The Screengrab : superbad

Screengrab Review: “Adventureland”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:30:00 GMT

It’s the summer of 1987, which means I’m cleaning rooms at a motel in Ellsworth, Maine between my sophomore and junior years of college. It’s not my dream summer job by any means; I’d much rather be manning the midway at the Blue Hill Fair, urging passersby to shoot squirtguns at the clown’s nose for the chance to win themselves a decorative and functional Def Leppard mirror. The screams from the Zipper ride, the smell of fried dough in the air, the sounds of AC/DC wafting from the Tilt-a-Whirl, the camaraderie of the carnies…what could be better?

The summer that could have been comes to life in Greg Mottola’s Adventureland, although not quite as vividly as I’d hoped. Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) stars as recent college grad James Brennan, a soft-spoken, sensitive virgin whose plans of spending the summer in Europe are derailed when his father is demoted. Still hoping to attend graduate school at Columbia in the fall, James is forced to take a summer job at the local amusement park, where he meets cute-but-brooding Em (Twilight's Kristen Stewart). They bond over weed and a love of alternative rock, but little does James know Em is sleeping with married maintenance man Connell (Ryan Reynolds).

Mottola the screenwriter undermines Mottola the director as the relationship issues between James and Em are put through some very familiar paces, particular once James, unsure whether he and Em are an exclusive item, goes on a date with the hottie of the park, Lisa P (Margarita Levieva). The plot mechanics are a drag because Adventureland is at its best when it’s in laid-back, hanging out mode. The park is populated by an appealing cast, including former Freaks and Geeks-er Martin Starr as intellectual Joel and the underused Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as managers Rich and Paulette. Mottola nails the seedy attraction of the park and its surroundings (including a dead-on townie bar featuring the obligatory dreadful cover band), but much of the comedic potential of Adventureland itself remains untapped. There’s a little too much puking for comic effect, although Superbad fans should be warned that gross bodily function humor isn’t a priority here.

It’s not really fair to review the movie I wanted to see rather than the one Mottola made, but I would have preferred a more freewheeling, ensemble-friendly approach – a 1987 Dazed and Confused set in an amusement park rather than the creaky rom-com that emerges. The overreliance on Eisenberg and Stewart to carry the film is misguided because their personalities aren’t up to the task; Eisenberg is fine but we already have a Michael Cera, and Stewart is a bit out of her depth in Em’s darker moments. Their ride is too familiar, and I really wanted to hear those screams from the Zipper.

"Adventureland": Greg Mottola and Yo La Tengo, in Search of the Sound of 1987

Phil Nugent — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:45:00 GMT

Back in 1996, Greg Mottola wrote and directed an excellent, low-key indie comedy called The Daytrippers, starring Hope Davis, Liev Schrieber, Campbell Scott, Parker Posey, Stanley Tucci--basically, your all-star indie cast, circa 1996. It got great reviews and did just well enough commercially to consign Motttola to the ranks of directors working in TV, where he gained a toehold on what would become the Judd Apatow Comedy Juggernaut by directing several episodes of the short-lived, Apatow-created series Undeclared. In a roundabout way, this would lead to his getting to direct Superbad, the monster hit written by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, with Apatow on board as a producer. Next week sees the release of the third film he has directed and the second he has made from his own script, Adventureland, a coming-of-age comedy, set in 1987, about a fresh college graduate (played by Jesse Eisenberg) spending his summer working at a Pittsburgh amusement park and falling in love with a co-worker, played by Twilight's Kristen Stewart. Given the youthful characters, the noisy, hormonal atmosphere, and the presence in the cast of such SNL stalwarts as Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig--not to mention that bad banner on the ads reading "from the director of Superbad"--audiences who wouldn't know The Daytrippers from the Night Stalker might very well show up expecting Superbad II, a possible misunderstanding that the studio might have little interest in discouraging.

Writing in The New York Times, Larry Rohter notes that in Superbad, the director "telegraphed his intentions before even a single line of dialogue had been uttered. With a title taken from a James Brown song and a soundtrack that leaned heavily on funk hits from the 1970s, the contrast with the movie’s three main characters, suburban white boys as nerdy and insecure as they were randy, could hardly have been more pronounced." In Adventureland, "Once again he uses music to signal what is to come, but this time he kicks things off with the Replacements and the Velvet Underground." As Mottola explains, “I had to indicate to the audience this may not be what you are expecting." The new movie is autobiographical, its tone more bittersweet than brassy. Rauch writes that some of Mottola's "most enduring memories of that time stem from the exasperation he felt hearing the same songs played over and over on loudspeakers at the park, and the exhilaration he felt tuning in to college radio when he and his friends were off duty." This actually helped him to forge a useful bond with his music supervisor, Tracy McKnight, who also worked at an amusement park around the same time and can out of the experience with "Eddie Money embedded in my head." In the process of piecing together what McKnight calls "the soundtrack to our own life stories,” she had to obtain clearances for almost forty songs, and with comparatively limited resources: Superbad, for instance, used one Van Halen's "Panama", which, Mottola says, “cost nearly as much as all of the songs in Adventureland.”

