Mank (4/5 Stars)

 

“Success has a thousand fathers. Defeat is an orphan.”

A movie by nature is a collaborative art form. More than one Oscar winner has taken the stage and decried the act of giving out individual Oscars when an individual’s work in the context of a movie depends so much on so many other people doing their jobs correctly. I mean just look at the amount of people in the credits. People are people however and sometimes no matter how much praise can be heaped upon a movie, egos can be large enough where there is not enough to go around. Such apparently is the case with “Citizen Kane”, which is arguably the best movie ever made. It had two writers: Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles and neither would acknowledge the other’s contributions. The truth is that they were both instrumental. Herman Mankiewicz wrote the first draft of the movie. Orson Welles took the draft and seems to have not paid much attention to it if all you pay attention to is what dialogue from the first draft actually shows up in the movie. But a screenplay is more than just dialogue. One of several great innovative elements of “Citizen Kane” is its multilayered narrative structure, which employs flash-forwards and flash-backwards from several points of view in a manner that is somehow not confusing. This is what Mankiewicz brought to the party in the first draft and is no mean feat. Nevertheless, “Mank” throws another log on this ever-burning fire by arguing that the writing of Citizen Kane was complete as soon as Mankiewicz wrote the first draft.

It is a strangely fitting way to tell this story. I mean when one takes a bird-eye view of Citizen Kane and considers its origins, production, and after affects, it is all one big axe-grinding affair. Two axe-grinders attempt to take down a great axe grinder and just when the history becomes the legend, they turn on themselves and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. After all, to engage in an argument about the truth of the writing and production of “Citizen Kane” is to engage in an argument about the veracity of the movie’s story, which turns out, is also not true.

The axe-grinders are Mankiewicz and Orson Wells. With “Citizen Kane”, they took an axe to William Randolph Hearst, the greatest axe grinder of them all, a one-man media conglomerate who sensationalized the news and started at least one war. (For Mank it appears personal. Orson probably was too young and stupid to know any better). They are about to succeed when their movie is acclaimed as the best of all time. Watching it, and knowing that it is about Hearst, but not knowing much about Hearst, one may be led to believe that Hearts died isolated and unloved with a hollowness no amount of physical assets could fill. 

But, as any story about the making of Citizen Kane will reveal (and which "Mank" shows), Hearst did not die isolated and unloved. He regularly hosted elaborate dinner parties in his mansion wherein very interesting people would be invited and would attend. And he had a late love in life, Marion Davies (here played by Amanda Seyfried) that was not a no-talent shrew who despised him, but whom had true talent and held him in true affection. Actually, it was Orson Welles who would end up an obese, alcoholic recluse. Mankiewicz, already a fat alcoholic when he wrote Kane, would go on to do no further notable work before dying in 1953. If only Mankiewicz and Welles had not turned on each other, you would not know of all their future failings and how Hearst had enjoyed a better fate than either of them. This whole thing is like a couple of magicians revealing their secrets in order to garner credit for their originality. Its short-sighted, the only winner being the rich guy in his mansion with all his beautiful and successful friends. The best scene in Mank is when our hero confronts a Hollywood producer about a shady power move thing that the studio is involved in. The producer explains that he is not a particularly smart guy, he just gets up every morning, he goes to work, he doesn’t make snide sarcastic remarks, he doesn’t get drunk, and he just generally gives a shit. That is why, he explains to Mank, he will win this particular battle.

I’m not really saying much about the movie. It is professionally and competently made by the Director David Fincher from a screenplay written by Jack Fincher (father of David Fincher). Gary Oldman does a particularly good job of being a sarcastic, overweight, alcoholic writer. Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, I think it must be noted how exquisite she has been lit in the black and white cinematography. A guy shows up as Orson Welles that does not really look like him, but the voice is there.

But really, this movie is pretty dependent on you having already seen Citizen Kane and liked it enough to delve into the history of it. But also maybe you shouldn’t. Perhaps Citizen Kane is better appreciated by not having knowledge of the artistic sniping and the erroneous history involved in it? Perhaps it would be more enjoyable if you came to it like one would a piece of pure fiction, uninformed of all the backstage axe grinding? I think it might be. So, I suggest watching Citizen Kane, and if possible, doing so before you see Mank or read this review.

