“GET SMART”
GET A REFUND
By Sean Chavel
Get Smart is a would-be summer blockbuster that wastes the talents of Steve Carell. This could be his worst movie. After looking through his list of credits, it must be decided this is his worst movie. "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Little Miss Sunshine" star is allowing his comic appeal to flounder, relying on dunce-head shtick to sell a performance. But the material itself is slapdash - neither thrilling nor funny. Maybe somebody remembers the original television series this is based on, that ran from 1965-70. Having never seen it, I understand that it strays from the TV show anyway.
Maxwell Smart (Carell) is a bumbling secret agent whose casual impassivity makes him look smarter and more suave than he actually is. He works for the U.S. spy agency CONTROLL under the Chief (Alan Arkin). Agent 23 (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is the star field agent that Smart idolizes. But Smart, in his first assignment, will be paired with the beautiful and limber Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). She's got a case of the quarrels. This means that at every opportunity she quarrels with Smart because he's incompetent and unworthy of her partnership. The dialogue, be aware, is less than fresh. Nothing sparks of originality in this tone-deaf dud.
After the agency headquarters is hit by an explosion, CONTROLL gets in pursuit of evil KAOS masterminds led by Terence Stamp and Ken Davitian. The ill-conceived plot is so generic it's hard to know what the hell any of it is about. It's all very substandard spy stuff that takes Smart and Agent 99 to Russia which leads to what feels like a pointless infiltration of KAOS terrorists. To Russia and to U.S. return, but why and who cares?
Within this unwieldy plot is the attempt to wheedle out jokes of Smart's inaptitude (he's a better analyst than he is a James Bond-like hero). The other half of the time the movie attempts humor with those funny gadgets such as the Swiss Army knife that's really a compact flame-thrower. The miniature bow and arrow that's hard to aim is the movie's one funny idea. Smart falling out of a plane without a parachute is another potential funny idea until it turns into cartoon ridiculousness.
But from the opening credits, where our buffoon protagonist goes through a series of
unnecessary secret doors to enter headquarters, the movie's booming TV theme music remix soundtrack drones out any of the comedy. Laughs are diluted by noise. What we have here is the presentation of Smart, a buffoon in a suit, and a bunch of other actors stripped of their charisma. Carell and Hathaway in particular needed a punchier script, and indeed, a better director. Peter Segal ("The Longest Yard," Nutty Professor II: The Klumps") is behind the camera. His method of pacing is discordant.
All Family... All Day!
Screenings, games, booths, giveaways, stage entertainment, pony rides, a petting zoo, and more will be a part of the Family Day celebration on Broxton Avenue.
Sunday, June 29, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., in Westwood Village
World Premiere
Sun., June 29, 3 p.m., Mann Village
On an expedition in Iceland, a scientist, his nephew, and their local guide stumble upon a thrilling discovery that leads them deep beneath the Earth's surface in this live-action 3-D adventure.
Director Eric Brevig
Writers Michael Weiss and
Jennifer Flackett & Mark Levin
Producers Beau Flynn,
Charlotte Huggins
Cast Brendan Fraser, Josh
Hutcherson, Anita Briem
Tickets Still Available with Pass Purchase
Peter Pan (1953)
Sun., June 29, 1 p.m.,
Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum
Ollie Johnston (1912-2008)
The recent passing of Ollie Johnston marked the end of an era-that of classic hand-drawn Disney animation by the studio's "Nine Old Men." As their fi nal fi lm together, Peter Pan is a fitting tribute to their lasting legacy.
Directors Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske
Writers Ted Sears, Bill Peet, Joe Rinaldi, Erdman Penner, Winston Hibler, Milt Banta, Ralph Wright
Producer Walt Disney
Cast Bobby Driscoll, Kathryn Beaumont, Hans Conried, Bill Thompson, Heather Angel, Paul Collins, Tommy Luske,
Candy Candido, Tom Conway
Visit LAFilmFest.com for a full line-up of fi lms and special events!
Buy Passes and Tickets at:
LAFilmFest.com or
1.866.FilmFest or Festival Ticket
Office at 1020 Westwood Blvd., Westwood Village.
“THE HAPPENING”
SIGNS OF ARTISTIC DESPERATION
By Sean Chavel
M. Night Shyamalan needs a career intervention. The Happening is yet another one of his half-baked daydream ideas warped into an absurd thriller. Attempts at humor only stymie the suspense. Dialogue straight or serio-comical slows down the action to the point where the characters ought to stop talking and get a move on already.