Although the soundtrack did wind up featuring some '80s clurter as Poison, "Rock Me Amadeus", and some Rush (thanks to a character whose enthusiasm for the band may be seen as an accidental but timely homage to I Love You, Man), it does include such timeless alt-rock favorites as New York Dolls, Big Star, the Cure, and Husker Du, whose music plays a special role in the budding romance at the picture's center. (“It’s shorthand in the script,” says Mottola. “Kristen’s character is already interesting to Jesse, but he falls for her when she plays Hüsker Dü on the tape player in her car.” Just reading that, some of are relating so hard that our heads hurt.) The movie has an actual behind-the-scenes link to that world via its original score, which was produced by the band Yo La Tengo, whose members, led by co-founder Ira Kaplan, have a mutual admiration thing going on with Mottola. It's not Yo La Tengo's first time as film composers; their most recent record, They Shoot, we Score, consisted of music they originally wrote for the films Old Joy, Game 6, Junebug, and Shortbus, and last year they scored The Toe Tactic, which was directed by Emily Hubley, whose sister, Georgia, is in the band. (She's also married to Kaplan.) “I’m down on songs that literally describe the action on the screen, because that’s unimaginative,” Kaplan says, by way of explaining their approach to soundtrack work. Instead, “sometimes the music is ahead of the movie by a beat, or behind by a beat.”

Face/Off: Judd Apatow and "Pineapple Express"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

["Face/Off" is an irregularly scheduled recurring segment in which two Screengrab regulars have an exchange of views on some recent fixture of the movie scene. In the exclusive behind-the-scenes photo below, taken at a typical Screengrab "pitch" session, Andrew Osborne [l.] and Phil Nugent [r.] persuade their delighted editor to allow them to revive this much-loved feature.]

PHIL NUGENT: Andrew, I might as well come right out with it. I grew up as one of the most socially maladjusted members of our society: the comedy geek. So I feel a certain kinship with Judd Apatow. In some ways that do not include material success and worldly achievement, we're even kind of alike. We share the same birthday and have both had dirty thoughts about Leslie Mann. He actually got to marry her, so he may have gotten to act on some of his by now. And as a fan, I go back quite a ways with him. And I'm not talking about no Freaks and Geeks, neither! I'm talking The Ben Stiller Show, baby! It was on that series and the longer-lived The Larry Sanders Show, both of which appeared at a time when I was about to be greeted at my door by a mob wielding flaming torches who had dropped by to suggest that my presence might no longer be welcome at grad school and so was sorely in need of a few chuckles, that Apatow developed his chops as a producer and screenwriter and started making the lasting connections that continue to appear in his work. And last year, when Knocked Up made him an official Hollywood player and Superbad made him a name brand, I was happy for him. After all, for a long time, this was a guy who was best known for creating TV shows (also including Undeclared) that inspired devoted cult followings but couldn't stay on the air for more than a year, or (as with the case of Sick in the Head and the other Apatow pilots that became staples of the "Brilliant but Cancelled" phenomenon) couldn't get on the air at all. Although the Internet has given us a great many wonderful things, I still think that the single best use of it that anyone has ever made came when it was used to publicly disseminate the notorious e-mail exchange between Apatow and Mark Brazill, the small crawling thing best known as creator of That '70s Show, and who thought that, by including a mash-up parody of The Monkees with a stereotypical '90s grunge band on an episode of The Ben Stiller Show, Apatow had ripped off his hackish notion of doing a similar show as a "real" sitcom. It's still a hilarious exchange between a clueless dolt with too much money and a genuine and humane wit (who, okay, probably also already had too much money). But I remember when part of the context of the whole thing was a world in which the dolt was seen as more successful. Not anymore.

Apatow has out his name on a lot of stuff since then, and some of it has been, well, a lot less successful than his best stuff. Pineapple Express was preceded into theaters by Step Brothers, which mostly serves as an announcement that it's time for John C. Reilly to, (A.) put some clothes on, (B.) get back to straight acting roles for a while, and (C.) put some clothes on! Last fall, Reilly was unable to hold together Walk Hard, which tried its damndest to sustain the parodic-skit nature of The Ben Stiller Show for the length of a feature film. One of the most discouraging things about Pineapple Express is that it reminded me of that e-mail exchange, but this time, it's Apatow playing the Mark Brazill role. The idea--and it's what we used to call real "high concept" back before someone decided that it would be the honorable thing to bury that phrase with Don Simpson--is a conventional action comedy with conventional L.A. locations and conventional gunplay and chases and explosive fireballs and shit, but with these stoned doofuses at the center. The movie works best when it suggests pure parody: when Seth Rogan and James Franco stay up late babbling about the plan they're going to implement the next morning, and wind up oversleeping by ten hours, and when they then walk off to begin the busy work of saving their asses, only to get distracted by playing leapfrog and trying to get a caterpillar high. (This lyrical interlude may be the only part of the movie that's as fully charming as the movie's trailer, which made phenomenal use of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes", and which was edited in a way that suggested more visual freshness than you get from the film itself. I am of course familiar with the standard criticisms that have been made of Apatow and the work he's been sponsoring as a producer: that he's running a boys' club, that it's politically tone dead and too insular by half, that John C. Reilly really fucking needs to put some clothes on!! But this is the first thing of his that I've seen that strikes me as struggling to meet the conventional halfway, to just take some of his and his performers' quirkier interests and skills--which here basically just comes down to stoner antics--and trying to shoehorn them into a tired action-comedy formula that neither he nor the hired-gun director, David Gordon Green, could care less about even executing with any degree of skill. Yet you, my man, have gone on record as liking this thing! In the name of Cheech and Chong--have you heard they're threatening a comeback movie, which may be something else I'll decide to blame on Judd when I catch my breath--why, sir, why!?

