The Visit: Some Thrills, Mostly Ridiculous!

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, The Happening) is no stranger to controversy. He is also no stranger to making bad movies. The Visit, despite some genuinely good tension and scares, is an incoherent catastrophe, a splashy blend of tones and stories that make this overall experience wholly unpleasant for all the wrong reasons.

Premise: A visit to Nana and Pop Pop’s house goes south. Result: Scary moments can’t make up for this nonsense.

Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are off on a very strange journey to meet their grandparents for the first time in their young lives. Their mother Kathryn Hahn has been estranged from them for the better part of 15 years but a recent failed marriage and a heart-felt plea from these alienated parents increases the likelihood of this meeting, even if she remains far away.

The entire journey shall be documented by precocious Becca, a burgeoning documentarian that increases both the annoyance factor as well as plausibility of the found-footage delivery.

This Is Where I Leave You: A Nice Time (Especially If You Have ADD)

Director Shawn Levy (The Internship, Night at the Museum), working with writer Jonathan Tropper, on whose novel the film is based, delivers a good time with This Is Where I Leave You. Unfortunately, all the fun, of which there is definitely some, is tempered by an overwhelming need o cover every possible “family problem” known to man, and then some.

Premise: When their father passes away, four adult siblings return home to mourn and find themselves trapped together amongst their many, many issues. Result: An enjoyable film that just doesn’t quite set itself apart, primarily because it found it hard to find out what it wanted to be. And not be.

Judd Altman (Jason Bateman) is having a bad few weeks. Not only does he stumble upon his wife Quinn (Abigail Spencer) in bed with his boss, Wade Beaufort (Dax Shepard), but he soon after learns that his father has passed on.

Bad Words: S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E! (Yes, We Went There!)

First-time-film director Jason Bateman has delivered one of the funnier surprises of the year. While it is certainly rough around the edges with a questionable resolution, the overall experience is actually quite positive and memorable.

Premise: A grown man sets out to exact revenge on the National Spelling Bee by finding a loophole allowing him to compete as an adult. Result: Good character development and a lot of laughs makes for a far better movie than initially expected.

For some reason, Guy Trilby (Bateman) has decided to enter the spotlight in one of the most humiliating ways possible: he will enter as a competitor in a local children’s spelling bee. Worst still, he manages to destabilize and defeat these children, incurring the wrath of both the mortified parents and Bee authorities.

But he is well within the rules (not the spirit, of course, but the letter) and is supported by a seemingly bamboozled journalist Jenny Widgeon (Kathryn Hahn), desperate to uncover his motivations. And as he gets deeper into the tournament, Dr. Bernice Deagan (Allison Janney) and Dr. Bowman (Philip Baker Hall) – respective leaders of the national competition – also become quite involved, and will seemingly do anything to stop him.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Touching and Fun!

Actor/director Ben Stiller (Tropic Thunder, Zoolander) has delivered one of the more surprisingly heart-felt films of the year.  While Mitty does come dangerously close to being “too cheesy”, it ultimately finds its way to telling a beautiful, memorable story.

Premise: Dreamer Walter Mitty finally pursues actual adventure vs. those in his mind. Result: A touching treatise on life and love that largely inspires.

Walter Mitty (Stiller) is a dreamer; this fact has not changed from the 1939 James Thurber short story or the 1947 film (even if pretty much everything else has). He dreams in order to live his life which has diverged frighteningly from the aspirations he once held as a child.  Then he hoped for a future filled with danger, excitement and memories worth remembering.

But after his father died, leaving him, his mother Edna (Shirley MacLaine) and his sister Odessa (Kathryn Hahn) without security, he trades his youth and hopes for a life of hard-work and dreams that exist only his mind. Eventually, he lands at Life Magazine where he is a negative asset manager, handling “excitement” in the form of stunning Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) photographs, but never truly living that excitement.

We’re The Millers: Hilariously Unexpected!

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: a True Underdog Story) has delivered one of the more surprisingly humorous comedies of the year.  At a time when the genre “Comedy” does not necessarily imply “funny”, Millers fairs as a refreshing “both.”

