Movie Review: Hope Springs

Plot: After thirty years of marriage, Kay (Meryl Streep) feels as if her marriage has hit a plateau. Much to Arnold’s (Tommy Lee Jones) displeasure, they set off on a week-long intensive marriage counseling session to see if there is anything left worth saving.

Last summer one film came and took me by surprise, and that was Crazy, Stupid, Love. I didn’t see a lot of promotion for it and I went into it with low expectations. Hope Springs is hands down this year’s Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Hope Springs works on so many levels. Obviously you can’t get much more A-list, star power than 17 time Academy Award nominee and three time winner Meryl Streep and three time Academy Award nominee and one time winner Tommy Lee Jones. These two are where it’s at if you need a good drama, but to knock it out of the park like they did in a comedy…..kudos.

I think this film is an important one because we live in a country where the divorce rate is over FIFTY percent. That’s devastating. And while that statistic is devastating, another sad fact is after 30 years of marriage, many fade into nothing more than two people coexisting in a house with little to discuss and even less affection shown. Hope Springs does a wonderful job tackling this issue.
Obviously with these two, the performances are spot on. Meryl Streep plays Kay who is desperate for love, conversation and affection from her husband. She is miserable in her life because she is miserable in her marriage. Your heart really goes out to her because she tries so hard to grab the attention of her husband.

Jones’ character is the exact opposite. Arnold is stubborn, hard headed and oblivious to any signs his wife tries to throw his way. He has a robotic schedule that consists of the same events every day. Upon Kay’s proposal to leave town and attend a week long marriage counseling session, he laughs the idea off. Upon arriving, he nags and complains the entire time as old men do. Jones’ performance in the film is hysterical. I know men just like him and director David Frankel does a fantastic job getting a great comedic performance from him.

Steve Carrell also stars in the film as their therapist, Dr. Feld. After watching the film it occurred to me that Carrell needs to give up his comedic roles and focus on more serious ones. As I watch Little Miss Sunshine, Dan In Real Life, Crazy, Stupid, Love and Hope Springs, I think about what a great actor he is. But then I watch Date Night, Evan Almighty, Get Smart and Dinner for Schmucks, I think that the guy is terrible. He once again gives a great performance in the film as he does in all of his dramatic roles he has taken, and I truly believe the guy has an Oscar performance in him if he gets the right role.

If I asked you who David Frankel was, you more than likely wouldn’t know, but I think he will soon be a sought after director. Frankel has had numerous hits with; The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me and the HIGHLY overlooked and underrated film The Big Year. If I have to sit through a chick flick, I want them to be worth my time. So far both of his has been worth it as well as his other two films. I hope he can keep the streak going.

While Hope Springs is hilarious with strong performances, it still can’t get away from a typical chick flick formula. Towards the end it does draw out and dip down into a little too much sappiness. It’s a predictable formula, but it doesn’t get too bad.

Hope Springs showed me what I don’t want my marriage to become and is perfect for any married couple whether it’s of thirty years, fifteen years or six months.

Final Verdict: 8/10

Movie Review: The Campaign

Plot: After a scandal hurts Cam Brady’s fifth consecutive run at Congress, two CEO’s influence dim witted Marty Huggins, son of a popular retired congressman, to run against Brady so that they can have control over the North Carolina District.

Comedy is a tough gig to keep going strong at. When you look at the careers of great comedians such as Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, they all have one thing in common; their careers get worse as they get older. How long can a fast speaking, hot tempered Eddie Murphy character continue to be funny? How long can a yelling, high pitched, uneducated slacker Adam Sandler character continue to be funny? And how long can an over confident, yelling while stringing a bunch of nonsense words together Will Ferrell character continue to be funny? In my opinion all of these guys have had their time. It’s not their fault, they are funny but after five and six movies of the same thing, they lose their punch. Zach Galafanakis is right on track with the rest of them. Sure, he’s hilarious in The Hangover, but did anyone else think that the second time around the gig was kind of up? And Due Date was funny as well, but as you watched didn’t you think to yourself, “He’s just like Alan from The Hangover”. So when trailers began to run for The Campaign, I thought to myself that this would be it for Galafanakis. I was already convinced that Ferrell would fall flat, but I still thought Zach had one more shot before his act gets old. Time will tell if that’s the case for Galafanakis, he and Owen Wilson have a film coming out, followed by The Hangover 3. But until then, he has at least gone out on a high note.

The film starts off with Ferrell’s character and I was surprised to find Ferrell funny again. Director Jay Roach was very smart about how he approached the film. First was giving it an “R” rating. The last Ferrell movie I enjoyed was Step Brothers, another “R” rated film. This gave Ferrell more range with his character since there would be no limitations.

The second thing Roach and the writers did was split it 60/40, as in Galafanakis was in the film sixty percent of the time compared to Ferrell’s forty, very smart because Ferrell can get overbearing quickly.

Ferrell doesn’t give any kind of miraculous performance, it’s the same thing we’ve seen a dozen times from him, it just happens to work this time around. He’s a sleazy congressman who gets caught having an affair after leaving a dirty voicemail on the wrong phone number. He has a cutthroat approach to the campaign doing anything it takes to win. I hope Ferrell continues to take this approach in his roles. He does better as an esemble. When I think of the films I like,I think of Old School, Anchorman and Step Brothers. All ensemble casts. His only solo film I liked was Talledega Nights. This is the way to go for him.

