Films Seen - February 2002

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

BUBBLE BOY (43) (dir., Blair Hayes) Jake Gyllenhaal, Swoosie Kurtz, Marley Shelton, Danny Trejo, Verne Troyer [What this is is a BLAST FROM THE PAST / BAD BOY BUBBY kind of deal, with a pinch of that EDWARD SCISSORHANDS thing where the weird kid loves the girl but is unable to touch her - except that it doesn't fix on pathos and poignancy like those other movies but takes off into wild humour, based on the general principle that if you bring enough outlandish elements together some transmutative alchemy will take place, ending in a great comedy. It doesn't, and they just feel like lots of outlandish elements self-consciously thrown together in the same movie - but it's still a kick to go from biker gangs to a real live freakshow (obvious Farrelly influence) led by Mini-Me, to a dead cow in the middle of the road (ditto) to a turbanned Asian ice-cream-and-curry vendor to a spot of mud-wrestling to a religious cult disguised as a "Bright And Shiny" singing group. Not much good as a film, though, typified by the odious soundtrack - one of those over-literal jobs where starting a fire instantly leads to a chorus of "Disco Inferno" - and the way Kurtz's over-protective mother gets turned into a Jesus freak, getting cheap laughs but losing the only smidgen of thematic interest (viz. the implied comment on those parents who - literally - want to keep their children in a bubble, 'safe' from the world). Possible best line : "Have you ever been karmically bitch-slapped by a six-armed goddess?"...]

THE TASTE OF OTHERS (64) (dir., Agnes Jaoui) Jean-Pierre Bacri, Agnes Jaoui, Gérard Lanvin, Anne Alvaro, Alain Chabat [A writers' and actors' film, though Jaoui does a decent job, crafting frames filled with various people each doing different things and looking in different directions - not inappropriately, since the multifarious richness of humanity is a major theme (the philosophy - best expressed in a miraculously perfect final shot - that we're all just players in the orchestra of Life, each particular 'taste' bizarre in itself, comprehensible in terms of the whole). It's an up-with-people kind of movie, though it doesn't so much build as accumulate, rather flat as drama but full of delectable moments and things to say : it's a call for engagement, or at least opening oneself to possibilities, not giving up even though things aren't always easy (the world, someone remarks acridly, isn't Disneyland) ; it prefers the hopeful romantic (Chabat) to the closed-off cynic (Lanvin), the eclectic / tolerant to selective / judgmental, the uncultured boor looking to improve himself to the bitchy artists swimming in their own complacency - though of course it's happy to listen to all of them, just as it gawks at people (making love, watching soaps, sitting in cafés) and eavesdrops on all the myriad kinds of small talk and chit-chat (talk about football, dogs, wallpaper colours, ice-cream flavours). Not a great film - Césars notwithstanding - but down-to-earth and generous-spirited ; Bacri broad but effective, Alvaro all too convincing as a morose, deeply unhappy woman : hardly an object of love in my opinion - but there's no accounting for the taste of others...]

RAT RACE (60) (dir., Jerry Zucker) Jon Lovitz, Rowan Atkinson, Breckin Meyer, Seth Green, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding Jr, John Cleese [Probably as good as it gets - "it" in this case being an IT'S A MAD (4) WORLD (more like CANNONBALL RUN) knock-off about motley characters on a cross-country race, heavy on the slapstick and outlandish disasters, done with relentless invention. Only reason why it never takes off is (I suspect) that all the attention has been lavished on plot and hardly any on the actors, who are mostly left to their own devices - no-one embarrasses themselves but they're all forced to fall back on mugging, top-flight players looking for something to play (IT'S A MAD (4) WORLD had the same problem, actually). Plotting, on the other hand, is loads of fun, less for the jokes (which are erratic) than the pace - which is breakneck, piling on the blowups with reckless abandon till you've gone before you know it from a busload of Lucy impersonators to a human heart bouncing around in the desert (shades of Zucker's AIRPLANE!) to the (Klaus) Barbie Museum staffed with neo-Nazis to a couple of guys hanging precariously from the legs of a cow which in turn is attached to a hot-air balloon, scuffling furiously as they hang suspended (using the teats to squirt milk in each other's eyes). Stuff to forget : needless toilet humour and lame use of lame-person's-anthem "Who Let The Dogs Out?". Stuff to chuckle over : cartoon opening credits, sign saying "You Should Have Bought A Squirrel", unexpected lump in throat during raucous finale. A buzzy, bouncy, slap-happy movie.]

LA CLASSE DE NEIGE (72) (dir., Claude Miller) Clément van den Bergh, Lokman Nalcakan, Francois Roy [Wondrously suggestive evocation of the terrors gnawing at a just-pubescent psyche, twisted by a monstrous father and the discreet but unmistakable suggestion of sexual abuse : not just fears and traumas but the way they overlap and dovetail with a need for affection and burgeoning sexuality, fear of a changing body (the Little Mermaid story acting as a signifier, with the implicit dread that change will involve some terrible sacrifice) - nightmare flickering into wet dream, the shy outsider's alienation from the crowd linked to a dawning self-consciousness of the body as separate and vulnerable. Loses its focus slightly in the second half, mostly because it steps outside the confines of young Nicolas' head, but much of it remains chilling, not just setting out the world of a clearly disturbed psycho but making that psychosis sickeningly familiar - all the half-remembered dreams (running from nameless killers who are out to slaughter everyone in the place ; banging on a coffin-lid in a desperate effort to avoid being buried alive) and patched-up traumas right at the bottom of the adult subconscious (the crippling tension of arriving late and being singled out by a well-meaning teacher ; the queasy relief in watching the class bully beat up on someone else). Fine study in repression, attuned to all the little details - "An ice-cream in winter?" asks Nicolas in surprise when a friendly counsellor tries to offer him a treat - helped by crisp images and an eerie score (the sprightly-creepy leitmotif recalls 12 MONKEYS) ; not everything works - the "Monkey's Paw" sequence is like the arthouse version of the pie-eating contest in STAND BY ME - but everything shows sensitivity ; happy ending (of sorts) undercut by the knowledge that screwed-up kids generally make screwed-up adults - and often end up having kids of their own.]

RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS (40) (dir., Penny Marshall) Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn, Adam Garcia, Brittany Murphy, James Woods [Oh, wow. Haven't seen one of these in ages ('these' being films that pretend to be comedies even while telling obviously dramatic stories) - not since ISN'T SHE GREAT, where at least the perversely jocular tone made thematic sense (since that was a film about show-must-go-on denial of trials and traumas). Beverly Donofrio, real-life subject of this souped-up biography, may well wonder just what drew the film-makers to her gritty tale - featuring heartbreak, shattered dreams, unwanted pregnancies, messed-up kids, terrible mothers, heroin addiction - if what they wanted was a blue-collar comedy in broad, feelgood strokes ; the mind boggles when the teenage heroine's attempt to abort her unborn child by throwing herself down a staircase gets played as goofy slapstick, Drew rolling bumpity-bump down the stairs in the background while her oblivious parents watch TV in the foreground. Psychologists may well link the impulse to make light of problems with the star's own real-life ups and downs, now 'behind her' and duly repressed (though producer James L. Brooks shares a similar sensibility, playing heartbreak as farce in his directorial outings), and it's certainly geared to the same arrested (or delayed) adolescence vibe as the Drew-produced CHARLIE'S ANGELS, playing like a 13-year-old girl's Guide To Life - friends great, family a drag, toddlers cute, pregnancy kind of an adventure : "We're gonna be pregnant together!" squeal our heroine and her bestest friend, scarfing down matching tubs of ice-cream ("This is so gross!" she adds when her water breaks). Went in expecting to despise it, ended up (somewhat to my horror) almost liking it : Murphy unexpectedly convincing, Zahn - who should really change his name to Steve Zen - floating above it all in his inimitable way, untouched by the idiocies, rabbit-punching with startling truth and subtlety in his final scene outside the trailer. Loose, good-natured, just a fluffy bit of fun ; question is, should it be?...]

JEEPERS CREEPERS (44) (dir., Victor Salva) Gina Phillips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck, Eileen Brennan [Noooo! How could they? First half-hour incredibly tense (true confession : I covered my eyes, for the first time in years), then - just as it's edging into Ed Gein / TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE territory - it collapses into the familiar FX-driven nonsense, its 'monster' both risibly plastic-looking and disastrously over-explicit. Might be a primer on everything that's wrong with today's horror movies (briefly toyed with rating it way down in the 20s, but one third of the film is very effective), though also suggests what might be accomplished : Salva's worldview is certainly darker than most, no doubt due in part to personal demons (the damsel is never in distress here : when the monster comes, it comes for the boy), though the ending might've been more of a shock - and less of a rip-off - pre-BLAIR WITCH. Hard to shake, as every good B-movie ought to be, even harder to take seriously ; heroes behave with wanton stupidity - "Let's get out of here!" they yell, but they never do - bicker in the midst of mayhem as if wrangling over whose turn it is to take out the trash ; narrative lurches, then grinds to a halt. "It's not like watching a movie," protests the psychic, trying to explain the visions in her head, "there are parts missing sometimes" ; guess it all depends on the movie.]

THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY (59) (dir., Alan Cumming / Jennifer Jason Leigh) Alan Cumming, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jane Adams, John C. Reilly, Michael Panes [Party at Al and Jenny's! Kline arrives with real-life wife Cates, real-life kids Owen and Greta ; kids sing a song, everyone plays charades and makes a little speech ; guests talk shop - it's a Hollywood party - gossip unreservedly, share neuroses and insecurities (overheard : "When I was in rehab for the second time..."). Stays superficial, noting only that movie folk tend to be fragile and profoundly screwed-up, which is good enough in this case - all the comic tension lies in deciphering the surfaces, trying to figure out where 'truth' begins and ends in a candid look at insincere narcissists ; warmth and intimacy tempered by the awkward knowledge that the gushy speeches are being delivered by professional actors (and let's not even start on whether anyone is playing 'themselves'). Giddy situations, cleverly observed (the whole neighbour's-dog sub-plot is hilarious), extra film-buff points for the fact that Panes isn't merely riffing on Peter Sellers, but Peter Sellers in THE PARTY. Surfeit of hysterics and uncomfortable-truth-telling in the final quarter ruins it slightly, but I guess you have to expect that kind of thing with actors calling the shots.]

TRANS (39) (dir., Julian Goldberger) Ryan Daugherty, Jon Daugherty, Edge Edgerton [Saw this mostly thanks to Gavin Smith's "Film Comment" rave, and because I knew the editor slightly at film school (hi Affonso, should you ever get to read this) ; not sorry I did so - certainly goes down easily enough - but it's hard to see what the fuss is about, though Mr. Goldberger might make a decent music-video director. Atmosphere edges towards the dreamlike, only to be pulled up short by yet another bit of flashy technique - fast-motion, garish tinting, a fight played as close-ups of a fist and a tattoo with urgent rhythmic clapping in the background ; human interest at a minimum, interludes with locals alternately condescending and confusing (doesn't the bus-station guy proposition our hero first? what was his problem?). All in all, something of a dud ; nicely edited, though...]