Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Tropic Blunder

Grade: C +

Director: Jake Kasdan

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas, Bobby Cannavale, Alex Wolff, Madison Iseman, Ser'Darius Blain, and Morgan Turner

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 59 min.

It’s probably giving the makers of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle too much credit to note that a film whose premise revolves around kids magically occupying adult bodies includes a brief appearance by the son of Tom Hanks, the star of Big almost thirty years ago. That said, this sequel—undoubtedly named after the Guns N’ Roses song once the producers obtained the rights to play it over the closing credits—is a lot like Colin Hanks: a capable progeny that nonetheless pales in comparison to its popular predecessor.

The Jumanji board game in the 1995 film, which starred Robin Williams, is replaced with an Atari-esque video cartridge, exhumed by a quartet of high schooler archetypes doing detention: Spencer (Alex Wolff) is the nerd, “Fridge” (Ser'Darius Blain) is the burly jock and Spencer’s sometimes pal; Bethany (Madison Iseman) is the pretty, solipsistic It girl who is emotionally attached is nothing except her cell phone; and Martha (Morgan Turner) is the brainy bookworm.

Unlike the 1995 original, where the game’s contents were unleashed into the real world, here the teens are teleported into the Jumanji video game, where each is assigned an avatar. Spencer is a strong, speedy explorer name Dr. Smolder Bravestone, played by Dwayne Johnson. “Fridge” is reduced to Bravestone’s diminutive sidekick (Kevin Hart), with a penchant for zoology and a weakness for cake. Martha becomes a comely commando (Karen Gillan), while Bethany becomes Professor Sheldon Oberon (Jack Black), a portly cartographer and, well, man.

Most of the chuckles come compliments of the age, gender, and persona-swapping gags. Johnson is convincing as a young nebbish suddenly coping with the body of a muscle-bound hero, while Jack Black exudes the superficial silliness of a self-absorbed teen girl. Hart is hilarious as the BMOG suddenly cut down to size. Even Nick Jonas pops up as another kid caught in the game to demonstrate that, indeed, Nick Jonas can carry a role.

Still, the premise and set pieces are uninspired and instantly forgettable. Any sticky situation is quickly resolved, and any sense of danger is minimized by the multiple lives each player possesses, a la a video game. Moreover, the film needlessly sacrifices its PG-rating for the sake of stray profanities and sexual allusions scattered throughout, particularly revolving around Bethany’s male anatomical self-discovery. Whatever marginal comedic value these off-color moments hold don’t befit the wide target audience for a holiday season release.

The camaraderie between the characters and cast carries the film. Otherwise, while the original Jumanji sprang on a fictitious board game, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is more of a bored game.

Kung Fu Panda 2

Grade: C +

Director: Jennifer Yuh

Starring the voices of: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, Seth Rogan, Jackie Chan, David Cross, Lucy Liu, Michelle Yoah, Dennis Haysbert, and Jean-Claude Van Damme

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

The most, nay, only interesting part of the chopsocky sequel Kung Fu Panda 2 are the closing credits, which midway through list Guillermo del Toro as a creative consultant. Presumably he’s who advised debut film director Jennifer Yuh Nelson that the best way to make a peacock sinister is let Gary Oldman do its voice.

Otherwise, the filmmakers presume that an animated film’s sum worth correlates with the lines of computer code necessary to conceive its brilliant but dizzying 3-D action sequences. The original’s serviceable you-can-be-anything fable about Po the portly panda (Jack Black) and his improbable ascension to Dragon Warrior gives way to a prosaic pourquoi story prompted by the “shocking” revelation that Po really wasn’t born to a daft, noodle-brained goose. Flashbacks drawn to resemble traditional hand-drawn animation allude to what happened to Po’s parents once upon the time they crossed paths with Oldman’s genocidal Lord Shen, who now returns from exile with designs on conquering China using a fire-spewing WMD.

In between, there is a plethora of Black’s distinctive hit-and-miss quips, clever Pac-Man and T2 spoofs, and Po eventually becomes Neo. The quest for attaining inner peace, espoused by Po’s returning sensei Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), clashes with the paws-of-furry flashed ceaselessly by Po and his Furious Five comrades – Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen), and Crane (David Cross).

You have to refer back to those closing credits to know that genre icons like Michelle Yeoh and Jean-Claude Van Damme lent their voices to this wuxia riff. Mostly, however, the whole enterprise feels like an excuse to introduce more animals – peacock, ox, croc, rhino, ram – that can be packaged as Happy Meal toys. Indeed, Kung Fu Panda 2 is like cinematic fast food – prepackaged, kid-friendly, and fallow.

Neil Morris

Year One

Slaves to Apatow movie hell

Grade: D

Director: Harold Ramis

Starring: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, and David Cross

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Year One is to Life of Brian, its ostensible cinematic inspiration, as Monty Python’s titular Nazarene is to his Messianic stable-mate: a pale imposter. When the book is written on bad Jack Black comedies or the first major misstep in Michael Cera’s nascent career, this misguided, humorless disaster – more akin to bad Abrahams and Zucker than Mel Brooks – will be chapter one.

