blah.  Keep moving, nothing to see here.  At least nothing that you haven’t seen done better elsewhere.

Hot Pursuit is just as generic as its title.

We are introduced to Witherspoon’s character of Officer Cooper in an opening sequence in which she literally grows up in the back seat of her hero cop father’s police car.  From toddler to teen, Cooper (if she was ever given a first name in the film, I honestly do not remember it) rides along with her dad: sharing stakeouts, sitting next to perps, dodging firefights, the works….

Dad may have been a legend in the police force, but family services should have taken his daughter away from him because he was obviously a criminally negligent parent, putting his growing daughter in harm’s way on a nearly constant basis.

Still, Cooper idolized her father.  So much so that she followed him into the police academy after dad was shot and killed.  The problem is her small stature, her anal-retentive adherence to the rules and her regular fuck-ups – including accidentally setting the mayor’s son on fire with a tazer – has her buried in the evidence room, where she is a joke amongst her brothers in blue.  They literally use her name as a verb to mean fucking something up.

Cooper’s oppurtunity to redeem herself comes when her chief (John Carroll Lynch), her dad’s former partner and best friend, puts her on a security detail.  A mob lawyer and his wife are set to testify against a ruthless drug lord.  A hot shot detective will be transporting them from their remote Texas mansion to the Dallas courtroom.  Because the wife Daniella (Vegara) is there as well, regulations call for a female officer to accompany them.

Of course, what should be a simple task turns out to be much more dangerous and complicated than expected.  On the compound, they are met by two groups of assassins, who take out the lawyer and the other cop.  Cooper and Daniella must go on the lam, trying to get to court in Dallas while dodging murderous drug dealers and crooked cops.

It’s the old odd couple kind of pairing, where two very different characters butt heads but slowly, through necessity, have to learn to trust, respect, and even kind of like each other.

Like I said, nothing you haven’t seen before, and seen done better.

Actually the crime story seems particularly undercooked, a very basic plot device to force the two women to get to know each other.  And if you don’t know who the dirty cops are from the start, you just aren’t trying.

Hot Pursuit is almost – almost – redeemed by the game way that the stars throw themselves into their parts.  Vergara is particularly amusing as the hot-headed Latin glamazon.  It’s nothing that Vergara hasn’t done regularly before, but she is good at it.  Witherspoon’s character is, by necessity, much more dialed back, but she does have some fun with making her tightly-wound policewoman finally loosen up.

And, for the record, there is nothing in the blooper reel that is worth sitting through the end credits for.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: May 23, 2015.

Results

RESULTS (2015)

Starring Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Kevin Corrigan, Giovanni Ribisi, Brooklyn Decker, Anthony Michael Hall, Tishuan Scott, Zoe Graham, David Bernon, Lindsay Anne Kent and Elizabeth Berridge.

Screenplay by Andrew Bujalski.

Directed by Andrew Bujalski.

Distributed by Magnolia Pictures.  105 minutes.  Rated R.

There is a lot to like in writer/director Andrew Bujalski’s low-key romantic comedy / drama about physical fitness trainers coming to terms with life and love – so why did sitting through Results feel being forced to do 500 sit-ups, 200 push-ups and 100 squat thrusts?

First off, I love the two lead actors and they do wonderful work here, even if their characters are in serious need of personality transplants.  The writing is mostly subtle and low-key and smart.  It explores a world we rarely get to see on film.  Writer/director Bujalski has an astute visual sense.

And yet, watching Results felt like doing hard time.

Bujalski is a notably low-keyed, observant filmmaker, bunched in upon earlier films like 2013’s Computer Chess or 2007’s Funny Ha Ha as part of the mumblecore scene.  However, his filmwork has been intriguingly realistic and insightful.

Results is his first movie in which he works with name actors.  LA Confidential and Memento‘s Guy Pearce and How I Met Your Mother and The Avengers’ Cobie Smulders are the two leads.  Respected character actor Kevin Corrigan also gets a lead role here, and names like Anthony Michael Hall, Giovanni Ribisi, Constance Zimmer, Elizabeth Berridge and model Brooklyn Decker take on small roles.

Pearce plays way against type as Trevor, an 50-ish immigrant bodybuilder who has opened a popular gym called Power 4 Life in the suburbs of Austin, Texas.  Trevor strongly believes in his personal life game plan – wanting to create a nirvana for fitness enthusiasts, a workout superstore which reflects his personal philosophy for personal health and wellness.  He strongly, passionately believes in his ideals, but unfortunately he has a bit of trouble verbalizing them, coming off as a salesman or a new age rube when he tries to explain his plan.

Smulders plays Kat, his most popular trainer, who is even more cynical than Trevor is idealistic.  Kat also has a huge chip on her shoulder, a burning anger in her core and a sense of drifting as she approaches 30.  She is beautiful but not concerned with looks.  She is also way too invested in her job.  She takes it personally if someone is late with a payment or decides to give up… to quit… their exercise regime.  She and Trevor have occasionally fallen into purely aerobic sexual relationship, but both of them are determined to keep things casual.

Into their structured little world blunders Danny (Corrigan), who is a wreck emotionally and physically.  He has recently gone through a painful divorce (apparently more painful for him than for her) and soon after gets the unexpected windfall of a huge inheritance.  Now he suddenly has no need to work and no wife to go home to, so he mopes around looking for a purpose, living in a brand new McMansion with little furniture, trying literally to buy happiness.

On a whim he decides he wants to train – when Trevor asks him what his goal is, Danny can only come up with the idea that he would like to be able to take a punch.  Kat bullies Trevor and the other instructors to become Danny’s coach, but when Danny’s interest in Kat strays from working out to more romantic thoughts, she melts down and totally rethinks her life, quitting the gym.

Honestly, Corrigan plays the role in such an oddball way that I can’t quite decide if it is a brilliant take on the character or merely mannered overacting; squinting, grimacing and slouching his way through life, speaking with the deadened slowness of someone having trouble comprehending what is being said to him, a hang dog assurance that no matter what the circumstance and how much money he has, life is going to kick him in the ass.

And the fact that Corrigan’s character only seems like the second most cartoonish character in Results – we’re looking at you, Anthony Michael Hall, for your cameo as a Russian weightlifter who makes Dolph Lundgren look subtly thoughtful – makes the movie’s motivations and choices puzzling and sad.

Honestly, I’m not sure what Bujalski is trying to say with Results and I rather expect that he doesn’t know either.  Just the basic thrust of the storyline changes quite a few times during the running time.  Is it an Altman-esque satire of the physical fitness industry?  An oddball buddy comedy?  A serious look at the American dream of business success?  A will-they-or-won’t-they romance between two characters who are both gorgeous but have absolutely no chemistry together?

Beats me.  Just trying to figure it out is making my head hurt.

The one thing that it is – and this is something that the quirky Bujalski has never been before – is formula storytelling, with a climax that just sort of peters out.  I suppose I can’t begrudge Bujalski the opportunity to try to sell out for a wider audience, but if you’re going to wallow, just do it.  You can’t just dip a toe in and expect anyone to be impressed.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: May 29, 2015.

Live From New York!

