romantic comedy

Peep World

payal — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Lately it seems as if forced quirkiness has become an unavoidable symptom of our indie films, with the family of characters being perhaps the most common and convenient setup (see Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, et al). So despite certain bright lights in Peep World's cast, I was wary of it from the start. The ensemble comedy centers on a family dinner that suffers under a mountain of tension in the wake of the success of the youngest son's tell-all memoir. The eponymous book mostly serves to air out the dirty laundry of all of its author's siblings: Jack, "the responsible one" (Michael C. Hall); Joel, "the fuck-up" (Rainn Wilson); and Cheri, a love-desperate neurotic (Sarah Silverman). Rounding out the cast are Ron Rifkin and Leslie Ann Warren as the parents of the clan, Judy Greer as Jack's wife Laura, Taraji P. Henson as Joel's girlfriend Mary, Ben Schwartz as Nathan, the youngest sibling and author of the controversial novel, and Kate Mara as his assistant.

With such a formidable cast, the film is mostly a showcase for its characters. Unfortunately, in this case the writing doesn't quite live up to the acting. For a comedy that's actually a tragedy of a highly dysfunctional family, the Peep World script doesn't create nearly enough of a history. The film is short, which would be fine (welcome, even) if not for the fact that it feels even shorter. There's something essential missing and, as a result, the emotional climaxes don't have much impact. We don't have enough time to settle into any of the siblings, let alone invest in them, and so, their epiphanies feel unearned.

The actors can't be faulted; they manage to create moments that are both hilarious and deeply touching, even without much to start with on paper. It may seem redundant to even mention it, but Michael C. Hall is just so good. Among the entire cast, he comes the closest to sparking actual empathy from the audience. One of the most effective scenes is when Jack has a quick phone conversation with the extravagant restaurant that's hosting his father's big birthday dinner—right after he's discovered that his own business has gone bankrupt and his few employees have abandoned him.

It's a pleasure to see Judy Greer playing against her stock rom-com quirky best friend role, and she and Hall are truly wonderful together. Taraji P. Henson is also, as always, one of the brighter lights among the cast, making the most of her small but hilarious role as Joel's understandably disoriented girlfriend. I would not have thought to pair her with Rainn Wilson, but they're ridiculously fun to watch together. Though she's never quite won my heart as a comedienne, even I couldn't take my eyes off of Sarah Silverman, and Ben Schwartz's Nathan faces a seemingly out of place, extreme situation with a fearless physical comedy that's equally unexpected. The only misfire in the casting is in Lewis Black as the film's narrator. His voice and delivery are certainly funny but they're also distracting, and even if that's the point of his voiceover, it still detracts from the film.

To the credit of Peep World, I certainly left the theater wanting more, but that's only because, despite its terrific performances, I was still ultimately left dissatisfied.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, February 27th 2011

Love and Other Drugs

mandy — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Edward Zwick

Bedford Falls Productions

Love and Other Drugs is Edward Zwick’s latest film and is something of a peculiarity for him. He is known mostly for such films as Glory and Courage Under Fire. His most recent film, Defiance, was also a war epic. Hence, turning this direction caused many raised eyebrows. That said, he is not totally knew to the genre, he started here actually.

The film tells the story of Jamie Randall, a pharmaceutical sales person who has a way with the ladies. You know the drill, and as much as I hate to admit it, for a majority of the film’s run time, it pretty much just runs the drill. We have our male protagonist that loves sex but not relationships, and our quirky, hip, nonconformist woman who initially shows no interest. Then they get involved and problems emerge when emotions show up. The film’s catch is that she has Parkinson’s disease. I appreciate that the film reveals this immediately rather than trying to keep her reasoning for wanting distance a mystery. But that doesn’t make the concept any more original.

There is a subtle irony that she is sick and he works in the medical field, but the film doesn’t really develop it. And I am glad that it doesn’t because Viagra (the drug that Jamie is selling) doesn’t really have anything to do with Parkinson’s. Instead Love and Other Drugs plays on the irony that he is selling Viagra and he is a sexaholic, but he chooses her instead.

