A Room Of Our Own

Note: I wrote this review of The Disaster Artist over a year and a half ago, after I saw a preview screening of the film. I watched it on opening night to learn that not only was it not substantially changed, not a frame other than the opening and closing credits was touched. On a second viewing, I'm a lot colder on the film, but I stand by the feelings I express in this review. It just doesn't have a lot to offer other than a one-time gimmick. Once that's used up, there's no reason to return to that well whatsoever.

Year: 2016

Director: James Franco

Cast: James Franco, Dave Franco, Sharon Stone

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I’m a huge fan of oddball auteur Tommy Wiseau’s bad movie masterpiece The Room. So much so that it’s not even listed on my index in the section that’s sorted by rating, because that would have broken the system entirely, not to mention my credibility. I’m also a huge fan of Greg Sestero’s behind-the-scenes book The Disaster Artist, which is hands-down the most fascinating nonfiction book I’ve ever read. It’s not only an insight into the twisted mind that birthed The Room, but the story of a man rattling against the bars of the cage of normalcy who would eventually become that twisted mind's best friend.

So when I heard they were adapting that very book into a movie, I was mighty intrigued. When it was announced that stoner comedy icon by day/berserk artistic soldier by night James Franco would be directing, I was concerned, but realized there’s hardly anybody better to bring that madcap, deranged nightmare to life.

I was wrong.

You’re tearing me apart, James Franco!

In The Disaster Artist, Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) is a young aspiring actor in San Francisco who meets the mysterious, ineffably accented, appallingly dressed Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) in an acting class. The shy young man comes to respect Tommy’s bravado and total lack of elf-awareness. They become fast friends and move to L. A. to pursue their dreams. However, Greg’s success at finding an agent (Sharon Stone) and a girlfriend (Alison Brie) makes Tommy dangerously jealous.

When they decide that the industry isn’t ready for them, they agree that they should make their own movie. They assemble a crew (Seth Rogen, Paul Scheer, Charlyne Yi…) and a cast (Ari Graynor, Josh Hutcherson, Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver…) with Tommy’s bottomless pit of money and it’s off to the races!

Oh hi, cult classic.

At its heart, The Disaster Artist is about the relationship between Greg and Tommy more than it’s about The Room itself. This is as it should be. And as a movie adaptation of said story, some details are changed to smooth the narrative along. This is also as it should be. As much a fan as I am of the book, I understand and respect that certain choices had to be made when adapting the material. However, the end product is both completely unrecognizable as the original true story and kilotons less interesting. The quasi-horror story of a dark, twisted friendship between a bipolar lunatic and an insecure ingénue has been transformed into a wacky, whitewashed buddy picture about never giving up on your dreams.

It lurches so hard to fit a three-act structure that it’s gut-churning. And again, to make myself clear, I’m not upset that they streamlined the casting process or combined multiple characters into one or cut out the subplot about Retro Puppet Master (OK, maybe I’m a teensy bit upset about that one). I’m upset they capsized years of bizarre behavior, manipulation, homoeotic tension, and drama in favor of a bog standard “girlfriend jealousy,” man-child, Apatow-approved plot structure, which they go ahead and totally ignore in the third act, arriving at zero resolution for either character. And this is not a “true stories don’t have endings” situation. By this point, everything true about this story is rotting under a stack of old TV Guides at the landfill.

I guess they were too chicken to commit to their story. Cheeeep, cheepcheepcheep.

That’s not to say that The Disaster Artist isn’t funny. It completely misses the point of its own story but it still has the juice to be pleasantly amusing. It’s not an uproarious affair, but there is plenty of that awkward comedy that’s rampant in The Room itself, especially in any scene where Tommy has to interact with people out in the real world. It certainly helps that James Franco completely disappears into the role, delivering a pitch-perfect imitation of Wiseau’s haunting strangeness. His comic timing is on point, and frankly he saves the movie from itself, the cuckoo center of the maelstrom of muddled plot elements.

