Despicable Me

I'd like to start this review off with a special belated happy birthday for my good friend Emily, who came along with Stephanie and me to Thursday night's premiere of Despicable Me. It was her first time at a midnight movie and hopefully a good kickoff to her day.

Now, on to the main attraction: Despicable Me.

The choice everyone has to make these days seemingly, 2D or 3D, was unanimous as Emily Stephanie and I all agreed that we enjoy 2D more. (editor's note: I hate 3D)

However, I can honestly say that this movie made me want to see it again... in 3D no less.

How you ask? Well, for starters, it is a good movie, which I will get to in a moment. But there are many instances in the film that you could tell were designed solely to play with the 3D (further proof that the trend is, in fact, a gimmick). This playfulness is something that has been missing from most 3D movies, especially the ones that were post-converted to 3D, not originally shot in 3D. I have heard terrible things about Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender.

As for the overall quality, Despicable Me is a charming, if not overly innovative, animated flick. It lacks the substance of Pixar's work but still has its heart in the right place.

The main character is "super" villain Gru, a humanized version of Wile E. Coyote. He has schemes to spare but is lacking in execution. He and his band of minions (hybrid Oompa Loompa/ Twinkie the Kid cross breeds) set out to pull the greatest act of villainy the world has ever seen.




A wrench is thrown into Gru's dastardly plans as three girls he initially adopts to aid him end up as more of a distraction than he had bargained for (the littlest girl Agnes is cute to the point where it is incomprehensible that she had not yet been adopted).


Then there is Vector, the weaselly, sea-life obsessed rival to Gru's enterprises. I never really bought him as a threatening character, but he does do a good job serving as the roadrunner to Gru's coyote. He has all the cool gadgets, the spiffy ultra modern fortress, and an impressive stolen monument cleverly disguised in his back yard.

Gru must make a decision: is his quest for the ultimate act of villainy getting in the way of his relationship with the girls, or the other way around?

Naturally mistakes are made, lessons are learned, and we are sent home happy. But the plot really isn't the selling point of Despicable Me. Rather, that would be the spectacles and the laughs.

The animation is vibrant and the humor is ever-present, with plenty of physical gags for the kids and slightly more sophisticated laughs for the parents. The voice acting too is top notch, Gru is characterized so well that I forgot that Steve Carell was even involved. And Russell Brand did an amazing job in his part (I didn't even realize who he played until getting on the imdb page).

Despicable Me is a good film, hopefully it has the staying power of such franchises as Shrek and Ice Age.


Attendance: 4/5
Crazy Fan Boy Factor: 1/5
Crowd Response: 4/5

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Production Value: 4/5
Animation: 4/5
Humor: 4/5
Agnes Cuteness Quotient: 9/5

Overall: 8/10

Featured New Release Poll- 7/16

My most anticipated poll of the summer has officially arrived.... that's right, Nicolas Cage in The Sorcerer's Apprentice!!!

Haha just kidding. That movie does come out this week, though. It is an expansion and reimagining of the classic Disney 'toon featured in Fantasia. How that works, I have no idea. If you want me to find out, send me to see it.

Or, you could do me a favor and vote for Inception, probably the only movie this summer I would actually go to at midnight by choice. The psychological thriller stars Leonardo DiCaprio and is directed by Christopher Nolan, my favorite contemporary director.

So which will it be, Inception or The Sorcerer's Apprentice?

Winner: Despicable Me

For the second week in a row, we had a dominating performance at the polls as Despicable Me ran away from Predators with 76% of the vote.

I'll check this out at the Westminster Promenade at midnight!

Next viewing assignment...

In honor of the 25th anniversary of its release, the next movie I am going to watch is Back to the Future, which came out in July of 1985.

This was selected by Marianne's (Steel Magnolias) husband Scott. On his survey he writes, "I loved the actors and the fun they had with time travel, and I loved the comedy". Great, Scott! (haha)

Back to the Future is an old favorite of mine but I don't mind re-watching it.

Transformers

It appeared on the screen, an iconic symbol of American ingenuity and workmanship, and my heart sank; "Oh god, he's going to do it. Michael Bay is going to blow up the Hoover Dam."

Could I have thought anything differently after having already sat through an hour and a half of Transformers, a movie by the director of such "films" as Bad Boys 2 and Pearl Harbor? Certainly not.