Galafanakis is the same story. I did find him to be the funnier of the two, but once again he is playing the same character we’ve seen before, only this time a bit dumber. His character Marty comes off charmingly dumb as he wrestles with who he is and who his campaign manager wants him to become. I don't know how they got through their scenes because his accent in the film is hilarious.

I found Dylann McDermott's character to be a nice surprise. McDermott plays Tim Wattley, Marty's campaign manager. Wattley is your typical “man in black” villain. I’m a fan of McDermott’s but he has never quite found his role after The Practice ended. I thought he was headed for a nice comeback with American Horror Story, but that show ended up taking a different turn. He has a nice dark comedy vibe to him that he should pursue more of. I felt like they could have worked him into more of the story, but he was definitely a bright spot for the film.

The third thing Roach and the writers did that was clever, was making the film appealing to two different crowds. If you don’t keep up with politics, you will enjoy this film as a simple comedy. If you do keep up with politics, you may enjoy the film a little more as they have thrown in a lot of references to things that are going on today. John Lithgow and Dan Akroyd play the Motch brothers, billionaire CEO’s who are loosely based off the Koch brothers who have been accused of paying millions to get people into Congress and more recently for paying $100 million dollars to have Paul Ryan put on the Republican ticket for Vice President. Had the film been too political or shoved one’s political stance down the audience’s throat, it could have been a turnoff, but they did a great job at balancing that.

The film was much better and much funnier than I could have hoped for. Enjoy it, it could be a while before we get a decent film out of either one of these guys anytime soon……I’m looking at you Anchorman 2 and Hangover 3.

Final Verdict: 7/10

Movie Review: Total Recall

Plot: In the future, most of Earth has been destroyed by chemical warfare and has been divided into two hemispheres. Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell) is a factory worker, living with his wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale) in the poverty stricken hemisphere known as the Colony. Plagued by dreams and wanting more from his life, he visits ReKall to have a dream vacation implanted. As the procedure begins, Quaid discovers that he’s actually a secret agent named Hauser, whose memory was erased by the president of Euromerica, Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston). Now with Lori, herself an agent in Cohaagen’s force, trying to kill him, Quaid/Hauser must go on the run, and discover the secret his suppressed memories hold before it’s too late.

In 1990 Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, hit theaters and became the suprise highest grossing film of the year. After its release, Columbia Pictures tried for years to get a sequel on the screen with several failed attempts. After a sequel couldn't be worked out they began trying for a remake, which also went throught failed attempt after failed attempt, as well as a television series that was cancelled after one season. After 22 years of efforts, Total Recall has finally made it back to theaters, and with a cast like Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston and Bill Nighy it should be pretty good right?

The first twenty minutes of this film builds up to something potentially great. Director Len Wiseman has built a beautiful technologically advanced world that is the best I've seen since Spielberg's Minority Report. Much like Minority Report, the weapons, tools, vehichles and appliances are vastly advanced while keeping them in the realm of possibility of one day acutally having the potential to exist.

Sadly, once the action begins the film goes downhill quick. I'm not a fan of "chase" films because most of them have the same formula; the protagonist is on the run, the antagonist catches up to the protagonist, big action scene, the protagonist gets away, and this formula is repeated for two hours. It is hard to develop characters and a plot with a set up like this, and Total Recall is no exception to the rule. It's a mess. Films like Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can and the Bourne series take time with their films. Yes, they are on the run but there doesn't have to be an unrealistic action sequence every fifteen minutes. It's not a race and it's ok for a character to stay in one place for more than five minutes.

Most of the build up going in for me was the cast they had lined up, but unfortunately they were a disappointement and not even the great Bryan Cranston could hold his own. I thought this was Farrell's chance for a big comeback, but he had next to no emotion in the film. He looks bored and uninterested in most of the tense scenes. Don't get me wrong, the writers are to blame for this mess, but he is to blame for the performance. I was excited to see Kate Beckinsale in her first role as a villain and for a moment she does really well. But having your husband as the director can really blow it for you sometimes because she was in this film WAY to much. I mean Len Wiseman crammed her in as much as he possibly could and tried to boost her up as some action star. It failed big time not to mention she had the worst lines out of anyone. So when Jessica Biel enters the film, I'm thinking that maybe she can pick up the slack but she was the worst out of them all. Her character was uninteresting and more of a problem than a help. So by the time Bryan Cranston shows up, it's to little to late for him as he is a cliche'd power hungry villain that falls flat.

But the main offenders of this trainwreck are the writers. I'm suprised that Columbia Pictures were not more aggresive in their hires since the studio wanted this to be a franchise so badly. Between the two writers they have a resume of films such as; Salt, Street Kings, Ultraviolet and Race to Witch Mountain. These B to C level writers do not cut it when making a film with this kind of budget. As a viewer I was insulted at the countless stupid scenerios that we are supposed to just believe and accept. 1) When a man walks into a room shooting at officers, they don't stand and watch while only one officer fires back at a time. 2) If your going at high speeds through the center of the Earth and your standing on top of the transportation device, you're not going to be ok, you're going to fly off first of all and burst into flames secondly. 3) Task forces can't appear out of thin air. It's 2012 and I demand a smarter script. This could have been pulled off in the 80's or early 90's but not today.

Aside from cramming his wife into the film extremley to much, Wiseman created a fantastic world with a sour and rotten core thanks to poor, lazy writing. And what a shame because this had potential. Now Columbia Pictures is left with what is sure to be a dead franchise now.

Final Verdict: 4/10 (a generous 4/10 I might add)