THE TUXEDO The best special effect in a Jackie Chan movie is always Chan himself, which makes the affable performer's latest American vehicle an especially ill- fitting and ill-conceived affair. Chan stars as Jimmy Tong, a bumbling, insecure chauffeur who works for a James Bond-like secret agent named Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs). After getting seriously injured, Devlin insists Tong don the spiffy tuxedo hanging in his closet; upon doing so, the lowly driver discovers that the suit is top-of-the-line government issue, with the ability to tailor itself to its wearer's needs and allow him to do everything from fighting martial arts-style to climbing the walls in the best Spider-Man manner to even executing some smooth moves on the dance floor. Now dressed to thrill, Tong soon finds himself teaming up with a rookie partner (Jennifer Love Hewitt, enjoyably awful) to stop a bottled-water magnate (Ritchie Coster) plotting to contaminate the world's drinking supply so that his own line will be the only safe one around (even the occasionally flailing 007 series never stooped to a level this inane). It's always a rush to witness Chan in his purest form kick and chop his way across the screen, but The Tuxedo miscalculates badly by forcing the star to play second fiddle to the dull effects that allow the suit to come to life. Still, this is hardly the picture's only problem, not when the villain (British, brooding, and boring) is the standard one employed by lazy screenwriters everywhere, nor when Chan and Hewitt demonstrate so little chemistry that they might as well be acting in two separate movies. 1/2
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BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER Here's a question to ponder: Why did Warner Bros. elect to hide The Adventures of Pluto Nash from critics yet willfully preview Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever in advance? Yet another motion picture that owes its allegiance to the video game market, the stridently simplistic Ballistic is an absolute failure on even its most basic level as an action movie. Ineptly directed by a Thai filmmaker who bills himself as Kaos (short for Wych Kaosayananda), this 90-minute equivalent of having one's head trapped between two clanging cymbals Chuck Jones-style might contain more explosions, gun battles and car chases per square foot of film footage than any other movie around, yet every boring moment of it is highly derivative, clumsily executed and stridently illogical (one of the heroes keeps setting off explosions away from the villains rather than next to them; what's the point of that?). When a filmmaker goes on record citing director Michael Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) as a major influence without even tossing an honorable mention to the likes of John Ford or Howard Hawks (who knew a thing or two about action), it's enough to send a cold chill through the entire industry. As a villainous lackey, Ray Park reveals himself to be an incredibly dull actor when he's not buried under makeup as The Phantom Menace's Darth Maul or X-Men's Toad. And as Ecks and Sever, two former government agents who square off against each other until they learn they have a common foe, Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu mumble their lines to the point of unintelligibility (not that the dialogue is even needed to follow this dum-dum plot). Both stars have made crisp action heroes in the past -- he in Desperado, she in Charlie's Angels -- but here they wearily trudge through a bog of ennui, dragging the rest of us right behind them.
THE BANGER SISTERS Not to be outdone by daughter Kate Hudson's Oscar-nominated turn in Almost Famous, Goldie Hawn herself turns up as a groupie in The Banger Sisters, an affable and even occasionally poignant picture that unfortunately falls apart toward the end. Hawn plays Suzette, a rock & roll babe who was legendary in her day for bedding scores of rock stars (including Jim Morrison); her partner in crime was Lavinia (Susan Sarandon), and together they were known as The Banger Sisters (so named by Frank Zappa). Now having just been fired from her long-standing job as a bartender at an LA nightclub, Suzette hits the road to look up Lavinia after a 20-year separation, but what she finds is a respectable, matronly woman who has suppressed all memories of her wild, wayward youth. Sarandon and especially Hawn are aptly cast in their respective roles, yet the picture is stolen by Geoffrey Rush as a failed writer whose tidy existence is disrupted by Suzette's whirlwind personality -- this character would seem completely extraneous were it not for Rush's quirky performance. Yet while the film threatens to develop from a breezy comedy into a thoughtful drama about the choices that people must make as they become older and are expected to embrace more responsibilities, the transition never works because the second half is rushed and disjointed, with character transformations occurring at an absurdly accelerated rate and plot resolutions being handled in an annoyingly tidy fashion. 1/2
