Movie Box Review

Until its final 45 minutes, the one thing that could be said about this year's Oscar telecast was that it was at least brisk.  Merely 2 hours and 15 minutes into the show, there were amazingly only 3 awards and the In Memorium segment still to go.  But for ABC, running under the appointed time would be at least as bad as running over--those commercials all had to get on the air--so at that point the brakes went on, and like the last 2 minutes of a close basketball game, when endless fouls and time-outs stretch the very nature of time, the remainder of the show moved in extreme slow-motion.  Most egregiously tedious:  the fatuous nominee-by-nominee description of each Best Actor and Actress performance that Natalie Portman and Colin Firth were forced to deliver.

The fact that from the network's point of view, the biggest problem with this year's show was that it ran too efficiently tells you all you need to know.  Billy Crystal, given the mantle of Host like a retired general brought back to action after some dreadful military defeat (in this case two of them:  last year's James Franco/Anne Hathaway debacle and the Brett Ratner/Eddie Murphy embarrassment), did what he does.  There was the polished opening bit with Billy inserted among the film clips and movie stars, the "Wonderful Night For Oscar" musical number (not particularly audible, although it was unclear whether that was Crystal's fault or ABC's sub-par microphones, a problem all night), the light digs at celebrities that were better timed than they were funny, the now-ancient "What They're Really Thinking" sketch, which ran horribly flat (Brad Pitt is thinking about parent-teacher conferences!  That's because he and Angelina have so many kids!  LOL!).  There wasn't a genuinely imaginative or inspired moment in Crystal's whole evening, but damn it, the show ran on time. 

The whole tone of the night seemed something like an Old People's Revenge, as though the Academy, after both its efforts at getting "hip" had ended in disaster, had thrown up its hands and embraced its creakiness.  (It was like the Academy had turned into the aged derelicts getting their revenge on Malcolm McDowell in the second half of A Clockwork Orange.)  Instead, they ridiculed--repeatedly--the whole idea of pandering to youth.  Take that, you young demo you--get off our lawn!

So the entertainment centerpiece of the night was Cirque du Soleil, the members of the troupe throwing each other around like cast members in Broadway's Spider-Man and resembling the Vegas floorshow they are.  A seemingly endless series of montages featured movie stars photographed like the Witnesses in Warren Beatty's Reds (including, briefly, Beatty himself), opining very seriously about What The Movies Mean To Us, and sidestepping the fact that few of them have probably paid for a ticket in a real movie theater for the past decade or more.  Christopher Guest's rep group turned up in a parody of screening focus groups that was so inside baseball, you'd have had to be a marketing executive to find it funny. 

Among the presenters, few of the pre-planned schticks paid off:  Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis with cymbals and Robert Downey Jr's unbearable Best Doc/reality-show bit (watching it, you felt sorry for Gwyneth Paltrow, a seeming impossibility) both fell flat.  Emma Stone managed to survive her gimmick, partly because it was fun to watch Ben Stiller play straight man, and partly because Emma Stone seems able to survive anything.  Chris Rock had some funny moments.  And Angelina Jolie stuck her leg out.

It came as a surprise to exactly no one this past week when the LA Times reported breathlessly that an analysis of the Academy membership revealed it to be predominantly elderly white guys.  And this show was for them, from the winners (Christopher Plummer, Meryl Streep, Woody Allen, 10 of the awards split between 2 loving tributes to the world of classic cinema) to the telecast itself.  The night felt as though the Academy was desperately hoping that if everyone pretended the world wasn't changing... maybe it wouldn't.

Good luck with that.

