More Than One Lesson

I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER (2009)
Directed by: Chris Columbus
Written: by Larry Doyle
Starring: Hayden Panettiere, Paul Rust, Jack Carpenter

In my review of Harry Potter and The Half -Blood Prince I noted that the only thing that hurt that impressive film was the fidelity to the smallest details of the source material. The makers of that film had the emotions, themes, and strength of the source material, they just tried to fit in too many of the details. In the case of I Love You, Beth Cooper, the cast and director didn’t even bother with the emotions and themes of the source material they just went for the details.

Director Chris Columbus and most of the cast members are to blame for the failure to create a funny, entertaining, and intelligent adaptation of Larry Doyle’s novel of the same name. Doyle also wrote the screenplay for this film and follows his novel quite closely. I can’t blame him for the failure because the wit, characters, and story are all pretty strong in the film. They are just hidden beneath bland direction and weak performances.

The novel is not a classic and the story is nothing groundbreaking, it’s a simple story of what happens after “nerdy” student Denis Cooverman (Paul Rust) takes the advice of his best friend Rich Munsch, (Jack Carpenter) and uses his graduation speech to declare his long time love for Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere). Later that night she takes him on the adventure of his young life. The entire story is contained within a 24 hour time frame.

As I mentioned it is a pretty simple story which certainly invokes the spirit of American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, and Superbad. These films have an energy to them that comes from playing up the almost mythological aspects of teenage years. We have all been there and have felt that excitement that comes from being young and feeling like your whole life is ahead of you. I remember feeling like any given night of my 17th year could change my whole life. That girl that I secretly loved would suddenly feel the same way after a dance at the prom. Yes, these films have that energy but they are grounded in the reality of what actually happens.

Unlike those films this one contains almost none of that excitement. All the big teenage moments in this film feel like “movie” moments. There is very little truth to them and as a result they completely fail to bring on any emotion. It feels like there is a great distance between the intent of the lines as written and the way the actors deliver them.

Beth Cooper is suppose to be the girl of Denis’ dreams but in Panettiere’s performance I could not find a reason as to why. She doesn’t know how to deliver the lines from Doyle’s script. They are clearly written to deconstruct Denis’ perfect vision of Beth but instead she reads them as if Beth Cooper was nothing more than a bitch. The character is written to have multiple layers and a sort of awareness that her best days are behind her. There is none of that in the performance just in the lines of the screenplay.

Beth’s two best friends Cammy (Lauren London) and Treece (Lauren Storm) are supporting characters but have been given a great deal to work with, but even it isn’t delivered. Cammy tells Rich that she plans on going to college to study acting. Upon hearing this Rich asks her why she didn’t ever try out for any of the school plays to which she replies, “social preservation”. This is a character that chose her desire to be popular over the desires of her heart. Either London wasn’t given the direction to explore this side of the character or she doesn’t have the talent. Either way the blame rest squarely on the shoulders of Chris Columbus.

The same goes for the character of Treece who takes the whole gang to her father’s cabin in the woods. The cabin exists for the sole purpose of her father’s extramarital affairs. This is made clear when Treece tells everybody that she can go there whenever she wants as long as she doesn’t tell her mom where the cabin is located. So when she later finds a mug that says, “World’s Greatest Dad,” and she remarks that she didn’t buy it for him there should be a little pain and confusion in her line reading. Instead, Columbus and Storm play it up for laughs by having her deliver it as a ditzy remark.

While these actresses deserve same blame for these poor performance there is evidence that the blame rests on Columbus and him alone. That evidence is in the character of Rich. Rich constantly quotes movie and then cites the director and release date. He also speaks in broken Spanish to make himself feel interesting all the while fighting the perceived notion that he is gay. Carpenter is able to give this character some dimension within Columbus’ direction. In one scene we realize that Rich’s dad doesn’t like him at all, in fact upon graduation he gives him an invoice for how much he owes for his upbringing. After explaining the laborious details of the invoice to Denis Rich remarks, “I didn’t think he paid that much attention to me.” Again, Columbus wants to play this line for a joke but Carpenter seems to understand the pain within the joke. He is able to communicate that pain to the audience before the film moves on to some sophomoric gag.

