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Something Borrowed

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Paul

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The only thing standing between Ginnifer Goodwin and her becoming America’s next sweetheart is one great movie. Like Drew Barrymore before her, she can take a piece of fluff like Something Borrowed and almost will it to such greatness by sheer determination. She fails, but we love her all the more for having tried.

Myopic at best, Something Borrowed takes the lifelong friendship of Rachel (Goodwin) and Darcy (Kate Hudson), and introduces a fiancee that one of them has and one them wants. Dex is an artificial construct of a leading man, seemingly cut from marble by a machine set to beige. Via the medium of flashback, we learn how Rachel and Dex were gifted a Meet Cute by the eroticism of torte law, only for their tentative entwining to be put on hold by Darcy’s shameless entrance. Witness the scene in a trendy bar, where her overbearing narcissism proves an intoxicating spell, wonder boy Dex rendered helpless in the face of a Kate Hudson storm.

Hudson, who seems to have inherited none of her mother’s likeability, plays the latest in a long line of determinably grotesque caricatures. Manifestly, what underpins the story are the eternal bonds of friendship, yet Darcy is drawn so one-dimensionally that it’s quite impossible to imagine either of her friends being seen in the same room as her, let alone allowing themselves to become confidant and fiancee. With each successive scene, she seems to hold ever more deplorable characteristics as a virtue, to the extent that usurping Rachel’s 30th Birthday party for a self-involved piece of showboating looks almost sympathetic in comparison.

Unsurprisingly, the lustful Rachel and Dex are thrown together once more by the winds of thematic necessity. Their scenes are collectively vacuous, each one fatally undermined by Colin Egglesfield; that slate of gleaming handsomeness who aspires to find acceptance and equal rights as a Tom Cruise waxwork. His face, perfectly symmetrical, neither retains life nor evokes character, leaving Goodwin to shoulder the burden of heartache alone. She’s an experienced hand, having done much the same in the equally impotent ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’, but her wounded-puppy yearning – while effective – is left wanting in the face of saccharine love-making high above a deserted New York City, muzak piped in to no discernable emotion at all.

If hero hath a name, it may well be John Krasinski. But for the grace of poor writing, he and Goodwin might have found themselves in a genuinely bewitching romantic comedy: their scenes together are ones of genuine warmth, characterised by snatched moments that awaken the very passion the film seems determined to keep them from. Would you believe me if I told you the film’s high water mark came not just from those impassioned arguments, but their appearance during a beach-side homage to Kenny Loggins? In the unlikeliest of settings, their fire is so obvious, so unforced, that it only highlights the absence of any such chemistry elsewhere. When a novelist and a screenwriter alike both overlooked that promise to focus instead on the terminably lifeless Dex, you can only wonder what level of nepotism gifted them such forgiving careers.

Two good actors is more than many films get, but it still isn’t enough to redeem a cascading stream of ridiculous melodrama. We’re even treated to one of those moments in the driving rain, as though suffering through 17 years of Hugh Grant and his inexplicable not noticing wasn’t punishment enough. As I watched Something Borrowed, there were periods in which I found myself momentarily involved and, yes, even moved. That is true. On reflection, though, maybe all I was responding to was the faint beating of two hearts amongst a sea of lifeless automatons.

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Underappreciated Sequels: Wayne’s World 2

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Paul

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No discussion of underappreciated sequels would be complete without reference to Wayne’s World 2.

First, let me preface this by saying that it isn’t as good as the original; very little is. Somewhere between Rob Lowe, hairnets and the Scooby Doo ending, lies a breakout piece of 1992 comedy, perhaps the last creative spunk from a classic era of Saturday Night Live. Wayne’s World stands as a testament to Mike Myers’ unique talent for invention and absurdist humour. Even now, two decades on, the film remain fresh and remarkably undiluted by the cultural fatigue that followed. Okay, “Not!” feels a bit hokey now, but the film was never really about the catchphrases that were subsequently run into the ground. It was about working joe-jobs to pay the bills. It was about the stifling conformity of suburbia. It was about the music, man. Moreover, it was a heartfelt ode to the friendship of two kids from Aurora, Illinois.

Against such hyperbolic delusions of grandeur, a sequel was never likely to find much favour. Still, Wayne’s World 2 has more going for it than most. For one, it has likable protagonists, which is a rarer commodity than you’d imagine. Consider The Hangover, Knocked Up, Tropic Thunder, and every Adam Sandler movie in existence: all box-office success stories, yet not a single one was helmed by a character you’d volunteer to spend a further 2 hours with. More accurately, none of them had a Wayne Campbell or Garth Algar. Where other leads existed solely as a means to a comedic end, these unlikely heroes were – in poster speak – a Head-Banging Good Time. They were never cruel or unkind; never brazen about their (limited) ambitions. If anything, they remained in awe of the lives they found themselves in. Wayne had never wanted more than to make a great show and hang out with his best friend, and we kinda wanted that too. We miss you, Dana Carvey.

The reason Wayne’s World 2 works is that it has something believable to hang its story on. A lot of sequels are either directionless, or hopelessly blown up beyond their original scope – Harold and Kumar 2 was particularly guilty of that, and indeed a great many other crimes against cinema. Here, the story felt more like a natural thematic progression. From a film that centred on taking a cable-access show to the big leagues of Rob Lowe’s barely-repressed homosexuality, came a sequel about the genesis of a music festival, as prophesised by the vision of Jim Morrison. If the creation of Waynestock felt ridiculous, then it was no more so than anything else they ever accomplished. Tia Carrere falling for Wayne? He’s great and all, but come on.

