The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - ISSTBN Marathon Reviews In Brief
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
|
11:15 am
[Link] |
ISSTBN Marathon Reviews In Brief
We held one of our periodic I-Shoulda-Seen-That-By-Now Movie Marathons this Sunday, where we all get together and see movies that really, we should have seen at this point in our lives. The ISSTBNs usually are grief-fests, where we haul out Schindler's List and all the other weepy dramas that we couldn't get around to... But this time, as if by magic, it was the comedy-centered ISSBTN. Weird.
Reviews in brief follow.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aiela had not seen, I had)
bec76 hated 40-Year-Old Virgin because it was "a comedy of pain," and weirdly enough I both disagree and agree with her. There is a lot of pain and awkwardness in Virgin, as Steve Carell is shoved into getting laid when what he wants to do is fall in love.... But the heart of it is that the side characters are genuinely trying to help him, in their own stupid ways.
I've been trying to elucidate why this is the greatest of the Apatow comedies, and what it comes down to is that this is the only Apatow yokfest where the lead character is smarter than the supporting cast. Andy is naive, yes, and scared of the world - but unlike, say, Seth Rogan in Knocked Up or anyone in Superbad, his instincts are actually good, and what he wants to do most of the time is, actually, the correct course.
It's about a man learning to shed his fear of not just sex, but other people, and that's why it works. In the end, it's transcendent because the pain led to something.
Also? It's funny as shit. People kept giggling the entire time.
Shaft (khiron1416 had seen, I had)
In the 1970s, we didn't need action. It was enough to have surly men in a room, growing at each other threateningly for ten minutes' worth of tedious dialogue, and then maybe there'd be a two-minute fight. Then twenty minutes of posturing.
For a man who's supposed to be a badass, these days Shaft seems positively loquacious compared to the action heroes of later days. I kept thinking, "Just shut the fuck up and punch someone, Shaft." And if it wasn't for that awesome theme song - you know what I'm talkin' bout - I doubt anyone would remember this.
Was this a genuinely good action film by 1970s standards? Or was the black community that hard up for a hero in the 1970s that this looked good regardless? In any case, I know I'll get shit for this, but without the tint of our handy-dandy rose-colored backwards-goggles of nostalgia, this takes forever to get to the action and the action itself is kinda lame.
Casino Royale (gieves had not seen, I had)
Here's the deal: I loved Casino Royale, because it was an origin story. And it was intriguing, watching this alternate take on Bond as a thug learning to be cool, someone talented and smart but not refined.
But if Quantum of Solance features more Angst-o-Bond, then they've fucked up. We have Angst-o-Bond; it's called "The Bourne Series," and they're very well done in their own right, thank you. The whole point of James Bond The Movie is that James is supposed to have a good time - it's how we live vicariously. When he fucks some beautiful woman and has her beg for more, that's us at the helm. When he gambles and wins and loves it, we love it. When he shoots a guy and feels the thrill of victory, we're there.
If the new Bond is going to weep with a killer's tears every third minute, then eventually we're going to get bored. Emo Bond is fun for a movie or two, and can even be compelling, but this new Bond isn't going to last for twenty movies. After the fourth one, we're going to be like, "Man, will he just take some Wellbutrin and shoot some poor bastard without moaning about it?"
Get Smart (I had not seen)
Stretching the boundaries of "What I should have seen," I rented this and practically no one else had seen it, so we all settled down. And it was better than I thought it would be.
See, in a lot of ways, Get Smart is the standard sloppy summer comedy; loose characterization, a plot that ambles (which is made painfully obvious when the jokes fall flat), and oh the predictability. (There are five agents. One of them is a mole. Gosh, take out Agent 99 and Max, who you know will be returning for the sequel, and discount the obvious team of jerks, and who's left to go?)
But what saves Get Smart is Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart.
Maxwell Smart is, well, smart. He does dumb things because he's not particularly experienced, and he is unbelievably unlucky... But in the movie, the slapstick doofs are punctuated with moments where you can see a James Bond peeking out from behind that rumpled exterior. He does genuinely clever things, so he's an underdog you can root for - he'll screw up twice, but that third time he'll come through and come through big. And unlike the old Maxwell Smart, he genuinely believes the best in people.