Premise: In an effort to pay off a drug debt, a man unites with a motley crew of outcasts to smuggle drugs over the U.S.-Mexican border. Result: An extremely entertaining comedy that will keep audiences intrigued from beginning to end.

Millers starts out slowly, focusing on developing the characters and their current life crises:  David Clark (Jason Sudeikis), a low-level pot-pusher who thrives with minimal responsibilities and haircuts; Rose O’Reilly (Jennifer Aniston), a stripper struggling with the fact that at 44 she still is, well, a stripper; Kenny Rossmore (Will Poulter), David’s neighbor with as much street smarts as Justin Beiber in Watts; and Casey Mathis (Emma Roberts), a runaway hood rat with all the warmth of a xenomorph from Aliens.

But all their disparate lives collide when David, along with neighbor Kenny, inadvertently finds himself involved with the mugging of young Casey and subsequently a victim of the crime himself.  He then must plead with drug czar Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms) who proposes that David smuggle drugs across the Mexican border as repayment.

As the task is impossible alone, David recruits Kenny, Casey and Rose to join forces as a typical American family in the hope that as an ordinary family they will fare better crossing the border. To say that the four do not get along is the grand understatement and much hilarity ensues.

The remainder of the film is a hilarious sequence of absurd events that pit the “family” against a series of obstacles such as a perfect family -Don (Nick Offerman), Eddie (Kathryn Hahn) and Melissa Fitzgerald (Molly C. Quinn)-, a mob boss (Tomer Sisley) and his goon “One-Eye” (Matthew Willig), as well as themselves.

There is nothing directly unique about the plot or the characters in this film which under most circumstances would have degraded this story into a painful snoozer.  However, the nature of the characters and their story is what really hits home.  Joke after joke hits its mark and audiences will find themselves invested in the plot and characters and thoroughly amused by their shenanigans.

The on-screen chemistry these characters deliver is ultimately what makes this film work so well.  Each actor is fearless and their delivery effortless, transforming their characters from one-dimensional clichés into roles we root for.  Aniston is phenomenal in this type of bold comedic role, proving once again that her range is far wider than our expectations. Sudeikis is also spot on, helping drive the film through each obstacle with his signature charisma and confidence.  “Go fu#k yourself real life Ned Flanders!” may still be the best line of the film.

Roberts, for her part, somehow manages to be both awful and deeply likable in almost the same breath while Poulter transforms from some sort of geek-bot into an actual person we expect could live on this planet, a feat thought unthinkable for at least the first half of the film. Helms, Hahn, and Offerman are all flawless in their respective roles and help to round out a perfect cast.

Ultimately, Millers works from beginning to end.  It is funny, clever, and manages to create lasting, believable characters even in the midst of the genuinely absurd. While it may not be the best film of the year, and perhaps not even the best comedy, it is certainly one of the more entertaining experiences in recent memory.

Rating: 8 – An expensive red wine and juicy steak

Wanderlust: A Strange Experiment in Comedy Gone..eh, Just Sorta Wrong

The latest film from Director David Wain (Role Models) is the cinematic version of a comedic piñata: on the one hand there are several moments that are hilarious and comedic gold both for their unique spin on familiar circumstances and their effective use of a strong cast serving as the deliciously sweet brand name morsels our dentists love to hate.  On the other hand, there are countless overly-bizarre, thoroughly cringe-inducing moments littered liberally throughout the rest of the film that simply boggle the mind resembling those  rotten apples, razor blades, and a coffee-stained 1987 copy of Reader’s Digest featuring an abridged version of the failed Dolph Lundgren home improvement book, Whatever he Touches, He Destroys.

Premise: Rattled by sudden unemployment, a Manhattan couple surveys alternative living options, ultimately deciding to experiment with living on a rural commune where free love rules. Result: A comedy experiment that rests uneasily somewhere between somewhat funny, inconclusive and unwatchable.