ANDREW OSBORNE: Since you started your critique with praise, I’ll start my defense of the Apatowniverse with my own critiques. For one thing, I thought Superbad was funny but wildly overpraised, and actually (more than Pineapple Express) a prime example of the strained, one-joke dangers of a too-limited thematic range. Jonah Hill’s Seth, Michael Cera’s Evan and, of course, Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s McLovin were all funny and charming, but sophomoric boys club humor without a corrective balance of mature XY and XX perspective eventually just feels like hanging out with sophomore boys (which got old pretty quick even when I was fifteen). A related criticism and possible symptom of Apatow’s more facile bent is his tendency to work with the same dudes over and over again while leaving his female actors (with the notable, understandable exception of Ms. Mann) out of the loop. Busy Phillips was just as funny and awesome as James Franco, Seth Rogen and Jason Segel on Freaks and Geeks, but she’s doing TV guest spots ever since while her former male co-stars are headlining one Apatow project after another. Ditto Sarah Hagan, Linda Cardellini (who’s got a steady gig on ER, but still...) not to mention poor Carla Gallo from Undeclared, who at least got cameos in later Apatow projects, although one of them (“Toe-Sucking Girl” in The 40-Year-Old Virgin) I don’t remember and the other (“Period Blood Girl” in Superbad) actually made me feel embarrassed for her. (And, really, would it have killed them to find a place for Knocked Up’s hilarious Charlyne Yi in Pineapple Express?)

I mean, there may be any number of perfectly good reasons why Apatow’s boys keep showing up in movie after movie while the girls fall by the wayside, but it does raise certain troubling questions (except maybe in the case of Katherine Heigl, who got a nice career boost with Knocked Up, only to later denounce the whole notion of a hot chick hooking up with an ugly guy as sexist before reaffirming her feminist street cred by starring opposite dreamy James Marsden in 27 Dresses as a strong, independent woman whose life revolves around fantasies of Prince Charming whisking her off to a perfect wedding).

Yet here’s why I defend the Apatowniverse in general: for one thing, it’s rare for anyone to be associated with even a single outstanding TV show or movie, let alone two of the greatest TV shows in the history of the medium (Larry Sanders, Freaks & Geeks) and a slew of smart, funny, eminently quotable and wildly popular comedies like The 40 Year Old Virgin that aren’t just funny but also have a distinctive personality and philosophy (as opposed to high-concept, anything-for-a-laugh joke factories like the Scary Movie franchise).

Even relative misfires like Walk Hard are fairly innocuous, with occasional classic moments (like Jack Black, Justin Long, Paul Rudd and Jason Schwartzman riffing as the Beatles, a scene I could have watched for hours). But it’s the egalitarian humanity of the Apatow brand I find most appealing (and most troubling when it’s missing): in his best work, there are no real villains or laughingstocks: everyone’s an asshole, everyone is foolish, everyone gets a moment of glory. The laughter is with, not at. Mintz-Plasse may be a pencil-neck geek, but he is McLovin, dammit. Mann may come across as shrewish in Knocked Up, but she’s also righteously, hilarious indignant and vulnerable by turns.

There’s much less empathetic character development in Pineapple Express, of course: Craig Robinson’s walk-on performance as a bouncer in Knocked Up was considerably more nuanced than his larger role as a drug dealer in Express, Gary Cole and Rosie Perez (both generally excellent) are essentially wasted as cardboard cartoon characters and the less said about the film’s regressive sub-Long Duk Dong Asian stereotypes the better.

But Apatow’s other strengths are on full display (and by Apatow, of course, I mean his influence on collaborators like director David Gordon Green and writer/star Rogen). Most importantly, the movie had me laughing the whole time, with nary a squirm of boredom or impatience. The action scenes may have been artless when compared to real action movies...but, first of all, Express is a parody and, to be honest, with all the CGI excesses of most 21st century action movies, it’s nice to reconnect with the simple old school pleasures of, say, a simple, straightforward car chase (especially one with distinctive but suspenseful just-this-side of realistic elements like James Franco’s panicky attempt to navigate a speeding vehicle with one foot stuck through a windshield he inadvisably attempted to kick out).

Another Apatow trademark is a certain respect for his audience: unlike any number of movies that cynically recycle tired clichés, situations and phrases (“You the man, dog!”) as if we’re too dumb or lazy to notice, Pineapple Express makes a concerted effort to be as entertaining as possible, surprising us and/or tweaking expectations whenever it can. Rogen’s character doesn’t just survive a near-miss gunshot: there’s also the ickily amusing aftermath. Conversations veer off in loopy, unpredictable directions. And did I also mention it’s just plain funny?

