PREDATORS: 1 STAR

“Predators” begins with a shot of an unconscious man plummeting to the ground from an airplane which is a suitable image to kick off a 106 minute movie which itself careens through every characteristic of the action / horror genre except one—excitement.

It should be noted that “Predators” is not a remake or reboot of the much loved Arnold Schwarzenegger film but an addition to the series which has now swelled to include six films about an extraterrestrial life form with a bad attitude an even worse teeth. In this new story Adrien Brody leads a team of misfits—is there any other kind in this type of movie—made up of a who’s who of bad guys and gals. There’s a merciless mercenary, a Yakuza assassin, a Sierra Leone death squad goon, a death row inmate, a tough Russian VDV commando, a black ops sniper and a “one of these things is not like the others” character, a doctor. None have any idea how they landed in this strange world but it soon becomes clear they are there to hunt. Or should I say to be hunted. Hunted by big ugly extraterrestrials. “This planet is a game reserve,” says Royce (Adrien Brody), “and we’re the game.”

“Predators” starts off promisingly. The opening shot of Brody plunging to the ground looks cool and is rather mysterious. How did this happen? Where did he come from? It’s a good set-up for a story that should take us to interesting and unexpected places, Unfortunately “Predators” never matches the exhilaration of that first sequence.

Brody, playing against type as an action star, sets the tone for the film. As the defacto leader of the group he has the most screen time and not just because he has the biggest role. No, he has the largest amount of on screen time because he pulls a John Wayne and leaves gaping lulls between every sentence. A monologue that would take any other actor thirty seconds takes him one minute. Doesn’t seem like much but when the pace of the movie is as slow as Brody’s dialogue, what should have been an exciting romp with some good action, the odd spinal cord rip and some ugly aliens becomes a drawn out campaign to combat insomnia.

If “Predators” had been made in the 1970s—the era of “Logan’s Run” and “Soylent Green”—it might have been about something other than just a group of killers—and a doctor character who is essentially The Professor from “Gilligan’s Island”—learning the difference between hunting and being hunted. Mind bending it ain’t, but what should we expect from a director whose name resembles a fifth grade insult? OK that was a cheap shot at Nimród Antal, but if he’s going to only dish up tepid action—and the worst samurai sword fight ever captured on film—he could at least have tried to insert some subtext or substance; anything rather than another s-l-o-w monologue from Brody.

“Predators” doesn’t feel like a summer movie. It seems more like a Farch film—something that would be released in that dead February – March stretch when the studios dump all their bad movies into theatres.

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME: 2 ½ STARS

Über producer Jerry Bruckheimer draws his inspiration from many places. He makes movies based on video games, amusement park rides, and toys. One day perhaps he’ll make one based on a bed spring, and you know what? It’ll be successful. The guy is genetically programmed to make movies that make money. His latest blockbuster-in-the-waiting is “The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” the action-adventure that hopes to make Jake Gyllenhaal (and his finely sculpted abs) the next Steve Reeves.

Based on the video game, the action packed story starts when Dastan is still a parkour practicing preteen peasant who out smarts the king’s guards and earns himself a spot in the royal household. Cut to many years later. Dastan is now a full grown man who looks a lot like “Brokeback Mountain” star Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s a bit on the wild side, but when he uses ancient firebombing techniques and slo mo to defeat enemy forces his reward is to be treated like a traitor and sent into exile. With the help of Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) and a crafty ostrich jockey (Alfred Molina) he might be able to prove his innocence and prevent the mystical Dagger of Time—releasing sand from the hilt of the knife turns back time and turns Dastan into a cool looking special effect—from falling into the wrong hands. Along the way there are double crosses, much videogame action and, of course, a love match. That Princess Tamina. Jake just can’t quit her.

This is the movie I’m sure Gyllenhaal’s management hopes does for him what “Pirates of the Caribbean” did for Johnny Depp, that is, get Bruckheimerized. Like he did for Will Smith, Nic Cage and Depp, all actors best known for doing risky character parts, Bruckheimer’s magic may turn him into household (although still difficult to spell) name. Will it work? Probably. Maybe. Who knows? Gyllenhaal is already a respected actor, and does what he can to emerge from this sword and sandal showdown with as much dignity intact as possible, but the movie and his character don’t have the same kind of verve that, say, Johnny Depp showed in the first “PotC.” Dastan is a big action role but aside from the odd emotional moment Gyllenhaal never really makes the role his own, in the way that Depp made Captain Jack Sparrow into a character that sold Halloween costumes and inspired the guy at the desk next to yours to do bad pirate impressions for weeks after seeing the movie. Savvy? 

What it does have is lots of action. The camera NEVER stops moving and when “Prince of Persia”—the character and the movie—is flip, flop and flying it is campy good fun. Gyllenhaal is literally crawling the walls in a display of physical prowess (and some pretty cool parkour) that’ll make your eyeballs dance, but when the story goes into the Sands of Time Mythology ™, or should that be mumbi jumbo, it’ll make your previously watusi-ing eyeballs glaze over. The crazy time shifting folklore and hopelessly silly solution to the sands situation slows the movie down to a shuffle and is only saved by Sir Ben Kingsley’s eye-rolling pantomime.

“The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is typical Bruckheimer bombast. It’s a huge movie with big battle scenes, a love story, a few laughs (some intentional, some not) and even a flock of ostriches. It has everything you want from a summer blockbuster except really memorable characters or a noteworthy story. 

PLEASE GIVE: 3 STARS

“Please Give” is a small indie movie in which the cumulative effect of the acting and dialogue outweighs the film’s shortcomings. Set in New York City it is the story of real estate, of neighbors, of young and old, of lovers and adulterers. In other words, it’s everyday life in the big city.

Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt are a married couple who run an upscale vintage furniture store. It’s the kind of place where sofas aren’t called sofas, or chesterfields, but referred to by their designer’s name—Corbeau or Eames. In a ghoulish (but common NYC practice) they purchased the apartment next door to theirs and are waiting for the elderly tenant (Ann Marie Guilbert) to pass away so they can renovate and take over her space. Until then the old lady is looked after by her two granddaughters, the troubled Mary (Amanda Peet) and Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), a kind hearted but quiet mammography technician (mamogrammist, maybe?). Mix in some liberal guilt, acne and two hundred dollar jeans and you have a story short on drama but bubbling with real feelings.

“Please Give” doesn’t have much of a story, and often feels more like a series of situations strung together than an actual film, but it does have interesting characters.

Keener and Platt have the easy way about them of a couple who have been together for many years. They are like well worn in shoes, comfortable and maybe just a bit stale.

She’s slowly becoming consumed by guilt. Guilt because they are well off, guilt because they make money reselling dead people’s furniture for a profit, guilt, because she doesn’t feel worse about waiting for the woman next door to die.

He’s on the edge of a mid-life crisis, and finds himself flirting with Rebecca’s pretty sister Mary at a dinner party. Keener and Platt make much of the material, adding layers of complexity to their characters through their performances. Both are thinly written, particularly Platt’s mid life meltdown, and although they could have simply been vessels for the film’s comments on New York life, the actors keep it real.

The knockout performances belong to Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet as sisters with very different outlooks on life. As with Keener and Platt, the characters feel underwritten, but both blossom on the screen. Hall, so striking in “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” is mousey and withdrawn for much of the film but comes out of her shell and Peet is a fireball of neurosis; unlikable and emotionally damaged.

“Please Give” is a small movie that will likely only find a small audience but is worth a look to see some very good actors do some very good work.

PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEF: 3 STARS

With the Harry Potter franchise winding to a close along comes the new kid on the block, Percy Jackson. Despite the protests of director Chris Columbus (who helmed the first two Potter movies and produced the third)—“It's nothing like Harry Potter,” he said, “Harry Potter is about wizardry and this is Greek mythology.”— Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief plays like the boy wizard’s long lost cousin.

Percy (Zac Efron look-a-like Logan Lerman) is an awkward teenager with problems in school, an unhappy home life and a lout of a step father who smells like Limberger cheese. On a school trip he is attacked by a winged daughter of the night who accuses him of stealing Zeus’s lightening bolt, the most powerful weapon ever created. Thus begins his Poseidon adventure. He is swept away to a mysterious training camp by his mother Sally (Catherine Keener) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) his best friend / satyr protector. There he learns about his true heritage; that his mother had an affair with Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and he is a demi-god—the son of a human and a god. He’s told the world is full of such half gods, some whose names cannot be divulged, he’s told are famous, “like White House famous.” To set things right and avoid a war of the gods which would likely destroy earth he must find the lightening bolt, return it to Zeus (Sean Bean) and rescue his mother from Hades (Steve Coogan), god of the underworld.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is its own movie, but there are unmistakable comparisons to Harry Potter. Percy may or may not have stolen Zeus’s lightening but he certainly steals some of Harry’s thunder. The lead character is half human, half supernatural; he goes to Hogwarts… er, I mean, Camp Half Blood to fine tune his powers; he chums around with Hermione and Ron types called Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover and there’s even a mid-air Quidditch match… er, I mean battle scene. Yes it may be derivative, but its mish mash of Potter and Jason and the Argonauts is really fun and should appeal to tweens who will get caught up in the action / adventure.

The action is fun—there are battles with a Minotaur, a run-in with Medusa (Uma Thurman) and enough eight headed hydras to make Ray Harryhausen proud—but this is a much more straightforward movie than any of the Harry Potter films. The lore doesn’t run as deep, the dialogue is much more pedestrian and it is traditionally structured. But Chris Columbus hits all the rights notes for a kid’s movie, although it would have been interesting (and probably much cooler) to see what a director like Terry Gilliam could have done to stretch the fantasy elements of the story.   

