THE COLOUR, THE TEXTURE, THE FLAVOUR - OF EXCESS

DIRECTED BY AKIVA SCHAFFER 

STARRING: BEN STILLER, VINCE VAUGHN, JONAH HILL, RICHARD AYOADE, ROSEMARIE DEWITT, WILL FORTE, DOUG JONES, ERIN MORIARTY and BILLY CRUDUP 

‘the Watch,’ previously called ‘Neighbourhood Watch,’ doesn’t start with the usual crash-land of spaceship or meteorite that’d give the entire plot away. There’s never been a movie where the alien wins. There’s only been those, occasionally, where there isn’t a battle as such. Seth Rogen’s involvement (as co-writer, along with buddy Evan Goldberg and Jared Stern) takes you back to the likes of ‘Paul’ on how a mildly successful comedy could be, in terms of contemporary entertainment value. ‘the Watch,’ in comparison, has very few laughs, all in bad taste. The sad part is that you think these characters deserve better. 

Perhaps this could be accounted for by my familiarity with Rogen and his work, but I could almost see ‘the Watch’ shaping up – in the writer’s room and out. Firstly, I think it’s kind of sad that they had to change the title. The ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ poster with the ‘Say no to Aliens’ sign on it gave you some idea on what you were up against. Even though ‘the Watch’ doesn’t exactly keep it a secret – its premise is established in the sequence that immediately follows the opening credits – you’re still confused on what the movie is about. 

The opening credits show a middle-aged man doing middle-aged things about a town called Glenview in Ohio, keeping away from his over-eager wife. He’s in a lot of clubs, we find, but does nothing that means anything. Is this a film about purpose, then? Would it raise the existential question and drop it without an answer, taking to convincing instead, making it a bittersweet mid-life experience of sorts? Ben Stiller, the man who’s perfect for the role, has himself been in a couple of movies where the lacklustre individual finds himself in the midst of the extraordinary. If the ‘Night at the Museum’ movies amount to anything at all, that is. 

“He’s the perfect guy,” I can hear Rogen say. “He’s a little less sorted out, you know, because he’s got PG-13 morals in an R-rated comedy. And he breaks his course because he can’t make pit-stops, you know? But he thinks he’s still in the race. And he needs all these people, all these buddies of his, to run the long road with him. A road where they end up busting alien balls together instead.” 

In ‘Knocked Up,’ there’s a scene where Rogen, playing Ben – an epitome of wasted humanness – asks Alison (Katherine Heigl) who works for ‘E!’ if she’s interviewed Vince Vaughn. He then tells her how he thinks Vaughn would be amazing to hang out with, and how, unlike other celebrity fantasies, he actually thinks his company would be something Vaughn would enjoy. ‘the Watch’ sees Rogen write for that man, which could’ve been a dream come true. They’re different comedians with some striking similarities, I’ve observed. Vaughn strikes me as a person with a slightly more impressionable conscience than Rogen, but that’s about it. They’ve played to their strengths in picking Vaughn for a role. Rogen couldn’t have possibly let him down. 

Franklin (Jonah Hill) is Shia Labeouf’s Mutt Williams gone rogue. I’ve previously expressed how fatigued I am with Hill’s brand of comedy. To put it simply, it hasn’t changed a bit. Franklin does poor switchblade and is even worse as a shot. He’s in the Watch so that he could join the force that rejected him before – and unceremoniously at that. His timing is impeccable, but his jokes suck. ‘Cyrus,’ ‘the Sitter,’ ’21 Jump Street.’ I can count the number of times he’s played an individual who shuttles between a man and an adolescent so fast he doesn’t linger anywhere for long. In fact, I don’t think he’s played anything else. Back in ‘Superbad’ times, he worked as a Rogen duplicate, hired because he looked younger. As his own comic, he’s yet to prove his worth. 

