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Reviews
Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
Truly a Horrible Adaptation of the French Film
It might help if you never saw the original French version, "Les Diner des Cons," Somehow, when Hollywood appropriates French films it nearly always leads to a disappointment (or loss) in translation. This is no exception.
The original French film was built on a satirical premise of French social manners, based on how the French view a cultivated person. I don't know what this version satirizes, and I don't think anyone involved in this film did, either.
The original version was also very funny. The humorous situations, very similar to the US version, were beautifully timed and very plausible. I've never laughed so much as I did watching the French version.
To make this story plausible, the Rudd role really needs to be convincingly ruthless and mean. But Paul Rudd as a supposedly ambitious private equity analyst trying to climb the corporate ladder only comes off a nice guy, a regular guy, a bland guy - not someone who really wants to win at all costs - which would justify all the bad luck the character has.
Carrell, as the idiot, should almost immediately gain our sympathy, but this over-the-top performance with the fake hair, nose and buck teeth only plays for low humor laughs. In the end, it's really hard to care about his broken marriage or the fact that he was ridiculed. The manic Carrell pitted against the bland Rudd comes off acting like Jim Carrey's Lloyd Christmas in "Dumb and Dumber", except without the laughs.
My advice - get a copy of "Les Diner des Cons" if you want a to see a really great film and laugh yourself silly.
Chaos (2005)
Phillippe as a Tough Cop: Arrested Development
Obvious tailored vehicle for Ryan Philippe. It seem the studios were hoping he could play a lead tough cop and not look like he's eternally 16 (he can't).
Heavyweights Jason Statham and Welsey Snipes serve as bookends to Phillippe, but when they're not on the screen Phillippe flounders; his shallow acting style has nothing to bounce off of.
The script is a typical late 20th century potboiler good cop/bad cop with a ridiculously predictable plot and dialogue lifted out of 1970s TV cop shows, such as "The Streets of San Francisco." Snipes reprises his role as the eternal black-hat villain, playing a slightly less crazed madman than his Demolition Man role. However, there wasn't much for Snipes and Statham to chew on. Statham's character announces he'd given up nicotine and caffeine - something this movie badly needed injections of.
Truly forgettable moment: Ryan Phillippe expounding on Buddhist dogma: Galloway: Are you a Buddhist? Dekker: No. It's just something I picked up along the way.
Mary (2005)
In the Beginning was Words, Words, Words
I'll need to start at the end of this film. No spoiler, don't worry. Just me saying, "Huh?" Ferrara's rambling, affected film left me stranded at the end in a Dead Sea. I really wanted to find something to recommend in this film, but all I could think of was how unfocused it was, how miscast, and how dull.
One particular problem was Ferrara couldn't decide if he wanted to make an investigative documentary or a inspiring religious drama. On the one side we've got real theologians yammering away about Jesus and Mary, and clips of violence in Palestine. On the other side we have two stories about New Yorkers having spiritual identity crises, and an actress still neurotically lost in her role wandering through the streets of Jerusalem looking for something to eat, or something. In the end we get a murky, arty film with meandering plot lines that don't really go anywhere.
In addition we have a casting problem. Juliette Binoche as the ersatz Magdalene plays her role as a treacly, new-agey Christian proselytizer. She reminded me of the people who accost you on buses asking you if you've found Jesus yet.
Modine and Whitaker, both plainly uncomfortable playing their roles, end up giving us melodramatic performances that, when arriving at the moment of spiritual catharsis, cause them to start chewing up the scenery. I couldn't help thinking that Whitaker's appeal to God in a hospital chapel made him look like a subject in a Goya painting, but without the pathos that the artist's subjects engenders. Both actors were not able to evince any genuine feelings, which is due mostly to a plot that doesn't allow them to develop their characters in the first place.
Better to watch Kazantzakis, or even Gibson. Or see "Cammina, Cammina" by Ermanno Olmi.