Roger Ebert said that Get Smart out-Bonded Bond. That's not true. The action sequences are exciting, but Bond-quality is a high mark that this movie does not reach. But it is a character I want to follow into another movie; Maxwell Smart evolves in this one, turning from joke into an agent who lucked out, and when the sequel arrives I hope that they still let Smart be smart.
The Aristocrats (bec76 had not seen, and neither had I)
The joke is tedious: A family walks into an agent's office. "What's your act?" he says.
The family does horrific stuff that the joke-teller makes up on the spot - an awful act that usually involves feces, incest, and bestiality.
"That's quite an act," the agent says. "What do you call yourselves?"
"The Aristocrats," the father says proudly.
I didn't want to see the movie because, well, the joke is lame, and I couldn't imagine seventy-five comedians telling it in a row would be anything but monotonous. But the good news is that the film knows the joke is terrible, and hence concentrates on the variations on the joke - how each comedian brings their own magic to it, what kinds of jokes people tell, the variations and back-flips and meta-references to the joke, and the community associated with it.
Don't get me wrong - it's funny as shit. Or perhaps funny because of the shit. But the documentary works because it keeps coming at you from every angle, and just when you think you've seen every Aristocrats possible, there's a juggling version or a mime or a perfectly clean version of it. And as such, the continual surprise factor keeps you going through it. It does get a little tedious near the end, but not so much that I felt the urge to go.
|
|
| |
I loved the Aristocrats and yeah the joke is lame (though, for some reason, I like the joke when the Southpark kids do it.)
But, the movie is amazing. I look at it as more of a documentary about how comics relate to each other than a movie about the joke itself. And the Bob Sagat section is creepy in a perfect way.
The most interesting thing to me is how the British comedians seem completely unable to tell the joke at all, even though they try.
Also, the scene where the dude is telling the joke while holding his baby is awesomely weird.
Also, my favorite version is when the joke itself is clean but then the punchline after "What do you call yourselves" is "The cock sucking motherfuckers."
My favorite part was Drew Carey (I don't put those words together often) doing his little flourish, and the cuts to various other comedians saying "Drew Carey likes to add a little flourish: 'The Aristocrats!'" as well as his explaining that you can totally mess it up by slipping and saying 'The Aristocats!'" Like the joke, the movie's not about the punchline.
I can get my mom with it occasionally. When I rented the video, I told her a long convoluted story (kept clean-ish because the kid was in the room) about how someone had brought their dog in and the dog had actually swallowed a DVD from one of the shelves, huuuge dog, and the guy began hitting it on the back and finally the DVD came back up, and do you know what it was called (I did a Drew Carey-like flourish with the DVD box before I knew it WAS Drew Carey-like flourish.).
Also, there's a manufacturer of trailer and campers called "Aristocrat," and I can't help but wonder what goes on in the back of the one parked in my neighborhood.
I loved the mime version. And the South Park version. And yes, it works because it's about comedians, and how they tell jokes.
I must get around to Get Smart.
The South Park version, weirdly enough, worked because of one thing: Cartman's continual reassurances to "Hold on, Kyle." As if this was gonna be something really fuckin' amazing when we get there, and we know damn well that it's not.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/88044190/208448) | | From: | aiela |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 04:41 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I generally do not like "uncomfortable comedies" where I am constantly feeling sorry for the main character because the whole plot seems to be an attempt to make the lead character miserable.
However, T40YOV worked because of a lot of what you've already said. They were doing things and putting himself in uncomfortable positions, but he constantly rose above it and you could tell he knew they were wrong. It wasn't a stream of the main character being sent into horrible prediciments, it was the main character being encouraged to do something, trying it, and then going "Um, WTF, no!"
I was telling a coworker about the marathon and she said "Yeah, I got about ten minutes into it and it was way too raunchy for me", which I can see, based on her personality, and I said that yeah, it was, which is why it surprised me how tender and sweet it ended up being, in the long run.