LIVE FROM NEW YORK! (2015)

Featuring Dan Aykroyd, Alec Baldwin, John Belushi, Candice Bergen, Dana Carvey, Chevy Chase, Billy Crystal, Jane Curtin, Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Al Franken, Bill Hader, Darrell Hammond, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Seth Meyers, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Amy Poehler, Chris Rock, Fred Armisen, Al Gore, Rudolph Giuliani, Ralph Nader, Tom Brokaw, Paul Simon, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Maya Rudolph, Andy Samberg, Bill O’Reilly, Fran Lebowitz, Anne Beatty, John Goodman, Leslie Jones, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Andy Samberg, Molly Shannon and Kenan Thompson.

Directed by Bao Nguyen.

Distributed by Abramorama.  82 minutes.  Not Rated.

It’s really hard to condense a series that has had 40 seasons, well over 700 episodes, approximately 50,000 hours of footage and 100s of cast members into an 82 minute long documentary.

Director Bao Nguyen does his best with this well-meaning documentary, but while it is consistently entertaining, it’s really just skimming the surface of the story.  Live From New York comes off more like an hour-and-a-half long tribute special to the show than an in-depth examination of a pop culture touchstone.

Saturday Night Live has had a long and winding road over the years, or as comedienne Amy Poehler puts it in Live From New York!: “SNL, the show that your parents used to have sex to, that you now watch on the computer during the day.”

Live From New York! the movie is more built for the byte-sized YouTube attention span, giving little slivers of some brilliant comedy and music but often leaving the audience wanting for more.

As is I suppose inevitable with a crash course in SNL history like this, some of the biggest names in the show’s history are barely mentioned.  Eddie Murphy is just mentioned in passing, Adam Sandler not at all.  Bill Murray is only shown in a few clips.  The failed all-star cast (which included Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Billy Crystal and Martin Short) after the original cast bolted is barely acknowledged and none of those names are spoken.

Of course late cast members like John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman and Chris Farley are shown in some clips, but their deaths are not mentioned, much less discussed.  Recent breakouts like Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader also are barely there.

Instead, Live From New York tries to trace the show’s timeline in history, which is occasionally well done – the show’s importance in the Bush-Gore election is slightly harrowing and it’s always fun to see Tina Fey’s version of Sarah Palin again.

On the other hand, a long and necessary look at the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and SNL‘s need to bring humor to a shell-shocked city is hijacked by a self-congratulatory Rudy Giuliani yet again using the World Trade Center tragedy as an excuse for his otherwise horrible stint as mayor.  (At one point, he actually refers to a period in NY history as “pre-Giuliani New York.”)

Still, even if Live From New York! occasionally takes on the feel of an E! television special, there is just so much classic comedy and enough smart anecdotes from the people who were there to make the film necessary viewing.  I just wish they had dug a little deeper.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: June 12, 2015.

Teen Beach 2

TEEN BEACH 2 (2015)

Starring Maia Mitchell, Grace Phipps, Ross Lynch, Garrett Clayton, Mollee Gray, John DeLuca, Chrissie Fit, Ross Butler, Piper Curda, Jordan Fisher, Jessica Lee Keller, Kent Boyd, Mónica López, Raymond Alexander Cham Jr., Kayla Radomski, Kc Monnie, Tyler Mizak, William T. Loftis, Morgan Larson and Jazmín Caratini..

Screenplay by Billy Eddy &Matt Eddy.

Directed by Jeffrey Hornaday.

Distributed by Disney Channel.  104 minutes.  Rated TV-G.

Who knew that the most anticipated summer movie for teens and tweens would be Teen Beach 2, a Disney Channel made-for-TV sequel to the 2013 hit Teen Beach movie.

Hitting the beach again are Brady (Ross Lynch – Austin and Ally) and Mack (Maia Mitchell – The Fosters) and their fun loving surfer and biker pals from Brady’s favorite 60’s film Wet Side Story. (Yes, that’s right.)

As with most good Disney movies, TB2 offers singing, cute characters, boyfriend / girlfriend relationships, friendship and some fun dance numbers which are reminiscent of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon’s 60’s beach classics.  Though the film basically starts where the other left off, there is definitely more drama for Mack and Brady as the surfing duo heads back to school.

When Lela (Grace Phipps) finds the necklace she gave Mack, she and Tanner (Garrett Clayton) head out into the ocean to find their friends.  Unlike the first movie, this time they end up in the present day and they stick out big time!  The remainder of the film is filled with Brady and Mack trying to hide their friends identities (which eventually includes the whole crew of bikers and surfers) from the real world and get them back to their own world before they disappear.

TB2 turns out to be cute and extremely enjoyable for the Disney crowd, many of whom have already watched it over and over in the first two days.  As with all Disney films – there are important lessons to be learned and like so many Disney films before, it’s all about friendship and self confidence.

Teen Beach 2 was also released on DVD and offers extras including a free replica of Lela’s friendship necklace from Mack and never before seen bonus rehearsal footage.

Deborah Wagner

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 5, 2015.

Boulevard

BOULEVARD (2015)

Starring Robin Williams, Kathy Baker, Bob Odenkirk, Roberto Aguire, Giles Matthey, Eleonore Hendricks, J. Karen Thomas, Landon Marshall, Henry Haggard, Clay Jeffries, Brandon Hirsch, Curtis Gordon, David Ditmore and Joshua Decker.

Screenplay by Douglas Soesbe.

Directed by Dito Montiel.

Distributed by Starz Digital Media.  88 minutes.  Rated R.

Despite whatever positive and negative attributes that Boulevard may display as a film, it will forever be known as the final starring role of beloved actor and funnyman Robin Williams.  Just seeing Williams – who committed suicide late last year due to extreme depression and advancing medical problems – casts a bit of a pall on this little drama of missed life chances and repression.

However, unlike the last Williams film that was also released posthumously – the antic family comedy Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tombs – the creeping melancholy the audience feels on seeing the actor’s familiar face actually adds to the somber mood of the film.

In fact, Boulevard reminds us of what a smart and subtle dramatic actor Williams could be when he was not doing his wild comedy shtick.  This film brings back the quiet, thoughtful Williams of The World According to Garp, One Hour Photo, Insomnia or World’s Greatest Dad, not the wacky fast-talking force of nature that was his normal mode.

Williams plays Nolan Mack, a sixty-something closeted gay man.  He’s been married to Joy (Kathy Baker), a woman that he loves in a sisterly way but with whom he’s never been passionate or had kids.  They’ve long since had their own rooms, living a separate but considerate and friendly co-existence.  His best friend (Bob Odenkirk) is an aging college English professor, and their long-ago plans of exciting city lives have pretty much been abandoned.  Nolan’s mother died suddenly six months earlier and his father is bed-ridden, dying in a local care facility.  He’s worked for 26 years at the same boring bank job that he doesn’t really like, and he’s just been offered a promotion that will assure that he will be at the bank for the rest of his career.

It is in this state of life ennui that Nolan finally takes a chance to change his life.  One day while driving home, he passes a group of prostitutes lined up on a local boulevard.  You get the feeling that he has been aware of them for a long time, but never before had the courage to turn around and actually engage with them.  He drives past the female pros, eventually checking out a few guy hustlers who are there.  In a slightly obvious narrative choice, he almost hits a young hustler named Leo (Roberto Aguire) with his car.  They start to talk, and eventually a visually uncomfortable Nolan agrees to take the guy to a motel and pay him for sex.

