The Losers

Y’know that action movie trope of heroes leaping toward the camera as a fiery explosion lights up the screen behind them? The Losers doesn’t have it. In The Losers, a school bus filled with adorable kids (and the heroes who’ve rescued them) leaps off a (gentle) riverbank while a fiery explosion lights up the screen behind it.

That’s when I knew I was in.

So, what’s this movie about? Oh, c’mon. An evil genius betrays a team of commandos. The commandos exact their revenge. Not only does this represent the plotline of three major releases we’ve seen this summer, it serves as proof positive that evil geniuses need to get out more. If the League of Evil Geniuses ever had movie night, they’d know to never, never ever, betray a team of commandos. This ranks right up there with “Don’t waste time explaining your evil plans to your vanquished foe. Just shoot him.”

Anyway, these commandos call themselves The Losers. So, why should you care about them any more than The A-Team or The Expendables? I don’t know that you should. If you’re this film’s target audience, you’ll see all three films on general principle anyway, just like there are people out there who see every romantic comedy that comes down the pipe. The Losers brings the charismatic team members, the silly jokes, the ‘splosions, and all the rest as competently as any other middle-brow action entertainment out there, and it seems to have a reasonably good time doing it. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen’s Comedian) looks great in a two-piece black suit (Note to self: I need to wear mine more often – ya just can’t go wrong in a two-piece black suit and a good white shirt.) that takes ever-increasing amounts of punishment and comes through it just as well as he does (Note to self: see if they make those suits in Kevlar.). Idris Elba (“The Wire”’s Stringer Bell) makes a fine #2 and comes across as a guy you don’t want to face in a knife fight. Zoe Saldana looks great in underwear, though she could really use a cheeseburger, and I don’t think you’d want to face her in a knife fight, either. Chris Evans, Columbus Short, and Oscar Janeda round out the team creditably well, though many of Evans’s comic beats fall flat (I’m not sure why – the guy has fine timing and seems up for anything – he was a riot in Scott Pilgrim.).

So there you have it. The Losers shows up on time, does its job, and goes home. It’s not the best thing you’ll see this year; but, if you’re in the mood for ‘splosion’s, it will deliver.

Love Me Tonight

Love Me Tonight begins with a marvelous bit of found syncopation, a musical sequence introducing us to morning in Paris through the rhythmic sweepings, nailings, workings, and ambient noises of a city coming alive.  It’s absolutely wonderful, and got me excited for the hour and a half to come.

Then, Maurice Chevalier shows up.

I’ve never been a big Chevalier hater.  In fact, checking his IMDB credits reveals that I hadn’t seen any of his film before now.  But I’ve gotta tell you that, after Love Me Tonight, I don’t understand why this guy was a movie star.  Sure, I can see why he would have been huge in vaudeville: he could sing, he could dance, and his exaggerated French accent would’ve wowed ‘em in music halls across the American hinterland.  On film, however, he exaggerated too much – he too clearly mugged, rather than acted, and he pulled me out of Love Me Tonight again and again and again.

So Chevalier’s a poor but honest tailor (fun side note, if you’re me: Ellermann is a rough German analogue to Tailor, so I was on the guy’s side even if the actor playing him bugged me) who finds himself posing as a count or duke or some such at a chateau in what’s supposed to be the Parisian countryside, but looks an awful lot like Pomona.  The most decadent, decayed fringes of the French aristocracy live in this chateau, people so dissolute and lacking in vitality that I wanted to guillotine the lot of them. 

Among these fossilized aristocrats live two women, Jeanette MacDonald (a princess) and Myrna Loy (a mere countess).  MacDonald’s the love interest and Loy’s the Baxter, and so we discover Love Me Tonight’s second biggest flaw (after the casting of Chevalier): Myrna Loy blows everyone else in the film off the screen.  She plays a bad girl of such spirit, such raw vitality, that she clearly belongs in a whole different movie.  [Come to think of it, I’m reminded of Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise: the movie’s grooving along ok when suddenly this no-kidding Movie Star whom nobody’s ever seen before shows up and steals it out from under everybody, and the audience is left wondering who that kid was.]  So you see, she’s the worst kind of Baxter – she makes the audience think the protagonist is an idiot for not immediately zeroing in on her, as opposed to the weak sauce who’s supposed to capture our hearts.

