Ted (4/5 Stars)

People let me tell you about my best friend....

Comedy is like magic. There’s an explanation but you don’t need to know it to enjoy it. You may even enjoy it more not knowing it. I’m trying to give Seth MacFarlane, the writer/director of “Ted,” a serious compliment. The movie, “Ted,” looks and feels so simplistically drawn that one may mistake the whole thing for being an easy thing to accomplish. But there is plenty of good material, much it is rather edgy (R rated Teddy Bear style sex, drugs, racial humor, and violence), and it is a comedic accomplishment that the movie comes off as a simple, funny, and ultimately harmless movie. 

It starts with the Christmas wish of a small Bostonian boy named John. He doesn’t have any friends so he wishes his stuffed Teddy Bear would come to life and be his best friend forever and ever. And the Teddy Bear does and wants nothing but to be his friend forever and ever. The concept of a Teddy Bear stuns the nation and Ted becomes a minor celebrity. But as explains the kindly narrator of the story, “No matter how big a splash you make in this world whether you’re Corey Feldman, Frankie Muniz, Justin Bieber, or a talking teddy bear, eventually, nobody gives a shit.” 27 years later, Ted is still alive and still living with the now 35-year-old John, played by Mark Wahlberg. They are still the best of friends but Ted is no longer an innocent child’s plaything. He lives on the couch, smokes pot, and brings home hookers. This is why Lori, John’s girlfriend for 4 years, played by Mila Kunis, presents an ultimatum: The Teddy Bear from your childhood or the woman you met as an adult. 

This is Seth MacFarlane’s first feature film. You may know him a lot better from the TV show “Family Guy.”  Living proof of that is the voice of Ted, a perfect copy of the Family Guy himself, Peter Griffin (both are voiced by MacFarlane.) This is a masterstroke as that voice, with the very very strong Beantown accent, is one of the funniest voices I have ever heard. There is an inherent vibe of glee inhabiting every syllable that makes me smile every time I hear it.

Even better is what isn’t taken from Family Guy and that is the avant-garde style of crappy humor that makes it an inferior sitcom (I stopped watching halfway into Season 3). Family Guy had this repeated obsession with this thing I will deem, “the absence of a joke-joke,” where characters would setup a situation and then blankly stare at each other, the joke apparently being that this is where a punch-line should be but there isn’t a punch-line and isn’t that funny? Well, perhaps the first time it was. Then you start wondering if the blank stares are simply there because the writers couldn’t think of anything funny to say. Anyway the good news is that this does not happen in “Ted.” There are real jokes here and the movie is filled wall to wall with them.

One especially great thing the movie does is present situations that should feel awkward but somehow stay comfortable the entire time. A good example of that is how the movie presents Laurie’s employer, played by Joel McHale, who hits on her everyday at work. These scenes should be awkward but aren’t and I think it’s mostly because of the blunt kind of whatever way Joel McHale brings it up, the way he doesn’t particularly care when being rejected, and the way it doesn’t touch upon anything truly creepy like leering stares, demeaning remarks, promises of material rewards, or threats concerning Laurie’s status at work. Then once Laurie and John temporarily separate because of something really funny involving Flash Gordon in a previous scene, the boss asks her out again to a Norah Jones concert. The way he phrases the reasons why she should say yes to this should be framed and put on somebody’s wall because I was like nodding along and going, ‘okay, fuck it. I would go to the concert too.’

That brings up what happens at the concert itself, which in most other movies would be awkward, but here became the funniest scene I have seen in a movie all year. John gets backstage at the Norah Jones concert, due to Ted’s past romantic liaison with the singer, and gets permission to go on stage and sing a song to his ex-girlfriend in the crowd. Impromptu love songs in public places are ripe territory for stomach-churning embarrassing moments. But here because of the way it’s done, it couldn’t have been more enjoyable. For one thing, Norah Jones is totally cool with it and even puts on sunglasses and plays along with a saxophone. Second, the song being sung is the theme song to “Octopussy” which is not a love song and actually not even about sex. It just happens to be the theme song of the TV show they watched the first night they met. Third, and most important, is that the reactions shots of Laurie don’t show somebody who is embarrassed and to top everything off, when they get to Joel McHale’s reaction, he smirks and says “Holy Shit” as if he is about to witness the greatest thing in the world.  The result is this sense of safety because even if it goes terribly, the outcome won’t be awkward because none of the characters will feel terrible if it does. In the meantime enjoy Mark Wahlberg singing “Octopussy,” really really poorly and all the people in the crowd getting really really angry.

For the record, quite a lot of the jokes in “Ted” contain pop culture references to really old TV shows like Flash Gordon and Octopussy. You don’t need to know anything about these shows to find the jokes funny. Case in point, I’ve never seen any of these shows and found all of the jokes funny. Use your comedic intuition and you’ll be just fine filling in the holes.

Let’s talk about acting and what makes it “good.” Here, Mark Wahlberg is playing a 35 -year -old schlub working at a rental car agency whose best friend is a talking teddy bear. Cut all the prejudicial crap you may have that states only actors playing biographical men with incurable diseases or physical handicaps deserve to win awards. Now judge this performance on its terms. Ask questions like, was it as funny as it could have been? As a lead character, did Mark empower the supporting actors to be as funny as they could have been? And perhaps the best question of all: Was the talking teddy bear believable? The last question is the linchpin here, because if Mark had done his job poorly, it would be really obvious that he was actually acting against an invisible spot on the floor. Ted, a product of James Cameron-ish special effects, was added entirely in post-production. This includes all the scenes where the two get in fights. During shooting, Mark was pretending to fight with someone who wasn’t physically there, not exactly an easy thing to do. This type of performance always gets overlooked because the better it is done the less people notice it. But it is there and deserves recognition. Billy Murray will probably get the Oscar for portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a biographical President of the USA who is paralyzed with polio, this year. I don’t even have to see that movie in order to predict he will get nominated for it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate actors that can pull off playing opposite to a CGI teddy bear an entire movie. I submit that takes just as much skill if not more. This is one of the best performances of the year.

One other thing that is noticeable in not this comedy but too many others. None of the women are funny. This is not simply just a problem in writing, but also in casting. All of the women here are supermodels, even the coworker that works at the rental car agency. I don’t particularly care about the realism of that, it’s just that if you hired an actual comedian, they probably could have done more with the part. I sort of got the sense here that MacFarlane’s imagination is limited in that respect and figured that all women are the same in the comedy department so why not just hire the most beautiful ones. Funny women exist! I have witnessed them in movies before. There are a million places I could go to look at incredibly beautiful women and their perpetually bored expressions. I paid money to see “Ted” in order to laugh. Hire funny women. If you don’t know how to write jokes for them, ask them to make something up.

Anyway good job on the first feature, MacFarlane. Now go out there and make another. 

The Rum Diary (3/5 Stars)

Weak story. Needs more rum.

Before making a movie, it helps perhaps to make sure that the recurring themes that drive the storyline do not contradict and undercut each other. What we have here are two tales. One is a comedy about an alcoholic journalist (i.e. Hunters S. Thompson before he got into hard drugs) played by Johnny Depp that has just landed a shit job working for what seems to be the only newspaper in Puerto Rico. His exploits include being kicked out of a hotel for drinking 162 miniature rums from the hotel room mini bar in a week, stumbling through his workdays with a perpetual hangover, and taking a healthy dose of that magic CIA interrogation serum that later on in the sixties (this takes place in the fifties) would be known as LSD. The second story is one of heroic journalism. The young and naïve journalist played by Johnny Depp is taken on by the rich corporate executives of Union Carbide (an inspired name choice for the more or less fictional corporation here) who want him to write "journalism" that basically subs as advertising for rich land developers and plays down the detriment done by said developments to the poor indigenous population.  Apparently taken aback by the injustice done between the classes, Depp puts on the righteous journalist hat and talks about fighting back. But this journalist isn’t very effective you know because he is a complete drunk. So therein lies the problem. You have a comedy about an unapologetic drunk that isn’t very funny because we’ve introduced the serious business of class warfare and you have a drama about the plight of the poor that isn’t very dramatic because the hero of the story spends more time drunk than actually solving the problem.

