THE CAMPAIGN: Underwritten But Not Unfunny

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

THE CAMPAIGN (Dir. Jay Roach, 2012)

With Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis pitted against each other as political rivals, you’re bound to get at least a few big laughs, right?

Hell, with the state of comedy movies these days I’d settle for a steady series of mild chuckles, which means I’m settling with THE CAMPAIGN.

Set in my home state of North Carolina, but filmed in Louisiana, this film features Ferrell as a vulgar, womanizing, full-of-BS incumbent congressman from the fictitious 14th District of N.C. who is surprised to be challenged by an effeminate, sweater-clad, pug-loving small-town tour guide (obviously Galifianakis).

SNL’s Jason Sudeikis is Ferrell’s level-headed campaign manager who can’t control his candidate (“What are you pointing at? A book of bad ideas?”), while Galifianakis is assigned Dylan McDermott (who seems to be channeling Richard Gere’s slick beyond belief character in POWER), to be his ruthless advisor.

Dirt is flung, reputations are smeared, and a baby is punched in the face - in slow motion, no less. Through all the debates and negative ads, the comedy stays at the same level of amusing, no unexpected gags or overly hilarious lines; just two funnymen fulfilling their base quota of funny.

I giggled a lot more at Galifianakis than I did Ferrell, as Ferrell is his all too typical dumbass with a hidden heart archetype, and although Galifianakis’ character could be seen as just a slight variation on his DUE DATE shtick, he still made me laugh more.

Political satire is very hard to pull off, which is probably why screenwriters Chris Henchy andShawn Harwell (with story help from long-time Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay, who also co-produced) didn’t even try to go very deep with this material. They kept away from actual commentary or pointed digs at our current political process, and went with the cheap goofball angle. Which is fine, but the real election year shenanigins we're going through now is much funnier than this.

Only in the case of two power-mad election-buying brothers (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd), who are behind Galifianakis’ run for office so they can in-source factory workers from China, do they come close to anything hard-hitting, but they don’t go very far with that either.

When one of the funniest things in your movie is Karen Maruyama as an Asian maid who is paid extra by Galifianakis’ father (an uncomfortable-looking Brian Cox) to talk like a Southern mammy, it’s heavily apparent that sharp political parody isn’t really your goal.

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HORRIBLE BOSSES: The Film Babble Blog Review

HORRIBLE BOSSES (Dir. Seth Gordon, 2011)

As the most recent in a spate of crude R-Rated comedies, HORRIBLE BOSSES is just funny enough to recommend. Although maybe just as a matinee.



Anybody who clicked on this review surely knows the plot, but I'll state it anyway: 3 guys who want to murder their bosses concoct a plan to do so with comical results.




As the 3 guys we've got Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudekis, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Charlie Day, and Arrested Development's (as well as the everyman in every other comedy movie made these days) Jason Bateman.



The bosses are Colin Firth with a combover as a chemical company coke-head who takes over Sudekis's workplace after his father (Donald Sutherland) dies, Kevin Spacey as a corporate asshole (shades of his likewise character in SWIMMING WITH SHARKS) who denies Bateman a promotion, and Jennifer Anniston playing against her girl-next-door type as a dentist who sexually harrases Day as her dental assistant ("Yours doesn't sound so bad" Sudekis says about Day's predicament).



Think STRANGERS ON A TRAIN + THROW MOMMA OFF THE TRAIN (both of which are referenced in this movie), with a sprinkling of 9 TO 5 thrown in for good measure. It takes a bit to really get going, but when it does the frantic scheming of the 3 leads makes for some big laughs especially from Day doing his patented screaming, not-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer, It's Always Sunny stuff.



Sudekis with his sex-snarkiness seems so much like his character in HALL PASS that I kept expecting him to call his wife back home, and Bateman is playing the same nice-guy notes he has in many a movie, but these guys' recognizable and relatable personas all anchor the movie nicely.



Spacey, Firth, and Aniston have fine funny moments, but none is funnier than Jamie Foxx who steals every scene he's in as a "murder consultant" the guys seek out in a seedy bar when they are looking for somebody to do their dirty work.



Scripted by John Francis Daley (who played protagonist Sam on Freaks and Geeks), and Jonathan M. Goldstein, the film feels oddly restrained at times - like it never quite goes over the top.



However when it busts out a car chase/phone sex climax it's gets mighty close.



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HALL PASS: The Film Babble Blog Review

HALL PASS (Dirs. Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, 2011)



At a preview screening of this film the audience in the packed theater cheered during the trailers when the cast of the upcoming THE HANGOVER PART II hit the screen.





I knew right then that this crowd was going to absolutely love what was ahead. And they did from start to finish of HALL PASS – they laughed loudly at every sex joke, masturbation joke, drug/alcohol joke, every single scatological shenanigan, every utterance of profanity, everything. 





So much so that I missed a lot of dialogue, but, hey, I’m not complaining about that.





I more than got the gist that the premise - Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live) are long married yet still juvenile horndogs who are given a week off from their marriages by their wives Jenna Fischer (The Office) and Christina Applegate – was just another excuse for the Farrelly brothers to again bombard the populace with their brand of extremely cheap humor.





From OLD SCHOOL to the oeuvre of Judd Apatow, the boy-men-who-can’t-grow-up-genre has been so much better served. There are a few laughs here and there – the familiar Law And Order sound effect greets the day 1-7 segment titles, and there are a fair amount of decent (though not laugh out loud funny) one-liners, but they are a rarity among the hundreds of groaners throughout.





There’s an odd mixture of a supporting cast: Stephen Merchant (who’s usually not far away from Ricky Gervais), J.B. Smoove, Joy Behar (!), Alyssa Milano, and most ridiculously Richard Jenkins as a too tan gold necklace sporting swinger who guides the 2 men in their quest to get laid while their wives are out of town.





Predictably Fischer and Applegate are themselves tempted by convenient suitors so the film tries to grow a heart in its last third, but by then I was so worn out by the tiresome cramming of foul gags into every scene that I really didn’t care how it turned out – who scored, who realized the supposed strength of their love, who got punked –none of it mattered to me.





But then, I may be in the minority because from what I witnessed at that screening, there’s no denying that it’s a crude crowd-pleaser that will probably be a big hit. To me, however, it just confirmed that the Farrelly brothers are still on my short list of my least favorite film makers.





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