The Giver

Son, I'm afraid this isn't another Tron sequel

Grade: C +

Director: Phillip Noyce

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgård, Katie Holmes, Odeya Rush, Taylor Swift, Cameron Monaghan and Emma Tremblay

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 40 min.

It’s easy to see why it took 17 years to get Lois Lowry’s best-selling 1993 YA novel The Giver on the silver screen. Instead of embracing the potential depth of its subject matter, the film adaptation co-produced by Jeff Bridges and directed by Phillip Noyce—both able filmmakers—is distilled down to a promising premise bookended by empty mythology on one side and convenient, magical-transformative malarkey on the other.

A pre-credits narration informs the audience that after “The Ruin,” humankind rebuilt society into a cluster of utopian “Communities” ruled by a council of Elders and their authoritarian chief (Meryl Streep). Memories of the past have been all but wiped out so society can begin anew. The weather is always good, the trees are fake, there aren’t any animals and no one carries a surname. Your family and occupation are predetermined. Citizens must dress alike and aren’t permitted to lie or use “imprecise language.” Mandatory morning meds keep everyone docile, emotionless and, yes, colorblind. And elderly citizens and deficient infants are “released to Elsewhere”—you don’t need to watch Logan’s Run to know what that means.

Wondering what The Ruin was and how humans were able—logistically and ethically—to develop these uber-planned communities? Don’t bother. The Giver doesn’t explicate such pesky details about its backstory. Instead, we glean them through the eyes of Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), an 18-year-old tapped as the new Receiver of Memory. Jonas will telepathically inherit the entirety of human history and emotion from The Giver (Jeff Bridges), a curmudgeonly elder living in an oversized library near the edge of the town.

As Jonas’ eyes are opened to the wonders of colors, snow, dancing, elephants and war, this carefully chosen Receiver immediately starts to crack like a cheap windshield. One of his only rules is to never share with others what he learns during training, so of course the first thing he does is tell his friends about what he’s learned during training. Jonas gets surly with his delegated parents (Alexander Skarsgård and Katie Holmes) and wants to kiss doe-eyed girl-friend Fiona (Odeya Rush), to the dismay of Asher (Cameron Monaghan), whose unruly and jealous disposition is supposedly the sort of character flaw that gets ironed out by medication.

The Giver is blessed with the handsome cinematography of Ross Emery, who formerly directed photography for the Matrix trilogy and Dark World. The film’s early acts team with a youthful exuberance—conveyed using subtle jump cuts and off-angle shots—churning beneath a futurististic milieu muted by Emery’s black-and-white palette.

But once Jonas visits The Giver and color starts intruding on this sci-fi Pleasantville, the precarious plot starts to unravel. The Giver doesn’t want to just impart wisdom on Jonas, but also radicalize him into shaking up this dystopic Garden of Eden (including some subterfuge involving Fiona and an apple). And once Gabriel, a newborn future Receiver, is slated for “release,” Jonas decides that it’s finally time to go rogue.

Besides the contrivance of how it’s accomplished, it’s hard to accept that this meticulously engineered society could be so easily undone by one young boy and a baby going on a walkabout beyond some invisible border. Or that it hadn’t happened before Jonas came along.

Ultimately, the sense of Sameness plaguing the flawed utopia in The Giver afflicts its cinematic presentation. In the end, Jonas finds his Rosebud and a cabin echoing with Christmas carols. But viewers are left to mull an aftermath of Jonas’ journey as unexplained as everything before it. Maybe the audience needs its own Giver.

Jack and Jill

Xenu said there'd be days like this

Grade: D –

Director: Dennis Dugan

Starring: Adam Sandler, Al Pacino,Katie Holmes, Nick Swardson and Eugenio Derbez

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

At the heart of Adam Sandler’s latest comedic romp, Jack and Jill, are lessons about the extricable bonds of family and the existential duality of the human soul, encapsulated under the guise of…oh, who the heck am I kidding?

The degree of celebrity and financial success that Sandler continues to amass as aresult of films that are increasingly and resoundingly putrid is fascinating only if one day we learn that the entirety of Sandler’s career was one big lampoon of Hollywood: a marginally talented star spoon-feeds producers and moviegoers a steady diet of clichéd scripts, awful actors, lazy filmmaking and offensive material,and they keep coming back for more.

If this were somehow true, then Jack and Jill would represent Sandler’s attempt to see just how low his fans will go. The cross-dressing comedy hasn’t truly worked since Tootsie, but that doesn’t stop Sandler and the indefensible Dennis Dugan from slapping on a dress and foisting this affront to the medium. Set around the Thanksgiving and Hanukkah seasons, Los Angeles ad exec Jack Sadelstein (Sandler) ruefully awaits the annual arrival of Jill (Sandler in a wig, makeup, fat suit and grating accent), his identical twin sister. Jill is loud, needy, embarrassing and obnoxious – frankly, a scene in which she talks loudly on her cell phone in a movie theater make her fair game for ridicule. But, she’s still preferable to Jack, who is regularly and inexplicably cruel to Jill, giddy when his adopted son punches her in the face and when she crash-lands a jet ski outside his pool.

