Downsizing

Honey, I Shrunk the Plot

Grade: D

Director: Alexander Payne

Starring: Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Jason Sudeikis, and Udo Kier

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 15 min.

Rarely have I witnessed the second half of a film spiral downward so quickly, decisively, and egregiously as Downsizing. The premise is promising: in the not-so-distant figure, Norwegian scientists develop a process called “cellular miniaturization,” in which organic matter can be shrunk to a fraction of its original size; in the case of humans, it’s down to about five inches. The breakthrough is fashioned as a cure for the ills of overpopulation, a 200-to-300-year transition that will end with humankind imposing less strain on finite natural resources.

The incentive for people to undergo the irreversible procedure is that because the expanding, but still-isolated downsized communities utilize less space and resources, modest means in the regular world are compounded in the downsized world. The middle class can suddenly find themselves millionaires living lives of luxury in a land where dollhouses are mansions and toy boats become yachts. That’s the lure for Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig), who learn that their $150,000 in savings converts to $12.5 million in the downsized world. Paul decides to abandon his Middle America woes and move to a gated microcommunity called Leisure Land Estates.

There’s an initial satire of the extremes people will go for the sake of material possessions and upward mobility. Where Downsizing could, nay, should have headed are the cascading mores of a consequence-free culture, introduced by Paul living downstairs from a wealthy hedonist played by Christoph Waltz. There are hints that the downsizing technology is being wielded as a means of subjugation by various countries and factions, and a better film would have further explored how this oppression intrudes into the supposed utobia of the miniature world. Finally, fiscal reality suggests that as more humans downsize, an economic equilibrium would take root and any financial disparity between the large and small worlds will ultimately diminish, if not disappear.

So, in what direction does writer-director Alexander Payne (Sideways; Nebraska) take Downsizing? An ill-defined eco drama, which begins with Jeff meeting Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a one-legged Vietnamese dissident exiled to the downsized world, where she works as a cleaning lady. Jeff feels bad because he broke Ngoc Lan’s prosthetic leg, and instead of fixing it or finding a new one, he tags along with Ngoc Lan’s workaday. A lot of aimless earnestness ensues, punctuated by some problematic humor revolving around Ngoc Lan’s broad broken English.

Eventually, Jeff and Ngoc Lan take a pilgrimage to Norway, where Payne doesn’t just squander his promising premise, but virtually forgets it. Nothing that occurs over the film’s final third realistically has anything to do with the consequences of miniaturizing. Instead, there’s a lot of really bad dialogue and really bad acting in service of a rudderless storyline. It’s both stunning and depressing to watch it all unravel, for a film with such big ideas become so suddenly small.

Despicable Me 3

You mean we have to make

another of these whaaaa?!

Grade: C –

Directors: Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda

Starring: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, and Miranda Cosgrove

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

The Despicable Me franchise is a testament to the axiom “less is more.” Erstwhile über-villain Gru and crew were goofily charming through two films, then came the short films, and the video games, and the books, and the theme park rides. The yellow, pill-shaped Minions were the darlings of the first Despicable Me, then the animatronic Twinkies dulled us with overload in their own spinoff (which, for some godforsaken reason, is set for a sequel in three years).

In Despicable Me 3, the Minions are consigned back to the role of Greek chorus, popping up occasionally for what amount to intra-film music videos. The excess this time is reserved for two things. The first is 1980s nostalgia, under the guise of baddie du jour Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), an embittered former child actor who grows into a moonwalking, walkman toting, mullet sporting villain who vows revenge on Hollywood armed with his old TV catchphrase, “I’m been a bad boy!” It’s a cute premise, until directors Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda blast “Sussudio,” Van Halen’s “Jump,” and Michael Jackson “Bad,” all during just the cold open. There’s a lot where that came from.

The other is Gru (Steve Carell), who learns through the laziest of plot contrivances that he has a long-lost twin brother, Dru (a slightly more dandy Carell). A little of Carell’s Slavic inflections goes a long way, particularly when doubled as a wealthy, carefree, flaxen-haired doofus. When Gru and Lucy are fired from their jobs with the Anti-Villain League, Gru accepts Dru’s invitation to teach him the family villain business, even though Gru’s true aim is eventually earning back his reputable job.