Whether or not Percy Jackson & the Olympians turns into some kind of Potter juggernaut is anyone’s guess. If nothing else it’s an imaginative fantasy for tweens and a crash course in Greek mythology to prep kids for Clash of the Titans coming later this year. 

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG: 4 STARS

Walt Disney is back in the fairy tale business. After a long layoff from both hand-drawn animation and fairy princesses and the like, Disney offers up a film that not only reaffirms their status as the premier purveyors of classic animation, but will also have you humming the catchy songs as you leave the theatre. “The Princess and the Frog” is a welcome addition to Disney’s legacy, comfortably sitting alongside “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King.”      

Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans the action in this Broadway-style musical really takes off when a free-spirited Maldonian prince named Naveen (voice of Bruno Campos) is magically transformed into a frog by voodoo magician Dr. Facilier (voice of Keith David). To break Facilier’s evil spell the prince must convince a princess to kiss him. So far it’s a Big Easy take on the traditional Frog Prince story, but when Naveen hops into a costume party and mistakes a beautiful girl named Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) for a princess the story takes a different turn. Convincing her to kiss him, she puckers up, gives him a smack, but because she’s not really a princess—she’s just dressed like one—he doesn’t change, but she does, into a frog. Together they search for Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis), a 197-year-old voodoo priestess who can turn them back to their human form.

Disney has scored a home run with “The Princess and the Frog.” Their first full-blown fairy tale since 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast” is a return to beautiful traditional animation. The artwork is stylish—particularly during two early musical numbers, the 1930s art deco inspired “Almost There” and the wild voodoo tune “My Friends on the Other Side”—and firmly in-line with classic 70s and 80s Disney. That means sophisticated drawings, dramatic camera moves and colorful backgrounds.

Complimenting the visuals is a score by Randy Newman that includes a variety of songs with a Louisiana flavor. Newman infuses the score with hints of zydeco, jazz and gospel call-and-response, creating a sonic landscape that perfectly compliments the film’s sultry bayou setting.  

As for the voice work, Disney keeps things fresh by not hiring recognizable a-list talent to voice the characters. Robin Williams brought a unique, manic energy to “Aladdin” that enhanced the film, but that’s a rare case. Too often the big names offer little other than recognizable voices, and that can work against the part they’re playing. Can you hear James Earl Jones as Mufasa without thinking of Darth Vader? Me neither, but here Disney is allowing the material to sell the show. Among the well cast voices are Keith David as Dr. Facilier, Anika Noni Rose as Tiana and Bruno Campos as Naveen. Good actors all, but hardly household names and that lack of familiarity allows the characters to live and breath, not simply be an extension of an already well-known celebrity persona.

“The Princess and the Frog” is a welcome return to form for Disney, but, as it also features their first ever African-American princess, a welcome step toward the future. 

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE: 3 ½ STARS

The old maxim, “never judge a book by its cover” could have been coined to describe Pippa Lee. When we first meet her at age fifty she’s the very picture of composure, a well put together spouse to her much older husband. Of course, the journey to becoming Pippa Lee, trophy wife, is far more interesting than the well manicured facade she presents to friends, family, and even, most of the time, to herself. “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” the new film starring Robin Wright Penn in the title role, takes the viewer on the wild ride that is (and was) Pippa’s life. 

We first get to know the middle aged Pippa, devoted wife of Herb Lee (Alan Arkin). He’s thirty years her senior and in a move to make a “pre-emptive strike against decrepitude,” he and Pippa leave New York for a retirement home. There her life begins to fall apart, and in a series of flashbacks we learn about her mother—a hopped up Maria Bello—her drug tinged wild young life—as portrayed by Blake Lively—and even a kinky photo session with her aunt’s lover. As her life unwinds, she finds security in the most unlikely of places—with the troubled son of a neighbor (Keanu Reeves).

Based on a novel written by director Rebecca Miller, “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is a rambling look at a woman in the midst of “a very quiet nervous breakdown.” The quirky flashback structure shouldn’t work, but Miller teases us, keeping the story fresh by bit by bit doling out tantalizing moments from Pippa’s life. There are ups and downs, and the reckless Pippa often seems to zig when she should zag, but in the end the story is life affirming, but in a grown up way.

Despite the presence of teen dream queen Blake Lively, this isn’t a drama for kids. It’s a study of living life north of forty populated with believable, interesting characters.

Front and center is Robin Wright Penn in the lead role. She’s never made much of an impression on me, despite her great beauty, but here she glows, as if this is the role she has waited all these years to do. As the elder Pippa (Lively plays her as a young woman) Penn hits all the right notes, creating a fully formed person out of a collection of flashbacks and biographical notes.

She is supported by an engaging and able cast including Alan Arkin as her wrinkled husband, Winona Ryder as her teary-eyed friend and (ultimately) betrayer Sandra, Maria Bello as her pill popping Stepford Mom and Keanu Reeves as a love interest with a twist.

“The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” mixes and matches mid-life drama and humor, delivering some surprises and real emotional moments to create an interesting portrait of an interesting person. 

PRECIOUS: 4 ½ STARS

There is nothing precious about the movie “Precious”. Nothing twee or frivolous. If the word “heartbreaking” hadn’t already existed in the English language it might have been invented to describe the story of Clareece “Precious” Jones an inner city NYC kid with big problems.

“Precious” is about the power of the educational system to help lift a person up from adversity but it is much more than just an inspirational teacher movie. It’s a movie about victims—one who transcends and one who doesn’t. “To Sir with Love” this isn’t.

Set in 1987 Harlem it follows the progress of “Precious” Jones, a pregnant, overweight and illiterate sixteen year old. She lives with her welfare mother Mary (Mo'Nique) in a rundown apartment where she lives a life of constant mental, physical and sexual abuse. “I’ll be OK,” says Precious. “I’m always looking up… looking for a piano to fall. There’s always something in my way.”  

The only thing that keeps her on an even keel is her rich inner life, but even that is filled with self hate. When she looks in the mirror she imagines a skinny, pretty blonde girl staring back at her. Despite her big dreams she feels people regard her and her family as “black grease that needs to be wiped away.” The one bright spot in her life is Ms. Rain (Paula Patton) a supportive alternative school teacher. With her encouragement Precious may find a way out of her hellish situation.    

“Precious” is one of the most grueling movie experiences of the year. It transports the viewer to an uncomfortably down-and-dirty world were pain and anguish are the price of admission. Hope, for Precious, is a dim light at the end of a very long tunnel but director Lee Daniels keeps the movie from being an exercise in viewer self flagellation with pitch perfect (and unexpected) casting and a sure narrative hand.

Cast wise the most surprising element to “Precious” is a career making performance from comedian Mo'Nique in a decidedly non-comedic role. Best known for parts in low budget comedies like Soul Plane and Beerfest she shows a dramatic side here as Mary, a vicious mother and welfare scammer.
Who would have imagined her (potentially) Oscar worthy scene would be opposite Mariah Carey? Carey’s work as a tough-as-nails social worker should erase all the ill will her “performance” in “Glitter” earned, and who knows, maybe she’ll be able to add an acting prize to her Grammy shelf come awards time.         

At the center of it all is first timer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe in the title role. She pulls off a difficult portrayal, making it believable; giving Precious the dignity she needs to survive and shows some real backbone in a character who could easily have been a cliché.

“Precious” is filled with disturbing imagery—incest and abuse—although when the going gets tough, mercifully, the screen often fades to black, but not always, and that is one of the strengths of the film. It doesn’t back away from the real life horror of Precious’s life. It’s bleak yes, but compelling.    

PLANET 51: 2 STARS
 
“Planet 51” plays like it was written by a team of marketers. It is ripe with all the stuff adults think kids love. Cuddly aliens? Check. Slapstick humor? Check. A cute robot that kind of looks like WALL-E but not really? Check. Silly adult characters? Check. The only thing missing is a good story.
 
Set on an alien world where it rains rocks and the 1950s are in full bloom—imagine a high tech “Happy Days” and you get the idea of the look of the film—the story doesn’t really take flight until dimwitted astronaut Charles T. Barker (voice of The Rock) lands, thinking he is on an uninhabited planet. His plan is to plant an American flag, knock around some golf balls and return home a national hero. Instead he discovers a planet full of “sea monkeys dancing to the oldies.” Most of the green-skinned inhabitants of the planet don’t quite know what to make of him either. The only knowledge they have of life from other planets comes from their sci fi movies. They believe he’s a “humaniac” with two sets of teeth that has arrived on their planet to harvest their organs and turn the citizens of Planet 51 into zombies. Barker becomes Public Alien Number One, the most wanted extraterrestrial on the planet. Then he meets Lem (voice of Justin Long), a friendly young Planet 51 astronomer, who may be his only chance to get back to his ship before the autopilot kicks in and returns to Earth without him.  
 
“Planet 51” is aimed directly at ten-and-under crowd, who should enjoy the silly jokes and the colorful pictures, but parents beware, there’s not much here for you. There is the odd throw-a-way line intended for the adults in the audience—a suppository joke and a “What the duck!” double entendre—which may raise a giggle but seem a little out of place when butted up against the kid friendly humor that makes up most of the movie.  
 
The underlying message of tolerance, however, is a good one. It teaches kids that no matter how different we may be there is almost always some middle ground. As I say, good message, I just wish it were wrapped up in a better movie.   

PIRATE RADIO: 2 STARS

“Pirate Radio” is about the indomitable never-say-die spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. It's about a group of DJs on a ship in the North Atlantic who spent the late Sixties bringing the music to millions of British kids. It's a good story, but maybe the fictitious story of Radio Rock would mean more today if the music meant more today. Popular music doesn't have the same rebel spirit it once did, and as such it's hard to imagine that once, many years ago people were willing to die for the music they loved.