Sure, That ‘70s Show had funny moments despite its flaws, too, and Judd Apatow may be something of an asshole (like many if not all rich, successful people)...and indeed, I’m even willing to believe the humor and humanity of his projects may drop and his asshole quotient may rise the longer he swims with the sharks of Hollwood...but I think it’s still way too early to equate him with a genuine douch-nozzle like Mark Brazill (or at least Brazill’s evil e-mail alter ego)...so let the Apatow backlash backlash begin!

PHIL NUGENT: Your point about the way that Apatow has failed to demonstrate the same stubborn devotion to such female talent as Linda Cardellini and Carla Gallo that he's shown, say, Seth Rogen and James Franco, is well taken, so much so that I regret that I, in my role as the guy trying to start some shit here, didn't mention it myself. When it comes to some comedy writers, I don't feel like complaining about a boy's-club atmosphere because I sort of dread the results if they were to try to write about women, just because they felt they should. (I might think more highly of them as artists and as human beings if natural curiosity compelled them to experiment in that direction, but politically mandated inclusiveness is no friend of comedy.) In Apatow's case, though, there's plenty of evidence that there's a much broader side of himself that he hasn't been exploring. It happens to be the same side that didn't pay the bills for many years. There are many ways to fail in show business; with Freaks and Geeks, Apatow failed the My So-Called Life way, with Internet petitions and reruns on basic cable and reviewers decrying the stupidity of an industry that would just throw away this gem. That's got to be one of the nicer ways to go down, but at the end of the day, you're still someone who couldn't provide job security for all the people who'd turned down other offers to work with you. (Of course, many of the people who are now rich celebrities thanks to their association with Apatow will be quick to tell you that before they met him they couldn't get arrested, but still.)

Looking at the flurry of activity that Apatow has initiated in the last couple of years--including getting projects green-lighted that were based on scripts that had been waiting in the back drawer for some time--I get the impression that he's been trying to create work for his "family", paying them back for sticking with him through the rough times. (Superbad was written so long ago that Seth Rogan had orginally conceived the Jonah Hill role for himself.) In the process, he may be spreading himself, and not just himself, a little thin. You mention Craig Robinson, who in his scene with Leslie Mann outside the club in Knocked Up was able to create a surprisingly full character in one cussword-filled monologue. I expect that he was much happier when he got the script for Pineapple Express and saw that he had a lot more screen time in it, but it comes to so much less. Apatow still has moments of startling inspiration in deciding how best to use these performers; he reportedly made the call that Franco should play the role in Pineapple Express that Rogen had, again, written with himself in mind, and the result is easily the best work that Franco has done in movies, probably the best he's been since, yeah, Freaks and Geeks. And the movie makes terrific use of my man Danny McBride, who in less than three months--the period of time bracketed by the release of The Foot Fist Way and Tropic Thunder--has emerged as the new bad-hair king of Hollywood. (I have a hunch that if Ben Stiller had invited Apatow to the read-through of the Tropic Thunder screenplay, McBride would have walked out of the room with Jack Black's part.) But in his recent productions, there only seems to be two kinds of casting--the outrageously inspired and the by-the-book routine. The cast of Pineapple Express consists of a few people who are squarely in the zone and several talented performers who look as if they're in denial about this being the final draft of the script.

Almost everybody I know loved Knocked Up while confessing to having had "a problem" with it. My own biggest problem with it was a little different from the usual ones I've heard expressed, such as that it gave short shrift to abortion as an option, or that it was implausible that a woman who looked like Katherine Heigl could ever get drunk enough to fuck Seth Rogen. My problem was that, while I had no objection to Rogen's character growing up enough to take on his share of responsibility for raising the child, I didn't think they should have gotten married. I couldn't imagine that union turning out in any way that wouldn't be hellish. Not because Rogen wasn't conventionally attractive enough for Heigl, but because Heigl, unlike everyone else in Rogen's circle, and indeed unlike just about everyone else in the whole movie, her own sister and brother-in-law included, didn't seem to have a funny bone in her body. It says a lot about the cult of standardized beauty that a lot of people felt comfortable saying out loud that Rogen wasn't good-looking enough for her but that I heard very few people ask what the hell he was going to do to keep from dying of boredom after they'd been trapped together for awhile. The fact is, movie audiences have traditionally accepted romantic partners in comedies who looked physically mismatched, such as Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, if both of them were funny; that's the real soul partnership. Heigl herself must have belatedly realized this, since her offscreen complaining about the movie has largely come down to the fact that she didn't get any laughs in it, but based on how eagerly Apatow has jumped to the task to serve funny women when he had them to work with, I have to believe that he sized her up as nice, pretty packaging and choose not to tax her. (You want to see what it looks like when a gorgeous-looking performer who's also gifted and funny is wasted by filmmakers who just want to exploit those physical assets, look at James Franco in thr Spider-man movies.) Since Apatow isn't one of those jackasses (like Al Franken) who's on record as believing that women just aren't funny--he probably gets a reminder of just how funny they can be every time he pisses off his wife--the casting of the dull but handsomely assembled TV soap star as the "normal" one in Knocked Up must be his commercial side talking; it's the part of him that probably thinks that the mass audience won't accept a romantic comedy in which the woman can hold up her end in the quirky wise-cracking department. In Pineapple Express, the commercial side of him is the part that thinks that more people will turn out to watch two comedians doing a stoner routine if somebody is firing machine guns at them, and I think that this time, the commercial side clearly outbalances the quirky, personal side. Which is an ominous development, in my view. Because if Apatow doesn't get back in touch with the side of him that once cared less about audience share and more about making the best use possible of his talents, he's never going to get around to making the movie I really want to see from him: a romantic comedy in which the woman is every bit as funny, maybe as indifferent to conventional definitions of success, and maybe even as much a challenge to conventional standards of attractiveness as the man.

