Archive for June, 2011

YATES: More character depth with minor character would make ‘Bad Teacher’ better

Perhaps it is my advancing age, but it seems like these sugar-coated mindless comedies are appearing more frequently these days, each with less substance than the last.

For every “King’s Speech” it appears there are five “Bad Teachers.” Nonetheless, films are entertainment as much as art, so I took in the latest silly comedy at a Saturday morning showing at my local AMC cineplex. That’s right, I said Saturday morning. It struck me as odd when searching movie times that a 10:50 a.m. option was listed on the screen of my iPhone, so I rallied up the troops and asked, “Who’s in for a Saturday morning movie?” I was accompanied by a friend we’ll simply call “Stubs” because of his recent joining of AMC’s rewards program they constant push on you during your movie going experience. I responded to the concession clerk’s question about joining the rewards program with an inquiry of my own regarding the Saturday morning movies. None too happy about being at work on Saturday morning she replied, “Apparently AMC thought it was a good idea to show movies in the mornings on the weekends.” Despite the touch of sarcasm, I tend to agree with her, finding that the movie theatre was the best place to be during the recent stormy Saturday morning. There was something charming about being in the theatre while the thunder rolled and the rain pattered on the cinema’s roof. The movie, unfortunately, was not quite as charming.

“Bad Teacher” follows the exploits of gold-digging, foul-mouthed middle school teacher Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) after she is dumped by her rich fiancé. Determined to win the heart and wallet of a fellow teacher with family money (Justin Timberlake), Elizabeth pulls out all the stops to get what she wants while taking on beloved teacher of the year and rival love interest Mrs. Squirrel (Lucy Punch, “Dinner for Schmucks”).

Typically, my synopsis of a movie is much longer, but to be honest, there’s not a lot more to sum up. The movie is a whole lot of Cameron Diaz’s character being a jerk to everyone around her. Too much of Diaz, one might argue (as I currently am). Timberlake diversifies his character portfolio with an impossibly squeaky clean schlep, and Punch will likely reflect back on “Bad Teacher” as her breakout role, but despite their standout performances, there are simply not enough of them onscreen. The solid cast is rounded out with TV standouts Jason Segal (“How I met Your Mother”), Phyllis Smith (“The Office”) and classic that guy John Michael Higgins (“Fired Up!”). Unfortunately the stellar comedic cast is wasted as ancillary characters that appear flat and only there to appease Elizabeth. Director Jake Kasdan (“Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”) and sophomore screenwriters Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (Year One) seem to struggle to branch out from the main storyline to offer any type of substance for the rest of the cast. Jason Segal is completely wasted as the gym teacher pining after Elizabeth. His character is basically reduced to one-liners constantly reminding Elizabeth that no matter how much of a jerk she is, he’s going to keep asking her out on a date.

The anti-hero protagonist is nothing new to Hollywood. In fact, some of cinema’s best characters have come from this type of character — Travis Bickle from “Taxi Driver” and Leonard Shelby from “Memento” immediately come to mind. However, when a protagonist’s every move is driven by the desire for…wait for it…a boob job, it comes off as uninspiring, no matter what the genre classification. Most anti-heroes have a set of redeeming qualities that are slowly revealed in order for the audience to emotionally connect with. Elizabeth Halsey lacks any real redeeming qualities even through the film’s denouement, where she continues to insult the gym teacher for his chosen profession while finally giving in to his advances. There is a somewhat muted attempt toward the film’s climax to show that Elizabeth has learned the error of her ways, but it feels like it was added at the last minute to prevent audiences from throwing tomatoes at the screen. Ok, Halsey doesn’t come off quite that evil, but she does rank up there with some of cinema’s most unlikeable characters.

I’ll stop short of saying “Bad Teacher” should be called “Bad Movie” as it is filled with laughs and snarky one-liners — mostly short lived and coming from the little used cast outside of Diaz. The film’s biggest failure is that it lacks any sort of verisimilitude — even for a flighty comedy. Because of her good looks, the world created in the film revolves around Elizabeth Halsey, despite the fact that she treats everyone around her like dirt. Hmm … on second thought, maybe there is more truth in this film than at first glance. Regardless, a little more depth with the minor characters and less screen time for Diaz would go a long way in making “Bad Teacher” a better cinema experience.

Travis Yates

WIEGENSTEIN: ‘Bad Teacher’ goes for broad-based humor leaving few memorable scenes

In the wake of summer’s previously released adult comedies “Bridemaids” and “The Hangover II,” director Jake Kasdan brings us “Bad Teacher,” perhaps seeking to create some form of foul-mouthed trifecta for the year.

