The Lame, Almost Laugh Free LAST VEGAS Isn't Completely Lifeless At Least

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

LAST VEGAS (Dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2013)

Four Oscar winners - Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, and Kevin Kline - join together for a film that will win no Oscars. The famous foursome play friends since childhood (forget that their ages range from 66 to 76) who hit Vegas for some bachelor party shenanigans in this crappy comedy that critics everywhere are calling THE HANGOVER for the geriatric set.

I’m not a fan of THE HANGOVER movies, but they at least have more of an attempt at a narrative; LAST VEGAS just piles on a bunch of city of sin set-piece ideas (the guys judge a bikini competition, get in a bar fight, pretend to be mob bosses, etc.) that seem right off the top of the head of the film’s screenwriter Dan Fogleman (CARS, CRAZY STUPID LOVE, THE GUILT TRIP).

The bare as bones back story is that in their youth, Douglas and De Niro’s characters had been in a love triangle of sorts with a girl who chose De Niro. The gruff as ever De Niro is now a widower who’s angry at Douglas, now engaged to woman half his age, for not coming to his wife’s funeral.

Other loose story threads are that Kline has been given a “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” card from his wife (Johanna Gleason) so he’s got a HALL PASS thing going on, and that Freeman is sneaking out on his overprotective son (Michael Ealy), who thinks his old man is going on a church retreat.

Another Oscar winner, Mary Steenburgen, pops up as a torch singer in a rundown lounge, all smiling and amused at the guy’s antics. Predictably Douglas and De Niro both fall for her in scenes devised to give the proceedings some emotional weight, but end up feeling shoehorned into this glib series of geezer sex gags.

There’s also the cringe-worthy scenario of the fellows bossing around Jerry Farrera (Turtle from Entourage). Their Parks Hotel concierge (Weeds’ Romany Malco) told Farrera that the guys are the heads of four crime syndicate families so he’d be scared into serving them. That obviously means that there’s terrible tough-guy jokes in the miserable mix to contend with too.

I have to say though, that castling Turtle does nail the air-headed Entourage guys-bonding-through-partying ethos the film is going for. The energy the leads put into their performances does elevate the flimsy material at times I also feel I should add.

But while it’s far from lifeless, LAST VEGAS is a lame, almost laugh-free, piece of PG-13 fluff that will please only incredibly undemanding crowds. 



It’s funny (funnier than anything in the movie, anyway) how Kline comes off like William H. Macy in WILD HOGS. That is, the one guy that you’d thought wouldn’t get caught slumming it up in such commercial dreck like this. However, more power to him because he looks like he’s having a better time than anybody else onscreen. I can't help thinking that his character and performance so deserve to be part of a much better movie.

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DARLING COMPANION (Dir. Lawrence Kasdan, 2012)

Lawrence Kasdan’s, newest film - his first since 2003’s DREAMCATCHER is his slightest yet.

All it’s about is a group of people looking for a missing dog. Okay, a few themes are broached - aging, love, the needs of family - but those are just brought up and discarded as these folks go through a few days worried about where their shaggy mutt (named Freeway) ran off to in the Colorado Rockies.

It’s mainly Diane Keaton that’s worried, her self-asorbed surgeon husband Kevin Kline acts like he’s just trying to appease her, especially since he’s the one who is responsible for the dog’s disappearance - the dog runs off chasing a dear while Kline was on his cell phone on a walk in the woods. This is something we have to endure Keaton over-emotionally whining about for a lot of the film’s running time.

Keaton and Kline had just hosted the wedding of their youngest daughter (Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss who pretty much phones her part in) at their vacation house, when this traumatic world-stopping event happened. Some family stay behind to help them with the search: Dianne Wiest as Keaton’s sister, with her son (Mark Duplass), and as her new boyfriend (a way too goofy Richard Jenkins).

Then there’s Gypsy caretaker (Ayelet Zurer) who claims she has the gift of psychic powers. Though the gang is initially skeptical of Zurer’s, uh, visions, they still take it to heart. Just when I thought my eyes couldn’t roll any more, Keaton has a nightmare which is done in animation - a completely misguided move as it tonally doesn’t fit at it all, and is, well, just weird.

Another silly addition is Sam Shepherd as a crusty sheriff. I actually can’t remember if he helps the search or if he’s as useless as the psychic - both as a character and as a plot device.

It’s sad to see Kasdan, the man who wrote and directed many popular (and good) titles including BODY HEAT, THE BIG CHILL, GRAND CANYON, and my personal favorite THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, (not to mention his screenplays for THE EMPIRE STRIKES AGAIN and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) have so little to say.

I knew before I read it in the credits that this was based on a true story, because it was so boring that it just had to based on something from the everyday existence of Kasdan and his wife Meg (who co-wrote).

Keaton comes off flightier than usual; she puts a lot of effort into her performance, but try as she might she can’t elevate the weak material that she’s given.