ANDREW OSBORNE: First of all, let me offer you a hearty cyber-handshake for providing the definitive closing argument in the case of Heigl vs. Rogen. It’s so absolutely dead-on, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it myself, but I intend to correct that mistake by taking credit for the idea in every single future argument I have with anyone, for the rest of my life, who bitches about the Rogen/Heigel pairing in Knocked Up. I myself refused to wed 'til I found myself a comical lass who could banter with the best of ‘em...and, frankly, I can’t imagine any better qualification for spousal consideration than a solid sense of humor (which Heigl's Alison Scott definitely lacked, though Rogen’s character, Ben Stone, at least wound up with some pretty cool in-laws)!

And, since you brought it up, I feel the April 2008 Vanity Fair article, “Who Says Women Aren't Funny?” more or less gave the definitive closing argument in the whole tiresome case of “Women Vs. Humor.” As Nora Ephron says in the piece, ““There is no question that there are a million more funny women than there used to be...but everything has more women. There are more women in a whole bunch of places, and this is one of them.” Sounds good to me, though I also agree with the sociological wisdom of a later quote from humorist and Harvard Lampoon alum Patricia Marx: ““Maybe pretty women weren't funny before because they had no reason to be funny. There was no point to it—people already liked you.”

So, there are funny women out there, and I’d like to see Apatow do a better job of utilizing them, because his best stuff isn’t the bad boy buzz of exploding cars and gunplay (however entertaining some of those moments may have been in Pineapple Express, though I thought the entire “crazy cops” subplot in Superbad was tedious)...no, Apatow’s gift is capturing modern day relationships with spot-on, up-to-the-minute clarity: Franco and Rogen hanging out in Express, Jonah Hill and Michael Cera hanging out in Superbad, Busy Phillips and Linda Cardellini hanging out in Freaks & Geeks, etc., etc.

And, while I agree I’d like to see Apatow do MORE comedies where the male and female relationships are evenly matched in terms of comedy chops, I wouldn’t say he’s NEVER delivered those particular goods. Steve Carell was a scream in The 40 Year Old Virgin, but Catherine Keener was certainly no slouch in the funny/unconventional department (and, in the supporting cast, Jane Lynch went toe-to-toe with Rogen, Paul Rudd and Romany Malco without breaking a sweat). And Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which Apatow produced for his boy Jason Segal, featured pretty funny turns from Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis (the dirtiest name in show biz).

Were Keener, Bell and Kunis as funny as their respective romantic comedy co-stars? Well, no, not quite: by way of comparison, my ultimate celebrity crush, Alyson Hannigan, was far more outrageous and funny playing off Jason Biggs in American Pie (a movie that would fit quite snugly into the Apatow-verse, come to think of it). And, yes, in the first American Pie, Hannigan wasn’t exactly a romantic lead, but rather a funny supporting player, like Lynch in Virgin, Leslie Mann and Charlyne Yi in Knocked Up and Amber Heard in Express.

So, okay, point taken: let’s get Apatow, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd together for a remake of Barefoot In The Park, stat!

But in the meantime, I’m not even close to giving up on Judd Apatow (yet), because, while some of his projects may fare better than others, he’s never really burned me as a viewer, meaning he’s built up quite a lot of credit in the ol' Bank of Osborne.

And I can’t really fault the man for trying a bunch of different genres (romantic comedy, action, parody, etc.) and using his newfound (and, given the nature of Hollywood , no doubt ephemeral) power to launch a bunch of projects (some good, some not as good, same as with any producer) that would never otherwise get made. Nor can I fault the man for possessing commercial self-preservation instincts...though it’s not like he’s Michael Bay, for God's sake, or even the aforementioned Nora Ephron, who gives good quote, yet also hacks up soulless Hollywood hairballs like Bewitched and Hanging Up with depressing regularity. (And, if you think about it, “stoner action comedy” isn’t exactly a sure thing/sell-out commercial genre anyway...even with all the blanks and explosions, Pineapple Express was still a personal movie, in that it directly reflected the distinct sensibility of Apatow and his collaborators.)

So, in conclusion, yes, I think Judd Apatow certainly has the capacity to go to the Dark Side – but aside from an executive producer credit on the odious Will Ferrell “comedy” Kicking and Screaming, I don't really see any evidence that he’ll be picking out a secret Sith name anytime soon. His upcoming projects (including a biblical comedy, a Sherlock Holmes comedy and a semi-dramatic film about stand-up comedians) seem to indicate a healthy willingness on his part to experiment. But, most importantly, Apatow's name on a movie poster usually means I’ll be entertained, either a little or a lot...and there are VERY few names in Hollywood that inspire that kind of brand loyalty these days.