Gru wants to be a brother, the Minions want a despicable leader, and Lucy wants to be a mom to Gru’s three kids, including Agnes, who just wants a unicorn. If those plot points sound ill-fitting, you’re right. Despicable Me 3 is a senseless, sloppy sequel. There are times when it seems to be grasping for a slipshod knockoff of The Incredibles. The only thing that’s incredible about this cash grab is its inevitable box office haul.

The Martian

AAA is soooo slow

Grade: A

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel, Ejiofor, Michael Peña, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie and Mackenzie Davis

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 21 min.

Combining heart and mind, The Martian is an ultra-modern technical achievement wrangled into a throwback cinematic experience. There’s the grand backdrop of space operas like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff, but in service to jarringly accessible narrative and characters. It’s Matt Damon’s best film in at least five years, maybe more. It’s director Ridley Scott’s best film in 15 years, maybe 33.

During the scurry to abort a manned mission to Mars in the midst of a fierce storm, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is clobbered by flying debris and disappears in the abyss. Presuming Watney dead, his commander (Jessica Chastain) and the rest of the Ares 3 crewmates leave him behind and embark on the long voyage home. When Watney awakes, begins the arduous task to contact Earth while subsisting on the hostile red planet.

Watney, a botanist with an exponential (and perhaps unrealistic) level of technical acumen, fashions part of his climate-controlled dwelling pod into a greenhouse, creating water through alchemy and growing potatoes in a compost of Martian dirt and discarded feces. It goes swimmingly for a while, but the technological safety blanket is always bound to go awry, suddenly and spectacularly.

The film has three fronts. Watney’s Martian homestead, the Hermes spaceship carrying his crew back to Earth (its exquisite, zero-G interiors evocative of Kubrick) and NASA’s best and brightest furiously conceiving ways to rescue Watney and keep him alive in the meantime. There are no silly stereotypes, no ill-conceived character conflicts. Ted Sanders (Jeff Daniels) is the starched-shirt head of NASA who funnels success through bureaucratic constraints. Vincent Capoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor, so good), head of the Mars Mission project, breathes a bit more fiery idealism. Kristen Wiig provides just the right amount of comic relief as a PR flack

The most daunting obstacle in The Martian isn’t the inhospitable Martian landscape, but the clock counting up the number of days Watney remains marooned, and for the Hermes to reach Earth, and for NASA to merely ready a resupply rocket. This isn’t some garish Michael Bay action flick hardwired into our era of instant gratification. Scott’s 141-minute running time allows the storyline to unspool logically, furthering the tedium of time, space and progress.

As the plot crystallizes into an amalgam of Cast Away and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the disco music accompanying Watney’s isolation is more than a kitschy device. It’s the soundtrack of an era replete with ingenuity and can-do human spirit. The Martian doesn’t shove these ideals—or its emotions—in your face, but rather permits them to permeate your synapses. It’s a celebration of science and intelligent problem-solving. And it’s also an epic whose climax combines the visual grandeur of Gravity with the thrills of an Avengers movie.

The Martian is a paean to humankind’s capacity for advancement, exploration and, yes, moviemaking.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

The latest in enhanced marketing techniques

Grade: B–

Director: Adam McKay

Starring: Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden and Meagan Good

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 59 min.

When last we saw Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), that polyester paragon of old school TV news, he was resisting the changing feminine face of his medium in the 1970s. In Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, he’s among the vanguard of the all-day news network and the ultimate dumbing-down of that same medium. That premise makes for a good half-hour or so of script material; the rest of Anchorman 2 is the sort of extraneous padding that comedic performers like Ferrell and Adam Sandler ultimately have the unfortunate clout to foist into their movies.

Ousted from his NYC anchor’s chair alongside his wife Veronica (Christina Applegate), Ron lands a job working the graveyard shift at GNN, the nation’s first 24-hour news channel. Locked in a ratings battle with fellow anchor Jack Lime (James Marden), the network’s prime time prima donna, Ron stumbles onto the notion of telling people “the news they want to hear” instead of “the news they need to hear.” So, Ron’s teleprompter gets filled with pap about kittens, car chases and, above all, “America,” all accented by a dizzying array of onscreen graphics. Dimwitted weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) moves outdoors, where every strong breeze is conflated into a deadly maelstrom. Loutish sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner) shows nothing but a highlight reel full of home runs and hard tackles (“and NO soccer,” Ron demands), all punctuated by his catchphrase “Whammy!” And beat reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) logs stories about strip clubs and, well, “America.”