Still about music then, but equally concerned with grounded characters we loved in recognition and good humour. Even discounting that wonderfully observed Morrison cameo, we have a Kim Basinger subplot that circles any number of tawdry 80s thrillers (“Take you where? I’m low on gas and you need a jacket”), and the appearance of Del Preston to relay the story of Ozzy Osbourne’s brandy glass of brown M&Ms. His tale is not just a familiar one, but one written with a keen eye to the absurdity gifted by retelling and mythology. Of course there was a Bengal Tiger standing between Keith Moon and the sweets. Of course Keith Richards can’t be killed by conventional weapons. If you want to know why Wayne’s World 2 hasn’t really aged, then the key is in those kind of details: it was as though Myers was not so much writing a script, as channelling these folk stories, steeped in the great traditions of rock ‘n’ roll.

Not that the film is above exploiting its beloved characters for situational comedy. The thrill of Wayne’s Hong Kong Dub fight with Cassandra’s father is an amusing aside that lesser films would have used for their dramatic finales. Likewise, perhaps the best moment of all is reserved for a similarly throwaway piece of silliness. On the lam from a typically slimy Christopher Walken, Wayne and his incognito friends make a break for the local disco, only to find themselves impotently banging at the stage door as the spotlight shines down. As build ups go, it might have made the eventual YMCA song-and-dance conclusion an obvious one, but it’s so fucking joyful I don’t care.

Others will no doubt talk about their sequels in the grandest of terms. Some may even appeal to greatness, or speak in hushed tones of reverence and haunting spirituality. But you know what? Fuck ‘em. Before he was a green ogre on the longest career slide this side of Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers was born to be the moustachioed construction worker of the Illinois Village People, and if Wayne’s World 2 was created for no other reason than to realise that fantasy, then it was a film worth making.

It’s a lot like The Godfather 2 in that respect.

This entry was originally featured at Mostly Film

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Submarine

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Paul

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“Most people think of themselves as individuals; that’s there no one else on the planet like them. This thought motivates them to get out of bed, eat food, and walk around like nothing’s wrong. My name is Oliver Tate”.

Submarine is as much about losing one’s virginity as Juno was giving birth. That film saw pregnancy as the foundation for more fertile conflict, and this uses sex as the impetus to explore existential teenage angst in a world of impending divorce. 15-year-old Oliver, buttoned-up coat and just-so scruffiness, is as taken with sex as any teenage boy doing without. Not just by his, but that of warring parents Lloyd and Jill, whom he observes with detached curiosity, documenting whether their bedroom light was last set to dimmed (good) or full brightness (bad).

School comes as easy to him as you’d imagine. He idles with thoughts of his untimely demise, envisioning classmates’ tear-stricken eulogies relayed in the wavering voice of the school principal. And then there’s this girl. Her name is Jordana, even if she doesn’t look much like a Jordana. Oliver courts her from afar, awkwardly, as though beholden to the kind of self-involved moments that have made ‘Wes Anderson’ a verb. His eyes emerge from behind a small notepad to look out at his paramour and her cruel schoolyard ritual. “Essentially, I disapprove of bullying” he concludes, before placing imaginary chalk on imaginary blackboard. “I must not let my principles stand in the way of progress”.

Oliver isn’t sure he believes in scenery. He’s one of those teenagers, like Juno, who don’t really exist anywhere but on the screen: too knowing even for a particularly erudite pocket philosopher, let alone a 15-year-old kid from deepest, darkest Wales. Yet he’s a joy to be around. After all, this is an unheroic hero who speaks in grand gestures while others retreat behind cool indifference. On the evening he and Jordana plan to have sex for the first time, he badly misjudges the mood but hands her his post-virginity declaration anyway. It’s the kind of letter, innocent and sweet, that you like to think you’d have written if youth and opportunity had so serendipitously collided.

Teen comedies tend to explore the adolescent world through an airbrushed facade of raunchy calamity. Submarine deals instead with cancer and the quiet collapse of home. With typical clarity of thought, Oliver takes stock. “Things were a lot less fun since Jordana’s mother might die and my parents marriage started falling apart. I’ve been working on strategies to solve both problems”. With modest triumph, he recalls having bought his Dad some new aftershave, before conceding “I’m drawing a blank on the cancer situation”.

I dislike that particularly loathsome phrase ‘quintessentially British’, but it rings true for Submarine; a film that imbibes the values of grey skies, thick accents and sour dispositions. It has that slightly misty feel I most readily associate with The Wonder Years, in which nostalgia hangs heavy, but in the best kind of way. It is never maudlin, nor does it succumb to the strange darkness of a Harold and Maude. Instead, it eloquently recounts those Polaroid moments of youth you’ll recognise whether you had them or not. It captures a quite profound sense of longing, both for new love and the sancturary of home. Fearing his mother is about to embark on an affair, Oliver abandons his grieving girlfriend to sit with his father over soup and water. Little is said. Oliver knows he should be somewhere else, just as his Dad recognises that marriages only fall further into quiet disrepair with every such sorry occasion. What more needs to be said?

Throughout, there are calls to Holden Caulfield and a host of great teenage thinkers, along with homages to Anderson and Goddard. Yet Submarine remains a determined and individual work. Richard Ayoade’s script is a deeply perceptive and idealistic one, given heartbreaking qualities by the melancholy of Alex Turner’s bittersweet soundtrack. Craig Roberts is an astonishing discovery, as is Yasmin Paige. Rare is the film fortunate enough to find two such perfect leads, rarer still the one that partners them with Sally Hawkins and the effortlessly encumbered Noah Taylor. I look to these warm, deeply human characters, and I don’t think I’d change a thing. Alive and vital, Submarine makes for kinetic filmmaking so life affirming that I wanted to watch it again almost immediately.

Ayoade will go on to make great films, but he’ll never make Submarine again – the moment is already passing, and soon it will be gone. It is, in truth, the last vestige of an innocence that can’t possibly last.

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