The film falls into more clichés and some of its worst moments are when the overweight, Jonah Hill-style brother of Jamie moves in because he is having problems with his lady. His purpose in the film is to be jealous of his brother, until he has sex and discovers that relationships are more important. He provides for plenty of alarmingly humorous gags.

Despite everything I just mentioned, Love and Other Drugs is good, even great if you are someone who loves romantic comedies as irrationally as I do. But it is not this year’s Up in the Air. It is a comedy at heart and it only loses sight of that to get deeply romantic. The film tells a love story and makes you laugh. And there is nothing wrong with that.

As you probably noticed, I haven’t mentioned anything about our two lead performers. I will say this bluntly: this is my new favorite Jake Gyllenhaal performance. He literally delves into the realm of Jim Carrey with this role. He is wild, charismatic, and hysterical. But he has a heart, and pulls it off even when the script can’t keep up with him.

Anne Hathaway is at the top of her game as well, but the script gives her a little less to work with. She shines in a particularly brilliant scene that shows real Parkinson’s patients gathered to share each others' stories. Hathaway sits in the audience with tears of joy, marveling at their accomplishments.

There are moments in this film where you can literally feel the sexual tension bursting from the screen. The cinematography and score work together to elevate the romantic tone. One beautiful shot in which Hathaway rejects Gyllenhaal shows snow swirling around her at the edge of an alleyway. Another shows only their skin through a blurred, steamy window, also with snow blowing around in front of them.

In the final moments of Love and Other Drugs, Jamie is required to make his cliché, final resolution request to be with her. Again, the film goes through the motions with this scene. But here, there is only one subject that needs to be touched on. And while the film stumbles a bit to get there, it goes where it needs to go, and says all that it needs to say. It ends on the right note and it is fun to watch it get there.

The full review can be found at Film Misery

Written by: Alex Carlson, November 10th 2010

Going the Distance

brittany — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nanette Burstein

New Line Cinema

When I first read about this film in the making, I was psyched. I’m a huge Drew Barrymore fan, and it appeared that finally, a romantic comedy was in the works that presented a more modern interpretation of male female relationships. It looked like it might actually include both sides of the story rather than just a fairy tale version of the woman’s desire to be desired.

Mission accomplished… sort of. A reflection of a modern day romance challenged by location, work, and common fears of intimacy, Going the Distance takes a small step on the road to diversifying the romantic comedy genre. But it’s a slippery slope, especially in the Hollywood Hills. I’m certain that many viewers will see themselves and their relationships reflected on screen; I know I did. However, both the plot and dialogue reinforce a dominant misconception of feminist thought—in order for women to heard, and in this case dateable, they have to join the boys club.

Going the Distance chronicles the courtship of Erin (Barrymore) and Garrett (Justin Long) as they meet, fall for each other, and struggle to maintain their relationship between NYC and San Francisco. Erin and Garret are introduced at a bar when he discovers she is ERL, the Centipede videogame high-scorer he has been working to beat. Flabbergasted that ERL is a girl, the rest of their evening follows suit as the beautiful Erin chugs beer, devours chicken wings, and trades crass jokes with the dudes. Apparently this behavior is just what it takes to get the commitment-phobic Garrett to fall in love. The reality of Long and Barrymore’s off-camera relationship is impossible to separate from that of the characters they play in the film, but it works. While many moments are contrived, the chemistry between the two is infectious, especially in the beginning when the cinematography fools you into thinking you’re watching a documentary.

Taking a cue from Knocked Up, Going the Distance offers the bulk of its humor via the supporting cast of men and fails in providing another interesting female character. Garrett’s overly-involved buddies Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis steal every scene they are in, whether by dj’ing the couple’s hook-up or convincing Garrett to grow a moustache in order to pick up older ladies. Erin’s support comes in the form of a cynical, disapproving sister, the always enjoyable Christina Applegate. Just like Leslie Mann in Knocked Up, Applegate’s character is dull and stereotypical forcing the usually hilarious actress to idle through meager screen time and meaningless dialogue.

