Super Duper

Ah, Superbad, one more in the time honored tradition of teenage sex comedies. I myself love them for their simplicity: a few raunchy jokes, a comfortably predictable story and some hot 20-something starlets doing God's work.

And while it's possible for a teenage sex romp to transcend its genre, becoming something more special than it has any right to be (much like professional wrestling), that's not why I watch them. Unfortunately for readers of The Hollywood Reporter, the same can't be said for Stephen Farber, a critic who is incapable of reviewing a movie on its own terms. Writes Farber:

Like "American Graffiti" and "Dazed and Confused," the film all takes place during a single day and night. But it doesn't have the smarts or the depths of those ensemble comedies. Instead it centers on the simple notion of underage kids itching to get booze and have sex.

If Farber's looking for an argument about the quality of the latter mentioned movies, he won't get one from me...mainly, because I've only seen one of them. But to then condemn Superbad as simply being about underage kids wanting booze and sex? He may as well condemn this Criticider for going to the nudie bar simply to watch Asian businessmen make it rain. If it's the genre itself that Farber isn't keen on, then his narrow minded review might've made sense. But that's clearly not the case here. Writes Farber:

And it's missing the belly laughs of earlier raunchfests "American Pie" and "There's Something About Mary." The film never achieves a hilariously outrageous epiphany like the hair gel scene in "Mary" -- a scene that can turn a teen comedy into a legend.

Again refusing to judge Superbad against itself, Farber has also taken on the role of revisionist historian. First of all, there are no teenagers featured in There’s Something About Mary, which, if I'm not mistaken, disqualifies it from being a teenage sex comedy. And second, American Pie had about as many belly laughs as Babel (and that film didn't need to have a kid fucking a pie in order to make me not laugh).

Before his review is done, Farber brings in yet another movie that he enjoyed more than Superbad. Only this time, he unwittingly sheds some light on his unspoken agenda. Writes Farber:

The friendship of Seth and Evan has homoerotic undertones, and there's a funny scene where they declare their undying love for each other. But because this is an American movie, don't expect the frankness of Alfonso Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien," which took the close friendship of two horny teenage pals to its logical conclusion.

Not only did Farber succeed in revealing the ending to a movie that I hadn't planned on watching until about two sentences ago, but he also made it clear that it's the, as of yet, untapped market of homosexual teenage sex comedies that's got his curlies in a twist (my apologies to But I'm a Cheerleader, a movie I enjoyed exceedingly more than Farber's review). Of course, if I had taken a pole in the chute before watching Superbad, I suppose my objectivity might also have been skewed.

Resurrecting the Crap

Robert Wilonsky is at it again. He's among the agent provacateurs making the L.A. Weekly look foolish from the inside. Here's what he had to say about the latest film to come out on a Friday that nobody will remember by Monday.

Resurrecting the Champ is a great movie about journalism — maybe the best there ever was — because Resurrecting the Champ is mind-erasingly boring. It’s a solid story about the newspaper business — specifically, about how a well-intentioned writer occasionally makes a mistake totally by accident, a mistake that is pretty much victimless and easily fixable with a retraction. And on that front, it’s a knockout — if only because watching it will render you unconscious for nearly two hours.

Actually, this first paragraph is the reason why Hollywood never makes movies about movie critics. If journalism is mind-erasingly boring, what are we to make of movie reviews?

Josh Hartnett plays Erik, a Denver Times sports reporter whose dead pop was a boxing announcer back in the 1950s (which, given the present-day setting, seems way too early for someone Hartnett’s age). Erik’s been relegated to the boxing beat, where he churns out workmanlike prose his editor (Alan Alda) damns as instantly forgettable. Lack of talent doesn’t stop Erik from wanting to be his dead daddy — beloved, important.

Then one night after a fight, Erik spies an old man (Samuel L. Jackson) in an alleyway being savagely beaten by frat fucks wanting to level “Champ, No. 3 in the World!” That’s how the man — a former heavyweight contender, now a homeless punching bag swaddled in tatters — describes himself. So Erik does what all journalists do when they stumble across a good story: He interviews the Champ, reads about the Champ, watches some old film of the Champ, and writes a story about the Champ — a story that makes Erik an instant star. Soon he’s wooed by Teri Hatcher’s Showtime exec, who wants his pretty face on TV and in her bed.

Only, Erik didn’t do quite enough research. He relied on an editorial assistant who claimed there wasn’t much to go on — a thin folder full of ancient newspaper clips and a single two-minute black-and-white videotape. He didn’t conduct extra interviews and took the word of a single source who’s been homeless for God knows how long and will likely say anything in exchange for the promise of restored fame, newfound riches or, at the very least, an occasional warm meal in front of a tape recorder. So Erik discovers too late that his Champ has made him a chump. Happens all the time — the single-source story that comes back to bite the writer on the ass.