The action begins when Carl (Tom Sturridge), a rebellious teenager recently expelled from school, arrives on the pirate radio ship. He’s been sent by his mother to stay with Quentin (Bill Nighy) his flamboyant godfather, in the hopes of straightening out his life. Fat chance. He’s surrounded by a group of rogue DJs—The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Simon (Chris O'Dowd), Angus (Rhys Darby), Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom), DJ Smooth Bob (Ralph Brown) and the decadent "king of the airwaves", Gavin (Rhys Ifans)—a less-than-wholesome group who are the collective voices of rebel rock. Life on the boat is a nonstop party until the creation of the Marine Offences Act, which aims to silence the rowdy DJs and their “rock ‘n’ roll pornography,” a failed marriage drives a wedge between the DJs and a blown engine threatens not only the existence of Radio Rock, but the lives of the DJs as well.  

The tone of “Pirate Radio” is pitched somewhere just slightly above reality, just below parody. Its version of the freewheelin' Sixties feels unreal, as if people back then were all colorfully dressed wild men and women without a care in the world. It’s obviously a highly idealized vision of the time that will appeal to boomers with rose colored memories of the time, but for the rest of us it will likely seem a bit naïve. The characters, as presented here by some very good actors, are caricatures from the Swinging Sixties and not fully developed people.

Philip Seymour Hoffman comes closest to creating a real character as a man who becomes racked with melancholy when he realizes he is likely “living the best years of his life” and his trip back to dry land will be downhill, but by and large reality gets lost in the feel-goodness of it all.       

It's a story about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll with little of the former and lots of the latter. In fact, “Pirate Radio” may be the first movie in some time that is actually more fun to listen to than actually watch. It has a blazing soundtrack, rich with great Brit rock like The Easybeats’s “Friday on My Mind” and Arthur Brown’s “Fire” but the film itself plays like a series of events rather than a movie. There's just not enough story and a few too many dance numbers here to justify a two hour running time.

“Pirate Radio” has its heart in the right place and is an enjoyable piece of 60’s fluff, but I would have been happy to simply have the soundtrack and leave the movie behind.

POST GRAD: 1 ½ STARS

Ryden Malby’s (Alexis Bledel) story has a ripped-from-the-headlines feel to it in these recessionary times. Despite being an A student in high school and earning a scholarship to the right university, her goal of finding the next great American novel at Los Angeles’s biggest publisher Happerman and Browning, didn’t quite work out.

Just the opposite in fact.  

Instead of living the dream at H&B the career minded Ryden is forced to move back home with her not ready for prime time family; quirky mom and dad (Jane Lynch and Michael Keaton), grandmother (Carol Burnett) and little brother (Bobby Coleman). “This whole post graduation thing isn’t turning out how I planned,” she says as she takes a part time job at her dad’s luggage shop.

When she isn’t planning her next career move she hangs out with her lovesick childhood friend Adam (Zach Gilford) and David Santiago (Rodrigo Santoro), a charming infomercial director, cat enthusiast and possible love interest who offers her a job.        
“Post Grad” is almost instantaneously forgettable. Apart from a few grin worthy moments sprinkled throughout the movie is an unwieldy mix of earnest teen drama and slapstick. Neither work particularly well although old pros Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch and Carol Burnett (who gets the movie’s biggest laugh) manage to wring some laughs out of the underwritten script.

The humour is a bit darker than you’d expect, mostly of the funeral for a dead cat gone horribly wrong type, but there are a couple of good one liners. “The Office’s” Craig Robinson, who is making habit of being funny in bad movies (ie: “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard”), pops up here as a smarmy coffin salesman who uses the pitch line, “What do I have to do to put you in one of our caskets today?” It’s a good line; I just wish there had been more of them peppered through the script.   

Once the jokes are exhausted, in the end there is the inevitable message that Ryden must stop obsessing about the future and live in the here and now. It is typical happily-ever-after fare, inoffensive, but not very interesting. “Post Grad’s” story of job woe may sound ripped-from-the-headlines, but the movie is yesterday’s news.

PAPER HEART: 3 ½ STARS

Charlyne Yi was born a year after Foreigner had a huge hit with the song I Wanna Know What Love Is but I think hearing the power ballad in utero had a long lasting effect on her, which must have directly lead to the making of the pseudo documentary Paper Heart.

In the film Yi, a musician and comedian best known for small roles in Knocked Up and Semi Pro, sets out to discover the true meaning of love. She says she’s never been in love and isn’t sure if she’s capable, so to avoid becoming “a lonely old spinster” she hits the road, interviewing everyone from her famous friends (like Seth Rogen) to a Las Vegas Elvis who says he once married a couple even though he knew the groom didn’t know the bride’s last name. She talks to divorcees about the true meaning of love; scientists explain the chemistry of love; a biker describes the feeling as “thirty minutes on the back of a Harley” and a couple of now elderly childhood sweethearts say she’ll know when she’s in love because it’s like a lightening bolt. Along the way Yi meets someone she might be able to fall in love with, but will she feel that lightening bolt or not?

Paper Heart is a mix of real interviews—the man-on-the-street stuff is genuine—mixed with improv from Yi, Jake Johnson (who plays the on-screen version of the real life director of the film Nicolas Jasenovec) and love interest Michael Cera. That blend gives the movie an authentically spontaneous feel but even at a slight 88 minutes the story feels padded and occasionally too quirky for it’s own good, but, despite its shortcomings, it is a film that can laugh at itself. At one point Cera describes the film-within-a-film as “quirky” and then adds sarcastically, “That’s just what America needs.” It’s fun to see the star of the idiosyncratic Juno and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist having fun at his own expense.

As for Yi her awkward, geeky charm is an acquired taste and she her acting range spans A to A, but she and Cera are quite sweet together and their chemistry, especially as their relationship starts to bloom and then wilt, is the thing that makes the film compelling.

There are some very funny moments contained within—a little girl describing true love as “taking someone to Applebees for hot wings” is priceless in a Kids Say the Darndest Things kind of way—but the film really shines when it focuses on the nitty-gritty of the heart. When Yi admits to being afraid she’ll lose her identity if she becomes too involved with someone else the film thankfully loses some of its schticky edge and comes crashing down to earth, in a good way.

Couple that with some wonderfully evocative animation used to illustrate the real-life love stories from the real-life interview subjects and you end up with a film that (eventually) cuts the quirky in favor of real feelings.

PUBLIC ENEMIES: 4 STARS

John Dillinger, the Great Depression’s Public Enemy Number One, is forever connected to the movies. Not only did he copy his signature bank robbing move of gracefully leaping over the teller’s counter from an obscure crime film but he also was gunned down by FBI agents on July 22, 1934 as he stepped out of the Biograph Theater on Chicago’s north side after a screening of the Clark Gable gangster flick Manhattan Melodrama. As befits a notorious movie lover, in death the charming thief has become a popular movie character. On screen he’s been portrayed by a succession of good looking tough guys; Lawrence Tierney, Warren Oates, Robert Conrad, Mark Harmon and now, in a new film from Michael Mann, Johnny Depp.

At the beginning of Public Enemies Dillinger is a crook turned folk hero. His daring bank robberies made him the bane of law enforcement but a hero to the public who blame the banks for driving the country into a depression. Noting the bandit’s popularity, Bureau of Investigation chief Edgar J. Hoover (Billy Crudup) senses an opportunity to raise the profile of his then little known crime busting outfit. Making Dillinger the country’s first Public Enemy Number One he mounts a very public campaign to bring the charismatic outlaw to justice. Leading the charge is the equally charismatic Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the man who served as the model for Dick Tracy.

Director Michael Mann brings his usual lush visual style to Public Enemies, but unlike his most recent films (Miami Vice and Collateral) this is a surprisingly intimate film. Mann shoots almost every scene in tight close-up, showcasing the sculpted faces of stars Depp, Bale and Marion Cotillard. It’s an unusual style for a crime drama, but zeroing in on the actor’s faces emphasizes the intimate relationships between the characters, turning these bygone figures into living, breathing people rather than historical stereotypes.  

Mann also surprises with his use of sound. This is a quiet film. Dialogue is mumbled, there is music, but it is used sparingly. The film’s calm is sporadically shattered by gunshots, which only makes the violence more jarring.

Mann’s stylistic choices—along with those of cinematographer Dante Spinotti, who gives the film a Godfather-esque feel with his use of shadows and darkness—breathes life into a familiar story.

In front of the camera there is star wattage to burn. Depp seemed an unlikely choice to play Dillinger; too slight, too good looking, but he is effortless in the role, bringing charisma and confidence to the film. Bale, in a secondary role, heaps on his usual intensity, but the histrionics of his recent work in Terminator: Salvation has been replaced with a smoldering, understated strength. Marion Cotillard as coat check girl Billie, brings believability as Dillinger’s girlfriend who's willing to risk everything for a man she barely knows.

Performance wise the one false note here is Billy Crudup as Edgar J. Hoover. Crudup, usually a fine actor, is one note, a seething mass of insecurity and arrogance and little more.  

Public Enemies is a movie of contradictions. It’s a romantic gangster movie; an art film disguised as a summer blockbuster; a film about a thief who was seen as a hero. It’s a complicated character study that holds up to more than one viewing.

THE PROPOSAL: 2 ½ STARS

The idea behind The Proposal is nothing special. Marriages of convenience for immigration papers  have been the subject of many movies, including (but not limited to) the aptly named Green Card starring Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell, the Canadian illegal alien thriller Honeymoon and A Paper Wedding which sees Geneviève Bujold marry a Chilean man so he can stay in the country. So without a fresh premise what can a movie like The Proposal offer? How about likeable, charismatic stars? Sometimes that’s enough.