The Personal History of David Copperfield (4/5 Stars)

 

Writer/Director Armando Iannucci is one of my favorites. He is responsible for the early career of the British comedian Steve Coogan (David Partridge) and the best TV show about British politics (The Thick of It). Thereafter, he made a great movie that crossed over his British political show into American politics (In the Loop) and then seamlessly transferred his skills to one of the best shows about American politics (Veep). Since leaving Veep, he made a masterpiece, The Death of Stalin, which I called in my review a perfect marriage of artist and subject matter. His work, a worthy successor of Monty Python, is defined by that very British and very cruel sense of humor (a worthy American successor of Monty Python along the same lines is South Park). 

In the spirit of Monty Python then, And Now for Something Completely Different! For the first time in Iannucci’s career, he has expended money on set design and costumes. The Personal History of David Copperfield is a lark to look at it. It adapts the 19^th century Charles Dickens' novel with color and flair. The stolid realism of his political films is completely gone. Moreover, the movie's storyline zips and churns through scenery and characters in a frenetic and fantastic pace. It is a giant leap in style for Iannucci and he accomplishes it like a natural.

The screenplay which Iannucci co-wrote with longtime collaborator Simon Blackwell. I have not read this particular Dickens work novel, but having read other of his books, I expect the screenwriters put in excellent work, omitting much extraneous details were successfully edited out while successfully retaining the emotional core and finding room for plenty of jokes. This does not feel like the usual Dickens adaptation, which is all the better because I have never felt Dickens to be especially adaptable.

In fact, I’m not sure I particularly like Dickens. I'm not sure I approve of the way he gave characters names that automatically signaled how you are supposed to feel about them, as if a book could be judged by its cover. Anyhow, if one were to adapt a Dickens book, what with all its contrivances, this would be the movie to show it is to be done. The unabashedly caricatures of personality are here. David Copperfield is as earnest as earnest comes. Mr. Murdstone is a mean monster. Uriah Heep is a total piece of shit. It is an unfair story told in an unrealistic abstract way as if to signal to the audience like a B movie would, hey this is not real life, have fun and enjoy yourself.

This brings me to the most noticeable part of the movie, what the movie has termed “color blind casting”. As you may suspect, this 19^th century British novel about British people ought to be entirely populated by British people. However, Iannucci has cast an Indian in the title role (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame), and several black people, some other Indians, and a Chinese man (Benedict Wong) in several of the supporting roles. 

Does this work? I am reminded of one of the stupider conversations I ever had with someone, a former roommate that attended the same college as Lena Dunham. He believed that Leonardo DiCaprio’s role in The Revenant could have been played just as well as a black man. (This role is based on the real-life personage of a fur trapper in 1820s America in the Louisiana Territory). I thought that point of view was idiotic. The movie was attempting to be as realistic as possible. It went so far as to shoot only with natural light. An undisguised black man as the protagonist would have been absolutely weird. I still stand by this sentiment, but at the same time, as a resident of New York City, I have seen many productions of Shakespeare plays which rely on color-blind casting. And for Shakespeare plays, color-blind casting works very well. After all, Shakespeare never had production value so there is very little realism in his works. The merits of his plays rely almost exclusively on the poetry of his words and acting, which can be done by anyone who can master the correct accent and style of performance. The color blind casting here works in the same way. There are many different ethnicities represented by the actors, but every single one of them speaks their lines in perfect 19th century English accents. (Not coincidentally I suppose, but the actors, if not British, come from places that have ties to the British Empire, in particular India, Africa, and Hong Kong. There are no Latin or Arab cast members).

