Archive for August, 2011

YATES: ‘Sold’ says ‘no’ to product placement in films

Still flying solo this week while Anna settles into grad school left me in an inquisitive mood, so I visited my local movie rental joint in search of something educational. Films fall into three main categories: Narrative, documentary, and experimental. Narratives — your typical cause-effect storyline with a conflict and resolution — occupy most of Hollywood’s attention. A small niche exists for documentaries, while experimental films are highly interpretive and created mostly for art’s sake. They have no real financial significance, which is largely why Hollywood ignores them. There is a new motif in Hollywood that is helping studios cover the increasingly huge costs of creating films — product placement. Now, narrative’s little brother — the documentary — is stepping in to tattle with Morgan Spurlock’s latest DVD release, “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.”

Financed solely through product sponsorship, the film is about … product placement and sponsorship. While he takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, product placement is becoming more and more prevalent in film and TV — something that is changing the landscape of film and television while widening the gap between studios and independent filmmakers. Hollywood is walking a fine line, running the risk of artistically stifling talented directors by including contractual obligations for products appearing onscreen at certain times or in prescribed locations. (Your soft drink can be in our film’s climax!)

“The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” follows Spurlock as he attempts to find sponsors to finance his entire film project. In return, the products are featured in comedic style throughout the documentary. The film introduces the audience to product placement terms such as brand personality, co-sponsorship and my favorite — faction, which is described as a production blending fact and fiction. Unfortunately, the film ends up more about Spurlock’s search for sponsors than the overall business and impact of product placement in Hollywood — which is too bad, because the film is very entertaining and informative when scratching the surface of the big business of product placement, but it is all few and far between Spurlock making his own sales pitches to corporations. After a somewhat unnecessary 30-minute exposition, the film begins to take shape by uncovering some of Hollywood’s tactics through interviews with entertainment lawyers, directors and producers. The movie comes full circle with Spurlock doing whatever he can to publicize the film. It’s a light-hearted look into something that deserves much more exploration.

Thanks in part to the controversial material they cover documentary filmmakers often find themselves under heavy scrutiny. Political or financial motivations are often cited when a filmmaker is accused of taking a certain stance — most notably Michael Moore, who tackled the war in Iraq and U.S. gun control with “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine.” Spurlock is not exempt from this crowd. His 2004 “Super Size Me” was highly critical of the fast food industry and spawned a rebuttal documentary in Tom Naughton’s 2009 film “Fat Head.” Naughton actually lost weight on the same fast food diet Spurlock followed and offered evidence that contradicts current obesity claims by the health food industry. It’s all extremely enlightening when you use a film as a starting point for your own research. I wouldn’t suggest you take any documentary at face value, as the medium of film makes it easy to manipulate facts and how things are portrayed. Ironically, one of the sponsors of “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” is the fast food franchise Sheetz. The term sell out is thrown around quite a bit during the film, and Spurlock does just that considering his recent indictment of the fast food industry. Of course, Spurlock says he’s not selling out, he’s buying in. Clever guy.

Ultimately all that Spurlock answers with his film is the question of if product placement belongs in documentary films. Given the informative nature of the film style, the answer is a resounding no. The artistic limitations are briefly discussed by a few Hollywood directors in the film, and if product placement hinders artistic freedom, what would it do to the free flow of unbiased information? For that reason alone (not to mention this film was rather boring), let’s hope this is the last time we see heavy product placement in a documentary film.

Travis Yates

YATES: ‘The Change-Up’ offers a few laughs, but won’t become a classic

Ironically I’ll be flying solo for the next few weeks as my co-pilot in the “He Said/She Said” blog prepares for grad school. I say it’s ironic because this week’s film is “The Change-Up,” centered on two protagonists switching bodies.

The idea of swapping bodies with someone — even for a couple hours — is a mind bending, mystical premise with unlimited possibilities. Is it any wonder that Hollywood continues to go to the well with the concept? One could argue that the ’80s were the heyday of the body swap film. The frequency of titles has slowed since then, with only a few notables in the past decade in “17 Again” and “Freaky Friday.” It’s a new decade and the first big body swap film has arrived with “The Change-Up.” I have been very vocal in my opinion that body swapping actors Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds aren’t mismatched enough to pull it off. Could they prove me wrong? I swapped $8 for movie tickets at my local AMC Theatre to find out.

