“LOVE” WELL WORTH LIKING

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE

Starring Steve Carell,

Ryan Gosling,

Julianne Moore,

Emma Stone,

Analeigh Tipton,

Jonah Bobo,

Marisa Tomei,

Kevin Bacon

Directed by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

Written by Dan Fogelman

Running time 118 mins.

Rated PG-13

          Surprisingly entertaining.

          Steve Carell does an excellent job being very Steve Carell-ish in a story about a middle-aged man (Carell) whose wife (Moore) decides to leave him.

          To complicate things, they have kids. Their thirteen year-old son (Bobo) has a crush on the babysitter (Tipton), who has a crush on Carell, who in turn finds that his wife also cheated on him with a coworker played by Kevin Bacon.

          Meanwhile, a smooth dude (Gosling) overhears in a bar Carell’s character bemoaning being a cuckold, and so takes him under his Henry Higgins-ish wing–a veritable “Pig Male-ian,” if you will.

          That kind of thing we’ve seen too often. There was a movie just a couple years ago with Will Smith pulling the same basic trip on Kevin James. We’ve seen it a thousand times in sitcoms from the last fifty years. Some poor idiot gets a conventional makeover and winds up looking just right for a catalog. That’s what makes this movie being so entertaining such a surprise.

          The very thing that makes “Crazy, Stupid, Love” work as well as it does is also almost what undoes it. Plausibility doesn’t merely come into question, it gets up and jumps out the window. Thereby coming dangerously close to impairing the film.

          For example–and I’ll remain deliberately vague to not spoil the film–there are certain things that thirteen year-olds have not ever said, not once, and will not say, ever, particularly in public.

          Also, during junior high graduation ceremonies, thirteen year-olds not only don’t get to speak indefinitely, and extemporaneously, they don’t want to. And especially nobody wants any kid’s dad doing that. No way any audience sits still, at a graduation or anywhere else, while some kid’s dad takes the mike and starts speaking extemporaneously indefinitely.

          Sappy implausibility aside, a strong ensemble cast and an intricate script form the overall impression. “American Beauty” meets “The 40 Year-Old Virgin”? Well, it’s not that, but sort of close.

          Carell excels at creating likeable characters who bounce back from adversity. I’d like to see him doing something totally different. He should be a vain, cruel man who doesn’t bounce back from anything at all. Sort of a modern-day King Kong, perhaps.

          Something to consider.

“LESS” IS MORE

30 MINUTES OR LESS

Starring Jesse Eisenberg,

Danny McBride,

Aziz Ansari,

Nick Swardson,

Dilshad Vadsaria,

Michael Pena,

Bianca Kajlich,

Fred Ward

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

Written by Michael Diliberti

Based on a story by Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan

Running time 83 mins.

Rated R

          Seventy percent funny, thirty percent serious. This is the ratio that worked with “Stir Crazy,” and it works for “30 Minutes or Less.”

          Upshot: A pizza delivery guy (Eisenberg) gets a bomb strapped to his chest with instructions to deliver up a hundred grand stolen from a bank in under nine hours or he’ll be exploded.

          That actually goes to the serious. What makes it even funnier is that the guy who comes up with the idea is played by Danny McBride (“Pineapple Express,” “Land of the Lost”). That dude’s dad (Ward), whom he hates, got ten million bucks from the Lottery back in the ‘90s, and has been blowing through it so fast, now he’s down to only one million. So the McBride character decides he better kill his dad in order to get the one million left.

          Except, way he figgers, if he does the actual killing, that’s not thinking like a millionaire. Lucky for him, there’s a gal at a strip club who knows a guy who’ll off the dad for a mere hundred grand. Hence the bank robbery, which McBride also does not want to do, in the manner of a millionaire.

          Meanwhile, both McBride and Eisenberg each have a best pal. Most of the laughs come from these two sets of friendships, both of which are hugely dysfunctional.  Think Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton from “The Honeymooners” in the case of the murder-plotters.

          But if Danny McBride steals the show in “Pineapple Express,” it’s Aziz Ansari who does that here. As the buddy of the guy wearing the bomb, he has a film presence which needs to be seen to be appreciated. Like Kal Penn in the hilarious “Harold and Kumar” movies, Ansari plays an Indian-American with hardly any of the stereotypes—he doesn’t sound like Apu from “The Simpsons” at all.

          It’s just a different kind of movie. And entirely refreshing at that. With only a bit a drawback, which is wholly subjective on my part: I have a hard time listening to Jesse Eisenberg speak. Almost every utterance comes out sounding very clipped and whiny. He sounds all the time petulant. Like fingernails raked down a chalkboard, it’s just hard on the ears. Same problem with the otherwise excellent “Zombieland” (also directed by Fleischer). I specifically didn’t watch that Facebook movie where he plays Mark Zuckerberg because I saw the trailer where he sits at a table and says, “What part don’t you understand?” With that damn tone that makes Woody Allen sound like James Earl Jones.

          But everybody besides that guy is great. Even the premise itself. So much trouble for so little money. How quaint. True, hard to imagine what a woman could see in this movie. Other than the token female thrown in. And that’s about the way it was with “Stir Crazy.”

          You just never see a movie with scroungy chick pals skimming leaves out of a pool for ten bucks an hour plotting to kill anybody at all. Why is that?