After finally giving in to this long-denied temptation, Nolan becomes somewhat fixated on Leo, determined to save the younger man from his street life and maybe even find love.  Leo, not surprisingly, seems a lot more reserved about their relationship, though eventually he does start to feel an odd friendship and kinship with this slightly desperate older man.

I’m not going to lie, sometimes Boulevard pulls its punches in its homosexual relationship.  Nolan’s relationship with Leo is often strangely chaste, almost like a mentor/student connection.  I mean, yeah, I guess I get that after decades of suppressing his desires it could possibly be difficult to totally throw yourself into the baser aspects of a homosexual affair.  However, you have to wonder how long he will be content at just watching the younger man stand around naked in cheap hotel rooms.

Nolan’s attempt to live a double life does not go totally smoothly, eventually Nolan is getting into physical altercations with Leo’s pimp, wife Joy suspects Nolan is having an affair and his relationship with the younger man starts affecting Nolan’s job.

Much of this can be intriguing.  Some of it is a bit overdone.  However, Williams never hits a wrong note, and his performance pulls the movie through its rough spots.  In fact, the extended scene when Kathy Baker as his wife finally confronts him of having an affair with a man is spine-tingling, two truly gifted actors at the top of their games.  Scenes like this make up for whatever missteps the film sometimes makes.

It is tragic that we will never see another new performance by Robin Williams.  However, at least he left us on a strong note.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 24, 2015.

Hippocrates (Diary of a French Doctor)

HIPPOCRATES – DIARY OF A FRENCH DOCTOR (2014)

Starring Vincent Lacoste, Reda Kateb, Jacques Gamblin, Marianne Denicourt, Felix Moati, Carole Franck, Philippe Rebbot, Julie Brochen, Jeanne Cellard and Thierry Levaret.

Screenplay by Thomas Lilti, Baya Kasmi, Julien Lilti and Pierre Chosson.

Directed by Thomas Lilti.

Distributed by Distrib Films US.  101 minutes.  Rated R.

Hospitals have always been forbidding structures.  Huge, frenetic, sterile, crowded, smelling of ammonia and cleaning fluids, noisy, full of sick and injured people, huge and odd looking contraptions, dazed and under-rested interns.  You never want to visit one, whether you are the patient, a guest or even likely one of the employees.

French writer/director takes advantage of his experience in the health system to give this slightly jaundiced look at the inner workings of a run-down Paris hospital.

Satirical looks at hospitals are nothing new – the high water mark still has to be Paddy Chayefsky’s 1960 landmark The Hospital – but Hippocrates has some interesting things to say, particularly taking into consideration all the US controversy about government-run health care.  (For the record, while Hippocrates does not make the French health system look good, it still looks like a better system than the profit-driven US counterpart.)

While greatly an ensemble satirical comedy/drama, Hippocrates – named after the legendary ancient Greek  doctor whose name has become synonymous with health care and forms the root of the medical Hippocratic oath – mostly looks at two interns who are new to the hospital.

The first is Benjamin (Vincent Lacoste), a baby-faced kid straight out of school who doesn’t even really seem to have all that much interest in being a doctor.  In fact, it appears that the only reason he took the job is that his father (Jacques Gamblin) is the hospital administrator, a fact that he seems a bit reluctant to acknowledge, as he does not want to be seen as nepotistic.

The other intern is Abdel (Reda Kateb).  Abdel is experienced, a fully-qualified doctor in his native Algeria, but he now that he has moved to France for a better life, he has to prove himself all over again before he can practice medicine as a doctor.  Abdel is a smart, insightful doctor, has a wonderful bedside manner, but is snippish when told what to do by people who know no more than he does, sometimes less.  His tendency to continue with his own course of treatment, even when told not to do so by his so-called superiors, has him constantly in trouble with the hospital administration.

Hippocrates is about their life in the hospital, essentially.  (I’d guess there is less than 10 minutes of footage in the film outside of the place.)  They treat patients, deal with families, study, eat, occasionally rest, blow off steam, argue with their bosses, try to come to terms with the hospital’s rules and limited budget, and eventually inadvertently cause an all-out work-stoppage.

Occasionally Hippocrates feels a bit too much like a TV medical drama – in fact there is a running gag in the film that just about everyone in the hospital watches the TV series House MD and often second guess his treatments and diagnoses.  Yet, in the long run it is a smart and funny look at the life and necessary gallows humor of an extremely stressful job.  It may not exactly help arguments for a single-payer health system in the US, but it doesn’t really torpedo them either.  It just shows that state-sanctioned health systems, like everything else, are horribly imperfect, but have their hearts in the right place.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 17, 2015.

Cobie Smulders at the New York Press Day for “Unexpected” at the Crosby Street Hotel, June 23, 2015. Photo copyright 2015 Jay S. Jacobs.

Cobie Smulders

Learns What to Expect from Unexpected

by Jay S. Jacobs

In the crazy, glitzy world of show business, it doesn’t take much for a little fame to go to someone’s head.  That’s why its always nice to meet a TV or movie star who is completely grounded, just a normal, nice person doing what they love.

Take Cobie Smulders.

Smulders spent most of the past decade as a key component in one of the most popular, long-running comedies on TV.  As Robin Scherbatsky, the Canadian teen-pop-star turned New York cable news anchor, Smulders spent eight seasons pounding down beers and talking about life and love at local watering hole McLaren’s pub with co-stars Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris.  Her character survived career turbulence, love affairs with two of her best friends and eventually a wedding that lasted the entire final season of the show.

Even during the run of the series, Smulders started branching out into films, taking on starring roles in such varied projects as the comedy Delivery Man with Vince Vaughn, the Nicholas Sparks romantic drama Safe Haven with Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough.  She even played the voice of Wonder Woman in The Lego Movie.  However, perhaps her biggest film breakthrough was smashing into the Marvel comics universe, playing Agent Maria Hill in the films Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and even the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

This summer alone, Smulders has three films released: the aforementioned Avengers blockbuster Age of Ultron, the offbeat romantic comedy Results and the sweet indie comedy/drama Unexpected.

Cobie Smulders at the New York Press Day for “Unexpected” at the Crosby Street Hotel, June 23, 2015. Photo copyright 2015 Jay S. Jacobs.

It’s a pretty heady workload for an actress who is in her early 30s.  Particularly considering that while filming Results and Unexpected, Smulders was pregnant with her second child with actor/comedian husband Taran Killam.

However, like I said before, Cobie Smulders isn’t the kind of person to let things go to her head.  She recognizes that she is in something of a dream position and she takes none of it for granted.

An example, if you may.  I recently met with Smulders at the Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo, New York, to discuss her latest film Unexpected.  The second I walked into the room, she smiled brightly and said, “Hey, I know you.”

Yes, we had met.  Once.  Seven years before.  Soon after How I Met Your Mother had been renewed for its fourth season, the cast and creators did a special Emmy-consideration presentation of one the episodes from that past season.  It was held at a famous New York tap room called McGee’s, the bar that was the inspiration for the show’s MacLaren’s Pub.  I sat down for about fifteen minutes at a time with each cast member: Smulders, Radnor, Hannigan and Harris.  (Jason Segel couldn’t make it, he was in Hollywood filming a movie that would become I Love You, Man.)

