Reviews

  • The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

    The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2015) My memories of the original Dukes of Hazard TV show are dim enough that there was no chance that a remake would offend me.  Early on, The Dukes of Hazard does get to (re)establish its premise: Redneck humor, Southern-US rural charm, that iconic Dodge Charger, those voiceovers still frames… it doesn’t take much for the film to fall into kind of dumb charm, something helped along quickly by Seann William Scott’s sweetly likable performance as a soft-witted young mechanic well on his way to becoming a good-ole-boy.  (Meanwhile, Johnny Knoxville is unremarkable in the other lead role.)  The Dukes of Hazzard, big-screen version, does get a lot of mileage out of its own charm, but the effect gets a bit dulled as it becomes clear that the film won’t have as many car stunts as the premise would imply, and once the dumb corn-fed humor of the film becomes less surprising.  The conclusion feels underwhelming, although it consciously tries to feed the comic assumptions of the viewers.  So is it as good as it could have been?  Certainly not.  Is it watchable?  I’d say so.  Whether one outweighs the other is something that viewers will have to decide by themselves.

  • The Invention of Lying (2009)

    The Invention of Lying (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2015) It’s clear, almost from the very beginning, why The Invention of Lying will never completely work.  As the voice-over laboriously explains its alternate-universe in which humanity never managed to evolve the concept of lying, the film just as quickly shreds its premise’s credibility.  Telling the truth and oversharing aren’t the same thing, and while the second makes for bigger laughs (the things Jennifer Garner says early on…), we know five minutes into the film that this is not going to make a single bit of sense.  So The Invention of Lying takes place in absurdity early on, which would have been fine if the film hadn’t tried to develop a romantic plot or an abrasive take on religion.  Writer/producer/director/star Ricky Gervais is a notorious atheist, and while there is some interest in seeing him work out some justification for religion (as comfort to the masses given the empty void of existence), much of the film’s second half, in which religion is invented, seems filled with easy pot-shots, not-particularly-funny moments and laboriously drawn-out dramatic potholes.  A bunch of comedians in quasi-cameos makes the film more interesting that it otherwise could be (Tina Fay gets a small but striking moment as an honestly resentful administrative assistant.)  You can see flashes of interest here and there in the film’s extrapolation of its ground rules (the inner workings of a film studio when fiction doesn’t exist are amusing), but just as often, The Invention of Lying showcases what happens when a smart person becomes convinced of the hilarity of an idea impossible to sustain over 90 minutes.  (For instance, there’s a running gag about hereditary concerns being at the base of any relationship that’s almost clever but handled too bluntly.)  It doesn’t help that the film is directed and assembled flatly, without much in terms of color or filmmaking prowess –it makes everything feel even blander.  There’s a lot of wasted potential here, but there’s no use denying that the film simply fails to meet its own expectations.  (This being said –and can I be completely truthful here?–, I’m aware that if I ever ended up making a movie, it would probably feel a lot like The Invention of Lying –a bunch of amusing imaginative concepts bogged down by poor execution, ultimately failing to reach anyone else but me.)

  • What a Girl Wants (2003)

    What a Girl Wants (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2015) Amanda Bynes may now be best-known as a cautionary tale about the hazards of undiagnosed mental health issues, but she had a few good years as a gifted comedy actress, and What a Girl Wants is a good showcase for what she was capable of doing.  The preposterous premise has Bynes as the daughter of an earthy American mother and a respectable member of the British establishment.  When she, as a young cool American girl, tries to reconnect with her estranged father in the middle of his political ascension, various wacky hijinks ensue.  What a Girl Wants is, obviously, aimed at the tweenager set: most of the comic set-pieces involve British aristocrats gawking speechless at the antics of our unrefined protagonist.  As I grow older, I find that I have less and less tolerance for the unexamined assumption that high-class refinement is inherently stultifying, that it always needs shaking up by younger-cooler-brasher protagonists: manners exist for a reason, and wouldn’t it be fun to see a film argue in favor of that at some point… (Oh, hey, Kingsmen.)  But that’s not What a Girl Wants is built to do, so it may be more helpful to focus on the success of Bynes’ antics, the fact that Colin First couldn’t possibly be any Colin-Firthier than he is here as an idealized father figure, and enjoy the various comic set-pieces in the spirit in which they were executed.  Predictable but executed competently, What a Girl Wants delivers what it was aiming for, and should please most of its intended audience… delivering what they want. 