If you're still reading right now, it's a minor miracle. How did you make it through the topor that is this Wilonsky's writing. He is perhaps the only writer in recent memory to mention Teri Hatcher in an article that no male is interesting in reading.

That’s what Resurrecting the Champ (which draws loose inspiration from J.R. Moehringer’s 1997 Los Angeles Times Magazine article of the same title) gets right: the dull grind of reporting and researching and writing, and the dull thud caused by a mistake made during that wearying process. Ace in the Hole this ain’t; Sweet Smell of Success neither.

Gee, in your hands, Robert Wilonsky, I could see why reporting would be a dull grind. I'm getting the impression the male stripping profession would be a dull grind if Wilonsky was a practioner of it. By the way, give Wilonsky a cookie for name-dropping "Ace in the Hole" and "Sweet Smell of Success" - he still has a New Beverly Cinema calendar from 1994 on his fridge to refer to. Great double feature!

But director Rod Lurie, a former Los Angeles magazine movie critic, can always find the overwrought in the mundane; his filmography (The Last Castle, The Contender, Deterrence) is stocked with bombastic movies in which a timpani’s deafening rumble accompanies every sideways glance. He and the screenwriters — Allison Burnett (responsible for the saccharine Autumn in New York) and Michael Bortman (virtually unheard from since 1996’s Morgan Freeman–Keanu Reeves pairing in Chain Reaction) — portray Erik as some guilt-ridden evildoer who’s perpetrated a great fraud. They demand a kind of teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing suffering of which Erik isn’t worthy (and Hartnett isn’t capable). Erik’s wife (Kathryn Morris), from whom he’s separated for nothing as interesting as an indiscretion (they can’t communicate, yawn), tells him he’s brought shame upon himself and the paper. Not hardly. The dude goofed. Big friggin’ whoop.

Hmmmm, Lurie, a former movie critic-turned-movie-maker. Any wonder why this critique is so friggin' negative and bitter? Sorry, Wilonsky, nobody wants to buy your romantic comedy-set-in-the-Civil-War screenplay with the singing barnyard animals, buddy! Too high concept!

Billy Ray tried to turn Glass’ fabrications at The New Republic into a thriller, and he wound up with Shattered Glass, a sardonic parody of All the President’s Men. Because Lurie doesn’t have the benefit of such exciting raw material, he peddles that brand of male-bonding cinema in which a kid lets down his adoring elders even as he struggles to live up to the memory of the dead dad he never knew. In the 1980s and ’90s, this particular cinematic subgenre had its own label: The Tom Cruise Movie. And, really, is there no better actor suited for the Top Gun Mach II or Pour Another Cocktail phase of his career than Josh Hartnett, who looks, at least, as deep as a drained kiddie pool.
RESURRECTING THE CHAMP | Directed by ROD LURIE | Written by MICHAEL BORTMAN and ALLISON BURNETT | Produced by MIKE MEDAVOY, BOB YARI, MARC FRYDMAN and LURIE | Released by Yari Film Group Releasing | Citywide

"Top Gun Mach II." Funny. That's clever. "Pour Another Cocktail." Wilonsky, you're on a roll! Do your buddies who hang out with you in your mom's basement (where you live) nickname you "Comedy Central" Wilonsky? Don't stop now with the goofball movie titles. Hey, MAD magazine! Still hiring?!

Actually, "Shattered Glass" was NOT a sardonic parody of "All the President's Men," it was a very good and decidely NOT dull movie about journalism that stood tall on its own merits. And Wilonsky is in desperate need of a girlfriend (if he swings that way) or some success in his writing career to cheer him up, even if he's shooting fish in a barrel with a review of a film that is an insult to people who rather enjoy the Great White Hope movie genre. Or is this the "Magical Negro" film? Who knows which wretched cliche this movie embraces -- Wilonsky is too busy railing against movies about journalism!

This is KARRY LING reporting for CRITICIDE!

Dear Robert Wilonsky,

It can't be overstated. Find yourself a girlfriend or some success in your writing career...THEN write your reviews! And next time, when reviewing a film, talk about things that pertain to the movie itself. Say hello to Ella Taylor over at the Weekly, your partner-in-crime in obviating all credibility left at this shell of a newspaper.

Signed,

Karry Ling

Crystal Ballbreaker

In what may be the most concise bit of foreshadowing in the long history of storytelling, Kirk Douglas speaks the following opening line in Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole...

CHARLIE TATUM
(to tow truck driver)
Wait here.

If you know what happens next, I don't need to spell out the punchline. But for those of you who never managed to track down this previously hard-to-find treasure, I'll spare you the gory details (scroll to the bottom of the linked page) and leave you to discover for yourself that you will never be nearly so clever if you live three times longer than Mr. Wilder's ninety-six years. This long-lost nitrate nugget stands as one of his greatest achievements, right up there with stepping aside and allowing hubris (and Warren Beatty) to give Pauline Kael the inevitable dressing down she so richly deserved.

