"About Last Night": About An Inch Short of Being Good

Now Available on DVD and Blu-Ray

I’m really tired of seeing Kevin Hart in movies.  I have yet to see him be likeable in anything, and this film is no exception.  He plays a loud, obnoxious asshole, and apparently some people think that’s funny, because he keeps getting work.  That said, the film seems to use Hart as an occasional vessel for a decent message about the functionality of relationships, and I was able to appreciate some of the lines his character delivered in one or two scenes.  However, I don’t think that saves this film.  It hovers right on the line between being a decent film and being a mildly unpleasant one, but I don’t think I’m inclined to recommend this flick.

There’s actually two concurrent storylines in this film that take place over the course of a year.  The less significant one deals with the evolving relationship between Bernie (Kevin Hart) and Joan (Regina Hall), which starts as purely sexual, then venomously spiteful, and then finally turns around to being a stable relationship.  Their seeming dysfunction is supposed to be the comedic center of the film, but if you’ve seen anything these two actors have ever been in, you can imagine that the humor revolves around shouting matches and insults, which get old fast.  The film spends most of the runtime with these two characters at each other’s throats, and when the two finally get back together at the end, it somehow simultaneously feels forced and predictable.  As I said before, Hart does deliver some good lines about how relationships aren’t perfect and how honest, open communication is the way to be with someone, but the film never shows his character exemplifying that behavior.  I appreciate the message the film tried to deliver through the Bernie/Joan relationship, but it rings a little hollow.

The other two characters are Bernie and Joan’s best friends, Danny and Debbie, who hook up, have amazing chemistry, then very quickly move in together, and then start building a life together that crashes down very quickly because they moved way too fast.  These two, portrayed by Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant respectively, are where the film’s true heart lies, and the performances these two give are great.  They aren’t the best communicators, and they’re both all too quick to attack each other’s flaws, but their chemistry feels genuine, and it’s easy to see that they would work well together if they would just stop assuming that everything in their relationship will be okay without any effort.  So yeah, they separate and it’s obvious that they are going to get back together at the end, but I do appreciate that the film’s final scenes are devoted to re-establishing a dialogue, rather than just reverting the two leads into being madly in love again.  

What I don’t appreciate is that the film fails to land any appreciable message about how to make relationships work.  The characters acknowledge their fault, but I wasn’t convinced that they had actually learned anything from their experiences.  Instead, the film’s message seems to be that true love will always prevail, which undermines the deeper message that lies just underneath the surface.  Maybe I just want this film to be more than it turned out to be, but there’s so much potential here to give the audience something thoughtful to ponder as the credits roll, and it never capitalizes on it.  It does better than a usual generic love story because the relationships, while flawed, are fairly realistic if not always healthy.  

Unfortunately, the film never fully addresses why the initial attempts at relationships failed in the first place, which seems to me to be the entire point.  There are worse romance films out there, but in light of reviewing both Her and In Your Eyes this past month, I can’t feel justified in recommending this one.

Know any films that falls short of hitting their thematic mark?  Tell me about them in the comments below.

"Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?": The Answer May Surprise You

Now Available On DVD and iTunes

I doubt many of you have heard about this movie.  Hell, I hadn’t until I noticed that this month’s DVD release schedule was looking a bit sparse.  Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? is a film about director Michel Gondry (probably best known for directing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) sitting down for a conversation with Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist and philosopher.  Gondry then hand-drew some animation to put over the conversation to provide some visual flair to what would otherwise just be footage of two men sitting in a room.  And really, that’s about it.

Writing about this film is turning out to be incredibly challenging, for I feel like the film is designed for a very niche audience of those interested in philosophy.  I’m pretty decently versed in philosophical concepts, as philosophy was my minor in college, but I wasn’t terribly familiar with Chomsky’s work or musings.  I found the film to be a pretty good primer on what he’s all about, though I’m sure I’d have gotten more out of it if I had done a bit of research on Chomsky before watching it.  Regardless, the conversation ranges from being autobiographical, to delving into the meanings of words in relation to our understanding of reality, to the understandable irrationality of faith, as well as various other reflections.  Gondry sometimes interjects with a narration that helps to break down some of the headier concepts, which is appreciated if this is to be taken as an introduction to Chomsky’s work.

