Am I the Only Movie Buff Who Didn't Like Annie Hall?

I write this review with trepidation because I am about to confess that I was not impressed with Annie Hall. I've heard the movie is iconic, and a post-viewing investigation revealed that it has an average rating of five stars here and an astonishing 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. So I know I'm in the minority here. But I watched it with my parents the other night, and while I laughed a few times, mostly I wondered what all the fuss was about.

Maybe I just don't like Woody Allen all that much. Maybe I find it annoying that Alvy, the neurotic, pessimistic, rambling nerd he portrays, is constantly addressing the audience directly. I didn't like it when David Spade did it in The Emperor's New Groove, and I don't like it here. Maybe I'm concerned that I see myself in the nervous little boy in the flashback who can't do his homework because he's worried about the universe imploding. I hate to give the guy a hard time since he already seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders, but I sure hope I haven't grown up to be like him.

Maybe I just don't find the romance between him and Annie (Diane Keaton) particularly touching or hilarious. Maybe it strikes me as tedious that a majority of his conversations seem to be about sex. Maybe I don't like the way the film jumps around between flashbacks, real-time and imaginary scenarios, sometimes without any clear indication of what is happening. Maybe the whole thing feels dated. Maybe I feel stupid because I just don't get it. Maybe it's all of those things. Maybe it's more.

That's not to say that I didn't get any enjoyment out of the movie. I did laugh aloud sometimes at Alvy's dry observations, and I thought some of the film devices were clever, such as the brief interlude with him as a cartoon character interacting with the queen from Snow White and the scene in which he daydreams about conjuring up Marshall McLuhan to silence an obnoxious faux-intellectual fellow filmgoer.

And it's fun to pick out not-yet-famous folks in minor roles: Jeff Goldblum as a guest at a party, Sigourney Weaver as one of Alvy's dates, John Glover as one of Annie's former flames, Christopher Walken as her intense, probably psychotic brother. And of course, I was keeping my eyes peeled for Paul Simon. It took him a long time to show up, but he finally did, and it was a treat to see him exercise his acting chops, which I've previously seen him do on Saturday Night Live with hilarious results.

While the film doesn't feel terribly edgy considering the sort of stuff that shows up on prime time television every night, I was nonetheless a bit surprised that it was only rated PG. Of course, the significance of ratings seems to have shifted somewhat since then. When I see "PG," I automatically think "family movie". This isn't. It's inappropriate for kids, and frankly, I think most would be bored stiff. However, there's really not much profanity or nudity or any of the other criteria to push it up to the next level, since "PG-13" didn't exist back then.

I'm not sorry I rented Annie Hall, but I would never buy it and have no desire to watch it again. I suspect I'm missing the point. Maybe I don't care.

Hairspray Exuberantly Examines the Notion of Otherness

I've been hearing a lot about Hairspray over the last couple years thanks to the enthusiasm of my young cousins, who were such fans of the show that they went to see it on Broadway. Aside from hearing the effervescent opening number, Good Morning, Baltimore - a grand hello to a bustling city that reminds me a lot of our beautifully boisterous introduction to Belle and her little town in Beauty and the Beast - on late-night and early-morning television, in the Macy's Parade and on Ugly Betty, I was pretty unfamiliar with the play, but all the buzz about it was enough to get me pretty pumped up for the movie when I heard that director Adam Shankman would be bringing it to the big screen.

Yesterday, my parents, my friend Libbie and I decided to see for ourselves what all the hype was about. What we got was a joyous kaleidoscope of slightly over-the-top early-sixties eye candy, with the darker edges of that era bubbling beneath the surface until they are brought into the full light of scrutiny when Queen Latifah's matronly Motormouth Maybelle leads a soulful march protesting the segregationist policies of The Corny Collins Show, the American Bandstand-esque television program that turns Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), a starry-eyed teen with a heart as oversized as her pudgy frame, into an overnight sensation.

Blonsky is absolutely infectious in the lead role. The girl is a ray of sunshine, undeterred by all the obstacles that stand in the way of her dream of dancing on her favorite TV show, while also unwilling to compromise her principles for the sake of her ambition. As the film progresses, she becomes acutely aware of how the black students from whom she learns her best dance moves are oppressed, and she yearns to create an environment in which race need no longer be a barrier to opportunities. Just as she has broken down conventional societal expectations of beauty, she strives to show everyone that integration is the wave of the future.

Along the way, she dances her heart out and takes a few time-outs to sigh dreamily over Ricky Nelson-esque Link Larkin (Zac Efron), who gradually comes to see Tracy as a young woman of such substance that she overshadows his perfectly coiffed girlfriend Amber Von Tussle (Brittany Snow), whose conniving mother (Michelle Pfeiffer), the manager of the station on which the dance show airs, undermines the new girl every step of the way despite opposition from host Corny (James Marsden), whose dazzling smile gleams all the brighter whenever Tracy takes to the stage.

