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Reviews
The Dark Knight (2008)
Batman Continues
Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in the Dark Knight may have been one for the ages and certainly worthy the ensuing Oscar buzz, but I can't shake the feeling that much of the praise surrounding the Joker has been misplaced.
While the focus on Ledger is certainly understandable given both his riveting performance and tragic death, not enough is being said about the writing and direction of his character. Writer/Director Christopher Nolan are the main factors behind one of the most menacing villains in movie history, which is no exaggeration.
Discarded are the traditional motivations for movie villains, including greed, pride and revenge. The Joker is in it for something much more curious, entertainment. Many of the Joker's scenes of dialogue reminded me of the monologues of the recently deceased George Carlin, who claimed to revel in major catastrophes and saw massive human death as a form of entertainment. The reason Carlin's bits were so funny and the Joker is so fascinating is that both touch on a taboo that is the cause of much guilt in our society, which is that most people have some enthusiasm when other people suffer.
It is not a concept most people are comfortable with, but the evidence for this phenomenon is undeniable. Go to cnn.com, and you will see that most of the stories with the most hits have nothing to do with public policy or global warming, but deal with sex and death. NBC's Dateline, once a beacon of investigative journalism has now turned into a role call of young, attractive, murder victims. Not that there is anything wrong with that. NBC is simply serving its audience, and so is the Dark Knight.
The Joker is surrounded by a cast of criminals who he is almost bored with. He disparagingly calls them "schemers," "manipulators," and at one point he declares that Gotham City "deserves a better class of criminal, and I'm going to give it to them." It sounds almost altruistic, like he is performing some sort of public service. And it is true, the Joker is a better class of criminal. Next to the Joker, the other vicious thugs in the movie seem like small-time hustlers. Their motivations are boring, their actions are predictable, and they don't even have the type of integrity that binds good criminals together. They will turn on each other just to make a little money.
The Joker, on the other hand, is more concerned with issues and behavior. He is like a mad sociologist. He murders an innocent person every night for a short period of time, simply to test the reaction of Gotham City and its vigilante hero, Batman. The Joker detests the criminals as well as law enforcement, because they make futile efforts to control society. He sees society as too fluid and unpredictable to be controlled as both sides would like. The Joker is a criminal genius who makes extensive plans for specific tasks but has no overarching initiative. No goals to build a criminal empire in order to gain wealth. In this sense, the Joker is a more sympathetic villain and certainly more watchable.
I mean no slight to the late Ledger, but this is a pretty hard role to screw up. The Joker is just so intrinsically fascinating as are the other major players in the Dark Knight, including Gotham City, which this time, resembles a bloated Chicago.
Christian Bale plays billionaire Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Batman, who has grown tired of the police's ineptitude in dealing with organized crime, so he ends it himself. This Batman is a more deep and mysterious Batman than the one I have seen in previous Batman movies (Unfortunately, I have not seen Batman Begins, though I now hope to see it as soon as possible).
He believes Batman's main role is to provide a symbol of hope and security to the people of Gotham City. We get the sense Bruce Wayne would trade all of his personal wealth to keep the idea of Batman alive. He is a worthy counterpart to the Joker, because he is not interested in the possible vain rewards of his pursuits. Batman vs. the Joker is a battle of values. Structure vs. Chaos. Preservation vs. Disintegration. Self-righteousness vs. Indifference to human suffering.
This is very deep film, indeed. I have not mentioned the other characters performed admirably by the likes of Michael Cain, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, and others, nor will I. I have only so much space, and what I admire above all else in the Dark Knight is its vision and inventiveness.
There is just enough realism and just enough exaggeration in all the right places to create both a relatable and mercurially riveting story at the same time. Gotham City is larger than life and the only place complex and nuanced enough to be an appropriate stage for these two villains.
It must be noted that while this is a Batman movie it is not a kids film. Many critics and other social commentators have cited the film's violence as the primary reason to deter children from seeing it. However, I would be more concerned with taking children to see a movie longer than two and a half hours with so many dark, complicated issues right on the surface of the film. Compared to the subject matter, the violence is quite tame. I can not give an estimate of what age of child should be permitted. It all has to do with the maturity of the child. If your seven-year-old is sophisticated enough to appreciate many dark elements of this film working in perfect harmony, by all means, take him. He will have seen one of the best fantasies he ever will see.
Step Brothers (2008)
They had more fun making it than I had watching it
Will Farrell tea bagging a drum set is not funny. John C. Reilly in bicycle shorts or a Chewbacca mask is not funny. The two stars pulverizing a playground full of eleven-year-olds is also, you guessed it, not funny. In fact, it is desperate and pathetic.
