movie roundup: bridesmaids, horrible bosses, page eight
Kristen Wiig should have been arrested for stealing scenes in Knocked Up from Katherine Heigl. Mind you, an earwig can act circles around Heigl, but Wiig showed, in a few scenes, that she has comic timing in spades. Now that she’s a marketable name, Wiig co-wrote, co-produced and stars in Bridesmaids, an affable comedy helmed by veteran tv director, Paul Feig. Wiig has surrounded herself with a pretty good cast, and for a dose of irony, Melissa McCarthy steals the film from Wiig and never returns it to her. McCarthy is so damn near brilliant as the bride’s soon to be sister-in-law, Megan, that she really deserves a nomination if not a win. Her impeccable timing, sense of abandon (though it’s crafted purposefully), and her obvious joy in playing the role of someone who doesn’t want to hide her quirks and silliness, is really one of the best performances I’ve seen in a long time.
The movie is a fun two hours though it’s bogged down by a few curious elements. One, the director who was one of the creators of the thoughtful, but short lived NBC show, “Freaks and Geeks,” constructs scenes as if he’s directing a two hour long sitcom. Some scenes take too long to unfold and then remain static. Feig doesn’t care to push the sequences and the effect is like a hummingbird flapping in one place when it should be moving. Second, there are too many extraneous characters that detract from the main story and the subplots and exist in a vacuum. For example, Wiig’s roommates, played by the annoying Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas, should have wound up on the cutting room floor. Every time they are on the screen, the movie comes to a halt. Another issue, albeit minor, is the casting of Ellie Kemper as one of the bridesmaids. She’s so completely vanilla, it makes me think that she got the job because someone liked her.
But really, this is McCarthy’s show, and she is so fun to watch. We all know that the Oscars aren’t always about rewarding the best performances, but if she doesn’t get nominated for some major award, then I’m gonna have to come up with the Huckleberries or something.
the drastic side effects of wilson phillips
No one steals the show in Horrible Bosses. And despite what other reviewers think, this includes Jennifer Aniston. What she does is play against type as a horny dentist who molests her sleeping patients and says things like, “Are you going to slap my face with your cock?” But in the end, we’re still watching Rachel, and I say this not because she’s so wholly identified with her role in “Friends,” but because she’s just not someone with range. Neither is Jason Bateman, who plays the straightman, but at least he can act. Colin Farrell looks like the character Tom Cruise played in Tropical Thunder. It’s amusing for a few seconds, and then it becomes mundane.
I didn’t laugh, I didn’t cringe, I barely reacted to the movie. It put me into some mild catatonic state for the entirety of its running time, and after a while, I was just waiting it out. Why care about three guys who decide to kill each other’s bosses when it’s joyless, not clever and offers a very lazy denouement?
Speaking of waiting things out, that’s essentially what I was doing with the British film, Page Eight. An aging MI5 bureaucrat, played by the usually interesting Bill Nighy, runs across a document that could unravel US-UK relations. It is, in some ways, Three Days of the Condor, on sedatives. The movie drags so much, that by the time it gets to where it wants to be, only a shot of ephedrine will perk you up to get interested. While watching this BBC Films production, I kept thinking about that line from Pink Floyd’s, “Time.” The one in which David Gilmour sings, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” After years of being puzzled by what that line means, now I know. It seems that a sense of urgency is not a particularly prominent trait among the British.
Want to see a good movie? Well, there’s one playing every Sunday night on AMC, and it’s called, “Breaking Bad.” Sure, it’s technically a tv show, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie that can cinematically rival that great show.
