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The Sitter

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Paul

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The curse of the Academy Award nominee may not be as pervasive as that befalling its winners, but it’s a potent jinx all the same. Consider Benicio Del Toro, who followed roles in 21 Grams and Che with the interminable Wolfman; an example which Jonah Hill now seems determined to follow in The Sitter, a film that yet offers hope to the many talented actors thus far overlooked by the Academy.

“Adult men don’t babysit things”, he huffs, like he has no idea what’s coming. Films have often relied on their characters naiveté for plot development, and The Sitter is no different. What sets it apart is its disinterest in using that to any notable end. Having heard the setup – a young college dropout left in charge of three mischievous kids for the night -you’d be forgiven for expecting a crude junket like that of The Hangover. They do share several traits, coked-out drug dealers and midtown madness amongst them. What it lacks, however, is that film’s camaraderie and energy. Too bad. Even the lamest jokes can be forgiven when delivered with enough chutzpah, and The Sitter has its share of stinkers.

Jonah Hill stars as Noah. Having spent his summer indulging a diet of cheetos and General Hospital, he finds himself in need of a job. And not just any job, for office work wouldn’t even begin to provide the unlikely hijinks necessary for such a comedy. For that, what’s required is exposure to the incontinent young: those fiery pre-teens who consider the world their urinal and splatter-paint shitting bowl. All the better when Mom has a tight dress and a penchant for slowly unwrapping bananas. You know, like a penis.

The events of The Hangover were driven by the character’s increasingly desperate quest to get back in time for a wedding. Here, the honeypot is Marisa’s vagina, which could yet be a New York mirage; ever was it thus for the misshapen and spotty. Her bargain with Noah for a delivery of coke in exchange for sex (“Like, full. on. vaginal. sex”) is responsible for all that transpires, from the appearance of a scatty and surely contractually-obliged Sam Rockwell, to a rendezvous with the impossibly attainable Roxanne. She, as is often the case, once offered the potential for real substantive development, only to be revealed as another tiresome perfect-but-not-until-he-realises-it girl next door.

Where once an escaped tiger led affairs astray, now are three children. The youngest, Blithe, is a beauty pageant darling with all the cutthroat ambition and none of the aspirations for world peace. Slater is introduced by way of the medications he needs to control his severe anxiety, in a barely-disguised prophecy that is surely unlikely to be of consequence later on. And then there’s Rodrigo, the pyromaniac. I’m not necessarily suggesting he’s the family’s adopted Mexican terrorist, only that he has an extensive collection of candy bombs in his pyjama pants. He blows up a whole bunch of toilets with them, in a recurring joke we’re presumably meant to find funnier with each subsequent airing. Kid’s gonna cut you, cabrón.

In any event, while the ingredients are there to fashion a passable Friday night entertainment, the result is considerably less than the sum of its parts. Jonah Hill is arguably the worst of all. His problem is less what his performance is than what it isn’t. Or, to put it another way, this isn’t Moneyball. Everything he does in The Sitter is representative of his entire body of work, with just that one, Academy Award winning exception. Where once he was erudite and lucid thanks to the words of Aaron Sorkin, here he’s back to being the fat kid with a fro’. He looks tired, like maybe he’d been reading the Moneyball script between takes and couldn’t quite reconcile the distance between the two. Poor guy. From a world of Billy Beane and grand sports diatribes, into this: a German shelf toilet of queens, roller-skates and dried faecal matter for your study and consideration.

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The Muppets

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Paul

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Life isn’t always a happy song, but when the Muppets are alive and well, you like to think it’ll work out okay. How wonderful that Jason Segal was allowed to revive them. Their genesis in ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ is well told: the romantic comedy that culminated in Segal’s bizarre puppet re-enactment of the Dracula mythology. Moreover, we’re told the musical was one he really did work on, only to late abandon. How fitting that, 3 years later, he’d be given free rein with this – the greatest musical on Jim Henson’s green Earth.

Walter and Gary live in Smalltown. As per tradition, humans and Muppets live side by side, in a world that does not make a distinction. They grew up as brothers, perched in front of the classic Muppet episodes of our youth. By the time the opening montage reaches the present day, both are in their thirties, though of course only Gary shows any sign of it. They decide to embark on a long-delayed pilgrimage to the birthplace of their favourite show, only to find a dusty lot where once dreams were made. A lonely tour guide ambles through a series of abandoned sets, more rainy Portmeirion than sunny Los Angeles. In doing so, the film acknowledges for the first time the Muppets’ faded currency. Consider how few in the audience were even born when the show last aired, some 30 years ago. To be successful in bringing these characters back, Jason Segel had to not only craft a fitting tribute to their legacy, but simultaneously re-imagine the Muppets for an entirely new generation. He succeeds admirably at both.

A chance sighting of a slimy oil baron sets the tone. Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) has designs on the black liqueur beneath the famous soundstages, and an unwieldy contract sets out his terms. Unless the Muppets can raise the 10 million dollars needed to buy it back, the land and everything on it will transfer into his name. Not for the last time, the film winks to the camera. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were reciting some kind of important plot point” snort the ever-curmudgeonly Statler and Waldorf. How true. And so began a quest to get the old gang back together again; a marionette mission from God. Bunsen and Beaker are poking away at the Large Hadron Collider, fittingly, while Gonzo is now the head of a multi-national plumbing and fixtures company. Miss Piggy? Why, she’s Anna Wintour at Vogue magazine, with barely a lick of makeup required. Those with a keen eye will spot Emily Blunt reprising her role as the curt assistant; still more evidence of the film having little interest in straying from a fun, self-aware vein. And besides, if you don’t find Muppet Man – a drunk tower of fur in a moustachioed suit – funny, then you lost your inner child somewhere along the way and I just don’t know what to say.