  • Wild Horses (2015)

    Wild Horses (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, August 2015)  Let’s be frank: It’s rare to see a film start as unpromisingly as Wild Horses does, with a few scenes acted in such an amateurish fashion as to make us wonder if the actors truly are professionals, or just regular people asked to read lines before a camera.  (It doesn’t help, confidence-wise, to find out that one of the two troublesome actors is writer/director Robert Duvall’s wife, although it makes more sense when you find out that English isn’t her first language.)  Wild Horses never completely recovers from those initial missteps, although it does get more self-assured as it goes on.  The increasing presence of such actors as Robert Duvall, James Franco and Josh Hartnett certainly helps, as does the gradually developed mystery at the heart of the tale.  For Duvall, this may or may not have been a vanity project, but it may remain a misguided one: Wild Horses, at times, feels like another version of the very similar The Judge (also starring Duvall), except with less charm and missing pieces in its narrative tissue.  Some set-pieces are good – I’m thinking about the meeting at a lawyer’s office and the conclusion, both effectively handled.  The rural atmosphere is also comfortable in its own way.  But the rest of the film is hit and miss, with even the good actors not quite managing to lift the film above its pedestrian script.  It’s too bad –for all the respect we can give to a seasoned veteran such as Robert Duvall, his film is too flawed to do him justice.

  • Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015)

    Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2015) The problem with self-aware trash cinema is that it’s frankly still trash cinema.  Third in a series meant to be mocked, Sharknado 3 knows the routine by now, and keeps escalating the craziness into orbit.  (This is not a figure of speech.)  Things start with such a full-tilt roar even before the opening credits, as sharks rain down on Washington and a crazy White House sequence ensue, that it’s hard to figure out how the film will top its own opening.  But after a slower first hour or so, things get crazy once again toward the end, delivering a big bang of a conclusion.  I’m not sure how they’ll top that in the already-announced Sharknado 4, but that’s part of the fun.  In the meantime, there are plenty of celebrity cameos, over the-top set-pieces, CGI sharks eating bystanders in equally-CGI bursts of blood.  Tara Reid and Ian Ziering know the routine as well, and work through their lines without breaking up.  (This being said, Cassie Scerbo steals most of her scenes.)  If nothing else, Sharknado 3 delivers on the promises made by its previous instalments, and little more should be said.  Still, it’s still trash cinema, and I can’t help but wonder if my time wouldn’t have been best spent watching something else.  But who am I kidding –I’m already planning forward to the sequel.  

  • Brother Bear (2003)

    Brother Bear (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Blu-Ray, August 2015)  One thing about watching Disney films as an adult is noticing how many of them have crippling tonal issues.  Brother Bear, for instance, is explicitly based on presenting different visions of the same world – at one point, our protagonist undergoes a transformation that expands his mind, something that is shown with a looser art style, more colors and a shift to wide-screen ratio.  That’s not a bad thing.  But what can be worse are the film’s jarring shifts from respectful drama dealing with death, family and responsibility, to a comedy with silly animal sidekicks hamming it up.  The comedy undermines the other more serious material and makes the film feel far more lightweight than it should.  But, of course, none of this matters to the very young target public of the film, who just experience Brother Bear (with its cute talking animals!) as if everything of-course happened that way.  The animation feels a bit lacking compared to other contemporary Disney releases, but is still pretty good in absolute terms.  The story doesn’t necessarily goes where one expects it to, although some of the plot points along the way are fairly predictable.  It amounts to a Disney feature slightly less impressive than other ones, but still relatively good family entertainment.

  • Premonition (2007)

    Premonition (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2015)  There may have been something interesting at the core of Premonition’s premise; a woman experiencing flashes of her life a week later, after a number of mishaps and a fatal accident involving her husband.  But as she tries to understand what’s going on without driving herself crazy, the film somehow manages to squander a lot of that potential.  There’s a bit of mystery, sure, but the process of discovering what’s happening takes too long and frustrates more than it fascinates.  Sandra Bullock isn’t too bad in the lead role –unfortunately, there’s not much to the film for her to do.  Alas, the film occasionally dips into so-terrible-it’s-funny territory, first with a macabre decapitated-head sequence (tastefully shot, but there’s no mistaking what’s happening) and then with an ending that seems so ill-conceived that it strains credulity. (Nice job fixing it, hero!) That terrible ending is pretty much the final nail in Premonition’s coffin –it’s one thing to be dull (no one will remember the film, but that may be OK considering the alternative) but ending on that kind of overblown dramatic note is the kind of thing fit to any anyone remember Premonition as a bad one.  (Great poster, though!)

  • Anastasia (1997)

    Anastasia (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, August 2015) I’ve been seeing so many Disney animated movies lately that I’d forgotten what sub-par Disney imitators could feel like, and here’s Fox Animation’s Anastasia to remind me of what I hadn’t missed.  There’s an amazingly ill-conceived blend of elements at the basis of Anastasia’s premise: Taking the rather tragic real world story of Anastasia, a Russian princess killed at a young age by revolutionaries, as a springboard on which to build an animated musical action/comedy film with the reanimated corpse of Rasputin as antagonist, musical numbers and funny animal sidekicks.  What the heck?  At times, it’s not clear whether we should be toe-tapping or howl in historical outrage.  All of this being said, though, the film is often quite better than its nearly-insane premise:  The visual details are fascinating, Anastasia herself is drawn attractively, some of the action sequences are exciting, the musical numbers are catchy and by the time the film comes to an end, the insane premise has been beaten down to quasi-normalcy.  The similarities with the classic Disney animated playbook are obvious and generally work.  (The one exception is the rather uneasy blend of CGI and classic animation, although to Fox Animation’s credit, no one was getting it right in 1997 –it would take until Disney’s 1999 Tarzan until that breakthrough). So it is that Anastasia still ends up a moderate success, although there’s a substantial hump to pass in the first few minutes in order to settle down with the rest.

  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

    Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on Blu-Ray, August 2015) Disney’s Atlantis never measured up against the heavyweight animated features for which the studio is best known, but even today there’s a lot to like in this proto-steampunk (or rather; “Jules Verne-inspired”) adventure looking for a lost continent.  Protagonist Milo is a likable nerdy hero, and there’s quite a bit of plotting going on as he discovers the true nature of those who are helping him.  The visuals are impressive (partly thanks to Mike Mignola’s design), and the integration between traditional cell-based animation and the computer-assisted animation used to bring the machinery to live has seldom been better-executed.  The film has a few laughs, a few serious moments, a generally controlled tone (which wasn’t a given for Disney animated features at the time) It aims a bit older (and a bit more male) than usual for Disney, with no musical numbers and some striking images along the waythe .  (I’m still pleasantly surprised at the surprisingly noirish way that Helga Katrina Sinclair character is introduced)  Some of the plotting is awfully convenient, something that limits its appeal to adult audiences.  Still, the adventure is briskly-paced, and rather interesting –especially as a change of pace from other Disney features.

  • 54 (1998)

