Date Night (2/5 Stars) April 12, 2010

Somebody forgot to include jokes in their screenplay.

Money can buy you a lot of things that can make a movie better. Shelling out the top dollars will get you A-List comedians like Steve Carell and Tina Fey. It can allow you to cast great character actors like Mark Wahlberg, Ray Liotta, James Franco, and Mila Kunis in bit parts. It can allow you to shoot highly technical action sequences in primo New York spots like Times Square, Central Park, and FDR drive among others. It can get you fancy cars, gorgeous sets, and a stylized marketing campaign. It can get you perhaps anything you want in a comedy except the main ingredient: Jokes. You can’t buy laughs. This is because jokes have a very short shelf life. They can’t be told more than a couple of times before they lose all of their power. They have to be grown and cultivated. Some writer somewhere has to sit in a room, employ a little creativity and come up with something. This movie forgot that part of the process. It seems like it was built along a one-sentence pitch like, “Hey let’s put Steve Carell and Tina Fey in a movie together. Wouldn’t that be great.” Everyone agreed to make the movie way before the script was assigned to some schlub named Josh Klausner to crank it out over the weekend. It didn't need to be funny because the marketing campaign could capitalize on the actor's reputations for at least the first weekend gross. They aren't going to get me next time. Klausner’s next movie as a writer will be “Shrek Forever After.” I will remember not to see that one. 

This movie employs a variation of what Roger Ebert lovingly calls an “Idiot Plot.” An “Idiot Plot” refers to the series of stupid misunderstandings that a couple in a romantic comedy will go through before they realize they love each other in the last scene of the movie. The idea is that if they just took a moment to sit down and talk about it then everything would be sorted out and fine. They don’t do this because then the movie would be five minutes, not a long drawn-out hour and a half. The Idiocy in this Plot has mostly to do with the actions of some very stupid and incompetent hit men and the retarded police who can’t seem to connect some fairly obvious dots. Carell and Fey play boring married couple (The Fosters) that gets in a case of mistaken identity after stealing a dinner reservation. The hit men take them into an alley, pull out guns, and ask them to provide an incriminating flash drive. To avoid getting shot, the old married couple tell the hit men that they hid the flash drive in a floorboard in the Boathouse in Central Park. (Does that sound like a believable story to you? I personally thought it was retarded.) As the hit men stare at the wooden floorboards in the Boathouse Carell sneaks up behind them and hits both of them with an oar. They are incapacitated for about 30 whole seconds as the old married couple makes their escape across the Pond in a boat that can’t go more than a couple mph. The hit men stumble out of the Boathouse and unload about five or six rounds of ammo at the row boat no more than 20 feet away. Not a single one gets anywhere close. The Fosters go to the police. A simple explanation is all that is required. But no, the Fosters spy the same hit men in the station as cops. So the Fosters don’t tell the officer that is questioning them anything. They high tail it out of there because they think the entire police station has been compromised. (It hasn’t). This is completely ludicrous but is completely necessary to the story. After all, if they did the logical thing the movie would be over in a couple of minutes. 

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t usually require realism in comedies. (I just gave a good review to Hot Tub Time Machine.) What I do require though, is that a comedy be funny. If it isn’t funny, then it might as well be taken seriously. And if I’m taking something seriously, the unreality of the plot better not insult my intelligence. (If it’s funny it can do anything it wants.) But Date Night isn’t funny. I didn’t laugh more than three or four times the entire movie. It’s quite remarkable actually. Everything that ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ the B-movie with the second rate cast did right, ‘Date Night’ the slick A-List movie gets completely wrong. For example, both movies employ a throw-up joke. If you want to know how to do that right, watch the former. “Date Night” does it all wrong. First of all it gives us plenty of warning. (Carell going “oh I’m going to throw up!) Then the actual throwing up takes far too long. (Carell does it once, then has to do it several more times). It wasn’t funny the first time because it breaks the 1st Rule of Shock Humor: The joke NEEDS to be UNEXPECTED. Otherwise there’s no shock. It’s just yucky. For the same reason it wasn’t funny the second or third time either. The whole thing lasts about thirty seconds, about 29 more than the audience needs to get the joke. This is not how you tell a throw-up joke. These people don’t know what they’re doing. 

