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Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Paul

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Often credited as one of the most naturally gifted performers in late night television, ‘Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop’ is a reminder that its bouffant star is often funnier without a script than he is with. The documentary, filmed over the course of last summer’s 32 date ‘Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television’ tour, contrasts a wanting stage show (“I know you have fun doing ‘Rock This Town’, Conan, but at whose expense?” asks a writer), with the behind-the-scenes mania that makes it all possible. If the perception of this being a thinly disguised puff-piece are largely accurate – anything more salacious than prickly drama is curiously absent – then it still paints an intriguing portrait of a man who doesn’t know how to stop.

Having performed for nearly two hours in the swelting heat, Conan’s pale features sag as he collapses onto a sofa backstage. Exhausted, he complains to his producer about the overstuffed schedule, before stealing himself for the latest meet-and-greet that he at once laments and encourages. Several hours pass before the last of them leave, and he snaps angrily at his staff. “You know what I want to do? Not talk to 100 people after the show. Not have each [backing singer] bring in 35 people. I’d like somebody to help me”. Later, at New York’s prestigious Radio City, an assistant points to some fans lining the sidewalk outside, only to find her boss already bounding towards them without invite or obligation. Much as his reflexive need to please is both desperate and endearing, anyone who watches him smile obligingly as fans awkwardly arranging themselves for photos will be hard pushed to suggest he lacks the personal touch.

The story of how ‘Coco’ came to travel from Eugene to Atlanta in a tour bus is one of impetuous executives running their cut-throat business into the ground. Having waited five years for his shot at succeeding his hero Johnny Carson as the host of The Tonight Show, Conan’s tenure was brought to a close just 8 months later, the shameful result of underwhelming ratings and protracted negotiations (which, infuriatingly, the documentary gives little insight to). He subsequently left the network – with a reported $42 million payoff – and Conan’s undiminished anger towards NBC and rival host Jay Leno is a recurring theme. Passing time after a show, he imagines receiving a letter from Leno, relishing an apology that concludes “How does it feel to have a soul?”.

The chief failing of ‘Can’t Stop’ is that it offers nothing new. Documentaries are at their best when they inadvertently undermine their subjects, as with the 1970 concert film ‘Gimme Shelter’, or the childlike narcissism of Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster. Despite rumours of this being a similarly dark revelation, Conan is depicted in glowing, resolutely human, tones: a smart, switched-on comic whose only crime appears to be an habitually dominaneering personality. Of his at-times overbearing tone (noticably during a blustering encounter with 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer), he reflects that “they’re little jokes with quotation marks around them”. In the background, his wife noisly prepares dinner. “Wanna oil that?” he snorts. “Yeah, that’s an example. That’s me letting her know“.

Accusing O’Brien of genuine bullying is to mischaracterise the casual oneupsmanship inherent to comedy. Even his fiercest critics are unlikely to argue with the him being summarised as a basically good guy who can go too far trying to please all the people all the time. Critically, the boundless energy that gets him in trouble also keeps things moving during a middle third that would have scuppered more ernest profiles, weighed down as it is by incidental celebrity encounters at interchangable tour dates. Conan has a remarkable gift for anarchic screwball, and his talents are duly highlighted by a documentary that shrewdly focuses on candid moments of vaudeville improvisation, rather than that other most sterile of offerings, favoured by touring acts everywhere: the Official Live DVD.

80 minutes is time enough to prove the comic pays little notice to distinctions between the stage and the street. His constant need for approval is at once troubling, yet no doubt utterly in keeping with his peers. As his jet climbs into the night sky on its way to the next stop of the tour, he stretches out his long legs before rattling off a showcase of free-assocating hammy accents to a crew who yearn to sleep. For Conan O’Brien, the world is his stage and we are his audience – whether we like it or not.

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Limitless

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Paul

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I’d like to think that with an extra 10% or so, I could be Bradley Cooper. “How ruggedly handsome”, onlookers would remark, as I swept past on my way to somewhere more exclusive. It’s a charmed fantasy of finding a key to unlocking the hidden potential of our atrophied existence; one which swathes of science-fiction writers have appropriated for their own creations over the years.

Limitless, the new thriller from director Neil Burger (The Illusionist), is built on the premise that such a fantasy is anything but. Eddie Morra is a writer who doesn’t write, heading for the bottom and gathering speed. He spends his days with purpose, avoiding either his landlord or a publisher haranguing him over another lapsed deadline. Leaving behind the blinking cursor of the blank page, Morra heads into the city to meet with his brother-in-law, Vernon. “This is an exclusive product” he begins, pushing a clear tablet of NZT across the table, “don’t be ungrateful”. Vernon slides out of the booth as quickly as he came, taking with him a nervous energy that hints at something more than the snake oil patter of a pharmaceutical rep on a sales call.

Broke and depressed, the gift is duly popped. Almost immediately, Eddie blinks into a world yawning with vibrant colour, his limitations redefined in the face of perfect focus and instant recall. A lifetime of experience and unconscious osmosis is a powerful tool in the right hands, and Eddie starts small. Take the girl on the stairs. “Information from the odd museum show, a half read article, some PBS documentary” the voiceover recalls as he talks her into bed, “mixing itself together into a sparkling cocktail of useful information. She didn’t stand a chance”. Later, his new-found aptitude draws the eye of the big investment firms as he educates himself into turning $12,000 into $2 million. Heading home an overnight success, the forgotten wisdom of feckless video games and old Bruce Lee movies is recalled, processed and enacted in the time it takes a chance attacker to throw their first and last punch.

