Movie Box Review

THE FIRM isn't NBC's #1 priority for midseason--that would clearly be Smash.  (In other news, there's no truth to the rumor that NBC has decided to change its corporate name to "Smash--The Monday After the Super Bowl".)  But The Firm is the inheritor of the network's once-grand Thursday 10PM timeslot from the busted Prime Suspect, making it an important part of the line-up.  And NBC has taken enough hits by now--after years of battering and the network's gradual loss of its years'-long arrogance, it's not even fun to beat the place up anymore.  So it's not with any joy, but with simple obligation, that it's necessary to call The Firm out for the terrible, tedious show it is.

Technically, the series is an extension/sequel to John Grisham's 1991 best-selling novel--the book that made his career--as well as Sydney Pollack's gold-plated 1993 film version, which starred Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, Jeanne Triplehorn, Holly Hunter, Hal Holbrook, Ed Harris, David Straitharn, and half the character actors in Hollywood.  The show is set 10 years after the events of the book and movie, in which lead character Mitch McDeere (Cruise in 1993, Josh Lucas now), was pursued by a murderous, mobster-controlled Memphis law firm and had to go into witness protection.  McDeere and his family (Molly Parker in the Triplehorn part, Callum Keith Rennie taking over David Strathairn's role as Mitch's ex-con brother who's now private investigator for Mitch's law firm, and Juliette Lewis as the brother's girlfriend and Mitch's assistant, plus a new character of the McDeeres' 10-year old daughter) have come out of the program and relocated in Washington DC--although actually the series is shot on a low budget in Canada, so after a brief slam-bang (extra cost) opening sequence, there's no effort at all to even simulate a DC setting--where Mitch and company have started a struggling small firm.

The 2-hour pilot barely pays lip service to the carryover plot from the original novel, although there are hints that it'll become a more prominent thread at some point, since the Memphis mobster Mitch was responsible for overthrowing has a college-age son who will now presumably be on his tail.  Instead, the show is mostly a familiar procedural, with Mitch representing criminal defendants and an Erin Brockovich-type product liability claimant.  The wrinkle is that in order to get the resources to fight his cases, Mitch has to associate his scrappy firm with a larger and clearly evil one headed by Tricia Helfer (6 from Battlestar Galactica--at some point she and Rennie will have a scene together and we'll get a mini-BSG reunion), which of course has nefarious and ulterior motives related to a murder case Mitch is defending.  Eventually the evil firm will probably tie in with the Memphis boy gangster, although that hasn't happened yet.

The Firm may improve in its regular 1-hour format, but as a 2-hour pilot, it commits the cardinal sin of being flat-out boring.  It's also frequently ludicrous and often horribly written (by Lucas Reiter), with dialogue that sounds like the poor actors, who've all proved their very solid talents elsewhere, are reading out place-holder lines from a script outline.  Grisham's novels themselves can often be accused of some of the same flaws, but he's such a master of rip-roaring pace that his books work despite their deficiencies.  Slowing down his kind of mush, especially when the tone is utterly humorless as well, is nothing less than suicidal for TV drama, and the result is painful. 

If NBC is to regain anything like its old form, it needs to embrace some kind of identity, something other than the scatter-shot desperation that (except in its Thursday sit-coms) has been its mode for the past half-decade.  Smash, based on its pilot, could be a step in that right direction.  The Firm, though, offers no identity beyond bland mediocrity.

NEW YEAR'S EVE:  Not At Any Price - Calling it a "Sit-Com" Insults TV

NEW YEAR'S EVE is such a calculated piece of commercial manufacture that it deserves a Powerpoint presentation more than a review.  Although strictly speaking it isn't a sequel to Valentine's Day (and in fact a few of the same actors turn up in this one playing different roles), everything has been done to duplicate the style and execution of that $216M worldwide grosser, including hiring the same screenwriter (Katherine Fugate) and director (Garry Marshall).  But the joke's on them, because this one is even worse than Valentine's was.