Barrymore is one of the few ladies in Hollywood with some real power in her pocket and, flawed as it may be, does her part to shift the traditional perception of women in film in favor of a more realistic, multi-dimensional character. When a co-worker asks where she is going, Erin, a grad-student and aspiring reporter, who have just been through the wringer with her editor, retorts, “I’m thirty-one and I’m an intern. I’m getting wasted.” As a thirty-one-year-old aspiring writer who has recently applied for a few internships herself, I immediately resonated with this character. As the film develops we watch Erin struggle with building a career in a dying industry, falling in love and eventually, having to choose between the two.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, September 9th 2010

The Switch

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:31:00 +0000

Directed by Josh Gordon

Bona Fide Productions

The Switch is getting a lukewarm reception, unless of course you count Capone's review over at AintItCoolNews.com, which makes the film sound like the culprit behind most major World Wars. Others found it sweet but lacking depth, and as usual in the case of movies that don't land with mainstream audiences, I loved it.

I liked the fact that The Switch wasn't all about gross-out sperm humor, which is what the marketing campaign made it seem like it was going to be, focusing entirely on the moment in question of the actual titular switch. The marketing campaign made it seem like the movie was going to be a Farrelly Brothers movie or something more akin to, The Back-Up Plan. But it wasn't.

This is a movie about what happens after a wacky mishap, the human fallout. It's more about the resulting child and less about the night he was conceived. Maybe it's because of the age I'm at, 28, and my thinking about having a family of my own soon that made The Switch the kind of story I could really grasp onto.

The film operates under what Ebert calls, "an idiot plot," where the entire film hinges around one secret that, if revealed, would essentially fix everything or ruin it forever. But unlike the frustration that typically comes with movies like this, as an audience member, I was rooting for the secret keeper and not wanting to ring his neck like I so often do. What's the difference this time? It's not really a secret. The two main characters already love each other, and we know that early on. They are simply too afraid of messing up their friendship and too frustrated with each other to say anything about it. Sounds less and less like the movie that was advertised, doesn't it? That's because this felt like a small film, maybe even an independent. But it was marketed to mass audiences.

Usually, movies like this play relationships oh-so-very-coy, and the main character seems totally oblivious to the fact that her male best friend is in love with her. I hate that. So, Aniston's portrayal of a character with mixed emotions, in love with her best friend but believing she deserves someone who will actually speak up for her and behave in a mature way, is refreshingly different. It helped me keep my patience with Bateman, who plays quirky and verklempt very well—so well that if it weren't for Aniston's more down-to-Earth portrayal, he would've driven me crazy. It's as if we have a romantic comedy where the woman is unwilling to participate in the traditional structure, refusing to wait on the man to resolve his feelings before moving forward in her own life without him. The trouble is, there's still that pesky problem of being in love. Yes, every romantic comedy is the same.

If you've been on the fence and you like movies about what happens after the seemingly "happily ever after," then give The Switch a try, eventually. Yes, there's a happy ending. Yes, at it's core, it's a populist movie about family and how we have to overcome the mistakes of the families we were raised in to build our own. But every once in a while, and with a cast like this, what's so wrong with that?

Excerpted from Born for Geekdom

Written by: Audrey M. Brown, August 25th 2010

Timer

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Jac Schaeffer

Capewatch Pictures

I love a romantic comedy. Throw in some magic realism–even better. Jac Schaeffer's Timer ticks both of those boxes, but, unfortunately for a film that explores people’s fears about missed opportunities, this film missed a few opportunities itself, and lost me as a fan in the process. (It bills itself as sci-fi but I say magic realism–there is new technology, but it’s never fully explained. I call that magic. More on this later, though.)

The concept is great: a company has created a wrist implant that counts down to the moment you will meet your soul mate–but only if that person has also bought an implant from the company. Obviously, this service is incredibly popular, leading to new phenomena in the dating world: some desperate types insisting every new person they date gets a timer implanted to make sure they’re "the one," others only dating those with timers in the first place, last-hurrah flings as the timer counts down its final days, and even technophobic hold-outs who don’t trust this newfangled stuff (with parallels to social networking). The consequences of having the timers could have been explored further though. Things were briefly touched upon-class issues, young love, bigger questions about fate and chance. The ideas all had loads of potential, but as I watched, I kept feeling like Schaeffer tried to go too far down each road, without taking the opportunity to wrap up every angle.