Her best friend Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes), a wisp of a girl with an omnipresent lollipop, ducks out from under the icy repression of her puritanical mother Prudy (Allison Janney) when she falls head over heels for Maybelle's exuberant son Seaweed (Elijah Kelley). Tracy, meanwhile, aims to bring her mother Edna (John Travolta), a frumpy laundress whose crippling self-image has long led her to eschew the outside world, into contemporary society. She's not an unreasonable woman; she's just insecure and set in her ways, and with a little nudging she is ready to support her daughter in her endeavors, though perhaps not as whole-heartedly as Tracy's gentle, eccentric father Wilbur (Christopher Walken), who achieved his own long-held goal when he opened a novelty shop, which enjoys an upsurge in business in the wake of Tracy's newfound celebrity.

Much was made of Travolta's gender-bending performance here, and he certainly immersed himself in the part, though I was never quite able to forget that she was actually a he, and neither was the rest of the audience, judging by the nervous titters that rippled whenever Walken edged in for a kiss. After his over-the-top performance in High School Musical, I wasn't sure what I would think of Efron, but he was much more nuanced here, even though he was in a similar role as a dreamboat who is startled into self-awareness by the arrival of an unconventional gal. I didn't think there was a weak link in the cast, and I give special kudos to Janney for making such a simultaneously humorous and terrifying impression in her brief appearances.

As someone with limited familiarity with the songs in this film, I was impressed by their energy and complexity. The lyrics in particular are very clever, perfectly capturing the various speech patterns of characters and often riddled with sly innuendoes that indicate this was not such an innocent time after all. Most of these are subtle enough that they would probably go right over the heads of youngsters, and there's little else in the movie that could be considered objectionable. Indeed, Hairspray is an ideal film for the family to see together, as the bouncy dance numbers and likable characters reel audiences in for a poignant lesson in the importance of accepting other people's differences. Don't miss out!

"Nothing Improves a Movie Like Low Expectations."

If you scroll through my movie reviews, you will likely notice that almost all of them bear a four- or five-star rating. There are two major reasons for this. The first is that I try to look for the good in things. I’m willing to overlook a lot of bad stuff if I ultimately enjoyed the movie more than I hated it. The other reason is that I rarely watch movies that I think I won’t like. Once in a while, though, I figure I might as well increase my credibility by going to a movie that I’m sure will earn a miserable review from me. So I didn’t complain much when my friend suggested going to see Wedding Crashers, a film I had pinned as one of the most disgusting of the summer. “But what if you like it?” my brother queried just before I left. “Well,” I replied, “I shall be very disappointed.”

Pile on the disappointment.

The film opens with John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) hard at work at their job, pretty much the only time this happens in the movie. Right off the bat it is easy to see that the two are good buddies. It also seems that their success in their career is based upon their immense capacity to irritate whoever they are advising. John hangs back a bit, only inserting occasional comments, but Jeremy talks with the speed of the Micro Machine Man, and each thing he says makes less sense than whatever came before. His motor-mouth tendencies come up several times in the film, causing several tirades that are somewhat amusing but more obnoxious. His frenetic energy makes him the more annoying of the two, though I’ve yet to see a movie in which I don’t find Wilson irritating. It’s harder to pinpoint just why, but I think it has to do with an overall aura of ditziness. Actually, for the most part he came across more intelligently here than he usually does, and there was an undeniable sweetness to his character. And while I didn’t like Vaughn’s character much, I had to admire his loyalty and feel sorry for him when John was too head over heels to be sensitive to his friend’s needs.

The premise of two guys crashing weddings in order to hook up with vulnerable young women is a pretty crude one, but the extensive montage scene showing how they achieve those goals is amusing and ingenious without being offensive, at least until the last minute or so. This is where the men’s real talents come to the forefront, and they manage to ingratiate themselves to a wide variety of guests, becoming the life of the party whether the wedding is Jewish, Indian or Greek. They show such congeniality, restraint and charisma during these receptions, it’s a shame such talents are reserved for ultimately unscrupulous activities. I couldn’t help but think of all the great things they could be doing if they focused their skills more appropriately.

The real conflict begins after the exhausting but exhilarating summer wedding season is over and they are settling back into a more relaxed lifestyle. But the wedding of prominent Secretary Cleary’s (Christopher Walken) daughter draws them out of their off-season leisure, and the high stakes and change of pace seem to impinge upon their decorum, at least at the wedding. Their barely whispered discussions in the church pew are jarring and most unseemly for the setting, though I couldn’t help but be amused by their wager over which biblical lesson the bride’s sister would read. The movie as a whole makes some interesting observations about the traditions involved in weddings – and the frequent insincerity of the guests. There’s a certain cynicism to it, but at the same time you walk out of the movie with the feeling that marriage is an institution to be respected.