Franco has also assemble a veritable A-Team of essential comic actors for lightning quick cameos, though – mysteriously – some of them (including Dirty Grandpa-redeemer Jason Mantzoukas) aren’t even given any real gags to work with. My favorite would be John Early, who plays a major agent's assistant and needs to get noticed by more people immediately. But frankly, the non-Tommy/Greg cast of The Room are given short shrift in a series of rapidfire scenes that blast through the actual making of the film. Only Ari Graynor (as Juliette Danielle, who played the blonde temptress Lisa) and Zac Efron (as Dan Janjigian, who played the psychotic drug dealer Chris-R.) make any sort of impression as the film completely ignores them. Seth Rogen also livens up several scenes from the peanut gallery, eking comedy around the edges.

To be completely honest, the film’s only acting liability is Dave Franco, who puts almost no effort into crafting a distinct personality out of Greg Sestero. Where James is playing Tommy Wiseau, Dave is just playing Dave Franco, coasting on his looks, his stock mannerisms, and a truly pitiful fake beard that looks like he got tarred and feathered by Fozzie Bear.

You are NOT my favorite customer, Dave.

The film has its ups and its downs, but it’s only half bad. It feels more like a home movie of celebrities hanging out than an actual work of cinema, but there’s certainly a place for that. I do wish it spent more time on the process of creating The Room (in fact, the longest segment of the film is the totally pointless premiere scene, where we get to sit with the actors and watch their weird facsimiles of actual scenes from The Room for what feels like hours. I’ve already seen The Room. I don’t need to watch fans watching a fan recreation of it, celebrities or not), because that’s where the more interesting story lies (in this watered-down version, anyway). And as it stands, if you haven’t actually seen the film, you’ll be flummoxed by the whole process. But I don’t mind spending 90 minutes with these people in this setting. If you’re a Room acolyte, seek this movie out. If not, leave your stupid wallets in your pocket.

TL;DR: The Disaster Artist is an oddball biopic that misses the story mark but lands the humor.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1189

Fang Girls

Year: 2016

Director: Melanie Aitkenhead

Cast: Leila George, Tori Spelling, Emily Meade

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: TV-14

Sometimes spectacularly bad ideas create iconic moments in cinema. Who would have thought that the story of a time-traveling, nude Austrian robot would become one of the most beloved franchises in history? Or that the story of zen space dudes and a princess battling a plastic man with an iron lung over a big skyball would change Hollywood forever? So, by that metric, producer James Franco’s idea to resurrect the cult classic Lifetime erotic thriller Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? as a lesbian vampire film should have produced an out-and-out masterpiece.

I wonder why it didn’t?

In Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?, Leah Lewisohn (Leila George) is a college theater student who’s deeply in love with her girlfriend Pearl (Emily Meade), despite the complete lack of concrete evidence to support that assertion. Pearl is a photographer, so literally every date is a photo shoot that eventually morphs into a Charmin-soft softcore lesbian bacchanal of face touching, finger licking, and Cirque du Soleil dry humping that would be physically impossible to enjoy without a penis. I don’t think they even talk!

Anyway, Leah brings Pearl home to dinner with her mom (Tori Spelling), who after an hour of face-touching and sultry whispering, begins to suspect that maybe these two aren’t just friends. When Leah drops the bombshell that she’s a lesbian, Tori shuts down and leaves the room because apparently she’s not a fan of Ellen. Seriously, she’s a non-religious single mom in 2016. Who the f**k is still that cut up about this stuff? Anyway, Tori begins to look into Pearl’s background and discovers that not everything is as it seems.

You see, Pearl is a Nightwalker, this universe’s lazy name for “vampire” (she literally explains it as “I’m a Nightwalker. You know, like a vampire?”). She was bitten by an ex and inducted into a group of Heathers-esque sexy vamps who stalk around in high heels snarling at each other. They want her to make Leah a vampire for reasons that make sense zero percent of the time, but she wants to get her consent rather than force it on her. Also, if you vampify your one true love, you don’t have to hunt humans and can subsist off one another for the rest of eternity.

Because vampires CAN’T be monsters! They’re so sexy!