British comedian Richard Ayoade as Jamarcus is endearing because he’s exotic. And also because it’s sad to see him swayed by these gentlemen. He shows surprise at being offered a beer-can. His eyes widen when he ends up at a local orgy. Of course, all these things have reasons stated in context. He’s as funny as the other men in the plot, but when it comes to chemistry, he sticks out like a middle finger. Rosemarie Dewitt as Mrs. Trautwig (Stiller is Evan Trautwig) is wonderful in bits and pieces as the woman who craves for attention from an absent husband, but she’s stunted to a cheerleader when the big boys take over. Her husband had formed the Neighbourhood Watch. Isn’t it sensible for her to head the women’s fitness centre? She looks like she could. Rogen and Goldberg aren’t as thoughtful. 

I’ll tell you what. In the first scene, a Hispanic security guard at Costco finds he’s become an American citizen. He downs a bottle of Vodka to celebrate and lights a doobie, as Kevin Smith would call it. You don’t know why he did that. He wouldn’t know why he did that; neither would Rogen. He had written and performed in ‘Pineapple Express.’ It’s the sort of movie where you don’t know which one is stoned – the actor, the character, or both. If this is him steering away from stereotype, I’d caution him not to. The guard rolls outrage into a joint and lights up. He then gets skinned by an alien. The film goes downhill from there – a trend that’s evident in the career graphs of Rogen and Goldberg, following the success of ‘Superbad’ and ‘Pineapple Express.’ They’re quite the brand. But they push their saleability. Kind of like a Magnum for a peanut-sized member. Pointless.

ON THE RIGHT TO CAST JONAH HILL

DIRECTED BY PHIL LORD and CHRIS MILLER 

STARRING: JONAH HILL, CHANNING TATUM, BRIE LARSON, ICE CUBE, ELLIE KEMPER, DAVE FRANCO, ROB RIGGLE with CHRIS PARNELL, PETER DeLUISE and JOHNNY DEPP 

There was a time when I ranked High-School movies based on how they handled Senior Prom. I thought I was past that time, more so because I thought I stopped watching High-School comedies for the heck of it, but then comes '21 Jump Street.’ While a film like ‘Superbad’ and, more recently, ‘Easy A’ could do away with the whole idea of prom happening, '21 Jump Street’ keeps it at the heart of a sequence. I think about it, it kind of makes sense. Prom’s a place where people go crazy, spirits soar high, people go high on spirits. That, or a newfound drug by the name of H.F.S. – an acronym I don’t even have to expand on. 

Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) have been together for as long as jocks had coexisted with boys in retainers. They bond on rejection and an odd sort of concurrence in sense of humour that has happened in any movie that has ever featured Jonah Mister-Bold-Letters Hill. Have you ever thought about it? The only way to be friends with a Jonah Hill character is to be as dirty as he can be. It once was a Seth Rogen thing. He had rendered himself versatile after. 

Together, Schmidt and Jenko speak a lot of words that have either four, five or twelve letters in them. There’s not as much inventiveness in humour, but Hill and Tatum have enough command over timing and share a decent enough chemistry to make the buddy-system work. Did I mention that they end up training at the same police academy and become partners in the force later on? They’re given bicycles instead of patrol cars – which is the thing about an action comedy, I guess. Where you lack in action, you write some lines; you make Jonah Hill say them. 

I had a problem in that I found I'm so used to Jonah Hill that I was dying to have Tatum cut loose and let some lines fly, if not take entire sequences in hand. Hill is too much to take. The man is a spoilsport, I’m not even kidding. Let me give you an example. There’s a scene where Jenko tells a certain individual that he’d ‘beat his member off with both hands’, which is forced humour at its peak and yet works because Tatum keeps his face intact and maintains a level of innocence to render it believable. The man he addresses and some cohorts of his think he’s mad. Schmidt, a.k.a. Jonah Hill, has to step in to clarify. He does what is called the Jonah Hill routine – which means he explains exactly what it means. It’s funny because he can be nonchalant about a clarification as petty as this. It works because he’s Jonah Hill. 

This is a reason that, I find, is becoming unconvincing to me as time goes by. Soon, Mr. Hill would reach what I’d like to call the Michael Cera stage, which is a point of no return. Better comics have known better than to head there. It’s a destructive place to be – for themselves, and for humour in itself. 