As for Pineapple Express, which got this whole discussion rolling in the first place, my definitive closing argument is simple: "it brought the funny" (as the comedy geeks would say)...

...and for a fellow comedy geek like Apatow, that's pretty much the point.

--Contributors: Phil Nugent; Andrew Osborne

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Trailer Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Paul Clark — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Dear Michael Cera,

I’m afraid your shtick might be starting to wear a little thin. It hurts me a little to say this, since I was a big fan of your work on Arrested Development, where you were responsible for some of the series’ most priceless moments. In addition, I thought you were exactly the sort of leading man that Superbad needed, your fumbly-kid style a perfect counterpart to the surrounding outrageousness. But midway through Juno, I began to wonder if you had anything else in your acting arsenal, and having watched a few episodes of Clark and Michael online didn’t put these thoughts to rest. Now, I’m not saying that it wasn’t a wise career move to act in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, which wasn’t just directed by the promising Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas) but also gives you a chance to play an honest-to-goodness romantic lead instead of being pulled thus way and that by Juno. But I’m not sure that starring in a movie that combines the raucous odyssey of Superbad and the outsider humor of Juno will give people a clue as to your acting versatility in the long term. I hope I’m wrong, Michael- Lord knows, if there’s anyone I want to succeed in Hollywood, it’s someone who seems like a well-adjusted, if somewhat neurotic, guy. But I fear you’re going to have to learn to spread your wings if you want your career to really take off.

All the best,
Paul

MTV Movie Awards Continue to Exist

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The ’90s live forever at MTV – in between all the dating and celebreality shows, anyway – so it probably should come as no surprise that the MTV Movie Awards are still in existence, and will be hosted this year by Mike Myers. It sounds like a very 1996 idea to me, but after checking the date on the press release, it appears to be true. Now the nominations have been announced and it’s time for the speculation to begin. Will Shia LaBeouf and Sarah Roemer win Best Kiss for Disturbia, or will those upstarts Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman from Step Up 2 The Streets pull off an upset? Will McLovin Mania sweep Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse to the Best Newcomer Prize? And what future classic of cinema will leave with the prestigious Golden Popcorn prize for Best Movie?

In fairness, I dimly recall a time when the MTV Movie Awards were a fun, irreverent alternative to the usual award show pomp. This is a show, after all, that presented both Godzilla and Clint Howard with Lifetime Achievement Awards. A distinguished ceremony during which Will Ferrell once wet his pants. A red carpet extravaganza with a somewhat flexible dress code:

It doesn’t take long for “fun and irreverent” to congeal into “lame and desperate,” however. Last year MTV brought in Survivor producer Mark Burnett to liven things up, but sadly, the nominees were not forced to eat gross food items or vote each other out (which might be a fun twist). Instead, my sources tell me (I was out playing Bingo), the night was basically a repository of cheap rehab jokes about Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and mind-numbing moments like the awarding of Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen Yet to Transformers.

Still, this is a blog for film news, so here is the news. The MTV Movie Awards nominees have been announced. You can find them here if you’re interested. Heck, you can even vote for them if you really care!

John Patterson On John Thomas

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:15:00 GMT

In this week's Guardian film section, blogger/critic John Patterson reminds us that, amongst the other debts we owe to Judd Apatow, we can also thank him for helping shred one of the last remaining bougeois taboos in cinema: the one that state that the human penis cannot be seen at any cost.

Patterson reports that it took a string of comedies, from Superbad to Forgetting Sarah Marshall to the upcoming Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, to shatter the ironclad reluctance of American bluenoses to the merest suggestion of the national generative organ. The penis is, after all, as Patterson notes, a comical thing -- "just ask any woman." Prior to the recent proliferation of the dick as joke (not to be confused with the dick joke), big-screen appearances of the little man were confined to pornography, well-meaning art films, and any movie starring Harvey Keitel.

Happily, the story isn't deadly earnest despite its very legitimate and welcome message, and Patterson does allow himself plenty of gag lines. Frustratingly, though, he fails to credit The Simpsons Movie for its role in the dingus drama; Bart's brief nude scene was the most talked-about moment of the film. Just because it's a cartoon penis doesn't mean that it doesn't count, Mr. Patterson!

Revenge of the Nerds - The 10 Sexiest Guy Geeks In Cinema (Part Deux)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

5. Steve Carrell as Andy Stitzer in The 40 Year Old Virgin

The poster said (and showed) it all: the painfully earnest expression, the terrible haircut, the little kid shirt and, of course, the no sex. For 40 years. Long past the point when even the nerdiest of nerds have usually managed to score at least a mercy jump from some kind soul, Andy is still living in a lonely geek paradise of pop culture, complete with an incredibly bad-ass video game chair that may, in fact, be even better than sex. But, in his isolation, Andy has also developed a tender soul and some not unimpressive pectorals (beneath a thick pelt of manly chest hair) that, combined with the stealthy square-jawed good looks beneath all the silliness, is sheer catnip to Catherine Keener’s E-Bay entrepreneur (not to mention my wife and most of her friends).

4. Michael Cera as Evan in Superbad and Paulie Bleeker in Juno

My sources inform me that Michael Cera is more cute than hot, although his junk-accentuating yellow shorts in Juno and the fact that he manages to attract Ellen Page’s titular wise-ass are mitigating factors in the case of his performance as teenage Tic-Tac enthusiast Paulie Bleeker. Of course, the geek side of the equation is more obvious...neither Paulie nor Evan seem to be especially popular in their respective high schools, but they earn their spot on this list by personifying exactly the sort of unspoiled misfits who are just on the verge of coming into their own as confident young adults (i.e., a tasty morsel and/or excellent boyfriend material for perceptive partners like Juno and Martha MacIsaac's teen temptress Becca.)

3. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in all those damn Harry Potter movies

And speaking of manly transformation...to quote blondychik1 over on YouTube regarding a certain nude scene from a certain notorious West End revival of Equus: “When did Daniel grow into a MAN?!?!” Meanwhile, over at Hogwart’s, the Harry Potter Nation has been watching the slow cinematic transformation of their favorite wizard from bespectacled young misfit to post-pubescent master of his wand in a mounting hormonal frenzy that even Muggles can feel way down deep in their Bertie Botts.

2. Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent in Superman I-IV

Respect.

1. Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker in Spider-Man 1-3

My wife and my female friends think he’s hot. My gay friends think he’s hot. Mary Jane Watson (personified by smokin’ hot, soakin’ wet Kirsten Dunst) thinks he’s hot. But he’s not JUST hot...he’s also a smart, sweet romantic superhero who’s nice to his cloying, annoying Aunt May...hell, he’s even nice to frenemies like Harry Osborn who try to kill him...AND he can deliver a stack of pizzas to your door from just about anywhere in just over ten minutes. Ladies and gents, I think we have a winner...(but please be sure to let us know who we missed)!

Click here for part 1.

Trailer Review: The House Bunny

Paul Clark — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Anna Faris is such a sunny and committed actress that I can't help but like her. Unfortunately, her tendency to gravitate to crappy movies makes this something of a challenge. Sadly, House Bunny does little to reverse this trend. Like many Happy Madison productions, House Bunny has a promising premise- a pampered young woman suddenly having to learn how to apply her meager life skills to an unlikely job. But true to Happy Madison tradition, they find a way to turn this premise into the most juvenile product imaginable, with plenty of forced slapstick and cheap shots at easy targets. In addition, it's painfully obvious that Faris' "geeky" charges- who include Katherine McPhee and Emma Stone (Jules from Superbad)- are obviously hot chicks in heavy makeup, which makes their miraculous transformation into stunners inevitable instead of surprising. That said, Faris at least appears to give it her all, doing her best to put a spin on over-explained jokes like the American Idol bit. And maybe it was just my low expectations, but her bizarre technique for remembering names got a chuckle out of me, which is better than some trailers I could mention.

Little Minx's Exquisite Corpse: Internet Playground for Tomorrow's Classic Commercials Directors, Today

Phil Nugent — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Little Minx, a commercial production company founded in 1998, has set up a website designed to give their directors a chance to strut their stuff via a series of very short films made under the umbrella title of "Exquisite Corpse". As in the Surrealists' parlor game of the same name, the concept is a sort of creative pass-the-baton game: the chief rule is that each filmmaker has to pick up with the last line of the script from the preceding film. (Typical titles: "She Turns Back and Faces Forward, At Peace" and "Without Missing A Beat, She Asks, 'Waffles For Breakfast?'") Handsomely produced (by Little Minx company founder Rhea Scott), the five films currently available for viewing are as easy on the eyes as they are soft in content. They range in style from urban-gangbanger-violence with arty flashback structure to New Age-feminist music video, and if the worst that can be said for most of the best of them is that they don't have anything new to say however snazzily they say it, the best that can be said of the worst of them is that they're over before you've had a chance to mind them much. The one that seems to have gotten the most attention, Josh Miller's "Waffles", is built around a plot twist that you can see coming from a mile off, but it does have a great opening line ("I guess what I'm tryin' to say is that if the good lord put hair there, it's probably for a reason."), some well-placed waka-jawaka on the soundtrack, and good acting by a cast headed by Stephen Mendillo, a familiar face from '90s episodes of classic Law and Order, and a fetching young actress named Aviva, who was in Superbad. And Chris Nelson's "She Turns Back..." leavens its standard-issue picture of the horrors of a TV casting call with a striking performance by Cara Failer as a conflicted kid actress trying to hang onto some self-respect. Well-executed but unsurprising, these are ideal for viewing on an iPod--which is only a put-down if the filmmakers had grander ambitions than that.

Other websites are popping up now (such as Wonderland) that aim to use the Internet to bring together talented new filmmakers and give viewers access to their work. "Exquisite Corpse" seems like the vanguard for a more business-minded approach that might be called cutting-edge practical: by giving commercial directors the chance to show how they might do if given the chance to stretch a little--say, behind the camera on a theatrical feature film--it may serve industry people as the latest concept in audition reels, while attracting moviegoers who are curious to see where the next Ridley Scott or Brett Ratner might be coming from. My own favorite of the films posted so far may actually be the first, Laurent Briet's "With the Eyes of Every Man Riveted Upon Her," a pulse-driven little vignette set in a gym that makes canny use of its teenaged lead actress and the Black Strobe song "Shining Bright Star." It would make a great commercial for something, which seems to be the idea.

