Eat, Pray, Love

I really didn't want to do this. I still want to pistol-whip Julia Roberts when I hear her utter that odious line from Erin Brockovich, "They're called boobs Ed". But I wanted to review a recent film, and if Roberts incites me to commit violence, Aniston makes me want to commit violence against myself. So, The Switch was out. Off to Eat, Pray, Love I went. Based on Elizabeth Gilbert's smash bestseller of the same name, the film chronicles the journey of one divorced woman looking for enlightenment. Roberts plays Gilbert, a writer who has just ended her marriage, drifted into another unhappy relationship, then decides to take an expansive year-long journey. Each place she visits signifies three different facets of Gilbert's search. Italy (Eat), where Gilbert eschews counting calories and gives in to her hungry id. India (Pray), where she lives in a humble communal ashram and assesses her spiritual well-being, and finally, Bali (Love), where she re-connects with a ninth-generation medicine man and meets Felipe (Javier Bardem) who helps her to believe in love again. I know what you're thinking. Or at least, I know what you should be thinking if you're not the kind of sappy mainstream dolt I avoid at all costs. You're thinking "Wow, the combination of that plot and Julia Roberts sounds like the kind of cloying crap that Hollywood spews at the Oprah crowd like it was a free key chain". In addition, you might be wondering what a snarky, cynical bitch like myself thought of this film. Well, it might be that I'm knocked up and all, but I liked this movie. I said it.
Eat, Pray, Love is thoroughly infused with Elizabeth Gilbert's voice as a writer, and she is good. Candid, unapologetic and blessed with an ability to make trite topics sound fresh, Gilbert possesses a unique quality lacking in most contemporary writers. Director Ryan Murphy and Jennifer Salt adapted Gilbert's book for the screen and held on to her style well while making the story more filmic. Murphy also makes the most of his lush locations by giving so many wide shots of Rome and Bali that you are practically able to smell the pasta and jasmine. Although, to be fair, during the India portion of the trip you can really only smell the cow shit.
There are three brilliant character actors in Eat, Pray, Love who threaten to take over every scene they share with Roberts. Billy Crudup (Almost Famous), Viola Davis (Doubt) and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) play Gilbert's husband, editor and mentor respectively, and they are all excellent. James Franco (Spiderman) plays Gilbert's lover and he is disappointingly whiny and uncharismatic. Now, to Roberts herself. I know why it kills me to admit this. I'll get to that later. Roberts is worth every penny of her 20 million dollar salary. Seriously. She has not one false moment in this movie and she carries it expertly. As Elizabeth Gilbert, she is unafraid to be unlikeable at those moments when her character is experiencing a particularly self-involved episode. This is highly difficult for most actors, especially famous ones who have made entire careers from being likable. Roberts is vulnerable without the usual display of tears and knows how to take the audience along on her quest without being preachy. Don't get me wrong; there is a scene in Italy when Roberts and her cohorts practice the Italian style of gesticulation where I wanted to gnaw her face off, but...
The reason that I hate to admit the adroitness of Roberts' performance is that she is nearly universally loved. Most people love her, which is precisely why people like me (who never want to be lumped in the category of "most people") abhor her appeal. It is however, tough to ignore that in the last twenty years, Roberts has consistently delivered good and sometimes great work (Charlie Wilson's War being the notable exception). Roberts' attitude off-duty is always putting me off, and her having achieved the highest level of fame makes it difficult to separate Roberts from her characters. But within the first few frames of her films, Roberts manages to convince that she is not the broad who gushed on Oprah about her "remarkable, that is, he is to be remarked upon" husband. My Comment is about those of us who fancy ourselves non-conformists and how much we lose out on when we deliberately ignore certain entertainment simply because it is popular. When I was young, I'd sit in my bedroom listening to Morrissey and Elvis Costello, assuming that I was among a handful of like-minded souls who would never deign to get into the Top 40 scene. Later, I rejected all mainstream movies, feeling that independent directors and writers were the only ones who could speak for me and my ilk. A book or movie becoming a smash success was the ultimate insurance that I'd never read or see it, and it was pointless to try and convince me otherwise. This behavior is not unique, particularly for the precocious teen . But when that attitude stubbornly gets carried through to adulthood, some very real things begin to happen. First you become an asshole. Worse, a pretentious asshole, which is the worst kind. You become so concerned with not sounding like a Philistine, that you end up sounding like a, well, a pretentious asshole. Most importantly, you miss out on things that you might have loved, but wouldn't experience because you were so afraid of being ordinary. That's really the crux of it. PA's are so afraid of being ordinary that they start to say things like they won't go see music played in large venues, or cannot possibly read the new book by a bestselling author. But unless the PA is either a hermaphrodite or a billionaire, he is doubtless pretty ordinary. Guess who's not ordinary? The fucking bestselling author. So deal with it and go Netflix Forrest Gump. It's really good.

