OK, I get it. That doesn't make your movie good

BRUNO. If there’s one thing Sacha Baron Cohen has contributed to our culture, it is most definitely grossing out audiences more than any other mainstream filmmaker around. With Borat and now Bruno (trailer), he has shown no, how should I say, modesty. If there's another contribution he has made, the next most significant would be to challenge his audience in a more subversive manner than just about any other comedian around today. If Bruno fails to live up to Borat, and it does, it is because in an attempt to be yet more exclusive in his comedy, he seems to have limited the “joke” more to his own entertainment than ours.

What made Borat so good was that, first of all, it was hilarious. The shocking humor, however, certainly ran much deeper than gags and was aimed at confronting people’s issues with Muslims and foreigners in general. It made us both laugh at the regular people we saw on the screen and at the same time question our own right to judge them as they judged the Borat character. He spent more time exposing people’s prejudice than ours, however, and so for that reason it was just inclusive enough to be a enjoyable movie experience for a certain segment of the population (meaning those not in a rural or southern area of the country for starters). That and it focused more on religion and ethnicity, which Americans are generally more comfortable talking about than sexual orientation, which he tackles in Bruno.

Again Baron Cohen recycles a character from "Da Ali G Show," which aired on HBO here in the States. Unlike that show and his previous film, he seems more interested in challenging his audience than his uninformed "cast." There are a few times when he confronts people’s issues with homosexuality -- notably a hunting trip with some rednecks and a visit with a couple of pastors who aim to turn gay people straight -- but he didn’t seem to really outsmart these people at all but instead made them just uncomfortable for our amusement. His most effective scene was a rather out-of-place set of interviews with stage parents trying to get their babies into a photo shoot and offering them up to do all sorts of inappropriate and dangerous behavior. This part worked well because he got the people to say outrageous and reprehensible things instead of making them squirm while he said them. The rest of his standard confrontational-style setups seemed, well, either too set-up (as in fake) or unmemorable. The much talked about scene with Rep. Ron Paul seemed to be included more just because he could than to achieve any sort of story-telling purpose.

The other attempts at humor revolved around him trying to gross out the audience and hope they find it funny. Like the exercise bike with a dildo attached, the choreographed demonstration of his favorite sex positions, and a shot of his penis flapping around and then eventually talking. And comments that made one cringe more than laugh. Most of these weren’t particularly funny, but I imagine to him they are because what he was really doing was using the audience watching his film as the people he exposes. He wants us to be grossed out by these comments and site gags and therefore expose our own homophobia in the literal sense of the word -- being afraid, not discriminatory, toward gay men. In a way this is more subversive than Borat and he is challenging his audience even more so in a way that ensures even fewer people get the joke. Perhaps that's his way of not imitating himself.

In a way I think it has worked and exposed how unprepared our culture is to deal with gay men (I exclude lesbians here because so does the movie) in a mature way -- even more so than foreigners. A number of gay-rights groups have come out hard against it calling it a minstrel show and it much a guarantee that conservatives would not approve of the movie. Even a number of reviewers have said that a movie cannot be a satire because it really just exploits stereotypes instead of commenting on them. Both these gay-rights advocates and reviewers don't get it. By accusing it of using stereotypes that are playing into his game and allowing him to make his point: they think there is something wrong with the character because at heart they are not really all that comfortable seeing flamboyantly gay actions on screen whether it be because of inherent homophobia or a movement of many "mainstream" gay-rights groups to promote assimilation instead of acceptance of "gay" culture to the point that they would object to what is obviously a hyperbolic representation. I could imagine a character that is unrealistically masculine or heterosexual (as even more respected action heroes, like Bond, usually are) would not get the same treatment by reviewers, audiences, or advocacy groups.

In the end, though, I think I got his point but I don’t know that it necessarily made the movie a success. Borat was a genuinely funny movie that I can enjoy on repeat viewings. The scene where he brings the woman the shit in a bag, for instance, was downright brilliant from the minute he walked into those people’s home. I’m sure he’s laughing his ass off seeing people’s reaction to his more recent movie. And perhaps if I watched people watch the movie, I could have the same experience of laughing at their reaction. But I can’t. So as a thought experiment it was great, but as a movie -- especially one whose aim is to be funny -- it just doesn’t pull it off. The reason Borat worked was because the humor and the social commentary were top notch. In Bruno he may have raised his social commentary a step higher, but he did so without making a quality movie to make this point.