If the goal of Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? was to capture the feel of a lost relic unearthed from the 90’s, it definitely worked. It looks exactly like the kind of acid-washed garbage pumped out by the likes of Joe Chappelle. Good on them, but authenticity does not imply quality. The fact that the film is full of bared midriffs, stalking girl groups, and a preponderance of irritating flash cuts just shows that the film is pandering to the nostalgic signposts of the Buzzfeed generation, not that they actually knew how to make a movie.

Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? is an unmitigated disaster, and not the fun kind. It’s a stilted, monotonous slog liberally slathered with padding so egregious I’m pretty sure it violates the Geneva Conventions. The endless photography sessions, on-the-nose monologues, and oddly fidgety aerial-view transition shots of a random city desperately attempt and miserably fail to distract from the facts that 1) This movie has no plot, 2) Tori Spelling is barely in it, an 3) producer and top-billed actor James Franco is in it even less, in shots that make it patently clear he wasn’t even on set with his scene partners. He might as well have Skyped in from his living room

Come to think of it, if we can safely assume that his taste in decor is questionable, that actually might be how he did it.

Did I mention that eeeevery sceeeene is in sloooow mooootion? It’s like they shot half the movie in Matrix-style bullet time, but instead of dodging missiles, they’re walking up a driveway in crop tops. Although, maybe it’s for the best that it happened this way. If it was all played at regular speed, that would leave us with an extra 20 minutes to fill, leading to a sad attempt to squeeze even more material out of a script that seems fundamentally disinterested in itself.

How else could you exlain the half-baked vampire mythology that never coheres into anything interesting or even comprehensible? We don’t know how these Nightwalkers operate, or why they do what they do. We don’t even know their names! And even though the film is obsessed with Scream 2-esque classroom scenes discussing the relevant topics of queerness and vampirism in literature, it seems unwilling to integrate that material into anything but the dustiest puff of a theme.

And then the story just goes bugnuts at the halfway point, forgetting that Leah lives in a dorm so she can constantly run to her bedroom after door-slamming arguments with her mom, wickedly contorting the wimpy side character Bob (Nick Eversman) – which, by the way, is not a name any modern college student would go by – into a cavorting demon of male entitlement, and utterly failing to stick the landing on its romantic arc.

The acting is terrible (especially in the scenes where they’re supposed to be wowing an audience with their performance of Shakespeare – a little bit of magical realism for ya), the plot is stunted and fails to do right by its cardboard characters, and – here’s the kicker – it’s just plain boring. There’s nothing worse than a boring bad movie, but its even more painful here because Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? has such a wonderfully nutty concept. The only upside is some fun restaging of Shakespeare, and the opportunity to mock just how slow on the uptake Tori Spelling is about her daughter’s lesbianism. She’s like a clueless sitcom dad and it’s great.

But yeah, like its main characters, this movie sucks. Don’t let it seduce you with its softcore flailing and irresistible synopsis.

TL;DR: Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? is a disappointingly dull movie that engages not at all with its bonkers conceit.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1040

Cleanup On Aisle 69

Year: 2016

Director: Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon

Cast: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I can take or leave Seth Rogen. When he’s doing Neighbors or plying himself in The Comeback, I’m all in. When he’s working with Judd Apatow, I’m 50/50. I’ve never disliked a performance of his, nor have I been utterly enamored of one. But when it comes down to his producing and writing choices, I can’t deny that he’s hit his stride. While I haven’t adored every movie in his recent string of films (This is the End, The Interview, Neighbors 2), he’s unafraid of being conceptually audacious, and I have heaps of respect for that.

Which brings us to the latest entry in his oeuvre: Sausage Party, an R-rated twist on the Pixar ethos. While he comedy’s juvenile at best, the script has no right to be as thematically sharp and satirical as it is. He can put one more notch in his belt because, no paper, this one’s another win.

Butcher paper, that is.

In Sausage Party, the food in the grocery store is sentient, and all they want is to be taken home to the Great Beyond by us, the Gods. They believe we will grant them an eternity of happiness and sensual pleasure. However, when Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is returned by a customer having become a shuddering wreck, hot dog Frank (Seth Rogen) begins to have doubts about the Great Beyond. His antics cause him and his devout bun girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig) to fall out of their cart, forced to find their home aisle before they lose their freshness.

