Doctor Who: The Movie

Doctor Who is a British science fiction series about The Doctor (that’s his name), an alien who travels through time and space, rights wrongs, meets famous people, and has amazing adventures.  The show originally ran from 1963 to 1989, went off the air due to slipping ratings, and resumed in 2005.  It airs on BBC America and has become an unqualified, global hit.

In 1996, however, the show was basically dead.  But The Doctor is hard to kill, and thanks to an expatriate British tv producer in the US, it got a chance to relaunch in America.  Fox and the BBC teamed up to make a tv movie that could serve as a backdoor pilot, but Doctor Who: The Movie aired against the final show of the popular sitcom Roseanne.  It got crushed. 

Ok, enough history.  Is Doctor Who: The Movie any good?  Not really, no.  Eric Roberts, as the villainous Master, is all over the place – menacing one moment and campy the next.  Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso, as the love interest and potential sidekick, respectively, don’t have enough charisma to keep up with Paul McGann as the Doctor.  The production’s too cheap to hold up, but not cheap enough to earn it a “good enough for tv” pass.

Now, on to the more important question: is it any good if you’re a fan of Doctor Who?  Sure.  The film stays in continuity with the old BBC tv series and is part of the continuity of the current iteration of ­Doctor Who, so it has plenty to offer those who keep up with such things.  McGann makes for a fine Doctor, the show strikes a decent balance between danger and whimsy, and the whole thing rocks along pleasantly for an hour and a half or so.

If you’re interested in checking out Doctor Who, don’t begin with Doctor Who: The Movie.  Instead, see the new-series episode “Silence in the Library,” available on Netflix streaming.  It’s as good as the show gets, and it just may hook you.  If you’re already hooked, Doctor Who: The Movie will fill in a gap and help scratch the itch until the next new episode.  It worked for me.

Megamind

Megamind is laugh-out-loud funny.

Here in the second paragraph, I usually describe the movie’s first act to give you a taste of what you’re in for.  You don’t the need that for Megamind.  Just know that it’s a cartoon about supervillain who’s not such a bad guy, once you get to know him.

This film looks great, with bright and colorful animation.  The story’s simple enough for toddlers, yet smart enough for parents.  The comedy balances slapstick and character-based humor to give everyone something to laugh at.  And the action sequences, well, they’re fantastic. 

I watched Megamind with my family (ages 2 - 43), and we all enjoyed it.  We laughed out loud, we got swept up in the characters, and we look forward to seeing it again.  Megamind is a winner.

The Lincoln Lawyer

In The Lincoln Lawyer, Matthew McConaughey plays a (mostly) shirt-wearing defense attorney of what we’d call the worst kind.  He rips off his clients, finds ways to get scumbags off the hook, and makes a lot of money.  This guy thinks he’s got it all figured out, until he takes a murder case with unexpected wrinkles.  Away we go.

I know what you’re thinking.  “Sounds like a disposable dime-store thriller.”  I won’t argue with you: The Lincoln Lawyer is a dime-store thriller.  Thing is, it’s a really good dime-store thriller.  The hero seems like a scumbag, but reveals hidden quality.  Marisa Tomei plays the love interest and, well, she’s Marisa Tomei.  The villain’s villainous, the plot twists and twists again, and at one point I genuinely couldn’t imagine how McConaughey was going to get out of his jam.  This film entertained and surprised me, and it wrapped up in a most satisfying way.  The Lincoln Lawyer shows what happens when a thriller’s done right.  I hope they make a sequel.

Cedar Rapids

In Cedar Rapids, Ed Helms plays what’s quickly becoming the Ed Helms character: a nerdy, uptight good guy who falls in with a bad crowd.  Hijinks ensue.  Valuable Life Lessons get learned.  Roll the credits.

Fine, fine.  The fish out of water is a comedic archetype for a reason: it often works.  Does it work here?  Well, ask yourself this question: do you find the concept of a guy who lives in Brown Valley, Wisconsin and works for Brown Star Insurance amusing?  If so, Cedar Rapids is for you.

Me, well, I didn’t laugh at that or any other joke in the movie.  It wasn’t that Ed Helms is a poor comedic actor or that the story didn’t flow.  It’s just that the jokes didn’t work for me.  I found Cedar Rapids to be genial company on a long flight in coach, but that was all.

Restrepo

Restrepo, a documentary about a year in the life of the soldiers manning Fire Base Restrepo in Afghanistan’s Khogal Valley, is phenomenal.  Expertly photographed and taughtly edited, it puts us right there in a valley that defines remote and isolated, and it helps us understand just what it is that we ask our young people to do when they don our country’s uniform and ship off to war.

Here’s the deal: National Geographic Channel made a deal with the U.S. Army to send a documentary team along with NAME OF UNIT on its # OF MONTHS deployment to Afghanistan.  The documentarians captured the daily lives of the soldiers at the firebase – their routines, their hijinks, their near-daily fighting with the Taliban enemy who controlled the valley before their arrival.  They also captured the unit on patrol -  cameramen Tim Heatherington and Sebastian Junger didn’t stay behind the wire – doing everything from trying to bond with the locals to fighting its way out of an ambush.

The effect?  We see these soldiers as real people, brave and afraid and risking their lives for an objective of questionable value.  This isn’t a movie about bugles and drums and soaring eagles.  It’s a movie about soldiers, low paid but well led, doing their best.  Restrepo is worth your time.