This pattern screws up the majority of the jokes in this movie. They will be fairly obvious in the first place and then that joke will be endlessly repeated as if the movie expects a punch line to get funnier upon each telling. There’s this bit where various side characters react with disgust at the Foster’s stealing of the reservation as if it is a huge social faux pa. After the second time, I could basically lip-sync what the next person would say the third, fourth, and fifth time. The movie is just one vacant scene followed by another. It’s a good thing Mark Wahlberg is shirtless during his entire performance because nobody in those scenes can tell a joke about anything else. If he put on a shirt, they would have nothing to say. 

I will say one more thing. Action sequences can be funny if done right. Here they aren’t but yes theoretically it is possible. Sexy is never funny. I bring this up because the Fosters inexplicably find themselves in a brothel with a bunch of scantily clad strippers everywhere. Tina Fey has to get into a stripper costume and do some awkward dancing herself. I don’t recall laughing at any point. You know there is a reason that ’30 Rock’ goes to such incredible lengths to uglify Tina Fey when she plays Liz Lemon. It’s because it is very hard to laugh at someone who you are physically attracted to. Tina Fey is gorgeous. That’s why ’30 Rock’ puts her in glasses, has her walk funny, and gives her an eating disorder. It allows her to be funny because we aren’t thinking of other things. (For a very good example of this, take the SNL “Chippendales” sketch. Who is funnier: Patrick Swayze or Chris Farley?) For this reason, no comedy should ever present a truly sexed up scene. What inspires lust and what inspires laughter are completely different things. If your purpose is to make people laugh, then that scene will be a great yawning void in your movie. Welcome to Date Night.

A movie with Steve Carell and Tina Fey will never be all terrible. I liked the semi-serious scenes where they simply acted like the married couple that was trying in good faith to revitalize their marriage. These are the type of scenes that allow a critic to say the movie is a “comedy with heart.” Except here of course there is no comedy. Just a void with some heart. Anyway, those scenes allowed this movie to get a 2 star rating.


Added a couple days Later:

I have to add a caveat to what I said about sexy never being funny. There's always an exception to the rule, and that would be Marilyn Monroe. She had the ability to be sexy and hilarious at the same time. (Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot). I think the big reason for this is because she was always so oblivious of her effect on the men around her. In other words, she didn't know she was sexy. It's a very hard thing to pull off because it is so very absurd (and thus funny). As Marlon Brando in 'A Streetcar Named Desire" once quipped, "I never knew a woman who didn't know she was good looking without me having to tell her."

