Jurassic World (2/5 Stars)

Nerd Pandering

If I had made a spoof of the Jurassic Park franchise, it might have been remarkably similar to “Jurassic World.” This movie is not too far away from being a total joke. Take two main plot points. First, the theme park “Jurassic World” is not growing in attendance because people are bored with the same old dinosaurs and the investors are getting anxious. Say what? A theme park with dinosaurs is losing its appeal after only ten years in existence? Surely that is one of the most absurd scenarios in the history of movies. But whatever, in reaction to this scenario the theme park is training velociprators like bloodhounds and creating a newer, bigger, more dangerous dinosaur. You see their focus groups suggest that giant carnivourous dinosaurs tend to draw larger crowds. These new attractions have gotten the attention of the U.S. Military which brings us to the second plot point. A contractor named Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) exclaims “Imagine what we could have done with these guys in Tora Bora!?!” I can actually answer that question. An Al Queada soldier with a sniper rifle would take down the raptor from about 500 yards away. And that’s if the beast could actually be transported to Afghanistan in the first place. And these absurdities are what drive the main plot conflicts of the story. Really. This movie just made a record 200 million dollars in one weekend. The silver lining to that I guess is that this movie would not have made nearly enough without the enormous goodwill garnered by the first two very good Spielberg films. So, at least in this instance, critics can be assured that bad movies don’t come out of nowhere and make tons of money. They stand on the shoulders of actually good movies and also in this case a pretty good book.

Let’s talk about the dinosaurs. They are relatively deficient from past movies in their capacity to provoke wonderment or thrills. The lack of wonder has much to do with the movie’s insistence via the characters that the dinosaurs are not so special. In the first movie you followed the reactions of paleontologists whose every dream came true when they saw their first living dinosaur. Contrast that with the two kids who visit the park in this movie. One of them, a child, is sufficiently excited. The other, a teenager, is more interested in girls. I felt like smacking him upside the head for most of the movie. It matters less what is on the screen than what the characters think about it. The experience of movie going is a vicarious one. If the characters don’t care than the wonder is not extended to the viewer. The fact that “Jurassic World” had one of its main characters not be all that impressed with dinosaurs really undercut the whole reason to see this movie: i.e. that it had fucking dinosaurs in it.

These dinosaurs are less thrilling than the ones in the original movie. Now I’m going to make a distinction in the technology but keep in mind that there is actually no particular reason why computer images could not do both. Think back to the original movie and pick out some of the more visceral moments, perhaps the Velociraptor in the kitchen tapping its big claw, or the water vibrating, or Wayne Knight’s death, or the girl being sneezed upon. None of these little things employed computer effects. It would be absurd to use computer effects for them, as they were not needed. However in the new movie, as far as I can tell, the dinosaurs are completely computer generated even for the moments when it isn’t needed, i.e. closeups on faces. And those dino faces look unnecessarily weird to me compared with the first movies. But as before it is not really the problem that the dinos are almost entirely computer generated. The real problem is that there are not really any moments that do not call for computer generation. There are no little moments. All the moments are big. And this is a problem because you need little moments to create suspense (i.e. water vibrating) and also to explain things.

Filmmakers studying Spielbergian masterpieces such as Jaws and Jurassic Park (as no doubt the director of “Jurassic World” Colin Trevorrow has) continually draw the wrong lessons from them. They assume that if you do not see a monster for a significant length of time that it suddenly becomes scarier. This is not true. The reason why the shark and the dinos are scary in those movies is because they are thoroughly explained. That is to say in “Jaws” Richard Dreyfuss explains in length the nature of Great White Sharks and in “Jurassic Park” a paleontologist explains how velociraptors attack in herds.  It amazes me how these scenes are sometimes the first ones dropped in inferior movies. What you get instead is movie cheats wherein the creature, not being defined, is allowed to arbitrarily gain and lose supernatural powers at the movies whim. Here the new dinosaur is allowed to camoflauge himself amongst the trees. This somehow makes it impervious to bullets, lots and lots of bullets. Or take the raptors, which can be trained to follow orders from Chris Pratt until they don’t want to until they want to again. It also does not help when the ambitions of the movie are so great in scope that a wild animal as a villain just cannot work without it having absurd levels of competence in fighting modern technological war machines. Sometimes for the purposes of thrills that do not insult the intelligence of the audience it is better to have a boat that is not big enough.