         

NEW “APES” STANDS TALL

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Starring James Franco,

Andy Serkis,

Freida Pinto,

John Lithgow,

Brian Cox,

Tom Felton,

David Oyelowo

Directed by Rupert Wyatt

Written by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silva

Suggested by the novel by Pierre Boulle

Running time 103 mins.

Rated PG-13

          Could just be one of the best sci-fi movies ever. That said, I don’t think of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” as a prequel so much as a highly revolutionary “prequel.” In quotes. Certainly there could be no advantage in watching this film, followed by all the rest in order. It would be about as weird as trying to do that with the Star Wars movies.

          The only real reason to call it a prequel is to tie it in with the pre-existing franchise because marketing says that’s what works.

          However, there is a very good reason why this film can’t properly be considered a prequel, and I’ll say what it is without spoiling anything, unless you don’t know how the original “Planet of the Apes” ends: When Charlton Heston pounds the sand and cries, “You did it! Oh, you actually did it!” (or thereabouts), he’s referring to the bomb. His character laments that man was stupid enough for nuclear war, and that out of dropping the bomb evolution took a new direction with the apes taking over. But this movie has none of that.

          Upshot: A scientist (Franco) with the cure for Alzheimer’s raises a chimpanzee test-ape called Caesar who, due to exposure to the drug, exhibits uncanny intelligence with potentially catastrophic consequences.

          What makes this movie work so well is the degree of authenticity. No other cinematic manner of presenting the proper believability has ever been possible until now. Until “Avatar,” anyway.

          That said, good as it is, no, it isn’t perfect. Although some of the digipanzees do look realistic enough to fool about anybody, I suppose. If watching a chimp or gorilla walk around upright–and these things are available on YouTube–kind of makes you wince in revulsion, you’ll love this one.

          The filmmakers simply do a damn good job of making the story look possible. Sort of like “Jurassic Park.” And they do it so much that we can forgive the excesses. Fact is, I’ll bet, there just aren’t that many chimps, gorillas, and orangutans in the Bay Area or any other area that could all band together in such huge cinematic numbers.

          Andy Serkis’ performance as Caesar is exceptional. As with Gollum and King Kong, Andy performs in digital getup, so we never see his face. But the eyes, the facial expressions, all the movement, and everything in the digital clothing is Andy, and it is his performance that brings out Caesar’s humanity.

          Naturally there are the requisite homage moments. A memorable line or two cleverly incorporated–a 3D puzzle of the Statue of Liberty, a TV on with Charlton Heston.

          Terrific presentation all around, and an understated performance by James Franco, who manages to make some fairly fantastic subject matter actually seem believable.

          So far, for the summer, right behind satisfying must-sees “Harry Potter” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” we have “Super 8,” “Cowboys and Aliens,” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” with “Rise” being probably just slightly the best of the latter three.

“COWBOYS AND ALIENS” MASH A SMASH

COWBOYS AND ALIENS

Starring Daniel Craig,

Harrison Ford,

Abigail Spencer,

Paul Dano,

Adam Beach,

Sam Rockwell,

Noah Ringer,

Keith Carrdine

Directed by Jon Favreau

Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzmann, Damon Lindelof,

Mark Fergus, Hawk Otsby

Based on a screen story by Mark Fergus, Hawk Otsby, Steve Oedekerk

Based on a Platinum Studios comic book by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg

Running time 118 mins.

Rated PG-13

          The number one surprise with “Cowboys and Aliens” is how not campy it is. If you don’t expect any buddy movie banter between the leads, you’ll have a smoother time, too. “Men in Black” in sage brush, “Cowboys and Aliens” ain’t.

          Upshot: Lean, mean Wanted Man cowboy (Craig) in Wild West times has a wound in his side and a weird, outer space-y device on his wrist, and won’t cow tow to the son of the richest man (Ford) in the dirty little town. This gets him into more trouble, and along the way, aliens show up. Aliens what need gittin’.

          It makes for an interesting mash-up. Sort of “3:10 to Yuma” meets “District 9" in the serious-looking Western mixed with bipedal, monstrous aliens.

          I don’t know that it’s really the right role for Harrison Ford, though. He doesn’t play the unlikeable guy very well. I think he knows that audiences see him permanently associated with Indiana Jones and Han Solo, and so he consciously chooses roles to go against that type. And he’s a good enough actor that he can do it. But there are lots of other actors who could play the role without being quite so distracting.

          Or maybe I was distracted more by expectations from the poster. It looks like Butch and Sundance, just the two of them. But the movie’s nothing like that. Not the big buddy festival at all.

          And a darn fine supporting cast, too. The dude that Daniel Day-Lewis slaps around in “There Will Be Blood” plays the son here quite memorably. Another guy, the Luca Brasi-ish thick skull in “The Departed,” is perfect as the rising Irish bandit leader.

          But it’s the lack of cutesiness one finds so startlingly refreshing. It is entirely unique in film to see so earnest a Western with trippy, bug-like UFO aliens leapin’ around, killin’ folk.

          “Tremors” and “Eight-Legged Freaks” are similarly campy yet slightly hardcore. “Cowboys and Aliens” is nothing like that.

          It’s not a great Western. And it’s not standout sci-fi. But somehow “Cowboys and Aliens” really is a great movie because playing it so serious gives it quite the quirky tone.

          Well worth checking out.