His tactics seem sound: “Bad Teacher” stocks itself with an impressive roster of comedy veterans from the well-known (Molly Shannon in a bit part) to those with less name recognition, but a long history of character acting (Thomas Lennon, one of the kings of “hey, it’s that guy!” in the movie world). But the large pool of talent forming the foundation of Kasdan’s film is unable to hide that Cameron Diaz’s titular character is a void at its center, holding it back from joining the ranks of 2011’s R-rated comedy crop.

Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, the ill-qualified educator in question (whether she actually studied education before jumping into the junior high world is an issue left noticeably unmentioned by the film), who returns to an English teaching position she hates after being dumped by the man who she intended to take care of her for the rest of her life. Miraculously, a potential replacement appears in the form of Scott (Justin Timberlake), a substitute teacher poised to become the empresario of his family’s designer watch business. Timberlake tackles his dweeby character with glee, and a scene in which he showcases his original songwriting skills is a film highlight (don’t expect another “Sexy Back,” let’s just say).

Convinced that a new pair of breasts will be her ticket to another sugar daddy, she begins a series of low-level scams that include embezzling from a school car wash and charging for non-existent tutoring sessions. Low-key love interest Jason Segel (whose own gym teaching methods often seem like they might make for a funnier movie) watches her tactics with amusement, something that can’t be said for Elizabeth’s tightly wound “across-the-hall-mate,” history teacher Miss Squirrel (Lucy Punch).

The runtime of “Bad Teacher” is largely taken up by montages of Elizabeth being, you guessed it, a pretty awful teacher. She smokes pot in her car, sleeps at her desk, and when she finally gets around to discussing her reading assignments, she chooses to pelt her students with dodgeballs to encourage better performance. Kasdan’s work becomes increasingly repetitive the longer the film drags on, hindered by a similarly rote script. There are moments of detail that provide real humor (a character’s fixation with dolphins, the weariness that field trip guides exhibit when constantly quizzing students on Abe Lincoln), but the movie at large goes for broader-based humor, leaving almost no memorable scenes.

Diaz has proven herself more than capable of comedic acting, most memorably in 1998’s “There’s Something About Mary,” and she’s able to deliver many of the script’s best lines with the acidity they deserve. But Elizabeth remains a single-note character in a field of funnier co-stars, a fact that all the sexy car wash scenes in the world can’t get rid of.

Anna Wiegenstein

YATES: Film offers stunning visual effects

While earning a minor in film at college, I was required to take a series of film production courses. The first one required students to make a film the “old school” way using a Super 8 mm camera and editing each scene together using splicing tape. It was a grueling process that took place in the basement of the SIU communications building, and we liked to call the experience “character building.” When I heard Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams were teaming up for a film called “Super 8,” I was immediately intrigued. When the first teaser trailer debuted with someone, or something, smashing away on the inside of a derailed train car, I was sold. As a director and producer, Abrams has brought us “Cloverfield” and “Star Trek,” as well as TV’s “Lost” and “Alias.” Would this recent partnership with sci-fi guru Steven Spielberg be his best work yet?

During the summer of 1979 in a sleepy Ohio town a young group of friends film a train derailment while making a Super 8 movie. When the military arrives to clean up the wreckage, the friends slowly begin to realize there is more to the accident than the town is being told. As the military begins evacuating the town, the kids finally see the film footage from the night of the derailment and the creature that crawled out of the wreckage. As the town crumbles around them, the friends set out on a mission to find the creature and save what is left of the town, and one of their own.

There have been several descriptions of “Super 8” with the most accurate calling it a combination of “The Goonies,” “Stand by Me,” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The story revolves around a group of six friends and how they are impacted by the arrival of the creature. The young ensemble cast is surprisingly fantastic considering the film serves as the acting debut for the two male leads in Joel Courtney as Joe and Riley Griffiths as Charles. Elle Fanning as Alice (as seen in the previously reviewed “The Door in the Floor”) rounds out the main cast of characters. Griffiths steals the show as an autocratic filmmaker desperate to finish his movie despite the catastrophic events unfolding around him. As the daughter of an alcoholic, Fanning carries an aura of vulnerability throughout the film reminiscent of a young Jodie Foster in “Taxi Driver.”

“Super 8” is a fun ride, but is by no means a classic. The film opens up on an extreme somber note with the death of Joe’s mother, setting up a storyline that comes off a bit contrived. Joe meets Alice. Joe falls for Alice. Alice’s father is the reason Joe’s mom is dead. Joe’s father forbids Joe from seeing Alice. Convenient, but not deeply explored and therefore it feels like artificial drama. The film’s climax arrives out of nowhere and there is literally no falling action, resulting in a very anti-climactic resolution. There is also no true protagonist to identify with. It seems to be Joe, but a protagonist is meant to overcome a series of obstacles in order to achieve his or her goal – and all Joe does is chase after Alice the whole time. Is it Deputy Jackson (Kyle Chandler, TV’s “Friday Night Lights)? He’s left in charge of the town once the Sheriff disappears. Is it Charles? He seems the most put out by the arrival of the creature, unable to finish his Super 8 film. The movie is named “Super 8” after all. It could even be the creature, which ends up having about as much depth as Joe. It could be any of them, yet Joe is the character Abrams asks us to invest the most in, even though he seems to have the least to accomplish.

