Old Dogs

Raise your hand if you're not an Oscar
winner disgracing yourself right now

Grade: D –

Director: Walt Becker

Starring: John Travolta, Robin Williams, Kelly Preston, Seth Green, Bernie Mac, Matt Dillon, and Justin Long

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes

As applied to its lead stars, the name Old Dogs is more apt than producers probably intended. John Travolta and Robin Williams play BFFs and business partners who glimpse midlife on the horizon and their best years in the rearview mirror. In other words, they suggest loose interpretations of their professional selves, and nothing encapsulates their deteriorating careers like this Disney drek.

Dan (Williams) and Charlie (Travolta) find their lifelong bromance threatened when Dan’s erstwhile one-night stand (Kelly Preston) suddenly shows up with his heretofore unknown twin moppets (Conner Rayburn and Ella Bleu Travolta), needing Dan to babysit while she does two weeks in the pokey. (Is it just me, or is it a bit creepy that Travolta’s real-life wife and daughter play Williams’ love interest and child?)

Life lessons about fatherhood allegedly ensue, including a weepy scene in which mom, daughter, and the law of movie morality expects Dan to jettison the multi-million dollar deal culminating he and Charlie’s 30-year career just so Dan can attend his daughter’s latest birthday party (I guess they didn’t think the first five or six were so important).

Director Walt Becker brandishes the dexterity of a hacksaw, like he did in his previous Travolta-starring calamity, Wild Hogs. Here, the entire film has only two gears: schmaltzy and farcical. The screenplay is nothing more than a series of barely connected sketches replete with gags about Asians, homo-anxiety, crotch-shots, and a dog with bladder control problems. There are also lots of human and animal reaction shots, plus uneven cameos. Only Matt Dillon and Justin Long acquit them well as gung-ho nature camp counselors. The rest of the supporting cast needs better agents or script-readers: Rita Wilson plays a cross-eyed hand model; Ann-Margret wanders in from the wilderness; and Bernie Mac is given nothing funny to say or do in this, his final film role before his untimely death in August 2008. Even the usually reliable Seth Green flounders; his only semi-amusing scene is already featured prominently in the film’s trailer.

It’s fitting that this big, unpalatable turkey is opening on Thanksgiving weekend. As it is, these Old Dogs need to be put down.

Neil Morris

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Live from Kenya - the Obama victory celebration roars on

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Grade: C

Director: Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath

Starring the voices of: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Bernie Mac, and Alec Baldwin

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

Soul Men

Grade: B –

Director: Malcolm B. Lee

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Bernie Mac, Sharon Leal, Adam Herschman, Sean Hayes, and Affion Crockett

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 43 minutes

There are few coincidences when it comes to Hollywood marketing. What are the chances that two of the late comedian Bernie Mac’s final film projects would be released into theaters on the same day merely 3 months since his untimely death? Still, in the doldrums of this pre-awards season, it is worth taking time to pay tribute to an underrated talent cut down while his acting abilities were still evolving.

The problem with Samuel L. Jackson’s outsized onscreen persona is that it usually dwarfs his costars, leaving little room for them to coexist in a film to which Jackson is either unwilling or incapable to modulate. Such is not an issue in the buddy road comedy Soul Men when Jackson meets his physical and spiritual match in the loquacious, brash Mac. The two play Louis Hinds (Jackson) and Floyd Henderson (Mac), former backup singers in a 1960s R&B trio who became estranged after their lead singer left for a successful solo career. After their ex-partner dies, Hinds and Henderson call an uneasy truce and embark on a cross-country road trip to a tribute concert in Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

The middling storyline hinges on a Blues Brothers framework that includes visiting Arizona dives and Texas saloons, coping with familial strife, and a final performance with the police waiting offstage to arrest the duo for sundry misdeeds. The musical numbers, for which the actors supply their own vocals, are pedestrian and derivative at best. But, Mac and Jackson paint in profanity with the same virtuosity some artists work in water colors, and together they form an irreverent chemistry. The result is a satisfying mix of hilarity and melancholy, the latter fueled by the reality that Mac and Isaac Hayes, who makes a cameo, did not live to see this film’s release.