Now lets talk about the secondary attractions, the people. There is not much to say here other than how well they play out stock imitations of other Spielbergian characters and tropes, most explicitly the one where an adult needs to stop working so much and spend more time with the kids. Then there is Chris Pratt doing his best ‘Indiana Jones’ impression. Not bad although I think he really should be drinking a beer in his first scene and not a coke (and who drinks coke from bottles anymore?). BD Wong, the scientist from the first movie, is back as a scientist here. His presence is nerd pandering which I will get to next. The same can be said about the characters of Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus the computer nerds in the control room. Again, more on that later. Bryce Dallas Howard plays a vapid corporate dummy who disrepects nature and is too high strung and organized for a relationship with Pratt to work. She has these high heels. Pratt at one point when they are in the midst of nature with danger all around them ridicules her decision to wear them. He is right of course. She shouldn’t be wearing them in this context and high heels in general are rather vain and unbecoming for someone already in charge with nobody to impress. So that’s a good criticism. But then the movie does something else: It insists that Bryce continue to wear the high heels the rest of the movie past many scenes when either a sane person would have ditched them or they would have broken past repair many times. Now given that the character is only wearing the heels because the movie itself (written, directed, and produced by guys) has been intent on making her wear them beyond all suspension of disbelief, is it really okay to make fun of the woman’s character for wearing them in the first place. I would suggest that it is not but this is the sort of thing one generally gets when a movie deems as its mission to above all else pander to nerds. In this particular case nerds like to think of themselves as Han Solo and that every girl is Princess Leia who would fall head over heels for them if only they weren’t so stuck up. Chris Pratt and Bryce Howard Dallas are just another reiteration of that classic type of nerd pandering.

I don’t like nerds. I don’t think there is another group of people who would sit through all sorts of stupid drivel as long as it patted them on the back and made them feel special. But boy do studios love nerds. Make a movie about their favorite comic book and the nerds will feel compelled to show up as a matter of honor perhaps if only for the opportunity to complain loudly about how terrible it was done. So the incentive to make decent movies is lessened right there. What is more is that the nerds routinely react with glee when sequels or reboots incorporate the best jokes and lines of the original movie. “Jurassic World” is no exception. There are a ton of inside jokes and callbacks to “Jurassic Park” (Hell, look at Jake Johnson’s “Jurassic Park” shirt) and “Jaws” that make the plot more predictable and all the action tinted with a sense of déjà vu. There is the ‘objects look closer than they appear in the mirror’ gag, there is ‘the loosening of a giant tooth from a vehicle’ trope, there is the ‘flare baiting of the T-Rex’ scene. The best example of all is the musical score. It isn’t John Williams great score from ‘Jurassic Park.’ It is a similar but inferior version whose best quality is to remind you of how great the original was. The most frustrating thing about “Jurassic World” is not that it isn’t a great movie, it’s that it cynically did not even allow itself the space to be a great movie. It deliberately set out to be a nostalgia piece. And the ones to blame are the nerds because they do not insist that their movies challenge them. (One could perhaps argue that the whole idea of having superpowers is an immature way of escaping real world problem solving). As long as they go and see the next Spiderman reboot every five years why would the studios ever give them something different.  

The Descendants (3/5 Stars)

Good Grief.

 I fear that my recent cycle of poverty is hurting my ability to empathize with the problems of the super rich. And this is something that is brought up right away in director Alexander Payne's new movie "The Descendants." The main character, a man named Matt King, confides to us in voiceover that people think his life is paradise simply because he lives in Hawaii. But he says that he has the same screwed up family problems as anybody else and they hurt all the same. True, this is true, I guess. Matt King's wife has just been in a boating accident and now lies in a coma in the hospital. The doctor tells him that she is not going to make it. His daughters aren't taking it very well. His father-in-law blames him. He finds out that she was having an affair. Screwed up stuff. But Matt King, unlike regular people, is also the descendant of Hawaiian royalty and is the sole trustee of a some of the last pristine area of Hawaiian real estate. When it is sold, it will be sold for many millions. He has a successful law practice and has the ability to send his daughters to private schools. He looks like George Clooney. So the whole wife thing, that sucks, it does. But I figure this guy will do just fine.

There's a fine amount of drama here floating about in vague meandering directions. It turns out that the wife has not been the best of people. So we have several scenes here where people get mad at a lifeless body. In one example, Matt King storms about the hospital room saying rather hurtful things at her. It is a frustrating thing to watch of course because the main impetus for the scene can't respond or defend herself in any way. So we don't really get both sides and don't really know what is going on. It is obvious that it is important though because people are wailing and yelling. But without explanations this feels more weird than dramatic. Perhaps flashbacks would have helped. A good deal of the rest of the movie involves Matt King telling family and friends that his wife will not wake up. It may seem cold of me to say that there were too many of these scenes, but I don't know anything about this person. There is no connection here. Things need to be explained a little bit more. (I have seen a movie which had a scene that worked involving a guy getting mad at his dead wife who had been cheating on him. That was Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris," and it was one of the best and saddest scenes I have ever seen. The parallels in these two scenes make George Clooney's outburst pale in comparison. Watch both of them and compare the acting styles. I prefer Brando's. It is more intimate. It starts off softer. It builds. There is a crescendo of anger with denouement of true sadness. It has a rhythm to it like great music. Clooney is dramatically correct but all over the place.)

The humor in the movie basically consists of Matt King's daughters acting out and him telling them to watch their mouths and not do weird things. Along for the ride is Sid (played by Nick Krause) who says dumb surfer things. I've seen Alexander Payne movies that were much funnier. Something like "Sideways" for instance much more brilliantly blended intelligent drama with true action and true hilarity. We have here a lot of dramatic grief but very little comic relief. Even Shakespeare knew to throw in some ribald jokes here and there. The movie has moments yes, and some rather good scenes where Matt and his daughters track down and confront the guy his wife was having an affair with, but overall the movie lacks that extra nerve or zest that makes a great movie. I will be disappointed if this gets a lot of Oscar Nominations and something like Bridesmaids blanks. A wife in a coma and people crying about it does not automatically a great movie make.

 One more thing, the voiceover this movie employs. It is there for the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then it disappears for the last three fourths of it. Why? Is the narrator no longer speaking to us anymore? Have the rules of the storytelling changed a quarter of the way through the story? There are certain rules about voiceover that should be followed. For one, it should never be used to tell us what is going on. This is generally redundant and often lazy. Two, voiceovers should be consistent. Good examples of this are "Amadeus" which is voiceover via real time confession; "Forrest Gump" which is voiceover via real time storytelling. "Fight Club," which is voiceover via a brain thought process. A master of voiceover is Director Terrance Malick. See his movies "The Thin Red Line," "The New World," and "The Tree of Life." Voiceover there is used as poetry which floats over a scene in meditation. All of these examples have consistent voiceover. They are entwined into the very structure of the story. We know who is speaking and who they are speaking to if they are speaking to anybody. They don't simply cease happening or seem like they are switching from narration to private thoughts and back again. All of these rules are broken in "The Descendants," and then the voiceover disappears entirely. This is shoddy writing and again I hope it does not get nominated for Best Writing. There really is better stuff out there.

 

American Dreamz 04/22/06

"I don't want all these boring contestants, I want contestants that are human, and by that I mean contestants that are flawed, and by that I mean I want freaks. Real freaks."
Such is the logic of American Dreamz, that is so close to this world that it's a bit unsettling. I sometimes wonder what the reaction to Dr. Strangelove was in the early sixties. It might have been like this movie, maybe not to the same degree but yeah, like that.
Such is our day and age that things get sorta mixed around. We want to be liked, but how does one go about being liked. One thing everybody loves is sincerity, and so all the Presidents and pop stars and directors and celebrities study classes on how to be sincere. Large efforts are made to make sure there's an atmosphere of sincerity. But there's the paradox, for one can't make people believe fake sincerity, even if one is sincere which most of the people in this movie are even if they're contained in something so false as American Dreamz or an elcted office. Do you get it, how do you get people to think you're sincere without telling them you are (which is insincere). You can't act not sincere, because who would believe you're sincere then. Thus the catch-22, and the underlying invisible truth of this movie and yes of our times. 
It definitely was a surprise how this movie turned out. It really could have been a lot worse. But even though it had a plot so over-the-top, it never felt that way. Even though we had personalities that were seismic in shape (President Bush, Suicide Bomber, Any American Idol Contestant) they never felt forced. It doesn't throw jokes at your face and demand you laugh. It sits back, says trust me, and let's you come inside to share the joke. This movie was marketed as out of this world, but it's very in it. Let's take an example from Dennis Quaid's performance as President Stanton.
Now I've heard alot of jokes about George Bush being stupid, but never have I seen anything like this. For the first time ever, we emphasize and share sympathy with George Bush. Sure the guy's not perfect, but he's likable and sweet. Even Dick Cheney isn't that horrible. This is not make fun of George Bush time, it's how shall I say, someone who we wish our President could be. He's the hero of the story, and at the end there's a certain kind of redemption for his real life counterpart when President Stanton stands up, without an earpiece or script and says from his heart the best line in the movie. "I know that there are some problems in the middle east that will never never never never never be solved. and for that I am sorry." Then he shakes hands with Omer, the show tunes singing terrorist. I swear to God, I could vote for that guy. Not the real George Bush. But the Dennis Quaid charachter. Like most people, I just love sincerity.