I’m not telling this story because Smulders actually remembered me, though of course that is gratifying.  Honestly it is rather shocking she recalled, considering how many interviews she has undoubtedly done in the time since we last spoke.  However Smulders went so far to prove further that it was a strong memory.  When we started the current interview she smiled, “I wish we were at McGee’s having a pint.  Another time.”  As mentioned above, McGee’s was the location of our last interview.

It’s a small thing, but it says so much about Smulders as a person.  She takes the time to appreciate the ride that is going on around her, to share in her success and to never, ever take anything for granted.  This approachability and genuine sense of decency extend to her screen persona: an attractive, smart and good-hearted openness which makes her perfect for the role of both the ideal love interest or best friend.

Cobie Smulders stars in “Unexpected.”

Now, we are a little over a year on since the finale of How I Met Your Mother.  “I miss all these people so much,” she said wistfully, looking at an old photo of herself with her co-stars.

However, her life and career are taking her on different paths now.  With a busy summer of three new movies hitting theaters (and the recent announcement of her signing on for another new film, the first movie to be directed by actress Clea DuVall), Smulders has been rushing from one project to the next.

So, how has her life changed since How I Met Your Mother ended?

“I have a lot more air miles,” Smulders said, smiling.  “It’s been a lot, but it’s been lovely inconsistency.  I was so blessed to be on that show for so long, and work with the same people for as long as I have.  I really miss everybody every day.  And the job and the character every day.”

However, as much as she enjoyed the comfort of a stable and enjoyable job, she is also getting into the idea of being more in control of her own destiny.

“It’s terrifying and also very freeing and lovely to be able to choose your own things.  Sometimes say ‘No.’  Sometimes say ‘please???  Please hire me!'”  Smulders laughed, “It’s been lovely.  We moved to New York.  So there’s been a lot of changes.  It’s been really exciting.  I’ve been very lucky.”

Cobie Smulders stars in “Unexpected.”

One of those changes is one that also forms one of the main plot threads of her latest film, Unexpected, which will be opening in New York and On-Demand on July 24th.

In that film, Smulders plays Samantha, a teacher in a Chicago inner-city school whose life is thrown into a certain amount of turmoil when she learns that she has become pregnant.  As a dedicated career woman who was not planning to have children yet, Samantha is concerned about her ability to juggle her career and motherhood.

Smulders has had to deal with many of the same concerns, though she recognizes she is in a different situation.

“It’s a balancing act,” Smulders said.  “A balancing act, always.  It’s really about trying to be as present as possible when you are with your kids.  Be with your kids, and when you’re at work, try to be at work.  It’s hard to turn off the other thing when you are with one of them.  It’s challenging, but I’m very grateful.  As a working mom I’m in a very good spot.  There are so many women out there that are working a lot harder than me, with a lot more to do.  I just feel very grateful.”

Unexpected is loosely based upon the life of writer/director Kris Swanberg, who was an inner-city Chicago school teacher who got laid off due to her school being closed for lack of funding.  As that was happening, she was pregnant and learned that one of her former students was also having a baby, so they grew closer over the shared experience.  Swanberg is also currently pregnant again, due to have a baby soon after the film opens.

Cobie Smulders and Gail Bean star in “Unexpected.”

Though the film was based upon Swanberg’s life, Smulders also felt that the story had a strong familiarity to her own life.

“Very much so,” Smulders said.  “I was pregnant, so obviously all this pregnancy stuff we were talking about was really relatable to me.  As well, having a young child and going through pregnancy and delivery.  All of it fed in to my little brain.  I was able to click back in to those moments, when need be.”

Smulders was particularly intrigued by the fact that the movie did not fall into the normal clichés.  It portrayed an important part in any woman’s life, but it did it in a quirky and intriguing way.

“I read it and it was a version of the pregnant movie that I hadn’t seen,” Smulders said.  “I feel like this was told more from the female perspective.”

Even more intriguing was the central friendship, between her character of Samantha and that of her student Jasmine (played by terrific newcomer Gail Bean).  They come from two very different worlds, and yet they deepened a connection through a shared experience.

“To me, one of the more interesting things about it – I mean there’s a lot in it that’s relatable to me as a woman who has children – but it was such an interesting way to showcase this relationship between these two women,” Smulders continued.  “It was a relationship I hadn’t seen on screen.  Under any other circumstance, I don’t think that you would see it.  I think that these women were bonded together because of their pregnancies.”

Cobie Smulders and Gail Bean star in “Unexpected.”

Smulders also liked the fact that the characters did not necessarily connect with their expected roles.  Just because one of the women appeared to be older and wiser did not mean that she had all the answers.

“It was an interesting way to link these women together and watch their journeys unfold,” Smulders chuckled.  “The thing that resonated with me, too, which I found really interesting was that these are two women, one of which is in a stable relationship.  A great place.  She went to college.  She has her career in check.  She is in a good place.  The other one is young, wanting to go to college.  Has a boyfriend that is not really around.  And the younger of the two is having an easier time with this pregnancy.  I thought that was really interesting, seeing these two different women and how they interacted.”

Of course, the most vital part of making the film work was finding the right actress to play against Smulders as her young charge, a poor-but-smart city girl who was trying to balance her impending future as a single mother with her dream of going to college.

The film lucked out with Gail Bean, a young actress who has been working in movies for about five years.  She has had small roles in several indies and shorts, even one large role in the little-known film At Mamu’s Feet.  However, Unexpected is her biggest role and biggest production so far, and she easily kept up with her more seasoned co-star.

Cobie Smulders and Gail Bean star in “Unexpected.”

“She was lovely,” Smulders recalled.  “I think she was very difficult to cast.  That part was really hard to find.  When Kris found Gail it was just perfect.  The thing about Gail is she’s supremely talented, but she’s also just… what, 22, 23 or something now?… and she seems so much older than that.  She’s very wise, but on the other hand she has a lot of vulnerability to her.  She’s very open.  She’s very connected.  She was just really amazing to work opposite.”

Part of the tension in the film revolves around the fact that Samantha cares deeply about Jasmine but sometimes seems to not recognize that they reside in very different circumstances.  Samantha looks at Jasmine’s problems from the perspective of a middle-class white woman, and she believes that anything is possible for the girl.  Jasmine, who grew up with little money, tends to be a bit more pragmatic about life’s limitations.

For example, Samantha becomes determined that if she pulled some strings, Jasmine would be able to continue following her college dreams away at Samantha’s alma mater, the University of Illinois.  Samantha is trying to do it out of love and belief in Jasmine, but Jasmine is more concerned about things like scholarships, housing and child care.

“I think that her emotions get a little bit mixed and she gets a little bit too involved,” Smulders acknowledged.  “Also, what she thinks is best for Jasmine is not necessarily what Jasmine thinks is best for Jasmine.  That’s really how it resonates.  Another thing I love about the film is seeing this last scene with Jasmine at the barbecue surrounded by this amazing family that love and support her so much.  That family is really important to Jasmine.  That is such a beautiful thing in itself.  We end the film and Jasmine is not giving up on going to school and having a career.  She’s still pursuing that, but just in another way.”