As inept tribesmen banished from their home village for sampling from the Tree of Knowledge (if only the filmmakers had dined at that table…), Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) begin a loose jaunt through the Book of Genesis, sparking everything from the fratricide of Cain (David Cross) to Abraham (Hank Azaria) sparing his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) from sacrifice to indulging in the pleasures and perils of Sodom. Their goal, such as it is, centers around freeing themselves and their would-be objects of affection, Maya (June Diane Raphael) and Eema (Juno Temple), from slavery.

Just as Zed and Oh wander the wilderness, so too does Year One meander aimlessly through one half-baked sketch after another. Ignoring the wit and satire all but smacking him straight in his face, director Harold Ramis falls back on anachronisms and a steady stream of scatology. You know, the usual: Feces, urine, flatulence, testicles, and a glut of gay gags.

With Cera, McLovin, Bill Hader in blackface, and an uncredited Paul Rudd as the doomed Abel, this rotten tomato is a Jonah Hill walk-on away from an Apatow family reunion. Sadly, Apatow accepts a producer credit for this mistake, but the most amazing thing is that its bottom-barrel script was penned by two regulars for The Office, Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg. Too schlocky to be good and too charmless to be a cult classic, this is an unimaginative misfire that its stars would be well-advised to instantly scrub from their resumes. Black and Cera spout off a funny line here and there, but poor editing, writing, and staging steer Year One into very primitive territory.

Neil Morris

Tropic Thunder

They say this cat Downey is one bad mother...
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

Grade: B

Director: Ben Stiller

Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr., Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Brandon T. Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Steve Coogan, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Cruise

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

It’s official – I worship at the altar of Robert Downey, Jr. The question of whether Downey is a top-flight actor was definitely answered way back in 1992 after his thus-far lone Academy Award-nominated turn in Chaplin. The years since have been a well-documented roller coaster of professional triumphs and personal travails that have both sharpened his acting skills and lent a hardscrabble edge to his aura.

Perhaps it is that professional street-cred, or the cache he earned after elevating Iron Man into one of the year’s most unexpected blockbusters, that gives Downey the leeway to tackle a part like Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder. (Set aside the obvious fact that the character’s surname is itself a comment on Downey’s rise from the Hollywood – and nearly literal – dead). One fact is indisputable: a minute number of actors would have the guts to accept such a risky role, and even fewer could get away with doing so without incurring public scorn and/or falling flat on their blackface.

Downey’s Lazarus is a five-time Oscar-winning Australian known for totally immersing himself into character – a less-than thinly veiled parody of Russell Crowe, or, nationality aside, the Method-obsessed Downey himself. To play a black soldier in the eponymous Vietnam War movie, Lazarus undergoes a skin pigmentation procedure and adopts an accent falling somewhere between Fred Williamson and Redd Foxx. Sure, Lazarus is a riff on the practice of movie actors’ plundering roles that cross racial, gender, age, and handicapped lines for the sake of critical acclaim and “craft.” Moreover, as a self-absorbed aesthete wrapped inside a Hollywood blaxploitation archetype, he is a raw, razor-sharp satire of the cinema’s traditionally uneasy, even patronizing relationship with reality. A part that could have gone so horribly wrong becomes – in Downey’s talented, transformative hands – epically hilarious and almost transcendent. Rarely has such an average film demanded repeat viewings thanks to a single performance.

The rest of Tropic Thunder is a decidedly mixed-bag, less a whole than the sum of its parts. Lazarus is one of several prima donna actors shooting a big-budget war movie, including an aging action star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, pulling double-duty as director), rotund, heroin-addled comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), and a hip-hop entertainer with the handle Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson). When the cast is stranded in the jungles of Southeast Asia, they inadvertently stumble across the real danger of a Thai drug cartel. Yet, as a consequence of their privileged insularity, the actors believe they are participating in a form of verite filmmaking and endeavor to play their parts.

The inside-baseball references come fast and furious, including virtually every Vietnam War movie ever made. In one of three faux-trailers that “precede” the film, the flatulent Portnoy stars in a Klumps-style franchise called “The Fatties.” Less obvious, but just as incendiary, is a fleeting subplot involving Chino and the ambiguous sexuality that many rap stars camouflage behind a façade of overheated machismo.

Uneven satire and Downey’s tour de force notwithstanding, the film’s worth is judged exclusively on a cameo-by-cameo basis. Many are wasted – Bill Hader and Steve Coogan – while others are simply underutilized – Danny McBride as a pyrotechnician and Nick Nolte as a grizzled Viet vet from whose novel the titular movie is being adapted. The two true standouts are also two surprises. Matthew McConaughey has limited range, but he was born to play a Hollywood agent. And, Tom Cruise’s extended turn as a paunchy, balding film mogul is the worst-kept surprise of the film; his foul-mouthed, booty-shaking routine may well inject some much-needed cool back into his career. His performance would walk away with any other film. As it is, Cruise’s presence – however amusing and audacious it is for a while – only magnifies the fact that he is among the plethora of actors who could never pull off a role like Kirk Lazarus.

Indeed, the overheated, over-the-top performances carry the comedy, but they also drown out the satirical cleverness.