I question whether or not Chris Columbus knows how to communicate authentic emotions on film. All his jokes fall flat as they rely too heavily on outlandish physical comedy. As mentioned all the moments that are meant to give insight into the characters are missed opportunities. The man was able to establish his career by directing the first two Home Alone movies (the first of which was written by John Hughes) and was lucky enough two direct the first two Harry Potter films (based on his promise to JK Rowling that he would cast all British actors). He also directed Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire and Bicentennial Man and took the Broadway hit Rent from the stage to the screen. Looking at his past films it is clear that he has built his career by either working with can’t miss franchises or heading star vehicles. When given an intelligent and entertaining screenplay he can’t deliver. Based on what I saw in this film he tried to rely on sight gags and how “hot” Hayden Panettiere looks.

Had the director paid more attention to the screenplay he might have succeeded in making a funny and touching film. Perhaps in the hands of a more talented director this film could have held a candle to some of the great high school films. In the end it is a failure.

In this episode, Tyler discusses Greg Mottola’s Superbad and what we as Christians can learn from it.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2009)
Directed by: David Yates
Written by: Steve Kloves
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon

As the series has goes on, the Harry Potter films have grown in maturity and complexity as the story and character have dictated. The first two films were directed by Christopher Columbus and were childlike in his straight forward and simple (if not bland) directing style. In using his vivid imagination, director Alfonso Cuaron made the third film feel like a teenager gaining a sense of style and confidence in a new found independence. The fourth film was directed by Mike Newell and felt more like an epic story of good vs evil as the main characters left their childhood for their first step into adulthood. The fifth and sixth installments have been directed by David Yates who brings a very mature and distinct style to the series. He is also the director who will be finishing out the series by adapting the seventh book into two separate films.

The first scene of this film sets the tone for the rest of it. The film opens with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) standing next to Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and looking exhausted and bewildered after facing Lord Voldermort. The scene promises that the characters are entering dangerous and unsure times. Right after it a group of evil wizards destroy a bridge in London and the daily Wizard newspaper tells us innocent civilians die. The world of Harry Potter is now dangerous and frightening.

Yet, there are somethings that will endure even in the darkest of times. Even though the Wizard World is engulfed in danger there is still time for young love. I really enjoyed the coming of age subplot in this film. These characters are experiencing their first loves and in some cases, their first heartaches. I respect the fidelity that the characters have to their teenage natures in these films.

Sadly, fidelity to the source material is one of the biggest flaws of this film series. Fans of the books want to see a faithful and complete adaptation and the filmmakers try to give it to them but it isn’t always a good thing. I felt like, had I never read the book, I would not understand the motivations of the characters in this film. Harry, the title character, doesn’t seem to have any motivation in the film other than to be where the story needs him. Compelling characters only have a few scenes to convey an entire story’s worth of motivation and emotion. All of the actors are able to do this well but only a few of them are great at it. Gambon is one of the actors who is great at it as well is Tom Felton who plays school bully Draco Malfoy. Felton brings great depth and complexity to his character as he wrestles with his decision to betray Dumbledore and Hogwarts. It would have been easy to play this character as the cowardly bully who finds himself in over his head. Instead I felt the conflict in the character as to whether or not he wanted to become evil.

It is a credit to the actors and filmmakers that the poor adaptation from book to screenplay doesn’t drag the film down. Yates may have to work from a plot checklist to satisfy the fans of the book but he has a deliberate vision for the film. There are dark clouds gathering through out the entire film which foreshadows the storm that is about to break in the lives of the characters. One great sequence features all the main characters preparing for the life changing events that are about to occur. It looks and feels like the calm before the store.

The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. There is one scene that takes places in a wheat field in the dead of night that is gorgeous. The stark contrast between the color of the wheat and the black of the night sky is incredible.

There is plenty to admire in this film but I felt like I was missing a complete story. I believe that it all comes down to the filmmakers trying to be too faithful to the source material. The fans of the book will always have the books for the entire story. When it comes to the films I wish the filmmakers weren’t so afraid to adapt the material from the written page to the screen. It’s a totally different media and I wish they gave themselves the freedom to use it to tell the story. I’m hoping that the splitting of the last book into two films will give them the chance to tell the story without all the clutter of a completely faithful adaptation. It is possible to be faithful to the story and characters without being so restricted by the details.

