The Campaign

The Campaign, a vulgar political comedy, kept me laughing through the end credits.  It never earned a deep, belly laugh, but it generally did its job.

Will Ferrel plays an incumbent congressman who doesn't actually do anything, but dos enjoy being a congressman.  When evil billionaire industrialists (the Moch brothers) sense his weakness after a scandal and create a controllable challenger in Zach Galifianakis, the fight's on as the two men race to the bottom of taste, ethics, and self-respect in their battle for the seat.

This leads to a variety of physical and verbal gags, delivered with gusto by our leads and backed with strong performances from Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, and Brian Cox.  It's sharp, bitter, yet ultimately hopeful comedy that worked well enough.  Did I love The Campaign?  No, but it's still a pretty good time at the movies.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a film about the roots of the Great Ape Revolution, is something of a misnomer.  Earth is already the planet of the apes, since we humans fall into that category.  Perhaps a better name might be Rise of the Planet of the Rest of the Apes.

Nevertheless, Rise of the Planet of the Apes does the impossible.  During the film’s climactic man-ape battle on the Golden Gate Bridge, we viewers know that mankind’s only hope is the complete destruction of the apes fighting to get across that bridge.  Nevertheless, we root for the chimps and gorillas and orangutans.  We, the audience, root for the success of our enslavers.

Wow.

Rise does this not only by anthropomorphizing a chimpanzee, but by making the anthropomorphization of said chimpanzee the actual subject of the film’s narrative.  We begin in an African jungle.  The chimp’s mother is captured, dragged away from her tribe, and injected with some kind of super chimp serum.  Later, when the mama chimp gives birth, we bond with her cute li’l offspring.  So does James Franco, who plays a scientist who adopts the infant and raises it like an odd cross between a child and a dog.  As the chimp will soon learn, however, Franco’s family represents the sum total of nice people in the entire universe. 

Here’s the problem: chimps don’t stay cuddly forever.  When they grow up and they get angry, they can kill people.  After our hero chimp, named Caesar (modeled by the talented Andy Serkis), attacks the Francos’ mean neighbor, he’s packed off to a facility for primates (No, not a hockey arena.  This is a facility for higher primates.).  The facility, more prison than sanctuary, becomes Caesar’s crucible: the place where he grows out of his trust for humans and into his role as leader of the ape revolution.  By the time he leads his comrades across that bridge, we’ve seen him endure so much cruelty at the hands of humankind that we really do root for him.  We want him and his comrades to find a better life, to find a way out from under the thumb of their enslavers.  What a wonderful exercise in cognitive dissonance!

The film couldn’t pull this off without selling us on its world, and Rise succeeds through smart casting, brilliant animation, and solid scoring.  The Franco family includes the likeable Franco himself, the also likeable John Lithgow, and the luminous Freida Pinto (of Slumdog Millionaire).  Brian Cox leads Team Evil, with help from Tom Felton and David Hewlett, and all three sell their villainy with gusto.  (They also all happen to be English, which calls into question the seriousness of the flag-less ape threat.)  {Note: If I were a better writer, I could have come up with a better Eddie Izzard callback.  We do what we can with what we’ve got.}  The animation, well, it’s wonderful.  We believe in these apes.  We believe in their weight and momentum and the emotions on their faces.  The music, well, I’m a Patrick Doyle fan and I have been since Henry V.  His score builds the world and fills in emotional beats that animated apes may not have been able to convey on their own. 

In short, not only does Rise of the Planet of the Apes work, it works wonderfully.  This ape found himself rooting for the competition against his better judgment, and he never thought that would happen.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

I remember seeing THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION when I was a kid. I remember liking it and have always had a special place for it even as I've grown fuzzy on the details of what it's actually about. By the time I fired this film up again last week, all I had to go on was a general feeling of goodwill, Jeff Goldblum in a cowboy shirt, and John Lithgow hamming it up. How would the film stand up to adult eyes?

Quite well, I'm happy to report. BUCKAROO BANZAI is that most difficult of creations: whimsy, pure and simple, that avoids being overcome by itself. The film lines up Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, and Clancy Brown on one side and John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya, and Vincent Schiavelli on the other, tosses a Maguffin between them, and then gets silly. It layers sight gags over character gags over situational gags, keeps the villains just villainous enough to serve as foils for the heroes, and generally invites its audience to sit back, grin, tap its feet, and groove along.

I enjoyed the heck out of it, and I can't wait to see it again in another twenty-five years.

Kinsey

Liam Neeson stars in 'Kinsey,' but Laura Linney walks away with the picture.

Linney plays Clara, a character who goes from bright young grad student to steady grandmother, and whose life transitions we accept every step of the way.

Don't get me wrong: Neeson is a fine Professor Kinsey, and at no point did I not buy him in the character. It's just that while his character had a more dramatic life than Linney's, hers had a richer inner life.

The movie itself is full of surprises. First, the supporting cast is absolutely first rate. I mean, look at this slate: Timothy Hutton, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnel, Heather Goldenhersh (who plays a minor part well, as she did in 'The Merchant of Venice'), John Lithgow, Tim Curry (who doesn't ham it up, for a change), Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker, and Veronica Cartwright, among others. Second, I absolutely expected Curry to twirl his moustache and collude with Kinsey's boss to make life tough on our protagonist: didn't happen. Third, the movie deftly handles its own subject matter, finding an adult footing without veering into sensationalism.

Well done, Mr. Condon. I look forward to seeing your next film.