Tulpan

Roger Ebert loved TULPAN, a film about a young sailor, recently discharged from the Russian Navy, who returns to the steppe of his native Kazakhstan to find a bride, buy a yurt, and settle down to herd sheep. In his review, the critic writes, "What does this sound like to you? Ethnographic boredom? I swear to you that if you live in a place where this film is playing, it is the best film in town. You'll enjoy it, not soon forget it, and you’ll tell your friends about it and try to persuade them to go, but you’ll have about as much luck with them as I’m probably having with you. Still, there has to come a time in everyone’s life when they see a deadpan comedy about the yurt dwellers of Kazakhstan."

That sounded like a challenge. After reading those words, how could I not see the film?

For my trouble, I got ethnographic boredom. Look, I don't think I'm ever going to the Kazakh steppe. I can't think of a reason why the Navy would send me, Delta doesn't fly there, and I'd rather go to Venice or Tokyo or Berlin in my free time than sign up for one of those bull$#!^ ethnovacations that cater to the Whole Foods Market crowd. So I looked to TULPAN to take me to a place I don't know, introduce me to people whose lives feel foreign to me, and let me walk a mile in their shoes for an hour and a half. The film did take me to the Steppe. It did introduce me to people whose lives felt foreign to me. But it didn't make me walk in their shoes. Why not? Because it didn't give me a reason to care.

Asa struck me as your basic callow youth, with nothing much to make him engaging beyond an ethnographic interest in his culture. His relatives were rough and hardworking, as I'd expect. The steppe looked like the steppe in MONGOL. And that was pretty much it. The film offered me nothing more on which to hang. I didn't laugh. I didn't cry. I didn't wait in suspense. I just sat there, looking at my watch.

Roger Ebert has introduced me to more great films than I can count, but TULPAN isn't one of them. It's all I could do to stay awake.

Yes Man

I liked YES MAN. I didn't love it, but I enjoyed as a lesser entry in the style of comedy I'm coming to think of as the Apatow school. It doesn't have a villain, its third-act crisis is organic to its story, and its characters mean well. Hey, it's even reasonably funny. I laughed three or four times.

Would it have been better with Jason Segel in the lead instead of serial over-actor Jim Carrey? Sure. Am I beginning to despair of seeing Zooey Deschanel in something that requires her to do more than act cute? Yeah. But there it is.

YES MAN tells the story of Carl, a guy who works at a bank in Brea, yet flits from Griffith Park to Balboa Park without a second thought. He's nearly fifty, yet he acts like a guy who's closing in on thirty. His improbably young and attractive ex-wife left him because he always says no. He's about to lose his improbably young and attractive best friend because he always says no. And he's never getting out of his bullet-in-the-head job because he always says no. But one day, he allows a nutty friend (Whom you can tell is genuine because he dresses like a hippie. In American films, genuine people always dress like hippies.) to talk him into attending a self help / quasi religious seminar dedicated to getting people to say yes. So far, so good. I can get behind a life-embracing ideology - I just don't want to smell like patchouli oil. This ideology requires no patchouli oil and it's led by Terence Stamp, which is pretty cool. Further, it requires neither a significant monetary outlay nor kneeling before Zod. Carl chooses well: he goes for it and embrace the culture of Yes.

Before you know it, the guy's in the middle of a full-bloom midlife crisis. He gets a new improbably young and attractive girlfriend. He learns to play the guitar. He takes flying lessons. He goes to all-night parties where one can assume he makes the other attendees uncomfortable because he's old enough to be, like, their dad, man. He's ridin' the groove train, baby, and he's livin' like he'll never run out of Viagra and Motrin.

That's your setup, and it's a perfectly fine frame upon which to hang a series of jokes and gags that should make you smile from time to time, grin occasionally, and even laugh if you're an easy touch like me. But Carrey's gotta embrace the fact that America's tired of watching him mug his way through pictures. Settle down, Jim, and insist on the rewrites that'll make it seem as if you weren't shoehorned into a younger man's story. Do that, and I'll invest much more in your character. And when I really invest in your character, that's when the real laughter comes.