John and Jeremy both lay eyes early on their quarry. Both make a connection by the reception. Jeremy achieves his ultimate goal but finds his plan has backfired. Gloria (Isla Fisher), sister of the bride, is smitten with him – is in fact obsessed with him to a psychotic degree. Worse, he cannot beat a hasty retreat because John has forged an emotional bond with Claire (Rachel McAdams), also a sister of the bride, and he wants some extra time to get to know her better. She has ceased to become one-night stand material; John, perhaps for the first time in his life, is in love. What follows is a weekend with the rather deranged family in which John sneaks in as much time with Claire as he can, Jeremy endures any number of dangerous and uncomfortable situations in the name of not abandoning his friend, and Claire’s boyfriend Sack (Bradley Cooper) hires a detective to see what these two newcomers are up to.

Probably my favorite character in the whole shebang is Secretary Clearly. Walken has a knack for creating compelling supporting characters, and he makes the senator a consummate politician and sportsman, but above all a completely devoted father. His scenes with McAdams are especially touching. He’s stuck with a tipsy wife (Jane Seymour) who confides that she has been unfaithful to him for most of their marriage. She seems severely unbalanced and spends most of her on-screen time trying to seduce John. Perhaps even more disturbing is Grandma Mary (Ellen Albertini Dow, as vitriolic here as she was sweet in The Wedding Singer), who is uncouth and vocally homophobic and, as my friend pointed out, really could have been excised from the film entirely with no detriment to the plot. They probably could have done away with Todd (Keir O’Donnell), the brooding black sheep of the Cleary family, altogether. He is a leering, unkempt presence, and though I initially wanted to feel sorry for this unappreciated artist, he was too surly and downright creepy to win points from me. His main purpose, I guess, is to make Jeremy also suffer through seduction from a most unwelcome family member, but he has to put up with so much anyway, this seems most unnecessary. Rounding out the loony bin is Sack, who’s a stereotypical svelte, controlling jerk who takes his girlfriend for granted but sees red if he thinks anyone else might have his eye on her. His cocky attitude and constant bullying make him a guy it’s easy to love to hate.

For the most part, I found Gloria to be utterly obnoxious, but I guess that’s okay because I felt the same way about Jeremy. The two are suited to one another. Claire is an entirely different story. This is McAdams at the most likable I’ve seen her. Too manipulative in Mean Girls, too volatile in The Notebook, here she is just a sweet, idealistic girl who loves her dad and is stuck with a major bummer of a boyfriend who the whole family seems to love. She thinks she loves him, but the more she sees of his vicious behavior towards the two mysterious guests the less sure she is. Cut out all of the gross-out trappings, and Wilson and McAdams create a surprisingly tender romantic comedy.

I had heard enough about this film beforehand that I expected non-stop opportunities for me to wave a hefty bag of popcorn in front of my face in order to shield my eyes from the depravities occurring on screen. What I got was long stretches of film that were hardly offensive at all, with a few extremely tasteless scenes thrown in so the group of guys roaring in the back row of the theater wouldn’t feel as though they had wasted their money. If TBS got its hands on this, strategically removing the most blatantly low-brow parts and smoothing over the raunchy language, it would probably be a perfectly appropriate film. Granted, if I hadn’t been so sure I would hate it, I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much. But however I got there, I arrived at the conclusion that Wedding Crashers is actually a decent movie. Sorry, Epinions, looks like it’s going to be another high rating from bilbopooh.

DiCaprio Resurfaces as Con Man Extraordinaire

Poor Leonardo DiCaprio. It must be hard to go from the most popular guy in Hollywood to the laughingstock is just months. Leo was a victim of his own success, grinning out from king-size posters, whispering fervently on that annoyingly spoilerific radio version of My Heart Will Go On (which must have played about once an hour) and appearing in various forms in the lockers and notebooks of millions of teenage girls across the country. It was overkill, and for a while I wondered whether we’d ever see him again. He seemed to drop almost entirely out of view. Then I saw Catch Me If You Can.

It’s five or so years later, and Leo once again is cast as a teenager, just 15 at the earliest point in this movie’s chronology. The teen in question is Frank Abagnale, Jr., a sweet-natured kid who turns con man in order to evade the responsibility of choosing which parent to live with after their divorce. Once his ingenious schemes begin and he starts to make money, he becomes determined to earn enough to replace everything they lost when his father (Christopher Walken), a bit of a con man himself, got caught and had his assets seized.