Because of all of the above, including my desire for more closure, I really wanted to like this film, and came very close to liking it. A few other things rankled, though. This may seem petty, but it struck a nerve with me: One of the opening shots of the film was of the logo of the company that created the timers–the silhouettes of a man and a woman, yet we briefly see later in the film that the company caters to couples of all sexualities. I don’t generally care what sexualities the main characters of a romantic comedy are, but it wouldn’t have taken much more effort to come up with a logo that was slightly less heteronormative. I mean, surely it would have been better advertising for the company itself within the confines of the film. Which brings me back to the world of the film. It was quite shallow–poke at it too hard and it was clear that there were a lot of unanswered questions: How did the technology work? How did the implants work? Why hadn’t anyone tried to hack the system? What if people’s bodies rejected the devices? Were they only available to wealthy westerners? Again, what made for a less than satisfying film could yet pave the way for a great series.

When it comes to the Bechdel Test, this film almost succeeds, but focuses just too hard on the guy-chasing and glosses over the other aspects of the relationship between the two main characters. Timer’s website purports to put across the message that you can escape your fate, but the message I got was these women needed to define themselves through their romantic relationships.

Great concept, but ultimately I was dissatisfied.

Written by: Chella Quint, August 18th 2010

I Can’t Think Straight

admin — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Shamim Sharif

Enlightenment Films

It’s always a bit tricky to adapt one’s real life experiences to the big screen, but that’s what award-winning filmmaker Shamim Sarif has done in I Can’t Think Straight. Based in London, the film depicts the budding romance between Leyla, an Indian Muslim woman raised in the UK, and Tala, an Arab Christian Palestinian woman who was brought up in a very wealthy family in Jordan. There are several challenges conspiring to keep the two apart such as racial, religious, and cultural discrimination, but the one central struggle in the film is overcoming the families’ homophobic bias.

Both Leyla’s and Tala’s cultural traditions are portrayed as not simply privileging heterosexual couplings, but forcefully pushing marriage to men on daughters. Tala is on her fourth engagement, a situation that brings much embarrassment to the family. She is set to marry Hani, a wealthy and handsome man with no protruding flaw, but whom she does not love passionately. Leyla and her boyfriend Ali are being pressured by Leyla’s mother to take their relationship to the next level, but her sister correctly guesses the reason for Leyla’s reticence. Despite the unexplained insistence that coming out to their families would be impossible, it is the infatuation of the women’s mothers in particular to be the gatekeepers of cultural and religious authenticity. Their siblings, friends, and fathers, however, are proud of Tala and Leyla’s feisty personalities and sufficiently sympathetic to their “Western” desires.

A typical romantic comedy, the myriad issues brought up in the film are never delved into with any amount of depth. More than lesbianism itself, the Israeli-Palestianian conflict receives the most attention in the film’s dialogue, which features several conversations involving anti-Semitism and support of suicide bombings that are, of course, tempered with standard liberal rebuttal. Feminist sentiment abounds as well with moments like Tala shoving food into her mouth after her mother’s reprimand that if she continues to eat she won’t being skinny enough to fit into her wedding dress. If not taken too seriously, I Can’t Think Straight is a fun, fast-paced, slightly campy, B-movie romp about self-determination and laying claim to one’s desires.

Originally published in Bitch Magazine

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, August 6th 2010

Soul Kitchen

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Fatih Akın

Corazón International

Soul Kitchen is a lot like cotton candy—sweet but, ultimately, not very satisfying. Like many festival favorites, the plot of this independent German film revolves around a cast of lovably quirky characters who get themselves eye-deep into trouble.