This sardonic framework culminates during the film’s final act with a madcap battle royale between various spinoff news channels, a parade of horribles embodying the media oversaturation that Ron’s bright idea would ultimately bring about. The scene’s cavalcade of cameos might smack of a narrative crutch. But, it breaks the monotony and, in the case of an appearance by a certain Canadian comedian, shows what a true physical funnyman can do with even the barest material.

Unfortunately, it’s also a scene that encapsulates everything good and banal about Anchorman 2. While the specter of a fight to the death between warring tribes from the BBC, MTV, E! and History Channel is hilarious, the incongruous inclusion of a werewolf, minotaur and the ghost of Stonewall Jackson is the sort of pointless surreality that populates rest of the film.

Too much time is spent on what Brick, Champ and Brian were doing with their lives before Ron gets the band back together. Same with an utterly unfunny subplot involving Brick’s non sequitur-filled flirtations with fellow oddball Chani (Kristen Wiig)—a little Brick goes a LONG way. When Ron is abruptly afflicted with blindness (too complicated to explain here), Ferrell’s otherwise droll portrayal of Ron’s self-pity party strays into stagnant waters, particularly when Ron and his son nurse-feed an injured shark they name Doby back to health. Even the structure of two verbal gags was lifted from the Austin Powers movies.

And then there are the lunkheaded attempts at off-color humor, which Ferrell and director Adam McKay include without an ounce of wit. Hearing Ron, Champ and others constantly refer to “blacks,” “Mexicans,” “lesbians,” and “Jews” isn’t brazenly non-PC, it’s just uncomfortably icky without sufficient satirical context. The ebb is Ron’s affair with Linda (Meagan Good), his feisty African-American producer, mined for race-centric riffs that include a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner scene in which Ron adopts an exaggerated black-cent in order to communicate with Linda’s otherwise erudite family.

Anchorman 2 is 15 minutes longer than its predecessor, but it feels like 50. Trimming a half-hour of self-indulgence would have left a solid, even subversive satire. As it is, this is one anchorman that desperately needs a copy editor.

Despicable Me 2

Grade: B -

Director: Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud

Starring the voices of: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Benjamin Bratt, Miranda Cosgrove, Russell Brand and Ken Jeong

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 38 min.

The Gru of Despicable Me was, well, rather despicable. But while he’s still a surly neighbor, the Gru of Despicable Me 2 is downright domesticated. He’s doting father to this three adopted daughters, going so far as dressing up as a fairy princess in order to not spoil the birthday party of his youngest, Agnes. His underground minions and evil sidekick Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) now produce jellies and jams, while admirers speak of Gru’s foregone plan to shrink and capture the moon with nostalgic reverence.

And this time around, Gru (Steve Carell) is working for the good guys. The former evil genius wants back into the game, and his nemesis is a once invincible supervillain named El Macho (Benjamin Bratt), purportedly posing as Eduardo, the rotund proprietor of a shopping mall Mexican restaurant. Yet Gru spends more time worrying about his teenage daughter Margo (Miranda Cosgrove) and her blossoming interest in boys, as well as pining over Lucy (Kristen Wiig, quite good), his rail-thin redheaded partner and gushing devotee.

The MacGuffin is the theft of some mysterious potion that turns anyone injected with it into purple, snarling creatures with appetites for destruction (Bath Salts?). What Despicable Me 2 is really about is, well, more and more minions. Yes, Gru’s pint-sized yellow helpers are back to bleep and blurp their way in and out of trouble. They have names, although none of them are important. And anytime the plot hits a stale patch—which is often—directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud trot out the animatronic Twinkies for more airtime and purposeless misadventures.

Still, Despicable Me 2 is more enjoyable than it has a right to be thanks to Carell’s zany yet wry wit and Wiig’s carefree confidence. Like that famous cream-stuffed sponge cake, the film is tasty to consume but not particularly enriching.

Paul

My, what big orbital cavities you have

Grade: B

Director: Greg Mottola

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Seth Rogan (voice)

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 40 min.

Comic-Con is the apt milieu for the opening moments of Paul, a sci-fi movie mash-up that succeeds in tickling the inner geek of moviegoers weaned on the likes of Star Wars, Alien, and the Steven Spielberg canon.