Brenda wants her journey to lead her home, and Frank wants his journey to lead to the truth. They’re joined by Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz) and Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton), two walking stereotypes that act out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for some godforsaken reason. Also there’s Barry (Michael Cera), a stunted hot dog who has seen the truth about the Great Beyond – that kitchens are essentially less-fun Jigsaw traps for groceries – and struggles to return to the store to warn his friend. Oh, and a douchey Douche (Nick Kroll) wants to destroy Frank and Brenda for accidentally bending his nozzle.

I don’t know whether it’s the fault of the middling-at-best, horrifyingly-inelegant-at-worst animation or my blissful ignorance, but I definitely thought he was a toilet brush for like 15 minutes.

Do you think cartoon characters cussing is the funniest thing in the world? Then you should just pre-order your special edition quadruple disc Blu-Ray now, because you are going to love the s**t out of Sausage Party. As expected, the film has one foot firmly plated in the sophomoric at all times, but it’s the other foot that’s going interesting places.

This whole script is a feature-length allegory about the creation of religion, the horrible things it makes people to to one another and themselves, and why we shouldn’t be so quick to cast judgment on people who subscribes to different belief systems than us. Also, the moral is that raging hedonism is our only defense against our inevitable mortality, so it’s pretty much like Toy Story 3. I know, right? You got your subtext all over my R-rated comedy! How did this get in here? It’s an incredibly clever story that has heck-all to do with naughty hijinks, but whatever. I’m there.

It’s to the point that I can actually see somebody’s life philosophy changing to some degree after a screening of Sausage Party. As alarming as that sounds, that honestly might just be a good thing. I’m physically upset by how deeply I respect the intellectual cogs spinning behind the movie’s colorful cartoon façade. And then, of course, the rest of the movie is mostly super racist.

Thanks, everybody. I was getting too deep into liking this movie.

Not only is the humor desperately crude, which I’m fine with, it gives in to its urge to pattern every ethnic food after the most revolting racial stereotypes that can be produced by a screenwriting cabal of white dudes. Shock humor is all well and god, and the film does manage to convert the hideously insensitive Lavash and Bagel arc into something sweet and then appropriately twisted, however most of the racial humor is not only distasteful, but kind of lazy.

It doesn’t take more than a teaspoon of thought to make Grits (Craig Robinson) an angry black stereotype or to name your Native American liquor character (Bill Hader, why) firewater. So it’s pointless as well as disrespectful. This is humor that’s older than anyone reading this, and it’s certainly not funny today, if it ever was to begin with.

I’m terribly sorry to have such bad news to report about that aspect of the humor, because a lot of Sausage Party is really fun. When it goes whole hog depicting violence or sexuality, the film is at its best, and I’m not just saying this as a horror fan. Watching a film so gleefully unafraid to push the envelope of Hollywood sensibilities is a massively liberating experience. It’s certainly not for everyone, but as a cartoon about food, it’s enough degrees separated form human experience that even non-gorehounds should be able to get a kick out of it.

So much of Sausage Party is fun and intelligent and so much of it is crass and low-rent that it’s difficult to synthesize a proper score for the monstrosity. What I’ll say is this: Go see t if you have a high threshold for fratty, tasteless comedy. If you don’t, who cares. Have a nice day.

TL;DR: Sausage Party is mostly irreverent, weirdly intelligent fun despite its unfortunately prevalent racism.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 962

Et Tu, Monkey?

Year: 2011
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Cast: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto
Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Full disclosure. Before watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I had seen no other films in the illustrious Planet of the Apes franchise. But I'm sufficiently well-versed in pop culture to understand the significance of, say, the main character playing with a Statue of Liberty toy or subtle, discerning homages like the line "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" So let's just say I'm not exactly in the dark.

But enough monkeying around. We've got a prequel reboot requel(?) to review!