The way the movie is presented is itself more abstract then realistic. Within this environment it makes sense to simply find the best actors around. Dev Patel, who has a very Tom Hanksian earnest everyman quality to him, is well cast in the lead role of David Copperfield. And I always like seeing Benedict Wong in anything. It would have been awesome if that was Chloe Sevigny in blackface, but apparently there is a black woman who looks just like her with the name of Rosalind Eleazar. The rest of the cast that is white is a who’s who of interesting actors: Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, and Peter Capaldi amongst them. Then there is Ben Whishaw who plays Dickens’ classic creep Uriah Heep. He does a particularly good job at making one’s skin crawl as soon as he shows up on screen. I am reminded once more by how much Dickens hated lawyers.

The movie moves swiftly from interesting caricature to interesting caricature and through comedic interludes and dramatic pratfalls. It ends with a artistic cop-out that is becoming as cliched as a story ending in marriage or death. The main character aspires to be writer. He writes a book about the people within the story. This story is published and becomes wildly successful. And The End, Happily Ever After.

I have seen this sort of ending perhaps a dozen times. What does it mean? Does it not say that all the hardships we endure in our lives can be automatically validated if the general populace pays attention to it and bestow upon the writer fame and fortune? Is that true? If two people have an argument, and only one is famous, and as a result only one side of the argument is told, is there then only one side of the story, and the argument won. Perhaps I am being a little cynical. However, it has been postulated that David Copperfield is a veiled autobiography of Dickens. If it supposed to be at all objective, is it fair to give your step-father the surname of Murdstone or to name anyone you once knew Uriah Heep. Apart from that, I really did like this movie.

A Blog Update

 

This is the fifteenth year I have been writing this blog and I think it is fair to say that 2020 was the worst year for movies in my lifetime. It is entirely the fault of the pandemic.

 

The crisis has made a few things clear though: First, it has been proven to me that seeing a movie in a theater is preferable to seeing a movie at home. The obvious differences are the size of the screen and the presence of an audience. These things are important, sure, and the presence of an audience is particularly helpful when watching a comedy or horror movie, but what I have come to respect even more is the focus that a movie theater provides the viewer. When one is at home there are a multitude of potential distractions that take the viewer out of the experience. Even a small pause in action would prompt me to look at my phone when I otherwise would not in a theater. For blockbusters this would not be all that important. You are not going to miss much when you look away for a few seconds. The movie I just watched, “The Personal History of David Copperfield” is a smaller movie, but it moves fast and has a lot of detail. Distractions can ruin the experience of this type of movie. I had to pause the movie several times and rewind so that I would not miss anything. I really wish I had seen this movie in a theater.

 

The pandemic also revealed one great thing about movie theaters I had completely taken for granted. As someone who lives in New York, I had the benefit of living in a market where almost every movie worthy of being released in theaters was available at some theater in the city. In effect, I always had the opportunity to see a particular movie at the time of its release. Now all the theaters are closed indefinitely. Since then, the movies that would have been given a theater release are now hoarded by streaming platforms. These streaming platforms, may they rot, don’t even allow movie night. That is, they do not allow a consumer to buy a single ticket to a newly released movie. I must subscribe to AppleTV, or Disney+, or HBOMAX to see anything on the service. Imagine my surprise, when I couldn’t see the latest Tom Hanks’ movie “Greyhound” earlier this year. I would have paid $15 to see it in a theater. I would have paid $15 to see it at home. But AppleTV wanted me to subscribe to AppleTV and would not sell or rent the movie to me otherwise. I believe I am like most people when I swear I will not subscribe to ten different streaming services (At this moment I have Netflix and Ami has Amazon Prime and Hulu). I’m not subscribing to a streaming platform just to watch one movie. That is stupid.

 

Worse, this development comes at the end-times of the rental market. For the first fifteen years of this century, movie-lovers lived in a golden era when every movie and TV show that was released was also put on DVD for general consumption in the rental market. In fact, all the great old movies were put on DVD too. With a Netflix DVD subscription, one had access to the entire DVD universe, which seemed to be almost everything. This golden era has ended. It is starting to become common that movies are not getting a DVD release (Compact Disc slots themselves are being omitted from new electronic devices). This would not be such a problem if there existed a general rental market where individual titles could be downloaded. However, that does not appear to be happening. “Greyhound” will not come out on DVD and it won’t be available to rent from AppleTV or any other streaming platform in the near or far future. It appears that it is fated to forever be locked within AppleTV. There are two ways a movie becomes widely seen. It is either widely marketed and highly anticipated. Many people see it immediately upon its release in theaters. Or it gains popularity once a critical mass of people have seen it and recommend it to other people. "Greyhound" did not get a release in theaters. A required subscription to AppleTV should severely limit any possible spread via word-of-mouth. It is hard to imagine a different scenario in which the rollout of this movie would result in it being seen by less people. It is almost as if Apple has no experience whatsoever in the business of making and marketing movies.

