Larry Crowne

Sean is a senior critic for Filmcritic.com.

It's an excellent premise with unlimited potential. Troubles at his full-time job force a disconnected protagonist to enroll in his local community college where he interacts with eccentric personalities straight out of Screenwriting 101, falls for the resident hottie, and learns more than he expected about his place in this cruel world of ours.

And if we were referring to Joel McHale and the lovable oddballs of NBC's cult sitcom "Community," I'd say it meets and, more often than not, exceeds its potential on a weekly basis. The same just can't be said about the similarly structured yet far less enjoyable Larry Crowne.

Soaked in affable, artificial sunlight and dripping with the "can-do" attitude of its director and leading man Tom Hanks, Larry Crowne squeezes all relevance out of a contemporary story of a man downsized at his company who only lands on his feet after realizing that the playing field must change.

Hanks is Larry, a former Navy cook and all-around good guy who is unceremoniously dumped from his retail job (which he enjoyed more than most would) because of an insufficient educational background. Larry never went to college, you see, so at the suggestion of his yard-sale-running neighbors (blustery Cedric the Entertainer and a flighty Taraji P. Henson), he enrolls at nearby East Valley Community College. His course load includes an intro to economics presided over by Mr. Sulu (George Takei) and Speech 217, taught by the jaded, soon-to-be-divorced Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts, turning her Mona Lisa Smile upside down).

Crowne may exist as a vehicle for A-listers, but the script, credited to Hanks and the atrocious Nia Vardalos, gives the film no fuel on which to run. Incredulous plot developments drop in Hanks's path from the get go, whether it's his unlikely, flirtatious friendship with sexy coed Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) or the moped gang she invites him to join. Roberts, meanwhile, suffocates under an obvious broken-marriage subplot that takes an eternity to develop, even with the great Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame playing her deadbeat mate, a porn-loving, part-time blogger who spends most of his screen time telling us he prefers chesty women.

The bulk of Crowne's issues are traced back to its pat and condescending script. Forced to rely on the same stereotypical caricatures and ham-fisted, coincidental plotting that doomed Vardalos's own pictures (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, My Life in Ruins), Crowne comes off as sweet, airy, superficial, and forgettable. Hanks exudes charm, ensuring that Larry remains consistently pleasant, but the movie has very little to say and no idea how to say it intelligently. Even Hanks's debut picture, the spectacularly infectious gem That Thing You Do, spoke more about the human condition than Crowne ... and that film was a slick and shiny ode to the short shelf-life of a pop music act!

A bit more about That Thing, which remains one of my all-time favorites even as I scratch my head over the uneven and uneventful Crowne. That 1996 comedy was beyond euphoric and so in tune with its storytelling that I couldn't wait for Hanks to get back behind the camera. He took 15 years between directing gigs, and now I wonder how many of those years looked like the end of That Thing, where the Wonders couldn't get on the same page and replicate their white-hot success. There's a strange irony bridging Hanks's spectacular debut to this flat follow up. Crowne suggests that when it comes to directing, he will be a one-hit wonder, having more in common with that fictional pop band than we might have assumed.

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Terri

It is not unfair to look upon the story being told in Azazel Jacobs's new film Terri on paper and groan heavily -- if not tear off your clothes, curl up in a fetal position, and cry from sheer exhaustion. The 39-year-old Jacobs's sixth film concerns the titular overweight outsider (Jacob Wysocki) as he is taken under wing by his friendly, odd, and oddly honest vice principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (the great John C. Reilly), following a string of homeroom tardies and general anti-social behavior. His home life with his dementia-ridden uncle (Creed Bratton of The Office) is weird, to say the least; he has a crush on a popular, damaged but essentially kind-hearted girl, Heather (Olivia Crocicchia); the only people he could possibly call his friends are Chad (Bridger Zadina), an outlandish deviant suffering from trichotillomania, and Mr. Fitzgerald. The funk of presaged, quirk-heavy familiarity is enough to make one pass out -- which makes Jacobs's sublime triumph all the more surprising and riveting. This is a clear sign of a major film artist breaking through the chrysalis.