Like Pixar, Jason Segal instinctively understands how to pitch his material to both the young and old. It is perhaps a cliché to remark how much parents will love the movie, but it’s true nonetheless. How else do you explain the Muppet tribute band playing out of Reno, with Dave Grohl standing in for Animal? You can barely tell them apart. Such cameos are never far away, with Rashida Jones, John Krasinski and Zach Galifianakis all playing a parts. Liza Minnelli does not appear. The stars all inspire or take part in a endless stream of musical numbers, crafted with enough heart to forgive their being pleasant rather than strictly memorable. What might a less cynical Trey Parker have made of this material, you wonder?

Only occasionally does the movie get it wrong, as when Chris Cooper enters into an excruciating bout of dad hip-hop. Miss Piggy remains far more impressed with herself than we are with her, but then she does set Kermit up for his very own so ronery moment, which speaks to our childish fears as much as it does our adult ones. Elsewhere, the twice-repeated ‘Life’s a Happy Song’ is the toe-tapping sibling of Zooey Deschanel’s contribution to the Winnie the Pooh soundtrack, while the old standards – Mahna Mahna! – are lovingly revived. I don’t suppose younger members of the audience will appreciate quite as much the barbershop rendition of ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, but it’s a masterstroke all the same, one whose inclusion is forgivable for its sheer audaciousness alone.

Rehearsals for the Muppets’ big telethon don’t go entirely to plan. “There’s supposed to be a rhythm to this!” Kermit despairs, head in hands, as Sweetums misses his cue, and Fozzie slaps on the fart shoes once again. Slapstick and love are so joined in a movie that captures what made the Muppets so great in the past, without succumbing to the inertia that long kept them there. For 90 minutes, we are treated to a colourful, energetic reminder of why the Muppets are the third greatest gift ever, after children and ice cream. Segal was brave and right to go with heart here. So what if The Muppets isn’t absolutely perfect? To be anything but slightly worn round the edges would only have spoilt its message: that, in an imperfect world, trying is succeeding, and what unites us more than anything is a yearning to belong. Be cynical if you must, but that’s an important lesson, as much for the parents as their kids. Maybe even the most important.

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Goon

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Paul

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Moneyball was one kind of sports movie, and here is another. Its star is Doug Glatt, who has the hardest head, knuckle and teeth in all of minor-league hockey. Where once he earned a dismal living as a nightclub bouncer, comes a bloody reign over a battlefield of ice. He’s a goon for hire, as they say, passed around small Canadian teams when only a 200lb bruiser will do.

Hockey is the kind of deranged sport in which the glory of the sin bin is considered second only to that of a great slapshot, and then only sometimes. Goon captures that violence with a touch so light that it can only be in the aid humour rather than drama. By casting Seann William Scott, the producers confirm it. Recent years have seen Scott grow increasingly easy to like, as put-upon performances in the likes of Mr. Woodcock and Role Models can attest. He even found some trace of humanity in Stifler, which is surely evidence of some profound mastery of craft.

He plays Glatt like a guy who has been hit almost as many times as he’s been the one doing the hitting. Some would call him a simpleton, though it would be more accurate to call him straightforward. Either way, when a fellow player reduces his role to that of a mindless thug, he doesn’t refute it. Instead, he renders it inspirational, as only the dumbstruck can. “I’m here to do whatever they need me to do. If they need me to bleed, then I’ll bleed for my team”. When he’s not cart wheeling mangled bodies into the opposition seating area, he’s finding love with a local potty-mouth by the name of Eva (“It’s like the bible, but with a bit of mustard on it”). It’s refreshing to see a romance that doesn’t try too hard. She’s played by Alison Pill, a sort of grungy Ellen Paige, who brings a similar blend of sweetness and habitual Canadian hospitality, with equally charming results.

After a brief spell moonlighting for his friend’s public-access TV show, Doug is seconded to Nova Cotia on a mission of mercy: to reclaim the talent of one Xavier Laflamme, the all-star from the Halifax Highlanders who once ducked and weaved, and now merely ducks. A bloody encounter on the ice left him with the punchable aura of a Bam Margera, in that seemingly-takes-no-shit-but-will-weep-under-pressure kind of way. His coach figures that if Doug can just keep Laflamme out of harms way for a while, he might yet rediscover the form necessary to win the season.

Enter stage left, inspirational sports genre movie. But wait. The kicker is the presence of one Ross Rhea. ‘The Boss’ is a wrecker too, only he’s been doing it longer and takes a whole other kind of pride from his scraps. Doug does it because it’s what’s asked of him; Rhea is just there for the kicks. Appropriate, then, that Liev Schreiber should carry forth the look of X-Men’s Sabretooth, in this classical role of veteran out to prove his worth one last time. The climactic battle between master and apprentice does indeed arrive, if you ever doubted it. There’s much teasing, but it’s worth the wait. Goon has a familiar way in all it does, yet by taking on the genre’s more overblown dramas with a decidedly irreverent approach, it also feels remarkably fresh. Purists be assured, there are no laser pucks in sight: just Braveheart team talks, a Hebrew Dolph Lundgren, and hard-won brawling on ice.

Or, to put it another way, Miracle and Warrior had a Canuck child. His name was Goon.

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