(And jesus christ, the scene with the teenager screaming about birth control scared the PANTS off of mother-of-a-14-year-old me. Ugh! :P)
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/67288234/8784671) | | From: | scarfman |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 11:57 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I think of "uncomfortable comedies" as nightmare comedy. Risky Business is another good example, but the Platonic ideal of nightmare comedy is One Froggy Evening.
If you haven't seen this, I'd recommend "The Fog of War," which is about Robert McNamara. Most of it is actually his account of his experiences as Sec. of Defense. Pretty interesting, actually.
Also from this weekend, "Inherit the Wind" from 1960 based on the Scopes trial and "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" with Simon Pegg.
Fog of War was my other choice. Seemed a little heavy for the room, though, at the time.
Well, actually, I wanted Hoop Dreams, but they didn't have it.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/90095755/123863) | | From: | onceupon |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 04:50 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
40-Year-Old-Virgin totally surprised me. I avoided it like the plague because I have such an uncomfortable physical reaction to watching those pain-based comedies. For example, I cannot watch Meet the Parents. Just can't do it. I HURT for him, for all of them.
But 40-Year-Old-Virgin has this gentle heart - the friends genuinely care about each other and Andy is struggling through stuff as honestly as he can. I am so glad I saw this movie - it IS funny but even when the joke is at someone's expense, we're laughing with the characters.
I agree. It's uncomfortable but it's not mean, and you watch what's going on at the character-eye-view rather than from a distance.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/68370701/541199) | | From: | robyn_ma |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 04:54 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Is there any geek who doesn't die a little when Carell sells all his action figures, though?
I realize it's time for him to put away childish things and all, but that collection was awesome.
I actually hated that scene, but I realized it was because he was being forced into it and it made me all squirmy. When he gave it up voluntarily later, it worked for me.
Spoilers for Get Smart'n crap.
The thing I loved about Carell as Maxwell Smart is the overwhelming sense of competence.
Yeah, Max is clumsy. Yeah, he has no field experience, and that causes some issues to crop up. And yeah, he's obsessive and anal-retentive and makes overwhelmingly detailed reports. But he's an analyst, and he approaches the world of superspydom as an analyst. He makes connections. He has intuitive leaps. He recognizes what comfort food means to a person and he was able to reduce an enemy operative to tears.
And beyond that, he is far, far more empathic than Don Adams ever was. Adams's Maxwell Smart was utterly clueless about the world, but he had 12d6 Luck and 3d6 Unluck and that saw him through. Carell's Maxwell Smart understands people, and his deepest fear is that he'll regain the weight he lost.
You mentioned that he didn't really out-Bond Bond, and that's true. But in exactly the way you mentioned, he exceeded the Bond of Casino Royale. Traditionally, James Bond is the man we all want to be, living through his adventures vicariously.
Maxwell Smart, as embodied by Steve Carell, is the heroic spy we all want to become, and it's all the more plausible because he started just like us -- vaguely Aspy and detail-obsessive, geeky and overweight, but in the end... well, smart.
Just my two cents.
I actually teared up at that scene where he talks the agent down, because he puts down his gun. He has the ability to hurt the guy, maybe take him down (he is ludicrously tough, after all) - but what's important to Maxwell Smart in that moment is that he has to save this guy's marriage.
And that simple scene of humanity is everything that Maxwell Smart oughtta be. That was the moment where I said, "Okay, Don Adams was good, but I want this." Because there isn't enough of that simple need for human connection and decency.
Aristocrats was shocking to me in that Gilbert Gottfried was funnier than Eddie Izzard.
Not to me. I love Gilbert and think that Eddie is vastly overrated.
I know, I know.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/41228609/6490) | | From: | nuala |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 05:43 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I saw Get Smart on the flight to the States this last visit. And ya know what? I thought the same thing. It was way better than I thought it would be. And Steve Carell wins it for me, hands down.
I liked the Aristocrats, but I was disappointed that Jon Stewart refused to tell the joke.