Cobie Smulders and Anders Holm star in “Unexpected.”

Samantha’s family is there for her as well, but in a slightly different way.  Samantha is unmarried when she gets pregnant, but she is involved in a very committed relationship with John, played by Anders Holm of Workaholics.  He immediately steps up and they get married, but Samantha worries that perhaps he did it because of the pregnancy rather than the relationship.

Holm and Smulders, both of whom have long histories in TV comedy, had a strong, natural connection as a film couple.

“The great thing about him and what he brought to this part was that it could be this kind of a jerk husband, who is like: ‘You can’t do it.  You’ve got to stay home.  You’ve got to do this,'” Smulders explained.  “He did that in a way that it just made it seem like: yeah honey, I support you and I love you.  I want you to be happy, but this is the reality.  He was never mean about it.  It was just he was the voice of reason.  I think that can come off sometimes as a little bit mean, but because he is who he is and he did a great job of it, he was able to be that voice without coming off as being too negative.”

Her mother is played by Elizabeth McGovern, who had her own experience in a pregnancy film: the 1987 John Hughes drama She’s Having a Baby, co-starring Kevin Bacon.  However, Smulders did not get any of the dirt about making that somewhat similar film.

“She didn’t [talk about the experience],” Smulders admitted.  “Elizabeth came to us helter skelter.  She wrapped on Downton Abbey and flew very soon after and came to us.  She started working the next morning.  We didn’t have a lot of time to rehearse and run things, but she came in just perfectly ready to fulfill this role.  She was just so easily affected by everything.

“Again, it’s another role, both her and Anders, they could have been just whiny nay-saying characters, but Elizabeth really brought a lot of humanity and depth to this woman, who really just wanted what was right for her daughter.  Really wanted her daughter’s life to be perfect.  It was such a beautiful change to go from this woman that saw that vision of her daughter going down the aisle in white shatter, and to pick up the pieces and be the mom that her daughter needed her to be.”

Cobie Smulders stars in “Unexpected.”

Also of great importance to Smulders’ character was her work as a teacher in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.  A good amount of the film’s time looks at the children and the problems with inner city schools being starved of funds and closed down in the communities that need them the most.  Smulders feels for the parents and students.

“I would love to figure that out,” Smulders said.  “I would love for education to be free.  I’d love for it to be equalized.  I’d love for friggin’ university to be free.  You look at Europe, even in Canada, where I’m from… it’s laughable how much college is.  It’s like $5,000.00 for the whole year for tuition.  I don’t understand why it has to be so expensive [in the US], but it is.  It would be nice to see better schools.  Also getting teachers more equalized and better paid.  It would be nice.  That would be really nice.”

She paused and laughed slightly.  “I don’t know how to fix that system.  Luckily that’s not my job, because that seems like a massive undertaking.  But it would be amazing to see it happen in the near future.”

One thing we will be seeing in the near future, though, is more of Smulders in our multiplexes.  With Unexpected just about to premiere, this is her third film to make theaters this summer.

Another indie film which came out last month was Results, a mixture of workplace drama and romantic comedy about an Austin, Texas gym.  The subtle and slightly subversive film, directed by cult director Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess, Funny Ha Ha) allowed Smulders to play totally against type, as a cynical and bitter fitness instructor whose fling with her older boss (played by Guy Pearce) eventually becomes more serious than they originally intend.

Cobie Smulders and Anders Holm star in “Unexpected.”

Though her character in Results was a fitness freak and constantly working out and looking buff, Smulders was actually pregnant while filming that movie as well, though not as far along as she was in Unexpected.  Hiding her pregnancy on film was an interesting experience for her, though it looks surprisingly seamless on screen.

“It was interesting,” Smulders said of the experience.  “I wasn’t able to push myself physically as far as I would have liked.  But, it was still early on, so I was able to do a lot.  It was slightly challenging.  We got through it and everyone was so accommodating and really understanding.  It was one of those that just kind of timed out perfectly and we were able to sneak it by and keep going and really, really show off the pregnancy in this one.”

Also, of course, Smulders continued her ascension into the Marvel comics universe, appearing in the summer’s big blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Smulders continued her turn as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Nick Fury confidant Maria Hill.

This role alone should keep Smulders employed for years.  It’s something of a given that Marvel characters float from project to project.  So far, she has played the character in Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and now Age of Ultron.  So, tell us the truth, Cobie Smulders.  Does she have to be constantly on call in case Marvel decides they want to drop her into one of their blockbusters?

“[Do] I have the microchip installed and I drop everything when it goes off?” she asked, good naturedly, shaking her head.  “No.”

Cobie Smulders and Anders Holm star in “Unexpected.”

So what is it like to be part of such a massive series of projects, one with such a huge international following?

“It’s wonderful,” Smulders said.  “It’s amazing.  It’s so fun.  With Ultron coming out it was just another whirlwind experience.  Shooting it was awesome and then having it come out and having fans react to it.  Anything that has to do with Marvel comes back to its amazing fans.  The support and the love they have for these characters is just a really cool thing to be a part of.  To go to the Comic-Cons and to see everybody and to feel that excitement is quite thrilling.”

Excitement seems to be a vital word for Smulders in this stage of her career.  Coming off almost a decade having a dream job, she wants to spread her wings a bit and see where things take her.  Next up is a just-announced untitled ensemble film, which will be the directing debut of actress Clea DuVall (Argo, Jackie & Ryan).  Smulders will be working with a cast of diverse talents such as Melanie Lynskey, Jason Ritter, Natasha Lyonne, Vincent Piazza, Ben Schwartz and Alia Shawkat.

And then?  Who knows?  Smulders is enjoying the freedom of picking and choosing her projects.  She’ll do indies.  She’ll do big budget.  She’ll do anything, as long as the script intrigues her.

“It’s a case by case scenario,” Smulders admitted.  “I’m interested in just trying out different characters.  Working with people that I enjoy and I respect and that seem like they’d be a lot of fun.  But it really, really just comes down to script and story.  Trying out different things.  I’m trying to challenge myself and keep myself interested.”

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 24, 2015.

Photos #1 & 2 ©2015 Jay S. Jacobs. All rights reserved.

Photos ©2015. Courtesy of The Film Arcade. All rights reserved.

Trainwreck

TRAINWRECK (2015)

Starring Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, John Cena, Tilda Swinton, Vanessa Bayer, Mike Birbiglia, Ezra Miller, LeBron James, Brie Larson, Randall Park, Amar’e Stoudemire, Norman Lloyd, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, Dave Attell, Bridget Everett, Nikki Glaser, Matthew Broderick, Chris Evert, Marv Albert, Tony Romo, Kyle Dunnigan, Kevin Kane, Tim Meadows, Jim Florentine, Bobby Kelly, Ryan Farrell, Robert E. Torres, Devin Fabry, Carla Oudin, Leslie Jones, Pete Davidson, Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei.

Screenplay by Amy Schumer.

Directed by Judd Apatow.

Distributed by Universal Pictures.  124 minutes.  Rated R.

As much as I wanted to be able to say, “the movie Trainwreck was… well… a trainwreck” I am unable to truthfully do so. In fact, Amy Schumer’s big screen debut is simply anything but. Already being hailed as one of the year’s top comedies, Trainwreck is fantastic.