While Mac voices a lion king in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, he is not the reason anyone will or will not see this PG-rated kids’ film. The best thing that can be said about this sequel to the popular 2005 animated original is that it will entertain youngsters under the age of 10. Of course, the same can be said about an animatronic jug band at Chuck E. Cheese’s, which might, come to think of it, rival the second Madagascar in plot depth and originality.

An ill-fated attempt to finally return home to New York City by the franchise’s quartet of zoo escapees – Alex and dancing Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer, emerging from exile) and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) – literally crash lands in the African plains. There, Gloria and Melman discover love, Marty discovers he is part of a like-minded herd, and Alex discovers his long-lost parents (Mac and Sherri Shepard). From there, it is onto a pale takeoff of “The Lion King,” as Simba…er, Alex competes to succeed his father against the dastardly Scar…er, Makunga (Alec Baldwin).

For kids, all the plotting merely passes time between “moving it” with Sacha Baron Cohen’s hyperactive, self-assured lemur Julien. For every one else, only the return of those sardonic penguins provides any genuine chuckles.

Neil Morris

Soul Men

Soul Men

Grade: B –

Director: Malcolm B. Lee

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Bernie Mac, Sharon Leal, Adam Herschman, Sean Hayes, and Affion Crockett

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 43 minutes

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Grade: C

Director: Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath

Starring the voices of: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Bernie Mac, and Alec Baldwin

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

There are few coincidences when it comes to Hollywood marketing. What are the chances that two of the late comedian Bernie Mac’s final film projects would be released into theaters on the same day merely 3 months since his untimely death? Still, in the doldrums of this pre-awards season, it is worth taking time to pay tribute to an underrated talent cut down while his acting abilities were still evolving.

The problem with Samuel L. Jackson’s outsized onscreen persona is that it usually dwarfs his costars, leaving little room for them to coexist in a film to which Jackson is either unwilling or incapable to modulate. Such is not an issue in the buddy road comedy Soul Men when Jackson meets his physical and spiritual match in the loquacious, brash Mac. The two play Louis Hinds (Jackson) and Floyd Henderson (Mac), former backup singers in a 1960s R&B trio who became estranged after their lead singer left for a successful solo career. After their ex-partner dies, Hinds and Henderson call an uneasy truce and embark on a cross-country road trip to a tribute concert in Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

The middling storyline hinges on a Blues Brothers framework that includes visiting Arizona dives and Texas saloons, coping with familial strife, and a final performance with the police waiting offstage to arrest the duo for sundry misdeeds. The musical numbers, for which the actors supply their own vocals, are pedestrian and derivative at best. But, Mac and Jackson paint in profanity with the same virtuosity some artists work in water colors, and together they form an irreverent chemistry. The result is a satisfying mix of hilarity and melancholy, the latter fueled by the reality that Mac and Isaac Hayes, who makes a cameo, did not live to see this film’s release.

While Mac voices a lion king in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, he is not the reason anyone will or will not see this PG-rated kids’ film. The best thing that can be said about this sequel to the popular 2005 animated original is that it will entertain youngsters under the age of 10. Of course, the same can be said about an animatronic jug band at Chuck E. Cheese’s, which might, come to think of it, rival the second Madagascar in plot depth and originality.

An ill-fated attempt to finally return home to New York City by the franchise’s quartet of zoo escapees – Alex and dancing Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer, emerging from exile) and Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) – literally crash lands in the African plains. There, Gloria and Melman discover love, Marty discovers he is part of a like-minded herd, and Alex discovers his long-lost parents (Mac and Sherri Shepard). From there, it is onto a pale takeoff of “The Lion King,” as Simba…er, Alex competes to succeed his father against the dastardly Scar…er, Makunga (Alec Baldwin).

For kids, all the plotting merely passes time between “moving it” with Sacha Baron Cohen’s hyperactive, self-assured lemur Julien. For every one else, only the return of those sardonic penguins provides any genuine chuckles.

Neil Morris