The setting this time is NY rather than LA, but the format is the same:  intercut between a dozen mostly  romantic comedy storylines featuring recognizable actors, all taking place on the same holiday night.  (It's quite cost-efficient because since the episodes are mostly self-contained, the actors are each only needed for a week or so, making them available at a bargain price.)  That date, of course, is December 31, and the focal point of the various stories is Times Square, the dropping of the ball, and the splashy party that's supposed to be taking place afterward. 

To the extent there's any one central character, it's probably the woman trying to make sure the ball-drop goes smoothly (Hilary Swank, uncomfortable as usual in a standard Hollywood role).  The other stories radiate outward from that.  We get the rock star singing as part of the Times Square festivities (Jon Bon Jovi) and his ex who happens to be catering the party (Katherine Heigl); the back-up singer (Lea Michele) caught in an elevator--let me repeat that, caught in an elevator, because that plot hasn't been used since 1964--with a neighbor who hates New Year's (Ashton Kutcher); the teen (Abigail Breslin) who's desperate to get to Times Square for the sake of a boy and her mother (Sarah Jessica Parker) who's trying to find her; the guy who works for the company throwing the party (Josh Duhamel) and has to be at a certain corner after midnight to meet the mystery potential love of his life; the drone office worker with tickets to the party (Michelle Pfeiffer) who offers them to a delivery boy (Zac Efron) if he'll fulfill her fantasies--and no, not those kinds of fantasies; and so on.  In a nearby hospital we also get a dying old guy who wants to see one last New Year's (Robert DeNiro) with the help of his nurse (Halle Berry) because he seemingly (accent on "seemingly") doesn't have any family, along with a truly cringe-inducing race between Jessica Biel and Sarah Paulson to be the first to give birth in the new year and win a cash prize--this one should have had a separate soundtrack, although screams of horror might have been more appropriate than a laugh track.  There are a few supposed mysteries about how the stories will connect, all easily guessable, moronic or both, and since this is a Garry Marshall movie, Hector Elizondo shows up.  And Ryan Seacrest.

Marshall has never been a subtle craftsmen, but his best romances have some grace and charm.  New Year's Eve, though, is a slack assembly of flat scenes, given the illusion of pace by the fact that double-digit plotlines are jumbled into 2 hours.  Worse even than the holes where laughs should have been is the shameless sentimentality that's wielded throughout with utter cynicism.  Even though he's considered an "actors' director," Marshall doesn't do any of the stars favors:  the cinematography by Charles Minsky is so ugly that many of the performers look awful, and there's no chemistry between any of the couples (particularly Heigl and Bon Jovi, whose scenes together are like a traffic accident).  It's embarrassing to see Sofia Vergara, consistently hilarious on Modern Family, reduced to playing a sidekick with a funny accent, and simply painful to watch Robert DeNiro, once one of the great actors of his day, collecting yet another bored paycheck.  Also, someone should have told Heigl that the last thing her career needed was a role where she constantly screams and complains stridently.  The survivors include Breslin, who is able to appear half-way human, and Pfeiffer and Efron, who have a ludicrous storyline but manage to skate above it.

Complaining about a movie like New Year's Eve is like complaining that the sun will go down in the evening:  with its cast, and the fact that it owns the romantic comedy genre for the next few weeks (Young Adult is only barely a comedy and definitely not a romance), it's going to make money.  Which means in a year or two, it may well be our duty to sit through "Fourth of July" or "First Night of Passover."  Sadly, the calendar will run out of holidays before Warners runs out of ways to exploit them.

Even with weakened competition on the other 2 networks, NBC and FOX weren't able to capitalize.

NBC:  There were holiday specials on ABC and reruns on CBS, and none of it did much for the NBC line-up.  COMMUNITY could only benefit by one or two ticks, and PARKS & RECREATION tied its season low.  Even worse, THE OFFICE (which creatively has utterly lost its way this season) remained below a 3 rating.  WHITNEY tied its series low as it waits for its demotion move to Wednesdays, and although the dead PRIME SUSPECT climbed slightly, it was to an irrelevant 1.3.