It is unmistakable that Johnny Depp and the makers of this movie admire Hunter S. Thompson a great deal. The subtitles at the end of the movie claim that out of the ashes of this particular failure one of the best journalists of like ever was born (that is somewhat paraphrased but you get the idea.) I guess, maybe. I haven’t read “The Rum Diary,” but I have read Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” That book is arguably a masterpiece. A masterpiece of what is another story. A masterpiece of fiction? Sure. A masterpiece of journalism, umm...no. Thompson was a journalist in, I suppose, the loosest sense of the word. He did not care about the facts, never met a deadline, was drunk or high most of the time, and never bothered to try for objectivity. The great thing about “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” for me at least, was the audacity of it all. Here you had a story about a couple of guys that were doing massive amounts of drugs, spending vast quantities of money they didn’t have, completely destroying the property of others everywhere they went, harassing (even raping) women, openly flaunting almost every law of public decorum sometimes to the face of police officers, and most of all, getting away with it all, completely and unapologetically. It is an unflinchingly awesome story and I bet would make a great movie. Its just that every time a Thompson book becomes a film the makers (Terry Gilliam with “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Bruce Robinson with “The Rum Diary.” Both star Johnny Depp) have not been able to match the wildness of the book. In this particular film, there is way too much concern for the Puerto Ricans. Hunter S. Thompson wouldn’t give a shit about dirty disheveled children with raggedy clothing. It is true that Thompson excelled at satirizing nasty, indulgent, and overweight American consumers and there is a brief scene in this movie at a bowling alley that gets that exactly right, but just because somebody hates the ruling class doesn’t mean that they sympathize with the downtrodden. Hunter S. Thompson was a well-written sociopath, not robin hood. To portray him as the latter has the detrimental effect of dampening and diluting the trademark style that make his books such incredible reads. 

If I had the choice, I wish this movie would have spent a lot less time with the rich people (Aaron Eckhardt and his pretty wife Amber Heard) and a lot more time with the other drunk journalists. I was pleasantly surprised by a turn here by Giovanni Ribisi, as the nastiest of the nasty drunks. He is almost completely unrecognizable from his role as the insufferable corporate boss in “Avatar.” Michael Rispoli has the Dr. Gonzo role minus the law degree. Johnny Depp does a very good Hunter S. Thompson impression, but unfortunately is about 30 years to old for this particular role. The book was written by Thompson during his very first stint as a journalist. He was in his young 20s. Johnny Depp is almost 50. He looks out of place in all the job interviews, introductory rum drinking, and flirtations with Amber Heard (who is my age). It must be said that Johnny Depp looks good for his age, but he still looks his age. We young people don’t have such fat faces.

All in all, this is an okay movie. There are no bad scenes. It is well acted and well told. But apart from several inspired lines of vocabulary uttered by Johnny Depp, it is not all that memorable. It would have been stronger if they added more rum.

Avatar (5/5 Stars) January 2, 2010

The humans lose but hey it looked spectacular!

James Cameron directs his first film since ‘Titanic’ in 1998. True to his usual form, he has poured an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and money into his new project. The story of the making of Avatar is almost as good as the story in the movie. Before the movie hit the theaters it had gone through more than ten years of development, four years of actual production, two years of live shooting, 300 million (or more) dollars, and the invention of new technology needed to achieve the special effects Cameron wanted. And as Ebert remarked, “it’s all there all on the screen.”