At times, Tropic Thunder threatens to transform into the big-budget action movie it seeks to lampoon. But, Downey always comes back to save the film, spitting out antiquated cultural clichés in equal measure with Hollywood bons mots. When Tugg bemoans the abject failure of his misbegotten attempt at a dramatic star turn in a film named “Simple Jack” – in which Tugg plays a mentally challenged man-child – Lazarus cites real-life examples to buttress his simple, sadly true diagnosis: “Never go full retard.”

The obvious irony is that Downey ends up earning and deserving critical acclaim for a role that lambastes the very fondness for heaping awards upon roles such as his. Like Lazarus, he is “just a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.” In my estimation, Downey’s just one bad dude.

Neil Morris

Kung Fu Panda

Coming to a Happy Meal near you...

Grade: B
Director: Mark Osborne and John Stevenson
Starring the voices of: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogan, Lucy Liu, and David Cross
MPAA Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes

Kung Fu Panda, Dreamworks’ answer to the perennial Pixar smash, is a charming, exciting, and occasionally uproarious kid’s fable set to the familiar tune of overcoming adversity to realize one’s full potential. It does not break new ground for the animated kid’s genre, but it makes a good time for kids and adults alike.

Po the Panda (Jack Black), a pleasantly plump noodle waiter and closet kung fu fanatic, becomes the improbable choice to assume the mantle of Dragon Warrior and save his ancient Chinese village-cum-barnyard, along with the secrets of the mystical Dragon Scroll, from the clutches from the dastardly Tai Lung (Ian McShane). Po – in essence a nerd with a eating disorder and fanboy obsession – trains under the tutelage of the laconic, Fu Manchu-mustached raccoon Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and a band of celebrity martial artists called the Furious Five (voiced by Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogan, Lucy Liu, David Cross, and, yep, Jackie Chan). Their basic, Herculean charge is to hone Po’s chronic klutziness into some semblance of coordination. The irony, it turns out, is the way Po’s special “gifts” eventually go from inhibiting his kung fu acumen to combining with it to create the ultimate warrior.

The copious, occasionally intense fight scenes make the film a bit inappropriate for extremely young viewers, and Po’s meteoric rise from roly-poly goof to dexterous warrior is improbable even for a cartoon (although, I suppose, no more so than The Karate Kid). However, the vibe remains light-hearted throughout, thanks primarily to Black’s trademark oafish whimsy – perhaps his most acute and accessible use of it since School of Rock – juxtaposed as a clever contrast to the faux-earnestness of the kung fu send-up. Indeed, Black is foremost among voiceover work that is uniformly pitch-perfect and perfectly cast, including Hoffman’s surly sensi and McShane’s menacing growl.

Moreover, anytime the cuddly comedy begins to lag, enter one of the many marvelous, expertly crafted action sequences that give the film its verve. Kung Fu Panda's bookend motifs are simultaneously droll and backhandedly satisfying: from the tongue-in-cheek opening title “Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend” to the film’s prevailing mantra, and perhaps the driving force behind those who created this pleasant parable, “To make something special, you just have to believe it's special.”

Neil Morris

Margot at the Wedding

Maybe I lost my Oscar up here.

Grade: C
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, Ciarán Hinds, and John Turturro
Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

Margot at the Wedding might be – as writer-director Noah Baumbach has stated – patterned in the style of an Eric Rohmer family comic-drama or, as another critic has put it, the manifestation of a Dorothy Parker poem. Or, as many contend, it could represent Baumbach’s equal-time excoriation of his mother following the thrashing he gave his doppelganger father in The Squid and the Whale. Regardless of its genesis, the director’s latest exercise in familial flagellation is a dreary, indulgent slog through upper-crust bohemia.

As the film opens, the eponymous Margot (Nicole Kidman), a writer of some repute, is traveling with her teenage son Claude (Zane Pais) to her family’s littoral homestead for the wedding of her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to a hapless lout named Malcolm (Jack Black). It seems that Margot’s acid tongue once broke up Pauline’s first marriage, and now Margot is in transition of divorcing her husband (John Turturro) and carrying on an affair with her writing partner (Ciarán Hinds).

What ensues is an endless, inane series of passive-aggressive back-biting and reprisals executed by utterly unlikable people – Margot and Pauline are the sort of folk who only laugh whilst recalling the time their younger sister was raped by a horse trainer. Any subtext gets washed away in a sea of ugliness except the vague metaphor of an old family tree whose roots are encroaching onto the property of some inexplicably creepy neighbors. Its eventual collapse onto the wedding tent is less remarkable as symbolism than as a beacon illuminating the last leg of this odious odyssey.

Perhaps we are meant to wallow in schadenfreude from observing the wretched treatment these hollow souls inflict upon one another. However, onlookers might guffaw at monkeys throwing feces at each other in a zoo, but the monkeys are still having a grand old time of it. There and here, the only victims are those lured into spectating the shit. Ultimately, Margot is like the semen young Frank smears on the school walls in Squid and the Whale: the masturbatory byproduct of Baumbach’s ongoing cinematic self-therapy.

Neil Morris