The Campaign

Starring Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, and Jason Sudekis
Directed by Jay Roach
Year: 2012
IMDB / Wikipedia

Every now and then, I will find it necessary to break protocol to tend to my extremely large Netflix queue. This is one of those times.

Politics can be hilarious without even trying. I have witnessed many elections turn into a comedy of errors for one or both major candidates and it always provides a sense of delight. With this opportunity, Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis had an opportunity to do a movie that took a good shot at politics portraying two very flawed candidates trying to be the lesser of the two evils. Unfortunately, in the search for humor a really stupid, unfunny movie broke out leaving me with out a clear winner.

The opportunity that was squandered was the angle of corporations buying elections for favorable candidates (something made legal under the Citizens United ruling) but it was reduced to a squabble between two morons with a lot of cussing, sex jokes, and pratfalls to bring it down even lower. Some might say I was asking too much from a Will Ferrell vehicle, but I held out hope. What was disappointing was that the rest of the cast kept trying to make this movie something more but the two leading men kept dragging it down, something I never thought I would say about two very funny guys. Perhaps they were trying too hard to appeal to a wide demographic and failed (and in that case this is a closet-comedic genius project) but on a basic level it fell flat. Don’t waste your time,

Most Valuable Actor: Though a bit player in this farce, Karen Maruyama, the Asian housekeeper for Galifianakis’ racist old southern father (Brian Cox) provides the only deserved laughs in the entire film as she is forced to use a haughty black-southern accent to remind the father of “the good old days.” Her 90 seconds of screen time make the movie almost worth it. Almost.

Trailer:

As Good As It Gets

Starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear
Directed by James L. Brooks
Year: 1997
IMDB / Wikipedia

I have a hard time with this film. Not because it is complex, not because it is mundane or unapproachable, but because the reasons I have for loving this movie also make me hate it so much. The story of a writer struggling with OCD (Nicholson), his favorite waitress (Hunt), and his gay next-door neighbor (Kinnear) takes place in a reality that resembles our own but is almost too fantastic and too perfect to be real.

This film has wonderful moments, real emotion, and some of the best dialogue I have heard in a film. But that’s the problem: it’s too wonderful, too real, and the dialogue is too good. Who the fuck talks like this? It’s one thing to suspend disbelief because you find a plot hole or a character makes a decision that is contrary to your own belief system, but this film is filled with characters (every character, in fact) that seems to say the exact right thing at the exact right time (or wrong time, in the case of Melvin). It’s too much but, at the same time, it is so good, so real, and so funny that I can get past most of the soliloquy-esque lines and enjoy the movie for what it is: a dramatic and passionate look at how we can spot the flaws in others but not often times ourselves.

Most Valuable Actor: It’s easy to plop Nicholson in this slot again after his amazing performance (which garnered him an Oscar) but it was Helen Hunt that deserves the nod here (she also won an Oscar for this film) as she brought a character to life with more than just dialogue delivery. Hunt has amazing facial range that can tell stories with a flutter of an eye or an awkward smile. Though not a classic beauty, she is pretty enough for the role but not a Hollywood glamour girl who would seem out of place in the same role.

Trailer:

The Art of War

Starring Wesley Snipes, Marie Matiko, and Anne Archer
Directed by Christian Duguay
Year: 2000
IMDB / Wikipedia

Like on my other blog, I am looking to make these write-ups more concise and worthwhile so they do not loom in my mind as a major undertaking. So, starting with this  post, I will be limiting myself to two paragraphs (because word counts suck) and that’s it. Enjoy!

There are many who give Wesley Snipes for being a bad Steven Seagal-esque actor with limited acting chops and only some serious martial arts abilities to fall back on. Though he will probably never win an Oscar for his work, Snipes does have a tendency to go for meatier roles that show ambition. In The Art of War, Snipes builds upon his ability to play a covert government operative that started in 1998’s U.S. Marshals opposite Tommy Lee Jones. The Art of War follows Snipes as a covert UN operative who is caught in the middle of an international incident that leads major global superpower to the brink of disaster. Not the most cerebral of plots, but it works.

This film seems like another pop-action flick with some roundhouse kicks and cheesy dialogue. While it delivers on both of those fronts it also provides some of the better character development and plot twists that seem to be missing from the contemporary cyber-thriller. Also, while the movie strives to be more than what it is it does a few things right, namely character development. In a film that could have made two-dimensional characters all-around the screenwriters put in enough into each character to make them realistic even if the events surrounding them lacked the realism. This movie holds up well under the weight of its ambition and, while not a classic, it is certainly not a waste of time.

Most Valuable Actor: Snipes is one of those actors who fizzled out before he reached his potential. Trouble outside of the box office didn’t help anything but I saw this as a step in the right direction for Snipes as he carried the movie in several parts.

Trailer: