Month: July 2016

The Night Before (2015)

The Night Before (2015)

(On Cable TV, July 2016) By this time in his career, Seth Roger has such a defined persona that “Seth Rogen does a Christmas movie” is enough to suggest a fairly accurate picture of The Night Before. We’re going to see crudeness (especially penile jokes), copious drug use, dumb jokes, a paean to male friendship and some anxiety about (finally) growing up. Roughly half of Rogen’s movies in the past ten years have played variations on the same themes and this latest one isn’t any different. For all of the emotional scaffolding about three friends wondering whether their Christmas traditions are holding them together or holding them back, this is really an excuse for Christmas-themed drug jokes and assorted shenanigans. It does work reasonably well, but usually thanks to the actors more than the jokes themselves. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anthony Mackie, Lizzy Caplan, Michael Shannon, and, yes, Seth Rogen all bring something extra to their roles even when they’re just doing what they usually do best. (Well, that’s not exactly true for Michael Shannon, who seems to be enjoying himself in a coarser role than usual.) Mindy Kaling, Ilana Glazer, James Franco and Miley Cyrus also show up in small but striking roles. Some of the comic set-pieces work well enough, and the film’s conclusion is just as gooey-reassuring as we’d like in a Christmas movie. As far as holiday classic go, The Night Before aspires to a place alongside Harold and Kumar’s 3D Christmas and Bad Santa, which isn’t terrible company when the syrupy nature of year-end celebrations becomes a bit too much to bear. “Seth Rogen does Christmas movie” it is, then.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)

(Video on Demand, July 2016) The original My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a perfectly likable romantic comedy, but it’s a bit of a disappointment to realize, fourteen years later, that writer/star Nia Vardalos never quite made the leap to superstardom following the success of that film. A look at her filmography since then has revealed a stream of work (hey, I’ve seen Connie and Carla in theatres!), but nothing approaching the massive success of her breakthrough feature. I suppose that a “generation later” sequel was inevitable, and now that My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is available, we’re left to contemplate a sequel that pretty much delivers exactly what anyone could have expected from it: A gentle and familiar brand of humour equally devoted to cultural differences and family obligations. Here, the plot has something to do with unsigned wedding papers and the need for the protagonist’s parents to marry again, but it’s really an excuse for sequences with eccentric family members, reflecting on the rigours of an established marriage in which the only child is about to leave the nest, and throwing a few sitcom moments. Among the performers, Vardalos is just as likable as in her breakthrough role, but it’s Andrea Martin who gets the laughs as Aunt Voula. John Corbett once again look pleasantly bemused by the Greek-themed madness around him, while Elena Kampouris establishes her character without too much trouble—a feat given how loud the other actors can be. Some of the Greek-community jokes would approach stereotypes if they weren’t so affectionate. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is not particularly good, but it’s certainly not bad, and if the result feels too much like an extended television series finale, it does provide viewers with what they were expecting from such a sequel.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

(On TV, July 2016) Curiously enough, I’d never seen Four Weddings and a Funeral, even despite being familiar with the stream of romantic comedies inspired by its success. Going back to the roots of the subgenre shows a film with the quirks and strengths of a relatively original script trying something its own way … rather than copying what’s been done before. Richard Curtis’s script is loosely structured around, yes, four weddings and a funeral (not in this order), this romantic comedy follows a foppish man (Hugh Grant, in a persona-defining performance) falling for a mysterious woman over a few key events. There’s a refreshing chaos to the amount and nature of the exposition required to set up a film with a core of friends and their acquaintances, and Four Weddings and a Funeral is perhaps most notable for the amount of stuff it doesn’t spell out along the way, trusting viewers to make up their own minds. This, however, can be taken too far: As much as I like Andie MacDowell in general (to the point of tolerating some dodgy line readings), she’s simply not given much to say here and the film feels weaker for being built on such a mystery. You can see how a modern retelling of the film, based on its imitators, would try to streamline the various charming little imperfections of the film—restricting the time continuity of the story to the days of the five events, spelling out subtleties, polishing some of the rough moments. It probably wouldn’t be as good, though: part of Four Weddings and a Funeral’s charm is how unassuming it is, and how it succeeds almost against all odds. That the result was often imitated yet rarely surpassed may be the ultimate compliment.