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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OBLIVION: Convoluted But Packs Plenty Of Visual Power

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

OBLIVION (Dir. Joseph Kosinski, 2013)

If I was rating this movie on the merits of its vast visual impact alone, as I experienced on an IMAX screen, I’d have to give it the highest marks. Kosinski, in his follow-up to his directorial debut, TRON: LEGACY, immerses us in the incredibly convincing post apocalyptic landscape of our world in 2077, after it’s been devastated by an alien attack that also destroyed the moon (that’s quite a sight - a demolished moon).

Tom Cruise, in deadly serious mode meaning he's refraining from flashing that blinding grin, is one of the last humans on Earth. Like WALL-E, he’s there to do a job though it’s not making skyscrapers out of trash, it’s repairing the drones that patrol Earth. In his coolly recited narration, Cruise calls himself part of the “mop-up crew.”

The rest of the human race has relocated to a colony on one of Saturn’s moons, while Cruise, protects the huge ‘hydro-rigs’ (pictured above) that harvest Earth’s remaining water.

But despite being haunted by visions of being on the observation deck of the Empire State Building with a mysterious woman during the invasion, Cruise has a nice set-up living in an iPod shiny single unit pad in the clouds (literally) with his co-worker and girlfriend, Andrea Riseborough. Their boss, Melissa Leo, pops up on a video monitor every now and then to check in and ask Riseborough, “Are you an effective team?”

The aliens, called Scavs (for “Scavengers”) have been mostly defeated, but there seem to still be some left behind lurking in the rubble.

Things get weird when Cruise comes across a crashed ship containing Olga Kurylenko in a hibernation capsule and recognizes her from his fractured Empire State Building flashbacks.

Things get weirder when Cruise and Kutylenko are captured by a ragtag underworld resistance army led by Morgan Freeman, apparently upset that he wasn’t tapped to narrate the film (I kid).

I got a bit lost in the twists and turns of the convoluted story-line and the ins and outs of the love triangle - this stuff makes sense when you have the whole story at the end but while its happening you may be like “wha?” - but the action set-pieces were gripping, the pacing swept me along, and the immaculate imagery kept my eyes a-popping.

Many critics are pointing out how many elements of OBLIVION allude to a slew of sci-fi movies, such as I AM LEGEND, THE MATRIX, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE PLANET OF THE APES, etc., but to me the movie came off most like it wanted to be a larger scale action re-imagining of Duncan Jones’ 2009 film MOON (also accused of being an amalgam of established sci-fi tropes), but it would give away too much, Spoiler-wise, to really go into it.

Perhaps Kosinki’s unpublished graphic novel that this is based on sorts out the narrative better but since that will probably never be published (bet some panels will make the Special Features of the Blu ray release though) I can only speculate.

I must re-iterate that the CGI, coupled with the sweeping cinematography of Claudio Miranda (TRON: LEGACY, LIFE OF PI) is really stunning - definitely the best I've seen so far this year. I've been so aware of watching actors walking around on sound stage in movies like OZ, but it never seemed like that in OBLIVION.

Along with its incredible visual impact, Cruise’s intense performance strongly carries the film. As MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL proved, the man is not going to let turning 50 take away any of his action star power. His steely focus carries us through what essentially is a popcorn picture posing as something more cerebral.

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TV Obscurities #1: The New Twilight Zone: "Dealer's Choice"

Although this is a blog primarily about movies, from time to time I post about particular television programs. In this new series, called TV Obscurities, I’m going to revisit shows from yesteryear that I think are noteworthy, or just plain amusing. This one is a bit of both:



TV Obscurities #1: The New Twilight Zone (Broadcast on 10/15/85): “Dealer’s Choice”

When CBS resurrected Rod Serling’s classic creation The Twilight Zone in 1985, it really didn’t catch on. Sure, it wasn’t given much of a chance to build an audience with its Friday night timeslot, but I remember watching it well into its second season (after it was cancelled it was revived for syndication for a third season which I didn’t see), because, well, as a 15 year old loser I didn’t have anything better to do on my Friday evenings.



As the critics at the time said, the ‘80s re-boot of Serling's immensely influential show that originally ran from 1959-1962 was extremely uneven, but there were some real gems. The Wes Craven-directed “Dealer’s Choice,” revolving around a game of poker in which one of the players is Satan himself, is one such episode.



To begin with, there’s the incredible cast: Morgan Freeman, M. Emmet Walsh, Barney Martin (Jerry’s Dad on Seinfeld), Garrett Morris (original Saturday Night Live cast member from 1975-1980), and Dan Hedeya (named Nick here - the same name he had as Rhea Perlman's ex-husband on Cheers).



It’s awesome to see Walsh and Hedeya just a year after they both appeared in the cult classic (and one of my favorite films ever) Coen Brothers’ debut BLOOD SIMPLE.

