This is it – pretty much the last of the summer’s big movies to be released. And I’m hearing much of what I heard last summer- “is that it?” There’s no “buzz” movies- the ones people tell you “you just have to see”. We’ve been through “Pearl Harbor” and “A.I.” and “Cats and Dogs” and just last week, “America’s Sweethearts”, and, still, I hear nothing about any of these movies once they’re released.
Now all hope is gone for this summer because I don’t think we’ll hear much about “Planet of The Apes” beyond this next week or so. Mark Wahlberg (don’t call him “Marky Mark”) takes the Charlton Heston role from the original, playing a U.S. Air Force guy by the name of Leo. He’s left stranded on “The Planet of The Apes”. But the similarity very much ends there. They tried awful hard not to do a simple remake of the original, and on that count they succeeded. Yes, Leo leads the humans in an uprising against the apes, and, yes, he gets help from a sympathetic chimp named Ari, played by Helena Bonham Carter. They’re up against a cruel ape general named Thade, played by Tim Roth, and his right hand “ape” called Attar, played by Michael Clarke Duncan. But I won’t say much else about the story because there are some pretty big twists coming. I will tell you I figured one out, but the other didn’t occur to me until right before it happened. I’m a little ticked off at the ending though, because as with “Jurassic Park III” last week, I felt set-up for a sequel. But I do think these twists do barely save this movie from my rating wrecking pile. The problem with this movie appears twofold. First, the premise of a planet ruled by apes years into the future is now not a new one. The preaching over man’s inhumanity towards ape and the parallels with our society’s treatment of blacks not that many years back seems dated now. Since the original movie came out in the 1960’s, we’ve had many far better depictions of the cruelty(movies like “Roots”). I think they saw this coming and attempted to crank up the humor and campiness here. Tim Roth’s ape character is a very over-the-top performance. He hisses, he grunts, he swings from tree to tree. Nice touch but it can’t make up for the sameness of this movie, which just takes us from chase scene to chase scene as Leo tries to flee from the ape guys over and over again. And I can’t say this was one of Wahlberg’s better performances. He’s kind of dull in the role and his back Boston accent starts to sound silly after a while. I think the other problem here is the PG-13 rating. The violence and action scenes are squelched to the point where most of this movie plays out like a TV movie. I’ve heard some call it nothing more than a “Star Trek” episode with Leo as Captain Kirk and it does seem that way sometimes. The make-up and costumes are great though. All in all, “Planet of The Apes” is not up to my standards of a great summer movie, but you could do worse. People I’ve talked to mostly mention “Shrek” and “Moulin Rouge” as summer movies they went out of their way to see. Who could have predicted that? I give “Planet of The Apes” a 6.0 on the 1 to 10 scale.Saturday, July 21st, 2001
What a cast, what a cast, what a cast. And what a shame, what a shame, what a shame. Catherine Zeta-Jones Douglas, Julia Roberts, John Cusack and Billy Crystal are the foursome which try to bring us this summer’s madcap romantic comedy. And try as they might, they fail miserably.
This movie has Billy Crystal written all over it. That may be because he co-wrote it. But even in scenes he does not appear in, I could feel his presence in the words the other characters were speaking. It’s that “Borscht Belt”, Catskills kind of comedy which should really only be delivered by Billy or maybe a Mel Brooks. Which is why the first fifteen minutes of the movie are pretty funny. It’s mostly Billy setting up the story and bringing us some laughs. It’s only ruined by the presence of that lizard Larry King, but enough about him.
Billy plays a publicist for a movie studio, but he’s just been fired. He can get his job back if he can save the studio’s latest release. Pretty soon after this you’ll wonder why he would want that job back. The movie in peril stars Gwen and Eddie, played by Zeta-Jones and Cusack. They are an on-screen and off-screen couple, having made about nine successful movies together. But she has run off with a guy named Hector, played by Hank Azaria. This has ruined the marriage and possibly this new movie, so it’s up to Billy to try and bring them together at least until the movie opens.