Indeed, the director himself briefly appears (well, his voice) during a telephone conversation with the titular space alien, voiced by Seth Rogan, seeking creative counsel during the pre-production of E.T. That scene is itself a goof, because while the bulk of its dialogue is drawn from the aforementioned genre touchstones plus Back to the Future, Star Trek, and many more, Paul itself is essentially an E.T. pastiche about an alien who has phoned home and now needs the help of strangers to catch its ride.

Enter middling science-fiction writer Clive Gollings (Nick Frost) and his best bud Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg), Londoners who hopped the pond to attend San Diego's Comic-Con before striking out in a rented RV for a road trip along the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Meeting Paul puts them face-to-face with the object of their sci-fi dreams. Ironically, the wise-cracking, foul-mouthed, pot-smoking alien also embodies the proverbial ugly American. During his decades of governmental interment, Paul – who resembles the clichéd little green Martian – served as a popular-culture prototype, a technical advisor for the entertainment industry. Dovetailing off this premise, it’s intriguing to postulate whether Paul also inspired Hollywood’s typical comedic stoner, instead of vice versa (see, for e.g., Rogan’s own Pineapple Express).

The misfits finds themselves pursued by governmental Men in Black, including Jason Bateman as agent Lorenzo Zoil (pun-alert, one of many), and a faceless Big Guy who serves no purpose other than a device for an eventual Sigourney Weaver cameo (not a spoiler if you’ve seen TV commercials for the film). They also encounter a mélange of Middle America archetypes that assume a freak-show quality – it’s meant as more than parody when we hear the house band at a dive bar playing a hillbilly version of the Cantina Song from Star Wars.

Among them are Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a God-fearing, cycloptic Creationist who eyes are opened, literally and figuratively, once Paul mind-melds with her. Wiig fits in nicely with Pegg and Frost’s distinctive gonzo byplay, although the script’s Christian targeting crosses the line into mean-spiritedness.

Moreover, while there is much comic value in a well-placed F-word, the glut of profanity deployed by Superbad director Greg Mottola not only grows wearisome, but it is also conspicuously used to patch holes in a sometimes aimless plotline.

Indeed, although Pegg and Frost wrote this screenplay, things don’t feel quite right without Edgar Wright, their longtime partner-in-sublime. The change in director and locale dulls the razor-sharp Brit wit that cut through the trio’s work in Spaced and, more notably, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, two parodies that doubled as durable genre entrées. Paul, on the other hand, feels like one long game of Name that Reference. It’s fun for fans and fan-boys alike to play along – just don’t expect much of a prize at the end.

Neil Morris

Despicable Me

Is there a Mrs. Super-Villian?

Grade: C +

Director: Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud

Starring the voices of: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, and Miranda Cosgrove

Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Despicable Me, Universal Studios’ animated summer entry, seems as though it should be rebranded Unlucky Me by having the misfortune of being released while the superb and superior Toy Story 3 is still filling theaters.

Trying to summarize the plot suggests part of Despicable Me’s problem. Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is a megalomaniacal, past-his-prime professional villain who cuts in line at coffee shops and rumbles around down in a gargantuan, environmentally unfriendly tank. Gru also desperately yearns to get back into the dastardly deeds game by heisting the moon. So, he adopts a trio of pint-sized orphaned sisters selling scout cookies in order to help him pilfer a shrink ray off Vector (Jason Segal), a geeky, tracksuit-wearing rival baddie. Got it?

Beyond the strained storytelling – think Annie meets Dr. Evil – the entire setup smacks of contrivance. Beginning with Carell’s overcooked Eastern European brogue, there are also uneven, ethereal 3-D visuals (the product of a French animation house), an original, ill-fitting soundtrack by hip hop producer Pharrell Williams, and Gru’s throng of pill-shaped yellow Minions, who go off on their own misadventures and whose ultimate purpose is to serve as the film’s marketing face in lieu of the less cuddly Gru. The voice actors – Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Miranda Cosgrove (iCarly) – are brand-name but virtually unrecognizable, which usually means they are misused.

Still, Despicable Me remains carefree enough, especially for its younger target audience. The filmmakers’ keen sense of comic timing aids many of its sight gags, and make sure you don’t watch the 3-D enhanced roller coaster sequence on a full stomach. I chuckled that the only person more sinister than a super-villain is a loan officer at the Bank of Evil (“formerly Lehman Brothers,” says its marquee). And, the film hoists up enough semi-credible, late-game moral lessons to preserve a semblance of integrity, although the notion that the girls will eventually thaw Gru’s heart is as predictable as squealing preteens at a Twilight screening.