    54 (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2015)  What is it about the Disco era that makes every single historical film about it feel so… dour?  Was it the way it imploded upon itself in a few months?  Was it that it gave way to the AIDS era?  I’m not sure, but there are a lot of disco-themed films, from Funkytown to Party Monster and Discopath, that ultimately show Disco as a false front for existential emptiness.  All of this throat-clearing is meant to say that 54 still stands strong as pretty much the same fall-from-grace narrative, wistfully recalling an era of excess before taking it all away from the lead character.  It feels very, extremely, completely familiar as a nominal protagonist played by Ryan Phillippe discovers Disco at the famed Studio 54, befriends plenty of interesting people, and then becomes completely disillusioned about it all.  Two or three things still save the film from terminal mediocrity: First is obviously the period recreation, especially early on when we discover the excesses of Studio 54 at the same time as our protagonist does.  Then there are a few performances worth talking about.  Neve Campbell was on the cusp of superstardom in 1998, and her role here plays off of that then-popularity.  Salma Hayek has an early-stardom role as a signer that makes an impression.  This being said, the film’s best and most affecting performance is Mike Myers’ decidedly dramatic turn as Studio 54’s owner, a sad role with a terrific scene set on a money-covered bed.  Myers has never done anything half as dramatically powerful since then, and it’s with the same kind of sadness that we can look at 54 more than fifteen years later, measuring it against the end of the Disco Era’s promises of non-stop fun.  The film itself may struggle to distinguish itself, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have one or two redeeming qualities.

  • Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines (2014)

    Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2015)  I normally wouldn’t stop to watch a straight-to-video third sequel in a series where most people don’t even know about the second and third film, but it turns out that this fourth film in the not-really-connected Behind Enemy Lines series is directed by Roel Reiné, a surprisingly effective low-budget director who, somehow, always manage to get a few impressive action sequences in otherwise unremarkable films.  So it is that I got my interest’s worth in Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines, which heads to Africa for a rather predictable story about a SEAL team investigating the acquisition of nuclear material by a local warlord.  The story is a big ball of nonsense (with an mysterious antagonist whose identity can be deducted from the very first briefing scene), and the actors aren’t particularly skilled, but the action sequences and the atmosphere of the film aren’t bad at all – some of the stunts look genuinely dangerous, Reiné gets the most out of his location shooting and he has a knack for capturing striking images. (Alas, one of those is of a human being blown into paste.)  The subpar screenplay hurts the film most toward the end, with a fairly mean-spirited turn into misogyny near its unsurprising conclusion.  Still, as long as you know what you’re looking for (action sequences looking great despite a small budget, that is), then Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines has something for you.

  • Blades of Glory (2007)

    Blades of Glory (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2015) I have a soft spot for comedies that take on a relatively specialized subject and then try to milk as many laughs out of it.  Blades of Glory is recognizably “a Will Ferrell film”, which is to say a broad mainstream comedy that relies on Ferrell’s particular brand of humor.  And yet, it executes the usual formula competently, can depend on a couple of good performances and even features Montréal as Montréal. Ferrell is less annoying than usual in a role that benefits from machismo arrogance rather than simply his usual man-child persona.  (The film itself also gets a lot of comic mileage in confronting bad-boy macho aesthetics with those of figure ice-skating, and not all of it is mean-spirited.)  Fortunately, the jokes work, while Will Arnett and Amy Poehler make for a good pair of antagonists.  The ice-skate chase through Montréal is funnier if you have an idea of the city’s geography (unsurprising hint: it’s all over the place).  The cast includes a number of famous and infamous figure skaters, and the work required to transform Ferrel and Jon Heder in world-class skaters seems curiously effective.  While Blades of Glory isn’t much more than an assembly-line mainstream Hollywood comedy, it’s well-tuned for its purpose and works reliably well as getting its smiles.  (Useless personal trivia: When I travelled to Los Angeles in 2006, my only encounter with Hollywood filmmaking in the wild came at the Los Angeles Stadium, when I saw a few trailers tagged as being from “Blades of Glory”.  I find it a bit ironic that it would be for a film that features Montréal so prominently… which is where I boarded the plane for Los Angeles. )

  • I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007)