What? Like it's my fault your movie's pedigree is so confusing.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, however it chooses to define itself, tells the story of Will Rodman (James Franco), a scientist working for an Evil Science Corporation testing experimental drugs on apes. During his experiments, he often lets his emotions get the best of him. Like the time he used his experimental Alzheimer's drug on his father (John Lithgow). Or the time he stole a baby monkey named Caesar (Andy Serkis covered in green balls) from the laboratory after his parents were killed following the cancellation of the testing and let him grow up in his well-appointed San Francisco home alongside his ailing parent. He brought a genetically mutated monkey home to hang out with his sick elderly dad. He's basically the worst movie scientist I've ever seen and I recently sat through some 50's sci-fi movies in which the only solution to any problem was to call in the troops and ask them to please bring the big tanks this time.

After the drug successfully eradicates his father's Alzheimer's for a couple years, Will's boss - Lord Business AKA Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) decides to allow further tests to continue. Soon afterward, a mishap with an angry neighbor causes the now-grown Caesar to violently act out and be sent away to an animal shelter run by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his petulant son Dodge (Tom Felton). There he meets dozens of mistreated chimpanzees, orangutans, and various other species of his kin. He sneaks them the new drug, which causes hyper-intelligence in apes, but festers dangerous disease in humans. And oh look, but a coworker has been infected and begins sneezing blood on just about anyone who asks.

Oh, also, Will gets a girlfriend, veterinarian Caroline (Freida Pinto), but she has no purpose in the plot, falls for him in under 30 seconds, and is never given a chance to use her skills with animals for any means. She's less important to this movie than James Franco's belly button.

Oh, also there's no good screenshots of her. Feminism!

The thing about RotPotA is that, despite having every possible warning sign, it's actually kinda good. Mind you, it's about as generic as a Hollywood thriller could possibly get and is filled to the brim with La La Land's typical brand of plot holes and quick-and-dirty conveniences (the Alzheimer's vaccine works in one day; nobody thinks to call a doctor when they start dramatically expelling blood from their nostrils), but it's charming for it. And in a franchise as strapped for quality entries as Planet of the Apes, it's hard not to sing the film's praises, though it does suffer from a bit of prequel disease, rendering its entire plot largely pointless because we know exactly what's going to happen.

The two strongest original elements the film brings to the table are its bright, polished aesthetic and its central theme (of growing up and leaving the past behind as you find the place where you belong; also man's hubris will destroy us all, yada yada yada), which hearkens back to the original film's intent without directly copying its message.

The filmmaking is smooth and precise, lending the movie with some beautiful sequences of great craft, including a wonderfully memorable aerial shot as well as several gliding Steadicam moments that guide the viewer through the film's spaces with a magisterial and skilled air. The story itself may be ruthlessly generic and the gore that aches to be in place during some of the more intense sequences is withheld by the PG-13 rating, but it's a well-made shiny diversion and we can't fault it for that.

That's right dad, hug the monkey. Hug the super sanitary, non-health code-violating monkey.

One enormous chink in the film's armor is the special effects. Andy Serkis is a genius in the craft of motion capture performance, so his Caesar is more than capable of carrying a movie on his shoulders. But the apes here are certainly no Gollum, or even King Kong circa 2005. The CGI monkeys seem to exist in a realm slightly to the left of our own in which everything is a little fuzzy around the edges and objects don't really respond to the weight of one's touch. It's decent enough to get the story across, but the animation keeps the film firmly out of reality. It's not like Planet of the Apes is supposed to be a hard-hitting, gritty neorealist drama, but you know what I mean.

Really, there's a lot to complain about with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but it's all ultimately inconsequential. When you have fun with a movie, why bother shouting into the hurricane? The plot is engaging, Caesar is a well-developed, earnest character, and there are enough nods to the horror genre (28 Days Later would be a more or less perfect double feature with this) to keep the darker side of the film intact. It didn't get snubbed in the 2012 Oscars for no reason, but it's a popcorn movie worth remembering. Here's hoping that Dawn of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes is just as refreshing.

TL;DR: Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a generic Hollywood blockbuster, but it's well-made enough to be a fun, slick time at the movies.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1004

Kim Jong Oops

Year: 2014

Director: Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen

Cast: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Randall Park

Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It is at this point obligatory to point out that it's obligatory to point out the controversy surrounding Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's new film The Interview. But all this hand-wringing will get us nowhere, so let's get right to it. Sony was hacked and theaters that premiered The Interview on Christmas day were threatened. You can read all about it in my article here. 