Despicable Me is light, mildly entertaining, and entirely forgettable – think of it as the anti- Toy Story 3. Funny thing, for your average summertime kids’ diversion, that might just be enough.

Neil Morris

Whip It

Bring me a box of Tagalongs, pronto!

Grade: B –

Director: Drew Barrymore

Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, and Drew Barrymore

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Ok, so it’s not exactly Juno on roller skates. Still, Whip It borrows heavily – like Smart People before it and undoubtedly many films after it – on typecasting Ellen Page as the spunky, whip-smart teen. While we look forward to Page expanding her role horizons, one thing is certain: She sure is great at playing a spunky, whip-smart teen.

While Whip It is entertaining in its own rite, Page carries the film on her pubescent back, overcoming numerous shortcomings brought on by a clichéd screenplay and some expected – and mostly excusable – floundering by debut director Drew Barrymore (who also costars).

Barrymore’s mistakes are not in spirit. Her film about a warehouse roller derby league in Austin, Texas treats its milieu with respect, presenting the all-female derby subculture not as an oddity but as misunderstood at worst and wicked awesome at best. Page is the treacly-named Bliss Cavender, a 17-year-old misfit who finds her calling in the roller rink under the moniker ‘Babe Ruthless' as a member of the rough-and-tumble Hurl Scouts, not in the assortment of teenage beauty pageants her reproving mom (Marcia Gay Harden) sticks her in.

While the film is imbued in female empowerment, Barrymore and screenwriter Shauna Cross (adapting her novel “Derby Girl”) conspicuous cast women – Bliss’ mom, her stuck-up high school friends, her roller rivals – as the antagonists. Meanwhile, men are generally shone in a sympathetic or even heroic light, including the derby team’s long-suffering coach (Andrew Wilson) and Bliss’ henpecked dad (Daniel Stern).

Most of the cast is up to task, including Alia Shawkat as Bliss’ best-friend and Kristen Wiig, who reigns in her sometimes annoying SNL persona for a subdued but hilarious performance. On the other hand, Barrymore’s excessive focus on BFF Jimmy Fallon as the derby’s carnival barker emcee grows wearisome well before his umpteenth pun falls flat.

Indeed, much of the humor in Whip It mirrors the same overbroad comedy Barrymore herself usually parades onscreen. A food fight, seriously? And, one scene in which Bliss’ dad shares a Fosters with his teenage daughter while they watch football on TV in the back of his van seems creepy coming from Barrymore given her well-chronicled history of childhood substance abuse.

The storyline itself is the same Bad News Bears entree mixed with a heavy dollop of Bend It Like Beckham and served with a passé boy-meets-girl side dish. And, while Barrymore wisely provides center stage to the action sequences, they often come across as a bit too choreographed.

Still, Whip It’s message overshadows its execution. And, before she turns the next page in her career, it is nice to see that Ellen Page doesn’t need Diablo Cody’s jabberwocky to carry a movie.

Neil Morris

Extract

Uhh, you were in "Teen Wolf Too." Uh hu hu hu...uh hu hu hu...

Grade: B

Director: Mike Judge

Starring: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons, Clifton Collins Jr., Dustin Milligan, David Koechner

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

Mike Judge will never be confused with Woody Allen. However, each shares an affinity for satirical comedy drawn from the nuances of their respective habitats. For Allen, his voluminous filmography is usually set in America’s artistic epicenter, New York City, a fact that has also undoubtedly afforded Allen much critical leeway.

Whereas Allen wallows in the Upper East Side, Judge lives in the lower west side: Texas, in the workaday malaise of the American heartland. In contrast to the prolific Woodster, Judge’s sparse resume is a product of his renowned, sometimes inhibiting perfectionism. The creator of Beavis & Butthead and King of the Hill has directed only three live-action feature films; one of those, the star-crossed Idiocracy, is seen by some as Judge’s attempt to revisit Allen’s Sleeper.