Anyway, in what’s perhaps the funniest scene in the movie, Capt. Hardy (Nick Offerman) tells Schmidt and Jenko that they don’t have what it takes to hit the street and are, literally, sent back to school. Capt. Dickson (Ice Cube) takes charge. He’s the stereotype of a foul-mouthing Black cop stereotype who has a few funny lines to deliver. Taking his own course of time through digs at pop-references, he tells the two of them about how a new drug had been found in circulation in the school they’re to enroll in. Their task is simple – “infiltrate the dealers, find the supplier.” Schmidt and Jenko become Brad and Doug McQuaid in an abandoned Korean church. They might as well have been baptized. 

Like any movie with multiple identities, ’21 Jump Street’ sets out to play. On top of the alias, we have another switch. Brad and Doug (whoever is whoever) are interchanged – they’d now have to undergo the additional ordeal of taking each other’s classes. What's sad is that it never ups the game. Jenko gets Chemistry with Ms. Griggs (Ellie Kemper) who, when he tells her he’s got to go to the bathroom, she feels the need to too. And Schmidt gets drama, ironic as it might be. They dread their classes, but they make peace with them anyway – with benefits. To Jenko, it’s friendship with a group of science geeks. Schmidt gets Molly (Brie Larson), who looks a little more realistic than High-School, for a change. Then there’s Eric (Dave Franco) who’s the new kind of ‘cool’ and the gang that Molly’s a part of, which Schmidt infiltrates en route to going for gold. 

Oh, and did I tell you that reliving high-school has the two cops go déjà vu on a popularity contest? That, a test of faith, an empty chase, a severed penis and Johnny Depp constitute the latter half of the film, which ends with the two cops doing what they had initially set out to do – to recite the Miranda rights right. 

Where buddy-cop-comedies are concerned, there have been too many. ‘the Other Guys’ with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, Kevin Smith's disaster flick ‘Cop Out’ with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan – we even had an 80s TV-to-screen adaptation in form of Todd Phillips’ ‘Starsky and Hutch’ (Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller) – all in under a decade. While it’s fun in case of an action-hero-comic pair and we have the action star trying to come down to the comic’s sensibilities, it’s better when it works. Wilson and Stiller were a gem of a pair, that way. Even Wilson’s successful camaraderie with Jackie Chan in ‘Shanghai Noon' comes to mind.

Which brings me back to where I started. Jonah Hill could even be a bad casting option in that he’s a show stealer. You put him in a movie, you put him alongside someone like Russell Brand in 'Get him to the Greek', who can stretch him on his own ground. Not Tatum, even if he’s not half-bad. He’s quite the revelation, actually. 

In that case, I’d have to stick to my original point – not Jonah Hill. You have the right to cast him in your movie, he has the right to take charge. I reserve the right to remain disappointed – with an evil smile at how Johnny Depp got shot.

ON GOING DOWN WITHOUT DIGNITY

DIRECTED BY DAVID GORDON GREEN

STARRING: JONAH HILL, MAX RECORDS, ARI GRAYNOR, JB SMOOVE, LANDRY BENDER, KEVIN HERNANDEZ, KYLIE BUNBURY, ERIN DANIELS, D.W. MOFFETT, JESSICA HECHT, BRUCE ALTMAN and SAM ROCKWELL

It’s very difficult to stomach a child swearing. The immediate reaction simply has to be one of shock, where we’re made to look at more than just the movie, at the actual bigger picture. “Where did she learn that?” becomes redundant where a more relevant question is “How can they let her?” It’s like a crusade almost, the struggle between different kinds of morality. The child would come to learn all those things anyway, so how does it matter? Only in the same way as underage sexuality. What’s going to rot is going to rot, so why not cut the fuss and make some manure instead?

Trashy scripts are born there, I like to think. At the houses of people who don’t mind which movie their children act in as long as they’re made stars in the process. Chloe Grace Moretz, second-in-line behind Dakota Fanning in this rat race, said in an interview about how her language on the sets of ‘Kick-Ass’ could’ve gotten her grounded had she used it anywhere on the outside. That’s some strict parenting. Her parents really seem to put their foot down. ‘Kick-Ass’ turned out to be quite the illuminating movie where her blitzkrieg performance might even have landed her a place on the Walk of Fame. But at what cost?