I can’t help but be reminded a bit of Huck Finn with Frank Abagnale, even though the circumstances are entirely different. Both are kids who are absolutely brilliant when it comes to pulling off highly improbable schemes. Moreover, both start running because of their fathers, though Huck hates his Dad and Frank adores his. At any rate, there’s something very appealing about this young man. He’s very likable, and nothing he does has malicious intent. When Frank begs Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), the agent who has been chasing him, to call a truce, we wish he could just give up the game with no consequences.

DiCaprio does a fantastic job as Frank, giving us just the right combination of sweetheart and wise guy. It’s come to the point at which it seems silly to even entertain the suggestion that Tom Hanks could be lousy in a movie. His performance, complete with a heavy New York accent, certainly measures up to DiCaprio’s. While Hanratty is a bit harsher than most of the characters we are used to seeing Hanks play – as demonstrated in an amusing scene that may have been what earned the film its PG-13 rating – he is really a decent guy, and it becomes evident that as aggravated as he is by the fact that Frank keeps slipping through his fingers, he has come to care about the teenager.

Walken turns in a rather haunting performance as Frank Sr. We get the sense that his son is succeeding where his father failed. His father is proud and perhaps a bit jealous as well, and he doesn’t see surrender as a viable option. His son has the Feds on the run; that should be enough to make him happy. Amy Adams turns in a sweet performance as insecure Brenda Strong, a candy-striper to whom Frank becomes very attached during his tenure as a doctor. When she brings him home to meet her parents, he has to reckon with her father (Martin Sheen), who seems intimidating at first but turns out to be a big softie. I really enjoyed his scenes with this family and, as a Lutheran, found their devotion to that denomination charming.

There’s something vaguely campy about the style of this movie. It’s a drama, but it has almost equal parts comedy. As Frank runs the gamut of impersonations – substitute teacher, airline pilot, doctor, lawyer – he relies as much on his charisma as his impressive check-forging skills. There are many scenes demonstrating his remarkable quick thinking, and these are generally the most riotous in the film. His first encounter with Hanratty is especially hilarious.

Catch Me If You Can is a fun movie with a largely happy ending. Like The Terminal, it’s light-hearted enough that it probably won’t go down as a milestone in the careers of its main participants. But it’s an enjoyable couple of hours with little objectionable content, and it was what convinced me that DiCaprio’s career is far from over. Catch yourself watching Catch Me If You Can.

Hunt for a Better Movie

Part Home Alone and part Henry's Awful Mistake, Mouse Hunt is the chaotic tale of a pair of estranged brothers united in the effort to sell their recently deceased father's antique mansion. Ernie Smuntz (Nathan Lane) is a chef who has just lost his job because of an unfortunate (and thoroughly disgusting) incident involving the mayor and a dinner which includes a roach as an uninvited ingredient. Obnoxious and manipulative, he only seems concerned with milking the most out of his father's inheritance.

Lars Smuntz (Lee Evans) is a pitiable fellow who shares his father's love of string and is determined to do what his father would want him to. He is the gentler of the pair, initially more reluctant to cause physical harm to the four-legged houseguest who will soon make the brothers' lives miserable. Recently separated from his money-loving and heartless wife, Lars joins Ernie in moving into the creepy old mansion his father left them. It seems to be a dusty old dump until a set of blueprints reveals that it was designed by a world-famous architect. Soon they are busy preparing for the grand unveiling of the house and concern themselves with getting it in perfect condition for the auction.

Their attention is soon diverted, however, when they discover a mouse in their house. For some reason, they decide to focus all of their efforts on disposing of this uninvited houseguest, taking ridiculous measures and destroying the house in the process. Not only is the mouse tiny, he's crafty and manages to beat the brothers at their game every time. Minutes after the first meeting with the mouse, I could see this was going to be a very long movie. I found myself groaning over and over again, wondering how these two could possibly be so stupid. Just leave the mouse alone, already! What the heck is the big deal?

A monster cat and a psychotic exterminator (Christopher Walken) fail to foil the mouse's determination to survive, and each plot turns out more disastrous than the last. The mouse has no great hatred against the brothers; all of the damage he causes them is an unavoidable side effect of his attempts at survival. In the end he wins, and the brothers, after losing their house to their furry nemesis, finally learn to combine their talents to create a business that both of them can enjoy. Who shows them the way? Why, the mouse, of course. And in the end, they're all the best of friends.

The slapstick is overwhelming in this movie; it's just about all there is. And while a couple of pratfalls are good for a laugh, an hour and a half of them gave me a monster headache. It was much too far-fetched to be funny for long, and much too painful. None of the characters was especially likable, with the possible exception of the mouse, but few were despicable. They were just sorta there, and their personalities were inconsistent throughout the film. "Since you are lukewarm I shall spit you out of my mouth..." That's what I suggest you do with this movie.