This Is 40 - 2012

"This Is 40" - 2012
Dir. by Judd Apatow - 2 hrs. 14 min.

Red Band Featurette

by Clayton Hollifield

"This Is 40" is a better movie than my rating would indicate.  But my rating system has an over/under point: three stars means that I'd want to watch the film again at some point in the future.  And there's no way in Hell that I want to watch "This Is 40" again, even though I thought it was a pretty decent movie and I laughed all the way through.  But the subject matter was so uncomfortable to sit through that I will be content if I never see this film again, and even blissful when I can push it out of my mind entirely.

Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) reprise their characters from "Knocked Up" (and no, there wasn't a Seth Rogen sighting, as far as I noticed) here.  They're both turning forty (in the same week, even), and under a lot of stress.  Aside from the milestone birthday, Debbie's boutique is being stolen from (to the tune of $12,000), and Pete's record label is tanking, with pretty much everything riding on their next release. Their kids are constantly at each other's throats, and so are Pete and Debbie.  There are other subplots, but they exist pretty much just to buffer between the no-holds barred arguments that Pete and Debbie have with others and with one another.  If you've seen "Knocked Up," understand that this entire film is pretty much tonally either the argument that Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl have at the doctor's office (not the positive one, the one where they completely blow up at each other) or the moment where Pete gets torn down by Rogen's character at his own birthday party.  For two hours and fourteen minutes.

So let's get to the good stuff first, lest you think that I hated this thing wire to wire.  Pretty much everyone who has a small role absolutely kills their minute or two on screen.  Melissa McCarthy has a fantastic pair of foul-mouthed scenes (maybe the highlight of the film - reinforced by the fact that the blooper reel that runs during the credits is a take of her meeting with the school principal and Pete and Debbie, where neither Paul Rudd nor Leslie Mann can keep it together), Jason Segel's lothario trainer is great, both John Lithgow and Albert Brooks are great as the misguided fathers of Debbie and Pete (respectively).  The feud between Debbie's two boutique workers (Megan Fox and Charlyne Yi, who may or may not be playing the same character she played in "Knocked Up") is pretty good, and Debbie's scenes with each individually are hilarious.  I'm probably missing a few people, but literally everyone who has only a scene or two do a great job with their time.

But here's the problem for me: Pete and Debbie's relationship is absolutely toxic.  It may be a point of personal touchiness about this, but watching two people (and in the context of this movie, two parents) constantly unable to resist going for one another's throats in a very real way (and in front of their children, which isn't glossed over here) isn't entertainment.  It's not some guy looking around wide-eyed, and only half-sarcastically spitting out his catchphrase, "Awkward!"  For me, it's a nearly unbearable re-enactment of the worst parts of my childhood.  I'm not exaggerating to say that if all of the bit parts hadn't been so funny, I might have walked out on "This Is 40," just to preserve my sanity.  As it was, I felt dread in my stomach every time Pete and Debbie were together on screen.  So when I tell you that there's no way I would watch this film again, not under threat of torture or death, I mean it.  It was torturous at times to get through "This Is 40," and now I've got nothing left to lose.  And, unlike what the plot would like you to believe, my personal experience with matters like this left me no faith that this family would find a way to stay together through their troubles.  I didn't believe it during the film, and I didn't buy the ending (which probably has less to do with what was being presented on the screen than I'd like to admit).

I don't expect everyone to react in the same manner that I did to "This Is 40."  But it's fair to mention that if your childhood included a period of tumult, you might find this nearly as uncomfortable of a movie-going experience as I did.  Plus, I hate having to capitalize the "is" in "This Is 40," as it goes against all of my training in the writing arts.  Plus, there was a gout joke here while I'm currently limping around on a cane because of a gout attack.  So, Judd Apatow, perhaps you'd like to take some shots at my weight, or my hair color or something?  You could drive to my home, and wreck into my truck and not leave a note.  Do you want to knock my dog over?  Do you want to steal all of my spoons?  I mean, you've already done everything you can to make this film a miserable experience for me personally, there's got to be a way for you to top that.  All I can say in response is that I used a free movie ticket to see "This is 40," and that feels about right.

2.5 / 5 - Theatre

Jeff, Who Lives at Home - 2011

"Jeff, Who Lives at Home" - 2011
Dir. by Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass - 1 hr. 23 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I suspect that how much a viewer enjoys "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" depends highly on his or her tolerance for meandering in general.  There are a lot of movies like that, particularly in the indie realm, where a certain ambiguity is what defines a character's existence.  To put it another way, "Armageddon" would be a much different film if Bruce Willis didn't have a clear vision for his own life, and instead of acting decisively, liked to smoke weed in his mom's basement and try to work things out.  Not better or worse, but definitely different.

In "Jeff," the titular character is played by Jason Segel, who is a 30-year living in his mom's basement (literally), and we're introduced to him waxing eloquent on the merits of "Signs" on the john, and then smoking weed by himself, in the A.M.  It's his mother's birthday (Sharon, played by Susan Sarandon), and all she wants from him is for Jeff to go to the home improvement store, get some supplies, and fix a wood shutter in her kitchen.  She even drafts her other son, Pat (Ed Helms), saying that Jeff is "stuck," and could probably use some help from his brother to get unstuck.  Pat's mired in an unhappy marriage himself, and is kind of an asshole.  The general situation is a little more complicated than that, especially Sharon's, and thankfully so.  She's involved in a "secret admirer" flirtation at her office that has her at turns twitterpated and humiliated, and it's a meaty sub-role for Sarandon to bite into.