This is one of the worst movies ever made. Not quite as agonizingly awful as "Lady in the Water" and not as dreadful and hard on the eyes to look at. "The Happening" at least has a clean and polished visual look. It has visual variety in comparison to Shyamalan's sludgy visuals from his last two flops. One good dialogue scene exists that demonstrates that the once heralded filmmaker at least has talent: Mark Wahlberg (who has lost his fire since "The Departed") is a high school science teacher who challenges his students to propose environmental theories as to why the honeybee insect disappeared in certain regions. It sort of demonstrates a "Half Nelson" kind of genius in the portrayal of the maverick teacher going beyond the curriculum to get his students to think big.
It's a good scene but it's the sole good scene of the movie. It gets you thinking for a moment that maybe Shyamalan needs to stray from supernatural suspense for awhile and go make his own "Half Nelson." Shyamalan's latest conceptual nonsense is that the plants (Yes, the PLANTS!) are triggering a toxin into the air that makes people go delirious before killing themselves - bodies fly off rooftops, lie flat under rotary lawnmowers, crash their heads in windows. The rules are murky, or seemingly change half-track in the narrative, but the more people around the deadlier. Once the secret is out that the plants are carrying the virus, you think, STAY AWAY FROM PARKS AND FROM MEADOWS!
Wahlberg plays one of those science nuts who figures this out early but can't seem to lead his wife and friends off of prairies and into sterile shelter. Groups of characters learn to not breathe the air but they continue to step out of their cars. Wahlberg and company step out of their cars and at one point make a run for it. You must be thinking, why didn't they just remain in their car and drive to safety instead of going on foot over grass?
None of this is revealed in the commercial advertisements because if people knew that it was PLANTS! they wouldn't go to the movie. There's a lot of death by osmosis in this movie, but stupidity by osmosis too. Zooey Deschanel is Wahlberg's wife, who suggests that they have to go back and save the people left behind in trouble. "But honey, you have to understand, they're already dead! Wahlberg bellows. At one point the central cast of survivors makes their way into a house, but instead of remaining still, they abandon the house to move on. Huh, goddamn it, housing is exactly what these characters need! There's nowhere to move onto except more prairies. On occasion they meet paranoid survivors who are just as deadly. All survivors have one thing in common: they're all slow-witted.
This conceived catastrophe that is supposedly taking place in the northeast of the United States is a widespread epidemic. Yet in the movie's lesser logic only dead bodies here and there are found lying around. This is an under populated movie that should have more dead bodies lying around, or more survivors in traffic trying to find their way west. Audiences should find their way to their nearest exit sign. No, it's not worth staying until the end. You'll only regret knowing the film's secret.
Note: 20th Century Fox is advertising Shyamalan's film as his first Rated R effort. While there is more gore in its depiction of people killing themselves it doesn't compensate with how lame the rest of the movie "happens" to be.
“THE INCREDIBLE HULK”
GREEN MUNCHIES
By Sean Chavel
Bruce Banner is a mild science-geek guy who tested past his limitations of rage becomes a gigantic green man-monster, a cross between Frankenstein and Kong. Banner comes to life by way of serious method actor Edward Norton, and the Hulk, the creature he transforms to, is a state-of-the-art CGI creation. There's none of Norton inside the Hulk, but the script takes care of that. The Incredible Hulk, a smash and slam Marvel comic book movie, probes the dichotomy of Banner as he tries to remove the Hulk by finding a medical cure that will remove the "rage" poison from his molecular DNA.
Banner, a fugitive from U.S. Army Intelligence, learns to master the ability to keep his pulse rate down (200 on his pulse odometer turns him into green giant of destruction). Norton, a sensitive brainiac of ration and reason, practices yoga techniques to keep his nervous system at constant calm mode. Banner humbles himself by taking a job on the assembly line of a soda pop factory in Brazil. General Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) tracks Banner across the globe and sends a special team to take him down. Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), a Russian raised in Great Britain turned Special Forces soldier, leads the team to no avail. There's not much that can be done when bullets bounce off Hulk and when Hulk throws a forklift at his opponents.
In efforts to combat the Hulk, General Ross gives Blonsky an injection of the rage serum (at a lower dosage). The serum, unperfected, is intended to create the perfect soldier. Banner, as a lab experiment, was an accidental breakthrough but if General Ross can apprehend Banner he can exploit his power. Banner, perpetually on the run, if captured will be studied and prodded.