There is this idea of a shared popular culture which comes from a time (50s to 70s) when there were only five television channels and movies were expensive to make. Everyone in the country seemed to be watching or at least aware of the same cultural happenings. The splintering of our shared culture has been occurring for awhile now (let’s put the start of it at basic cable). The closing of movie theaters and the obsolescence of DVD rentals will only exacerbate that trendline. Where we go from here I do not know, but I am noticing the change.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (3/5 Stars)

 

I saw “I’m Thinking About Ending Things”, the new movie written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche New York), without reading any reviews about it. Strange things occurred all over the place. Still I believe I grasped the basic concept of what was happening. My guess was that an old janitor at the local high school was reminiscing (and revising) a memory he had a long time ago when he brought a girl he liked back home to meet his parents for the first time. I was close. After I saw the movie I read an review/interview with Mr. Kaufman in which it was revealed that everything but the janitor going about his day at the school was entirely imagined. There was no memory the janitor was revisiting. The whole thing was a daydream.

 

Is that a spoiler? I’m not sure. A spoiler generally refers to revealing a detail of a plot too early. In this movie, the basic concept is never revealed. You can only guess at it. Furthermore, I’m not sure knowing what the concept is will change how you view the movie a second time. There is much in this movie that is just strange and is hardly justified by the movie’s concept. There is a dog that appears and disappears randomly, a mysterious basement that isn’t so mysterious, a dinner meal that is never eaten. In the third act, the movie delves into ballet and animation. Even now, when I know what was happening, I could not tell you why most of the strange choices were necessary. They appear to be arbitrary to me.

 

This is the sort of argument I would level against a David Lynch film, but I have also like some of what David Lynch has done (the Twin Peaks tv show in particular). And I liked the movie The Lighthouse last year, so strange happenings by themselves are not a complete turn off to me. However, there is a problem with static scenes that simply go on too long to be anything but boring after a while. There are two scenes that take place entirely in a car. Each must be at least fifteen minutes long and contain nothing but dialogue. Kaufman changes the camera angle a bunch of times, but that is not enough. After a while one cannot stave off the feeling that nothing has happened for an exceptionally long period of time.

 

The concept when finally understood (I recommend reading articles that explain this movie either before or after seeing it) is very sad. Apparently, this old janitor never got far in his love life because he was always so terrified at bringing a woman home to his depressing farm to meet his weird parents. Even his imaginary girlfriend (here played by Jessie Buckley, his imaginary self is played by Jesse Plemons) does not seem to like him. Even though she is a creation of his mind and implanted with various bits of culture he has picked up over the years (landscape painting, Pauline Kael movie reviews, his favorite poem), she can’t help want to end the relationship, thus the title. I can’t help but think of Fight Club, which was about a man who so loathed himself that his imaginary friend wanted and proceeded to beat the shit out of him.

 

I’m not about to tell Charlie Kaufman to stop being so depressing. (Surely solitary high school janitors deserve movie as much as anyone else.) However, it may be a good idea for him to stop directing his own screenplays. His best movies employed such inventive directors as Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). They brought a colorful energy to Kaufman’s writing that is sorely missing from the bland palette of Kaufman’s own directorial visions (Synecdoche New York and Anomalisa). Perhaps if Kaufman went back to only writing his movies, he could find more time to make more of them. I note that Kaufman has only made two movies in the past decade. That is not nearly enough with someone with so much raw talent.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (4/5 Stars)

 

