Page 3 of 4
MAMMA MIA! Meryl Streep fans and ABBA fans can at least count on those two components firing on all cylinders in this adaptation of the Broadway smash. Everyone else, though, may be forced to rummage through the debris that constitutes the rest of the picture to find anything worth salvaging. Streep is aptly cast as Donna, a former singer raising her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) at her hotel on a Greek island. Sophie's about to marry hunky Sky (dull Dominic Cooper), but first she's determined to learn the identity of her father. The candidates are suave Sam (Pierce Brosnan), uptight Harry (Colin Firth) and rascally Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), and as long as the actors essaying the roles stick to walking and talking, they're fun to watch. But whenever one of them is called upon to sing, be prepared to duck and cover as their aural ineptitude bombards our eardrums (Brosnan especially looks physically pained choking out the lyrics, as if he's being subjected to a prostate exam just outside of the camera's eye). There's no reason this couldn't contain all the effulgence and expertise of other musical adaptations like Hairspray and Chicago, but stage director Phyllida Lloyd appears to be so blissfully ignorant of the dynamics of moviemaking that, aside from the songs themselves, there's little joy to be found in the musical numbers. The clumsy camerawork, editing and staging all diminish rather than enhance the perceived showstoppers, and the choreography ranks among the most dreadful I've ever witnessed in a big-budget musical. All of this adds up to produce the biggest disappointment of the summer movie season. **
MEET DAVE How many times have we moaned about how "all the best parts were shown in the trailer"? Meet Dave takes the opposite stance: Based on the preview, this vehicle for Eddie Murphy looked as if it would compete with The Love Guru in the sheer awfulness department. And make no mistake: What's presented is still pretty bad. But compared to Mike Myers' toxic effort, this almost comes off as Annie Hall by comparison. What the trailer doesn't convey is that Murphy actually delivers a sharp comic performance as Dave, a human-shaped-and-sized spaceship powered by the tiny aliens within. He also plays the diminutive captain of the spacecraft, but he isn't especially memorable in this dry role, spending much of the time alternately wooing a fellow shipmate (Gabrielle Union) and a friendly Earthwoman (Elizabeth Banks), as well as slowly learning that our planet and its inhabitants are capable of offering compassion and beauty and great movies like It's a Wonderful Life. It's Murphy's work as the walking, talking spaceship that's inspired, as the character amusingly reacts to the surplus of confusing information flooding his system (as when Banks' Gina announces that they're eating meatloaf for dinner and the ship's computer brings up images of the burly rocker). Unfortunately, Murphy far outshines the material, which mixes the usual bodily-function gags with the usual last-minute sanctimonious pleas for compassion and open-mindedness. *1/2
ROMAN DE GARE Ever since winning a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the 1966 international smash A Man and a Woman, writer-director Claude Lelouch has steadily turned into persona non grata in the U.S., to such a startling degree that most of his movies don't even rate any sort of theatrical run on this side of the Atlantic. Thankfully, his latest film managed to slip through the embargo, as Roman de Gare is a suspenseful drama with enough satisfying twists to keep any mystery hound satisfied. Dominique Pinon (Amelie, Delicatessen) stars as a mysterious man who's catching his breath at a highway rest area when the hard-luck Huguette (Audrey Dana) gets unceremoniously abandoned there by her fiancé. Alone and frightened, she accepts a ride from this odd-looking character, but who is he, exactly? The film hints that he's the serial killer who just escaped from prison. Then it suggests that maybe he's the teacher who abandoned his family for life on the road. Finally, the man himself claims to be the personal assistant of best-selling author Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant). Lelouch and co-scripter Pierre Uytterhoeven repeatedly pile on clues that take us in one direction before swerving down a different path, yet what's especially clever about the plotting is that anything that proves to be merely a red herring is then incorporated into another storyline, thereby minimizing the danger of dangling plotholes. That's not to say the movie is drum-tight – the climactic revelation isn't as carefully thought out as what precedes it – but moviegoers in the mood for an alternative to the summer blockbusters will forgive any minor slippage. ***1/2
