Movie Box Review

We live in a pop culture where the recent Emmy Award nominees are so clearly superior to the films up for this past year's Oscar that it's not even worth arguing about. (Mad Men vs The Artist?  Game of Thrones vs The Help?  Modern Family vs War Horse?  Seriously?)  So the days when one could look down at a movie comedy by calling it "sitcom" are pretty much done--comparing a movie to Parks & Recreation, Louie or New Girl is, if anything, high praise.

Calling Jennifer Westfeldt's FRIENDS WITH KIDS akin to a sitcom, then, is more descriptive than critical.  The romantic-comedy-drama involves the inter-group relationships of 6 old friends who live in and around a major city (New York in this case), much as Happy Endings and How I Met Your Mother do.  The group includes 2 married couples:  Leslie and Alex (Maya Rudolph and Chris O'Dowd), and Ben and Missy (Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig).  The story centers, though, on the 2 who are single:  best buddies Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott), who have been inseparable since college, but never romantically involved.  (They love each other unreservedly, but aren't physically attracted.) 

The movie's title has double meanings, and the first is that as the story begins, Julie and Jason are feeling like the odd friends out, since both married couples are raising babies and/or toddlers, changing the dynamics of their marriages and the group in general.  Both Julie and Jason want children, but as they watch what parenthood is doing to their friends, and with each of them so far unable to find "the one" with whom they want to have it all, they eventually come to the title's second meaning:  they decide to have a baby together, just as friends (outside dating encouraged), with responsibility and custody split down the middle and no change, they vow, in their own relationship.

You don't need to have watched Ross and Rachel for all the years of Friends to figure out very quickly where all this is going to end up.  Nature may abhor a vacuum, but that's nothing compared to the way romantic-comedy feels about 2 good-looking unattached pals who've considered romances with everyone on earth except each other.  The issue with a movie like Friends With Kids is just how enjoyable and insightful the journey to that destination is.

This is where Westfeldt, making her directing debut (she previously wrote Kissing Jessica Stein and Ira & Abby) acquits herself well.  Her script may be glib and, in the end, predictable, but it's also marked by some sharp, bawdy humor, and later in the proceedings by more than a little surprisingly searing drama.  (A New Year's Eve gathering for the group prompts a particularly scorching monologue from Hamm, who in his day job is not unacquainted with characters who bare dark undersides.)

It's tempting but misleading to label Friends With Kids as trendily influenced by Bridesmaids, featuring as it does the same kind of 4-letter humor--much of it from the women characters--and half the same cast, but as it happens, Friends debuted at Toronto last fall, shortly after Bridesmaids hit theatres.  The similarities are superficial anyway, since Friends mostly eschews wacky slapstick for more of a concentration on relationships.  But the overlap in casts is all to the good, because these actors continue to be great together.  As for the newcomers:  Scott, who has been very dark indeed in indie movies like The Vicious Kind, brings a little of that edge to a less idealized romantic role than the one he plays in his own day job on Parks & Recreation.  Westfeldt makes a marvelous, funny pair with him, although one wishes that as a writer she'd resisted the cliche of having Julie be the sensitive one who's the first to become overwhelmed with true emotion.  In the smaller roles of Julie and Jason's significant romantic interests (think of them as the guest stars brought in for sweeps), Edward Burns effectively turns on the charm, and the much-maligned Megan Fox deserves some credit for completely holding her own with this high-powered ensemble.  

Friends With Kids isn't any kind of cinematic event--in terms of sheer quality, it's not better than 2 hours of TV's best comedies--but it provides the kind of self-contained 2-hour satisfaction that isn't TV's stock in trade (along with the kind of sex jokes confined to HBO and Showtime).  If you've been sitting on your couch long enough and want a smart, sophisticated and sometimes moving comedy on a bigger screen, this is the right movie to see.

This week UP ALL NIGHT was promoted to NBC's version of the big leagues, where many felt it belonged from the start.  It's switched places with Whitney and been given the benefit of The Office, NBC's one genuine lead-in, for the Thursday 9:30PM slot.   Let's take a look at whether it merits the step up.

WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  Reagan (Christina Applegate) and Chris (Will Arnett) somewhat neurotically raise Amy, their first baby, while Reagan juggles her job producing her best friend Ava (Maya Rudolph)'s afternoon talk show and Chris, a lawyer, serves as stay-at-home dad.