A bit of damage aside, Bay resisted the temptation to destroy the landmark completely, which might be a high watermark in his directorial career.


Early on in the film, we meet Sam Whitwicky (Shia LeBeouf), the principle non robot. He is descended from a polar explorer who found a few alien artifacts trapped in the ice. Sam buys a used car and things get interesting. Soon, the nice Autobots and mean Decepticons are transforming all over the place, searching for an all-powerful talisman.

Let me just say now that by no means is Transformers a bad movie. I had never watched it before the other night and I can only say that I found it to be absolutely ridiculous, and that's considering I already knew it was about transforming robots from outer space.

First of all, the coordinates for the allspark or whatever that thing was, were somehow encoded onto a 100 year old pair of glasses? Which apparently can survive a twenty foot fall onto concrete?

Then, when they finally find the damn thing, they decide to hide it from the Decepticons in a big city?

(The following was probably a conversation between Bay and his best friend Jerry Bruckheimer) "Hey, I have an idea, you should have them bring the doohickey the bad guys want to a populated city!" "Oh yeah! More property damage!"


Granted, this does, as intended, lead to a bitching action sequence, but is it believable? Even in a movie about robot aliens, no. No it is not. But that's ok, because that's not what Bay is about. He is all about interspersing action with more action and leaving a little room for some characters to say lines that explain why they are going to blow something up. Or do do insane and unnecessary things like ride a motorcycle towards an evil robot, leap off and slide 100 feet on the pavement through its legs, shooting a grenade launcher into its chest WHILE IT IS SIMULTANEOUSLY GETTING NUKED BY A FREAKING F22. Uhh, overkill much, Michael Bay? That's not how physics work, sorry. I can think of about 124 different ways the guy should have died in that sequence (not to mention all the idiot soldiers should have died of thirst in the first hour of the film anyway).

Oh and who in the hell was that Australian girl? Why was she even in this movie? That whole subplot was not needed at all, since there was no plot for it to be a sub plot FOR.

But I digress.


Transformers is maybe a half hour too long, thanks to an inordinate (for a Michael Bay movie) amount of exposition and non action scenes in the first hour. I would have thought I would appreciate this. But you know whats coming from the first minutes, so it would have been better in this case to just get there a little sooner. An agonizing scene after Sam meets the Autobots involves him searching his room for the glasses for a few minutes, being interrogated by his parents, and the Autobots bumbling around the yard (physical comedy doesn't work well with CG non-human characters).

The acting was pretty solid for an action flick, except for Megan Fox, who brought the entire cast down. Plot, well there was one and that's all that I have to say about that.

This film stands out thanks to its integration of impressive CGI and live stunts. You really can tell the difference between a real and CG bus getting ripped in half. So kudos to Bay for blowing some real stuff up. And for leaving the Hoover Dam alone.

If you are willing to turn your brain off and just watch the robot parts flying all over the screen this movie is awesome. If you care about human characters too much, it might be a problem.


Production Value: 5/5
Action: 4/5
Acting Performances: 1/5
Can you tell: I don't like Michael Bay?

Overall: 6/10

Top Five "Cast Against Type" Film Roles

I don't know about you, but I really appreciate a movie with great casting. Casting directors in Hollywood all too often go with the safe choice for their hero, the romantic interest, the goofy friend, the villain. These are called stock characters, and the actors who find themselves always playing the same sort of character are "typecast" (Robert DeNiro as mobster, Samuel L. Jackson as BAMF, Owen Wilson as Dweeby but Sincere Nice Guy, etc).

When a film steps outside the safety of typecasting, it sometimes can end up disastrously. For example, John Wayne played Genghis Khan. Nuff said. However, there are a number of instances where the "wrong" casting decision was oh so right. Here are my five favorite examples.

5. Kate Winslet as the unstable extrovert, Jim Carrey as the reserved shy one in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


This example is interesting because here you see two seasoned actors who are essentially using the others' style in their performance. Winslet plays the precocious and somewhat scatter brained Clementine, the foil to Carrey's Joel. A mopey outcast with a dry sense of humor, this is the type of role one would typically see played by, oh, I don't know, Michael Cera comes to mind (if this film were made in five years by less courageous filmmakers, I guarantee Cera would play this role). To have Joel played by Carrey gives him an edgier sadness. We yearn even harder to see him crack his trademark 20 million dollar grin. Conversely, the usually prim and proper Winslet inhabiting the character of Clem makes her seem all the more eccentric.