Zinos (Adam Bousdoukos), a German of Greek descent, has a lot of stuff on his plate. He’s the proprietor of Soul Kitchen, a struggling eatery in a rundown section of Hamburg. The tax people, led by Frau Schuster (Catrin Striebeck), are knocking at his door. His ne’er-do-well brother, Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu), seeks employment at the restaurant wanting “to go through the motions” of working so that he can make parole. Neumann (Wotan Wilke Möhring), a shady real estate agent, is sniffing around in hopes of acquiring the property. An uninsured Zinos makes the mistake of trying to move a heavy dishwasher by himself and gets a herniated disk for his trouble. On top of all this, Zinos is pining away for his girlfriend, Nadine (Pheline Roggan), who has hightailed it to Shanghai.

Attempting to revamp the restaurant’s simple cuisine, he hires the temperamental Shayn (Birol Ünel), a culinary snob who lost his last job for pulling a knife on a paying customer who asked for hot gazpacho. Things start looking up for Zinos when Shayn’s gourmet creations take off with the hip crowd. Eager to reunite with Nadine, Zinos makes plans to move to Shanghai, leaving Illias to manage the place. Illias gambles the restaurant away to Neumann. And poor Zinos discovers that Nadine has been cheating on him and aggravates his back injury on the same day. Zinos burns down his apartment in a fit of painkiller-induced pique. Homeless, loveless, jobless, and broke, Zinos has to figure out a way to get his restaurant back.

The script, co-written by the director and the leading man, is chock full of sly jokes and the dialogue is genuinely inspired. The filmmaker wisely decided not to let the food upstage the story. The problem is that the characters, with the exception of Zinos, are mere stereotypical sketches. Too much of the plot rests on contrivance—the romance between Illias and the surly waitress Lucia (Anna Bederke), for example—and things wrap up a little too neatly at the end. I never could root for the burgeoning relationship between Zinos and Anna (Dorka Gryllus), the physiotherapist who treats his back injury; the two don’t spend enough time onscreen together for me to care.

Full of whimsy, Soul Kitchen is definitely a film I would watch again. I can also see how it won the Special Jury Prize and the Young Cinema Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. It should enjoy a respectable run on the art-house circuit when it’s released in the States later this summer; however, the film is much too flawed to ever make any “best of” list, and it definitely isn’t Fatih Akin’s best work.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, July 31st 2010

Leroy

admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:02:00 +0000

Directed by Armin Völckers

Dreamer Joint

Leroy is a romantic comedy about a boy born in Germany to one white parent and one black parent. The front of the DVD says it all, depicting a picture of Leroy on top of an orange background; his afro, the size of a planet, surrounded by hearts, Nazis, and his friends and family. Leroy tackles an interesting perspective on modern neo-Nazism and what it looks like in today's Germany.

Leroy's father is an offbeat inventor, while his mother is involved in city politics. Leroy's best friend and comic relief is a blonde half-Greek boy named Dimitri. Hilarity ensues when Leroy falls in love with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl whose parents are part of the far-right German party which aligns itself with Nazism. She also has five skinhead brothers. Leroy, being faced with the peril of love with a Nazi's daughter, is forced to confront his black identity, something he had never thought about until then. Delving conveniently into a store that specializes in “black power” and black literature and film, Leroy begins to research black history, with an emphasis on the American civil rights movement. Leroy even takes on fashionable accessories in a slapstick sequence as part of his mission to find his black identity, such as a long brown coat similar to the one from the movie Shaft and glasses in the style of Malcolm X.

This film is a particularly interesting look at "black consciousness" from a black German's perspective. Although some of the jokes are done in an over-the-top, slapstick fashion, Leroy is a smart look at what it means to be different in our modern society, where racism isn't as prevalent on the surface, but instead is more subversive.

At times, when the film does address heavy questions of racial identity, it tends to fall back on silly jokes and the exchanging of zany one-liners between Leroy and the Nazi brothers, when it could have pushed through these motifs in a little more conclusive fashion. The end even seems a bit forced as they try to wrap up everything into a perfectly happy ending. (No kidding!) Despite these few flaws, Leroy does have some genuinely funny moments, such as when Dimitri tries a "hair removal product for Greeks and half-Greeks" or the fun little dance number involving Leroy and his girlfriend's five Nazi brothers, which plays during the credits. Overall, I would recommend this film for it's lightheartedness and unabashed look at racial identity in a non-American society.

Written by: Chrissie Thornburg, March 30th 2009