In this episode, Tyler is joined by Nathan Potter to discuss Larry Charles’ Religulous and what we as Christians can learn from it.

Celebrity gossip has been around since the early days of theatre. When movies and television came along, America’s interest in Hollywood gossip skyrocketed. People were intrigued to know more about the performers that they tuned in to watch every night. Public interest in a performer could turn him into a star, to the point that talent was rendered almost completely moot. A person’s career could shatter if public opinion turned against him (see the unfortunate case of Fatty Arbuckle for heartbreaking evidence of this).

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In this episode, we discuss Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and Robert Redford’s Quiz Show.

THE DEPARTED (2006)
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: William Monahan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson

So I should probably start out by saying that I am a big fan of Martin Scorsese. I think he is a brilliant filmmaker and has made some of the most important American films of all time. That being said, I felt like The Departed was one of his more disappointing offerings, and not really the Best Picture for 2006.

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TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)
Directed by: Michael Bay
Written by: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, and John Turturro

I’m not sure if I would ever use the phrase “socially irresponsible” to describe a film. In all honesty it seems far too dramatic. I mean I have seen a great number of bad films in my day but not a film that I would say is bad for society. Such a film would have to go far beyond having poor cinematic qualities. It would need more than a high dose of sexuality, violence, and a bit of racism. It would need to be such a film that uses those elements with glee and it would only be successful if audiences accepted it without realizing it.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, directed by Michael Bay, is such a film. Now, before I get to carried away here I want to be careful. I’m a pretty liberal guy and I feel that people need to make their own choices. I don’t want to tell anybody what they should and should not see based on my own opinion.

That being said this is not a call to revolution it’s a call to education. I believe that people have taken the media for granted for far too long without learning how to digest it. We teach students how to recognize and understand literary techniques to read novels in English classes but we don’t have widespread Media Literacy classes to teach them how to digest the films, TV, music, and advertisements that they are subjected to day after day. This is creating a problem in our society in which at the very least they will flock to see bad movies and at the very most believe that what they see on screen is socially acceptable, responsible, or appropriate.

Seeing as how the film earned just over 200 million dollars this weekend I think it makes the strongest case for the need to have a discussions about Media Literacy. I don’t think people understood some of the images that they were seeing on the screen in this film. I would like to think that if they did there would have been more of an outcry about this it instead of validating it with such a high first week gross.

So what is so wrong with it? Well, first of all like all Michael Bay films this one is incredibly violent. There might not be much blood and guts, but in the opening moments of this film there is the implied deaths of hundreds of people. When giant robots tear through buildings and run through the streets stomping on cars do you think there were people in them? Do you think that every building was empty and every car was automated? Chances are there were people in them and when a giant robot falls into traffic people were crush beneath them.

This is a time-honored tradition in Michael Bay films. The man loves action sequences and he very good at them. They are very exciting and personally, they are a bit of a guilty pleasure. Still I can’t help shake that feeling every time the heroes’ car slams into another car that the other person gets hurt. Or when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence drive through countless Cuban houses in Bad Boys 2 they mowed down somebody’s brother, sister, mother, or at the very least, a puppy.

I mean he is making a car chase and two cars slamming into one another is kind of exciting. Also, it would be pretty disturbing to see the aftermath of one of these accidents. Actually, it would be down right grisly. As Alfred Hitchcock would say, “it’s only a movie,” and there is something to that point of view. Michael Bay does action films and car chases are an action film staple. More than anything I bring this up as food for thought. I don’t want to get too caught up on it because the other two issues with this film are more pressing and offensive.

One such is issue is that Michael Bay’s films are terribly misogynistic. The man tends to show woman as nothing more than the lustful desires of men. For men in the film and for men in audience women are nothing more than something to ogle. Basically if a Michael Bay film was my sole tool for shaping my view of women I would be terribly disappointed that they didn’t look or stand like a woman in the calendar in a mechanic’s garage.