But after a swift backtrack (possibly having realized that thanks to the media coverage and first amendment-touting American audiences, they would make approximately a kerjillion percent more in box office than if the release were uneventful), Sony gave the film a limited release in a couple hundred indie theaters nationwide and allowed flag-hungry viewers to do their patriotic duty and purchase it via online streaming one day early. Everyone in the media and across the globe seems a little muddled about the ramifications of this decision, especially now that there's considerable evidence that North Korea might not have actually been directly involved. But let's just agree not to take anybody on the entire planet at their word at this point and look at the facts.

The Interview has been released. So far, nothing terrible has happened. And, from the physical evidence of the film itself I can conclusively say that if nuclear tensions arise from this decent but underwhelming comedy, then the world is in even worse shape than I thought. It was not wise of Sony to greenlight a film about the assassination of a currently standing leader, especially one as notoriously three-crayons-short as Kim Jong-un. Nor was it wise to release it on Christmas because seriously, who is programming these Christmas releases this year? American Sniper? Unbroken? I'm gagging on the gritty bioptastic jingoism.

But The Interview is a lark. It's just another frat comedy, using the background of a derelict regime to lend gravitas and irony to the parade of dick jokes.

In the measuring contest, the tank wins by a landslide.

As just about everyone in the solar system knows at this point, The Interview is about entertainment "journalist" Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his producer Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen), who are asked to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) when they score an exclusive interview with him. The two best buds see this as a way of pushing their careers forward, but when Kim and Dave form a fast friendship and Aaron falls head-over-heels for Sook (Diana Bang), a sexy propagandist, things get complicated.

And by "complicated," I mean "North Korean boner jokes." But I don't mean to devalue the film in its entirety. There are some genuinely decent moments of comedy and - it must be said - the dick jokes can be pretty great. As is to be expected by anyone who has been awake in the Anglosphere for more than five minutes, there are moments that tip into the less sensitive end of the spectrum, but the whiffs of misogyny, racism, and homophobia are not strong enough to be truly poisonous.

This is literally all we can ask in a movie where every female character (of which there are a mere two) is immediately treated as a source of erotic pleasure, even if they're in a position of power - say, a CIA agent or a high-ranking official of a militaristic dictatorship. Here's a little experiment - next time you have a female judge at a hearing (although - since you are reading this blog - I am certain that you are a peace-loving, law-abiding, respectable individual and won't find yourself in this situation), wolf whistle as loud as you can and follow that up with a nice "va-va-voom" or two. See where that gets you and send me a note in the comments.

Science is fun!

There are plenty of fun, non-execrable comic moments, especially in the first half hour (in which the film focuses more or less exclusively on incisive pop culture riffs rather than uneven political satire), but none will have you carted off to the E. R. for a busted gut. And they begin to peter out once the duo actually arrives in North Korea, which isn't as thoroughly represented as it could have been, either through shyness or lack of current information. Although the destitution of the country is mentioned many times, it is almost never seen. In a way it makes sense - it's easier to understand why Skylark would have trouble seeing the problem, and this is a comedy - not a documentary. But if we're going the political route, which a movie like this inevitably can't avoid, why not go all in?

This sort of gradual wearing out as the film goes along is present in the aesthetics as well as the comedy. In fact, the very first moments of the film are its absolute best, using color theory, framing, composition, and juxtaposition to establish the bleak atmosphere of North Korea as well as the fact that Dave Skylark is an ill-informed man-child whose program can't hold up to the likes of hard news. This is all accomplished swiftly and efficiently in the opening minute and a half, a level of cinematic prowess that swiftly vanishes, like the very last of our Christmas cookies before I woke up this morning, damn it!

