« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »

School for Scoundrels

Last week, I found myself in a position I didn't think I would ... not ever, in my life.
I found myself enjoying, yes, enjoying a movie starring Jon Heder. I'm not going to rain on Napoleon Dynamite or anything, but he absolutely has a limited range as an actor. However, the reason I liked his character Roger and the movie School for Scoundrels is probably because Heder was born to play the role- Roger is a doofus who works for the city of New York as a parking inforcer. Yeah, a parking inforcer.

The premise behind School for Scoundrels is, that in order for ANY man, even those classified as a "loser," to get any woman he desires, that man must not be himself. This does work for Roger, but only up to a certain point. His instructor Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton) tells all the men in the class that they must LIE, LIE, LIE to any woman to impress her. Of course, as you'd assume, this works for the men for a while and against them in the end. But all does end well - and this simplistic tale of stupidity and the affects of idiocy, as well as honesty, is actually not half bad at all. You'll know what's going to happen every single time (or you get the sense of what the filmmakers want to accomplish act-by-act), and yet, it just works. I'll admit - I only saw this movie because it was free, even though it looked like a carbon copy of Anger Management, and I branded it as so from the first time I saw a trailer for it. And now after seeing the movie, it wasn't a bad assumption at all. But the difference between the two movies is Anger Management was and is, in my opinion, a total waste of time.

Thornton's Dr. P is the same angry bastard that he played in Bad Santa- or any other movie where he spent a considerable amount of time yelling at people. This doesn't really matter by the end of the movie, because it does confirm that Thornton is good at, yes, that said yelling. Throw in a decent cameo and you have yourself a satisfying byproduct of Director Todd Phillips. Phillips, I believe, is best at his game when tackling the PG-13 crowd, which he does better here than in his previous effort Starsky and Hutch, as well as his gross-out R-rated frat films Road Trip and Old School. It surprises me as well how much SFS doesn't rely on what I call typical "physical" comedy, which to the average person is when you laugh when someone gets knocked in the head or falls down, only from the result some kind of object hitting them. SFS has one scene that does use complete physical comedy, but it's also paired with good comedic writing, so all is forgiven completely.

Genuine gags and humor aside, it's not going to win any Oscars or end up on my year end Top 10 list, but I'm not going to deny School For Scoundrels is a funny movie that I enjoyed greatly. Will you like it too? Maybe. Will you remember it years after you see it? Probably not. But I think it's worth spending your buck on.

Posted by madamczyk at 11:45 PM | Comments (2)

The Black Dahlia

THE BLACK DAHLIA is the tale of cops in LA who find themselves immersed in the horrifying death of Betty Short, who's fragile looks and mangled body have gained her the nickname of The Black Dahlia. Why and who killed Ms. Short, the small town girl who came to LA with dreams of stardom and met a horrifying death, is a mystery still to this day - this film version of the story is taken from the novel by author James Ellroy, who wrote another iconic cop drama that you may have heard of called LA CONFIDENTIAL. But one thing that does separate this Ellroy drama from the other is that LA CONFIDENTIAL ended up being an amazing film adaptation - THE BLACK DAHLIA, however, is not.

Josh Hartnett stars as Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert, a good cop who's a boxer on the side, and only fights to win money to take care of his aging and mentally unstable father. His partner is the hotheaded Lee Blanchard, played by Aaron Eckhart, whom Bucky often boxes as the two men face each other as Mr. Fire (Bucky) VS. Mr. Ice (Lee). Blanchard also takes care of Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson), the supporting siren of this noir escape into the dark side of the often sunny town- but with the appearance of the corpse of the Dahlia (Mia Kirshner), the trio's once solid friendship is as risk due to the cloud of suspicion and sadness.

Bucky and Blanchard find themselves constantly immersed in the audition footage they find of the Dahlia, as the aspiring actress she was before her death. Her sad eyes plead for the roles she wants from her auditioner- all she wants is to be famous, at almost any cost. Along the way, her trail through a females only nightclub leads Bucky to Madeline Linscott, the daughter of an impressionable contractor in the city, played by Hilary Swank. She leads Bucky straight into her bed to keep her involvement in the Dahlia's history and her bisexual nightlife out of the papers. But what Bucky doesn't know is that the roots of the Dahlia's death are much more complex than his police work would lead him to believe.

You'd think that with such a promising cast, an interesting story based upon a notorious crime, and a seasoned director that The Black Dahlia would be something of a masterpiece, but in fact, it's nothing more than a muddled mess. Brian De Palma's direction lingers between drama and thriller, but never deciding which the movie should - scene after scene, the movie is never compelling. A lack of focus also hinders the script, which gives promising characters like Kay Lake the occasional silly line, and leaves Aaron Eckhart's role of Lee Blanchard terribly underdeveloped. Josh Hartnett and Hilary Swank do their worst throughout. Somehow Hartnett's dialogue, despite filling a majority of the entire film, is totally forgettable. The biggest blunder of the film is the casting of Swank, who's Madeline is supposed to look similar to Mia Kirshner's Dahlia, but the two couldn't be more different. If anything, Swank resembles a man instead of a starlett. The fact that Swank also appears so much older than the other main actors works against her completely. You'd think that a more mature actress of her sorts would still be able to make something of her often ridiculous dialogue, but her acting feels amateur, as well as laughable at times.

Outside of the main actors, the side characters are just there to support or exist without explanation. I found myself wondering who certain names discussed in the story often were. Although everything was explained in the end, the script is so strangely confusing at times that I just had to skip over my concern as the story rolled along.

While THE BLACK DAHLIA is a big miss as both a compelling drama and the crime thriller, the one shining light besides the good production values and editing is the absolutely award-worthy performance by Fiona Shaw, who portrays Madeline Linscott's mother. Shaw's two scenes in the film are completely over the top, comedic, and cringe-worthy, but it's the kind of performance you'll remember more than anything else in the entire film. It's very sad to think that the film with so many good qualities doesn't even get to rise to its potential in the end. However, that just may be the curse of the Dahlia itself.

Posted by madamczyk at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)