Jacobs himself has spoken of the film as a break from the personal storytelling of his previous feature, the superb Momma's Man, though it doesn't seem that this has affected his highly intimate style. Even so, it's hard not to see the significance of Terri's jolly, energetic stroll through the woods in the morning, freed from the cluttered environs of his uncle's house, which is something like the loft the "hero" of Momma's Man shared with his parents transplanted to a Los Angeles suburb. Teased at school for his "double d's" and his habit for wearing matching pajamas to school, Terri finds solace in the freedom and power of nature, never so much as when he witnesses a hawk devour a dead mouse. Out there he is a king; in school, he is one of Mr. Fitzgerald's "monsters," an unsettling term Terri uses for the outcasts and special-needs kids that the vice principal pencils in for personal time during the week. He feels isolated, weirder than ever, and Fitzgerald's attempts to paint it over with a few white lies and a speech about "good hearts" only make matters worse.

Jacobs embeds his film with pathos which blends beautifully with the film's robust humor, which can be attributed to both Patrick deWitt's witty, nuanced screenplay (based on his own short stories) and Jacobs's deft work with his talented cast. The humor derives from the inherent innocence and gentleness of our lumbering hero, contrasted against the cynicism, wisdom, hormones, and discipline he encounters at school. Heather's near-immediate fall from grace, precipitated by her willingness to get fingered publicly by a boy in home economics, is followed immediately by a scene in which the boy holds out his still-moist fingers for Terri to sniff. The scene is inherently raunchy, but Jacobs handles it with a sense of sincere discovery that befits the tenderness that Terri exudes. It's the same tenderness that everyone but Terri withholds from Heather when she returns to school and is essential to the friendship that blossoms between the two outcasts and, to a lesser extent, between Terri and Chad.

What is perhaps most striking about Jacobs's film is how perfectly he pitches it between waking life and real life, with Terri as his oversized Little Nemo and the dreadful age of maturity galloping towards him like a wild, haunted steed. The death of Mr. Fitzgerald's secretary, for example, begets a stirring speech about the small horrors and mediocre triumphs of adulthood, which Reilly delivers with his patented shaggy dog honesty. It's told by a man who has been disappointed by life, but the essential message is that of understanding, of doing your own thing while trying to tolerate what other people do.

Terri's relationships with Heather and Chad are on uncertain ground by the end, but his friendship with Mr. Fitzgerald survives and promises respite. Terri's wonderment at such small pleasures as nailing a hook shot gives Fitzgerald hope, even in the face of his troubled marriage, and Jacobs harnesses that delirious sweetness without stumbling into sentimentality. This is to say that despite its narrative pedigree, which strikes the difference between John Hughes and Good Will Hunting, the film's hazy, transcendent beauty and distinct artistry reclaim the rote set-up. Jacobs has stated that the film was born out of both his love for and experience in independent cinema (his father is the brilliant avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs) and the early influence of the late Hughes's films. In Terri, we can see those two forces within the titular, lovable oddball: The struggle and yearning for acceptance, and the need to be the singular self. And for once, the two forces do not collide, but rather intertwine and meld, the result of which is a deeply humane comedy that touches the ethereal. It's one of the few outright masterpieces that have graced the cinema thus far this year. 

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Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.Apparently the first two installments were mulligans. That's right, after four years and $550 million in practice, Michael Bay has finally figured it out. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the movie that fans have waited for, critics have complained about, and box office receipts are ripe to reward.  Sure, it's still big and bloated, made even more elephantine by the spectacle savant's new love affair with 3D, but it works. The story is simplified and consistently moves forward. The characters -- even the robots -- are given depth and dimension, and the last act decimation of Chicago will be the Summer of 2011's "must see" moment. It's no classic, but it sure is a crowd pleaser.

Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is now a recent college grad, jobless and living in Washington DC with his new hot honey of a girlfriend, Carly Spencer (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). She has a high profile position with entrepreneur Dylan Gould (Patrick Dempsey) and holds down the financial fort while our hero rediscovers his purpose in life. Locked out of the government's control of the Autobots -- even with his friend Lt. Colonel William Lennox (Josh Duhamel) in charge -- he is desperate to get back in the game.

Sam's chance comes when a high level employee (Ken Jeong) at his new boss's (John Malkovich) business confronts him, offering information regarding the US space program in the '60s, the discovery of a Cybertron ship on the dark side of the Moon, and the recovery of some crucial artifacts. Naturally, Megatron (Hugo Weaving) wants these items, and is willing to take on Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and old nemesis, Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) to get them. Sam, on the other hand, must convince 'retired' Agent Simmons (John Turturro) and new government hothead Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand) to let him help his machine friends.

Considering the incomplete feeling of the original Transformers and the awfulness of Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon is an epiphany. It's almost like someone else stepped in and reimagined the series while Bay and Executive Producer Steven Spielberg weren't looking. Granted, original franchise scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are MIA this time around, leaving the second installment's helper Ehren Kruger to step in and straighten things out. Gone is the hackneyed mythology that made little or no sense. No more All Spark. No more Matrix of Leadership. Instead, we get the set-up for an all out war, a reason why Earth is the location, and then...CHAOS!

Chicago gets its Midwestern metropolis butt kicked in the last hour of this film. Buildings blow up, bend and crumble. Flying alien spacecraft slam into famous landmarks while the Loop looks like a body-strewn war zone. Bay stages this finale brilliantly, bringing everything in his over the top arsenal to the table.  Yes, there is still the forced patriotism and irrational moments when characters, including 30 foot tall mutating metal extraterrestrials, speak of freedom and duty, but this time around, we don't mind. Since Bay has already confronted and confused us with his various creative choices, nothing seems out of bounds now, not even the complete and utter destruction of the famed Windy City.

As for the cast, everyone shows up to cash their check and no one really embarrasses themselves. Newcomer Huntington-Whiteley is no better or worse than the curt Kewpie Doll she replaced, even if her British accent gives Carly an air of intelligence that her otherwise vacant stare negates. Similarly, some of the important players from previous installments are pushed aside to make room for solid scenery chewing from McDormand and Malkovich. Even the knucklehead level of comedy comes off as an integral part of the overall process.

Ultimately, Bay manages the near-impossible: he makes us wonder what's next for this billion dollar bonanza. As long as he follows the formula he finally discovered here, it will be another implausible piece of pure popcorn entertainment.

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Driving Down the Supernerd Highway With the Cars Films

John Scalzi is an award-winning science fiction writer.A question this week about last weekend's number one film:

My husband and I went to see Cars 2 this weekend (it's cute) but are now having a difference of opinion about what genre of film it is. I say that talking technology means it's science fiction. He says talking cars with no evidence of humans ever existing means its fantasy. Who's right?

Hmmm. Well, strictly from a marketing point of view, it's neither a science fiction nor a fantasy film; it's a Pixar animated film, which is its own category -- and its own highly desirable category, since the average domestic box office gross of the previous eleven Pixar films is just under $260 million dollars, and even the runt of the litter, A Bug's Life, racked up over $160 million. The Pixar brand is so useful that even those films from the company that are unambiguously science fiction -- The Incredibles and Wall-E -- weren't marketed as such; they were marketed as Pixar films. This isn't a complaint, mind you, and even if it were, Disney (which now owns Pixar) would be right to ignore it. Its job is selling its film effectively, not satisfying genre purists.