It isn’t long into this movie when I realized how dreadful these characters were and how much I hated them. First there’s Hector, played by Azaria. He plays Hector with that now completely unfunny “Ricky Ricardo” touch. Most of the humor here revolves around Hector’s mispronouncing words which contain the letters “h” and “j”. So that “junket” is pronounced “hunket”. Funny, yes? If you saw the movie “Birdcage” in which Azaria plays the gay couple’s houseboy, you already know this character. Mildly amusing then, completely not amusing now. But this gets worse. I thought about walking out the longer I had to see the Zeta-Jones and Cusack characters. Gwen is the over-the-top pampered movie star, whining through every scene. The joke is, “everything is about me, me, me”. That got old, really old. Eddie is the pill- popping mental patient, completely torn up by Gwen’s dumping him. Funny for about five minutes, very tiring the rest of the way.
It’s left to Julia Roberts to save this movie and it didn’t happen. She plays Kiki, Gwen’s sister and personal assistant. It took me a while to figure out they were sisters, and you know why? Because I didn’t care! Anyway, Kiki is the old ugly duckling turned into the swan story. She’s Cinderella with Gwen being the evil step-sister. The beauty in the backround who puts up with her sister’s every demand. We have to wait and wait and wait until she finally fights back. Tiring, very tiring. You will get to see Julia in the fat suit though. It’s the new hip thing to do – put the thin starlet in the fat suit (Monica on “Friends”). Not enough to save this stinker though.
What does help is Crystal and a special surprise character played by Christopher Walken. He’s the director of the Gwen and Eddie movie, and too bad he only shows up at the beginning and the end. As usual, Walken plays a nutball, a kind of a Unabomber guy whose movie turns out to be a behind the scenes look at Eddie and Gwen and Kiki in sort of a candid camera deal. Which was perfect, because at about this point I was wondering how much longer are people going to shell out ten bucks for drivel like this before the “Survivor” craze which bumped many bad sitcoms off of television, starts bumping bad movies like this off of the movie screen. Can’t you see it- “Survivor:The Movie”. “America’s Sweethearts” tried too hard to satirize the phoniness of Hollywood. We know all about it already. How about being a little more subtle? I give it a “4.0” on the scale.
Saturday, July 14th, 2001
The summer of sequels picks up again and the general rule is no sequel is ever as good as the original or makes as much money as the first one. Sadly, this one is no exception to the rule. It may make matters worse that it follows the original by only one year. What was fresh and over the top last summer is old news now.
Here’s the good news – this thing is only seventy-five minutes long and you hardly have time to notice how bad it is. Well, actually you do. I did laugh though. Out loud at several points. Just not often enough.
There’s no story here. Is there supposed to be? Each scene is just a set-up to some poop, vomit or other bodily fluid joke. The story this time puts the young people in a haunted house, supposedly the same one in which Satan possessed a young girl. In fact, the movie opens with an “Exorcist” spoof that best illustrates what is good and bad about this movie. It’s got the two priests and the possessed girl and lots of urine, poop and vomit flies around. And I’m a guy- I love jokes about poop and vomit. But how long do you want to see James Woods sitting on a toilet ripping and grunting? It’s like this – guys do like to gross each other and can sit around for a while doing just that. But as the basis for a movie and the second one in just a year? I don’t think so.
I guess I’m just a purist. Movies have to eventually be about something and even if it’s a comedy, have some kind of a point. Take Chris Elliott’s part in the movie. He plays the caretaker of the haunted house and the joke here is that he has a tiny mangled hand. And ,yes, it’s funny when he serves up a delicious turkey dinner by running that mangled hand through everyone’s food. But this goes on through something like five different dishes. Of course, I was about the only left laughing when he molests the turkey by reaching inside for the stuffing and he gets all hot and bothered over it. Something about the “stinkhole” just set me off.