But despite its drawn-out decline, The Interview is never less than pleasant, though it evaporates from the tongue as soon as it's tasted. Riding as it does on the backs of a gaggle of strong performances, it may be wobbly but it never falls down. James Franco isn't far from his usual schtick, but his act of character creation is more than meets the eye, with subtle, ingrained tackiness that draws some big laughs. Seth Rogen is consistent as always, but Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan (as the sexy Agent Lacey) are the real standouts in this parade of malfeasance.

That's right, smoke that victory cigar.

I have sung Park's praises again and again, but he outdoes himself as the little-seen despot, finding outrageous humor in Kim Jong-un's stunted personality, but simultaneously harnessing a raw power that breaks through his cuddly teddy bear persona and makes him a character to truly fear. Any actor could have coasted on the realities of the dictator's presence in the audience's subconscious, but Park goes above and beyond to menace and create a subtle, cunning villain that elevates the cheery comedy into something even remotely meaningful.

And although Lizzy Caplan's character is nothing but a flesh shell with a great rack, she brings a warmth and humanity to the role, grounding even the most ridiculous one-liners into a realistically human character despite her remarkably minuscule screen time. Without these four performers, The Interview would collapse like a despotic regime after the removal of its leader.

All in all, The Interview is a decent way to kill an hour and a half, but it's nothing to write home about. It's especially nothing to write to North Korea about. Its ill-handled release is a source of great turmoil in the industry at the moment, but as the waters settle, let's allow this film to become a footnote rather than define the moviegoing experience of 2014. It's really not memorable enough to deserve much more than that.

If you take one thing away from this movie, please let it be that Randall Park deserves more starring roles. Make it happen, America.

TL;DR: The Interview is a forgettable bro comedy driven by several terrific performances.
Rating: 6/10
Should I Spend Money On This? That's your call. If you want to do your part for 'Murca, you can rest assured that you'll be pretty safe in doing so. If you want to skip it, you won't miss much.
Word Count: 1312

Bropocalypse

Year: 2013

Director: Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen

Cast: Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, James Franco

Run Time: 1 hour 47 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

First, an apology for missing This Is the End when it was in theaters - due to reasons I've never been able to adequately comprehend, movie tickets cost money.

This is the first "End of the World" film from the relentlessly unwatchable and overwhelmingly nihilistic 2013 summer season and to my knowledge the only mainstream comedy (if not the only mainstream film in general) to deal with the Biblical Armageddon. Granted, it's Biblical Armageddon as experienced by a group of douchey comedy actors and viewed through a haze of pot smoke and dick jokes, but it's an interesting fact nonetheless.

Also to my knowledge, this is the only film in which the entire cast is playing themselves (albeit slightly fictionalized versions). This idea could almost certainly not exist in any other era, what with the mainstream media's increasingly microscopic coverage of the minutiae of the celebrity lifestyle. Thanks to Reality TV and TMZ (don't get me started), stars are more accessible to us. They have characters outside of their onscreen personas and they seem like they could be our friends. They are our friends.

It's hard to imagine Clark Gable or Audrey Hepburn being willing to take on a project like this (even without the dicks), but in today's world we have the ability to see what Anna Kendrick is having for breakfast. We can see Kim Kardashian's Christmas presents. We can visually explore the subtle daily shifts in Justin Bieber's abdominal body fat percentage. Why not make a movie like this?

Essentially, This Is the End is the apotheosis of meta. The period of postmodern cinematic recursion that didn't start with but reached highest visibility with the release of Scream, a film that thoroughly explored the concept that its characters were well aware that they were characters in a movie has reached its pinnacle. We've seen characters who know they're characters but what about characters that simply aren't characters at all?

Such a brilliantly weird high concept would almost certainly have ended up in a back drawer somewhere had it not been for the high profile cast attached to the project (and their willingness to take massive pay cuts). 

OK, so enough with the film theory BS. What about the actual movie?

It's.... OK.

The Bling Ring has gone way too far this time.

This Is the End is certainly funny, but it's funny like a California winter - mild and enjoyable, but you can't shake the feeling that it really should be something else.

The plot follows Jay Baruchel (Jay Baruchel, one of many Judd Apatow alums in the cast, having starred in Undeclared in 2001) on his first trip back to LA in some time. He's staying with his buddy Seth Rogen (Seth Rogen, who also co-wrote and co-directed) who suggests they hit up a party at James Franco(James Franco)'s new house in the Hollywood Hills despite Jay actively despising the whole scene and everyone there.