It is small consolation that one of the egregious scenes in the movie takes place after the credits roll. Unfortunately though, the aisles and exits at the theatre I saw Step Brothers at were clogged with spectators who, beyond any intelligible reason as far as I can tell, were amused enough by the first 100 minutes to stick around for the encore, so I was stuck.
I find it necessary to qualify my above remarks, as well as those I have not yet written down, by saying I do not object to raunchy, low-brow humor. Any one of the images mentioned in the lead of this review could have been as funny as the pie scene in American Pie or the testicle/zipper shot in There's Something About Mary. But there needs to be some context and perhaps a little motivation as well. We need to know why something is funny, and understand how it fits in with the world its movie occupies. The images themselves do not suffice, no matter how shocking or disgusting.
If you are not yet familiar with the general set-up of Step Brothers through the movie's excessively aggressive and ubiquitous marketing campaign, it is rather simple. Will Farrell and John C. Reilly play two slacker children- one is forty years old and the other is pushing forty with a short stick- whose successful, motivated single parents get married, and therefore begin the weirdest Brady Bunch type family in movie history. Farrell and Reilly's characters hate each other upon sight and bicker insufferably until they realize they are cut from the same degenerate cloth and then become best pals.
Eventually, the father, a revered and important physician played by Richard Jenkins, becomes so enraged by the overgrown adolescents' antics, that he delivers an ultimatum to them. Get jobs and move out by the end of the month. I feel this is all the plot exposition this film deserves, because Step Brothers is more about a series of failed gags and profanity for profanity's sake.
I consider myself to have a very high tolerance for explicit, raunchy sexual behavior and an even higher tolerance for foul language, but even I found Step Brothers to be puke-inducing, more than a bit rough. Remember the tea bagging scene mentioned in the lead. We do get to see every hairy inch of Will Farrell's scrotum. It does not advance the plot. It is not the logical conclusion of a series of events. It is not executed with any sort of subtlety or surprise, it is telegraphed a week ahead of time. It serves no function whatsoever except to show Will Farrell's testicles because Farrell, who co-wrote the script with director Adam McKay, thinks it is funny. It is not, and neither are the endless gags which continually use sex, genitalia, cursing, etc. as bludgeons. It is not so much a movie as an exercise in arbitrary weirdness and manic perversion.
The clerk who sold me my ticket said that while most of the younger audiences seemed to love the film, many middle-aged moviegoers had left the film enraged, demanding to be refunded. To me, this does not demonstrate a schism in tolerance, but a schism in taste. Today's middle-aged moviegoer grew up with Animal House and Porky's, and was quick to embrace the aforementioned American Pie and There's Something About Mary. And anybody willing to put down ten bucks to see a movie starring the man behind Old School must have been prepared for some politically incorrect humor. However, in Step Brothers it is not funny, just depressing, mean-spirited and reprehensible.
Even more depressing, is the fact that there is a kernel of a good idea here. There is endless comedic possibility of two social misfits with Peter Pan complexes who are seemingly oblivious to all real world expectations. Unfortunately, this movie is completely unwilling to push the frontiers of any sort of substance whatsoever. It just falls back on the same safe, broad humor that so many of Farrell's previous efforts are marked by.
Worse yet, is that the two lead characters' quirks are made less interesting by the supporting characters in the movie. Everybody is pretty much the exact same. Even the supposed smart, successful people in Step Brothers behave like social deviants, giving Farrell and Reilly nothing to bounce their energy off of. They hardly even stand out as weirdos. Even the straight-laced father succumbs to visions of being a T-Rex. It is not a fantasy, but a goal.
There is something potentially fascinating about a successful doctor who aspires to be a member of a different species, one that is extinct to boot, but like so much of the rest of the movie, the joke is undercut by the tone of the rest of the film. The undeniable chemistry between Farrell and Reilly is the only thing that makes this film supportable. They really embody these characters and go all the way with them. Unfortunately, that is all the way to the toilet. The film displays many symptoms of Farrell's classic "Ain't I cute" syndrome.
This film makes the classic mistake of believing goofiness is an adequate substitute for wit. All comedy writers, directors, and actors would serve themselves well to observe a few basic lessons. Smart people are funnier than dumb people. Secure, well-adjusted people are funnier than zany outcasts. And most importantly, a bad gag done loudly is even more annoying than the same bad gag performed at a humble volume.
In a summer of surprisingly strong major studio releases, Step Brothers does what it can to taint the cinematic gene pool.