The Dark Knight 07/18/08

Yes, I know, I've got some explaining to do. My decision for giving this film a rotten rating is actually resting on paradoxical sands. If this film was less serious, carried less moral weight, and didn't contain potent messages, I don't think it would be getting a negative review. But the fact that it is serious, that the filmmakers did intend to challenge the viewer with grotesque situations, that they deliberately pulled our emotional strings, and that they decidedly drew conscious parallels with current political situations, should place upon them great responsibility to the viewer. And the fact is, this story cheats. The movie cheats, and despite the great performances, action sequences, and its often noble intentions and ambitions, on principle I will give a bad review. You simply can't take advantage of an audience like this. You can't intentionally persuade people to be moved so deeply on false premises. I compare this movie more with something like 'Silence of the Lambs' than 'Iron Man.' That's how creepy and dark it is. There are reasons why filmmakers are very careful about making Holocaust pictures. The Nolan brothers should have taken a step back and thought it through once more on this one. 
What exactly do I mean when I say a movie cheats? There are many cliche examples (Watch 'Hot Fuzz') like bad guys firing off rounds and rounds of automatic guns and not hitting anything. There's the implausibly tough female, the indestructible man, and who can forget the old 'Oh my god we're about to be hit by train!' Here in this movie is a version of the 'insurmountable enemy,' a villain with such incredible mobility, intelligence, and material at his disposal that any attempt to beat him becomes implausible. The first time we see the Joker he's robbing a bank. He has told his flunkies to kill each other off so he can keep all the loot. By the end there's just him. The next time we see him he's got new flunkies, the police take one of them in. He turns out to be a schizophrenic psychotic. We are told most of his flunkies are. Now I don't have a masters in business management, but how does one run an organization that is intelligent enough to pull off triple crosses, infiltrate and intimidate the entire police and D.A. office, and have enough foresight to do some of the insane things in this picture with a gang of psychotic madmen that have a habit of killing each other off. The thing about the Joker, and these are his words, is that he's a force of chaos. At one point he admits he never has a plan. Where and when he says this is especially ironic. He says this to the new Harvey Two-Face in a hospital that he apparently has just rigged to explode. Keep in mind that like an hour ago, he had been in this abandoned warehouse taking over the entire mob. He set a spectacle by setting 34 million dollars on fire. The money's in this big pyramid, which someone had to take days to build. Who? Who knows. Not the Joker because he's been taping himself in some penthouse torturing policeman. In just a few hours after he blows up the hospital, he somehow sneaks 100 barrels of oil and a couple bombs into two ferries. He figures out how to stop their engines, take over the PA system and cast forth dire messages all from some abandoned skyscraper, where apparently he found time to take hostages and dress them up as clowns to perform yet another double cross on police snipers who would have no idea where to find the Joker if it hadn't been for Batman's top secret surveillance techniques. Therefore Joker must have super intuition or super paranoia to prepare himself for things he logically should know nothing about. My point is that this guy has to be some sort of super genius at logistics and coordination to pull any of this off. Does that reconcile with Heath Ledger's portrayal of a chaotic madman?
Commissioner Gordon may be a nice guy but he's a horrible police chief. His hapless cops go around in SWAT patrols getting completely blind sided by the Joker's forces, losing to them most of the time in direct confrontations. I wonder where The Joker is getting the manpower to do these things. I wonder where he gets big rigs, garbage trucks, and a vast number of empty warehouses. How does he know exactly where to trip up a helicopter? If I wasn't mistaken, half the criminal underworld was jailed early in the picture. Who are these people? There is also a bigger question of how they get paid, what with the Joker's penchant for lighting all of his money on fire. 
In a lesser movie this sort of thing wouldn't matter as much. But 'The Dark Knight' is rife with deep scenes and a couple grotesque situations that shock your conscience. I glared at the screen hoping the makers of this film didn't have the gall to blow up a ferry full of people in a PG-13 film. By that time, I wouldn't be surprised if they did. There was a couple of scenes that reminded me of the 'Saw' franchise. There's a particularly cruel one in which a newly engaged couple are tied to chairs in different places. In front of them is a time bomb and a radio. This way they can conveniently weep to each other as they are waiting to be blown to kingdom come. At least this movie had the taste not to show any real torture, but still we get to hear about it. The Joker explains how he got the scars on his face. The stories are decidely untrue, he changes it every time to befit the situation. Whatever is more horrifying. My God, is he one fucked up dude. 
The Dark Knight can conveniently be linked with current political situations. I think it is meant to. The Joker represents forces of evil in the world, Islamic Jihadists come to mind. We don't understand them, we don't know what they want. We can't negotiate with them or buy them. We don't know where they come from, or how they gain the ability to do what they do. Batman here goes through a change, he can't be a willy nilly super hero like Superman. He, as Dick Cheney would say, needs to turn to the dark side to beat the Joker. We see a city wide, highly illegal, super surveillance machine. Batman represents vigilanteism, secret covert action, a necessary evil. He's rough with the bad guys. He throws the Joker around in the interrogation room. I very much expected him to go through with some sort of 'enhanced techniques' in there. As Commissioner Gordon says at the end, Batman isn't a true hero. He doesn't represent our values or wishes. We are waiting for the day when we no longer need someone like him. He is simply the hero we need for these hard times. Wow, what a bad message. 
I have yet to get political in my reviews, but this movie necessitates a certain dialogue. So I myself will delve into the dark side to give the counter argument. I think this movie illustrates perfectly the mindset of many Americans that is simply wrong. The fact that we feel, as a nation, a need to delve into the dark side ourselves is because we have a strong misconception of the enemy. We think who we are up against is a form of the Joker. But what this movie illustrates if you look at it closer, and pick it apart like I have, is that an enemy like the Joker is conceivably impossible. No matter what the morals are, we have to admit that flying several different planes into several different buildings at the same time takes a certain amount of logic and coordination. These people are not chaotic psychopaths. They are rational beings that have a great deal of foresight, and to some extent, good management skill. It does no good to label them as crazy, evil, or cowards. That's a fundamental misinterpretation of our problem. Suicide bombers need bombs and paychecks. Like everyone else they eat, drink, and sleep each day, most have families, and all of them have a cultural history. If you understand what that is, then you have gained enormous insight into how they work and what rules they follow. The Joker knew Batman's rules and exploited them tragically. We have yet to figure out how the Joker ticks and he still frightens and confuses us. 