This group of great character actors is gathered together for a night of poker at Walsh's shabby abode, but things get a little dicey when the fellows suspect the new guy (Hedeya) is the Devil because he always has three sixes (get it?) in his hand when he wins. 

Of course it turns out that Hedeya is the Devil, and the guys are caught up in a game with severe consequences.



“Dealer’s Choice” is one of the comical episodes of The Twilight Zone; it doesn’t have a creepy vibe, and a crazy twist ending, it consists of five working class guys in a 2 room set, with wall paper out of BARTON FINK, reminiscent of the poker guy’s nights that John Goodman would host on the sitcom Roseanne during the same era.

I’m sure a modern update of this script, concerning playing poker online, could be effective, but I bet it'd be nowhere as good.

Written by Donald Todd, who would go on to be involved in shows like Caroline in the City and Ugly Betty, this segment has a number of funny lines like:



Peter (M. Emmet Walsh): “You know, a guy wants to settle in and play poker with some guys, he should come up and say, you know, ‘Hello...Hi, I’m the Prince of Darkness - can I sit in for a few hands?’”



And this priceless exchange:



Tony (Morgan Freeman): “What's the devil doin’ here in New Jersey?”



Jake (Garrett Morris): “What’re you talkin’ about, Tony? I think he lives here!”





The actual game, that comes down to Walsh Vs. Hedeya has the expected up-the-stakes suspense, but it's not really why this episode stands out to me. It's the back and forth banter between this bunch that gets me.



And you gotta love a show that ends with the protagonists finding free beer and food in the kitchen - courtesy of the Devil, who turns out to be a gracious loser.

That's another beauty of this story - the Devil is just another schmuck not unlike the guys he's gaming with, and one that will actually honor the game.

I was always a fan of these kind of episodes of The Twilight Zone, in which regular Joes dryly deal with deadly demons, and win out in the end. Sure, these may be the most trivial of the series, but they’re the ones that stick with me longer than the scary ones.

Narrator Charles Aidman sums it up sweet and simply in the outro: “Just a friendly game of cards among a friendly group of guys, who have just come back...from the Twilight Zone.”

This episode is available on DVD, and in 3 parts on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

More later…

RED: The Film Babble Blog Review

RED (Dir. Robert Schwentke, 2010)

Sometimes it seems like every other movie opening this year at the multiplex is a comic throwback to ‘80s action movies or based on a graphic novel I wasn’t aware of before.

To its credit RED is both. But that’s the only credit I’ll give this unfunny overblown mess though.

RED is titled after the stamp on agent Frank Moses' (Bruce Willis) file, meaning "retired, extremely dangerous."

Willis leads a mundane life as a former Black Ops CIA agent who tears up his retirement checks just so he can continue to call customer service representative Mary Louise Parker because he has a crush on her.

Before you know it Willis is on the run from government assassins and he abducts Parker for the ride. She goes along with it in her typical jaded Weeds fashion, but the unbelievable and incredibly contrived nature of her role never convinces for a second.

Parker’s life before was boring and now she’s caught up in a world of espionage – I get it, but it’s such a cringing cliché with a capital C.

He re-unites his old crew – the all star cast of Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Ernest Borgnine and John Malkovich – to fight the attackers and it’s one shoot-em-up after another.

The film is solidly staged but it’s a joyless affair with really poorly written dialogue and a distinct lack of laughs.

At this point in Willis’s career it’s surprising he would be attracted to this boring by-the-numbers material.

Willis just sleep walks (sometimes in slow motion) through a barely interesting plot handled with a hodgepodge of styles and clashing tones. The narrative involves a cover-up of Guatemalan slayings orchestrated by the Vice President (Julian McMahon).

There’s some seriousness in the seams but it’s overshadowed by cloying silliness. It’s also off-putting that the film has an unbearable sense of self satisfaction.

Malkovich as a jacked up explosives expert appears to be having fun with his role, but with such lame one-liners (none of which I can remember or else I’d quote one) that feeling is far from contagious.

Freeman, who is 73, plays an 80 year old ex-agent – a role that requires no heavy lifting, just his patented homespun delivery. Borgnine is 93 and like Malkovich he’s seems to be having a good time. Maybe he’s just happy to be anywhere these days.

Then there’s Dame Helen Mirren in a white evening gown firing a machine gun. That’s supposed to be a hilarious image, but it creaks like everything else in this misguided movie.

Oh, and I shouldn’t forget Richard Dreyfuss, still channeling Dick Cheney from W, as a bad guy who is also saddled with lines that fall flat. “I did it for the money” Dreyfuss revealed in a recent interview. 

It sure shows.

I saw somebody on a message board refer to this film as THE EXPENDABLES but with people who can actually act.” I can go with that because just like that Sylvester Stallone all star vehicle, this is ultimately a lame package.

RED, which I think should stand for Really Excruciating Drivel, is a waste every way you can cut it.

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