    I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2015)  Social progress can be measured in laws and statistics, but it’s also a matter of unsaid stereotypes and evolving culture.  Watching I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry eight years after its initial release, I’m stuck most strongly about the film’s uneasy relationship with gay stereotypes, as it presents two heterosexual men marrying for obscure (and frankly nonsensical) administrative benefits.  On one hand, the film is good-natured enough to (eventually) argue firmly in favour of progressive values, show homophobia in a bad light and affirm that sexual orientation isn’t something that should be discriminated against.  Coming from the mid-naughties, after Canada had legalized same-sex unions but before most of the US followed suit, that wasn’t too bad.  But then again I Now Pronounce You Chuck &  Larry crassly makes a lot out of stereotypes, characters spouting regrettable epithets and a barely-repressed attitude that “isn’t it hilarious to pretend to be gay???!?” as a freak-show.  I certainly hope that the very same plot wouldn’t be developed in the same way today.  It’s best to consider I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry as a relic of its time, at a moment when same-sex marriages were past reprobation, but well before they were normalized.  More shocking is the realization that this review spent nearly two hundred words discussing social progress before mentioning that this is an Adam Sandler film, and that he is more or less up to his usual crude shtick here. He is, of course, portrayed as a strongly heterosexual man (and the film stops just as a same-sex kiss with Kevin James was coming up.)  Don’t think that the film is all harmless: As disturbing than the gay stereotypes is seeing Rob Schneider in yellow-face, with a broad and unfunny imitation of an Asian character.  Otherwise, the dumb comedy of I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry pales in comparison to its socially-risky premise: it’s all dumb gags, obvious developments, flat direction and an expected conclusion.  There may be something interesting to say about slipping a dose of progressive values to Sandler fans under the deceptive guise of a dumb comedy, but I’ll let others tackle that train of thought –I’ve blathered long enough about the film already.

  • Grudge Match (2013)

    Grudge Match (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2015) Grudge Match isn’t an unofficial remake of Rocky Balboa, but is sure does feel like it at times, as a retired boxer played by Sylvester Stallone takes up the gloves once again to face an old rival.  But while Rocky 6 tried hard to keep up the serious underdog tone of its series, Grudge Match thankfully seems willing to let the natural comedy in its premise run free.  Or so it seems for a while, it bits and pieces –because far too often, Grudge Match lets go of its comic premise and muddles down in emotional sequences that take away from its strengths.  It doesn’t help that the film is deeply conventional – it’s not so bad when the characters are exchanging barbs or indulging in easy physical comedy, but when Grudge Match gets serious, it also gets dull.  Still, there is considerable entertainment in seeing Robert de Niro take up old glories (although this does nothing to calm critics claiming that his twenty-first century output so far has been almost entirely riffing on his previous career), and Stallone arguably plays a better take on his Rocky Balboa character.  Alan Arkin once again plays crusty-old-guy better than anyone else, much as Kevin Hart can somehow remain a non-obnoxious motor-mouth.  It’s also good to see Kim Basinger again in a substantial role.  The laughs rescue the film from rote emotional familiarity –there is, in particular, a single-shot silent gag involving a bridge, jogger, a scooter and careful composition.  Still, Grudge Match is pretty good entertainment, especially for anyone in the mood for a solid way to pass the evening.

  • Boyhood (2014)

    Boyhood (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2015) It would be tempting to criticize Boyhood’s endless digressions, hefty running time and scattershot plotting, but that would be missing the point of the film.  Famously filmed over twelve years, Boyhood is about the little moments of early life – the dumb conversations with friends, the visits to church, the breakups and the trips and the fights and the dress-downs and the ways lives changes.  Even as Boyhood grinds to a halt for family parties, philosophical digressions and daily minutia, there is a poignant resonance here with everyone’s universal experiences.  Despite my uneventful early years as far away from Texas as possible, I could certainly find flashes of similarities between my boyhood and moments of the film.  Boyhood lives in the interstices of other flashier stories, and there’s something almost profound in the way it combines the very intimate with the epic sweep of a twelve-year story in which the protagonist visibly matures before our eyes.  The cultural references are amusing (albeit liable to make older audiences reflect on the passage of time as in “was that twelve/ten/eight years ago already?”)  Acting-wise, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette provide welcome anchors of continuity, which somehow becomes more and more important as Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater do a great job aging twelve years in nearly three hours.  It doesn’t take much to zone out during Boyhood (perhaps evoking the first image of the film, reflected on the poster) as the film effortlessly puts us in a reflective mood, thinking about our lives and how they go on, one small moment after another.  Unique in scope, Boyhood is another small triumph for iconoclast director Richard Linklater, once again doing fascinating things with cinema.