More than most other film franchises, Bill & Ted seems to benefit consistently from low expectations and the suspension of disbelief. The premise of the original movie involved two teenage boys from San Dimas California that dream about being rock-stars, call each other dude, and implore the people they meet to “Be Excellent to Each Other.” They are met by Rufus, a time-traveler from the future, (played by George Carlin), who informs them that they have a glorious destiny to unite the world in song but first have to pass a high-school history presentation. To help them in this regard, he lets Bill & Ted use his time machine to round up historical figures to help them pass. The film somehow works. I think it is because, although Bill & Ted know nothing about history, the movie itself is surprisingly literate. Importantly, the movie is also not snobbish about its education. It perceives the historical figures not as lofty great men, but people, and finds fun in what these people would think of the 1980s. It works much like Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” would work like twenty years later. It is enthusiastic about the past but never uses that knowledge as a platform for superiority. It treats history in a most inclusive, accessible, and excellent way. A tip of the hat to the writers of all three movies, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. Also, San Dimas High School Football Rules!

Bill & Ted Face the Music keeps intact all of the elements of what made the first Bill & Ted movies work and does just enough to differentiate itself into a new movie. It is a more of a concluding chapter than a breaker of new territory however. There is time travel (like the first movie) and a trip to Hell (like the second movie), but no new surreal concept. What it concerns itself with is the tying up of loose ends. It was foretold in the first movie that Prescott and Logan would write and perform a song that would unite the world. In this movie, we see that destiny fulfilled.

The entanglements of time and heaven/hell travel are given the briefest of surface logic, which is fine for the movie’s purposes. Now middle-aged and so far unsuccessful in uniting the world in song, Bill & Ted are met by the daughter of Rufus (played by Kristen Schaal) who informs them that the world is going to end later that day unless the foretold song is played at a very specific time and place. How specific? Well the movie is about 95 minutes long and Kristen Schall says this at around the fifteen-minute mark, so like in 75 minutes. Classic Bill & Ted movie logic.

But Bill & Ted have not written the song yet. It has been twenty-five years they have been trying to do the same, so how could they do it now by the end of the movie. More Classic Bill & Ted movie logic coming up:

-        Wait, haven’t we been foretold to write this song. That must mean that we are going to do it. We have a time machine, why don’t we just go to the future when we have written the song and take it from ourselves.

-        Excellent idea.

-        Wait, except won’t that be stealing?

-        How is that stealing, when we’re stealing it from ourselves, dude?

But the thing is, it is stealing, and older versions of Bill & Ted don’t like what these younger versions are up to. They excoriate them for being selfish and cutting corners. These are the funniest scenes in the movie with double Alex Winters and Keanu Reeves light-heartedly arguing with each other about time travel ethics.

Meanwhile, Bill & Ted now have two daughters, Billie and Thea, who seem to be the very rare kind of teenagers who believe their parents are to be emulated and impersonated. They want to help and engage in their own most excellent adventure into the past to form a supergroup of all ages. Amongst the greats on their list: Jimi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They have great taste in music. It is unfortunate though that the artists play their most well-known songs. For Armstrong (played by Jeremiah Craft) that is “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I can think of ten other pieces of music I would have rather heard him play. Still, it is fun to see Satchmo on the screen. Really, the only musician I did not recognize was the most recent, a rapper named Kid Cudi. I have becoming familiar with his oeuvre all morning. Thanks for the tip Bill & Ted.

Like a lot of movies nowadays that derive from source material largely populated by white men, the movie has taken steps to get more people involved, perhaps even with the intention of handing off future installments to the girls Billie and Thea.  A lot of time I find this sort of inclusivity annoying because it seems to reflect not so much a moral imperative as much as a corporate bid to cater to the lowest common denominator in order to increase market share (the real money is in the international box office after all). It is almost axiomatic that most great movies are not inclusive (at least in terms of casting) because they concern specific subject matter and are thus intended for a specific audience. This adherence to particularity is what differentiates those movies from run-of-the-mill films which are designed to eschew controversy/personality in an effort to placate everyone. The usual result is that they resemble something you’ve seen a hundred times before because, spoiler alert, you have.