Will the tailor capture the heart of the princess for no apparent reason?  Sure.  Will we see one jaw-droppingly cool stunt involving a train?  Absolutely.  Will the songs go home with us?  No.  The dancing (This is a musical, after all.)?  What dancing?  I didn’t see a legitimate dance number in the whole picture.

What I saw, sadly, was an hour and a half of a bad film actor pursuing a woman the story gave me no reason to care about, while a no-kidding hot number for the ages waited in the wings.

So pass on Love Me Tonight.  But fear not: I’m a loving kind of guy, and I’m not going to leave you hanging.  Here’s Nat King Cole singing a song I thought would turn up in the movie, but didn’t:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb945jfgW0k

And here’s Myrna Loy being ridiculously awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG3NZjRv2nM

You’re welcome, and good night.

Hot Tub Time Machine

The advertising for Hot Tub Time Machine did nothing for me. The picture, about three friends and a tagalong nephew who accidentally return to 1986, seemed like a silly ‘80s sex comedy with middle-aged guys. Unfortunately, I had my fill of silly ‘80s sex comedies by 1986. But Roger Ebert liked it and I still have a soft spot for John Cusack, so I figured I’d spin up the first act and see how things went.

I laughed all the way through to the closing credits.

There’s so much to like about this movie that I don’t know where to begin. Is it with the proper debut of Rob Corddry, whom I loathed in Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story? The vulgar (yet clever) writing and spot-on delivery? The chemistry and timing of the leading cast (Cusack, Corddry, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke)? Nice touches like the casting of actors like Crispin Glover and Billy Zabka in hilarious supporting roles? This movie has so much to offer!

Let’s start with Corddry, playing one of the most difficult kinds of roles: the comic jerk. He’s the guy everyone hates, the one who never grew out of the kinds of behaviors that made him barely tolerable back before everyone knew better. Guys like this, they turn out bitter and sad, but Corddry manages to make bitter and sad sympathetic and likeable. He’s the one guy who should never have left the ‘80s, he’s happy as hell to be back, and he gets all the best gags (I don’t want to spoil anything, but one gag still has me chuckling every time I see a soap dispenser.).

The writing epitomizes vulgar-as-funny, as opposed to MacGuyver’s vulgar-as-vulgar. Corddry and Cusack have an exchange that I’d love to describe, but my kids read this blog. Let’s just say that comic vulgarity, played straight by actors who know what they’re doing, has the power to knock me out of my chair. This exchange did just that, and it’s just one setup in a movie full of them. I wish I could buy a copy of this screenplay – I bet it’s even funnier on the page.

The lead cast, well, they each get their moments. Cusack’s takes an ‘uptight guy who needs a Manic Pixie Girlfriend’ role and gives it life and humor. Corddry, well, I already talked about him. CHUD.com’s Devin Faraci likens him to Belushi in Animal House, and he’s not far off. Craig Robinson provides the moral center and some achingly funny moments – I’ve never laughed so hard watching a grown man cry. Clark Duke, well, I think he’s the audience surrogate for the younger demographic, but he’s still wonderful as a guy far more mature, in his way, than his elders.

And the touches, well, who doesn’t love Crispin Glover in a time travel comedy or John Cusack in a skiing comedy set in the ‘80s or the introduction of one classic villain of the decade’s cinema with a line made famous by another classic villain? It’s silly, it’s good fun, and it’s remarkably effective in every way.

So, yeah, there’s no way a film entitled Hot Tub Time Machine should be any good. But one of the great things about film is its ability to surprise. This film surprised the heck out of me, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

So put the kids to bed, spin this one up, and have yourself a good time. I sure did.