handjive

This flick was a huge waste of talent. This group of talented actors gamely go through the motions of trying to give their characters some heart, but all the while they are wallowing in a ridiculous pool of muck. "Gross out comedy" can be done well, but here it is not so. As a white viewer, I have to admit that I don't know how four black women interact amongst themselves, but I am quite certain there are not four women of any color who would ever come close to this level of constant and purely gross, demeaning stupidity. F-bombs? Sure, we got truckloads. Wet, noisy oral sex simulated with fruit at a breakfast table? Check. Worshipping big ****? Yep. Talking about asses and what comes in or out of them? Incessantly. A woman hanging on a wire above a crowd of people and accidentally urinating on them? Sadly, yes. And that was so fun, we also get a SECOND woman hanging on a wire above a crowd of people urinating on them, this time intentionally. It seemed the only thing missing was for these characters to literally throw poo at each other. I seriously suspect they have saved that scene for the director's cut.

"Why Him" is essentially a remake of about a zillion films based on the tensions of disapproving in-laws. There is a lot to like about Why Him, especially the performances from most of the cast. James Franco plays Laird as a lovable lout. He pushes the unlikable side of the character pretty hard, but it is obvious form the get-go that he is a basically decent guy who never had a chance to become properly socialized. Bryan Cranston plays the outraged dad in a way that is much more plausible that one would have expected--he is perpetually flabbergasted, of course, but we see him keeping a lid on his emotions in a realistic way. Megan Mulally plays a sleeper role as Mom--initially she is quiet and sheepish in Cranston's shadow, but before long she breaks out the hilarious in an understated way as she warms to the Laird character much faster than dad does. Sadly, Zoey Deutch has to play the daughter Stephanie, the weakest character in the film. Initially Stephanie seems smart and fetching, but eventually we see too many of the required plot points condemn the character to being an unrealistic, unlikable schemer. Cedric the Entertainer turns in a quiet, serviceable performance (shame he has no laugh lines to work with and his character is so dull it is little more than a prop). Keegan-Michael Key rounds out the cast and gives a goofy comedic performance as a sort of butler to Franco's character. The butler role is pure comic relief, and Key makes the most of the opportunity. The whole project hinges on the extreme crassness of the Laird character. The primary weakness of the film is losing the balance between basic realism of the situation as portrayed by the Cranston family versus the unrealism of the Laird character. The situation provides quite a few good laughs (again, mostly from Mulally and Key), but eventually the sheer number of omnipresent F-bombs becomes unsustainable and they conspire to sink the ship. This fatal flaw is virtually identical to the fatal flaw in Sausage Party, another R-rated comedy that featured Franco and writing credits to Jonah Hill--both films had a lot going for them but were sabotaged by heavy use of foul language as a lame substitute for actual humor. Word to the wise: One or two well placed F-bombs can be very funny, but over a hundred of them are never funny and will always stink up a movie.

Meh. The premise of this flick seems drawn from a bargain bin comic book (excuse me, I meant so say graphic novel). Some heroes get their powers from a radioactive spider bite, while others get theirs from Asperger's syndrome and martial arts training from a domineering jar head father. In truth though, the over-complicated "Wolffe" character (Ben Affleck) is more similar to a tongue-in-cheek hero like the "The Tick" than it is Spiderman. Affleck's deadpan performance is the core of the movie. He uses a monotone voice and generally flat affect to create some very dark humor (bang!) and, conveniently, to accidentally charm the cute young character played by Anna Kendrick (also good in her limited role). Setting aside the implausibility of the main character, the trouble with the movie is it is 90% back-story and 10% plot. And that cursory plot (financial intrigue at Lithgow's robot company) is as exciting as a bag of sand. All told, the flick establishes a quirky character and set of colleagues plainly designed to populate a series of sequels. I walked away feeling like I had paid to see Part One of a two part story. And Part 2 threatens to include even more tedious exposition to explain why the character is not only so proficient but also so deplorable. Presumably the plot in Part Two will involve another financial puzzle and include another gee-whiz scene wherein Wolffe solves the mystery with his accounting genius. And probably even more hard sell on the ins and outs of Asperger's syndrome. I can wait.