Here, though I give the inclusivity a pass. Given the personalities of Bill & Ted and the overall tone of the trilogy, uniting the world in song actually does seem to be in line with how the characters would act and where the plot would end up without undue contrivance. It would then make story sense to get everyone involved. The song could have been better, but you know, it is hard to create a transcendent piece of music that involves every musical style in the whole world going backwards and forwards through time. As it is pointed out, the point is not that the song is the best song, but that everyone is playing it, which is a very Bill & Ted argument. They never have been particularly good musicians.

First Cow (4/5 Stars)

I enjoyed being excited about “First Cow” this year, the newest filmmaker from Kelly Reichardt. It is a story about the first cow in Oregon in the 1920s and a odd couple of men, a cook named Cookie, played by John Magaro, and a Chinaman named King-Lu, played by Orion Lee, who conspire to steal its milk and use to it to sell pastries. As there are no other cows, they will have the best tasting pastries in the territory. A boon!

What a dumb idea for a movie and I enjoyed telling people I was anticipating “First Cow” because the plot seemed so enjoyably stupid. But that was only half of it. I enjoyed getting excited by “First Cow” because Kelly Reichardt had directed it and written it with her long-time collaborator Jonathan Raymond. There previous collaborations include: “Old Joy”, “Wendy and Lucy”, “Meek’s Cutoff”, and “Night Moves”. So even though it looked and sounded stupid, I knew it was going to be good. And “First Cow” is very good. One of Reichardt’s best. And I would know because I have now seen every movie she has made, even her obscure student film “River of Grass.”

When I last wrote a review for a movie of hers “Night Moves” in June 2014, I spent half the time trying to explain why I to liked Reichardt’s style. I will add to that here by saying that she is from a very specific place that filmmakers usually do not make films about. The location is Oregon. In addition, she sometimes makes films that are period pieces. And where else can you see a movie that takes place in Oregon in the 1820s.

That is when “First Cow” takes place, mainly in a trading village comprised of Native Americans, English trappers, but also the travelling Russians and Chinese. The only real house around belongs to the richest man in town, played by Toby Jones. He also brought with him to the territory the title cow.

Cookie is an unappreciated cook by his rougher compatriots. He saves the life of King-Lu one day in the woods when he hides him from vengeful Russians. They strike a tender and gentle friendship that is really nice to witness. John Magaro’s performance is especially nice. When King-Lu first invites him into his shack and asks him to take it easy before dinner, Cookie’s first instinct is to start sweeping the floor. Then he goes outside and picks flowers for the table. (I think this movie would make a hilarious double feature with “The Revenant”. They exist in the same time period (1820s) and general location (American West) but could not be more different in content and tone.)

King-Lu is ambitious. His last scheme left him flat broke, but he has not given up. King-Lu is excited by the possibilities of being the first people in a new territory. “History isn’t here yet. It’s coming, but maybe this time, we can take it on our own terms.” But how to start? Perhaps a crime, surmises King-Lu anticipating Balzac’s famous saying.

The crime is to sneak into the field of the rich man and surreptitiously milk his cow. Through this little tale, Reichardt seems to make lots of statements about history, capitalism, opportunity, and class, but true to form, she does not come close to hitting you over the head with it. One can simply watch “First Cow” in a state of zen, letting the music gently wash over you, and taking comfort in calm acting and simple storytelling. In jazz, they say it is the notes you don’t play that make all the difference. The same can be said about a Reichardt film.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (4/5 Stars)

Earlier this year I was going through the movies of Bong Joon Ho and watched “Snowpiercer” for the first time. It was a decent movie about the last living humans spending time on a high-speed train whose cars were divided by class. The poor cars were in the derelict overcrowded caboose and each subsequent car being nicer and more luxurious. The content of each car was a mystery before the main characters invaded them, so there was a pleasant anticipation every ten minutes in the movie. The second to last car was a electronic music rave party. Lots of music, lights, drugs, and grinding. I felt that was an odd choice for the highest strata of society. Then I saw “Eurovision Song Contest: The Son of Fire Saga”. Now I get it. This movie is the last car on the apocalypse train.