The child in such a movie is supposed to signify a dysfunction that’s meant to intimidate; to come across as an instructive sort of shock. I’ve never found myself comfortable with those movies that try to ease me into the situation; that show the situation to be beyond control that we can't do anything but watch. Even worse are those that get a laugh out of it.

‘the Sitter’ is like a ‘Superbad’ about preteen siblings. Well, one of them is thirteen and is a soon-to-be-found homosexual (Slater, played by Max Records, who has had his share of mischief earlier in Spike Jonze’s ‘Where the Wild Things are’), another is Hispanic and adopted (Rodrigo – Kevin Hernandez) and likes to break than make. Which is pretty understandable, except he escalates. The third is Blithe (Landry Bender), who looks to be about ten and would probably win Paris Hilton’s ‘My New BFF.’

Writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka create a lineup that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg could never have possibly created, and they do it by the simple way of rendering their characters younger and fitting them into the same family. And Jonah Hill plays dirty babysitter against Rogen’s dirty cop in a one-man show without Bill Hader for support. Hill is Noah Griffith, faithful to Hill’s own stereotype as the overweight, foul-mouthed, catastrophic young man who, under no circumstances, would ever tone it down. I know I have to eat my words after his sensational weight-reduction bout, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Noah is a Momma’s boy, a college dropout and a loser boyfriend. That’s a ‘Cyrus’ meets ‘Get Him to the Greek’ in a ‘Superbad’ premise.

Jessica Hecht as Sandy Griffith is as hot as Marisa Tomei was in ‘Cyrus,’ with the difference being that Noah actually wants her to find someone. Her friend, a Mrs. Pedulla (Erin Daniels) has set her up with a surgeon whom she thinks she’d hit it off with. Everything looks set, Sandy is excited, Noah is happy to see his Mom like that. Then comes the news that the Pedullas’ babysitter has called in sick and there’d be no outing without someone to take care of their kids. Sandy asks Noah to step in, Noah brushes reluctance aside for his Mom.

‘the Sitter’ is a pastiche of emotions which doesn’t do justice to any. The caring son, the yearning boyfriend, the helpless victim – all are subverted by a compulsive comic stance. The timing is good but the plot is unjust. Noah and the kids embark upon this adventure from one inappropriate place to another, with wise-cracks and emotional intercepts to punctuate a mindless chase where a car is lost and regained, ‘the Hangover’ style. In the end, Blithe would have danced at a couple of unfitting places, Slater would have found out that he’s gay and Rodrigo would have blown up two toilets and a car before he learns to sweep the floor. Noah, on his part, would have lost the coke that he was getting his girlfriend (Ari Graynor) along with a handful of diamonds stolen from his traitor of a Dad to repay the eccentric gangster in Karl (Sam Rockwell) whose ‘dinosaur egg’ he wasted, thanks once again to Rodrigo. Like every loser boyfriend, he learns to let go and teaches too, but only on finding his share of interest in Roxanne (Kylie Bunbury) from school who has always had a crush on him. The kids smile from the window. Noah smiles back. All is well, or is supposed to be.

Everyone is disappointed with David Gordon Green, a filmmaker of such promise as he showed with his independent suburban movies such as ‘George Washington,’ ‘Undertow,’ ‘All the Real Girls’ and ‘Snow Angels.’ After ‘Pineapple Express,’ which was more of a Rogen & Goldberg vehicle than one of his own, he came up with ‘Your Highness,’ which, we thought, was to be his worst. ‘the Sitter’ is second-time sadness. I hope Jonah Hill loses his stereotype with the weight he’s lost. And I hope that Green finds his way back to serious cinema again. Because, honestly, I can't take this a third time.

FEEL THE GREEK!

