Movie Box Review

REAL STEEL wants to be loved so much, it practically walks the audience members to their cars and offers to give them all a lift home.  And yet, the packed house I saw it with could only offer the movie a smattering of applause at the end, and no cheers at all for its supposedly titanic robot-vs-robot bouts.  That's the price the picture bears for being assembled out of a crate of movie spare parts.

In John Gatins's script (from an earlier incarnation credited to Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven, and based originally on a Richard Matheson short story), the time is very slightly in the future, which looks exactly like the present except that boxers have been replaced by giant mechanical robots who can fight endlessly and be repaired (usually) when their Rock-em-Sock-em pieces are knocked off.  The robots are "trained" by humans, one of whom is Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman).  Charlie is a figure out of a thousand movies:  an ex-boxer himself, he owes money everywhere, is completely irresponsible, especially to the sweet-yet-tough gym owner (Evangline Lilly) who loves him but knows she can't count on him, and still nourishes dreams of the big time.

Years earlier, Charlie had abandoned his wife and young son for his life on the road, and as Real Steel begins, he finds out that his ex-wife has died, and if he'll just sign the proper papers, his very rich ex-sister-in-law (Hope Davis, in a truly thankless role) and her tycoon hubby (James Rebhorn) will adopt the boy.  Charlie is happy enough to go along, in exchange for enough cash to buy a new robot.  BUT, because the wealthy brother-in-law wants an untroubled vacation in Tuscany, first Charlie will have to take in young Max (Dakota Goyo) for the summer.  Naturally, the two of them are unwilling companions at first; naturally, when Charlie's expensive new robot is blown up due to Charlie's greed, it's Max who finds Atom, a rusting wreck of a 'bot who can take a punch but has no skills; naturally, a reluctant Charlie is talked into training Atom; naturally, Atom begins to win.  And did I mention that early on, we're told that the number one unbeaten robot boxer in the world is Zeus, who's owned by a refugee from an episode of Nikita (Olga Fonda, I guess one of the lesser known Fondas) and trained by the sinister Tak Mashido (Karl Yune)?

All the cliches that were assembled to make Real Steel wouldn't be such a problem if the movie at least had some fun with them, but the picture is painfully earnest and undeveloped (Zeus's evil team doesn't even get to do anything dastardly).  The gradually thawing relationship between Charlie and Max follows its predetermined path (omigosh, what will happen when Max finds out Charlie took money in exchange for giving up custody?), as Charlie gains principles and becomes a better human being.  Even though the movie's entire reason for existing is that its fighters are made of metal instead of flesh, the fights themselves follow exactly the rules that go back (at least) to Sylvester Stallone 35 years ago:  our hero must take an unbelievable amount of punishment for round after round ("No one can survive this!"), until finally the feared opponent tires him/itself out, and that's when the hero has one shot, just one shot, to score a stunning knockout.  

Gatins' s script is completely uninspired, and the best that can be said about Shawn Levy's direction is that it isn't as egregious as the work he's done on sappy comedies like Cheaper By the Dozen and the Steve Martin Pink Panther remake.  His Night at the Museum pictures weren't classics, but at least they made some clever use of their gimmicks; this one is just loud, and it wears its sentimentality too much on its sleeve.  (The movie was produced by DreamWorks, and like a lot of movies and TV shows produced but not directed by Steven Spielberg, it often feels like a wannabe Spielberg picture.)

There are a lot of capable actors in this thing, none of them at their best.  Jackman just coasts on his star power, and Goyo's performance screams "child actor."  The robots do better, and there's some very effective melding of actual animatronic machinery with CG animation.  The picture has an A-list cinematographer in Mauro Fiore of Avatar, and Danny Elfman supplied the rousing score, so it all looks and sounds impeccable; however none of that can make it any less empty.

Real Steel is inoffensive, and it'll please some people and make some money (although it may well need foreign revenues to pay for its enormous cost).  It's an example, though, of that increasing Hollywood phenomenon:  an imaginative idea filmed with no imagination at all.

The new remake of Tom Holland's 1985 FRIGHT NIGHT has a great set of credentials.  Craig Gillespie, the director, was behind the well-regarded indie Lars and the Real Girl, and has since been house director of United States of Tara for Showtime.  The cast includes Anton Yelchin, about to make a big splash in the wonderful Sundance prize-winner Like Crazy, along with Colin Farrell, the very talented young British actress Imogen Poots, David Tennant, and Gillespie's Tara star Toni Collette.  And most notably, the new script is by Marti Noxon, who cut her--sorry--teeth on the classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer and has since worked on shows like Angel, Mad Men and Grey's Anatomy.

And with all that, mostly it's just another crappy horror movie with a supposed comic edge. Holland's picture (which grossed only $25M in 1985, so this is hardly a grab for the riches of a lucrative franchise) was an arch, even campy black comedy in which Charley (William Ragsdale), obsessed with horror movies and lore, came to realize that his new next door neighbor Jerry (Chris Sarandon) was actually a vampire, and enlisted the services of Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell), host of the local low-rent, late-night horror TV show, to bring him down.  

That basic outline is still the plot of the remake, but there are quite a few shifts in detail and emphasis.  Most of the changes seem to stem from the idea of resetting the tale from the midwest to Las Vegas, which was a promising concept--a city that truly never sleeps--but because (for budget reasons, no doubt) the movie was actually shot in New Mexico, Vegas as a physical location plays virtually no part in the picture.  This time, Jerry (Farrell) isn't an old-world Dracula type like Sarandon; he's a contemporary douchebag who supposedly works construction on the strip, wearing tight t-shirts--Charley's mom (Collette) and even his girlfriend (Poots) can't help themselves from leering at him.  Peter Vincent (Tennant) is now the star of a campy, but higher-scale, horror-themed stage show at the Hard Rock Hotel.   Meanwhile, Charley (Yelchin) is now more of a post-nerd guy who, for reasons even the movie doesn't understand, has a hot, compassionate girlfriend, and he spends the first part of the movie not believing the vampire story at all, despite the efforts of his former pal Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to convince him.

You can see how all of this may have pitched well:  in these Jersey Shore days, the idea of a douchebag vampire could have been fun, and Charley, dumping his own friend for the sake of popularity and hovering on the edge of becoming a douche himself, could have been a complex match for Jerry.  In the movie, though, with its imperatives of getting to the 3D bloodshed, very little of this is developed.  Yelchin basically does his best Shia LaBeouf as Charley, and the movie turns into Suburbia with fangs. Farrell has some really good moments as Jerry--he's scary and funny as he preens in front of Collette and Poots, and when he hovers just outside Jerry's doorway, frustrated not to be invited in--but the script betrays him by turning Jerry into a crazy killing machine much too early on.  Tennant livens things up as Peter Vincent (he's basically doing Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek), although even he can't do much with an extraordinarily clumsy chunk of exposition late in the story that's supposed to explain why he's helping Charley.  Poots, who's given very interesting performances in indie movies like Cracks and Solitary Man, is here just "the girl."  And although Collette grounds her mom character nicely, it's hard to see what she's doing in the movie, other than as a favor to Gillepsie.  

The movie is badly constructed even as a genre piece.  Apart from the sloppy vampire mythology, which introduces a late gadget into the story just to ensure a happy ending, all the set-piece action sequences go on forever, and at 106 minutes, the picture feels 15 minutes too long.  Gillespie has no particular feel for atmosphere or pace beyond the obvious quiet-quiet-quiet-BANG of horror cliches, and the picture is never at all scary.  There's nothing notable about the picture technically, either:  vampire movies aren't really ideal for 3D, since by definition, they tend to take place in the dark and the dim 3D image makes things even murkier; it's hard to tell whether Javier Aguirresarobe's photography ever had any distinction. 

In an era where we're inundated with vampire stories, a new entry in the genre really has to take some chances to make a mark.  (And if it does, as with last year's Let Me In, the audience may reject it.)  Fright Night sounded like it might be one of those, but it's just another late-summer grab for ticket sales, part of the August/September low-budget horror fest.  Next week's entry:  Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  

DreamWorks/Disney's decision to open the lengthy, serious THE HELP on a Wednesday in mid-August looked like a questionable strategy, but so far it's paying off:  Deadline reports that its opening day gross is headed for $5.5M, very solid for a mid-week debut.  By way of comparison, Eat Pray Love, also based on a bestseller targeted to female audiences, but with the advantage of a Friday opening (not to mention Julia Roberts) opened with $8.5M, on its way to a $23M weekend.  The Help will hoping that good word of mouth will propel it to around $20-25M by Sunday, and then a leggy run through August.  With a spartan production budget of $25M, the picture is far cheaper than Eat Pray Love or Julie & Julia, another August success, and those two got to $80M and $94M, respectively.  While Help figures to be a tough sell overseas, it may not need much of an international contribution to reach profit.  

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY for all the latest boxoffice numbers and analysis, starting tomorrow with Mitch Metcalf's weekend predictions.

It's admirable, in a way, that for much of its length, COWBOYS AND ALIENS is willing to be more of a western than a scifi extravaganza, even though scifi is a safer commercial bet.  The problem is that as westerns go, it's not all that impressive--and that goes for its otherworldly dimensions too.

The extended development process for Cowboys and Aliens has been much reported.  It was first acquired for the screen 14 years ago, based on a title and pitch for a graphic novel that hadn't even been written yet.  Through the years, the project went through prospective studios, directors, stars and many, many writers.  The final film credits include half a dozen of the latter (Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostley for the script, and the last 2 of those plus original scribe Steve Oederkerk for the story), which in Hollywood means at least twice that many had their hands in it.  Over the years its tone no doubt changed many times, as did the balance between its twin genres.  The ultimate choice for director was Jon Favreau, and the film has a cast of producers to give any studio accountant pause:  Steven Spielberg, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Favreau and several of the writers are among those with fingers in the profit pie.  

Despite all those cooks in the kitchen, the film manages to feel all of a piece, but it's a curious piece.  The main creative decision seems to have been to play against the jokey title that was the reason the project was bought in the first place--the movie has precious little humor, and never plays western conventions against the aliens-from-outer-space genre in any kind of entertaining, let alone provocative or ingenious, way.  Instead, it trots out as many western cliches as a TCM theme night:  we have a Man With No Name (Daniel Craig, eventually revealed to be Jake Lonergan) who rides into a town dominated by all-powerful cattle baron Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) and his sadistic drunken son Percy (Paul Dano).  Dolarhyde's chief aide is a Native American (Adam Beach) who's a much better man than Percy, but Dolarhyde won't recognize that.  In town, Percy makes trouble for the sheriff (Keith Carradine) and the tenderfoot saloon owner called Doc because he wears glasses (Sam Rockwell); Doc also has a Latina wife (Ana de la Reguera).  There's also a tough but kind preacher (Clancy Brown) and a boy determined to fight with the men (Noah Ringer).  Finally, the town has a gorgeous woman of mystery named Ella (Olivia Wilde).  

The story doesn't do anything with those cliches other than plopping spaceships down beside them.  It begins when Jake finds himself jerked awake in an empty expanse of wilderness; he has almost complete amnesia, and a curious metal bracelet around one arm.  As soon as he reaches town, of course, he antagonizes Percy, which brings Dolarhyde into his life--which is when the alien spaceships attack, taking much of the cast captive for nefarious purposes, and Jake discovers that the bracelet is actually a weapon that can shoot down the ships.  He, Dolarhyde, and most of the surviving town (and eventually some Apaches and outlaws) have to join forces to track down the prisoners and stop the aliens.

This form of Cowboys and Aliens must have satisfied the battalions of studio executives and producers who had to sign off on it, and why not--it's entirely predictable, made up of pieces of better movies.  Memorable westerns, though, stay in our minds not so much because of their shootouts as the characters and tone, and that's the case whether the films are John Ford classics, dark, latter-day Clint Eastwood dramas or last year's Coen Brothers' snappy remake of True Grit.  Even a Sergio Leone epic like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with all its striking imagery, is built in great part around the iconic performances of Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef.

There's nothing comparable in Cowboys and Aliens.  Craig is a perfectly functional hero, but the fact that he's amnesic forces him to be fairly blank for most of the story.  Ford, of course, has an iconic screen presence of his own, and he manages a few pungent scenes, but there's little to his character, in large part because Favreau and the writers don't have the nerve to keep Dolarhyde a bad guy for very long.  Olivia Wilde's performance makes sense once her Ella is fully explained, but that doesn't make the character more satisfying.  The rest of the strong supporting cast mostly fades into the background--even Sam Rockwell, for whom the word "irrepressible" is usually apt.  

This was a film that badly needed a visual stylist as director, and although Favreau has genuine strengths as a filmmaker, that's not one of them.  The Iron Man movies have splashy special effects, but they work because of the sharp, witty dialogue and the comic license Favreau gives Robert Downey Jr and the rest of the cast.  None of that comes into play here, and Favreau's western landscapes and alien action sequences all look pretty dull, even with the great Matthew Libatique (Black Swan and Inside Man, among others) behind the camera.  Harry Gregson-Williams' score is routine, and the CG aliens and spaceships break no new ground.

Cowboys and Aliens earns some goodwill, because it does mark a change from the superheroes and genetically gifted teens who inhabit our fantasy films these days.  Unfortunately, while it puts on a moderately entertaining show, its only clear accomplishment is wasting a very cool title.