Longtime friends Dave (Jason Bateman, TV’s “Arrested Development”) and Mitch (Ryan Reynolds, “Green Lantern”) are leading empty lives. Dave is a workaholic married father of three caught in the rat race at his law firm and Mitch is a womanizing actor who occasionally finds work to continue his slacker lifestyle. Karma steps in when the two confess their mutual envy of their lives, and they awake the next morning in each other’s bodies. While waiting to switch back, Mitch must take on the role of responsible husband and father, while Dave gets a taste of the single life.

“The Change-Up” misses the mark for a number of reasons. You never really connect with the two characters swapping bodies. Mitch is incredibly unlikeable, and Dave’s charm wears off as the film progresses. Granted this type of film is a tad predictable, but there should still be some threads of intrigue. We never learn about Mitch’s past and why he acts so juvenile, and we learn a little about Dave’s back story but nothing involving his marriage, which is an integral part of the plot. The major elements needed in a classic body swap film are missing from the movie. As expected, I had a hard time accepting Bateman and Reynolds as the two body swappers as they are just too similar. Reynolds complaining about Bateman’s body while you can clearly make out Bateman’s abs is a tough sell. Someone along the lines of Steve Carell would have been a better casting choice for Bateman’s buttoned-up father role. As for the major dilemmas faced by Mitch and Dave — well, there really aren’t any. All that really happens is Dave learns to appreciate his family and Mitch learns to grow up. I learned that apparently one of the primates from “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” became a screenwriter and churned this baby out.

Plot-wise the film is flimsy, even for a predictable story. With Dave one week and one big deal away from making partner at his law firm, we get a montage of Mitch — a soft porn actor, mind you — working day and night on actual legal matters to help Dave’s firm hammer out a deal. Yet when it comes down to the big meeting to close the deal, Mitch uses an analogy of bedding a Catholic girl to convince his partners to negotiate for an additional 100 million dollars. So much for all that legal work by Mitch and the soul searching that went along with it. Dave, on the other hand, just kind of loafs around for the week enjoying time away from his wife and three kids.

Director David Dobkin (“Wedding Crashers”) uses a lot of raunch, and I think it was a mistake. Is there a better way to show us Mitch is irresponsible besides dropping the F-bomb every third word? At times the film feels like it wants to be a romantic comedy; others a Farrelly Brothers imitation. It all takes away from Bateman and Reynolds, who have good chemistry but don’t share the screen nearly enough. There are a few scenes that carry some emotion — mostly surrounding Dave’s wife Jamie (Leslie Mann, “17 Again” coincidentally). For the most part, though, the film comes off disjointed — more of a collection of comedic scenes rather than a cohesive story — which causes a disconnect with the characters. If I can’t buy into at least one of the protagonists switching bodies, I can’t buy in to the film. While a few laughs are had due to some situational comedy, “The Change-Up” won’t go down as one of the classics when it comes to the body swap film category.

Travis Yates

YATES: ‘Source Code’ begins promising and unravels quickly

Anna and I take a break from the summer blockbuster circuit to catch up on a new DVD release that is a big budget action flick in its own right in “Source Code.” Director Duncan Jones hit an absolute homerun in his 2009 directorial debut with the lesser-hyped “Moon.” How would he fare in his sophomore effort that featured a much larger budget? Bigger is not always better when it comes to Hollywood, and unfortunately that seems to be the case here.

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal, “Brokeback Mountain”) awakens on a train in a body belonging to someone else, and soon learns he is the centerpiece of a government mission to find the bomber of a commuter train in Chicago. A program called the source code puts Colter on the train eight minutes prior to the bomb detonation to uncover the bomber’s identity before the threat of a second attack is carried through. Colter must battle the clock, his government cohorts, and his own demons – all in short eight minute spans – in order to save the lives of millions.

There are a couple inherent flaws with a film such as “Source Code.” For one, when you repeat the same eight minutes over and over for the majority of the film, it is extremely hard to develop any depth amongst the characters. Colter is eventually revealed as a sympathetic protagonist, but he spends the first part of the film coming off as a bit of a jerk, harassing random passengers on the train. The rest of the film’s characters are all minor and we know absolutely nothing about them, even with a romantic subplot involving Colter and Christine (Michelle Monaghan, “Eagle Eye”), the girlfriend of the man whose body he’s been placed in.