Adaptation Discussion 2: The Revengening

ALICE

I don't have a whole lot to say at the moment, but the film we watched last night, Alice (unofficial trailer) by Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, got me thinking about a subject we discussed a while ago, namely the liberties filmmakers take when adapting either another work of fiction or historical events to film. The film begins by saying it's "inspired by" Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and in many regards it follows it—the White Rabbit running late, Alice growing and shrinking, tea with the Mad Hatter, flamingo croquet with the Queen of Hearts—but in many respects deviates from it, not only in its events but in its overall tone and mood, to the point that it's clear that Svankmajer felt no need to follow the source material when he didn't want to, presumably based on his own artistic choices and sensibilities. Alice is aesthetically much darker than Carroll's novel, and whereas much of the novel's appeal comes from its wordplay, the film is almost silent, and what dialogue there is is often repetitive. Svankmajer may have used Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a jumping-off point, but he was obviously making his own film, not just adapting Carroll's novel.

This seems somewhat different from what we were discussing earlier, though, since that was about adapting historical events rather than existing fiction. While I generally think that filmmakers should tread carefully in the former case (e.g., Che, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Battleship Potemkin), I don't necessarily think the same holds true for the latter. Whereas an historical adaptation has no clear, "canonical" text on which it's based and to which it can be compared for accuracy—even first-hand accounts aren't ironclad—an adaptation of fiction does have such a text—the original work of fiction—and so doesn't carry the same burden. I guess that's why I have no problem with the fact that Alice deviates greatly from its source material; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is still there for anyone to refer to, so I think that Svankmajer, Tim Burton, Walt Disney, or anyone else doesn't bear the same responsibility (for lack of a better word) and is free to deviate from it however he sees fit.

So do you think that distinction is legitimate, between historical adaptations and fictional adaptations? Or do you think a film like Alice should stick more closely to its source material? That an adapter like Svankmajer owes something to the work he's adapting? Thoughts, feelings, reactions?

None sure about 1 through 8, but 9 was good

ARCHIVES OF THE FANTASTIC: THE NINTH COSMIC CONVERGENCE. So I'm, oh, three weeks or so late on posting this. But what can I say...it's almost like I'm preparing to move!

I don't think it's quite fair to give this movie the same sort of analysis as the other movies we generally talk about here as it is an amateur production. I just thought I would just fill you in about it. The movie is a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi/superhero movie about three heroes, three villains, and the all-knowing Archivist who is one of many that monitor the actions of the various planets across the universe. When the missions of all three villains and heroes converge with the threat of causing serious harm, the Archivist steps in and helps the earthlings come together to save the day and bond.

The filmmakers definitely took advantage of the amateur nature of the project to include some humor and at times winked at the low production values. One of my favorite parts was a chase scene where you could see people gawking and wondering what the heck was going on. This added to the generally fun atmosphere of the whole thing. I noticed the kid in front of me in line when I was getting my beer was an extra in the movie. There was a lot of clapping whenever a new character appeared on screen and one time a little kid even got excited at seeing someone she knew. They definitely knew the crowd for which they made the movie and it seemed to be something they all enjoyed. I personally also had a good time trying to figure out where in town some of the scenes were filmed.

Your cousin, Benja Barker, was quite entertaining as the supervillain Dr. Megahertz because more than any of the other actors, he went all the way with the camp involved in the movie. Did he overact? Yes, of course he did. But that's what it called for.

To be fair and not try to sound overly nice, I should say that as amateur filmmakers, they do have a bit of learning to do. Nearly all of the outdoor scenes were pretty washed out, for instance. But they did a great job of making entertainment for their friends and it looked like they had a fun time doing it.

