By D’Arcy Kavanagh
A few years ago, Jim Carrey lost his mojo with audiences in a bid to be recognized as a serious screen presence. While he demonstrated his talents extend far beyond Ace Ventura-type of efforts, his audiences stayed away in huge numbers. Now the original Carrey is back, over the top, zany and rubbery in Yes Man, a comedy that strikes the funny bone just enough to make the movie a decent viewing experience.
Carrey is Carl Allen, a bank loan officer who takes out his depression over a broken marriage on just about everyone in his line of sight, especially folks seeking some financial aid. He’s basically given up on life, content to watch old videos until he has to go to bed and start another dreary day. These first few scenes provide the story backdrop, but are so heavy with negativity that they come perilously close to turning off an audience.
But then Carl is dragooned by an acquaintance to a self-help seminar where he accepts that the key to life is to say “yes” to life – all the time. At this moment, the movie switches into gear and the laughs start with Carl doing anything but say “no” to an experience. While clearly preposterous in some of his actions, Carl’s new love of life is energizing. Unleashed, Carrey turns Carl into one of his pantheon of Most Goofy Characters.
The plot is predictable as Carl meets and falls for a scooter-riding, avantgarde musician-artist, delightfully portrayed by Zooey Deschanel – remember the name because she’s destined for bigger things – who becomes a little overwhelmed by Carl’s wacky qualities. You know the bit - boy finds girl and so forth.
Carrey is like Robin Williams, another film comedian with a hunger for dramatic recognition. In a comedy, they can go far beyond the “danger zone” in what to try on screen. But thank goodness that the two of them occasionally try because the state of screen comedy otherwise is at a painfully low level with movies fixated on an abundance of coarse language and an overload of jokes involving bodily fluids. A throwback Carrey comic character is a welcome sight even if the cinematic fare he’s in isn’t anything special.
Travel Tip: Carl and his lady love head out for a wild weekend to Nebraska. Yup, the American heartland. That part of the world doesn’t have the cache of Paris or the French Riviera, but it shows you can have fun even in places where there’s not a hill to be seen. Southern Alberta, where this review is being written, has a ton to offer the truly curious – special carriage museums, dinosaur riverbeds, ghost towns.
Archive for the ‘Movie Reviews - with a "Travel Twist"’ Category
Movie review - Yes Man
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009Movie review - Valkyrie
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009By D’Arcy Kavanagh
Tom Cruise has done period piece films before (Far And Away, The Last Samurai) and he’s made the mistake to tackle the past again with the Second World War thriller Valkryie. The problem isn’t that he doesn’t try; instead, he works so hard in Valkrie that his earnestness dominates the screen. It’s just that Cruise, who has undeniable talents, is a truly modern actor, someone who provides nuances from the digital, politically correct world of today and not from the cultures of different times.
Cruise is at the epi-centre of this well-produced, real-life story about a 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Cruise is German war hero Col. Claus von Stauffenberg who has lost an eye, a hand and his loyalty to Hitler’s cause. So, taking enormous risks to not just himself but to his family, he meets with like-minded German officers in a bid to kill Hitler and start peace negotiations with the Allies who are on their way to final victory. While he’s a colonel surrounded by more senior officers, Stauffenberg is the most relentless in pursuing the plan and he becomes the unofficial leader of the plotters. It all happens with so much speed that Stauffenberg seems surrounded by fellow officers who seem more than happy to acquiese to anyone with a decent idea.
The challenge in such a film is everyone coming into the theatre knows the plot didn’t work. So, how do the filmmakers build the action when the conclusion is foregone? In 1973, another film facing a similar challenge, Day of the Jackal, had the same task; it told the supposed real-life story of a plot to knock off Charles de Gaulle. That production was so tautly directed and acted that it stands up as one of the great political thrillers ever made.
But Valkyrie, though, just doesn’t muster the same energy as Jackal. It does a good job of recreating the era, but, in the end, it’s sabotaged by too much Cruise and not enough of the other actors who include such formidable talents as Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Terence Stamp. While the historians might conjecture what would have happened if the plot had been successful, audiences could easily wonder how this movie might have turned out with someone else in the lead role.
Travel Tidbit: Germany has distanced itself politically from the horrors of the Second World War, but there are still places that deserve a visit. For example, the scores of military cemeteries Germany and the Netherlands tell how great were Germany’s losses. Then there’s the Dauchau concentration camp site that is devastating in its story.
Movie Review: Australia
Friday, January 2nd, 2009By D’Arcy Kavanagh
Australia, the epic about Down Under featuring the beauties of the country and its two lead actors, is the kind of movie that hasn’t been made in a long time, either in that country or elsewhere.
Following a romance that is spectacularly predictable and a villain so cartoonish that he’d be twirling his moustache if only it was a shade longer, Australia is one part Big Screen hokum and two parts Great Intentions. It’s almost like a Hollywood product of the 1950s although it occasionally flashes a current sensibility when mentioning the assimilation issues of its aboriginal peoples. This Aussie epic wants to connect with people in other lands but, although it does prove entertaining from time-to-time, it really isn’t up to the job.
It starts off badly. Nicole Kidman, providing unintentional laughs with her caricatured portrayal of a brittle, impatient English noblewoman, is Lady Sarah Ashley who decides in 1939 to travel to the Northern Territories to deal with the ranch that consumed her husband’s life. Clearly out of her depth with the rugged folks, she makes enemies of most everyone she encounters. But when confronted by Australia’s Marlboro Man, known only as The Drover (Hugh Jackman channeling Clark Gable of Gone With the Wind), she has a change of attitude and soon she, The Drover, a half-Aboriginal lad and a handful of others are taking a herd of cattle to Darwin so they can land a big army contract since, crikey, the Second World War is on its way.
Kidman and Jackman spit and spar on the journey, but then collapse into each other’s arms, all while beating off the dastardly activities of the lead villain and his unwashed henchmen. From there, the predictability factor increases even more as war looms and love wanes.
Director Baz Luhrmann does a wonderful job of beautifying the Outback and his Darwin scenes are properly dated to that rugged community. He also keeps the pace moving along nicely with plenty of action scenes that are photographed with a panoramic view. But he’s got moments in the movie that could easily have been excised or redone including one with Villain #2, played by Australian acting icon Bryan Brown, who sits back in a chair and just starts laughing for no good reason other than he’d probably just watched some of the earlier scenes.
The performing honours don’t belong to Kidman who gets more relaxed as the movie goes along but still seems to be “acting” or to Jackman whose best work occurs with his shirt off. Instead, it’s Brandon Walters as the young half-Aboriginal lad who dominates the screen with a natural quality the others don’t provide.
For a nation that’s produced some wondrous movies in the last generation or two (Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith), Australia is the type of flag-waving epic that involves terrific homegrown talent (Kidman, Jackman, Brown and the great Jack Thompson) in a movie that looks great, but, at its core, is all Hollywood and no Australia. Too bad, mates.
Travel twist: I kept waiting for it, but the movie doesn’t have a single scene with a snake. The Northern Territories have plenty of serpents, many of them deadly, but none in this show. If you’re thinking you can traipse about the countryside Down Under without a worry about snakes, you should think again.