There's not much to add about the weekend grosses that hasn't been said (see Mitch Metcalf's round-up report here), so let's take a look at who, apart from the studios themselves, did and didn't have a fun weekend:

Women of THE HELP:  Emma Stone isn't likely to get Oscar consideration for her performance, being the "White Actress in an African-American Story" (for a particularly egregious example of this criticism, see Patrick Goldstein's column today--as a rule of thumb, if you have to cite Armond White as back-up for your argument, you may want to rethink the debate).  But she's still the biggest name in a smash hit, and her supporting role in the sleeper CRAZY STUPID LOVE doesn't hurt either--assuming that the Spider-Man reboot doesn't go splat next summer, she'll have as much claim as anyone to the currently vacant title of America's Sweetheart.  Meanwhile, Viola Davis has a big decision to make:  campaign for the Oscar as Best Actress (which she might not win, but just being nominated could bring her to a new level in the industry) or Supporting (where she would have a serious chance at victory)?  Her decision will directly impact co-star Octavia Spencer, who has a much better chance of making the cut in Supporting with Davis in the leading category.  (There's also the chance Sissy Spacek could pull a Supporting nomination for her tasty little role as Bryce Dallas Howard's mother, but probably not--see "White Actress in an African-American Story," above.)  Not in the same gender pool but still a Winner is director Tate Taylor, who went from being utterly unknown to the man behind a giant success, without having to direct music videos or make a stop at Sundance.

Expanders:  Several limited releases widened their runs this weekend with generally good results.  SARAH'S KEY made $3900 at each of 201 theatres; THE GUARD did $5200 at 83; THE WHISTLEBLOWER, $3200 at 44; and SENNA, $12K at 14.  (THE FUTURE did less well, with $2K at 32.) 

Andy Serkis:  He probably won't get that Oscar nomination for his motion-capture performance as Caesar the chimp.  But when Fox starts its campaign on his behalf, no one will be laughing.

Avi Lerner:  You may never have heard of him, but he's produced 243 movies for his Nu Image and Millenium studios, most of them proud--and often profitable--pieces of low-budget schlock.  (Righteous Kill?  The Nicolas Cage remake of The Wicker Man?  Those were his.)  He had a breakout hit last year with The Expendables, and this year CONAN THE BARBARIAN was supposed to provide him with his first real franchise, at an expensive-for-him cost of $70-90M.  Now the movie will have to hope for huge overperformance overseas just to break even (although no doubt Lerner's own investment is covered by pre-release guarantees, from distributors who may not be his biggest fans today).

Bob Weinstein:  His Dimension genre brand was supposed to fund brother Harvey's swings for the Oscar fences.  But this week's disastrous reboot of SPY KIDS follows the disastrous reboot of Scream earlier this year; coming soon is another "found footage" horror movie with Apollo 18, and then a second chapter in the Piranha series, which didn't do all that well ($25M) the first time.

Anne Hathaway:  Remember that currently-vacant position of America's Sweetheart?  It wasn't so long ago that the job seemed Hathaway's for the taking, but the past year or so hasn't gone so well.  It's not that Hathaway is giving bad performances, or even choosing terrible movies (Love and Other Drugs was a tonal mess, but still entertaining, and One Day is a respectable failure)--she just seems to be pushing too hard, nowhere more so than during her painful-to-watch Oscar gig.  The Dark Knight Rises isn't likely to do much more for her than previous installments did for Katie Holmes or Maggie Gyllenhaal (odds are that Tom Hardy will be the movie's Heath Ledger and she'll be Aaron Eckhart), but that's OK as long as her Catwoman doesn't actually hurt the picture.

Colin Farrell:  After paying some dues with his fine performances in little films like In Bruges, Crazy Heart and Ondine, Fright Night was supposed to be Farrell's first step back to commercial viability--but even with good reviews, it turned out no one cared.  Up next is the much more expensive remake of Total Recall, whose producers can't be feeling too comfortable now that this week's Conan reboot fell flat on its face.

Openers:  Nothing much was happening in the arthouses this weekend.  John Sayles' AMIGO could only muster $4K per theatre in 10 despite guest appearances from Sayles and the actors, and MOZART'S SISTER wasn't much better with $4700 in each of 7.  The one seeming exception is misleading:  Kevin Smith's RED STATE pulled in $26K in a single LA theatre as part of its Oscar-qualifying week (it seems the picture, despite its massive Sundance hoopla, is going to VOD next month and may never have a conventional theatrical release), but that number was boosted by a Q&A with the motormouth maestro at every show.