Not only was Trainwreck downright hilarious, it was also important. Schumer’s character, a “modern chick who does what she wants” is not the typical female romantic comedy star that we’ve come to know very well.

In fact Schumer’s character, Amy, was much more representative of a stereotypical male character in the films, turning the tables on clichéd slots for women in comedy. Schumer used comedy here to make a statement, much like she does in her TV show, Inside Amy Schumer.

Schumer uses the film as a tool, highlighting changing modern times and expressing women’s sexuality in a more modern way. She doesn’t put it on a pedestal however. The film shows both positives and negatives to the more carefree lifestyle, making the point that it’s important to both find balance and be bold in our lives.

Schumer wasn’t the only standout in the film. Wrestler John Cena makes an appearance as Amy’s softie fling. His improvised lines and physical reactions garner a memorable performance that is both comedic and surprising. The same goes for basketball superstar LeBron James, who stars as former Saturday Night Live standout Bill Hader’s character’s client and confidant.

While the comedic value of Bill Hader’s performance is much less of a shock, his starring role as doctor Aaron Conners really lets him shine. He plays the stable half of the relationship with Amy, a calm, collected guy who strikes a good balance for Amy.

While the film was a comedy, it did have it’s more serious moments, as all good comedies should. These serious moments do not drag on, and are effective in letting the story move forward.

In a film with an outrageous amount of guest stars, ridiculous situations and hilarious one liners, there was also time to take things seriously, evaluate the  choices made, and truly appreciate a good laugh. Trainwreck is a great film, and I highly recommend it.

Ally Abramson

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 26, 2015.

The Outrageous Sophie Tucker

THE OUTRAGEOUS SOPHIE TUCKER (2015)

Starring Barbara Walters, Tony Bennett, Carol Channing, Michael Feinstein, Shecky Greene, Bruce Vilanch, Lloyd Ecker, Susan Ecker, Paul Anka, Kay Ballard, Chubby Checker, Don Dellair, Joe Franklin, Brenda Lee, Tony Martin, Mickey Rooney, Connie Stevens, Mamie Van Doren and archival footage of Sophie Tucker, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, John F. Kennedy, Judy Garland, J. Edgar Hoover, Al Capone and Ted Shapiro.

Narrated by David Hyde-Pierce.

Directed by William Gazecki.

Distributed by Menemsha Films.  96 minutes.  Not Rated.

Fame is so fleeting, and over generations even the most accomplished artists are generally forgotten.  I’ve vaguely heard the name of Sophie Tucker over the years, but I can’t really say that I knew anything about the actress and singer.

However, for my grandfather’s generation, Tucker was a huge celebrity.  Breaking out of Broadway and Yiddish Theater, Tucker was one of the first women to break through as a triple threat, a groundbreaking jazz singer, an actress and a comic personality.  She was brave enough to sing songs which were rather scandalous (well, at least for back then, in today’s world they seem rather mild) about sex and relationships.

Her looks and size (she was a proudly plus-sized woman and not exactly what most people would call beautiful) did not interfere with her becoming something of a sex symbol, one of the biggest pin-ups during World War II.  Her ribald and lively delivery inspired future artists as diverse as Mae West, Bette Midler (who idolized her) and Lady Gaga.

She was good friends with and contemporaries with everyone from Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Mickey Rooney, Tony Bennett and Jimmy Durante.  She was friends with several US Presidents, to the point that she could call John F. Kennedy on a whim and he’d take her call.  She was one of the most prolific product pitch-people of her time.  She was a tireless self-marketer, writing her biography and selling it at her own shows, taking the names and addresses of her audience and handwriting them notes.

And yet, like I said, I’d barely even heard of her.  Perhaps this is because she died when I was merely three years old, but many of her contemporaries have stayed in sight of pop culture long after they moved on.

The Outrageous Sophie Tucker shows her to have been a fascinating, principled, smart and funny woman.  The film is full of intriguing photographs and footage, though an-often used technique of moving still photos like a puppet against a still background was always annoying, cheesy and distracting.

The film is a little stingy about personal information about Tucker.  They sort of gloss over her relationship with her family when she left her son to go seek fame.  In her Orthodox Jewish background, this type of behavior would be cause for her to be cut off from her family, but that never totally happened and the film does not exactly explain why.  A later relationship she has with a female friend is teased as perhaps being a lesbian affair, but the filmmakers never feel comfortable enough with their research to either commit to the fact or deny it.

Some of the stories are not even exactly about Tucker, per se.  A touching story of American World War II soldiers fulfilling a dead compatriot’s dying wish by playing Tucker’s song “My Yiddishe Momme” in the liberated streets of Nazi Germany as the Allies marched in really had little to do with Tucker herself, beyond the fact that the dead soldier was a big fan.

However, the film showed the interesting dichotomies of a woman who broke many glass ceilings despite having to put up with much that she did not want to – particularly an early phase in her career when she was forced to perform in blackface – just to get noticed.  The Outrageous Sophie Tucker showed a consummate show-woman and a brilliant, principled businesswoman (she never had one contract in her career – her word was her bond).

And while it would have been nice to have a bit more footage of its subject (it also made me really want to track down her autobiography), The Outrageous Sophie Tucker is an intriguing introduction to an eccentric talent which has sadly been mostly forgotten.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 24, 2015.

Vacation

VACATION (2015)

Starring Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Chris Hemsworth, Leslie Mann, Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Charlie Day, Catherine Missal, Charlie Day, Ron Livingston, Norman Reedus, Keegan-Michael Key, Regina Hall, Emyri Crutchfield, Alkoya Brunson, Nick Kroll, Tim Heidecker, Kaitlin Olson, Michael Peña, Colin Hanks, Kirstin Ford, Ethan Maher, Hannah Davis, Elizabeth Gillies, Cristina Squyres, Nadine Avola, Ryan Cartwright and John Francis Daley.

Screenplay by Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

Directed by Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

Distributed by Warner Bros.  99 minutes.  Rated R.

Hollywood continues mining its past in vain hopes of steering its future, but the ongoing onslaught of remake/remodels of old favorites almost inevitably mostly spawns disappointment.

This reboot of the 80s Vacation series (the filmmakers couldn’t quite decide if they wanted to do a sequel or a remake, and ended up kind of doing both at once) has a particularly tricky pedigree to live up to.

The original 1983 film, National Lampoon’s Vacation, is seen as something of a comedy classic, but honestly it’s not quite as funny as you probably remember it being.  It spawned three sequels, one of which was probably better than the original (European Vacation) and one that has become beloved, though honestly it wasn’t all that great (Christmas Vacation).

At the time the original Vacation came out, it ended up proving that the films produced by the legendary humor mag were not a flash in the pan.  National Lampoon had started out big five years earlier with National Lampoon’s Animal House, but ever film they made after (such as Class Reunion and Movie Madness) would crash and burn quickly.  Actually, other than Animal House and the Vacation films, having National Lampoon in your title ended up being a death sentence for a film, though in the early 2000s National Lampoon’s Van Wilder became a fluke hit.