WHERE WE ARE:  Whether deliberately or not, Up All Night's first episode in its new time slot was either uncharacteristic or a sign of how the show is planning to change.  The slightly-outdated New Year's Eve episode barely mentioned Amy, and was almost wholly about the grown-ups.  For a show that's been so closely tied to stories about child-rearing, this felt fairly revolutionary. 

The other noticeable difference between the show now and the way it began is the continuing moderation of Ava as a character.  Originally, Rudolph was cartoonishly broad as what everyone stoutly denied was a caricature of Oprah Winfrey (who Rudolph used to play on SNL), and it caused Up All Night's tone to feel distinctly schizophrenic, since the at-home scenes with Applegate and Arnett were mostly built around more low-key observational humor.  While Ava is still by far the show's brassiest character, the writers have made an effort to draw her in more human dimensions, especially since introducing Jason Lee as Kevin, an ordinary-guy steady boyfriend for her.

This has made the series easier to take, and a better fit with The Office.  The only downside is that the more even tone is leading to some awfully banal storylines, as in tonight's episode where the New Year's Eve festivities devolved into Reagan and Chris railing at each other for the little ways they annoy each other (Chris thinks his Borat voice is funnier than it is, Reagan becomes a cutthroat competitor at Trivial Pursuits), while Kevin felt resentful that Ava doesn't go out with him in public because she's ashamed of him.  These are the kinds of storylines that Modern Family finds ways to do much more deftly (coincidentally, ABC's hit had its own storyline this week about the competitiveness between Claire and her dad), partly because every character on that show is so well defined.  Despite the great charm and skill of Applegate and Arnett, Reagan and Chris are still fairly thin as characters, and turning down the volume makes that more evident.  (The show could also use some more supporting characters beyond Jennifer Hall's production assistant, although Hall got the welcome chance to show some new sides to her character in this episode.)

Up All Night is a superior half-hour (god knows it's superior to Whitney), well written and performed.  Given NBC's current state of being, it'll be a longterm player for the network, unless it somehow ruins the Office hour entirely.  The question it'll face as it moves forward is just how much substance the series has when it's not being that show about yuppies raising a baby.

America knows what it wants this holiday season:  a flying middle-aged reindeer and lots of lingerie models!

CBS:  RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER first aired (on NBC) in 1964, and 47 years later, it's still going strong.  Its 4 rating easily won the 8PM time period.  (Here's a fun fact about Rudolph, courtesy of Wikipedia:  the original 1964 version of the show didn't resolve the fate of the Island of Misfit Toys, which caused such a viewer ruckus that the rescue of the Misfits was added the following year.)  An NCIS repeat was a solid 2d at 9PM, and then the VICTORIA'S SECRET FASHION SHOW beat the other networks senseless with a spectacular 4.6 (so much for no one watching network TV at 10PM anymore), more than doubling its closest competition.  Safe to say the Secret ladies will be back in primetime sooner rather than later.

FOX:  All things considered, not a bad night.  Even with the strong family competition from Rudolph, GLEE managed its highest post-baseball number with a 3.2.  NEW GIRL is still substantially below where it had been in early October, but at 3.6 it was a steady winner of its half-hour, and RAISING HOPE was up from the last couple of weeks.

NBC:  Both BIGGEST LOSER and PARENTHOOD tied season highs, and while those are still low numbers (2.4 and 2.2, respectively), when you're NBC, you don't poke at good news.

ABC:  The 8PM hour was badly dented by Rudolph on CBS, with both LAST MAN STANDING and MAN UP! hitting series lows at 2.4 and 1.7.  Without a Dancing results show at 9PM, the network threw an hour-long repeat of THE MIDDLE at 9PM and couldn't manage better than a 1.4.  With that lead-in, BODY OF PROOF slumped to tie its season low of 1.8.

CW:  90210 did an OK 0.8, but despite some promoted plot twists in its "fall finale," RINGER was blah with a 0.6.  (Incidentally, it's worth noting that in Monday's final ratings HART OF DIXIE rose to a 0.9.  That's higher than anything on CW has done lately on a non-Thursday, and even more impressively, it marked a 50% improvement from its lead-in Gossip Girl's 0.6.)

UP ALL NIGHT is a crucially important piece of new programming for NBC this fall, as you can tell from Mitch Metcalf's Fall Promo Analysis, where it's the network's most-promoted new show.  Not only does NBC need new hits in general, but they're hoping that this starry (and not inexpensive) sit-com can blaze a trail for them past Thursday and into Wednesday night comedy.  And there was nothing terribly wrong with the show in its original version--my Pilot Report is here.  But yesterday, at their Press Tour gathering, the network announced a reshuffling of some important series elements.  In the original pilot, Christina Applegate's character worked at a PR firm, with Maya Rudolph as her boss and best friend.  In Version 2.0, the workplace will be a daytime talk show, with Rudolph as the host and Applegate the show's producer.