With that caveat out of the way, and with the additional caveat that things are about to get supernerdy up in here, let's look at Cars 2 (and its predecessor, Cars). The filmmakers at Pixar, as far as I am aware, have been mum about how anthropomorphized automobiles have become the dominant species on the planet, so we're going to have to do some speculating. Here are the scenarios as I see them:

Scenario One: The Cars movies take place in a world where the cars were initially designed by humans, but the humans have disappeared in some way or another, leaving their automobiles to carry on without them. This strikes me as a reasonable theory for a number of reasons. One, at this point we're loading our cars with all sorts of computer processing power, and we're even now at the point where self-driving cars are legal in one state (Nevada, the crazy car nut of American states, apparently). And of course cars have been talking to us for a while now, telling us to put on seat belts and the like.

It's not that hard to make the leap from where we are today to full autonomous, self-driving, self-aware automobiles that have outlived their initial purpose of ferrying about human beings -- whose cultural preferences and bias they would still continue to exhibit without knowing why, or even that they are. Whether the humans are gone due to their own hand or due to, say, an automotive uprising in which Skynet and Lightning McQueen are mashed up into the most adorable autopocalypse ever, is perhaps best left unexamined at this point. The point is, if this is the scenario, then the existence of the cars has a rational basis, and the Cars series of movies is indeed science fiction.

Scenario Two: The Cars movies take place in a world where some celestial Henry Ford or Karl Benz reached down from the sky and with a touch of his finger animated the (necessarily metal-rich) mud into the very first cars. In this world, humans never existed, which makes the general morphology of the cars a little puzzling, and which makes one wonder if automobile philosophers (of which there must have been some) ever theorized as to why they all had spaces inside them clearly designed to convey some sort of creature from one place to another.

No doubt there is a rich vein of automotive teleological debate that has been engaged in over the millennia on just this subject, none of which reaches us the viewers because in the films we're following the adventures of an arrogant jock and his genial but dim best friend, neither of whom is what you would call the deeply introspective sort. Which is fine; no one expects a Pixar version of A Man For All Seasons, featuring cars. Be that as it may, in this scenario, the Cars movies have a non-rational and magical basis, and would be fantasy.

Scenario Three: The Cars movies take place neither on earth nor on a planet watched over by a mystical creator, but rather on a planet where the processes of evolution have given rise to a metal and internal combustion-based form of life, the predominant form of which just happened to (and unbeknownst to them) mirror to an unsettling degree the design of automobiles found here on Earth, not to mention the parallel cultural development. The details (and fundamental likelihood) of such an evolutionary and cultural path I will leave to others to discuss, except to say, hey, it's a quantum physics universe and anything can happen. In which case, the Cars films are neither science fiction nor fantasy, but simply contemporary action comedies.

There's a fourth scenario, in which the Pixar filmmakers simply said, "Hey, talking cars are cool!" and gave little if any thought about where the film could be slotted, in terms of the science fiction and fantasy genres. But come on. That's the unlikeliest scenario of all.

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New on DVD - Sucker Punch and Barney's Version - June 28, 2011

Chris Barsanti has been a Filmcritic reviewer since 2002. So there.Wild girls and angry old guys: Zack Snyder pulls every trick out of his overflowing SFX goodie bag for the guilty-pleasure Sucker Punch, while Paul Giamatti effortlessly owns the screen as a sarcastic ranter and possible murderer in Barney's Version. These and other films you might have heard of (Beastly, 3 Backyards, Season of the Witch) are coming this week to Blu-ray and DVD.

Sucker Punch

With pulpy extravaganzas like 300 and Watchmen to his credit, upcoming Superman director Zack Snyder has an over-the-top aesthetic all his own. In this psychedelic heavy-metal fever-dream, a girl imprisoned in an insane asylum wages fantastical warfare inside her head against steam-powered German zombie soldiers, dragons, and orcs. "Prepare to be wowed," said our critic, "Also get ready to be confused, inspired, and disappointed -- if ever so slightly."