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.

THE HELP is--and I mean this in a good way--a big-screen Hallmark Hall of Fame.   It's a long, absorbing, emotionally satisfying piece of mainstream Hollywood moviemaking that skims the surface of its difficult subject--the life of black maids and nannies in the pre-Civil Rights era South--in a way that used to win Best Picture Oscars back in the post-World War II era.  (Think Gentleman's Agreement or The Best Years of Our Lives.)  These days, we expect serious subjects to be addressed in less comfortable ways on screen, and The Help has already gotten plenty of backlash and meta-criticism for its style and format.  Taken for what it is, though, the picture delivers.

Based, of course, on the bestselling novel by Kathryn Stockett (which I haven't read), the film version of The Help is written for the screen and directed by Tate Taylor, whose only previous feature credit was a low-budget comedy called Pretty Ugly People that barely appeared in theaters.  (It didn't hurt that Taylor is an old friend of Stockett's who lobbied for him to get the job.)  One key element of the controversy around the book and film is that its central character is a young white woman.  Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), a recent college graduate in 1963 Mississippi, doesn't fit in with her debutante surroundings.  (In a different universe, Skeeter would be Peggy on Mad Men.)  Skeeter works as a local reporter, but she chafes at the pretensions of the girls she grew up with (headed by Hilly Holbrook, played by Bryce Dallas Howard), and when she sees the way that group treats their maids, she has the idea of compiling a book of interviews with those women.

The soul of The Help lies in these women, and particularly two of them:  Aibileen (Viola Davis), who lovingly raises the young children of white families that treat her as chattel, and Minny (Octavia Spencer), who works for the odious Hilly.  Matters in the town come to a head with Hilly decides that the maids should not be allowed to use the family toilet, and that all houses in town should have special outhouses built for their help.  Although Skeeter may be the protagonist of The Help, and we're forced to watch a fair amount of her not-very-interesting relationships with a suitor (Chris Lowell) and her ailing mother (Allison Janney), the film does understand that the humiliation and courage of the maids is its true center.  

Whenever a Hollywood movie approaches a painful subject, there's always the dicey task of balancing the hard-to-watch facts with enough entertainment value to make audiences willing to endure the experience.  The Help is unafraid of frosting its heartache with comedy, sometimes broadly so, and there are those who object to that.  None of the humor, though, takes away from the awful situations depicted.  What Taylor does very well is present a portrait of the profoundly mixed emotions the races had for one another in that place and time, where many of the children raised so fondly by these maids grow up to become their oppressors. 

The acting is as good as anyone could ask.  Davis, who's been terrific for years in movies like Doubt and Antwone Fisher, is superb and strong, and Davis navigates the tricky line between the movie's comedy and drama impeccably.  Stone is as radiant as any young actress in movies today, while Howard, who can easily be dull in nice-girl roles, seems revivified by the chance to play a monster.  Also worth noting is Jessica Chastain, as a white-trash nouveau riche wife whose story intersects with Minny's, and Sissy Spacek, who does a marvelous job as Howard's mother, a woman who stays crafty even as dementia is setting in.

It can't be said that Taylor impresses as a film artist with a rare eye, but for what's essentially his debut, he does a fine job:  he's marvelous with the actresses (none of the men make much of an impression) and does a solid, professional job behind the camera, helped by such pros as cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt and composer Thomas Newman. 

The Help is more than a little retro as a movie; it certainly doesn't offer the kind of insight and commentary about its era that we get in Mad Men.  The film has no great revelations to offer, either in story or in style.  But there's a place for accomplished narrative at the movies, especially when accompanied by the kind of acting we have here, and The Help gratifyingly meets that goal.

Without further ado:  CRAZY STUPID LOVE is the comedy of the summer.  Also the drama.  There are certainly spectacles out there now providing fantastic visual thrills, and some of them (X-Men, Harry Potter) are quite good, too; but if you want to watch an uproarious, surprising story about human beings whose only magic powers are for screwing up and somehow managing to keep trying again, this is your movie.