Sandra Bullock is Margaret, a high-powered book editor, about to be deported back to her native Canada (“It’s not like I’m an immigrant,” she says, “I’m from Canada!”). She’s the kind of Devil Wears Prada boss who inspires fear and nasty instant messages like “The witch is on her broom” among her staff. In a bid to stay in the U.S. and hang on to her high paying gig—that’s how we know this is a work of fiction; she’s a wealthy book editor, which is like being a rich banjo player— the quick-thinking editor convinces her beleaguered assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds, who says he would often “dream of her getting hit by cabs”) to marry her. He says yes, but with a few conditions including meeting his salt-of-the-earth family (Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Betty White) in small town Alaska. As if meeting the family wasn’t enough, a curious immigration official complicates their lives as well.  

The Proposal is primarily a rom com with side orders of the old “fish out of water” routine, a bit of slapstick and topped with some heartfelt family values for good measure. So what makes it different from, say, New In Town, the similar but unforgettably terrible Renee Zellweger film from earlier this year?

Two words, Bullock and Reynolds. It’s quite simple; they are likeable actors the audience wants the best for. She’s a rom com vet who brings her considerable charisma to a predictable and occasionally thinly written script; he’s a hunk who can do romance and do funny. Together they elevate a paint-by-numbers story, if not to the level of great art, than at least to the level of those earnest big eyed paintings.

It’s a rom com that focuses on the rom rather than the com. The Proposal does have laughs sprinkled throughout—many of which come from Betty White who seems to be channeling her inner crazy Cloris Leachman here—but overall it can best be described as amiable rather than laugh out loud. 
    
The Proposal doesn’t have the humor of When Harry Met Sally, the heart of Notting Hill or the farce of While You Were Sleeping but the leads have enough charm to smooth out all the film’s rough edges.   

PONTYPOOL: 4 STARS

Where would Canadian horror movies be without St. Valentine’s Day? In 1981 My Bloody Valentine, a creepy little slasher flick shot in Cape Breton, ran afoul of the ratings board but has since gone on to become a cult classic. Now a new type of terror rears its ugly head on the day Hallmark created. In Bruce MacDonald’s Pontypool, the townsfolk of a small Ontario town are infected by a deadly virus on St. Valentine’s Day. A God Bug that turns them into flesh eating zombies. Not even Cupid with a quiver full of arrows can keep this town safe.

In the film’s opening minutes we meet Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), a down-on-his-luck talk radio host. He’s a former big market jock reduced to working in Pontypool, a backwater station far from his last big gig. Stopped at a crosswalk on his early morning drive to work the silence of the small town is interrupted by a strange woman pounding on his passenger side window, speaking nonsense. Perturbed, he continues on to work and turns the strange encounter into a topic for his show. “When do you call 911?” Soon though, troubling reports of rioting in the town’s core start pouring in. When the reports turn ominous Mazzy realizes he is at the center of a big story and keeps broadcasting. What he doesn’t realize is that, perhaps, he is helping to spread the disease.

To call Pontypool a zombie movie isn’t quite accurate. Sure the movie is about a disease that turns regular people into flesh eating creeps, but it’s more about how they became that way than the eerie aftereffects of the sickness. Set entirely inside a small radio station in the basement of a church, the story focuses on Mazzy, his producer Sydney (Lisa Houle) and call screener Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) who use eye witness accounts to slowly piece together the horrible story that is happening outside their doors.

We’re barely given a glimpse of the zombies, which is good for those with weak stomachs, but may disappoint hardcore George A. Romero fans who expect blood and guts. MacDonald, however, has reinvented the wheel by replacing the gore with brain matter, but the kind you think with, not eat. MacDonald captures horror in mostly subtle ways. In his film a broken window with blood dripping from a shard of glass becomes a chilling symbol of the violence that we never see.  

At the center of Pontypool’s cerebral thrills is Stephen McHattie. The actor best known for playing Dr. Reston on four classic episodes of Seinfeld carries the entire picture on his back and it is his intense performance that makes up for the lack of gory thrills. As the grizzled Mazzy his face is so lined, so etched with life experience that lost travelers could use it as a road map. It’s not the face of a hero and that edge gives the film some of its great moments. This is a guy who drinks scotch in his morning coffee and likes to break the rules. How he will react in the face of a virus spread by the spoken word when all he really knows how to do is talk keeps the story unpredictable and compelling.

Pontypool is a movie set in a radio station that plays like a radio show. By and large the action is described and for once the old cliché that what you can’t see is more terrifying that what you can actually see rings true. Couple that with a mounting sense of doom and you have an edge of your seat thriller.

PINK PANTHER 2: 0 STARS

There was a time when the teaming of Steve Martin, John Cleese and Lily Tomlin would have sent tsunami sized ripples through the comedy world. Mr. Wild and Crazy paired with comedy legends from Monty Python and Laugh In would have guaranteed laughs and big box office mojo. That would have been 1978. Unfortunately for us and them, it's 2009. The three comedy legends co-star in the unimaginatively titled Pink Panther 2, an uninspired and unnecessary sequel to Martin's 2006 reimagining of the classic Peter Seller's character.

The movie's premise is thin even for a February comedy. In fact, it's thin enough to make Paul Blart: Mall Cop look nuanced. It begins with a super villain named El Tornado thieving the world’s greatest treasures—the Magna Carta from England, Italy's Shroud of Turin and a Japanese Imperial Sword. Chief Inspector Dreyfus (John Cleese) of the French police is forced to assign Jacques Clouseau, "the world's greatest detective," to the case. The situation becomes complicated when El Tornado steals the national French treasure The Pink Panther and Clouseau must work with an international team of detectives to solve the case.

Inspector Clouseau has suffered cinematic indignities in the past. Both Roger Moore and Alan Arkin bungled their way through past adaptations, but the Martin's take on the character lowers the bar to untold depths. There was a time when Martin's out-there brand of humor shook up the comedy world, rebelling against exactly the kind of comedy pabulum that is imprinted on every frame of Panther 2.

Where to start?

His ever changing vocal inflection sounds like Elmer Fudd doing the Wild and Crazy Guys accent. More annoying than funny. More annoying than anything else.

The script, the thing that passes for comedy writing here, is formulaic and flat. There isn't a line in this movie that even approaches the pure comedy mania of the "That is not my doog" scene in The Pink Panther Strikes Back and even the slapstick is so predictable that Buster Keaton would have thought of these gags as old hat. Only one set piece, where Clouseau burns down a restaurant while juggling bottles of wine, hints at what could have been if anyone on either side of the camera put in the effort.

Worst of all is Martin's take on the character. In Seller's hands the Clouseau was an inspired collection of quirks and tics; a doofus but a well meaning one. Martin has subtly changed Clouseau into an arrogant, petty bumbler. The difference? One was lovable and funny and one isn't.

February is quickly turning into the "I'm only in it for the money month" where good actors stoop to making crap for a quick paycheque. It's bad enough that Martin makes movies like this, but why does he have to bring Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irons, Alfred Molina and Jean Reno down with him?

The first Martin Pink Panther wasn't funny but nonetheless made a lot of money. As a potential audience member keep this old saying in mind, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Don't get sucked in again. Stay home. Rent A Shot in the Dark and remember when someone knew how to get real laughs playing the clueless Inspector Clouseau.

PAUL BLART MALL COP: 1 STAR

In this Year of the Recession much has been written about the impact of a slowed economy on Hollywood. Jonathan Taplin of Film In Focus reports that “last year the Sundance Film Festival reported 3,624 feature film submissions composed of 2,021 U.S. and 1,603 international feature-length films. Assuming they all expected to make it to a theater that would mean 69 films released each week… we must acknowledge that there are too many feature films being made in America.” Here, here Jonathan. Let’s start with Paul Blart Mall Cop.

When we first meet Paul Blart (Kevin James) he’s about to do the physical portion of his State Trooper’s exam. He’s noticeably heavier, shorter and sweatier than the other candidates and sure enough, he doesn’t make it through. It’s back to the rather humbling life of a security guard—excuse me, security officer—at a New Jersey mall. He’s a love sick loser, unlucky at love and life. He “eats his pain” using “peanut butter to fill the cracks in his heart.” He has a crush on Amy (Ugly Betty’s Jayma Mays), a pretty girl who sells hair extensions at a kiosk in the mall called Unbeweavable. She’s out of his league, but he may be able to win her over when a group of thugs take over the mall and hold her hostage on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.

Paul Blart Mall Cop was produced by Adam Sandler’s company Happy Madison Productions. They specialize in cheap and cheerful comedies usually banking on one recognizable star backed by Sandler’s reliable crew of regulars. This time Kevin James, best known as TV’s King of Queens, takes the lead. He’s a likeable sitcom actor who seems to have based Paul Blart on the kind of character John Candy focused on; the loveable guy beaten down by life.

It would have been interesting to see what Candy could have done with a character like Blart. Kevin James plays him as all doe eyes and physical humor, two things Candy excelled in, but Candy knew where the line between real life and caricature was and rarely ever crossed over. His characters had huge dollops of humanity that made them likeable no matter how badly they behaved. James isn’t quite that skilled. In his hands Blart isn’t a real person, just a collection of traits that are supposed to add up to someone that the audience will care about. Trouble is, we don’t. We don’t care about him or the predictable story.

James does pull off some impressive physical work. For a big guy he’s sprightly, not Chris Farley agile, but his stunts are the movie’s best gags. The scene where he goes all Rambo in the mall’s Rainforest Café provides a glimmer of hope for the rest of the movie, but alas, it doesn’t sustain.

Paul Blart Mall Cop is essentially a sitcom played out to feature film length. Unfortunately there aren’t enough laughs or interesting characters to justify the extra hour.

PRIDE AND GLORY: 3 STARS

Angry corrupt cops who “bleed blue” and speak with heavy Brooklyn accents are nothing new at the movies. We’ve seen them for years, decades even, in everything from Serpico to last year’s We Own the Night. The trick to keeping audience interest is to add in some new elements to shake up the old formula. Pride and Glory, written by the son of a cop and starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, attempts this by telling a multi-generational story of a family of policemen.

Ray and Francis Tierney (Noah Emmerich and Norton respectively) are New York police officers at very different stages of their careers. Francis, like his father and namesake (Jon Voight) before him, is a well thought of commanding officer, while Ray, a former hotshot, now a traumatized ex-street cop, is currently riding a desk at Missing Persons. At the urging of his father Ray is lured away from the relative safety of his desk to investigate the murder of four cops at a failed drug bust. When Ray’s investigation leads him to believe that his brother and brother-in-law (Colin Farrell) may be involved he is forced to choose between his family and his brothers in blue.

Pride and Glory doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and even the intergenerational twist isn’t that new—just ask James Gray, the director and screenwriter for We Own the Night—but it does a good job of presenting the moral quandary that arises when telling the truth is going to have serious consequences for the ones you love.

Ed Norton convincingly portrays Ray’s conundrum. He’s a bubbling caldron of bile that threatens to boil over at any moment, and if you’re Colin Farrell you might not like him when he’s angry. Norton expertly conveys anger, confusion and remorse often in the same scene. It’s a nicely calibrated performance that is better than the rest of the movie.

If you could describe Norton’s performance as finely tuned then only the opposite can be said of Farrell’s work. As dirty cop Jimmy Egan he is kind of one note, but it’s a good note. He plays the out-of-control cop as a delightfully unhinged man who will do anything—including menacing a baby with a piping hot iron—to get what he wants. It’s a performance that borders on camp, but Farrell keeps it on the right side of the line and his passion adds some much needed gusto to the film’s slower scenes.

Jon Voight, Noah Emmerich and the rest of the cast hand in solid performances, although there’s nothing nearly as memorable as Farrell’s wild ride.

In many ways Pride and Glory is little more than a slightly above average cop drama, but its willingness to splash around in the grey areas of cop morality and loyalty plus the commanding performances of Norton and Farrell earn it a recommendation.      

PASSCHENDAELE: 3 STARS

Passchendaele, the second feature from director / actor Paul Gross, is a hybrid of romance and war movie based around the 1917 battle for Passchendaele which lasted for four months and claimed 600,000 causalities on both sides. The story sprung from a conversation Gross had with his Grandfather who told him about bayonetting a young German through the face and killing him during a battle. Years later as his grandfather lay dying in a hospital bed he asked for forgiveness over and over. Only Gross knew that he was speaking to the young German he had killed in the First World War.

Passchendaele is a personal story told on an epic scale and was seen by audiences for the first time as the opening night film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

The film is ambitious in its scope with battle scenes to rival anything we’ve seen on screen in recent years, while also grafting on a story of honor and romance. In the self-penned script Gross tackles big, timely issues regarding war, patriotism and valor that occasionally come off as a bit corny, but the movie’s heart is in the right place.

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS: 3 ½ STARS

David Gordon Green’s resume wouldn’t suggest that he has a light touch. His first film, George Washington, told a story about group of children in a depressed small town who band together to cover up a tragic mistake. Next came the slow paced All the Pretty Girls followed by two films that can only be described as domestic tragedies, Undertow and Snow Angels. The four films contained a total of 1.5 laughs spread out over a combined running time of 411 minutes. He’s one Gloomy Gus. So it was with a bit of amazement that I noticed his name on the credits of the new Seth Rogen stoner comedy Pineapple Express.   

Rogen, Hollywood’s latest Canadian-born comedy prodigy, plays stoner Dale Denton. Dale’s slacker life becomes complicated after he witnesses a murder perpetrated by a crooked cop (Rosie Perez) and the city's most dangerous drug lord (Gary Cole). Freaked out, he drops a roach containing a super rare strain of weed called Pineapple Express—it’s the apex of the vortex they say—at the crime scene. Fearing that the dope is traceable back to him Dale and drug dealer Saul (James Franco) go on the lam with the blood thirsty killers hot on their heels.

Luckily for audiences looking for a midsummer laugh Pineapple Express has less to do with Green’s previous films and a whole lot in common with the kind of politically incorrect R-rated comedies Rogen specializes in like Superbad and Knocked Up. It’s a strange genre flick that falls somewhere between the Cheech and Chong oeuvre and Scarface. It’s funny in a goofy kind of way, but also has a bloody climax that rivals the latter movie’s famous “Say hello to my little friend” scene.

Rogen is a bit more manic here than usual, but brings his everyman appeal to a role that could easily have turned sugarless in the hands of a less likeable actor, but it is James Franco who really surprises. Best known as the bland Harry Osborn / New Goblin in the Spider-Man franchise he shows a completely untapped side here. He’s really funny. As the permanently high drug dealer Saul Silver he delivers many of the film’s best lines and his bleary-eyed charm reveals an engaging comedic presence. 

On the comedy scale Pineapple Express doesn’t quite rank up there with some of Rogen’s previous work—I’m thinking the sublime Superbad here—but has enough goofy charisma combined with super charged action to make it an unusual but likable summer distraction.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END: 1 STAR

According to Captain Jack Sparrow, the pirate’s motto is: “Take what you can and give nothing back.” Apparently the salty adage doesn’t only apply to sea bandits. The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End filmmakers seem to have taken it to heart as well—they’re going to take almost three hours of your time, your twelve doubloons admission and in return they’ll give you… well, more than nothing, but not much.

Part three of the Pirates franchise picks up the action where last summer’s cliff hanger left it dangling. Scurvy dog Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is still missing, presumably eaten by a giant sea creature. Heartthrob heroes Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) are allied with the formerly skeletal pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to rescue Sparrow from Davy Jones’ locker and conquer the ghastly ghost ship, The Flying Dutchman.

Treachery and betrayal abound as loyalties switch on an almost minute by minute basis—double crosses lead to triple crosses which, in turn, lead to quadruple crosses in a story so confusing it would give Machiavelli a headache trying to keep things straight.

The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy rivals only The Lord of the Rings movie for sheer length, the only difference being that LOTR was written by a scholar who spent fourteen years fine tuning the story, whereas POTC was written by a team of Hollywood hacks who are able to dream up pretty good action sequences, but fail to come up with a plot to connect the big money scenes. I suppose we shouldn’t expect much from people cobbling together a story based on an amusement park ride, but I doubt that even a hundred monkeys banging away at a hundred typewriters could come up with a more jumbled story.  

None of the Pirates movies have been exactly easy to follow, but the first two were blessed with some commanding performances that smoothed over the rough hewn story telling. In supporting roles Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy stood out amid the action, creating characters that were memorable and colourful. Rush’s Barbossa was a great villain; flamboyantly evil, he added some delicious menace to the first instalment.

In the second one Nighy shone as the fish faced Davy Jones, complete with a slimy prehensile tentacle beard and a giant lobster claw for a hand. It was a strange character but despite layers of make-up and special effects Nighy made it his own and out acted the heavy prosthetics.

Then of course, there was Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, arguably the world’s second most famous pirate next to Captain Morgan. In part one his Sparrow was a marvel of comic invention, an unexpectedly swishy swashbuckler—a swishbuckler?—who stole every scene he was in. It’s the role that made Depp a household name, and for better or worse, will be the character he is best remembered for.

What seemed so fresh the first time around is now as tarnished as one of Sparrow’s fake gold teeth. Depp presents a caricature of a caricature, mumbling his way through this movie, relying on tricks recycled from the first two. It’s as if Depp, a constantly inventive actor always on the hunt for something new, grew bored of playing the same character for a third time. He can still raise a smile, but for sheer manic fun, check out the first movie.   

Even less fun than watching Depp saunter through scene after scene is watching the embalmed performance of Rolling Stone’s guitarist Keith Richard as Sparrow’s father. Depp says he modelled his character on the guitarist, so pairing the two should be fraught with comic possibilities but instead we get an idea why Keith waited until age 63 to make his dramatic debut. As an actor rock and roll’s great survivor makes a great guitar player.   

POTC: At World’s End is an orgy of swordplay, action and there’s even some hangings, but none of the big action scenes have the inventiveness of the previous efforts. Nothing here compares to the Dead Man’s Chest sequence where Depp, channelling Buster Keaton, balances atop a giant mill wheel while it careens through the countryside. The action here is big and loud, but otherwise pretty standard pirate movie stuff. Swords clash, pirates swing from ship to ship and cannons roar, but the stunts mostly feel like amped-up Errol Flynn retreads.   
Abandon all hope, ye who enter the theatre! Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End lacks the panache of the first instalment, mistaking 168 minutes of rambling bombast for entertainment value.
PAN’S LABYRINTH DVD: 4 ½ STARS
We generally think of fairy tales as the domain of young people—sweet fables to send the kids off to sleep, or feed their imaginations during their waking hours. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, however, has a more old school approach. His most recent film harkens back to the pre-politically correct days when Grimm’s fairy tales emphasized the “grim” part. In Pan’s Labyrinth he skilfully weaves a dark adult fairy tale set against the backdrop of the Second World War, creating a fairy tale that will likely keep the kids up at night, terrified rather than soothed.

Del Toro uses parallel worlds to tell the tale. In the mortal world it is 1944 Spain just after Franco’s fascists have taken over the country. In this cold, cruel and violent place a young girl, the soon-to-be-stepdaughter of a sadistic fascist general, escapes into a fantastic world populated by a pasty white creature known as The Pale Man and a half-man, half-goat Pan. The horned creature tells her she is a lost princess, and the only way to return to her underground kingdom is by completing three difficult tasks. Her harsh fantasy becomes a harsh reality when she is forced to endure the dire truths of her dual worlds.