Avatar is not just a movie. It is an event in movie history. It is a movie that defines the future of movies, or at least big budget blockbusters. Like ‘Birth of a Nation,’ ‘King Kong,’ ‘Star Wars,’ and ‘Jurassic Park,’ it will find itself on top lists not because it happens to be a superior story but because it is a first of its kind. When we saw this film we saw something we had never seen before on a scale that was unprecedented. We saw for a whole new planet with gorgeous fluorescent rainforests. We saw 3-D used in a way that complemented the picture by adding depth (especially effective when a character jumps off a high cliff) instead of distracting the viewer by throwing things at us. We saw characters created completely with special effects that conveyed real human emotion. This is perhaps the most significant jump the technology in this movie enables. Avatar is the first movie that has traversed what in animation is called the “Uncanny Valley.” The uncanny valley concerns the area of animation that is looks so close to the real thing that it will actually make a viewer uncomfortable (Those look like humans but they’re Not! How unsettling). This valley is most easily seen in Robert Zemeckis’ last three movies The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol. Zemeckis it seems was knocking on the door that Cameron finally busted down here. Where he failed Cameron has succeeded. Who knows what will come of this? The floodgates of science fiction are officially open.

The most important thing about the story perhaps is that it shows off everything that the new technology can do. In the not so far future a human corporation has landed on an alien planet named Pandora to mine a mineral named (whatever) that sells for an enormous amount of money on Earth (a planet we never see). The problem is that an indigenous tribe called the Na’vi live directly over the minerals. The corporation employs scientists to try to deal with the Na’vi. The scientists create Avatars, fake Na’vi that humans can control while in a simulation trailer. The movie has three main Avatars for three actors, Sam Worthington (the marine), Sigourney Weaver (the head scientist) and Joel Moore. It is uncanny how one can recognize immediately the actor in their respective nine foot blue Avatars. The Marine named Jake Scully goes undercover with the Na’vi learning their ways. Their ways could have come completely out of a Native American textbook. They respect and revere nature and wear nothing but loincloths. In addition, they live in a very tall tree, visit floating Rainforest Mountains in the sky, and have pet dragons they fly around on. I hope you’re not afraid of heights, because the 3-D makes the falling distance seem very real. 

Of course diplomatic solutions fail, as they must in order to give the movie an opportunity for a huge climatic battle. Stephen Lang plays the hardcore scar-faced human general who leads his mechanized fleet into battle against the all-natural Na’vi. At first it seems that the war will play out exactly like the war between the imperialist Americans and the Native Americans played out (I believe a direct metaphor for this very ‘green’ movie) with the humans moving in, killing off or evicting the Na’vi, and then taking the natural resources. The Na’vi though have a trick up their sleeve that the Native Americans didn’t have. The Na’vi’s deity, Eywa, is real. I mean actually real. More importantly, it takes sides. 

Here is where I sort of get off the bandwagon story-wise. Frankly enough I don’t like deities getting involved in wars. They tend to make the battle incredibly unfair and when that happens the story suffers. Movie battles are at their best when they involve clearly enabled strategy between worthy adversaries. Two very good examples of this are The Matrix (Neo vs. Mr. Smith) and Peter Jackson’s King Kong (King Kong vs. The Dinosaurs). The war in this movie doesn’t have any real strategy at all except at some times the Na’vi are winning, and then the humans are winning, and then Eywa comes in and decisively seals the victory for Mother Nature. Of Course, to me it was one of the most spectacular battles I have ever seen but something tells me that my grandkids will view Avatar just like I viewed the original King Kong (1933). A sort of okay story with really crappy effects. 

By the way, it was somewhat disconcerting to me (when I wasn’t awestruck by the visuals) that the humans lost. Say I’m unfairly prejudiced against other species (not racist as they incorrectly infer in the movie) if you want, I don’t care. This movie will definitely make enough money that the studios will demand a sequel. Hopefully the humans will come back and win in that one.