This casting decision works wonders in the film, particularly considering the mind-bending nature of he plot as a whole.

4. Tom Hanks as the mafia hitman in Road to Perdition


This often overlooked film features a few bold casting decisions, but most notable is Hanks as the protagonist Michael Sullivan, a gunman for the Irish mafia.

Hanks could have easily made a career similar to Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, playing buffoons in 80's comedies. He switched it up in the 90's, taking on serious roles in Philidelphia and Forrest Gump, cementing himself as one of the top leading men of the era. But a GOOD guy leading man, not the action hero. We don't see Tom Hanks as an unsavory murderer; he only kills Nazis and the occasional convict, right? Oh, how wrong we were.

So why cast Hanks as Sullivan? If one looks at the character as an ordinary gangster, the decision appears flawed. Someone tougher, Jason Statham perhaps, could have fit the bill better. But Hanks lends an authenticity to the role, the everyman feel that most gangster types lack. This is especially important as the relationship between Sullivan and his son is the cornerstone of the film. Sullivan, as played by Hanks, is a family man who just happens to also be a ruthless murderer.

3. Heath Ledger as the psychopath covered in makeup in The Dark Knight


One of the unwritten rules of casting in Hollywood is if you are going to go to the trouble of casting an exceptionally good looking person, you had better make them look as good in the film as possible. If you want them to look ugly or scary, well there are plenty of ugly or scary looking people to cast (read: Steve Buscemi).

Christopher Nolan subverted this rule and went for quality acting over a look or a type when he went to Heath Ledger to play his Joker. And the effect is disturbing.

I have heard people argue that Jack Nicholson is still the best Joker but lets face it, Jack plays the Joker in EVERY role. If you are looking for a creep, everyone knows Jack is the one to go to. Heath, on the other hand, was the romantic lead, the studly bad boy, the gay shepard. Basically, the good looking leading man type.

Thats what makes his performance in The Dark Knight so entrancing. His face smeared with make up and marked by scars, the pretty face has been completely disfigured (metaphor perhaps for the eventual transformation of another character in the film).

2. Elisabeth Shue as the stripper with a heart of gold in Leaving Las Vegas


In 1995, a mere five years after Julia Roberts was a pretty woman, Elisabeth Shue was best known as the girl next door from such films as The Karate Kid, Adventures in Babysitting, and the Back to the Future trilogy. This background made her a strange choice to play Las Vegas hooker Sera, who is befriended by Nicolas Cage's alcoholic Ben.

It is this background, however, that gives her character the vulnerability necessary to make her sympathetic to the audience. Her plight, being forced to watch the slow demise of Ben, is heartbreaking, and she plays the character perfectly to elicit the same frustration from the audience.

1. Henry Fonda as an even slightly less than moral person in Once Upon a Time in the West


Ok, ok, as the BAD GUY. You know, the villain? The one you want the good guy to kill at the end? I know, its hard to believe, but Henry Fonda is a bad dude in Sergio Leone's greatest film.

Before working on Once Upon a Time in the West, Fonda was the everyman, the epitome of the good guy, playing such endearing roles as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath and Juror 8 in 12 Angry Men, along with a bunch of other honest men in a world gone wrong (Mr. Roberts, The Wrong Man, etc).

So why then would Leone choose this everyman as Frank, the villain of Once Upon a Time in the West?

A peek at the Frank's introductory scene will give us a clue.


McBain Massacre Scene

The camera pans around from behind, slowly revealing Fonda to be the man in charge of the group of killers. Imagine what that must have felt like for a viewer in 1968. To help, here is another Fonda clip:


Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men

That is the Fonda people knew and mostly still remember. That is why his performance in Once Upon a Time in the West is so remarkable. Leone took a well established nice guy and made the audience want to see him strung up. Powerful stuff.

Next viewing assignment...

In the spirit of the summer mega-blockbuster, my next film to watch that has been chosen by one of you is Transformers, the 2007 spectacle with Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and a bunch of computer generated robots who are the real stars.

Transformers was selected by my friend from high school marching band Kyle, who wrote on his survey that this is his favorite movie because he likes robots.

I saw about a third of Transformers once and didn't get into it enough to see it through to the end, but this time I will, without fail.