In other words, the audience isn’t given a reason to like either sibling or, for that matter, anyone else in this dumpster fire of a movie. Jack’s throwaway family includes dim bulb wife Erin (Katie Holmes, grinning mindlessly) and an adopted moppet from India who has a bizarre but pointless fetish for Scotch-taping objects, including animals, to his body.

The first fart joke comes during the opening credits, eventually metastasizing into a full-blown diarrhea gag after Jill scarfs down some chimichangas. And Sandler trots out his usual unholy triumvirate: choppy editing, useless celebrity cameos and casual racism. Famed Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez is ethnically emasculated, playing a gardener who cracks wise about crossing the border inside a car trunk and takes Jill to a gathering of la familia that features piñatas and an one-toothed old woman revived from unconsciousness by shoving red chili peppers in her mouth.

Playing himself, Al Pacino becomes infatuating with Jill after spying her at a Lakers basketball game and embarks on an extended, fanatical courtship. Rehashing lines from The Godfather and donning Tony Montana’s black suit from Scarface eventually devolves into watching the acting legend tickle-fight with the cross-dressing Sandler inside a medieval castle and perform a rap routine in a commercial for flavored coffee.

While Pacino’s presence here seemingly represents a new nadir in his career, he manages to turn this utter rubbish into something oddly satirical. He tackles each scene with such gusto that you soon realize that while Sandler is paying slapdash homage, Pacino has something more cunning in mind. He turns the film’s inanity to his advantage, spoofing his onscreen personas as a means toward skewering the entire Hollywood system. Jill consoles Pacino after smashing his Oscar statuette by reminding him that “you must have others.” “You’d think it,”he deadpans. “But no.” Later, Pacino longingly recalls his native New York City, lamenting L.A. as a place “where all the palm trees look the same” and productions of Richard III feature Bruce Jenner as Lord Hastings.

In spite of itself, Jack and Jill will likely fetch Sandler another big payday. Still, when Pacino appears in a NYC bar at film’s end dressed as Don Quixote and starts tilting a ceiling fan, it’s a joke that’s too smart for the room and more self-aware than a movie that’s (literally) full of shit deserves.

Neil Morris

Mad Money

Everyone's fantasy while watching "Mad Money"

Grade: D +
Starring: Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Ted Danson, and Adam Rothenberg
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

The Writers Guild strike is already hitting Hollywood so hard that filmmakers are apparently hiring eight-year-olds to write their scripts. Or, at least that is the only way to explain the mind-numbing stupidity of Mad Money, yet another woman-hating invective masquerading as pro-feminist pap. Its would-be progressive mantra seems to be that women are money-grubbers that can be just as devious as their male counter-partners in crime. You’ve come a long way, baby.

More than anything, will someone please stop Diane Keaton before she infests another romantic-comedy, family dramedy, or just comedy in general? Her frantic gyrations, shrieking lilt, and frequent, oh-so Upper East Side costume changes are the stuff of self-parody, the mark of a once-talented actress resorting to bottom-feeding scripts and directors that will let her wear her darn gloves as much as possible.

Stripped of her upper class lifestyle after her husband (Ted Danson) loses his job, Keaton’s Bridget Cardigan (even the character’s surname connotes pretension) eschews any use of her comparative literature degree or social network. Instead, she decides to follow a tip from her Hispanic cleaning lady and slum with a janitorial job at the Kansas City Federal Reserve just long enough to concoct a way to smuggle out old money earmarked for shredding.

There is a semi-stimulating modicum lurking about the artificiality of legal tender and the delusion that stealing another’s trash is not stealing at all. But, subtext is not the aim here when your only premise is that money is reeeally important and there are audience demographics to target. So, we get middle-aged Bridget partnering up with poor, black single mom Nina (Queen Latifah) and white, iPod-addicted bubble-head Jackie (Katie Holmes) to carry out their caper.

The proverbial series of hijinks and close calls follow, burdened further by writer-director Callie Khouri’s (Thelma and Louise) unimaginative blocking of an utterly simplistic-cum-unrealistic heist that the gals incredulously carry on for months, plus a veritable cascade of woeful, unfunny dialogue: Bridget – “A drug test…what kind of drugs would I have to take?” Allow me to suggest the kind that settles your stomach while sitting through this drivel.

Mostly, you will wonder why the three chatty amigas do not get caught earlier, for the sake of both common sense and a yearning to see the closing credits start rolling. It is those audiences, not their money, who leave the theater mad.

Neil Morris