BARBERSHOP Despite the presence of rapper-actor Ice Cube and the occasional booty shot, it's the PG-13 rating and the tag line "From the Producers of Soul Food and Men of Honor" that should tip viewers off that this ensemble comedy has more in common with Sunday school values than Friday film vileness. Forsaking the raunchiness of that Ice Cube hit (as well as its sequel, Next Friday), this one is mostly a sweet-natured and sweet-tempered affair, with the Cube cast as a decent bloke who, like Jimmy Stewart with the Bedford Falls Savings and Loan in It's a Wonderful Life, has inherited a business from his kindly father that has become like an albatross around his ambitious neck. He agrees to sell the shop to a loan shark (Keith David) who plans to turn it into a strip joint, but immediately regrets his decision once he realizes how his establishment serves as a bedrock for the local black community. Ensemble comedies rise and fall not only on the strength of the humor but also on the appeal of the various characters, and in both instances, Barbershop manages only to part down the middle, with some choice wisecracks (most courtesy of Cedric the Entertainer as an opinionated, elderly barber) and amiable personalities having to wrestle screen time away from an inane subplot involving the theft of an ATM machine. It's nice to see Ice Cube in such a relaxed mode, though, and film buffs will want to note that actor Troy Garity (as the shop's sole white barber) is the son of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. 1/2
CITY BY THE SEA With apologies to James Brown, Robert De Niro just might be the hardest working man in show business, but that counts for naught since he's also turning into the dullest working man in show business. Just as the networks over the years have produced their Movie-of-the-Week, De Niro seems to have settled into churning out his own Movie-of-the-Season, sandwiching this fall release between the spring comedy Showtime and the Christmas flick Analyze That. But lately, this once-unpredictable actor has seemed capable of only two speeds, self-parodying clown and street-smart loner, and it's the latter persona that turns up in this tedious cop flick inspired by a true story. De Niro plays Vincent LaMarca, a veteran detective working the Manhattan beat and doing his best to remain emotionally distant from everyone, including his inquisitive girlfriend (Frances McDormand). LaMarca abandoned his home turf of Long Beach, Long Island, years ago, leaving behind a fed-up ex-wife (Patti LuPone) and a neglected son (James Franco), yet he finds himself drawn back to his old stomping ground once it appears that his junkie son might be involved in a murder. An interesting premise gets completely wasted in a sluggish drama that grows less interesting as it unfolds.
THE FOUR FEATHERS A.E.W. Mason's century-old novel has never been too far removed from the minds of moviemakers, as witnessed by the fact that it's been filmed on seven separate occasions. This 21st century model is a satisfactory (if shaky) heir to the throne, a visually robust retelling that reinstates a dash of the epic to the big screen. Unfolding during the late 19th century, the film stars Heath Ledger as Harry Feversham, a promising British soldier who's surrounded by adoring buddies, including his best friend Jack Durrance (Wes Bentley), and who's set to marry the charming Ethne (Kate Hudson). But when his regiment is suddenly called for active duty in the Sudan, Harry decides to resign rather than go fight on foreign soil. Because of his action, he's sent four feathers (marks of cowardice) from some of those closest to him; tortured by this turn of events, he musters up all his courage and sets out determined to redeem himself in the eyes of his friends. Mason's novel and the earlier screen versions were largely celebrations of honor and heroism, of that stiff British upper lip turning into a sneer at those who would trifle with the almighty Empire. But director Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) isn't having any of that: He clearly respects his young soldiers even if he doesn't support their cause, and it's not difficult to see that his contempt for British colonialism can easily be applied to our own nation's global strutting under the dictatorship of George W. Bush. Kapur's political agenda might seem to be at odds with the basic foundation of the tale, and yet, as with most war movies that are careful to separate the soldier from the situation, it's a dichotomy that thankfully never distracts. Ledger and Bentley make dashing heroes, but Hudson is woefully miscast, appearing about as luminous as a 20-watt bulb after 999 hours of service.