Jeff's real issue is that he does believe in destiny, and while he's open to following whims (a wrong-number phone call for "Kevin" sends Jeff off on what seem like tangents, at least at first), he just can't figure out what he's supposed to be doing.  So while it might seem like a simple task to take the bus to a Home Depot to get some wood glue, coming across another bus-rider named Kevin turns it into an adventure.  His brother is the opposite; always convinced that he's in the right, locked in an unhappy relationship, and having to deal with his idiot pot-head brother, all the while knowing that there's no help coming for him.  Part of that is his overbearing personality, part of it is just his situation.  As with any odd-couple story-line, at some point they're going to have to come to appreciate what each other has to offer, but it's a rocky road.

There are likely two vastly divergent opinions of what I have just described.  If you're a Pat, this probably sounds awful.  The idea of having to put up with a film (even as short as this one is) that just won't get to the fucking point, already is untenable.  And I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong on that point.  While things do happen, it's all in the service of navel-gazing, and you might find that uncomfortable (at best), but more likely boring.  Go ahead and pop in that copy of "Armageddon," to each his own.  But if you're more like Jeff (in temperament, the recreational drug use is completely optional), there are points that might definitely hit home.  For whatever reason, Jeff is out of friends and down to his family, whom don't really understand where's he's coming from.  He had hoped that something meaningful would have occurred to him by this point to point him in the right direction for his life, and despite the fact that he's actively trying to figure things out, it just hasn't happened.  That's a sentiment that I think a lot of people can empathize with.

Comparing movies to other movies is always unfair, but at the same time, necessary.  Nobody would listen to me go on this long about any movie in a conversation, but if I told you that this was kind of like "The Darjeeling Limited" without the scenery mixed with a bit of Richard Linklater's work, I think you'd be able to see the ballpark that "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" is playing in.  This isn't my favorite movie of it's ilk, but I'm partial to this sort of situation, and it's a quality addition to the Sibling Misunderstanding/Mired Adult section of your local video store.  But if you don't already look in that section, there are probably half a dozen reasons that immediately come to mind as to why you should probably just keep walking until you hit that Exploding Asteroid section.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre

Bad Teacher - 2011

"Bad Teacher" - 2011
Dir. by Jake Kasdan - 1 hr. 32 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's a fundamental problem with a comedy when all of the funniest scenes don't have the star in them.  That's not to say that Cameron Diaz doesn't have some funny scenes, but she kind of gets lapped by her co-stars here.  The timing for "Bad Teacher" could hardly be better, following hot on the success of the female-led, raunchy "Bridesmaids."  But this movie just isn't in the same ballpark.

The plot is straightforward.  A gold-digging ho (Diaz, playing Elizabeth Halsey) has her dream marriage fall apart (meaning one that is primarily for money), along with her dreams of leaving the teaching profession behind.  She begrudgingly returns to teaching, hoping to land another golden calf.  Fortunately, Scott Delacourte (Justin Timberlake) shows up as a substitute teacher; he's from a family that makes luxury watches.  Elizabeth gets it into her head that in order to land Scott, she's going to need some anatomical enhancements, but on a teacher's salary they're hard to come by.  And while she's got her eyes on Scott, the gym teacher (Jason Segel) is making a play for her.  And all along the way, she's completely indifferent to her students - doing nothing but showing movies for weeks on end, instead preferring to engage in a game of one-upsmanship for the affections of Scott with another teacher, Amy Squirrel (played with a unhinged candy-coated nastiness by Lucy Punch).  And she smokes a lot of pot and drinks a ton, too.

I don't know whether to lay the blame for general unfunniness at the feet of Cameron Diaz, or at the writers'.  There's certainly an issue with Diaz' performance; while the character's behavior is unquestionably bad, there's a sort of awareness lurking that makes it feel more calculated than natural.  That's a problem, it's one thing to enjoy this sort of thing when the character makes the choices she does out of a compulsion or because she just doesn't know better.  Instead, it feels like she's aware of what the right choice is, and chooses over and over again to be nasty or selfish.  An easy comparison movie is "Bad Santa," where Billy Bob Thornton really inhabits his character as a nasty piece of business, but it feels like a person behaving naturally (if comedically and poorly).  Here, it's like a singer not quite hitting the note.  Cameron, you're a little pitchy, dawg!

At the same time, the character as it's written is flawed, too.  While Diaz is beautiful, she's nearly forty years old, playing a character that's written as a first year teacher.  Much like Will Ferrell needing to stop playing athletes due to diminishing believability, Diaz is at least a decade too old to play this role using youthful naivety as the excuse for her behavior.  The writing never gives any explanation as to how the character came to be the person she is, which is fine when the character is supposed to be an early twenty-something.  But, if you're going to cast a star who doesn't fit into that slot, you need to adapt the story a bit.  Forty year-olds don't exist without some sense of history, they don't pop out of nowhere.  Even in a raunchy, check your brains at the door comedy, it's a failure at some stage (whether it be writing or editing such explanations out).  So, while Diaz's performance was a little tone deaf, the writing didn't give her what she needed to make the character work.

What does work here?  Justin Timberlake is pretty funny with his ridiculous earnestness, and Jason Segel's gym teacher is really good, especially when goading Timberlake's character.  Lucy Punch is really great - her manic, super-"nice" character works really well as a foil to Cameron Diaz's cynical character.  Pretty much all of the smaller roles are knocked out of the park.  But when you can't find a way to root for the main character (because it just doesn't quite click, due to the aforementioned issues), it's a nice side dish in an otherwise terrible meal.

Man, I wanted this to be a funny movie, but it wasn't even close.  At least Diaz looked really good in the car wash scene...

1.5 / 5 - Theatre