Dinner For Schmucks

Before I begin this review, I have to apologize for waiting so long in between posts. I have been under the weather for the past few months and haven't been able to write. I hope you'll continue to follow the blog and comment as you see fit. Now, on to Dinner For Schmucks. This movie should be re-titled Movie For Schmucks. Written by David Guion and Michael Handleman, Schmucks was adapted from the French film Le Diner de Cons written by Francis Veber. On paper, the movie seems wholly hysterical; Tim, a young analyst up for a promotion at a private equity firm (Paul Rudd) agrees to go to a dinner hosted by his arrogant and wealthy boss (Bruce Greenwood). The catch is, Tim and his co-workers must bring along the biggest idiot they can find. At the meal's commencement, the boss will judge who is in fact the "winner" of the idiots and present him/her with a trophy. Naturally, the employee whose schmuck wins will curry the most favor with the boss.
Tim runs into initial moral opposition from his girlfriend Julie, played by Stephanie Szostak. While very beautiful in that waifish European way, it is difficult to tell whether Szostak has a French accent or a speech impediment. Julie makes Tim promise not to attend the dinner, which Tim complies with, until he fortuitously meets Barry (Steve Carell). Barry is a windbreaker-clad IRS agent who in his (ample) spare time makes dioramas with stuffed mice. Sporting a bad red hairpiece and a set of novelty teeth, Carell plays another version of his reliably earnest and well-meaning fools (The Office, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Get Smart have provided us with enough examples of this for you to know what I'm talking about). Tim decides that Barry is too good a prospect to pass up and plans to attend the dinner. Barry, however, comes to Tim's home a night early and not only derails his life, but the movie as well. The second act consists of place-filling slapstick and sight gags, with an introduction to four more characters trying desperately to be outrageous but managing only to annoy all but the 80-year-old sitting next to me. Jemaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords fame) is the best of this bunch, giving us Kieran, a bizarre artist with a penchant for juxtaposing his own image with wild animals. It still isn't that great. The very talented Zach Galifinakis goes his typical overly intense, diet-averse, nebbish route. I adore Galifinakis, particularly on his Between Two Ferns sojourns, but this performance makes me wonder if I'll see anything new from him soon.
What should be both the culmination and the best part of Dinner For Schmucks is the actual dinner. It is far from the best part. The "idiots" are a veritable hodgepodge of childishly-conceived characters, so awash in hokey costuming that they look like vaudevillian porn stars. Paul Rudd, a truly gifted actor with a special talent for comedy, has literally nothing to add to the scene. I am not as embarrassed for him as I am for the actors at the end of Footloose (the glitter alone makes me cringe), but it's close. While the writing in this film isn't anything inspired, I think the real blame is on Roach. Lately a more prolific producer than director, Roach has helmed both the Austin Powers and the Focker franchises. While each series is highly bankable, I think there is a general agreement that as each progressed, the humor became more and more recycled. I am of course reserving judgment on Little Fockers, out later this year. Roach does not pull the best performances from any of his highly skilled actors, and relies way too heavily on the image of the characters rather than their development. The saddest example of this is Carell. Week after week, Carell delivers some of the finest comedy on television in The Office. His performances in films like Dan in Real Life proved him a good actor as well as a facile clown. But there is nothing new or fresh in Schmucks that surprises or delights us about Carell.
My Comment is about that point in a successful career when an artist plateaus. Most actors go through it simply because there is not enough good written material for them. Others experience it because their previous success makes them (0r their management team) too terrified to mess with the formula. Nicolas Cage, a bright and burning talent who was deserving of his Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, seemed to fall back on the sarcastic action hero with an edge so many times that no one gives a shit anymore. Especially the IRS. Conversely, Johnny Depp has never hit the dreaded plateau. Depp made an early career of only taking the roles that everyone warned him to be career suicide. He always did something different but not just for different's sake. Whether it was to work with a certain director, or to show the world a side of himself that we didn't know existed, Depp chose parts he wanted, period. While it's easy to sight the Pirates movies as his sell-out payday extravaganza, remember that Depp fought the studio tooth and nail to play Jack Sparrow as a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe le Pew. Although it's rare to find an artist as uncompromising as Depp, Carell has a reputation for being incredibly hard-working and dedicated. I hope that Dinner For Schmucks isn't the death knell for Steve Carell's brilliantly original take on comedy, or the end of his growth as a performer. We would miss out too much.