It was written by a then-mostly unknown screenwriter named John Hughes (who got his start writing for the Lampoon magazine), who within a few years would have written and directed such 80s classics as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The film’s star, Chevy Chase, had left Saturday Night Live years before with the idea of being a movie star, and by the time Vacation came out he was making crap like Oh Heavenly Dog, Under the Rainbow and Deal of the Century.

So there was not a lot of expectation when National Lampoon’s Vacation was released, and fairly, the film easily overshadowed its low expectations.  Meant as a wicked satire of 80s family values, the original film became a pretty huge hit.  And yes, it was peppered through with some terrific slapstick gags, but also it was going out of its way to wallow in “shocking” humor and saccharine emotions.

Chevy Chase’s character of Clark Griswold also has taken on more dimension over the years, lingering underneath the obvious goofy doltish demeanor is a rather angry and dismissive man – the epitome of the Reagan-era sense of me-decade entitlement.  He was a man who was proud to make a living selling food additives, for Christ’s sake.  He purchased the most ugly, high maintenance car possible to take his family on their country-wide road trip to Walley World, a theme park and consumerist paradise.

Not all of National Lampoon’s Vacation has aged all that well, but I have to admit I still feel a nostalgic affection for it.  However, compared to this new reboot of the Griswold adventures, National Lampoon’s Vacation is a stone-cold classic.  Hell, compared to this, Vegas Vacation, the limp final episode of the original series, was terrific.

Written and directed by actor John Francis Daley (Freaks & Geeks, Bones) and his partner Jonathan Goldstein (the pair had previously written Horrible Bosses and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) with a sledge-hammer’s touch, the new Vacation takes on all the best and worst parts of the original and turns them up to eleven.  And then they just start shoveling toilet humor, vomit shots and sudden moments of gratuitous violence on top of everything.  No one ever though that the main problem with National Lampoon’s Vacation was that they didn’t go far enough with the gross-out humor.  And yet Goldstein and Daley continue to dollop it on until the main reaction the audience has is exhaustion.

Ed Helms plays Rusty Griswold, the boy from the original film (then played by Anthony Michael Hall) all grown up with a suburban family of his own.  (Fun fact: In all five Vacation movies, the roles of Rusty and Audrey Griswold have been played by different actors each time.)  He has grown up to be a pilot, married a gorgeous woman (played by Christina Applegate, who looks disturbingly like Beverly D’Angelo, who played his mother), has two sons, an effeminate (but straight) loser of an older son and an obnoxious bully of a young son.  They live in a huge suburban McMansion (how did he get that on a local pilot’s salary?) but he feels a disconnect in the family.

So he decides the way to get everyone together is to drive across country to Walley World, conveniently forgetting what a disaster the same trip he took 30 years earlier was.  They hit the road, and just like the first time the film is just a series of disasters descending on the family.  The film is very self-consciously ironically aware of its reboot status – at one point Helms archly points out this story is different than the original trip because they have two boys compared to a boy and a girl.

They repeat or renovate many of the gags from the original film – the absurd family cruiser, the Grand Canyon trip, the model in the sports car, the car crash in the desert.  While the new film inevitably ups the ante on each of these gags, very few of them land as satisfactorily as the original.

They also have time to stop and visit Audrey (now played by Leslie Mann) and her conservative (and well-hung) weatherman husband (Chris Hemsworth) and later his parents (Chase and D’Angelo, reprising their original roles).

Whether they actually make it to Walley World is almost beside the point, though I think you can make a pretty safe bet as to whether it happens.  However, as Clark Griswold points out as his family is visiting, the people who say “it’s not the destination, it’s the trip” are crazy.  It’s all about the destination, because the trip will inevitably suck.

And sadly, this new Vacation is lots of trip and almost no destination.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 30, 2015.

Listen to Me, Marlon

LISTEN TO ME, MARLON (2015)

Featuring footage of Marlon Brando, Christian Brando, Cheyenne Brando, Anna Kashfi, Tarita Teriipia, Vivienne Leigh, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Francis Ford Coppola, Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris, Lee J. Cobb, Bernardo Bertolucci, Maria Schneider, David Niven, Susanna York, Stella Adler and Bob Crane.

Written by Stevan Riley.

Directed by Stevan Riley.

Distributed by Passion Pictures.  102 minutes.  Not Rated.

Marlon Brando was a very talented, a very complicated and eventually a very disturbed man.  He lived a very fabulous life and also a very tragic one.  He knew great love and great loss.  He was intellectual, progressive, insecure, fun-loving, self-critical, deeply compassionate, occasionally vain, often eccentric, sometimes selfish and often baffling.  He had big passions and big appetites.  He was a ladies man and yet he almost never settled down for a traditional romantic relationship.

He loved beauty (particularly a life-long passion for the island of Tahiti) and was fascinated by ugliness.  He both appreciated and undersold his talent, even his profession of acting and filmmaking.  He had oddball interests.  There is a legendary story of his excessive fascination with extremely diminutive actor Nelson de la Rosa in one of his last films, The Island of Dr. Moreau.  This film shows that he had his head digitally preserved for filmmaking use after he was gone, an visual effect that is somewhat disorienting and spooky with cold, dead-looking eyes.

Listen to Me, Marlon probably comes as close to giving people a look at his inner workings as you can ask from a film.

The legendary actor apparently was rather obsessive about making audio cassettes of himself just talking.  He made these tapes for meditation, or as therapy, as entertainment and as a personal history.  He also recorded business meetings, doctor’s appointments and even canoodling with a few unnamed ladies in his life.

Brando’s estate has given writer, editor and director Stevan Riley complete access to these tapes, most of which had never been heard by anyone but Brando himself.  Mixing these tapes as narration with a mixture of personal photos, home movies and television and film clips, Riley is able to give a pretty intriguing overview of the life and work of the late movie star, who died in 2004.

It’s a mostly very intriguing look at what a Brando autobiography might have been like.  Starting out as a small, insecure child in the heartland, child of a cold father and an alcoholic mother, it traces his growth from starving New York actor to the toast of Broadway from A Streetcar Named Desire to becoming the flashpoint of the method acting movement.  It also shows how he drifts from his pure talent as his career exploded.

Brando could be a harsh personal critic.  He freely admits that he was disappointed in his Oscar-winning performance in On the Waterfront and that he was not at all sure he could pull off his trademark role of Don Corleone in The Godfather.  Also, he was self-aware enough to know that his exploding fame and fortune made him more headstrong and difficult to work with as an actor.

The final half-hour or so dealt mostly with his personal tragedies, particularly the 1990s when a tabloid scandal exploded as his son Christian was imprisoned for killing the abusive lover of Marlon’s daughter Cheyenne.  Then a few years later the emotionally fragile Cheyenne committed suicide.

It’s hard to listen to some of the darker passages, but Brando’s tapes also had a meditative beauty that salves some of life’s deepest hurts.  The final soliloquy, undoubtedly recorded to help with insomnia or meditation and at the same time soothingly feeling like an acceptance of mortality, shows a man who was at peace with a pretty fascinating life.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 7, 2015.

Unexpected

UNEXPECTED (2015)

Starring Cobie Smulders, Gail Bean, Anders Holm, Elizabeth McGovern, Aaron Nelson, Tyla Abercrumbie, Shonique Watkins, Takiyah Dixon, DuShon Monique Brown, Robyn Coffin, Aaron J. Nelson, Preston Tate Jr., J. Anthony Kopec, Adrian Bond and Heidi Johanningmeier.