Believe me, you talk about breaking new ground in the movie “gross out” scene business, this movie does it. My mouth hung wide open, the stuff I saw up there on the screen. Wait till you get a load of that foul- mouthed talking bird! And the disabled jokes. What is it with the Wayans brothers and the disabled? Not only is there the Chris Elliott mangled hand spoof, but we also treated to a guy in a wheelchair who spends most of the movie saying “I can do it myself”. Again, funny at first, not so funny about the fifth time you hear it. Give the Wayans brothers credit for kicking the politically correct movement in the teeth, but it all just doesn’t stand up long enough.
I think if the gross out stuff had been used a bit more sparingly and some other dumb horror movie humor had been written in, this one might have been more memorable. After all, they did go beyond the scary movies this time including spoofs of “Survivor”, “Emeril Lagasse”, “The Weakest Link” and “Titanic” just to name off a few. But if you blink, you’ll probably miss those. You’ll only remember the poop and vomit and sex jokes. Which is ultimately like overhearing a group of dumb guys in a bar who have had way too much to drink. It’s amusing for about twenty minutes, then it all gets old real quick. “Scary Movie 2” gets a “5.0” from me.
Saturday, July 7th, 2001
Seeing this movie has cemented two theories of mine. First, I can certainly enter a theatre with too positive an attitude and be pretty disappointed. And, secondly, when a movie that’s supposed to be funny starts out not being funny and continues that way for too long, it may be impossible after a while to get me to laugh at all.
So it was with this movie, marketed as a cute inside look at the long secret war between dogs and cats. This was a great premise. Who hasn’t wondered why a dog will just start chasing a cat for no reason at all? So this movie explains it. Dogs and cats have been at war for thousands of years. At stake – which one will be the humans number one companion. It’s all explained through the experiences of a dog named Lou, a cute beagle puppy voiced by Tobey McGuire. He’s adopted by a couple, played by Jeff Goldblum and Elizabeth Perkins, as a companion for their young son. It so happens that Goldblum is also a research scientist working on a medication that will make humans allergy free when they are around dogs. That’s dogs, not cats. So the cats want to steal that formula. Other than that, the only other thing going on here is a side story about Lou and the boy bonding and an older mentor dog to Lou trying to make Lou tough and combat ready. Easily forgotten.
The leader of the cats is played by Mr. Tinkles, a big fat furry white thing. The voice of Mr. Tinkles is provided by Sean Hayes, mostly known as “Jack” from the Will and Grace TV show. He’s assisted by a cat voiced by Jon Lovitz and there are dog voices provided by Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon and even Charlton Heston.
What went wrong here mostly went wrong early on. For some reason, this movie almost seemed to take itself too seriously. We are introduced to the secret war through all these serious male voiced dogs and their high tech equipment and it isn’t cute or funny. Yeah, the sight of a mutt at the controls of a computer is mildly amusing in that “Far Side” kind of way, but that’s all. We finally get down to the battle as the cats send in their best to try and steal the formula, but again, it all falls flat. And let’s face it – there’s a scene with some “Ninja” cats parachuting from the sky and doing “Matrix” like tricks as they take on Lou, and it all looks very fake. Of course it is, but the cats are really ugly and I didn’t take to the Japanese voices. Later, there’s a Russian cat doing the same thing, but this time he’s armed to the teeth. And, again, what may have looked promising on paper failed to deliver on the screen. Maybe it’s the fact that we all talk baby talk to cats and dogs and would never expect them to have voices that sound like grizzled old guys or foreigners throwing weapons.
About the only thing that did crack me up, well, made me chuckle a bit is the woman who takes care of Mr. Tinkles. Unaware he’s the sinister mastermind of the cat takeover, this woman treats him like somebody’s little “foo-foo” pet, dressing him up in horrible little outfits and talking to him like he’s some kind of one year old girl. Hayes delivers all he can as the nasty Tinkles, but it all falls far short. I laughed so much harder at “Babe” and it doesn’t have any where near the special effects of this movie. As the movie wore on, I found myself almost unwilling to laugh, because it had failed me so early on. I think they tried to hard to impress us with all the cat and dog moves and forgot to keep it simple, cute and funny. I give “Cats and Dogs” just a 3.0 on the scale.