This is a Will Ferrell comedy, written by Will Ferrell and a recent collaborator Andrew Steele. Andrew Steele was the main writer for the very funny miniseries “The Spoils of Babylon” and the just funny “Spoils Before Dying”. This movie has a certain comedic professionalism to it. The story telling is very efficient. Within the first five minutes we know the lifelong goal of the protagonists Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir is to win the Eurovision song contest, that Lars Erickssong has a disapproving father and that Sigrit Ericksdottir is secretly in love with Lars but Lars doesn’t know it (and they might be half-siblings?).

These are all well-worn comedic premises but they still work not less because of general wit of the screenplay and the performances of Ferrell as Lars, Pierce Brosnan as his father, and Rachel McAdams as Sigrit. Besides everything about Eurovision is a ridiculous music video fantasy. The freshness of the subject matter enlivens the entire movie.

Not that Eurovision is a new thing. Apparently it has been going on since the end of the World War II. Its huge in Europe and no-one in America knows anything about it. That dichotomy, Will Ferrell, says is what drew him to the project. Eurovision is a contest in which European countries sponsor home-grown acts in a singing contest held in a giant stadium and shown to millions of people on TV. We are shown a clip of ABBA singing a song about Waterloo in the early 1970s.

Lars and Sigrit are from a small fishing village in Iceland. When Lars learns that he and Sigrit get into the semifinals for Iceland, Lars rings the emergency bell in the local church tower. This is against the law and Lars promptly gets arrested. But in the police station, Lars and Sigrit plead with the local cops to just “be cool” and the cops just let Lars go. At another point, after Lars and Sigrit have inexplicably gotten into the Eurovision contest, they take part in what is called a Song-A-Long in a gigantic mansion. Every participant has ridiculous over-the-top makeup, hair, and costuming and check all the boxes in terms of ethnic and sexual identity. These people don’t have a care in the world. This musical interlude is the last car on the Apocalypse train.

Eurovision was directed by David Dobkin, who has done some pretty bad work in comedies before (see the lost opportunity that was Wedding Crashers). He is probably better appreciated for his music videos. The material here is a much better fit for him than his other movies. The movie has music throughout and Dobkin knows how to shoot in stage choreography for film. In particular, the closest this movie has to an antagonist, the Russian Alexander Lemtov (played by Dan Stevens), has two kind of ridiculously number involving taming lions, lions represented by male dancers with chiseled abdominal.

I had a lot of fun watching this movie. I enjoyed all of the songs, even Ya Ya Ding Dong. This movie is like the opposite of all the concurrent crises we have in America. We could probably use something like Eurovision here. The closest thing I guess would be American Idol, but that is a celebration of individualism and Coca-Cola, when it isn’t explicitly an exercise in sadism, not something that would bring people together.

Irresitible (3/5 Stars)

At a small-town city council meeting in the tiny town of Deerlaken, Wisconsin, the Mayor and city counsel are voting to impose a voter identification law. In walks Jack Hastings, played by Chris Cooper, who objects to the I.D. law. He makes a reference to what appears to be a latino couple in the back of the room, references high-minded democratic ideals and some tenets of Christianity and leaves. This is all caught on camera and posted to YouTube.

The video is shown to a Democratic political advisor named Gary Zimmer, played by Steve Carell, who absolutely loves it. It is almost too good to be true. Here is a white middle-aged man, veteran, and farmer, from a swing-state no less, that is taking a pro-immigration stance using the symbolic authority (founding fathers and the bible) of Republicans. Gary carpetbags his way to Deerlaken with the intent to finance the candidacy of Jack Hastings for Mayor of Deerlaken on the Democratic ticket. He wants to make a big national deal about this tiny mayoral race in rural Wisconsin.

Jack Hastings, along with his daughter Diana Hastings, played by MacKenzie Davis, allow Gary to serve as campaign manager to the upcoming campaign. Deerlaken has major problems. Its economic base was centered on a military base that has since closed, throwing many local companies out of business. The population of Deerlaken has collapsed from 15,000 people to just 5,000. With problems like that, an astute observer may wonder why the locals would care about national immigration policy.