Blades of Glory 06/22/07

A comforting, unambitious, solid comedy from people who are venturing into well known waters. This has to be Will Ferrel's third sports movie (following KIcking and Screaming, and Talladega Nights) and the umpteenth time he played a droll, unmitigating badass. Again he knocks it out of the park. Why? Because like a very good Broadway star he manages to keep basically the same performance looking fresh and new. He's definitely the heart of the comedy, although another great part of this movie is the number of small parts that are given to well known faces. This movie has enough second tier comedians to rank it with a Christopher Guest film. In supporting roles we have Rob Corddry, Luke Wilson, Craig T. Nelson, Andy Richter, that gay guy from Reno 911, various skating stars (including an inspired cameo by Sasha Coen), the duo of Will Arnett and Amy Poehler who are perfect sister and brother villains, and Jen Fishcer, from the Office, as the shy love interest. All of them are playing roles they've played a thousand times before, but all of them play them well. So it's no surprise that the movie doesn't suck. Then again it's no surprise the movie is good. There you have it: no surprises period.

The one part of the movie that could have been better was Jon Heder. The main problem with this guy is that his acting conflicts with the part he's playing. He's supposed to be an infemminite, graceful, figure skating star. Instead Heder plays the guy like he's Napolean Dynamite's cousin. He's not graceful, he's clumsy and stupid. It doesn't fit well. and since the main love interest is between him and Jen Fischer I would have liked a guy that deserved to have someone fall in love with. Jen likes this guy because of the script, not because he's in anyway good looking or interesting. The role would have been better cast with a Topher Grace or maybe even a Jason Schwartzman.

But I'm getting carried away. The movie works and to it's credit it's not all gay jokes which was a relief. Some of it is clever wordplay. Notice a banter that takes place when the kids realize they have to spend the night in the same room. Ferrel objects and says deeply "Nights are a dark time for me." Which Heder retorts with "Nights' are a dark time for everyone." Ferrel shoots right back "Not for those living in Alaska and Men with night vision goggles." Very true, this movie relies on snappy lines like that. The movie's climatic scene is climatic and I was apprehensive and caught in the moment. The movie ends on a note that in a lesser comedy would have been bonehead ridiculous, but since I liked the movie I let the filmmakers get away with it and enjoyed it instead. 

The best part is a new twist on the old movie cliche "the nervous first telephone conversation," between Jen and Jon. What's great about is that both are receiving insane advice from Will Ferrel and Amy Poehler respectively. They both awkwardly throw heavily weighted innuendo at each other and are pleasantly surprised when the other responds positively even though they aren't really talking to each other and they're sages have completely different agendas. Those are good ingredients in any comedy, convenient complications.