The fact is, Billy Wilder will be remembered long after every copy of Pauline Kael's short-sighted review of Ace In The Hole has been recycled as paper plates, and here's why: The broad's considerable flare for writing notwithstanding, her fatal weakness as a critic was a comprehensive lack of vision and a stubborn resistance to the notion that anyone other than her goes to movies.

Her tongue was as sharp as Dorothy Parker's, yet somehow girthier and mad butch. I'll be honest, it's impossible to put down one of her voluminous indulgences until you've blasted through at least half of it in a single sitting. If only her mama had hipped her to the fact that the cinema doesn't exist just for her, or her generation, or right now or next Thursday afternoon. It exists for all time and for all the humanity contained therein, and the greatest of film artists intuitively understand this. Most film critics, on the other hand, can see no farther than next Memorial Day. Herr Kael was no exception.

Billy Wilder produced and directed this box-office failure right after SUNSET BLVD. and just before STALAG 17. Some people have tried to claim some sort of satirical brilliance for it, but it's really just nasty, in a sociologically pushy way.

Let's face it, menopause can be rough. Still, Billy Wilder was hardly responsible for the cobwebs on her ovaries, so who's being nasty here? Sociologically pushy? This from a woman who gave a glowing review to Altman's Nashville months before it was even finished? She'd accused Wilder on more than one occasion of being overly cynical and mean-spirited, but one need look no further than his art collection to know what rubbish that characterization is (full disclosure: I've never seen his art collection). Wilder - who himself began as a newspaperman - only happened to foresee what the future ultimately held for American journalism, that's all. Crack a dictionary, dead lady, that's not cynicism. It's soothsaying.

And anyway, if Billy Wilder is so cynical, why is his work universally embraced by each succeeding generation of filmgoers and shamelessly cribbed by anyone that's ever picked up a camera? Of course, Pauline Baby's confrontational, self-absorbed, nose-thumbingly snotty (but in no way cynical) work has itself brow-beaten its way into the lexicon of contemporary culture, but the timelessness of America's Top Model has yet to be determined.

I got my just-released DVD of Ace In The Hole in the mail a couple days ago and watching it again just as the Crandall Canyon Coal Mine Circus came into town, frankly, made my taint hairs stand on end (as did the predictably beautiful new Criterion Collection print, except in a sexier way). Remember what I said about Mr. Wilder's prescience? Well, let's just say that the rescuers in the film also used the drill-from-the-top approach now being employed by the coal mine rescuers, with what will unquestionably be identical results.

Increased circulation.

Dear Criterion Collection,

Nothing against Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee, but their two brittle VHS copies of The Big Carnival (Ace In The Hole's alter ego) have just about had it, so I was more than thrilled that you finally came to the rescue. And while watching your lovingly restored DVD of the film in the comfort of my own living room isn't quite so charming as watching it with a spring up my ass at the New Beverly Cinema, I will nonetheless display it proudly until next year when my entire collection is rendered obsolete by Blu-Ray.

Yours in 1.33,
Popcorn Peter

Eat My Stardust!

Hello and welcome to the Criticide debut of your man, the undisputed champion of the people, Kid Licorice (K-Lic if it pleases you…but, under the advice of my lawyer, Kid Lic will henceforth be dismissed from the Kid Licorice lexicon). For my opening act here at Criticide, I’ve decided to reflect on the most recent in a long line of fantasy novel adaptations: Stardust. And when I want to know anything about the mythology of fairytales, the wonder of fallen stars or the particulars of skull crackin' racism, I go to the source: Boston. While I’ve never been to Boston myself, thanks to the magic of cinema, I know as much as I’ll ever need to know about it*.

The Boston Globe is where I’ve set my sights and the pen of Wesley Morris is where I shall begin (yes, the same Wesley Morris who played Guy #1 and Rasta Dude in two episodes of Dawson's Creek). Getting started at the beginning, here is the opening stanza of Mr. Morris’ Stardust “review”:

“Any movie that has Claire Danes playing a fallen star sounds too painful for words. The irony! ‘Terminator 3,’ ‘Stage Beauty,’ ‘The Family Stone,’ ‘Evening’: Neither her luminousness nor her intelligence has been put to particularly thrilling use. They haven’t, really, since she blazed through Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet.’ For her sake, I'm embarrassed to remember how long ago that was. At this point even she seems over herself. The expression she wears in ‘Stardust,’ a romantic science-fiction fantasy with her as the aforementioned fallen star, breaks your heart. It seems stuck between a grimace and a cringe: It’s the face of a maiden caught taking out the garbage.”