Gary Zimmer does not connect those dots. And he knows he does not have to meet his ultimate goal. With his connections, money, and election apparatus behind him, he knows that he can simply outspend the other side to victory. The mayoral race does not really matter to national politics, but because of the immigration issue, the location of Deerlaken, and the identity of Jack Hastings, it will make a great story for the national news cycle. A Democrat wins in this rural town with Democratic sound-bytes for the first time in fifty or so years. When the Republicans catch wind of what is happening, they send down Faith Brewster, played by Rose Byrne, to dramatically up the spending game. Gary loves this because it means even more time and money are going to be spent on this symbolic election. Even if Jack Hastings loses, the Democrats would still win because they would have been able to beat expectations.

This is Jon Stewarts’ second feature film as a writer/director following Rosewater. We all know him from his fifteen years at the The Daily Show, an excellent fake news broadcast on Comedy Central. There is a twist to the story which he springs in the final twenty minutes. I hesitate to discuss a twist, but I will because I believe if the movie had not concealed the twist, it might have made for a more effective and funnier movie.

As it is, the movie follows Gary Zimmer around as if he is the main character. But he is not the main character, and he makes a poor main character while the movie allows him to take on that role. The main character is Deerlaken and the people in it. The Youtube video was fabricated and the election is a scam. The people of Deerlaken, helped by an astute understanding of campaign finance laws, know that if their town’s local election can catch the attention of the national media, their local economy will be the recipients of a vast amount of unfiltered unaccountable cash. The town intends to use this sorely needed cash to rebuild the local infrastructure, stimulate the local economy, and do other things that actually matter (as opposed to a purely symbolic national immigration debate).

But you will not know this for the first 90 minutes of “Irresistible” and the marketing campaign for it has gone even further in pulling another bait-and-switch on the expectations of the audience. Jon Stewarts’ fan base is urban and liberal, which is why the marketing is presenting a political comedy between the idealistic democratic strategist Gary Zimmer and a nihilistic republican strategist named Faith Brewster, played by Rose Byrne. But Faith Brewster is not a main character of this story and the movie is not really about a tussle between Democrats and Republicans. Faith shows up, finds Gary’s scheming mostly boring, and does not pretend, like Gary, to patronize the locals. She is here to shower money on the local economy and remind the people that Gary doesn’t actually care about them. She doesn’t care about them either, but her straightforward unashamed manner is less annoying.

Jon Stewart does not actually have much to say about the Republican party here, which makes sense if his purpose is to enlighten and inform those in his audience, his audience being mainly urban and liberal. All his criticism focuses on Gary Zimmer, the out-of-touch liberal elitist, who likes to describe the rural white residents of Deerlaken, Wisconsin as small-minded to the intelligentsia at NYC dinner party fundraisers. It is the urban elitist who ultimately gets outmaneuvered by the small-minded rural folk. I admire Jon Stewart’s willingness to not preach to the choir. That man has got some big ol’ matza balls on him.

As a director, Jon Stewart is still a little happy-go-lucky with his camera. He has some distracting camera angles and shots here where a more straightforward and simple style would have been appropriate. He has an eye casting though. I always appreciate when Will Sasso, from MadTV way back when, shows up in any movie to play anybody. “Irresistible” is not all that funny in the first half. However, as things become clearer, it picks up more and more laughs as it gains speed through the midway point.

The movie ends with a conversation with Trevor Potter, the lawyer brought on screen in many Daily Show and Colbert Report segments to talk about the ridiculous of campaign finance laws. Jon Stewart asks, could a town actually do this? Could they raise all this outside money, funnel it into Super Pacs, and then spend that money on local issues instead of advertising for an election? Yes, Trevor Potter, states. There are no rules for Super Pacs. You can raise any amount of money for them, ostensibly for the purpose of influencing an election, but spend that money however you want. Jon Stewart, wisely suggests, that more people should abuse the law and use the enormous amount of money circulating through our election ecosystem to actually help local communities. I feel like that idea may have had the comic potential of the accounting scheme in “The Producers”, which as you know, was laid out very clearly in that movie’s first scene. I wonder what this movie would have been like if Jon Stewart had led with his great idea.