Review: You, Me and Dupree

This movie is probably worth a rental, but nothing more. It features a few funny laughs, but probably only about half of the comedic scenes work. The problem with the movie is that it works mostly as a situational comedy, but it doesn't set up the situations properly to generate the right laughs. The biggest reason for this is that the movie doesn't know who the main character is. Is the movie about Matt Dillon's character? It seems like it in the beginning. But then towards the middle it seems that Owen Wilson's character becomes the protagonist. But then the movie starts describing Kate Hudson's character a bit more. It's all done rather clumsily, and the net effect is that none of the characters is well fleshed-out, none of them seem real, and it is very unclear whom the audience is supposed to identify with most. Perhaps the intended answer is "all three", but the movie fails to pull that off. The net result is that the developments between the characters have neither the comedic nor emotional impact that is required to really hook in the audience. A few scattered scenes work, but overall it falls flat.

The other disappointment is that Owen Wilson does not get to do as many zany things as he normally does. He's actually rather reserved, considering that the premise would seem to allow him to go way over the top. Again, I think this is because the movie wanted to approach the plot as if it were a situational comedy, rather than a farce. Unfortunately the filmmakers couldn't really pull that off, so it just feels like Owen Wilson is being artificially restrained. Perhaps he just needs Ben Stiller or Vince Vaughn in order to fully let loose.

Review: Eragon

I did not read the novel that this movie is based on, so I cannot comment on the accuracy of the translation of the novel to the big screen (apparently numerous liberties have been taken, or so I am told). I can only approach the movie for what it is. And unfortunately for the most part it is a mess. The problem is that the director does not know what he is doing, coupled with a few actors who are either not very good or were not well-directed.

The biggest problem is that the movie suffers from scenes that do not flow together to provide a coherent story. The combination of camera angles, musical cues, and character actions do not combine to create the proper mood for a movie such as this. A story of this type has clear precedents to follow. It features a young boy who is coming of age and trying to find his destiny. It features oppressed people waiting for a leader to emerge to lead them out of their misery. It features evil bad guys who are faced with prophecies that predict their demise and are trying to kill the savior before he can topple them. One might think that in making a film with all these elements, it would be a good idea to study these films to see how to move a film from scene to scene. But instead the movie steals scenes outright from these other films, and then hastily glues together those scenes with filler scenes that are clumsily executed. There are also too many times where a character looks off to the side pensively and the scene ends in anticipation of the character learning something or doing something, but instead the next scene is unrelated to what just happened. It all feels like a film student's project rather than a polished movie.

There are also a few points where the actors deliver their lines quite poorly. The lines themselves are not inherently bad, so either the actors are not very good, or the director did not do a good job helping them to deliver their lines better. In defense of the actors, most of them appear to be quite young and are probably starring in their first major movie.

Having said that, the movie has several good points. The CG animation of the dragon is quite amazing, with very fluid motions, tons of detail, and even some expressive facial movements. The scenes of the dragon flying are extremely well-done, providing an exhilarating view from the skies. And more than that, after the halfway point of the movie there is a certain earnestness to the movie, an unpolished sincerity, that starts to make sense. The movie seems targeted towards children younger than those who would be interested in Lord of the Rings, and displays a certain naivete that has a charm on its own. Instead of being at all cynical with regards to its subject matter, and instead of injecting adult concerns and logic into the plot, the movie seems content to keep matters strictly in the realm of childlike fantasy. And on that level, the second half of the movie works.

So, while the movie's shortcomings keep it from being compared favorably to such epics as Lord of the Rings or Star Wars in terms of execution, plot coherence, and originality, on the other hand there is a certain innocence and naive charm that could easily work for younger audiences. It is probably worth a rental, especially if you have tween-aged boys in your household.

Review: Deja Vu

Honestly, I watched this movie because I wanted to watch stuff blow up in a mindless fashion. Going by that criteria, the movie succeeds and can be recommended. However, the movie is otherwise not terribly good. It begins very promising, but then a "secret" is revealed, a secret that is explained in a very clumsy fashion, and which is used and abused poorly for the rest of the movie, building from a minor implausibility to a complete collapse of the suspension of disbelief. At that point, it's all just running around and gunshots and explosions. Also, the ending chickens out from making an interesting statement and is instead 100% Hollywood, which was disappointing as it defies the internal logic of the movie itself and makes everything completely arbitrary. As per a Tony Scott, the look of the film is interesting in and of itself, with a very high contrast look and yellow-amber filters. It's a very well-photographed film, and quite interesting to look at from a purely aesthetic perspective. Otherwise, I can't recommend this film.

Review: The Prestige

It's funny how Hollywood works sometimes. A script starts getting passed around, multiple studios look at it, and then inevitably two different production companies decide to do it, each with a slightly different but fundamentally the same version of the initial script. Probably the biggest example in recent years occurred in1998, when both Deep Impact and Armageddon came out with end-of-the-world asteroid collision movies, but just in the past two years two movies about how Truman Capote wrote 'In Cold Blood' have come out. This type of overlap between movies happens quite frequently in Hollywood, several times a year in fact, but usually one or both of the movies are lower-profile, or one movie has enough elements that are different and/or is marketed differently so it's not as obvious.

We have the case here with The Prestige and The Illusionist. Both are about magicians and prominently feature a love story. Both feature very similar types of twists to the plot. But there are several significant differences, the first being the tones of the movies. The Illusionist is more of a mystery with a passionate love story in its center, whereas The Prestige is much more concerned with vengeance and retribution, and is thus quite a bit darker.

The Prestige has numerous plot twists, unlike The Illusionist which has just one major one. While the first few plot twists are interesting, after a while it becomes easier and easier to predict the plot twists because there are so many and they follow pattern of back and forth between the two dueling magicians. Overall it becomes a little bit tiresome. The very last plot twist is also a little bit of a let-down, as it relies on a certain genetic coincidence, and is not internally consistent with the characters involved.

There is also a bit of jumping back and forth between three different time periods in the movie for the first 2/3rds of the movie that is not as well-edited as it could be, so there is a little bit of confusion sometimes trying to figure out which time period the movie is talking about. But about 1/3 of the way through the movie the plot begins to take shape, so after that time it becomes clearer what is going on.

In general, The Prestige is more concerned about plot twists and vengeance than about meaningful character development, whereas The Illusionist focuses more on the nature of the characters and what they are going through. So, the choice of which magician movie to watch mostly boils down to what mood you are in and which actor(s) you like better.