The script by Dan Fogelman (previously known mostly for cartoons like the original Cars, Tangled and Bolt) and direction by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (themselves screenwriters, with idiosyncratic films to their names like Bad Santa and I Love You, Philip Morris) are triumphs of tone that mix slapstick with surprising poignancy.  The story begins with the marital break-up of Cal (Steve Carell) and Emily (Julianne Moore), a function of midlife crisis and Emily's straying with co-worker David (Kevin Bacon).  Cal is utterly bereft by the loss of his family, and his attempts to rejoin the dating scene are pathetically bad.  He's fascinated to watch a local Lothario, Jacob (Ryan Gosling) in action, and Jacob in turn is amused and horrified by Cal's failures; he takes Cal under his wing, teaching him tricks to attract women. 

This is the part of the movie featured in the marketing, and it delivers a lot of big laughs, fueled by the terrific comic chemistry between Carell and Gosling.  The great thing about Crazy Stupid Love, though, is that even that relationship has more to it than just comedy:  Cal may master Jacob's tips, but he's too genuine to use them without feeling, and on some level, Jacob envies that.  And all of this is just a slice of the film's portrait of romantic and family misadventure, which keeps expanding to such an extent that I can't reveal some of what happens toward the end without spoiling the fun.  We stay with the developing friendship between Cal and Jacob, but we're also following Jacob's own relationship with the reluctant Hannah (Emma Stone), a young lawyer who threatens to change Jacob's carefree theories about sex and life.  We watch Emily's experiences as a newly single woman, and the awkward crush her son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) has on his babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton)--not to mention Jessica's own romantic issues.  At its best, Crazy Stupid Love recalls the classic Woody Allen movies of the 1970s and 80s, presenting a wide, varied portfolio of lovers both skilled and inept.

The cast is just about perfect.  Carell keeps his physical comedy emotionally grounded and delivers a performance more like his work in Dan In Real Life and Little Miss Sunshine than in his big-budget vehicles.  Julianne Moore is, as always, remarkably truthful even in comedy, and she and Carell fit together better than you'd expect.  Gosling is the film's major surprise, effortlessly shifting from the wrenching indie drama of Blue Valentine to reveal himself as a suddenly deft Hollywood comedian; it's no surprise at this point, though, that Stone is peerlessly appealing and smart.  Marisa Tomei is hysterical in a role that shouldn't be described in too much detail, and the lesser-known Bobo and Tipton more than hold their own in the ensemble.

Crazy Stupid Love is so smoothly engineered that it's easy to underrate:  Ficarra, Requa and Fogelman maneuver hairpin turns between pathos and farce as though they're moving up their own driveway.  There are a few minor missteps (the ending could be a little less neat), and the movie is content to work within the confines and style of conventional Hollywood filmmaking--there's nothing innovative about it.  (Although the cinematography by Andrew Dunn--he shot Precious, among many others--and editing by Lee Haxall are notably first-rate.)  But it affords the pleasure of a marvelous story, superbly told.

This has been an odd summer for comedy:  R-rated comedies aplenty, all of them proud of their own raunch, and all of them tremendously successful (only Friends With Benefits won't get to $100M, and even that film will do fine), but hardly anything geared to simple old-fashioned storytelling.  This could well explain the huge success of Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris, an intelligent, likable little film that's exploded (by indie standards) at the boxoffice, even though no one would seriously compare it to his classic work.  Crazy Stupid Love, with its PG-13 rating and largely older cast, seems unlikely to hit the first weekend heights of its rowdy mates--Mitch Metcalf is predicting a mild $16M opening--but it should thrive over time as people see it and spread the word.  It's sane exhilarating good.

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS - Worth A Ticket:  Almost Great

For about an hour, as you watch his new FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, you could be forgiven for thinking that writer-director Will Gluck is the future of Hollywood romantic comedy.  Gluck came out of TV with the very underrated Fired Up, about a pair of college guys who dress up as female cheerleaders to get girls (I'm serious--watch it on video), and then he had his break-out with last year's terrific Easy A.  Friends With Benefits seems to be well on its way to building on this with an unusually smart, funny romance--until it isn't.