However, I felt that Gondry, strangely enough, was the part of the film that most hurt its quality.  Gondry’s interjections, while sometimes helpful, are most often used to demonstrate that he is not on equal intellectual footing with Chomsky, basically letting the audience know that he may look like an idiot over the course of the talk, but that’s only because Chomsky is so smart.  The thing is, that’s just a way for Gondry to save his ego from being hurt and is completely unnecessary.  Chomsky wouldn’t have the reputation he has if he didn’t exhibit an intense amount of intelligence; it’s just that obvious.  We don’t need Gondry constantly reverting attention back to himself, because he’s not the point of the film.  It seems bizarre that the director of such a simple premise could mess it up in favor of his own egotism, but there it is.

As for the animation itself, I really can’t say much for it.  Gondry seems to have done most of the animation himself, which is why the film took three years to produce after the original interviews.  The drawings are crude and the animation methods and looping aren’t at all disguised.  I don’t really see a purpose to these drawings except, at best, to give us something to look at for what could otherwise be a podcast, and at worst, to give Gondry an excuse to show the world his doodles.  At the end of the day, they don’t really affect the experience one way or the other.

So, do I recommend Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?  Well, I think the review speaks for itself.  This is obviously not a film for everyone, and it is definitely not something meant for casual viewing.  If you have an interest in philosophy and linguistics and don’t mind a somewhat *cough* pretentious director, then you may find something here you can enjoy.  If you’re anyone else, well, this is one you can pass up.  Personally, I liked what I saw and don’t regret watching it, but it didn’t inspire me to admire Chomsky as much as I think Gondry would have liked.  But I got eighty minutes of mental exercise, and that’s about all I can ask for.

Do you have any opinions on Noam Chomsky?  How about strange documentaries or interview pieces?  Or is this the type of film I should never review again because none of you could care less?  Leave a comment below!

"The Monuments Men": A Monument to Mediocrity

Now Available on DVD and Blu-Ray

I really liked the idea of this movie.  The trailer made it seem like Ocean’s 11, but with a set of great, aging actors, and set in World War II.  It seemed like it would be a fun ride, probably with a few anti-war undertones to it.  I wasn’t expecting anything amazing, but I was expecting something coherent.  Unfortunately, that’s not what we have here.  Director George Clooney definitely has his heart in the right place, but unfortunately, he makes some pretty big mistakes in bringing his pet project to the big screen.

During World War II, an art collector named Frank Stokes (Clooney) pitches to the U.S. government that the Nazis are stealing or destroying Europe’s great works of art, and that the government should send in a group of art experts to ensure this art’s protection.  Stout brings together an all-star cast to hunt down these works of art, including John Goodman, Matt Damon, Hugh Bonneville (of Downton Abbey), and Bill Murray.  You may have noticed that I haven’t bothered to list the names of the characters each of these actors play, and that’s because calling them characters is a bit of a stretch.  The film does a great job of composing scenes that should give us insight into these characters and make us care about them, but it also barely makes the effort to establish the characters well enough to make the audience care.  This is particularly emphasized when the characters split up to different European cities and their interactions with one another are limited.  I didn’t remember anyone’s name or any defining characteristics about them because the film didn’t bother to take the time to introduce anyone.  Instead, it lazily relies on the identifiable faces of the actors, which is a real shame because if the actors had been allowed the chance to really build these characters, this could have been a great ensemble movie.

What this film really lacks is structure.  The individual scenes are very well directed, and the actors do a good job with what they’re given, but looking at the larger picture, everything feels so disjointed.  The film will often spend a few minutes on an amusing, but ultimately inconsequential scene, then cut to an equal inconsequential scene with different characters.  There isn’t much of an act structure to this film other than a bunch of guys wandering around Europe, looking for stolen art, and occasionally getting shot at.  There are a couple of death scenes that in a more cohesive film would have been heartbreaking, but here they come off as cheap attempts to pull at its audience’s heartstrings.  The film does get its act together a little bit toward the end for a phoned-in climax, but by that point I just wanted the credits to roll.

You can tell that George Clooney really cared about telling this story.  His various monologues that he speaks from a script that he wrote are evidence enough.  However, I don’t think he should have been sitting in the director’s chair if he wanted this telling to be successful.  He seems to know how to make an individual scene work, but he doesn’t seem to know how to make the important establishing pieces stand out or even exist in the first place.  And for that reason, despite the good performances and interesting premise, I can’t recommend this film.  There’s just nothing substantial enough to outweigh its faults.

Have a favorite George Clooney film?  Let me know in the comments.