THE GOOD GIRL A sterling example of the sort of "introspective cinema" that previously brought us the terrific Ruby In Paradise, The Good Girl is a bracingly candid study of an ordinary woman and the difficult choices she must make as she tries to figure out exactly how she wants to spend her remaining decades on this planet. Jennifer Aniston, in a smart career move that should do more for her big screen aspirations than inanities like Picture Perfect, is just right as Justine, a not especially bright 30-year-old working a dead-end job at the Retail Rodeo store and married to a house painter (John C. Reilly) who spends his free time smoking pot with his hayseed of a best friend (Tim Blake Nelson). Justine sees an opportunity for escape once she begins an affair with a passionate (and possibly disturbed) 22-year-old co-worker (Donnie Darko's Jake Gyllenhaal), but once her illicit activity causes numerous complications, she begins to find herself cornered and must make a series of hasty decisions that could potentially hurt rather than heal her situation. Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White (the Chuck and Buck scribe who also appears here as a religious security guard) smartly earn our empathy by bouncing humor off the situations rather than the characters (the potential for condescension is enormous but rarely taken), and the result is a movie that manages to be both charming and troubling. 1/2
ONE HOUR PHOTO The dirty secret regarding Robin Williams is that, despite his standing as an out-of-control funnyman, he's usually most interesting when he's playing it straight. It's not hard to overact, as he's done on oh-so-many occasions; what's harder is to subtly underplay, to invest a character with meaning via hushed tones and furtive glances rather than bedpans on the feet and flubber in the pants. This dark side of the former Mork from Ork reaches full fruition in One Hour Photo, a psychological thriller that finds the actor delivering what might be the best performance of his career. Williams plays Sy Parrish, a quiet man who has spent years working behind the photo counter at the local Savmart. Lonely beyond measure, Sy treats all his customers with care, but he saves the most affection for the Yorkins (mom Connie Nielsen, dad Michael Vartan, son Dylan Smith), whose photos he has developed for years. Viewing them as the perfect family unit, this emotionally damaged individual starts to work his way into their everyday routines, a decision that reaches a frightening conclusion once Sy notices the hypocrisies that rest underneath the faux-reality projected on those 4-by-6 photos. Writer-director Mark Romanek establishes a wonderfully creepy mood throughout the whole picture, but this isn't your everyday, run-of-the-mill thriller -- what's most interesting about it is how it constantly alters our opinions of Sy Parrish, allowing this apparent madman to occasionally emerge as a sympathetic (and even oddly moral) person who earns pity as much as disgust. 1/2
SERVING SARA Just as Jennifer Aniston is receiving glowing reviews for her subtle performance in the critical darling The Good Girl, here's her Friends co-star Matthew Perry forced to mug his way through a sputtering comedy that, in one scene, requires him to stick his arm deep into an impotent bull's butt and massage its prostate so that the animal will start delivering its seed into a plastic decoy cow (with Friends like these, who needs enemas?). Perry does himself no favors by appearing in this slapdash effort, which finds him playing a process server who, after being ordered to deliver divorce papers to the British wife (Elizabeth Hurley) of a loutish Texas millionaire (Bruce Campbell), teams up with the betrayed woman to serve her husband the papers first, thereby insuring she'll have a bigger cut of their accumulated fortune. Serving Sara wallows in the sort of ribald putdowns and ethnic slurs not seen since the heyday of comics like Don Rickles, but most of it is desperate rather than funny (phrases like "Eat me" are what passes for innovative wit in this feature). Hurley has been amusing in other comedies but here she seems adrift, and she and Perry seem about as believable a romantic couple as would a lion and a lemur. 1/2
SWEET HOME ALABAMA It's sad to witness once-exciting actresses like Ashley Judd and Angelina Jolie now wasting their talents in exceedingly generic studio products, and it will be even more tragic if Reese Witherspoon follows their lead. Witherspoon was a delight in last year's Legally Blonde, but I'm afraid the success of that film might mean she'll start turning her back on quirky projects like Election and Freeway (fabulous in both) and settle into a stereotypical rut. Sweet Home Alabama certainly lends credence to my fear: A lazy romantic comedy that apparently looked no further back than 1991's Doc Hollywood for its inspiration, this finds the actress basically mining the same Blonde emotions (albeit mining them well) in a picture that relies on the usual narrative props found in seemingly every other comedy these days. Witherspoon plays Melanie Carmichael, a rising New York fashion designer who's just accepted a marriage proposal from the son (smarmy Patrick Dempsey) of the city's mayor (Candice Bergen). First, though, she has to go back to her Alabama hometown and get her first husband (Josh Lucas) to sign the divorce papers, something he's been reluctant to do. From there, everything plays out exactly as expected: Melanie rediscovers her spark with her down-home hubby; she's condescending toward her former friends until the sound of music (in this case, Lynyrd Skynyrd) reawakens her soul; Southern hospitality wins out over Northern arrogance; the sole gay characters, one depicted as fundamentally lonely, the other depicted as on the prowl (in cinema, these are the only two types that seem to exist), hook up; Melanie makes the oh-so-predictable decision regarding her suitors; and the end credits roll and audience members head for the exits. Did I leave anything out?