Banner wants a cure by removing this from his system (he's like a drug addict dealing with withdrawal). Tim Blake Nelson, as Samuel Sterns, is a nervous-tongue scientist who might have the antidote. But Banner has to return to the States to reacquaint himself with lost love and science geek Betty Ross (Liv Tyler, a pretty face minus any witty dialogue) at Culver University, his one-time professional residency. An Army ambush spurts Banner into Hulk, resulting in a high-mayhem action sequence that has Hulk beating up General Ross' helicopters.
The campus grounds of Culver are like the world's biggest park - an ideal arena for an action sequence in a movie like this. Tanks, storms of soldiers, long-distance weapon fire can all be deployed. None of it can match Hulk's brawn. All this is done as sort of a wrecking ball boy's fantasy of trouncing the Army, an incompetent brigade. But inside the special effects of the Hulk, is a Banner who wants nothing to do with these powers. After combat, en route to Samuel Sterns he goes.
It's a simple plot really. General Ross and Blonsky, as two war lust comrades, share the film's best and sharpest dialogue. Hurt and Roth have a seething eagerness in their performances. And while Norton has the gravitas, his role requires him to be more introspective. Yet somehow we're involved with his quest. Yet in his quest, to relinquish himself from the Hulk once and for all doesn't entirely make sense: If captured, he'll still be studied and prodded by government scientists. If he stayed the Hulk, he'll always find a way to break from detainment.
The movie has its load of stupendous visuals, everything from the hills-stacks slums of Brazil to Hulk waging war to science lab plethora. As summer blockbuster entertainment, this "Incredible" entertainment has its number of whoa! moments but the New York climax with two angry beasts, Hulk versus Creature (a new General Ross and Blonsky concoction) is not as thunderously exciting as it should be. It's a lot of CGI whacking around minus imagination. This Hulk is a treat for action-hungry audiences, but it's a swing away from being a super-treat. Marvel comic book fans should note that Tony Stark makes a guest appearance in the closing scene.
The Los Angeles Film Festival
By Crystal A. Johnson
The Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) has an air to it that is special because it not only invites you to screen movies, hear from artists, directors and the like but it invites you to walk the streets of Westwood. Bustling with people walking, crowding on buses and a homeless person on every other corner might make one feel like they've been transported to New York. However, the unmistakable sunshine, palm trees or movie theaters on virtually every corner reassures one that it is indeed Los Angeles. Part of Broxton Avenue was shut down for expos and viewing classic film under the stars. Speaking of stars, in attendance were Rob Riener, Melvin Van Peebles, Guiermo Del Toro, Antonio Banderas, Mario Van Peebles, Bookem Woodbine, and Lori Petty among others. David Alan Grier helped to pen a screenplay with long time gal pal Petty which made its world premier at the festival. Melvin Van Peebles' latest film made its debut in LA having already been shown at Tribecca and the Maryland film festivals. Other films with out star power which shined included the documentaries Pressure Cooker, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story and The Order of Myths. Target offers a $50,000 prize for winners of the various competitions.
Here are some festival highlights and lowlights:
Narrative Competition
Poker House - Directed by Lori Petty
The independently spirited actress Lori Petty makes her directorial debut with the loosely autobiographical independent film called Poker House. Petty shares a compressed version of her life, in this day in life story called Poker House. Petty presents a version of what is best described as not your grandma's Iowa. The story takes place in 76. The Selma Blair plays a druggie hooker and she is the mom of the main character, Agnes (Jennifer Lawrence). Agnes is modeled after Petty. Her character is tough, maternal and a star basketball player pressing to get through the hand she has been dealt living in the Poker House. Lawrence and the actresses who play her younger sisters (Chloe Moretz and Sofia Bairly) light up the screen. Bookeem Woodbine gives an excellent performance as the pimp running things in the Poker House. Petty admits that she was a fan of Woodbine and envisioned him for this role. Because of the disturbing truths about Petty life, she is sure to find empathy from many an audience member. The biggest problem with the film is that many scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor. Otherwise, it is a solid directorial debut. Petty attributes getting the screenplay done to
David Alan Grier who consistently pressed her to finish.
The Pleasure of Being Robbed- directed by Joshua Safdie
The indie film entitled The Pleasure of Being Robbed is more likely to give ticket purchasers the displeasure of robbed by paying to sit through it. The story is underdeveloped. It falls short of what it pitches itself to be. The film is written by director Joshua Safdie and Eleonore Hendrick who plays the main character of Eleanore. Although the running time for this flick is 78 minutes, it feels like eternity. I could hear the echo of similar sentiment by an audience member that said, "Well, that's two hours I can get back of my life." The film is not terrible. On the other hand, it is not good either. The neurosis of the lead character is believable. She epitomizes the essence of the weirdo which one may try to pretend you don't see. The concept centers on a young women with a curiosity to delve into people lives by stealing their purse is unique; however, finer points of story fall apart when the cliché road trip begins. It is definitely an artsy film with grainy looking shots and capturing the heartbeat of New York. There is no shortage of yellow cabs and zany characters. However film fails to deliver a truly interesting tale about her quest for knowledge or living vicariously obtained through theft. The Pleasure of Being Robbed comes up short and would be best packaged as a short film.
