Movie Box Review

STAR WARS EPISODE I:  THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D, to give it its fully identifying title, has the distinction of being the most successful movie ever made that is generally agreed to be terrible.  Over $900M in tickets have been sold for Phantom Menace since its opening in 1999 (that number will go over $1B when the current re-release is taken into account), which doesn't even begin to include revenues from homevideo, merchandising, television licenses, etc.--and aside from admiration for the film's special effects, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything good that's been said about it.

The dreadfulness of Phantom Menace didn't stop anyone from going.  It was a colossal pop culture event when it opened, bigger even than Harry Potter or Twilight or Lord of the Rings chapters, because it was the first new entry in 16 years in what was, title for title, the most successful motion picture franchise in history.  One simply couldn't fail to see it.  I attended a 3:30AM show--that is not a typo--at Grauman's Chinese on opening day, and we got in the ticketholders' line almost 3 hours early just to get good seats (there were hundreds of people already there ahead of us).  When the movie ended and we exited, rosy-fingered dawn was just beginning to touch the sky above Hollywood Boulevard, and the only real question was how we'd managed to stay awake.   

And now it's back.  George Lucas, the Scrooge McDuck of American cinema, fondled and squeezed his stupendously valuable intellectual property until he realized there was more revenue to be shaken out of the pockets of moviegoers, and Phantom Menace is just the first of what will be re-releases of all 6 Star Wars films in 3D.  (The Phantom Menace 3D is reasonably high-quality, as transfers go, but since the movie was never conceived for the technology when it was made, it has none of the imagination or visual excitement of recent 3D movies like Avatar, The Adventures of Tintin or Hugo.  Plus the glasses inevitably make the images darker and more grayish, resulting in a visual experience that's overall less enjoyable than the original version.)

This compels us, 13 years after the fact, to take another look at The Phantom Menace and how it stands up as a movie.  

It's instructive to glance at George Lucas' filmography.  He is, depending on how one cuts the numbers, one of the most--if not the single most--successful men ever to work in motion pictures.  But it's impossible to think of another filmmaker with a 40+ year-long career whose work is limited by such a narrow set of boundaries.  In the past 35 years, Lucas' only films as a director are the Star Wars features.  And as a producer, only twice in the past 2 decades has he stepped away from the Star Wars or Indiana Jones franchises, with the forgettable Radioland Murders in 1994 and this year's unimpressive Red Tails.  (Lucas periodically claims that he's going to devote the rest of his career to low-budget "indie" projects, but he doesn't have a lot of credibility on the point.)  Despite having the financial resources and clout to create literally anything he might have wanted to on film, Lucas has chosen to do... more of the same.  It's actually sad, in a way.  Lucas, unlike fantasy filmmakers such as Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Cuaron or Sam Raimi, to name just a few, made his life's work the richest McDonalds ever.

Also sad are Lucas' shortcomings as a director and writer, and nowhere is that clearer than in Phantom Menace, which was his first piece of direction since the original Star Wars 22 years earlier.  For those who've lived in a cave since 1999,  Phantom Menace begins the Star Wars saga by introducing the 8-year old Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), who in the course of the movie meets Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), R2-D2, C-3PO, Yoda and Pademe (Natalie Portman) who will become the love of his life and the mother of Luke and Leia.  While one can see in the later movies the seeds Lucas was planting in the saga with this view of Anakin as a child, he would have been better off sticking with adults.

The Phantom Menace script, for which Lucas takes sole credit, is a tedious and often all-but-incomprehensible hash of taxation issues, blockades and mysticism, conveyed with dialogue that was either dreadfully expositional, childish (as opposed to believably child-like) or flat-out embarrassing (the latter would include every word out of the mouth of Jar-Jar Binks).  Sadly, although Lucas has been known to tinker with his movies prior to re-release, he hasn't seen fit to remove the messianic undertones from Phantom Menace:  hints of Anakin Skywalker's possible virgin birth and discussion of his genetic superiority.  (These plot points were toned down considerably in the later prequel chapters.)  The somewhat queasy pre-romance between Padme and the 8-year old Anakin also remains.  (This from the filmmaker who also gave us what turned out to be a semi-incestuous brother-sister undercurrent in the initial movies.)  

It can't be a coincidence that Portman, Liam Neeson (as Obi-Wan's mentor), Ewan McGregor and Samuel L. Jackson (as a senior Jedi), all of whom have more than proven their great talent elsewhere, give utterly wooden performances under Lucas' direction.  (Let's speak only in passing of Jake Lloyd, who never had a career post-Phantom Menace, and thus can only be remembered for one of the worst child performances ever put on film.) It's also not a coincidence that the only sequence in the movie that really worked in 1999 and still does now is the pod race, because it involves no dialogue and almost no acting.