So why the change?  A variety of reasons, no doubt, but one may well have been to accommodate Rudolph's broad (and funny) style of performance, which seemed a bit odd in an office context  but could make more sense for a character in showbiz.  Also, the talk show format allows for weekly "guests," which can help introduce quirky characters and occasional celebrities for each new episode.  It certainly wouldn't be a surprise if the change was made partly because focus testing groups reacted unenthusiastically to the original workplace scenes.  Another reason, although likely the least important, is that it removes the overlap between Up All Night and Free Agents, which airs immediately after Up and is also set at a PR firm.  (Not to be cruel, but Free Agents isn't likely to hang around long enough for that to be an issue.)  In any case, the PR agency of Up All Night is dead and gone; long live its talkshow.

Few recent movies have arrived bearing such a bouquet of goodwill as the new comedy BRIDESMAIDS.  It marks the movie starring and screenwriting (with Annie Mumolo) debut of Kristen Wiig, generally considered one of the shining lights of this generation's "Saturday Night Live;" it's produced by Judd Apatow, whose best movies have combined big laughs with quirky humanity; it's directed by Paul Feig, creator of the beloved TV series "Freaks and Geeks;" and it's the exceedingly rare mainstream Hollywood movie to feature a cast of women without relying on the usual Hudson/Heigl/Roberts/Bullock kind of romantic lead. It's been greeted with remarkable critical support (90% on Rotten Tomatoes).  It is, indeed, admirable... I just wish it were a little better.

So what happened?  It feels as though the movie is being praised for what it intermittently manages to be, rather than what it often is, which is a frustratingly uneven, terribly overlong (125 minutes, more running time than The King's Speech needed) picture that both discards and grabs for dear life onto the cliches of "women's movies."  The story is a simple framework:  Wiig plays Annie, who's been down on her luck professionally since her bakery went under, and whose romantic life is pretty much limited to mutual exploitation with Ted (Jon Hamm, very funny)--her lifeline is her longtime friendship with Lillian (Maya Rudolph).  The news that Lillian is engaged makes Annie happy but also feeling adrift, and the fact that she's maid of honor forces her to interact with other eccentric bridesmaids (Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper, Wendi McLendon-Covey), and to compete with the rich, grasping Helen (Rose Byrne) for control of the wedding plans.   

There are, admittedly, some scenes between the women, especially towards the end, that have a level of emotional complexity we don't see in typical rom-coms.  But along the way, many of those scenes are as broad and obvious as anything in Sex and the City.  And the Apatow touch is felt with a heavy hand in sequences that force-feed the movie crude physical humor, like a food poisoning that leads to much vomiting and diarrhea, and a scene where the bridesmaids are on a plane to Vegas and Wiig gets accidentally drugged, and it all goes on so long (it's like one of Wiig's SNL sketches from hell) that it felt like the whole theatre should have arrived at the Vegas airport by the time the scene was over.  It's also somewhat puzzling to see the film acclaimed for not forcing romance on its single protagonist when there's a prominent, and obvious, romantic comedy storyline that features a charming Irish traffic cop (Chris O'Dowd) who's got "love interest" written all over him from the moment he appears.  There's been great effort to distinguish Bridesmaid's tone from that of The Hangover, but I'm not sure how the characters in that picture were any sketchier than the women here.

As a piece of filmmaking, Bridesmaids isn't exactly a prime example of craft (which isn't unusual for an Apatow production).  Neither Feig nor cinematographer Robert Yeoman are able to make the movie look better than we'd expect from a well-budgeted single-camera network show, and editors William Kerr and Mike Sale must have been paid extra under the table to let scenes meander on. 

None of this is to say that Bridesmaids is a waste of time:  Wiig is a genuinely unconventional presence at the center of a Hollywood film, and several of the supporting actors, most notably McCarthy, successfully go for broke with their roles.  There are laughs here, and moments of honesty.  It's easy to root for Bridesmaids (and apparently many people are); but like many a wedding guest who's indulged a little too much at the open bar, it's not quite as fascinating as it thinks it is.

(BRIDESMAIDS - Universal - 125 minutes - R - Director:  Paul Feig - Script:  Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo - Cast:  Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Chris O'Dowd, Jon Hamm - Wide Release)