The word masterpiece is thrown around rather casually these days, but in this case I think it applies. Pan’s Labyrinth is a beautifully realized film that vividly paints both worlds using broad strokes of beauty and dread. Del Toro’s vision of fascist Spain is uncompromising. Violence lurks around every corner and death can come in cruel and unexpected ways. When young Ofelia disappears down the rabbit hole she doesn’t find a world of comfort, but a place fraught with danger, almost as perilous as the “real” world she is running from. Del Toro effortlessly intertwines these realities, creating one whole that is emotionally complex and as satisfying as the age-old fairy tales that inspired it.

The fantastic new two disc DVD release includes a prologue and commentary track from del Toro, featurettes about the making of the film, storyboards, and interviews with the cast and crew.

PERFECT STRANGER: 1 ½ STARS

Somewhere in Hollywood there is a very usual script. I say usual because it doesn’t look like all the other scripts that get made into movies every year. This one looks more like the “fill-in-the-blanks” game that you used to play as a kid.

The first line probably looks like this:

A beautiful / handsome ____________, played by _____________, risks his / her life to investigate a ___________’s murder.

Fill in the blanks anyway you like, and presto! you have a standard “Mad Libs” thriller that will make a few bucks at the multi-plex on opening weekend before heading straight to the DVD bargain bin.

Ashley Judd used to make a lot of these kinds of fill-in-the-blanks thrillers. Remember Double Jeopardy? Eye of the Beholder? No, neither do I, and that’s because they are so generic they make almost no impression on the viewer. Such is the problem with the Perfect Stranger, a new that seems to have borrowed the “Mad Libs” crime drama script template.

In Perfect Stranger a beautiful reporter, played by Halle Berry, risks her life to investigate a friend’s murder. So far, so standard. The addition of a couple of quirky characters should spice things up a bit, yes? Well, no. Giovanni Ribisi as a wacky computer genius and Bruce Willis as a two-timing advertising executive are both so by-the-book even the receptionist at Central Casting would think they were old hat.  

There are plot twists a plenty, (no, Balki isn’t the killer, that was Perfect Strangers), but they feel like contrivances created by a desperate screenwriter rather than events that grew organically from the story. The twists and turns aren’t interesting, and when it is time for someone to go to jail (I won’t say who just in case you decide to throw your money away on this one) the evidence against them is so thin it wouldn’t even warrant a slap on the wrist at the People’s Court.

Perfect Stranger promises much, but delivers little. It’s a total _________ of _________.

PARTITION: 3 STARS

Partition, a new film by Canadian director Vic Sarin is part history lesson, part love story. Sarin, who was born in Kashmir, has made a movie set in post 1947 India after the country won its freedom from colonial rule after nearly 350 years of British presence. India was split into two countries divided on the basis of religion: Pakistan was made an Islamic state and India a secular state. The division led to violence between Muslims and Sikhs and that is the backdrop of this movie.

Sarin has taken a huge historical event—the Partition and it’s violent aftermath—and turned it into a human story, concentrating on two young people from either side of the ideological fence who fall in love.

Gian, played by Jimi Mistry, is a Sikh who rescues a Muslim woman from certain death at the hands of his friends and neighbors. His experience as a soldier has made him weary of violence, and he refuses to allow any harm to come to her. Soon, they fall in love, have a baby and she is accepted by his community. When she discovers that some members of her family survived the massacre that led her to Gian, she travels to Pakistan to see them and tell them of her new life. The partition, which brought the couple together, will now keep them apart.

Sarin’s updated Romeo and Juliet story is beautiful to look at—he is an accomplished cinematographer as well as director—brimming with period details and skillfully shot set pieces. The story of Gian and Naseem is nicely crafted, perhaps to the expense of some of the heftier concepts in the story. There are many big—and timely—ideas here, such as the role religion has played in creating unrest in the world, but Sarin doesn’t fully explore them, choosing instead to concentrate on the ill-fated love tale. If Sarin had broadened the narrative Partition could have been the epic movie the story seems to be crying out for.

Jimi Mistry, best known for comedic roles in films like The Guru and Touch of Pink, convincingly plays a man tormented by his violent past. As Naseem doe-eyed Canadian actor Kristen Kreuk has good chemistry with Mistry and pulls off the transformation from frightened refugee to wife and mother.  

Partition is an interesting take on the Romeo and Juliet story, but doesn’t delve as deep as I would have liked.    
PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER
4 ½ FOR AUDACITY
2 ½ CONTENT
3 ½ OVERALL

This is the strangest movie of the year. Directed by Run Lola Run director Tom Tywer and based on the best selling novel by Patrick Süskind Perfume is the story of a serial killer who is obsessed by smell. Born into the slums of 18th century Paris he becomes an expert perfume maker, but his overdeveloped olfactory sense pushes him to a darker place. He kills women to harvest their scent in the demented hopes of making the ultimate perfume.

This is a big budget, ambitious film that manages to capture the novel’s world of scent and smell. It is a strange story, chock full of abrupt changes in tone, magic realism and characters who appear and disappear just as quickly.
The novel was long considered unfilmable—many directors tried to crack the material, including Ridley Scott, Tim Burton, Martin Scorsese, Milos Forman and Stanley Kubrick—but Tykwer has managed to capture the wonky spirit of the book with a vision that is vivid and disturbing. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer isn’t for everyone, but will satisfy adventurous viewers.

THE PAINTED VEIL: 3 STARS

The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham's novel about a dysfunctional British couple who travel to rural China in the early part of the 20th century has been brought to the screen twice before. Greta Garbo’s 1934 version used the title but little else from the book, while a 1957 take on the story, titled The Seventh Sin, skirted around some of the more unsavory aspects of the story. The new version, starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts has the old-fashioned epic old-fashioned feel of its predecessors, but is far more frank than either of the first two films could ever be.

Norton and Watts play Walter and Kitty Fane, an unhappily married couple who stay together out of habit rather than love. He is an unaffectionate biologist who is married to his work, she a shallow party girl who craves attention. When she has an affair with one of her husband’s colleagues Walter explodes, showing real passion for the first time in their marriage. He cruelly offers her an ultimatum: she can either follow him to a cholera ravaged village in rural China where he will study the disease or suffer the indignity and ensuing scandal of being sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery.
She chooses the former and while in the dangerous rural village, away from everything and everyone they know, the couple discovers forgiveness and is able to reconnect.

The film was shot on location in Mainland China and looks spectacular and both Norton and Watts hand in good performances that really get under the skin of a relationship that is in real trouble. The movie is set in post Victorian times and these two actors adhere to the etiquette of the day, but also show the passion that boils just beneath their mannered facades. The achieve something remarkable—they make an eighty year old story set nearly a century ago feel up-to-date and modern.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS: 3 ½ STARS

Cal it “Will Power” or “Strength of Will,” however you slice it Will Smith has had a remarkable career. He’s had number one hit records and a long running sitcom; he can flip flop from violent action movies to romantic comedies, from drama to animated cartoons. The only entertainment field he hasn’t conquered is porno, and I’m sure it’s not because he wouldn’t be good at it, he’s probably just too modest. This Christmas season sees him hand in his strongest acting performance since Ali.

In The Pursuit of Happyness Smith plays Chris Gardner, a down-at-the-heels family man trying desperately to keep his family together in early 80s San Francisco. A get rich quick scheme isn’t going well and his wife is tired of living hand to mouth. A chance encounter with a successful stock trader and his skill with a Rubik’s Cube become his ticket to a different world—but first he must intern at a brokerage house for six months with no pay. In short order his wife leaves him, he fights for the custody of his son, he gets evicted, thrown in jail and his one form of income, these bulky bone density gizmos he tries to sell door to door, gets stolen.

The situation is bleak and only Gardner’s sheer strength of will prevents him from going over the edge. I hate to say it but so far this story sounds like the typical inspirational “Based on a True Story” twaddle that clogs up the multiplexes this time of year but there is a difference and that difference is the abovementioned Mr. Smith.

The movie has a tendency towards the maudlin, the easy sentiment, but Smith’s lead performance elevates the entire film. The inherent sense of decency he brings to the role of a man bloodied but not beaten by life shines through. He has the exhausted posture of a person who is fighting disappointment, doing his best not to throw in the towel and give up. In this performance is a certain kind of pride and dignity that audiences will relate to.

The Pursuit of Happyness is a crowd-pleaser that succeeds because of one very good performance.

THE PRESTIGE: 4 STARS

Director Christopher Nolan is obsessed with obsession. His last three films, Memento, Insomnia and Batman Begins, all have, at their core, single-minded men who are driven beyond the boundaries of reason. Memento’s Leonard will not let complete short term memory loss prevent him from finding his wife’s killer. The cop in Insomnia is so preoccupied by guilt and the search for a serial killer he cannot sleep and Batman Begin’s title character, well, let’s just say he has some issues. His latest picture, The Prestige, turns up the heat, focusing on two Victorian age magicians hell bent on destroying one another professionally and personally.

At the beginning of the film a good-natured rivalry turns deadly for budding magicians Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) when Borden causes an onstage accident that causes the death of Angier’s wife. A cat and mouse game persists over the years, culminating when Borden creates the ultimate illusion, The Transported Man, a spectacular stage illusion where a man seems to disappear and instantaneously reappear on the other side of the stage. Angier will stop at nothing to discover the secret of The Transported Man. Borden knows this and uses his adversary’s obsession to draw him deeper into a web of deceit and trickery.

The real magic here is the way in which Nolan tells the story. He has designed the movie’s plot pattern as kind of a Mobius Strip, which constantly turns in on itself, keeping the viewer from knowing what is coming next. He plays with the time line, employing flashbacks (and even a flashback within a flashback) slowly pulling all the discombobulated elements of the story together. Nolan’s strange twisting of time can be confusing, but stick with it. In the end all the pieces fit together. Like the old trick where a conjurer sawed a woman in half, the effect on the viewer is weird and wonderful. You can’t believe your eyes, but in the end, when the lady (or the story) is put together again, something that seemed impossible somehow appears to make sense.