The Day the Clown Cried 2

FUNNY PEOPLE

I don't want the post title to give the wrong impression. Funny People isn't "so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy . . . so wildly misplaced," as Harry Shearer described Jerry Lewis's never-released Holocaust comedy The Day the Clown Cried. It's actually quite a good movie, if not Apatow's best then certainly his most mature. (I mean "mature" in the artistic sense; don't worry, the dialogue is just as scatalogical as in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.) However, the Apatovian balance between humor and drama is tilted markedly toward drama in Funny People. Whether that makes it a better movie or a worse one will probably be much debated among Apatow fans. In my opinion, it merely makes it a different animal from what we've seen from Apatow before, and so should be judged on its own terms, not on The 40-Year-Old Virgin's or Knocked Up's. And according to those terms, it's a very touching, heart-felt film, but one that also happens to be really funny when it wants to be.

Ira (Seth Rogan) is a struggling LA stand-up comedian (so struggling that his actual income comes from a job at a supermarket deli), living with two other comedians (Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill) whose careers seem to be going somewhere, unlike Ira's. This begins to change when he meets movie-star comedian George Simmons (Adam Sandler, in many respects playing a thinly veiled version of himself), who hires him to write stand-up material for him, act as his personal assistant, and generally do whatever the spoiled celebrity wants him to do (including sitting beside his bed and talking to him to help him to fall asleep). Ira soon discovers that his comic idol isn't just past his prime creatively (George's filmography (examples) is eerily similar to Sandler's in its dubious quality) and suffering from a serious case of middle-aged-celebrity ennui, but also dying from a rare blood disease. However, the just-might-work treatment his doctors have him on ends up working—they explicitly show this in the trailers, so there's no way that's a spoiler—and George uses his new lease on life to reconnect with Laura (Leslie Mann), the love of his life who left him and is now married to an often absent, questionably faithful husband (Eric Bana). Ira, however, comes to feel torn between his loyalty to his idol/employer/friend and his moral qualms about breaking up a family for self-centered, undependable George's sake.

As I said above, while all of Apatow's movies mix comedy and drama, Funny People leans much more heavily toward the dramatic side; not only that, but for much of the movie the drama is fairly dark, dealing with George's illness and what he expects to be his last months of life. That doesn't make Funny People a black comedy, because it doesn't derive its humor from its dark subject matter; rather, the stand-up-comedian humor and the approaching-death drama simply exist side by side. This could have made the movie schizophrenic, with disastrously wide shifts of tone between funny and sad, but Apatow wisely gives primacy of place to the drama and allows the humor to supplement it naturally and organically. There aren't really comedy set-ups, like the speed-dating or drive-home-with-Leslie-Mann scenes in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, just funny dialogue and interactions (in addition to the actual stand-up, of course). Lest this be read as not giving the movie's humor its due, let me emphasize that the humor is really, really good; everybody's funny, from Rogan, Sandler, and Hill to more surprising comedic quarters like Bana (I knew he started out in comedy back in Australia, but I've never seen that material; I may have to rectify that now).

Though the movie's drama ostensibly comes from George's illness and how he and those around him deal with it, much of its poignancy actually comes from its depiction of professional comedy, in which Sandler, Rogen, Mann, and Apatow himself have all participated. Sandler and Apatow lived together in the late '80s while both were struggling stand-ups—the movie opens with a video of their actual prank-calling hijinks together—before Sandler landed SNL and Apatow devoted himself to behind-the-camera work. They, and others they knew and worked with, spent years working on their material and honing their delivery, struggling to make ends meet (by, for instance, living with other comedians, like Ira and his roommates), dreaming of making it one day. While Ira lives at one end of the stand-up way of life, George lives at the other; a decade or more after hitting the big time, he has little to look back on except a series of high-concept movies he's half-embarrassed by, a big empty house, no real friendships (despite all the fellow-celebrities he socializes with; this is one cameo-heavy movie), and memories of how alive he felt climbing up to where he is now. When I called this movie Apatow's most mature movie, I meant it both in its mechanics—its confidence in not needing to bombard the audience with humor and giving center stage to the dramatic aspects—and in its subject matter—nostalgia, regret, appreciation for the little things in life. It should surprise no one who watches this that it was made by a man entering his 40s.