Barney's Version

Paul Giamatti won the Golden Globe for his stellar work in this adaptation of Mordechai Richler's dark-hearted and time-skipping novel about an aging, womanizing Canadian  producer who just might have murdered his best friend. Our critic thought that while the sprawling drama "may not be particularly original ... it deserves respect for the way it gives each character a measure of importance, enabling some reflection on how the smallest act and word can change life's course."

3 Backyards

A triptych drama slowly unfolding over the course of one long and not particularly eventful day in a highly average suburban neighborhood, Judy Berlin director Eric Mendelsohn's second feature stars Edie Falco and Elias Koteas as, respectively, a housewife obsessed with the movie star down the road and an embittered businessman so lost in life he can't board his plane for a routine trip. Meanwhile, a little girl gets lost on the way to school. Our critic liked the mix of tabloid-fodder story and subtle technique, writing that the "hazy, moody atmosphere throughout this trio of odd encounters suggests nothing short of Raymond Carver penning pieces for Us Weekly."

Season of the Witch

Being apparently incapable of turning roles down, Nicolas Cage now appears in full-grime mode for this medieval adventure where he plays one of two knights (Ron Pearlman's the other) who have ditched the Crusades, only to end up being hired to transport an accused witch to the monastery where she'll be put on trial. "While not the worst film in Cage's recent rash of paycheck opportunities," our critic wrote, "it is indicative of how far the once mighty have now fallen."

Beastly

A film that came and went this year in the blink of an eye, Beastly is a tween pic about an egotistic jerk of a guy who gets cursed by a witch so that his looks are deformed. Our critic said: "Pitched at the level of second-grade girls and populated with enough false sentimentality, damaging romantic myths, and vulgar teen stereotypes to set them on the wrong course for life, the movie is a crippling exercise in lumbering obviousness and crude identity theft." But can the hero find true love with Vanessa Hudgens?

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Interview: Selena Gomez

Sean is a senior critic for Filmcritic.com.

Though Selena Gomez only turns 19 on July 22, the Texas native already has left her mark on television, music and the movie industry. And yet, tabloids are only interested in who she's allegedly dating (Justin Bieber) and how she's feeling (a recent hospital stay set the Internet ablaze for days). On the morning we spoke about her upcoming film Monte Carlo, Gomez had just learned that her single "Who Says," which is featured in the movie's marketing campaign, had gone platinum, so we started our discussion there.

Q: Congratulations on your single going platinum.

A: Thank you! I'm so excited. I couldn't believe it. I think it's a goal for every artist. We just want our music to be heard in every part of the world. I'm just so excited that people are hearing these lyrics and this song.

Q: Your lyrics are very uplifting, similar to songs written by Katy Perry, Pink, and Justin Bieber. Is this a trend, where pop songs are skewing in a more positive direction?

A: Well, I love that, and I hope that it continues to happen because music just affects people's feelings. It brings out emotions in you and makes you happy and sad. I'm thrilled that we have an array of powerful songs out right now.

Q: Monte Carlo is one of the first films released this summer for girls. And the season is pretty much dominated by blockbusters aimed at teenage boys, from superhero films to Transformers sequels. Does that frustrate you?

A: No, that doesn't bother me at all. I mean, I get it. I love those movies, and I enjoy them with my friends, as well. But I think that what's exciting about Monte Carlo is it's presented in contrast to all of those films. I feel like it's going to be a fun movie for girlfriends to go to with their moms. It's a sweet simple movie. It never gets too loud! If anything, I'm doing it for all of my girls. The sci-fi movies can get all of the boys, so long as Monte Carlo gets all of the girls.

Q: When you jumped from "Wizards of Waverly Place" to your first feature film, Ramona & Beezus, did you notice a drastic difference between working in television and film?

A: Oh, it's so different. Especially when you come from a four-camera sitcom. We'd bang out our show in front of a live audience, and I guess it became kind of easy. But on a film, you are working 14-hour days every day. Sometimes you are working nights. Your whole life is spent on either a soundstage or a set. It's definitely different, but I enjoy both a lot, and I had a great time on Monte Carlo.