When Vernon turns up dead, his apartment ransacked in pursuit of the wonder drug, Eddie finds himself on the run from those who have and those who want: sometimes it costs you to be the first kind, and other times it’s your boss and there’s a price to that too. All paths lead to Carl Van Loon, a powerful businessman who Robert De Niro portrays with the lazy menace characteristic of his latter-day work. He agrees to mentor the young wunderkind, unaware that Eddie’s growing dependency is having dangerous consequences. At his best, he functions as a plausible Ubermensch, operating with speed and insight far beyond that of his competitors. Other times, he seems to blackout; when word breaks that a model has turned up dead, Eddie can remember being in her hotel room, but neither how he left nor what he had done there.

Limitless is gifted with a sure fire premise, let down by an all too fallible imagination. Its nootropic had potential far beyond insider trading and street thuggery, but that is where Limitless’ ambitions end; an early scene where Eddie directs his ambitions towards the dishes might make for a fun diversion, but it’s also a pretty telling one. Being present but unaware, acting without lucidity; no matter how entertaining, those gaps in the timeline surely deserved more than a quickly-forgotten murder investigation and a trio of jonesing, cartoonish Russian mobsters. Nonetheless, in mixing the spirit of Enemy Of The State with the kinetic visual energy of Wanted and Scott Pilgrim, the film’s high-wire act remains an intoxicating popcorn even while the deeper nature of its dilemmas go unexplored.

With an abrupt ‘Six Months Later’ epilogue comes the lingering question of whether you can ever really go back. The film proffers a vision of the haves and the haves not. Like Dorothy stepping into the technicolor wonder of Oz, Eddie’s world is brighter and bolder for his use of NZT. As he shifts gears to assume the control promised him, Limitless wisely leaves the question of his return to Kansas an ambiguous one.

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Cedar Rapids

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Paul

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Though any number of words might come to mind while watching Cedar Rapids, ‘exhilarating’ is unlikely to be among the first. Slight and inconsequential, perhaps. Gentle, even. A great many films have woven those qualities into thrilling narratives, but Cedar Rapids isn’t one of them.

Tim Lippe is what critics like to call ‘small town’, which is as fitting a description as any. He possesses laudable characteristics – being honest and kind – none of which resonant on a dramatic level. Occasionally there are moments that work. One scene has Tim laying next to divorcee Macy (Sigourney Weaver), whom he meets for a once-a-week bedroom rendezvous. She used to be his teacher. When he excitedly pulls out a promise ring and asks if she once lusted after him as he did her, she deadpans “Well, you were 12″.

Working in insurance is what people like Lippe do in films like this, although finding the motivation to get him to a convention in Cedar Rapids takes a bit of invention. Once there, the writers pin their hopes on this bundle of guileless geniality doing the rest, and to a point he does. The problem is that Tim’s adventures are about as exciting as you’d imagine possible at an insurance conference, and not a smidge more. For all the charmed innocence that sets up a great moment of roommate discovery – “There’s an African American man standing in my room. He’s smiling at me” – there’s the inescapable sense of watching these pleasantries coming from a character type more than an embodiment of anything tangible.

With two in the bed, as it were, Dean Ziegler arrives to roll his roomies right over. Ziegler is John C. Reilly channelling Will Ferrell as an overgrown clown whose role is clearly defined, allowing Reilly to serve it without threatening a fresh take on the old standard. The inspiration for Cedar Rapids lies somewhere between Fargo and The Hangover, and the three ramshackle roommates set out on a diminutive adventure befitting that heritage: unfortunate entanglements – romantic or otherwise – lead to team bonding, a mission to right corporate wrongs on an unsatisfying path to growth, and rural drug busts with wanton prostitutes. If you want a summation of the experience, taking ‘derivative’ and ‘tepid’ as your starting points won’t lead you far wrong.

A good cast has assembled here to do mediocre work. Lippe is informed by Ed Helms having played a similar straight-arrow for 7 years in The Office, and Reilly is equally well-acquainted with his guffawing loon (as in 2008′s Step Brothers). Anne Heche shares some nice scenes with Tim, and the palpable sadness behind their flirtations promise more tenderness than the film is ready to allow them. Amongst a cast of veterans spinning their wheels, Isiah Whitlock Jr stands apart. He breaks from type in kindness and a series of overt, playful references to The Wire that sprinkle a delightful garnish on his real-life Cleveland Brown. Whether the straight guy or the fall guy, whatever the film needed considerably more of, Whitlock had it to spare.

Even so, very little about Cedar Rapids inspires commentary much beyond “meh”. I can’t even damn the film with the faint praise of having tried hard, because it doesn’t do that either: it’s as mild-mannered as its star, and passes the time without incident to recall. There are occasional jokes and consistent performances, but the two rarely come together in any satisfying way, with the familiar plot seeming far too laboured for a movie as brief as this. More the poorer half to Mike Judge’s Extract than a continuation of the Apatow raunch-a-thon, Cedar Rapids defines mediocre, with neither the pace nor voice to transcend dullness masquerading as existential angst.

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