The premise of this film rests on a couple that has gotten a raw end of the deal of life.  After a moderately humorous interaction with a realtor and the cautious purchase of the world’s smallest studio in Manhattan, the two find their lives unraveling: Linda (Jennifer Aniston) delivers one of the most awkward and poorly-received documentary pitches to some HBO executives since Kevin Costner pitched Dances with Pedophiles; and her husband George’s (Paul Rudd) bonus is put on hold after the firm is suddenly brought down on unnamed but clearly numerous fraud charges.

Out on the street and broke, George turns to the world’s worst human being slash brother Rick (Ken Marino) who is about as nurturing as a Mama Ann Coulter eating her snake young alive. On their journey from NYC to Atlanta to live with Satan himself, they accidentally stumble on a strange commune of even stranger people ranging from a nudist to the outright insane. However, on the fate-full night, the two grow closer, let go, and feel more alive than ever before.  When their visit with Rick and his wife Marissa (Michaela Watkins) turns out to be a hysterical, but short-lived disaster, the two flee in terror back to the commune.  And then, the true madness begins.

Essentially, the rest of the film follows two competing plotlines: George and Linda’s relationship as tested by the lunacy of the commune and the cliché “Save the Commune” storyline which does about as much as you would expect (note: as a reminder, you expected nothing). The main storyline, however, offers us that mixed bag of humor and horror referenced earlier: there are several laugh-out-loud moments that cannot be overlooked.  Of course there are more moments where sweet death cannot come soon enough.

Essentially, Wain’s style is to turn this film and its content into an absolute playground where anything goes…literally anything.  These people are so far off the deep end that the life guards have left them for drowned or eaten by fresh water pool sharks.  There is Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio),the nudist writing a pointless novel and producing his own wine; there is former porn-star, super bitch Karen (Kathryn Hahn); there is the too-much-acid-in-the-70s Carvin (Alan Alda), the creeping super-hippy Seth (Justin Theroux), the preggers lady Almond (Lauren Ambrose) and the list goes on and on. 

While Wain is able to squeeze some fresh new fun from this potentially stale formula, more often than not, audiences will long for the cliché. Time after time observers will be mortified with embarrassment for the characters on screen which does itself offer some of that trademark what passes for humor these days; however, far too frequently, there are gags which just don’t make any sense at all, based on completely odd-ball elements which are more confusing than anything else. 

Apparently, Wain’s objective is to fill every moment of this film with a joke.  Ultimately, most of them are either tired, not funny, or delivered to such extremes as to snuff out the comedy long before the bit is even over.  Like a comedy workshop gone awry, this film needed more editing, less eccentricity, and more Prozac.

The acting in the film, however, is of high quality, so if such an experiment were to be had, Wain, at least, armed himself with actors that could deliver.  Rudd and Aniston always have chemistry and both are quite fantastic in their roles.  While Rudd in particular suffers some at the hands of the script and the goofy antics, he and Aniston are very funny and very believable.  Theroux is typically quite funny and also manages to effectively communicate his intense desire for Anniston with only his eyes and body language, an impressive feat of control. 

Marino and Watkins are likely the most consistently hysterical characters in this film, grounded in the sad reality which is their absurd, sad, repressed lives, and never being forced to confront the Eden meets Narnia meets Circus Sideshow that is the commune.  Both deliver their lines perfectly and ensure that attention is always on them.  It would have been almost nicer to see a movie about them…or at least Watkins. 

Hahn, essentially reprising her role as the hippy-villainess in Our Idiot Brother, manages to make this character angrier and more annoying than even that endeavor. Of course, in her defense, that seems to be exactly what Wain intended. Alda, on the other hand, has taken a step back from his usual brilliance; his performance is a bit disappointing since it lacked the nuance and depth that he normally brings to roles.  Instead, audiences will gaze upon him, eyes-glazed, every time the script forces him to utter some line we forgot before it happened.