Kline should’ve lived up to his nickname “Kevin Decline” and passed on this (he really doesn’t put as much effort as Keaton into his character), but since he’s Kasdan’s go-to guy (he’s starred in 6 of Kasdan’s movies now) he was probably just doing it as a favor.

In Kasdan’s 1991 drama GRAND CANYON (also starring Kline) - not a great film, but it sure looks like a masterpiece compared to this - Steve Martin plays a slick movie producer who tells Kline that his problem is that he hasn’t “seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.”

Well not one riddle is answered in the miserable DARLING COMPANION.

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THE CONSPIRATOR: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE CONSPIRATOR (Dir. Robert Redford, 2010)

Robert Redford's 8th film as director finds him again mining the political mechanics behind a well known controversial event. This time, it's the assassination of Abraham Lincoln with the focus being the lone female charged as a co-conspirator.

James McAvoy plays Frederick Aiken, a fresh out of law school lawyer who Senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) suggests should defend the woman, boarding house owner Mary Surratt portrayed by Robin Wright.

McAvoy isn't interested in taking the case on because he thinks she's guilty, but as he gets enveloped into the back story, he begins to see the woman as a possible scapegoat.

Unfortunately the viewer doesn't get enveloped, as this is stiff glacially plotted material. It was first difficult to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with this film as surface-wise it's a handsome looking, well acted, and noble intentioned piece of work, but somehow it's a extremely dull experience in which history never comes alive.

Redford must have thought he was coming on too strong in LIONS FOR LAMBS (which he was), so he decided to delicately dramatize the proceedings here. Sadly so delicately that nothing has any weight to it, and all the player's parts are blandly rendered.

As Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Kevin Kline is the only one who carves out a convincing character, but he too is cornered inside this undercooked contraption of a non-epic.

As a by-the-numbers history lesson, THE CONSPIRATOR does put forth some undeniably important points about Constitutional rights and gives us a new angle on an ages old story, but Redford's hands off execution is too distant and dismal for the film to do anything but ultimately disappear.

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Blu Ray Review: THE EXTRA MAN

Now out on Blu ray, DVD, and scheduled to be available streaming on Netflix Instant starting 12/16/2010:

THE EXTRA MAN (Dirs. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2010)









This film, which I initially thought was too quirky for its own good, grew on me quite a bit. Kevin Kline has been in so few movies lately that it's extremely pleasing to see him sink his teeth into a juicy role, and the role here is a beaut.




As seen through the eyes of Paul Dano as a young aspiring writer with delusions of "Great Gatsby"-ish grandeur, we meet Kline as Henry Harrison - an eccentric failed playwright who lives off of the splendor of rich old ladies as he describes: "A fine meal, vintage champagne...an orchestra perhaps."

You see the scraggily gray haired mustached Kline considers himself an "extra man." He explains:




"You see women outlive men so there's always a need for an extra man at the table. It maintains a proper seating arrangement. Boy-girl, boy-girl."




Dano, who was kicked out of a teaching position at Princeton and came to New York to "find himself", rents a room from Kline and gets a job doing phone sales for an environmental magazine. Dano is fascinated by Kline's philosophies and tricks like how to get into the opera for free.




As a fellow flighty co-worker, Katie Holmes becomes the object of Dano's affection, but there's a little snag in his plans as she has an activist boyfriend and, uh, Dano has a bit of a cross dressing issue.




In one of the most off-kilter performances of his career, John C. Reilly appears in a small part as a grizzly wide-eyed neighbor of Kline's who speaks in falsetto. Reilly's part doesn't really fit in at first, but as the film goes on it becomes an inexactractable piece of the quirky quilt.




Though it's largely Dano's movie, Kline is who keeps it rolling with his witty line readings and chutzpah - a scene in which he teaches Dano how to take a leak while standing between parked cars on the street has more cheeky charm than one could imagine with that description.




What's less successful is the handling of Dano's sexual deviance. Scenes of the droopy sad eyed actor fondling brassieres and trying on women's clothes are cringe-worthy and don't add much to the more interesting material involving the wealthy women Kline is trying to woo.




A subplot involving Celia Weston as a wannabe socialite and somewhat rival of Kline's isn't explored fully, likewise Patti D'Arbanville's skimpy part as a dominatrix that Dano hires.




These flaws aside, THE EXTRA MAN is just amusing enough to be recommended. It's not as essential a film as director Berman and Pulcini's AMERICAN SPLENDOR, but it's fairly agreeable entertainment nonetheless.




Special Features: a commentary with Kevin Kline and author Jonathan Ames ("Bored To Death") who wrote the original novel, a second commentary with the co-directors + crew, a deleted scene, a clip of the voice recording for a cartoon clip, a behind the scene featerette of the musical score, and HDNet: A look at THE EXTRA MAN.




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