DIRECTED BY NICHOLAS STOLLER

STARRING: RUSSELL BRAND, JONAH HILL, ELISABETH MOSS, ROSE BYRNE, COLM MEANEY with T.J. MILLER, AZIZ ANSARI and SEAN COMBS

I think the most singular thing about Nicholas Stoller’s ‘Get him to the Greek’ is that in spite of the crassness of humour that the film did NOT sidestep, it turned out to be quite a likeable affair. How, I ask myself. Here is yet another film that rationalizes the eccentricities of a rock-n-roll musician, brands on him the ‘loneliness’ label that rockstars recline to as a convenient stereotype, that their lives are in actuality a sort of pitiable tragicomedy. Here is yet another film dealing with the disillusionment of the quintessential believer, and a reinvention in newfound belief. Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’ is ‘almost’ the perfect cocktail recipe for this passive-aggressive music trip that every subsequent attempt has to be William Miller, but with differences. It’s inevitable.

And yet, I have to admit that ‘Get him to the Greek’ kept its charm. The weird thing is, I don’t know how. Not concretely. I think in Russell Brand (as the infamous Aldous Snow), we find a more convincing rock-n-roll star than Billy Crudup could ever be. Crudup had an image change, his Russell Hammond – a method acting venture. Brand, I felt, was playing himself or a very close version. He’s British, he’s fairly effeminate. He’s reminiscent of Keith Richards minus the guitar work. I mean, Johnny Depp had to act like him (Jack Sparrow, as we hear, is a Richards impression with improv) but Brand doesn’t find the need to. Russell Brand, the comedian, serves as a convincing template for Aldous Snow, the rockstar. For all we know, you could scratch the actual sexcapades (considering he’s married and it’s working) and you have him on your canvas, alive and breathing. Jackie Q (Rose Byrne) could be Katy Perry, although she’s more Madonna with the Karmic routine, but you get what I mean, right? They work.

Oh, do I have to tell you about the plot? I didn’t know what ‘the Greek’ was before I watched the film, so I don’t know if it’d be a ‘spoiler’ if I let you know. Or you may already know and it would be of no difference. Anyway, it’s about a man from a record label (an associate? I don’t know the jargon, so let me stick to that) who’s sanctioned to bring Aldous Snow down from Britain for a concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. That’s ‘the Greek’ in the title. I’m sorry, I’m bad at America.

Anyway, this man Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) has problems. Probably the most serious of them. Him and his girlfriend Daphne (Elisabeth Moss) work opposite shifts in a live-in relationship. They brunch together. They watch ‘Gossip Girl’ together. It looks like it can’t get worse, but you don’t buy that. Not when there’s Aldous Snow in the picture. He’s just out of a 7 year relationship with a son to show, and is back to living with his Mother who feeds him biscuits than love. Or, considering mothers, they both go together and he doesn’t see it other than for a moment of truth. But anyway, Aaron is on a time-bomb routine. The clock ticks 72 hours and then Snow performs, whole or broken. That’s the deal.

Like I said, Jonah Hill is no William Miller. What’s good is that he doesn’t try. He looks overgrown to recommence on his ‘Superbad’ cuteness (for lack of a better word!), but beyond the unshaven look, the extra pounds and the tons of puke, there’s still a fair shade of the likeable kid left in him. To quote a friend again, he still rules in the ‘capital letters’ zone. The rest of them are stereotypes pretty much like in every chemistry-anti-chemistry flick, there’s no Jason Lee to step out and impress. But even for that, Colm Meaney looked overcooked. It’s not the first instance that he’s been badly used, but considering it’s Apatow, you’d expect better. Sean Combs has his moments as Sergio, head of ‘Pinnacle Records’ where Aaron works. He says the funniest thing in the whole film, which actually happens to be factually inconsistent, I felt. It’s neither the Zeppelins nor the Stones that live longest, Serge. Last time I checked, Chuck Berry was African-American. Be proud, bro.

Nicholas Stoller might lack the deftness of a music-ingrained Todd Haynes or a Cameron Crowe, but he’s good value. His film ate its own words, I felt, and then puked them back out. I’m sorry there’s too much puke in my review – in my defence, there was even more in the film. But then, there was Russell Brand as well. It’s amazing how electrifying he is on stage, how organic the concert(s) look. For a parody character, he gives us quite the experience. His music sucks, but you feel the Greek. Kind of puts Stoller in perspective – you think he’d make a great record producer, he just turned shit to gold. As Filmmaker, I’d say he gets a Bronze medal, tops. Or as a critic equivalent, the half-smile.