What Phantom Menace did have in 1999 was a then-revolutionary expansion of the role of digital special effects.  Lucas had re-invented special effects with the first Star Wars, and he all but did it again here, with settings, sets, spacecraft and entire characters like the loathed Jar-Jar residing in computers.  It was all quite extraordinary, an entirely new palette for filmmakers to use in creating cinematic worlds, and whatever else one can say about Lucas, he deserves full credit for his visionary development of the technology.  Unfortunately, in 2012 these effects have come a long way from their 1999 standard, and these days--through no fault of their own--many of the Phantom Menace effects look rudimentary and old-fashioned.

There's no question that Phantom Menace will continue to make money on this go-round, and so will the subsequent Star Wars re-releases.  Lucas has the ultimate good thing, and the movies, along with the innumerable spin-offs, prequels, games, products and additional ancillaries, will sell forever.  In the case of Phantom Menace, however, that didn't--and doesn't--make it any good.

Put it this way:  the new superhero epic THOR cost something like $150M to produce, required the diligent services of hundreds of professionals over a period of 2 years, is being presented with all the trappings of IMAX, 3D and super-stereo, and yet there's not a moment in it as exciting--let alone as much fun--as last night's paintball episode of "Community."   Now "Community"s paintball episodes are completely awesome, so that's a fairly high standard... but still. 

Thor isn't the worst superhero picture to come our way (remember the Fantastic Four movies?  the Joel Schumacher Batmans?  Superman:  The Quest for Peace?), but it may be the most underwhelming.  Marvel presumably hired Kenneth Branagh to direct because of his association with Shakespearean drama (it certainly wasn't because of his action movie chops), and under his helm the picture presents itself with extreme seriousness--the hero's backstory is interweaved with Norse mythology, which here takes place in an Asgard located in outer space, and Thor himself, not a mere immigrant from his planet a la Superman, is essentially a god.  The Asgard scenes take place in massive, fake-looking sets that look like they were re-lit from Cecil B DeMille's Egyptian palaces in The Ten Commandments, with equally phony CG landscapes that seem modeled after the matte paintings in David Lynch's version of Dune.  In case that wasn't enough, no less than Anthony Hopkins was brought in to roar his way through the role of the one-eyed King Odin, father of Thor (if I was hearing correctly, he's called "Allfather," although it's not clear if that's his convenient last name or a salute to his parenting skills).  

As written by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne (from a story by J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich), the Asgard section of the tale gives Thor (Chris Hemsworth) an evil brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston)--we know Loki is evil because he's made up to look like Richard E. Grant (unlike Thor's robustly Aryan good looks) and he turns out to be adopted--who plots with the nearby ice people (kinged by Colm Feore behind a lot of digital effects) to take advantage of Thor's impulsive arrogance and depose Odin, banish Thor to Earth and take over the throne.  But not to worry, Thor still has 4 warrior buddies on Asgard--a fat one, a hot babe, an inexplicably Asian one, and one who looks oddly like the young Kenneth Branagh--to protect his interests.  Meanwhile, back in banishment (specifically New Mexico), Thor crashes to Earth right in the path of spunky, lovely young scientist Jane (Natalie Portman, this having been shot before she knew Black Swan was about to change her career), her kooky sidekick Darcy (the criminally underused Kat Dennings, from Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist) and mentor Erik (Stellan Skarsgard, Hollywood's go-to professor).  This will come as a shock, but spunky scientist Jane finds herself falling for the hunky god-in-exile, while he learns a handy lesson about appreciating humanity and accepting self-sacrifice, which is useful because--did I mention?--only when Thor shows he is worthy can he regain possession of his magic hammer Mjolnir, which apparently has been watching "Camelot" on Starz and is stuck immovable in a rock until such time as a worthy god can retrieve it.  And since this is a Marvel movie and everything has to lead to their megafranchise Avengers picture next year, Clark Gregg from Iron Man (and eventually Samuel L Jackson) are lurking around, although how Thor will connect with SHIELD is left unclear in this installment.

And you know what?  All of that, as dumb and dense as it is, would be fine if the movie were just enjoyable (try talking yourself through the storyline of Batman Begins one day).  Branagh does some things right--he gets humor from Hemsworth, Portman and Dennings in the fish-out-of-water New Mexico scenes, and Hiddleston is a fine villain once you realize he's going to act like the "trusted" family friend in 1940s movies who turns out to be a Nazi spy.  There's also one genuinely cool CG moment when a giant robot Loki's sent to Earth manages to reverse itself back-to-front without turning around.  But Branagh doesn't know how to edit the action sequences--he completely muffs the big moment when Thor regains his powers--and the script, which probably went through many more writers than those credited, dribbles off at the end, so the final confrontation between Thor and Loki has so little impact you expect the real climax to follow.  (The 3D, as increasingly expected, is virtually without impact.)  Even the coda scene (you have to sit through all 10 minutes of credits to get there, unlike Fast Five, which mercifully lets the audience go after the first couple of minutes) delivers less of a set-up for the next chapter than you'd hope.

