New Releases
RV One would have to travel deep into the 1990s -- during the era of Mrs. Doubtfire and The Birdcage -- to find a comedic Robin Williams performance that was more than simply incessant and annoying shtick. RV, therefore, marks the first time in at least a decade that Williams merges his patented humor with a recognizably human character, and the balance suits him well. It's just a shame that the vehicle that carries this engaging performance doesn't offer a smoother ride. Williams stars as Bob Munro, a workaholic who spends far more time sucking up to his unctuous boss (Will Arnett) than racking up quality hours with the wife (Cheryl Hines) and kids (Joanna "JoJo" Levesque and Josh Hutcherson). Ordered to attend a business meeting in Colorado right when he's supposed to take the family to Hawaii for a vacation, Bob decides to meet both obligations by renting an RV and heading out to the open spaces with his clan -- and thereby making it easier to sneak away long enough to participate in the powwow. That quintessential modern-day tug-of-war between career and home is too omniscient to ever be ignored by filmmakers looking for an easy angle, but for a while, RV looks as if it's going to be a poignant, perhaps even perceptive, take on the matter. But no: Director Barry Sonnenfeld, whose one-two punch of Get Shorty and Men In Black once promised a brighter future, and scripter Geoff Rodkey, who recently hacked up the screenplay for Tim Allen's The Shaggy Dog, reveal an obsession with labored slapstick and potty humor, meaning we get tiresome scenes in which Bob falls down hills, gets run over or finds himself covered head-to-toe in fecal matter. By the end, the crudity is so excessive, it makes National Lampoon's Vacation look as sophisticated as The Accidental Tourist by comparison. Jeff Daniels and Kristin Chenoweth offer some broad laughs as married yahoos who permanently live out of their RV; the roles are condescending, but the pair invest them with vibrant personalities -- and it's worth a chuckle just to hear Daniels' character deliver the word "chagrin." **
Current Releases
AKEELAH AND THE BEE The pattern holds that every decade's midway stretch gives us an underdog worth supporting. In the 1970s, it was Rocky, in the 1980s, it was the Karate Kid, and in the 1990s, it was Babe. And now here comes 11-year-old Akeelah to carry the torch for the little people. Akeelah and the Bee, which in addition to its underdog roots also manages to come across as a mesh between the documentary Spellbound and Boyz N the Hood refitted with a happy ending, centers on Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer), a south LA girl who, with the help of her mentor (Laurence Fishburne), works her way through the national spelling bee circuit. What sets the film apart is the manner in which it details how Akeelah's triumphs end up lifting the entire community: Her success is their success, and it's truly inspiring to watch neighbors from all walks of life throw their support behind her. There's no need to hide that lump in your throat or tear in your eye -- this movie earns its sentiment. ***
AMERICAN DREAMZ The decline of the American empire -- or at least the dumbing down of its populace -- began in earnest some time ago, but it has clearly reached its zenith with the twin threat of the Bush presidency and reality TV. Both, of course, are obvious targets for satire, but it's hard to mock something that in itself is already a mockery of sorts. Writer-director Paul Weitz nevertheless takes a stab with this comedy that ties together a moronic talent show hosted by a callow Brit (Hugh Grant) and a clueless US prez (Dennis Quaid) unable to think for himself. American Dreamz is a crushing disappointment, a weak-willed, ill-conceived film with a scarcity of laughs and a maddening tendency to let its subjects off with a slap on the wrist rather than go for the jugular. Lacking the lockjaw clench of a Dr. Strangelove or a Network, it's content to offer toothless stereotypes and defanged targets. This isn't a black comedy -- it's more like a whiter shade of pale. **
FRIENDS WITH MONEY Movies like Friends With Money can often be termed "slice of life" films, but when they're as tasty as this one, a slice won't suffice: We end up longing for the whole pie. Set in LA, this rich seriocomic gem centers on the daily activities of four close female friends. Three of them indeed have money: screenwriter Christine (Catherine Keener), clothing designer Jane (Frances McDormand) and stay-at-home mom Franny (Joan Cusack). The friend without money is Olivia, whose lifestyle forces the others to reflect upon their own circumstances. I greatly enjoyed writer-director Nicole Holofcener's previous two pictures, 1996's Walking and Talking and 2002's Lovely & Amazing, but this might be her most accomplished work yet. Her greatest strength as a writer rests not in her dialogue (though it's top-grade) but rather in the manner in which she proves to be enormously generous of spirit with all her characters. ***1/2
HARD CANDY Moviegoers will exhaust themselves trying to determine whether this is an exploitation flick, a feminist empowerment drama or a particularly feisty coming-of-age yarn with a diabolical twist. It immediately puts the audience at unease by exploring the burgeoning relationship between 32-year-old Jeff (Patrick Wilson) and 14-year-old Hayley (Ellen Page). But just as we fear that Hayley will become another victim of an Internet predator, the tables are turned in dramatic fashion, with Jeff's luscious Lolita morphing into an avenging angel. Wilson is excellent, yet the real discovery is Page, who never shies away from the implication that Hayley might be deeply disturbed by her own set of demons. Eventually, we realize that Hard Candy isn't necessarily a movie about lost innocence. In a modern world ruled by technology that allows 14-year-old girls and 32-year-old men to easily hook up, it's possible that this innocence never had a chance to flourish in the first place. ***
LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN The latest hollow exercise in hipster chic is the sort of convoluted, twist-packed yarn that strains to be unpredictable but is actually even easier to figure out than those Jumble puzzles that appear in the dailies. Josh Hartnett, cinema's favorite lightweight, plays Slevin, a seemingly guileless guy who finds himself caught in a power struggle between two rival crime lords (Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley). Bruce Willis is on hand as, natch, the taciturn hitman who turns out to be more involved than he initially appears. Hartnett would seem hard-pressed to carry a basket of laundry, let alone carry a motion picture, while the three reliable vets seem almost bored trying to keep up with the plot's changes of direction. The movie's saving grace is Lucy Liu: Cast as a chatty neighbor who helps Slevin piece together the mystery, she's a breath of fresh air in a genre that too often suffocates on its own fumes of pungent testosterone. **
THE SENTINEL Michael Douglas plays Harrison Ford and Kiefer Sutherland costars as Tommy Lee Jones in The Sentinel, the latest thriller that tries to put one over on the audience but ends up only fooling itself. Yet while it's clearly no match for The Fugitive, this "innocent man on the lam" yarn gets some mileage (well, yardage) out of a fairly taut first act and an appropriately constipated Michael Douglas performance. Douglas is cast as Pete Garrison, a career Secret Service agent ballsy enough to carry on an affair with the first lady (Kim Basinger). But evidence soon surfaces that an inside man is helping a foreign outfit plot to assassinate the President (David Rasche), and agent David Breckinridge (Sutherland) becomes convinced that Garrison, his former mentor, is the traitors. Director Clark Johnson doubtless planned to deliver a hand-wringing thriller filled with unexpected twists and turns, but when the results are this obvious, even good intentions can find themselves caught in the line of fire. **
SLITHER If nothing else, this deserves credit for offering a break from the current trend of nihilistic horror flicks whose sole purpose is to devise groovy new ways to kill people. Make no mistake: Slither offers gore by the bucketful, but the movie's in the spirit of those enjoyable, us-against-them monster yarns that ran rampant in decades past. Starting out as an alien invasion opus before switching gears to become a quasi-zombie flick, the film involves a gelatinous E.T. whose master plan employs hundreds of slugs that take over humans' bodies by entering through the mouths; naturally, the entire planet is doomed unless an amiable sheriff (Nathan Fillion) and a concerned housewife (Elizabeth Banks) can figure out a way to shut down the otherworldly operation. Slither takes its time getting started, but once it does, it never lets up, throwing the blood, slime and one-liners (some woeful, most witty) at the screen with feverish abandon. ***
TAKE THE LEAD Inspired by a true story, this centers on the efforts of ballroom dance instructor Pierre Dulaine (Antonio Banderas) to teach his elegant craft to a high school class of rowdy inner-city youths. Initially resistant to his efforts, the kids eventually come around once Pierre agrees to mesh his moves with their hip-hop music. The issue of whether the best way to reach troubled kids is by diluting what they should learn with components of what they like is an interesting one -- it would take a more courageous movie than this one to even attempt to answer that, but for its part, this allows both sides to weigh in on the argument. The climactic dance competition is clumsily presented, and I could have done without the heavy-handed "villains" of the piece. Still, Banderas and his young co-stars are appealing, and the subplots involving the students' troubled home lives carry more currency than one might expect. **1/2
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING The so-called "culture of spin" gets taken for its own spin in this lacerating adaptation of Christopher Buckley's 1994 novel. Even with a too-brief running time of 92 minutes, the movie manages to pack in all manner of material both saucy and dicey, yet when the smoke clears, what's most visible is the emergence of Aaron Eckhart as a major talent. He's terrific as Nick Naylor, who excels as chief spokesman for the tobacco industry even though he realizes he's despised by a significant part of the population. Nick earns the admiration of Big Tobacco's Big Daddy (Robert Duvall), but he has his hands full bonding with his own son (Cameron Bright), who adores his dad but often asks tough questions about his profession. Writer-director Jason Reitman keeps the laughs flying during the first half, then slows down enough to lay the groundwork for a satisfying conclusion. ***1/2
THE WILD Comparisons to the fine Madagascar aren't necessary to point out the myriad shortcomings of The Wild, which manages to be abysmal on its own terms. Fast-paced is one thing -- Bugs Bunny and crew all but turned it into an art form -- but this ADD-affected movie seems to have been made by mentally stunted adults after they've popped a dozen uppers and downed two dozen cups of coffee. The CGI animation is impressively lifelike, though it begs the recurring question as to why we would want our animated movies to not look like animated movies. Everything else about this toxic toon is intolerable, especially the sidekicks who accompany Samson the lion (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland) as he leaves the comforts of the New York zoo to search for his wayward son in a faraway jungle. Nigel the koala (Eddie Izzard) rates a special mention, emerging as the most loathsome animated character since Martin Short's insufferable robot B.E.N. in Treasure Planet. *
OPENS FRIDAY, MAY 5:
HOOT: Logan Lerman, Jimmy Buffett.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
THE PROMISE: Cecilia Chung, Hiroyuki Sanada.