FOX:  Winner of the night, but X FACTOR tied its season low with a 3.1.  BONES was up only slightly from recent weeks.

ABC:  A rerun of the 1970 holiday special SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN didn't perform as well as other holiday chestnuts have lately, although its 2.2 was certainly better than Charlie's Angels had been doing in the slot.  CMA COUNTRY CHRISTMAS, with a 2.1, was well below what the network usually does with its 9-11PM shows.

CBS:  BIG BANG THEORY was below its Thanksgiving night repeat, while the other reruns were in line with what they'd done on the holiday.  This was good enough for 2d place in every timeslot of the night, except 9PM where PERSON OF INTEREST lost steam.

CW:  Its Thursdays are now firmly in repeat mode until next month, and the lights barely stayed on with a 0.4 average.

Tonight NBC airs a 2-hour family TV-movie Game Of Your Life, which is an advertiser-funded show, while FOX has the inaugural PAC-12 Championship college football game, which unfortunately for all concerned has turned out to be a mismatch between Oregon, ranked #8 in the country, and 31-point underdog UCLA.

The recent movie I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT most resembles is The Nanny Diaries, which is odd because it was a flop for Harvey Weinstein and The Weinstein Company, and yet Weinstein's studio is behind this witless, dreary picture too.  Apparently he skipped the "fool me once, shame on you" class in mogul school.

Where Nanny made its privileged mother (Laura Linney) the villain so the nanny could be the heroine, in I Don't Know, mom is the lovable lead.  (The nanny, a relatively minor character, apparently surfs off the coast of Boston, for which she deserves at least a little credit.)  Sarah Jessica Parker plays Kate, who juggles her 2 kids, a husband (Greg Kinnear) with a shaky economic future, and a demanding hedge fund job, to the admiration of one and all.  The movie concerns a period where things get even more difficult for her, because hubby's career is finally taking off just when she's poised for her biggest career move yet, working alongside a charming financier (Pierce Brosnan) to create a giant new fund of her own.  Her husband gets cranky, her kids miss her, colleagues are after her job--can she really have it all?

Was there ever any doubt?  I Don't Know, which was based on a UK-set novel by Allison Pearson, has Aline Brosh McKenna as its screenwriter, and she specializes in (much better) female wish-fulfillment fantasies like The Devil Wears Prada and Morning Glory.  In the end Kate is so incredibly good at her job, and has made so much money for her firm, that her boss (Kelsey Grammer) allows her to be flexible with her hours, which makes husband and kids happy and still puts her at the top of the corporate heap.  So... a model of realism, in other words.

The reality of the movie wouldn't matter if it were at all funny, which it rarely is.  Parker is game, and adept at physical comedy, but there's more emotional depth in the pilot for NBC's Up All Night than there is here.  She's not helped by the fact that McKenna and director Doug McGrath have larded the movie with one gimmick after another:  we get Kate's narration (note to filmmakers:  if you have Sarah Jessica Parker narrate your movie, you're begging to be compared to Sex and the City), not to mention a variety of characters who talk directly to the camera in fake interviews, a la The Office and Modern Family, plus visual bits like Kate's middle-of-the-night lists scribbling on her ceiling as she lies awake.  

The rest of the first-rate cast makes little impression, with one exception:  Olivia Munn, who's charming enough as Kate's robotic number 2 that it might have been better to make the movie about her character.  Kinnear, Brosnan and Grammer fade into the celluloid (and this wasn't the movie for Seth Meyers to try and play a scripted character instead of just doing gags), the sight of Christina Hendricks as Kate's best friend mostly provokes the wish that either she get a leading role or Mad Men come back faster, and somehow the seemingly irrepressible Busy Phillips, unfailingly hilarious on Cougar Town, has been made thoroughly repressed and unfunny as a Mean Girl mom who delivers most of her lines on exercise equipment.

The truth is that we know exactly how movies like I Don't Know do it--lazy scripts, uninspired direction, predictable points of view and wasted casts.  It's an old recipe, and one best forgotten.