The movie is anchored by the performances of its leads. The two actors play polar opposites—Borden is rough around the edges, Angier suave and upper-class; Borden is a self-taught magician, Angier studied the masters of the craft—and, as such, each brings a different slant to their obsession. Borden is streetwise, while Angier is more sophisticated. Christian Bale, working with Nolan for a second time following his turn as the Caped Crusader in Batman Begins, brings an edgy brooding to Borden, handing in what may be the best performance of his career so far. As the suave Angier, Hugh Jackman finally delivers on the promise he has shown in other films. He’s a good actor, but performances in movies like Van Helsing and Kate & Leopold haven’t shown the strength on display here.

The supporting cast is eclectic and interesting. Michael Caine (also making a return appearance from Nolan’s batman movie) hands in one of his self-assured mentor performances. He plays Borden’s magic guru with the degree of charm and professionalism we have come to expect from him. No surprises there. More interesting is David Bowie as America's greatest electrical engineer Nikolai Tesla. Bowie transforms the engineer into a regal, but mysterious presence.

The Prestige has much in common with the magicians who inspired it. Victorian conjurers used misdirection and spectacle to wow audiences. In 2006, with The Prestige, Christopher Nolan is doing the same thing.

POSEIDON: 2 ½  STARS

There have been many nautical disaster films—everything from Abandon Ship! to Speed 2: Cruise Control to Titanic—but the granddaddy of them all, the one that started the disaster movie craze of the 1970s was The Poseidon Adventure. It spawned a series of catastrophic calamity movies with names that usually featured an exclamation point, like Earthquake! and earned producer Irwin Allen the title Master of Disaster.

The new version of the film, Poseidon, not only streamlines the title down to the bare essentials, it also cuts the running time from 117 minutes to 98. Also lost is most of the character development. Director Wolfgang Peterson returns to the watery milieu he knows so well, having made Das Boot and The Perfect Storm—this guy has spent more time underwater than David Blaine—but apparently left any well-rounded characters ashore. He dispenses with any sort of character study in the first twenty minutes of the movie, perfunctorily introducing us to the ensemble cast of stock characters before he gets to the main attraction—the ship flip. Once the wave capsizes the ship the movie takes on a video game tone, with a small band of generically stubborn passengers trying to find a way off the sinking ship.

With dialogue that reads something like this, “Wait! I think there is a way out over here! You’ll have to trust me if you want to get out of here alive!” it’s no wonder that the characters disappear, becoming little more than damp counterpoints to the special effects.  The Poseidon Adventure starred five Oscar winners, including Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters—the remake can only boast one, Richard Dreyfuss—who chewed the scenery and made the best of the corny dialogue. The new cast, anchored by Josh Lucas and Kurt Russell with supporting actors who seem to have been chosen by who looks best when wet, play it straight, clichés and all. The camp value of the original is lost and with it, some of the fun.

As uninvolved with its characters as Poseidon may be the devastation is masterfully realized. The real star here is the special effects. The giant wave, the topsy-turvy ship and the claustrophobic vertical climb through an air conditioning shaft are worth the price of the popcorn.  

Character wise Poseidon is little more than a wet t-shirt contest—I’ve played video games with better characters than we find here—but the special effects do offer some thrills and after watching 98 minutes of underwater action you will be grateful to have dry clothes to wear.

PASSAGE TO OTTAWA

A rarity among independent films, Passage To Ottawa is a family drama, suitable for kids and engaging enough to keep adults interested. Omi (Nabil Mehta) is a seven-year old East Indian boy sent to live with relatives in Ottawa when his mother falls ill. He believes he is on a quest to find a super-hero who will save his mother. Roland, (Jim Codrington) the captain of a local tour boat seems to fit the bill. The two form an emotional connection, as Roland begins a romance with Safia, (Amy Sobol) Omi’s lively cousin. Nice naturalistic performances from a mixed cast of amateurs and professionals coupled with sure handed direction from India-born, Russian trained, Canadian resident Gaurav Seth add up to a sweet family movie, that champions the virtues of multi-culturalism. Recommended.

PEOPLE I KNOW

Al Pacino is a world-weary New York show biz publicist in People I Know, so world-weary in fact that it looks like he hasn’t slept since he finished shooting on Insomnia in 2002. The bags under his eyes aren’t bags anymore, they’re suitcases. As Eli Wurman he is on the way out, a has-been from another area who medicates himself with a constant cocktail of cigarettes, booze and pills. A personal scandal threatens an event he is planning, and we follow him through the final preparations for his last big hurrah. Director Daniel Algrant pulls great performances out of Pacino, Kim Basinger and Tea Leoni and Robert Klein, who all seem to relish the chance to speak well written, smart dialogue. Set in the present People I Know feels very contemporary, but manages to have a timeless quality about it. The seamy underbelly of New York doesn’t really change from year to year, only the faces do.

PORN STAR: THE LEGEND OF RON JEREMY

Ron Jeremy is the biggest (wink wink, nudge nudge) porn star in the world. With over 1600 adult films to his credit, Jeremy has been working in the adult film business for nearly a quarter of a century. One would expect a documentary about his life to be salacious sleazy stuff and while Porn Star does have elements of baseness (how could it not?) it chooses to focus on Ron Jeremy the man, not the movie stud. We learn that he holds a Master Degree in special education, and was once a teacher. All his friends talk about his legendary cheapness. Jeremy is very open in front of the camera, sometimes almost too much so. He can be a charming guy when he wants to, but there is an air of desperation that bleeds through his well constructed public persona. Director Scott J. Gill humanizes Jeremy and somehow makes you feel pity for a man who says he has slept with over 4000 women.

THE POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE

If, like me, you are not familiar with the television adventures of Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles, the test-tube superhero Powerpuff Girls, this movie is a good place to start. We meet the girls in their infancy, just after they were created in a lab by Professor Utonium. Apparently if you mix sugar and spice and everything nice with Chemical X you get small flying girls with the power to shoot lasers from their oversized eyes. The girls have some trouble learning to contain their powers, and when the evil monkey Mojo Jojo tricks them into working for him they must take a stand and save their city. I’m not sure who will go see this movie. At the screening I was at there were lots of six-year-olds and lots of twenty-five-year-olds with suspicious grins on their faces. The animation is quite beautiful, very imaginative, managing to look completely contemporary and yet somehow retro at the same time. There’s also lots of great pop culture references sprinkled throughout – look for a nod to the banker from the Monopoly game and some King Kong sight gags. It’s a good time waster, although a little stiff at full price with a running time of just 87 minutes.
PUNCH

Punch is a risky Canadian drama that explores an emotionally incestuous relationship between a father and daughter. It also introduces us to the world of Topless Female Boxers, but more about that later.

Newcomer Sonya Bennett is the teenaged Ariel, a rebellious young girl being raised by her single parent father (Michael Riley). When he brings home a woman he is dating Ariel feels betrayed and punches the woman in the face, giving her a black eye. Enter the aforementioned Topless Female Boxer (Meredith McGeachie). She is the tough, lesbian sister of the wronged women, and comes to extract an apology from Ariel and her father.

It all sounds very “Jerry Springer,” and to a degree it is – the topless boxing angle is pure titillation – but there is some substance here. Director and screenwriter Guy Bennett introduces many interesting human drama elements to Ariel’s coming-of-age story, but frustratingly fails to fully explore any of them. He hints at things that are daring and unusual, but then backs away from the difficult material. At its core Punch delves into the pain of finding the right emotional distance between yourself and those whom you love, but the message is muddied by too many plot twists. The topless boxing is very, uh… visual and will probably put some bums in the seats but unnecessarily clogs up the story.

Sonya Bennett sizzles as the audacious daughter, while Riley subtly conveys the turmoil the father feels as a respectable man who realizes that his relationship with his daughter is tainted.

This is Guy Bennett’s first film and there are enough indications in this movie of someone who really knows how to direct actors and is willing to take interesting risks as a screenwriter to make lead one to think that while Punch isn’t quite there, it’ll be interesting to see what this guy will do next.

PUMPKIN

I’m not sure if this movie goes way too far, or not far enough. A dark teenage comedy, Pumpkin tells of the story of the perfection obsessed sorority girl Carolyn McDuffy who falls for Pumpkin, a mentally challenged boy she meets when her sorority house agrees to coach some “special people.” The film forces the viewer to look inward and confront their own prejudices, but it does so in such a strange and weirdly paced way that it is hard to recommend Pumpkin, although I think it is an interesting movie. I wish someone like Lloyd Kaufman would have directed it, someone who would take the gloves off and go for the jugular in every scene and really give this material some bite. A movie like this will only work if the filmmaker goes in completely committed to the idea. As it is Pumpkin seems to teeter on the brink of outrageousness, but pulling back every time to stay on the PC side of the fence. It’s a shame because this could have been a truly wonderful and subversive movie.

PUNCH DRUNK LOVE

I loved Magnolia and Boogie Nights, but unfortunately lightening has not struck a third time for director Paul Thomas Anderson. Punch Drunk Love I think, was an attempt by Anderson to pare down the epic length movies he is known for and make something simpler and more linear. He has accomplished that, cutting the running time down to one and a half hours from his usual three, but in doing that has sacrificed character development. I was hoping this would be Adam Sandler's entry to adult roles, and while he is almost there, he displays no ability to grow and develop into a believable character. His Barry Egan is a distributor of novelty items (like plungers with dice on them for use in Casinos), with a severe anger management problem. He falls in love with Lena (Emily Watson) while at the same time becoming involved in a phone-sex extortion scam. Not a bad premise, but when the main character is hard to identify with it makes it difficult for the viewer to feel sympathy or any connection to them. Sandler stretches his usual teen-movie shtick a little bit, but not enough to satisfy. I’m not sure whether this is a mediocre Paul Thomas Anderson film, or a really great Adam Sandler movie.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST: 3 ½ STARS

The Seven Seas are not enough to contain Johnny Depp’s outrageous scallywag Captain Jack Sparrow. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the anticipated sequel to the 2003 mega-hit The Curse of the Black Pearl is in theatres now is so much bigger, louder and more convoluted than its predecessor that perhaps in the third sequel Disney will be forced to create the 8th, 9th and 10th Seas for Sparrow to conquer.