Documentary Competition:
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story directed by Stefan Forbes
The documentary profiles the political rise and fall of Lee Atwater. Director Stefan Forbes masterfully pieces together the jigsaw puzzle of what constitutes as the make up of the former Chairman of the GOP. Forbes presents a back story to the man who would significantly influence campaign politics and help George W. Bush Sr. secure the presidency. Despite his reputation, the documentary does not merely dwell on the diabolical aspects of the man but it reveals that every thing about Atwater was not clear cut. Although, considered a protégé of Strom Thurmond, both Black and White friends attest that Atwater was not a racist. Despite his spearheading one of the most racially charged campaigns in American history, Atwater could lead a blues band consisting of African American at the Inaugural Ball. Colleagues of Atwater insinuate that politics was nothing more than a game and he played to win. This is a timely piece and compelling film to watch during an election year. Much of the content mirrors some of the ugly politics seen this year. It probes into the heart issues of America; moreover, it delves into what makes most Southerners tick when it comes to politics. Does playing the race card as a fear tactic effectively obstruct voter views on other matters? No matter the party affiliation, this film is an election year must see!
Pressure Cooker- directed by Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman.
In the opening moments of Pressure Cooker, the audience quickly learns that Culinary Arts instructor Mrs. Wilma Stephenson makes her students feel the heat. Her methods are brash and tough but she whips her students into being real contenders to succeed. Hell's Kitchen meets East Philadelphia's Frankford High School in the documentary by producer/director Jennifer Grausman. In the film the pressure is on for Mrs. Stephenson's students to be a cut above the rest. The tactics may include screaming more than occasionally but her track record amounts to tuition scholarships within one year in excess of $700,000. The accomplishments of her students are quite remarkable in a school where 40 percent of the students do not make it to senior year. Pressure Cooker is a testament to the power and influence of one to make change possible. The directors chronicle the senior year of three passionate culinary students who see being the best as a way out of the East Philadelphia. Pressure Cooker is a power testimony to the power of one to be instrumental in changing lives.
Largo- directed by Mark Flanagan and Andrew Van Baal
Named for the musical and comedy night spot in LA, the film entitled Largo is a real treat. It makes you feel like you are there or it somewhere that you want to put on your to do list. Music lover will enjoy this film. Directors Mark Flanagan and Andrew Van Baal find the right places to insert stand up comedy to avoid monotony. A bevy of talent hits the stage ranging from independent artists to A- list celebrities. There are great performances by Fiona Apple, Colin Hay and surprising fresh talent. Moreover, the film captures the eccentric beat of Largo. The film is shot in black and white with beautiful transitions between scenes. There is some great editing of some musical numbers when the musician happens to play more than instrument. This film is a great ode to the musician and a place called Largo.
The Order of Myths directed by Margaret Brown
Aspects of Mardi Gras such as pedigree, the two way streak of racism, class, and history are unmasked in this documentary. In Mobile, Alabama Mardi Gras has two kings and two queens. One royal court is White and the other is Black. In Mobile, Alabama there are two parades. One parade is the Black Parade and then there is the main parade with the White King and Queen. This film is too good to spoil with much detail. Director, Margaret Brown does a great job of unfolding facts without narration. The Order of Myths certainly leaves room for lengthy conversation about the socio-economic and racial culture of the south.
Bonus Screening:
Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha by Melvin Van Peebles
Although what is seen on the screen may be the most ludicrous thing one will ever see, it amounts to a fun romantic comedy. It takes time to build the story or even grasp the unimaginable casting of 75 year old Melvin Van Peebles playing as young as fourteen in this film. There's no special make up. No, it is Van Peebles just as he is at 75 playing a young man. The comedy delivers and after awhile you just go with the story an almost forget that you are seeing a much older man portray a maturing young man. That is until the love scenes with significantly younger women. While watching, all I could think was he must have had a ball playing this part. His character evolves from a sweet gullible kid with a heart to see the world to a world traveler who aches to go home to his love. It is hard to determine if the Melvin Van Peebles fan will actually enjoy the film or simply enjoy Van Peebles