There are many problems with this but in the case of Transformers there are going to be young boys watching the film. I’m not about to yell out, “The children! The children! Won’t somebody please think about the children!?” but seriously think about the children watching this film.
If Michael Bay wants to portray woman like this in his rated R fare it’s still offensive but not as much as an influence on that audience. Adults realize that this is not realistic. They might not agree with it but hopefully it won’t play a part in shaping their gender roles. Honestly, my hope would be that they are either too intelligent or too far along in their negative development to believe that only big breasted blondes are beautiful.

With the kids though it might be sending terrible messages. Think about a young boy watching this film for the robots but also seeing an upshot of a young girl’s skirt. That might have a lasting impression on him. Or a young girl feeling very self-conscious because she doesn’t look anything like Megan Fox does as she straddles a motorcycle in tiny tiny denim shorts. Incidentally Megan Fox’s first on screen role was as an extra in Bad Boys 2. She was an extra in a club scene wearing an American flag bikini and a cowboy hat because two things Michael Bay loves is America and women.

Finally, the greatest offenses in this film are the pretty racist characters known as The Twins. They are two robots named Mudflap and Skids who have African American voices, gold teeth, speak in Ebonics, and admit to not being able to read. I honestly was at a loss for words when they appeared on screen. Somebody at some point in production had to stop and ask what was happening with these characters. That can only mean that Michael Bay intentionally created the characters to be portrayed that way.
I’m not really sure what Michael Bay was trying to accomplish with these characters. I understand that they were meant to be comic relief but why did he use negative African American stereotypes for laughs? It’s not the voices it’s everything that comes along with them.

Also, for some unknown reason, on top of everything Michael Bay milks laughs out of an African American character that looks just like the robots. The character works at a deli and he is an African American man with bad teeth. If the point was to make a quick joke why did he have to use that actor? Why did he have to get cheap laughs from another African American character? Honestly, maybe I wouldn’t have taken it that way had it not been for the robots, but together I have to wonder.

Evidently even the writers, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci were taken by surprise when they saw these two characters on screen. In an interview with Film School Reject that had this to say about the situation:

Orci: Number one, we sympathize. Yes, the gold tooth was not in the script, that’s true.

Kurtzman: It’s really hard for us to sit here and try to justify it. I think that would be very foolish, and if someone wants to be offended by it, it’s their right. We were very surprised when we saw it, too, and it’s a choice that was made. If anything, it just shows you that we don’t control every aspect of the movie.

Cole: Were you offended by them?

Kurtzman: I wasn’t thrilled. I certainly wasn’t thrilled.

Orci: Yeah, same reaction. I’m not easily offended, but when I saw it, I thought, ‘Someone’s gonna write about that.’”*

So again I find myself worrying about the audience because when I saw this film they loved it. They were laughing at these two characters without any regard for how they were portrayed. If people think that is funny will they try to make do that kind of impression to make other people laugh?
As I mentioned before I’m not trying to use Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to create a new Seduction of the Innocent, which was a 1954 book written by Fredic Wertham that claimed comic books had a direct link to juvenile delinquency. He believed, among other things, that Batman and Robin celebrated and encouraged a homosexual lifestyle. What I’m trying to say is that people need to be more aware of what they are seeing on the screen. If they are more educated they might begin to question the intent of the director. Then maybe a film with such blatant sexism and racism won’t gross nearly $200 million in five days. The fact that it almost beat The Dark Knight in the five-day gross contest is sort of embarrassing for the country.

So can a movie be deemed socially irresponsible? Well, if we start to see more films treat women like objects and use minstrel show characters for comic relief then we will know that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was in deed socially irresponsible. As it currently stands the film is just in the poorest of taste.

*(Source: Film School Rejects)

It’s hard to admit, but some commercials are actually quite entertaining. They amuse us; stick with us. Those are the exceptions, though. Usually, commercials are just annoying.

One enterprising company is paving the way by having both.

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NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)
Written and Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones

The west Texas landscape is harsh, rough, and unforgiving. This makes it the perfect setting for a world gone wrong. A world that may have once been vibrant and beautiful, but is now cold and dangerous. It’s a world fallen from what it was meant to be.

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