Dead Man’s Chest finds pirate Jack Sparrow searching for a way to get out of his blood debt to the legendary captain of the Flying Dutchman, Davy Jones. Setting sail with Depp are most of the cast from the original, including Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom along with welcome new additions in the form of Bill Nighy as Davy Jones and Stellan Skarsgård as the be-barnacled Bootstrap Bill. Together and separately they flee from a cannibal bb-q, supernatural sailors and a sea monster, while engaging in tavern brawls, rum drinking and general yo-ho-hoing in a story so long-winded that I could have carved a nice piece of scrimshaw waiting to get to the point of the plot. Luckily director Gore Verbinski has infused the movie’s over-long running time with enough thrills, spills and chills to keep us afloat.

At the center of it all is Johnny Depp, the pirate who, appropriately enough, steals all the scenes he is in. It’s mostly smooth sailing for Depp but as with any sequel some of the fun is gone. In 2003 his Captain Jack Sparrow was a marvel of comic invention that wowed us with his swishbuckling devil-may-care antics. Here Depp gives us more of the same but this time out we know what to expect from him. The filmmakers have wisely limited his time on screen this time out in an effort to keep the character fresh. Too much of a good thing is still too much.

The real treasure here is the fish faced Davy Jones played by English actor Bill Nighy. He leads a crew of undead sailors who have morphed into a veritable seafood smorgasbord. His first lieutenant has the head of a hammerhead shark; another has a conch shell exoskeleton while another has pufferfish cheeks. Jones himself is an incredible creation with a slimy prehensile tentacle beard and a giant lobster claw for a hand. It is a strange character but despite layers of make-up and special effects Bill Nighy makes it his own out acting the heavy prosthetics.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest may not shiver your timbers in exactly the same way the first one did, but it still delivers. It’s fun and exciting, just as any movie based on an amusement park ride should be.

PLANET OF THE APES DVD BOX SET: 4 STARS

When I first heard about the “ape head” packaging for the new Planet of the Apes box set I couldn’t wait to get my stinkin’ paws on one of those damn dirty apes.

It is the most unusual and disturbing DVD cases ever made. Unusual because it is an almost life size bust modeled after Roddy McDowall's stylized chimpanzee makeup for the original Planet Of The Apes, complete with lifelike hair. Disturbing because I swear the eyes of the thing follow me around the room.

Hidden under a flap on the back of the ape head is a pouch containing fourteen DVDs, the entire Apes oeuvre on disc. Included are all five original movies (1968-1973), the complete series of the Planet of the Apes (1974) TV Show and the never-before-released Saturday Morning Cartoon TV series: Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975) as well as Tim Burton’s 2001 re-imagining of the Planet of the Apes mythology.

The original movie, starring Charlton Heston, holds up quite well, and features social commentary that still seems as relevant today as when Michael Wilson and Rod Serling wrote it in the late 1960s. The twist ending has been parodied a million times, most famously as a musical number on The Simpsons, but still packs a punch. The four sequels offer up varying levels of quality, and are kind of a lesson in diminishing returns, but are worth a look. The live-action television show and the crudely animated cartoon series are curiosities with nostalgia appeal and perfect for Apes completionists.   

The “ape head” collection will set you back about $250, and only 2,000 will be available in Canada.

Proof

Proof debuted at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and at the time I thought it had the potential to go on to become one of the hot movies for grown-ups to come out of the fest. Instead it was ignored on release, but now people have a chance to revisit the movie on DVD and check out the great performances by Gwyneth Paltrow as the daughter of a brilliant but mentally ill mathematician with Anthony Hopkins the father, Jake Gyllenhaal as the love interest and Hope Davis as her overbearing sister.

Based on the Broadway play, Proof –adapted for the screen by Arthur Miller’s daughter Rebecca—is the story of Catherine, the daughter of a brilliant but mentally ill mathematician who fears she may have inherited her father’s insanity. Complicating Catherine’s life are a domineering sister and a young math student who believes that he has found an important new mathematical proof in her father’s old papers. I think people assumed that this was a movie about mathematics—that it would be dry—but it is not. Proof is an absorbing drama about family, genius and self worth.
The Pink Panther

There was a time when Steve Martin’s idiot character was truly original and funny. Twenty-five years ago when he made films like The Jerk and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid Martin was the jackass du jour, an actor who could deftly mix slapstick with pathos and transcend the genre. Think The Three Stooges mixed with Moliere. 

In the eighties and nineties his films took on a higher, more sophisticated tone. Recently, however, his work has been more commercial, and quite uneven. Cheaper By the Dozen and Bringing Down the House made big cash and re-established him as a box office draw but will do nothing for his comic legacy.

Which brings us to The Pink Panther.

Forty-two years ago Peter Sellers created one of the screen’s most indelible comic characters, the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. Since then there have been several attempts to recreate the Seller’s magic—Alan Arkin and Roberto Benigni have both tried and failed—with the most recent being Steve Martin.

Martin gives it his all but never rises above mimicking Peter Sellers. As Martin—using an accent reminiscent of a French Elmer Fudd—pratfalls his way through this caper film I was constantly reminded of other, better movies. Of course the ghost of Peter Sellers looms large, but also Martin’s earlier work. A scene with Martin and Jean Reno as unlikely bedmates made me long for the similar and funnier scene with John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. A dance interlude reminded me of Martin’s famous dance with Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live. In short, nothing in this film feels original.

The Pink Panther has a couple of laughs, but I’d recommend sticking to the real deal and checking out the recent Pink Panther DVD box set featuring Peter Sellers.

The Producers

It’s re-make a rama at the multi-plex this week. Kong is still doing big business and two other retreads are joining it on theatre marquees. The Producers started life as a very funny film by Mel Brooks starring Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. Thirty years later a musical version of the story of the worst play ever mounted on the Great White Way helped revitalize the real-life Broadway. Unfortunately I don’t think the film version of The Producers will work the same magic in movie theatres and reverse the slump that theatres chains have been experiencing this year.

Fans of the stage version of The Producers will be pleased to have a faithful adaptation of the musical, starring Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and several of the original Broadway cast, but stage and film are two different mediums, a fact that seems to be lost on director Susan Stroman. As a choreographer Stroman has a shelf full of Tony awards and has worked at the very highest levels on Broadway. As a film director she is a great choreographer. Her film version of the play feels like she simply pointed a camera at the stage and yelled action. There is little effort made to open the film up and take it outside the proscenium arch. When the movie does stray from the box-like confines of the stage we get our best sequences—a chorus line of elderly women on walkers in Central Park and a lavish production number for Broderick’s “I Want to be a Producer” number.

Lane and Broderick bring considerable charm and energy to their roles, but it feels like they are playing to the back of the house rather than to a camera. Ironically, The Producers, a story so rooted in the tradition of Broadway, would have benefited from a more Hollywood treatment.  

THE POLAR EXPRESS DVD: 2 STARS
This is supposed to be a warm, cuddly Christmas movie but I found the weirdly lifeless animation creepy, akin to A Christmas Carol performed by zombies. Based on a children’s Christmas book by Chris Van Allsburg, this is the story of a doubtful boy who is intimidated into believing in Santa Claus after he takes a terrifying nocturnal locomotive journey to the North Pole. The computer-generated animation renders all the characters with vacant eyes and odd too-smooth movement that didn’t fill me with the Christmas spirit, only dread. I call this the Bi-Polar Express because to me it is two movies—on the surface a shiny Christmas movie, but underneath a quite effective horror movie.
I’m giving the Bi-Polar Express 2 stars because as a horror movie it works quite well.

PRIME: 2 ½ STARS

Prime has a great set-up for farce. A 37 year-old divorcee begins a new romance with a much younger man. The only person she can confide in is her therapist, the woman who is always telling her to move on with her life and try new things. The trouble is the younger man is the therapist’s son. Could be either very funny or quite tragic, but falls somewhere in between.

Uma Thurmond brings her usual “umessence” to the role of the divorced woman, but like Meryl Streep she isn’t a naturally gifted comedic actress and several scenes here fall flat as a result. Sandra Bullock was originally cast in Uma’s role and I think it would have been a much different movie with Bullock’s lighter touch in the lead.

THE PACIFIER DVD

Remember Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot? How about Junior featuring a pregnant Arnold Schwarzenegger? What these films have in common is they represent action stars—men who made their names in movies bashing heads and shooting guns—trying to prove that they are more than just a muscle mass that got lucky in pictures and that they have the range to make us laugh. The latest to switch from cracking ribs to tickling funny bones is Vin Diesel. You’ll likely remember the bald, brooding actor from movies with macho names like XXX, Pitch Black or The Fast and the Furious, but after a couple of failed action flicks, he followed in the career rejuvenating footsteps of Schwarzenegger and Stallone and made a comedy—The Pacifier. In this film the six foot muscle man plays a Navy Seal assigned to protect a house full of out of control kids. It’s an amusing—but not particularly new—idea to cast the tough as nails army guy with these kids, but the movie never veers into laugh-out-loud funny. It works better on DVD than it did on the big screen, and I think kids under ten might enjoy it, but parents may want to watch something else.