Screenplay by Megan Mercier and Kris Swanberg.

Directed by Kris Swanberg.

Distributed by The Film Arcade.  86 minutes.  Rated R.

Unexpected is not merely the title of this small independent drama, it also surprisingly ends up describing the effect of the film itself.  Looking at the basic storyline the audience could be excused for reflexively dismissing it as a smug baby flick and never expecting the movie to be such a smart, insightful, funny and sad look at an odd couple friendship.

It doesn’t just stick with the typical pregnant woman movie template, though those aspects are here as well, but it is also an intriguing look at class, race, careers, women’s issues and the importance of extended family.

Unexpected is loosely based on the experiences of co-writer/director Kris Swanberg, wife of mumblecore film figurehead Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas).  It’s nice to see that the wife, while sharing her husband’s naturalistic style of filmmaking, is not quite as meandering and unfocused as her hubby in her storytelling.

The film looks back at Kris Swanberg’s former career as a teacher in an inner-city Chicago public school, and how her school losing funding coincided with her first pregnancy.

Cobie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother (who was herself pregnant during the filming) plays Swanberg’s doppleganger character, Samantha, a thirty-some middle classed teacher who loves teaching until she is hit with the one-two punch that the city was closing down her school and that she was pregnant.

Samantha is somewhat freaked out by the pregnancy – she and her live-in boyfriend (Anders Holm) were not quite to the point where they were talking marriage and kids – and besides her dream job has just opened up.  If she has the baby, will she be able to try to get that position?

At the same time Samantha also learns that Jasmine (Gail Bean), one of her brightest high school students, is also pregnant.  Samantha makes it her own project to make sure that Jasmine does not let the coming baby stop her from going to college.  As the two are sharing an experience, they bond and become friends through pregnancy stuff – doctors’ appointments, Lamaze classes, shopping for baby things.  Samantha tries to take care of the younger woman, but it turns out that in many ways Jasmine is more comfortable and ready for the situation than Samantha is.

The film is quietly insightful about its world and situation and has some spectacular acting — particularly coming from Smulders, Holm, Elizabeth McGovern and the totally unknown Bean, who may be the biggest positive surprise in acting.

In fact, the movie itself is a positive surprise.  Unexpected turns out to be rather unexpected, and I’m damned happy that it is.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 24, 2015.

Katrina Bowden stars in TNT’s new series “Public Morals.”

Katrina Bowden

Taking on Public Morals

by Ronald Sklar

Hey, don’t make her career talk to the hand, just because she’s beautiful. At one time, Katrina Bowden may have been voted Esquire‘s Sexiest Woman Alive, and she is (so far) best known as Cerie, the vapid model/intern/Liz-Lemon foil on 30 Rock, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously and win some roles with a little meat on the bone.

This is happening. Ed Burns writes, directs and executive produces Public Morals on TNT, which follows the lives, trials and lip-biting temptations of New York City’s Vice Squad in the pre-gentrified New York City of the Sixties.

In it, Katrina plays a tried-and-true Noo Yawk stereotype, but screw that: she kicks that convention out of bed and turns the tiresome cliché on its head, reimagining that usually flat character type into two more additional dimensions.

“She’s a prostitute, which seems kind of simple on paper,” Katrina tells me, “but she isn’t typically like a prostitute character. She’s sweet and innocent and mysterious and you don’t know if she’s lying. She’s a full character. There are so many layers to her.”

Just like on 30 Rock, Public Morals allows Katrina to play against some serious heavyweights, including Burns, Michael Rapaport and Elizabeth Masucci. One of the co-executive producers is a name that turns almost as many heads as if Katrina just walked by: Steven Spielberg. So, no, this isn’t another SAG-card-renewal obligation to throw on the ol’ IMDb.

“I wanted to play her outside of what her chosen career path was,” Katrina says, making it totally believable “that a cop would actually like her and fall in love with her and pursue a relationship with her. She seems more like a real person than somebody who is trying to buddy up to a cop.”

The show is delivered in the wake of the new normal for post-Mad Men/Breaking Bad cable television. The bat signal is projected in the sky for considerable talent like Ed Burns, whose knack for adding heft and lift can take traditional cable networks to a new plane.

“He’s a very inspiring person,” she says of Burns. “He wants to do what he wants to do, and he actually gets it done. At the same time, he’s just a very cool and normal guy. He’s really great to be around. He directed all of the episodes in the first season, so as both an actor and a director, he knows how to talk to you and get your point across. His whole attitude is wonderful. His story is based on a lot of what his father went through. His father was a plainclothes officer in the Public Morals division in New York City in the Sixties, so he would come to the set a lot and tell us stories. It all comes from a real place. It’s something that means a lot to him and his family.”

Edward Burns and Katrina Bowden star in TNT’s new series “Public Morals.”

It’s always nice to work with a super genius talent, as a rising tide lifts all boats. The same magic happened with a boss from another job: Tina Fey on 30 Rock.

“I was so young when I started on 30 Rock,” she says. “I was 17. [Tina] was a great role model from the very start, very inspiring, especially as a woman doing what she has been able to do. She’s just a wonderful person. I just can’t say enough good things about her.”

Is Katrina really Cerie, and vice-versa? If so, say it ain’t so, Katrina/Cerie!

“I don’t think I am,” she says. “People are often like, ‘Wow, you’re not like her at all.’ Or ‘Wow, you don’t dress like [she did].’ The writing on 30 Rock was so perfect. My goal for every line was to make another character look stupid or old or embarrassed; but also, you wanted to like her at the same time. She wasn’t supposed to be mean. I just had to find new and interesting ways to try to come up with ways to deliver the lines so that you still liked her and just kind of laughed at her instead of thinking that she was mean.”

The New Jersey native started modeling early (dad would drive her into the city for castings and auditions), which led to the 30 Rock gig, and later, being voted Esquire‘s Sexiest Woman Alive.

“I only held the title for a year, but it was very, very cool,” she says.

Men the world over know and understand all too frustratingly well how and why Katrina is sexy, but what is sexy to her?

“Someone who is confident,” she answers, without hesitation. “I think confidence wins all in that department for me. The way you hold yourself. Just being who you are and being okay with that. Often we question ourselves and we’re not so positive, and being always so sure of yourself is hard to attain all the time. So I find it sexy when I find somebody being very confident in what they are doing. And I think humor is sexy too, being able to laugh at yourself and find humor in things. Life is so short, we can’t take it too seriously. I think all of those things create a very cool personality.”

Now that the career is in first gear, Katrina divides her time between coasts, but she’ll take Manhattan. Yep, the very same city that co-stars with her. Katrina’s New York cleans up real nice and is on its best behavior, unlike the characters on Public Morals.

“I’ve been living there for nine years now, so I feel like I’m officially a New Yorker,” she says. “It changes you. And waiting in line at Starbucks takes more than three minutes.”

True, sometimes a New York minute takes more like three minutes, but it looks like Katrina is quickly making her way to the front of the line.

Find out more about Public Morals here. http://www.tntdrama.com/shows/public-morals.html

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 13, 2015.

Photo 1 ©2015. Courtesy of TNT. All rights reserved.