Thor's florid tone is completely different from the more sophisticated, character-based wit of the Iron Man series (not to mention those of the two failed Hulk movies), which makes one wonder just how they're planning to bind them all together for The Avengers.  But that's next summer's problem.  The good thing about summer blockbusters is that they're like buses--if the first one that stops doesn't look like a comfortable ride, just wait and there'll be another.  The buses have just started to run for Summer 2011, so let's hope the vehicles to come have better engines.

(THOR - Paramount/Marvel - 117 minutes - PG 13 - Director:  Kenneth Branagh - Script: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Don Payne (story by J. Michael Straczynski, Mark Protosevich) - Cast:  Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Clark Gregg, Kat Dennings, Idris Elba, Colm Feore, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Josh Dallas, Jaimie Alexander - Wide Release)

Let's give a little love to the devious people at Universal who cut the trailers.  The masterminds behind the red-band for YOUR HIGHNESS managed to find, in its 102 dull minutes, roughly 3 and a half that, when cut together with fiendish skill, suggested the movie had actual laughs.  Bow to their genius!  (Is it too late to take back everything bad I said about Arthur?)

It's not as though anyone expected high art from Your Highness, or even something particularly original.  Anachronistic genre humor isn't anything new:  Monty Python, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks are among those who've shown how brilliant it can be.  As long as it's--what's the word?--funny. The script is by Danny McBride (who also stars) and Ben Best, and it's directed by David Gordon Green, who after a first career making esoteric art films like George Washington and Snow Angels, segued strongly to comedy with Pineapple Express, as well as episodes of the McBride/Best HBO series "Eastbound and Down"--these guys aren't amateurs.  But this time they don't get anything right, from attitude to dialogue. I'd compare it to last year's Land of the Lost, but--and this pains me to say--Land was better.

The plot, if anyone cares, is serviceable enough.  A kingdom has 2 princes:  Fabious (James Franco), who as his name implies is perfectly heroic, and Thaddeous (McBride), who is a Danny McBride character.  Fabious' virgin princess fiance (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux), with the aim of raping her during a magical eclipse so he can create a dragon, and the brothers go after them, aided along the way by a warrior on her own quest (Natalie Portman).  A decent enough framework to hang some jokes, you'd think. 

Except they left out the jokes.  Instead, characters--particularly McBride--say 4-letter words as though it's a novelty, which maybe it would be if the goal was to make 11-year olds snicker.  It's not even a stoner comedy, because there are maybe half a dozen weed jokes in the whole picture.   The movie just sits there and asks to be laughed at, like the spoiled nephew at a family party who insists that he's funny.

 

Truly it's a puzzle, because everyone here has been part of good comedy in the past.  Admittedly, McBride isn't much interested in range (except for his nicely restrained bit in Up In the Air):  the role of Thaddeous, obliviously loud-mouthed and unaware how pathetic he is, is a cousin to McBride's Kenny Powers on "Eastbound" (not to mention his character in Foot Fist Way, also written with Best) and while that show's an acquired taste, McBride knows exactly how to work the gears on Kenny so that he's a funny horror.  Here, of all things, he's just bland.  Franco, who was thoroughly amusing as the amiable dealer in Pineapple Express, never seems to get a handle on Fabious, who's neither smug nor exaggeratedly heroic--it's like somebody had to remind Franco every morning that he was in the movie.  Portman (who doesn't enter the movie till the 2d half) brings some much-needed style and class to her part, but the script almost never lets her be funny--and Deschanel gets to do even less (these guys run a strictly boys' club).  The picture lurches from one set-piece to the next and ties up the loose ends of its story as though that's what the audience cares about; it doesn't begin to have the improvisational inspiration of Pineapple or the other comedies the group has done. 

According to what they've said in interviews, McBride and Best spent years writing and rewriting the script of Your Highness until they were in a position to get it made, and maybe that was the problem--by the time it was a go, all the freshness had drained out of it.  For audiences, though, what remains is a stolid bore; at least at Medieval Times there's some jousting.

(YOUR HIGHNESS - Universal - 102 minutes - R - Director:  David Gordon Green - Script:  Danny McBride, Ben Best - Cast:  McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, Damien Lewis, Toby Jones - Wide Release)