An entire paragraph dedicated to cutting down Claire Danes at the knees? Even if your criticism of Miss Danes’ career is valid, Mr. Morris (and, please, don’t look for ol’ Kid Licorice to validate your poisonous prose), you still broke the bounds of context by only begrudgingly mentioning the film for which your article promised to review; and even then, you take the opportunity to give Miss Danes one last shove, insuring her place under the bus. But it doesn't stop with her:

“This movie also happens to have parts for Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Peter O’Toole, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, and others. So ‘Stardust’ is not just a nadir for Danes. It stinks for almost everybody. But Danes is the one person who seems to show it.”

Now, Wesley, I’m not ashamed to admit, I had to look up the word “nadir,” so kudos to you and your superior thesaurus. According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, nadir means either:

1 : the point of the celestial sphere that is directly opposite the zenith and vertically downward from the observer

or

2 : the lowest point

Because I didn’t have time to look up the word “zenith,” I’m going to assume your use of nadir refers to the second option, in which case, you, Wesley Morris, have just declared “the lowest point” in the careers of, among others, Robert De Niro and Peter O’Toole.

Wow.

The depth of your nerve, sir, is surrpassed only by the size of your balls.

Oh, but wait...I'm not being fair. You do take a moment to praise the work of
Mr. De Niro:

“The movie goes right exactly once: When De Niro shows up as a closet-case pirate for a series of daylight sequences aboard his floating ship. If ever there was an occasion for him to fax in a note saying the dog ate my performance, this would be it. But surrounded by the exuberant bunch of actors playing his crew, De Niro makes a macho-hammy-swishy mess of himself.”

Backhanded though it may be, it appears you’ve chosen to err on the side of respect by giving Mr. De Niro his just due.  If only you had stopped there:

“He’s terrible, but he’s having, well, a gay old time.”

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.

*Thanks again, Good Will Hunting!

THE ONION STINKS!

Everyone knows about the phony newspaper called The Onion. I've always been a fan of their outrageously silly headlines and their political satire... at least until the "real" newspapers took their cue and then schooled them on the business of funny. Yes, ever since 911, this publication has stood by and allowed the mainstream media, not to mention the President himself, get all the laughs. When The Onion stopped being effectively satirical, it suddenly found itself on the wrong end of an irony. The laughter ended. Moisture began to form and trickle down the cheeks of The Lincoln Memorial, The Statue Of Liberty, and two of the faces on Mount Rushmore. Thanks a lot, The Onion.

Now, the latter part of the newspaper is a non-satirical entertainment section called The A.V. Club that features not only interviews, but reviews of various newly-released media, most notably - FILM REVIEWS!!! Serious film reviews by super-serious film reviewers. Boy did they drop the comedy ball there. Read this cold open from contributing Onion peel Nathan Rabin. It's from his review of the much anticipated and prematurely acclaimed "Once."

"John Carney's sadly beautiful Once is a musical for people who only think they hate musicals, and not just because it boasts virtues seldom associated with the genre, such as realism, intimacy, and low-key verisimilitude."

Holy Thesaurus-busters! And does he really think that the "I hate musicals, but this one is different" line is going to wash with Irish indie-folk? This guy either wants to get laid or get discovered by the editor of another free paper. Who wants to get laid by a Frames groupie or by someone who buys their clothes at Whole Foods? Why doesn't he just scour the personal columns in the serious section of his own paper if he so desperately needs to get his rocks off? Jesus.

Note to Nathan: You're a pseudo-intellectual film critic. Under no circumstances, anywhere, anytime, will you ever be considered cool to any of these idiots. So, stop trying to please them. Let them smoke under the bleachers. You stay on the other side of the playground where you belong, playing Tetherball by yourself like the rest of us.

For some equally annoying cinema stoogery, let us turn to The Onion's Tasha Robinson and her opening. Minds out of the gutter, I was referring to the beginning of her Ratatouille review.

"Toward the end of Ratatouille, Pixar's latest animated romp, writer-director Brad Bird mounts such a cogent, feeling, pained deconstruction of professional criticism that viewers might almost suspect he's had problems with persnickety critics in the past."

Okay, so they're not all super-serious over there at The Wacky Gazette. I mean, attributing the flawlessness of what might be the greatest animated masterpiece of the last year and a half to the ramblings of a grotesquely narcissistic group of lowlifes who have built their careers on a foundation of subjectivity? Now, that's funny!

Take note, The Onion. I will now engage the comedy rule of threes. To complete the hat-trick, I will go into raffle-mode, put my hand in the bowl of poopies, and pull out the name... drum roll, please... (drum roll)... Scott Tobias.

Dear The Onion's Editor In Chief,

I realize your inclusion of serious material is specifically designed to make what's supposed to be funny in your paper seem funnier, but it's a diversionary tactic that is as transparent as it is ineffective. My advice is to dump the A.V. Club section entirely and have your critics write zany comedy articles. Rest assured. It can't get any less funny.

Salty Milkduds