As everyone knows by now, Friends shares its premise with No Strings Attached, the very lame comedy that rode Natalie Portman's concurrent Black Swan stardom to a $71M gross ($148M worldwide) earlier this year.  In both, a couple that isn't romantically involved decides for the sake of convenience to get together for sex, with the idea that they'll be able to keep it separate from any emotional entanglement.  Of course, in both cases that's not the way it plays out.

The dreary thing--OK, one of the dreary things--about Strings was that it never really honored its own premise:  from the start, it was clear that Ashton Kutcher's character had a puppydog crush on Portman's, so the story became a matter of waiting for Portman to be willing to accept emotional commitment and open herself to Kutcher's love.  The script had to come up with psychological issues for Portman to triumph over, and there was hardly any fun to be had in the movie at all.  (Not to mention that it was almost stubbornly devoid of laughs.)

Friends With Benefits, in contrast, delivers on its initial idea.  Dylan (Justin Timberlake) is a magazine designer from LA headhunted for a NY job by Jamie (Mila Kunis).  He's new in town, they're both busy people who've recently been dumped, and they strike up a friendship--then decide that the sensible thing to do is add purely physical sex to the equation, since neither wants to be in a real relationship.  Of course, even while they're denouncing the cliches of romantic comedy (Kunis has a great bit attacking Katherine Heigl movies, and there's even a film-within-the-film that features Jason Segal and Rashida Jones), the two of them are falling for each other, and it doesn't take a prophet to figure out where it's going to end up.  What makes Friends work for quite a while is the very quirky, genial, appealing script by Gluck, Keith Merryman and David A. Newman, which has the kind of old-fashioned snappy banter that nowadays is rare outside of an Aaron Sorkin project. 

It also helps that Timberlake and Kunis actually seem to like each other, and they have real screen chemistry together; it's a relief to watch a big-screen romance where neither of the characters is an idiot, a doofus or a selfish creep with a heart of gold.  Timberlake's been kicking around with his film career for several years now, and he was excellent in The Social Network, but Friends is his first genuine leading man role, and he handles it like a veteran, smoothly hitting all the laughs and carrying off the more dramatic moments.  Kunis, too, has been on the brink of breaking out since she moved over from TV, and she makes a hugely appealing, sexy and often hilarious lead.  Gluck is a casting whiz, and like Easy A, Friends is also loaded with fabulous supporting actors:  Woody Harrelson, Andy Samberg, Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman, and Easy A's own Emma Stone and Patricia Clarkson all make appearances.  

So how does it all go wrong?  Gluck and his co-writers can't manage to stick the landing.  After being intelligent and witty and charming for more than an hour, easily convincing us that these two smart people would ultimately figure out that they're made for each other and fall into each other's arms, the script invents melodramatic and unnecessary plot turns to push them together, then break them up, and of course reunite them.  The last reel is cluttered with "call-backs" that repeat scenes and motifs from earlier in the movie in a grindingly obvious way.  Jenkins is forced to more or less replay his role from Dear John, as the movie recycles one of the lousiest recent movie cliches:  the Alzheimer's patient who manages to reach lucidity just long enough to impart some parental wisdom.  Timberlake and Kunis suddenly act in ways inconsistent with their behavior earlier in the movie, just to keep the plot's wheels turning.  By pandering to exactly the same rom-com conventions they ridiculed earlier, Gluck and his team drive their project straight into a wall.

It's sad to watch, because once you're on a movie's side, the last thing you want is to have the filmmakers wrench it away.  And even with its missteps, Friends With Benefits is still worth seeing, the first two-thirds are the most likable comedy of the summer.  It's jsut that when things get bogged down, you might want to consider checking out the next auditorium at the multiplex and watching the giant robots destroy Chicago; it's less painful than watching Friends With Benefits destroy itself.