In Extract, Judge’s talent for toeing the line of caricature without stooping to condescension is again on display. The film’s sardonic look at the workplace milieu immediately recalls Judge’s cult fave, Office Space. Jason Bateman plays Joel Reynold, the owner of a flavored extract factory beset by professional and personal woes. Joel yearns to sell his company and cash out for an early retirement, but a proposed deal with General Mills is threatened when an employee (Clifton Collins Jr.) sues after losing a gonad during a workplace accident.

At home, Joel is trapped in a sexless marriage, always arriving home just beyond the eight o’clock deadline after which his frosty wife, Suzie (Kristen Wiig), cinches up her sweatpants for the evening and settles in to watch Dancing with the Stars. Joel whiles away his nights at the local watering hole, where Dean (Ben Affleck) serves up drinks, half-baked-if-well-meaning advice, and assorted pharmacological remedies.

Within this inanity, there is a grifter named Cindy (Mila Kunis), who is looking to drain whichever poor sap into whom she can sink her comely claws. And, there’s a lunkheaded gigolo named Brad (Dustin Milligan) who takes his charge of seducing Suzie way too enthusiastically.

Bateman proves a worthy foil for scene-stealers Affleck, Koechner, and Gene Simmons (yep, that Gene Simmons) as a slimy, ambulance-chasing lawyer with the suitably reptilian name Joe Adler. However, the talents of Kunis and Wiig are underused, while Collins, J.K. Simmons, and the rest of the supporting cast fill flat, one-note characters.

Allusions to America’s eroding manufacturing base, attitudes toward Hispanic laborers, and the tenuous institution of marriage free-float throughout Judge’s screenplay. Still, too much significance need not be assigned to the genial, sometimes sketchy humor. There’s enough social commentary simply in our recognition of the cliques that drive the assembly-line setting, or the annoying, nosey neighbor (David Koechner) who seems to always flag Joel down just as he arrives home from work, never stops talking, and pesters him to accompany he and his wife to a local Rotary dinner with $55 tickets Joel will have to buy.

More intriguingly, while Extract revolves around a white-collar lead who drives a Beemer and lives in a gated community, he represented as ultimately more dysfunctional than the redneck who swills Pepsi out of a 2-litter bottle while watching The American Outdoorsman on his giant rear-projection TV.

With this film, Mike Judge comes off as a working man’s Woody Allen … or a kindler, gentler Judd Apatow. Too bad he doesn’t make nearly as many movies.

Neil Morris

Adventureland

"Shush...don't tell them 'Saturday Night Live'

hasn't been relevant since, well, the 1980s.

Grade: B –

Director: Greg Mottola

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Martin Starr, and Margarita Levieva

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Everyone who ever had a crappy summer job during their younger years can relate to the subculture in Adventureland. Out of a stew of school-age workers and their adult-age overseers, hierarchies are forged, rivalries form, friendships grow, and romance blooms. Some of these relationships are genuine, but most of them germinate in order to allay the monotony of the temp milieu.

When his parents are suddenly unable to fund a post-college graduation European dream vacation or tuition to journalism school at Columbia University, James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg, presumably because Michael Cera was busy) must settle for a menial job d’été as a carnie running rickety rides and rigged games at the titular local amusement park. As James tries to “find himself,” he falls for a comely, angst-filled teen, Em (Kristen Stewart), who is embroiled in an affair with the park’s handyman (Ryan Reynolds), a married amateur musician who perpetuates his studly aura by spinning yarns about the time he jammed with Lou Reed.

While Eisenberg and Reynolds more than carry their weight, it is Stewart who shines brightest as she continues to ride her method acumen to seeming stardom. SNL’s Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig play the park’s gonzo caretakers, while Freak and Geeks alum Martin Starr is amusingly deadpan as James’ glum, romantically frustrated coworker. And, children of the 1980s will revel in the film’s Reagan-era tableau: the hair, the video arcades, the weed, the strains of “Rock Me Amadeus” blaring incessantly over the park’s loudspeakers.

Notwithstanding the game cast and cultural accoutrements, however, the formulaic plot evokes dozens of similar coming-of-age dramedies – like Garden State and Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist – that do not rise to the level of a John Hughes ‘80s demi-classic. Adventureland aims to be a kindler, gentler version of writer-director Greg Mottola’s Superbad. But, in an effort to sate the ribald comedic sensibilities of the Apatow-crowd and the arthouse sensibilities of the Sundance-crowd, Mottola doesn’t do justice to either camp.

Neil Morris