Q: You shot in some strange locations.

A: Well, most of the film was actually shot in Hungary, which was really cool. There were certain parts of Hungary that actually resembled Paris. We also shot in Paris for four days, and then wrapped in Monte Carlo. I'd been to Paris before, but had never been to Monte Carlo or Budapest.

Q: That would scare me a little. I'm not sure I could handle that culture shock.

A: No, it wasn't at all. It was really beautiful. The people were nice, and the food was fantastic. I had a great time.

Q: OK, you have to fake a British accent and play polo in this film. Which presented the greater challenge?

A: Definitely polo. [Laughs] I mean, I'm an actress. I don't have a horse background. I may be from Texas, but my part of the state doesn't have horses. It was very funny for everyone else, because I really wasn't very good at it at all. I loved riding the horse. I was just terrible at the game of polo.

Q: But you are great at Twitter. You're coming up on 6 million followers, and yet you only follow 600 people. What does it take to get Selena Gomez to follow you on Twitter?

A: Here's the thing about that. I want to follow my fans. But I'm always usually on Twitter tweeting and talking to my fans, and whenever I read their "@ replies," I'm inspired by them so I'll quickly follow them. But I never get the chance to sit there and hit the "follow" button on all of the people who have such nice things to say to me. I would love to follow everybody. But I do want them to know I appreciate everything that is sent.

Q: So that's you. It's not an assistant monitoring your Twitter feed.

A: Not at all! I love being able to talk to my fans. That's all me!

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Monte Carlo

Sean is a senior critic for Filmcritic.com.

Judging a movie solely on its trailer often works against the film and rarely benefits an audience member. Marketing materials for Monte Carlo, as an example, made it look like a zany mistaken-identity comedy modeled after the amateurish body-swapping comedies of the 1980s (think Like Father, Like Son) instead of the sensitive, smart wish-fulfillment fantasy it actually turns out to be.

Once considered a possible vehicle for Nicole Kidman (back when it was a straight-up adaptation of the Jules Bass novel Headhunters), Monte Carlo reconfigures itself to showcase the talents of chipmunk-cheeked Disney Channel starlet Selena Gomez. She plays Grace, a Texas teen from the less-than-fortunate side of town who has been saving for a Parisian getaway since high school began. Days after graduation, she finally takes the trip with best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy) and somber stepsister Meg (Leighton Meester) in tow. But while the vacation gets off on a few wrong feet, things change once Grace is mistaken for bitchy socialite Cordelia Winthrop Scott (also played by Gomez), and decides to live the privileged lifestyle for a few days.

There's no denying that 20 years and two testicles separate me from Monte Carlo's target audience. Director Thomas Bezucha (The Family Stone) and his team of screenwriters fill their teen-girl getaway with flights on private jets, stays in posh hotels, scooter rides through exotic locales, dinners on yachts and dancing behind the velvet rope. It's a Young Adult novel on loan from the library that's beamed directly onto the screen.

Yet I did appreciate Bezucha's attempts at grounding his wispy travelogue photography with some real-life issues. Gomez and Meester make something of the stepsister subplot, with the latter also grieving a deceased parent and not being ready to shake the sometimes-comforting blanket of sorrow. Cassidy looks beyond her high school beauty queen image to wonder if it's wrong to settle with the rugged, loyal, small-town boyfriend she's got back home. (It helps that he looks like Glee star Cory Monteith.)

By remembering his audience, Bezucha musters an admirable teen dramedy that's brainier than a Kate Hudson rom-com and deeper than other vehicles meant to convert TV-sized personalities like Gomez into big-screen actresses. Whether she maintains this level of stardom is undecided. She's a small performer and doesn't show a lot of range here. But Carlo, itself, sidesteps the fairy tale formula from time to time to portray authentic teenage girls overcoming their past, accepting their present and figuring out their future ... set against a gorgeous European backdrop.

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