I thought The Aristocrats. James nearly needed medical attention. The Gilbert Gottfried bit about "Now you may be wondering 'Where did all the blood come from?' made him laugh so hard and long I had to shut to movie off for several minutes and wait for him to stop turning purple.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/7448451/1366673) | | From: | anivair |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 06:14 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
likewise. I gained a whole new respect for Godfried because of that movie.
| | From: | anivair |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 06:09 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
bond: I don't mind angsty bond now. Bear in mind that what we're looking at is a reset. How do you get from a human being to a guy who can kill, fuck, and gamble with a smile of his face all the while manipulating and backstabbing without any remorse or the slightest change in hairstyle?
Clearly, you get there by breaking him first. And that's what they're doing. I like it as a transformation.
We'll see. Movies in series are not well-known for bringing the characters through complex transformations, so you're assuming something that's traditionally been a weakness of franchise films.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/25285903/528487) | | From: | lordkiev |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 06:41 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Casino Royale needed less poker. I get that it's a poker subsection for people that aren't interested in poker, but talk about boring. I can go out and play poker; I want to see Bond doing the things I can't do.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/73947401/440417) | | From: | jenk |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 08:44 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
What had me rolling my eyes was all the explanations about poker. Dude, if you were going to waste screen time explaining the game, you could've stuck with Baccarat.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/60874700/8361854) | | From: | pentane |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 07:40 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
As for the pacing of Shaft, compare Enter The Dragon to, say, anything with Jet Li in it.
Agreed with you on Shaft, but I think that part of the problem was that in the 70's the action standards weren't what they are today. Another film that promises a lot but is actually pretty lame is Bullitt.
Ditto. Saw that recently as well, same thing.
I dunno, man. Wonder what people thirty years from now will think of our films.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/74509707/18840) | | From: | amurana |
|---|
| Date: | November 10th, 2008 11:48 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I got to see the Aristocrats in a painfully arts-picture-house type place. You sit at little tables and have menus and everything. It was SO FITTING.
I loved it. Thanks for reminding me!
I was afraid to see Get Smart because I used to love watching the show on Nick at Night. It's good to know Smart comes through okay. ^_^
I was afraid for the same reason; it was too easy to imagine them screwing up the movie by making it resemble the show in the wrong ways, but thankfully they changed just the right parts.
It's more enjoyable, though, if you're a fan of the show than if you're not. Mmm, in-jokes.
| | From: | scarfman |
|---|
| Date: | November 11th, 2008 12:06 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
My favorite in The Aristocrats was Chuck McCann. I don't remember why now, but I remember deciding then. It's all in the delivery.
Which one was he? I'm trying to remember who Chuck McCann was and why it might have been good.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/45379176/1706897) | | | George W. Bush's farewell address | (Link) |
|
On January 20th 2009, George W. Bush is set to give his farewell address. He ascends the podium.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he says and spreads his hands.
Cameras snap and glitter.
"The Aristocrats!"
With nothing more to add, Mr. Bush takes questions.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/2866866/711176) | | From: | theferrett |
|---|
| Date: | November 11th, 2008 02:44 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | Re: George W. Bush's farewell address | (Link) |
|
FLAWLESS VICTORY.
I refuse to watch "The Aristocrats" because I hate raunchy shock humor.
I found "Get Smart" really enjoyable.
"Casino Royale" was a pleasant change from campy!Bond to serious/semi-realistic!Bond. Thought the "Return of the King"-esk endless series of endings was annoying. Then again, I've never lived vicariously through Bond because I have no love of flashy cars, hate tuxedos, and have no desire to shag random hot women...
...which segues perfectly into "The 40 Year Old Virgin". Judd Aptow's movies don't really appeal to me and "Get Smart" was the only time I liked Steve Carrell. But as if that wasn't enough, as a 27 year old virgin watching that movie would probably just make me glad I don't have friends who are trying to 'help' me get laid...
I love everything Steve Carrell touches (except for Evan Almighty)..and what I love about 40-year-old Virgin is that unlike all the other Apatow leads...Carrell's character is someone I'd actually really like to be with, not "oh, he's cuddly enough, I'm sure he'll stop being a gross jerk when his friends aren't around". I will say that the "unrated DVD" added a lot more gross and left me feeling a lot less love.
The first time I saw Get Smart I liked it a lot, I liked it less the second time....
Have you seen "Dan in Real Life"? |
|