I don't know how fans of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, or of the myriad other projects with which Apatow has been involved to one degree or another, will react to Funny People. The humor's still there, and it's very good, but it's there to augment a dramatic story, instead of the drama being there to tie the comedic elements together. And the drama succeeds just as the humor does, in large part due to how deeply personal it comes across, for both Apatow and Sandler. (Maybe I'm just projecting my views of most of Sandler's movies, but I can't help but see scenes like George watching videos of his old '80s stand-up autobiographically as Sandler saying, "I used to be good, I used to experiment and really put myself out there. When did I get content with collecting paychecks?") Those looking for a duplicate of Apatow's prior movies might be disappointed, but those looking for a heart-felt, poignant, bittersweet film that also happens to be funny as all get out should be well-pleased.

P.S. — One respect in which Funny People stands out is the amount, and quality, of pre-release viral marketing they produced. In addition to the George Simmons movies linked above, there's a website dedicated to Ira's more successful roommate, said roommate's crappy sitcom, and the stand-up of one of Ira's particularly untalented (and so, of course, very popular) fellow-comedians, played by the great Aziz Ansari. Enjoy.

My art film can beat up your summer blockbuster

No, I haven't fallen of the edge of the world. More like I've just been hiding my head in shame for not getting the allusion in your last post's title.

I'm glad to see you responding to my earlier post about Aronofsky and the RoboCop remake. Although we don't totally agree on the question of more "artistic" or "non-mainstream" filmmakers making big-budget summer spectacles for the masses, I honestly don't think our positions are as far apart as you make them out to be. (Oops, there goes the "red meat" you were hoping to sink your teeth into!) I thought you knew me and my cinematic tastes better than to think that I don't like "well-made action" as much as the next guy. It's not as though I look down my nose at anything that isn't My Dinner with Andre or a moody Bergmanesque family drama. Don't you remember how stoked I was to see Snakes on a Plane? (It may not have lived up to those expectations, but that's beside the point.) We've seen enough movies together over the years, and enjoyed them together, that I don't see how you can think that we have a "fundamental difference in our movie preferences"—or if we do, it's certainly not to the extent you make it out to be. Maybe that just means I'm a philistine too.

That said, I still can't help but think that Aronofsky and filmmakers like him could be doing more with their limited time and energy than making superhero movies. I enjoy those movies when they're well made—and I'd certainly rather see guys like Nolan and Raimi making them than Bay—but I just don't think those filmmakers' summer blockbusters are as good as most of their other films. The Dark Knight is probably the best of the kind of movies we're talking about, but I still don't think it has the level of passion and complexity of Memento or The Prestige. I'm not saying it's impossible for superhero movies, or big-budget action/adventure movies of other genres, to have potential for depth, complexity, and genuine emotion. Every genre has that potential; films like Shane, The Searchers, Once upon a Time in the West, and The Assassination of Jesse James show that Westerns aren't all just about cowboys vs. Indians or lawmen vs. bandits, and films like The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2001, Solaris, and Moon show that science fiction isn't just about saucer-men and Buck Rogers. However, I simply don't think that there's been a superhero movie of that caliber yet to raise the genre above the level of the average comic book, as the Westerns and sci-fi films I mentioned raised their respective genres above the level of pulp Western and sci-fi novels. I'd say The Dark Knight and Watchmen have come closest, but the superhero genre still has a long way to go, especially when we remember that those movies are the exception rather than the rule by a sadly wide margin.

So my position is basically that I really like a lot of the big-budget, mainstream movies filmmakers like Nolan and Raimi have made—and I'd probably even enjoy a RoboCop movie made by Aronofsky too. But they seem to have a harder time making truly complex, groundbreaking, passionate products when making those kinds of movies than I've seen them make with other projects. (Of course, meddling on studios' part to protect their $100-million-plus investments is a very possible contributing factor to this as well.) As much as I enjoy these kinds of movies, I can't help but think that these filmmakers could be put to better use elsewhere.