Take away some nice wide shots of Monument Valley and all that is left in Million Ways is a deadly flat dull unfunny trial of patience. Because the pitiful script knows no shame, I can understand perfectly why we see an inane cameo by Gilbert Gottfried. The mystery of the year is why Charlize Theron allowed herself to get anywhere near this steamer.

"Neighbors" has been terribly over-rated by most critics. Mostly the flick is the usual mixed bag of tired and gratuitous sex gags. Seth Rogen's schtick is way past it sell-by date. I was pleased to watch the feisty Rose Byrne and I'd very much like to see her in a better picture.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The documentary is a retrospective on the unusual life and teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche, a high-profile author and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. The film hinges on interviews with his former students, and it suffers greatly from their lack of objectivity. Obviously these folks admire the man, as they have devoted a lot of time and energy to his teachings and generally hanging around his community for many years. The potentially interesting topics here are completely missed because the subjects seem unable to criticize the human failings of their master (and by extension, themselves). The Master sat on a throne and selected a steady stream of young women (married or not) for special private lessons. Meanwhile his wife kept her mouth shut and the devoted throng dutifully sat there on their meditation cushions for hours, longing for enlightenment. How did Trungpa get a way with it?? The film never asks this crucial question, let alone answer it. But the answer is provided by the film's title: at the core of the saga is an allegedly powerful teaching technique known as "Crazy Wisdom". Unfortunately the film holds the concept in high esteem, failing to bring any of the skepticism it deserves, so the project is doomed to being a ****, biased, nostalgic love letter. What is Crazy Wisdom? According to the surviving students, it was their master's ingenious method of awakening his students by behaving wildly out of character, and shocking his students with confusing psychological challenges. Okay, maybe that is a real psychological technique with some beneficial utility, but that's only one way of looking at it. Another way to see it is as a method of convincing a large group of gullible 1970's hippies that their guru's alcoholic philandering and his basket full of exotic Tibetan mumbo-jumbo is all part of a clever master plan aimed at guiding them to enlightenment. Why was Trungpa's disrespectful behavior (that must have smelled funny) reflexively deemed acceptable? Well, "it's just more of Trungpa's Crazy Wisdom, of course!" Basically, Crazy Wisdom is an example of the kind of free pass that too many gurus have granted themselves since the beginnings of the cult racket. It was a heavenly sweet deal for the horny master, and all too easy in the free love era, when young "seekers" were hungry for any kind of the exotic teachings that had begun to filter in "from The East". It was not such a sweet deal for the vulnerable students. Glaringly absent are the interviews with the hundreds or thousands of students who got burned by Trungpa's selfish, manipulative behavior. Anyone who did find enlightenment in that milieu probably packed up and hit the road before the next sunrise sitting.

If I had been a victim caught up in the true crime recorded in this film, I would sue. After a screening in Boulder Colorado, the first thing the filmmaker told the audience was "I have many good lawyers". The dude is just plain scummy. The basis of the story is the filmmaker perpetrating a real-life fraud on a handful of nice, gullible people. He knew before he started there would be no movie unless he was able to make someone look stupid. Of course he succeeds, or there would be no movie to edit, publicize, and distribute. So we get to see him spiritually **** whoever is foolish enough to trust him and his sexy smiling henchmen. And every ticket sale makes him richer for having done so. When Sascha Baron Cohen did similar stunts (e.g., Borat) his targets were a variety of bigots, and the "humor" in those films was driven by bigots being shown to be bigots, and humiliated along the way. Cohen's movies are palatable in large part because the victims themselves are dangerous to begin with. None of the victims in Kumare are bigots--they are mostly ordinary simple souls who have an appetite for harmless New Age spirituality. That is not a good enough reason to mock them. It was disgusting to watch this man toy with people's hearts and minds just to get a few cheap laughs. Just watch the yoga instructor when she learns the truth about Kumare--she is definitely not laughing and why should she, when she allowed her studio and her students to become his victims. No doubt the counter argument is that this is a cautionary tale about trusting false gurus--ok, fine, but that does not justify creating a new set of victims.