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Ollie Trinkie (Affleck) is a high-falutin’ Publicist in the music industry. He’s the best according to some. He’s living an enviable life, making fat cash and is married to a lovely woman named Gertrude (Lopez). Gertrude is pregnant with their first child and Ollie is having a hard time dealing with this as he puts his career first. Things take a complicated turn when Gertrude dies while giving birth to their new daughter. Trying to be a Publicist and a father and not doing well at either, he publicly loses his job, rather comically, and ends up back in New Jersey living with his father (National treasure, George Carlin) and young daughter. He ends up working a menial job as his name in New York is now infamous and soiled. With his priorities now questioned, will Ollie be able to settle down to a simpler life or will his itch to get back in the game of publicity get the best of him?
Okay, so it’s a rather trite premise. There are several clichés that pop up throughout the film that normally would make you roll your eyes, unless your tears are easily jerked. However, there is one ace in the hand for this film: It’s written and directed by Kevin Smith. Oh glory be and hail Kevin Smith!!! Smith certainly knows how to turn a phrase and say the things that we always wanted to say but could never put them into words. This is his gift and he displays it well in this film. I haven’t laughed at a film this hard since Old School and the great thing is that they are two vastly different films. What’s so funny about it? If you have seen any of Smith’s films, you know that it’s tough to nail down everything that’s funny about the film. Let’s put it this way: This is Smith’s first mainstream film that plays to a much wider audience than his previous efforts. Take Smith’s biting humor, tone down the language and slip it effortlessly into a PG-13, romantic comedy and…there you go.
The casting is also spectacular. First of all, you have Lopez, who dies around the 15 minute mark. That’s BRILLIANT casting in itself! In all seriousness, she and Affleck showed more promise and chemistry as an on-screen couple in that 15 minutes than they showed throughout the unbearable two hours of Gigli. Yes, I saw it and let’s never discuss it again. Affleck is back to acting again (see Good Will Hunting and Chasing Amy, another Smith film, for details), which is welcome. He does it well and carries the film like a champ. Raquel Castro is Gertie, the nine-year old sweetheart that plays the daughter of Ollie. She’s a fantastic young actress who really gets under your skin in a positive way. She really steals the film, even snagging scenes from Affleck. For her first film, she acts as if she has starred since birth. Carlin shows impressive range in this film as he delves into a more dramatic role than we are used to from him. He’s a joy to watch, as is Liv Tyler. Tyler plays an outgoing, naïve video store clerk and student who embarrassingly Waltzes her way into Ollie’s life. Her character is so funny and sweet, as she is deeply good natured, but her out-going side and her knack for sticking her foot in her mouth keeps her on the outside looking in. You can’t help but root for her though.
Call me an old softy, but I really enjoyed this film and fell for it despite its shortcomings and predictability. I believe that if you can’t sit back and laugh at a well written film with loveable characters no matter the premise of the film then you may as well stay home. *** ½
The Ladykillers
The Coen Brothers strike again with The Ladykillers, a farce starring Tom Hanks about a heist gone terribly wrong. Is this plot similar to other Coen films? You bet. Does that take away from the fun? Hell no!
Hanks plays Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, G.H. for short, a blowhard convict with more book smarts than common sense. G.H. happens upon the door of Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), a widowed, bible toting senior citizen with a dirt wall basement that just so happens to be adjacent to the office vault of a casino. G.H. poses as a “just passin’ thru” musician who rents a room from Marva and convinces her to let and him and his “band” rehearse their music in her basement. Of course, there is no music to rehearse, just a hole to dig.
The “band” consists of the usual Coen approved eccentric characters such as the ghetto fabulous Gawain McSam (Marlon Wayans), a custodian for the casino with Mommy issues, Garth Pancake (JK Simmons), a nature/explosives expert with a wife named “Mountain Girl” and Irritable Bowel Syndrome, the General (Tzi Ma), a chain-smoking brute cut from the Chairman Mao cloth, and Lump Hudson (Ryan Hurst), a knuckle-dragging college football player meant to be the group’s pack mule. When Marva begins to grow suspicious of their basement doings, the downward spiral commences.
Again, the Coen’s seem to be stuck on the theme of schemes going wrong. Whether it’s William H. Macy botching his wife’s kidnapping in Fargo, Nicolas Cage’s child abduction backfiring in Raising Arizona or Tara Reid faking her own kidnapping in The Big Lebowski…okay it appears as if they have a thing for kidnapping as well…the Coen’s seem to be pigeonholing themselves creatively. They seem to revel in showcasing the evil that men do and the stupidity that often accompanies it. That’s all well and good, but perhaps it’s time to branch out?
That being said, I still enjoyed this film thoroughly. Much like Kevin Smith, their writing is superb and smart and is always the star of the show. The characters were also enjoyable as Hanks returned to one of the goofy roles that originally made him a star. And Irma P. Hall will likely be remembered at Oscar time next year for her ideal casting in this film. An overall great film, though I felt like I had seen it before. ***
Shattered Glass – DVD Review
In the mid-90’s, a young writer for the political magazine The New Republic, “the in-flight magazine of Air Force One”, brought to its pages some very interesting and compelling stories. Many were a bit outlandish and seemed too good to be true. He received much acclaim, was respected and loved by his peers and was seen as something of a visionary…that is until it was discovered that his stories were fabrications that didn’t come from reality but from his vivid imagination. Hayden Christensen plays Stephen Glass in the true story of one writer’s rise and fall, Shattered Glass.
Glass’s stories ranged from young Republicans getting trashed in hotel rooms after a Republican convention and harassing young women to a hacker that was so good at breaking into million dollar companies hard drives that he’s hired by one to be their computer security specialist even though he’s just a teenager. It’s not until an Internet magazine columnist, Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn), does some extensive fact-checking on the hacker piece that he begins to discover some crater sized holes in Glass’s work. An increasingly paranoid Glass begins to come unhinged as he’s suddenly under fire from the Internet magazine as well as his own publisher.
What a fantastic film. The tension that develops when Glass is being discovered as a fraud is so thick you could cut it with a knife. And Glass is not a sympathetic character at all. He’s a whiny, pandering little brown nose and his demise is worth waiting for. Christensen plays him well, as he seems to have the market cornered on playing whiny characters (Star Wars Episodes I & II, Life as a House). There are also great turns by Zahn (who is really a great actor who has mired his career by playing silly comedic characters in mediocre movies as of late), Chloe Sevigny as the copy editor who acts as a big sister to Glass, and Hank Azaria and Peter Saarsgard as the former and current editors, respectively, who watch Glass spin slowly out of control while on their watches. Great acting all around.
This is such a fascinating look at the life of a troubled soul who desperately wanted to make a dent in the world of journalism but didn’t have the chops to do it legitimately. A must-see. ****
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