Abrams brought us the groundbreaking film “Cloverfield” in 2008 and seems to go back to the well with a similar formula that could be considered Cloverfield: Midwest, with a mysterious creature caught on camera as humans try to escape its wrath. “Super 8” offers more of a plot and suspense, but something seems to be lacking with the character development. Despite this, the young actors shine as the focal point of the film. It seems like Spielberg and Abrams tried to do too much in the film, leading to under-developed characters storylines. As with most big budget sci-fi films, “Super 8″ is worth checking out on the big screen and does offer plenty of laughs and stunning visual effects. Stay put once the credits roll for a look at Charles’ finished Super 8 zombie movie — that may be the best part of the entire film.

Travis Yates

WIEGENSTEIN: Film is about moviemaking

Opening a film with a slew of production company logos is standard practice today, totally unremarkable. That said, there’s a funny rush in the seconds before “Super 8” even starts its runtime. In watching the classic bike-across-the-moon image of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, followed immediately by the icon of Bad Robot, the creation of J.J. Abrams, a sense of inevitability is there; of course this would happen eventually. The torch between the two adventure movie mavens hasn’t been passed so much as its been acknowledged and embraced.

While early Spielberg films (“ET: The Extra-Terrestrial” in particular) are its most obvious inspiration, “Super 8” uses numerous universal rules of storytelling to their best example. The young director Charles (Riley Griffiths) scours moviemaking magazines to learn how to create an engaging plot, and Abrams clearly has the book memorized. Show character emotion in order to keep the audience rooting for the good guys. Hint at a larger backstory, but don’t get bogged down in it. And above all else: giant scary things are always scarier when they remain offscreen as long as possible.

Spielberg’s own “Jaws” taught everyone that last lesson through sheer necessity. The mechanical shark looked cheap to the director, so he kept it hidden through most of the film. And while CGI has advanced moviemaking light years beyond what was essentially a terrifying puppet, Abrams keeps the dictum close to heart. The alien’s path of destruction speaks for itself for three-fourths of “Super 8,” rather like 2008’s excellent alien-of-devastation film “Cloverfield” (another product of the Bad Robot family).

All this would mean nothing without a solid base in the trials and tribulations of the film’s young cast, led by the remarkable Joel Courtney. Indeed, the idea of a monster escaping from military control is almost equitable to the seismic effects of dropping a pretty girl (Elle Fanning, following up her leading turn in last year’s “Somewhere”) into the midst of a bunch of dweeby pre-teen boys. The chemistry between the guys in question is funny and unforced, reminiscent of earlier friend-centric films like “Stand By Me.”

Likewise, dead bodies are a fascination for the boys in each film, albeit in very different manners. Rob Reiner’s 1986 classic has its cast out looking for an actual corpse, while the Abrams iteration treads familiar ground for both himself and Spielberg: youthful attempts at creating the most lifelike zombies possible for a short film shot on, you guessed it, a Super 8 camera. Interestingly, the actual auteur-in-training is presented as both a smart storyteller and an insufferable control freak, perhaps in a self-effacing nod by Abrams to his own past. The protagonist here is a lesser crew member, in charge of boom mic holding and undead makeup tricks he learned from a manual — all the better for Joe (Courtney) and Alice (Fanning) to shyly develop crushes on one another.

Joe is a boy possessed of great awkwardness (particularly around Alice) and incredible sadness — “Super 8” opens with the loss of his mother, leaving him with a distant father to raise him as best he can (Kyle Chandler, whose lack of purpose in the story is one of the film’s notable missteps). And if it takes an extraterrestrial being (though it’s one that can’t be bribed with Reese’s Pieces) to reconnect him with his parent and help him gain confidence, well, that’s fine. What theme could be more prevalent in the films of both Spielberg (everything from “Minority Report” to “Hook”) and the work of Abrams (both “Alias” and “Lost,” most notably)?

The blend of old-fashioned thrill technique –I’d take another 30 minutes of suspenseful waiting than I would the ultimate final quarter of the movie, comprised of a whole lot of running and explosions — with a classic core of childhood emotionality is what makes “Super 8” the success that it is, both for the summer movie pantheon and in the career of J.J. Abrams. It’s a film much needed in a season otherwise filled with comic hero adaptations and big-budget sequels. It’s about quality moviemaking much more than aliens, and viewers are better off for it.

Anna Wiegenstein