Overall, Wanderlust is 40-45% fun with the rest languishing somewhere between boring and unwatchable.  While it sometimes successfully pokes fun at Hippies, it tends to feel overly reductive and the characters seem more like caricatures. Fortunately, the funny parts (especially the scenes with Marino and Watkins) lift the movie just enough to keep it from feeling like a waste of time. And I will also applaud Wain for making a relatively unique film with a lot of experimental attempts in comedy; but a word of advice – audiences typically don’t like to feel like lab rats, especially when the cheese being offered tastes like “Huh?” and “I want my Money Back.”

Rating: 6 – A mediocre Prosecco that a cute bartender served you

Our Idiot Brother: The Dreadful Sound of the Painfully Unfunny

Director Jesse Peretz (The Ex) manages to cage audiences for all 90 excruciating minutes of this comedy that never quite connects.  Even with a remarkable cast, the concept of this film is far from funny and the plot ultimately causes more irritation than laughs.

Premise: A naive man-boy causes ripples in his family’s lives after he is forced to live with each of them.  Result: A generally unfunny, often cringe-inducing spectacle that manages to neutralize the good performances of its strong cast and make this difficult to stomach in almost every way.

The film opens with Ned (Paul Rudd) doing the unthinkable: with only minor coaxing, he manages to sell pot to a uniformed police officer.  It is therefore only within moments that the film establishes its fundamental premise: that Ned is an idiot; a painfully stupid person who manages to fall into every one of life’s little traps.

However, the flaw in this construct is that the film does not seem to understand the difference between being stupid and being naïve.  Often Ned is positioned as that adorable boy next door filled with hope and trust, just the formula we should in mix our lives with.  But even small children tend to understand what Ned cannot, that trust is a gift earned, not granted, and instead he just ends up causing continuous, painful calamity with everything he touches.

After several months, Ned emerges from prison none the wiser, and finds that his evil, hippy girlfriend, Janet (Kathryn Hahn), has replaced him with another stoned nincompoop, Billy (T.J. Miller). While these scenes do bring about a few broken smiles, overall, the hippy humor is from somewhere deep in space and like light from a far off star, it will take thousands of years to make an impact here on Earth.  While waiting, audiences may find distraction by trying to count the number of times Ned can shout of “Willie Nelson” the name of his dog, a storyline that receives inexplicable attention.

And so, with no place to stay, Ned returns to his mother’s home and communes with his three dysfunctional sisters, each of whom represent a different, yet equally sad female stereotype.  His mother Ilene (Shirley Knight) appears to be some type of functional alcoholic; his eldest sister Liz (Emily Mortimer), is some type of broken housewife too blind to see her husband’s affair (and that he is a di%k); his next sister, Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), a blossoming young journalist in NYC who is neurotic enough to destabilize atomic compounds; and finally Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), the sexually liberated but thoroughly confused youngest sister who manages to often come up as more clueless than her brother, the aforementioned idiot.

Ned descends upon them like a hurricane of honesty, destroying everything in his path.  As the film progresses, Ned manages to inadvertently do everything possible to destabilize his sisters in his never-ending quest to make enough money to rent the goat barn behind his ex-girlfriend’s farm (dare to dream there Ned!)  Of course, because he is cute and cuddly, all his actions and their consequences only serve to point out just how remarkably troubling his family’s lives really are.

In record time, he is able to pull apart Liz’s marriage, possibly destroy Miranda’s career, threaten Nat’s relationship and land himself back in jail by telling his parole officer he had been smoking pot.  But like the unity that comes in a great storm’s aftermath, audiences are asked to understand that despite what seems like chaos, Ned’s antics have actually made their lives better by confronting the troubles they had previously refused to see. And naturally, in a world of trust and love, everything work out for the best. J Unfortunately, if asked, most survivors of catastrophe might point out they’d been better off if it hadn’t happened to them at all.

Unfortunately, the clichéd underlying premise and a generally unfunny, and often painfully awkward, plot will likely leave audiences wanting less. While Rudd and the rest of the cast do a good job in their roles and create relatively nuanced characters, the film fails to take hold in most important ways.  Instead, we are left with a film that wasn’t bad, but in the end, was much closer to stupid than it would have liked.

Rating: 5 – A luke-warm Pinot Grigio