The party scene (one of the funniest scenes in the film) is a veritable avalanche of guest stars including Mindy Kaling, Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, a coked out Michael Cera, and scores of other good natured celebrities who gave up a weekend to help out with their friends' movie. It's really quite charming that none of the guests seem to be plugging themselves in any way, just appearing for the sake of how funny it is to see them die violently.

And boy do they. Immediately following the Rapture, a massive sinkhole opens up out front, swallowing fistfuls of celebrity partiers into the bowels of Hell. Michael Cera is impaled by a broken streetlight. Paul Rudd accidentally squishes a woman's head. It's really quite hilarious in a low fi CGI kind of way, although it seems more like a silly celebrity home video than an actual wide release motion picture (something which is true of essentially the entire movie).

Stars are nonchalantly chucked left and right without so much as a backwards glance. The only one who's actively mourned is Rihanna, a pop star whose preponderance of close-ups suggest that the filmmakers' passion for her rivals even Sergio's, a concept that is scientifically impossible.

As calculated by Einstein's Theory of Rihannativity.

The only survivors of the world's biggest party foul (besides a bedraggled Emma Watson who makes an extended cameo) are Jay, Seth, James, Craig Robinson (Craig Robinson), Jonah Hill (Jonah Hill), and Danny McBride (Danny McBride). And I hope I speak for more people than just me when I say who the hell is Danny McBride?

Against Jay's wishes, the six of them hole up in James Franco's palatial home to try and survive the siege of flames and sinkholes and poorly composited CGI monsters (the atrocious CGI is mostly forgivable here because the film in no way asks us to actually take the demonic threats seriously). The motley crew goes through the motions arguing over rations, forming alliances, and desperately trying to survive. Oh, also dancing to Gangnam Style (an already dated touch) and filming homemade sequels to Pineapple Express.

They also film reality TV-style confessionals that I choose to believe is part of the overarching parody of the Hollywood elite because they serve no actual purpose.

The bulk of the film takes place in this location and the comedy is mainly derived from watching these horrendously emotionally stunted individuals dealing with the apocalypse. The longer we spend in the house, however, the more grating the humor gets and by the time two of the men have a three minute shouting match about cum before another of them gets raped by a demon, I had long since checked out. By that point, the good bits had waned to the point of plateauing and the bad, sometimes unnecessarily offensive, abrasive bits had taken center stage.

The movie sags greatly in this middle half, but picks up again once our heroes are forced to exit the house after a truly hilarious exorcism scene, the best in the entire film. The final act of the movie is inconsequential but much less infuriating and thus a considerable success.

Also Emma Watson is the best.

For the most part, the actors are solid, the standout being Jonah Hill as a hilariously sycophantic toady and the worst being Danny McBride as all of the worst qualities of humanity rolled into one doughy ball.

And despite the infrequent truly hilarious scenes and the thankfully not overwhelmingly intolerable bad ones, there is a heart buried deep in there, the core story arc being Seth and Jay struggling to repair their  fizzling friendship. It's no Old Yeller, but it's more heartfelt than most of any of these actors' entire output put together.

Overall, This Is the End is breezy entertainment that deserves more laughs than cringes, especially considering the fact that it's essentially a silly celebrity YouTube video with a $30 million budget. 

Yes, that comes with its flaws, but such an idiosyncratic project should be embraced in today's cinematic climate. I mean a movie that contains a lengthy reference to The Exorcist and a fully choreographed Backstreet Boys performance within half an hour of each other is to be cherished. And though it isn't the crown jewel of comedy, such an eccentric little film is welcome in an age of bland blockbuster flops and endlessly manipulated, committee-mandated sequels. This Is the End is a fluke; a strange and mostly accidental byproduct of a waning studio system, but a charming one nonetheless.

TL;DR: This Is the End isn't exactly funny enough to earn its dizzyingly high concept, but it's a quirky and fun meta film.
Rating: 6/10
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