The second inherent flaw that happens all too often in these psychological thrillers is when you have a situation in which the main character is confused and unaware of his or her surroundings, it is often presented in a way that is confusing to the audience as well. It’s a double-edged sword as you don’t want to reveal too much to the viewer too early, but you also have to make the plot somewhat cohesive. “Source Code” is wrought with unnecessary non-linear time jumps and plot holes that just don’t add up — their sole purpose seems to be to establish that poor Colter is very confused — yet it really only confuses the viewer.

“Source Code” begins promising — a bit of a Hitchcock “whodunit” on a train — but things start to unravel quickly. A mid-film plot twist is completely predictable — thus nullifying it as a true twist. Colter as a hero is paper thin at best. He spends most of the film worrying less about saving millions of lives and more about falling for his new girlfriend — in the span of eight minutes, mind you. The mission sends him back to the train countless times, but when Colter questions if the program could be used for a higher purpose and asks to go in again, his government handlers act like the source code program charges by the hour.

“Source Code” scratches the surface of some interesting themes such as free will, alternate and parallel realities, and soldiers used as disposable assets. Unfortunately, the film’s plot refuses to settle on one point and instead skims the surface of several. With a bit more focus, “Source Code” could have been a though-provoking film asking us to consider the growing role and future implications of technology in our lives. As it stands now, it’s more of a disjointed action flick that is somewhat entertaining yet mostly predictable.

Travis Yates

WIEGENSTEIN: ‘Source Code’ winds up mostly successful

“Source Code” was unfortunate enough to come out amongst a slew of “Inception”-like reality-bending action pieces in the early part of 2011. For a while, its trailer could be mashed up with “Limitless” and “The Adjustment Bureau” with almost no effort. The difference here is in the director — Duncan Jones, who recently gave Sam Rockwell the role of his life in “Moon.” And just as “Moon” wasn’t a paint-by-numbers sci-fi thriller, “Source Code” is a smarter and much more engaging film than its counterparts. Here’s a movie that uses its explosions not to bombard the audience with CGI, but to create a painterly still image that Jones is content to linger on for as long as he chooses.

When Coulter (Jake Gyllenhaal) awakes, he’s Sean. If that sounds confusing, don’t worry — the U.S. Army officer is just as discombobulated as the audience. Eight minutes after he finds himself inhabiting someone else’s body, the Chicago commuter train he’s riding is engulfed by a massive explosion, jolting him back to a form of limbo where an initially impassive military figure named Goodwin (Vera Farmiga). She explains the situation: Coulter is in the midst of a “time reassignment” program, and his sole purpose is to play an eight-minute role over and over until identifying which passenger rigged the bomb. Between this and “Transformers: Dark Of The Moon,” it looks like Chicago is finally getting its day in the sun as a center of destruction — congrats, I guess.

Checking in at a brisk 90 minutes, screenwriter Ben Ripley fills his big-screen debut with touches of past mystery storytellers — the premise is pure Agatha Christie, and the amount of focus given to tiny details owes more than a little to Alfred Hitchcock, a director who knew his way around a great train movie. Ripley asks the viewer to pay attention, a move that is sorely missing from numerous movies that happen to feature large fireballs.

Gyllenhaal (last seen in the semi-regrettable “Love And Other Drugs” and the fully unfortunate “Prince Of Persia” adaptation) is able to strike both the emotional and adventurous notes that his previous two projects swung at and missed. While he’s always been convincing in action roles (“Jarhead” most notably), the scenes where he quietly comes to terms with his halfway existence hit just as hard.

Given that Coulter is onscreen for 99 percent of the runtime, it’s difficult for any of the supporting cast to rise to his level. Michelle Monaghan’s love interest role is shallow, as the plot necessitates that it be — she’s only given eight minutes each time, after all, with half of her lines unchanging from one iteration to the next. As Coulter’s supervisory officer, Vera Farmiga’s job is to exude empathy, which she does just fine in the three moments she’s allowed any range at all. Other than that, Goodwin is to the audience just what she is to Coulter: a flat image on a screen.

Unfortunately, “Source Code” ultimately shoots itself in the foot due to a ten-minute plot addition that weakens what might have been a striking finale. However, Jones maintains his reputation as a director who’s gifted at tweaking existing genre tropes to smarten up his films. Thanks to this canny ability and the solid leading performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, “Source Code” winds up mostly successful, and a full lap ahead of its earlier competitors.

Anna Wiegenstein