YouTube Film Critics: Spill and the Reel Geezers

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Newspapers have been shedding personnel at an alarming rate in recent months, and those of us who earn our beer money writing about movies are no exception. As the Hollywood Reporter notes in a piece about small independent films being overlooked by major newspapers, “Critics have recently been laid off, bought out of their contracts or left and were not replaced at the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, New York Newsday and more than 15 papers around the country.”

This presents a problem for you, the film consumer. Where to go for a diverse array of informed opinion on the motion pictures of the day? Well, once you’ve read all the latest news and reviews at the Screengrab, you might want to click on over to YouTube, where the time-honored Siskel & Ebert format lives on in two very different web series.

Spill.com is the latest permutation of Korey Coleman’s long-running Austin cable access show The Reel Deal. Coleman, his friend Martin Thomas, and a rotating cast of co-hosts conducted a loose, funny and very low budget roundtable discussion of the current cinema for over a decade before relocating to the internet. A cartoonist and filmmaker (his indie film 2 A.M. played SXSW in 2006), Coleman decided to take on a new creative challenge and animate webisodes of The Reel Deal (podcasts of this version of the show can be found here). The show proved so popular, it was bought out by a New York company and reemerged as Spill.com. Aside from Korey, the rest of the Reel Deal crew took on new personas for the revamped version, but the irreverent humor and down-to-earth vibe remain intact, as you can see in this review of The Mist:

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Reel Geezers. If you ever wanted to recreate the experience of listening to your grandparents bicker about movies, this is the show for you. Lorenzo Semple Jr. (screenwriter of Papillon, The Parallax View and 16 Batman episodes) and Marcia Nasatir (a former agent and producer of The Big Chill and Ironweed) give the octogenarian viewpoint on the latest releases, which is particularly helpful when it comes to a movie like Superbad:

Regal Cinemas to Allow Trailers with Fart Jokes

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

As regular readers of the Screengrab know, trailers that begin with a green band graphic are approved for all audiences, while those that begin with a red band (pictured here) may contain strong language, violence, sexual imagery and other “objectionable” material. Red band trailers are rarely seen in theaters outside of art-houses; they’re generally confined to the web, even if they’re advertising PG-13 fare. This causes headaches for the makers of raunchy comedies like Superbad, who are unable to fully showcase the crude pleasures their movies have to offer for an audience that has already paid to see, say, Knocked Up.

At the ShoWest convention last week, one major theater chain decided this is just a little silly. Regal Entertainment Group, which operates over 6000 theaters in the United States, “has made the decision to program red band trailers on a case-by-case basis,” Regal spokesman Dick Westerling told the Hollywood Reporter. One catalyst for the change was the ShoWest screening of the red band trailer for Universal’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. According to the Reporter, “The movie's green band trailer establishes its premise and plot, while the red band trailer gives a much fuller taste of its raunchy humor and sexual calisthenics, and it had exhibitors laughing.” Well, of course. No one enjoys sexual calisthenics more than motion picture exhibitors.

Universal president of marketing and distribution Adam Fogelson is obviously thrilled with Regal’s decision, although he does seem to recognize some limitations. “For example, it would not be appropriate for a red band trailer for a movie like American Pie to run in front of Schindler's List. We all want to be smart and careful about the use of red band trailers, working closely with our partners in exhibition. We don't want moviegoers seeing material that is inconsistent with the movies they are going to see.”

Here’s that red band trailer for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Enjoy the sexual calisthenics!

Trailer Review: Pineapple Express

John Constantine — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:52:00 GMT

2008: The year of the stoner comedy. Gregg Araki’s (Doom Generation) Smiley Face finally got wide distribution with a “DVD Premiere” at the beginning of January, Harold and Kumar 2 hits in the spring, and here’s Pineapple Express due in August. Of the lot, Express looks the most promising and, frankly, the most bizarre. Seth Rogen jumping from the second floor of a warehouse onto an armed goon? James Franco playing a cowardly pot dealer and hiding in a dumpster (he’s the Green Goblin, maaaaaaan.)? I don’t know what the hell is going on here but it certainly looks funny. This is another script from the Superbad team of Rogen and Evan Goldberg so it’ll be interesting to see how their collaborative skills have grown beyond their high school output. Note also the awesome usage of M.I.A.’s “Paper Airplanes” for the soundtrack.

The Movie Moment(s): Notable Moments of 2007, Part 2

Paul Clark — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Seth's secret shame, Superbad

2007 was a great year for dark and despairing cinema, but less so for really good comedy. But if nothing else, it can lay claim to at least one comedy sequence for the ages, even while it's so raunchy it would've made Curly Howard blush. In the scene, Seth (Jonah Hill) confesses to his best friend Evan (Michael Cera) his longstanding compulsion to draw penises. Of course, Evan has a hard time believing it (2007's funniest line in a walk: "Dicks? Like a man dick?") but the wonder of the scene is that Hill plays it completely straight. Seth is clearly ashamed of himself, angered by the trouble it's brought him, and annoyed that no one seems to understand his plight. In addition, screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (note the first names) make the details in the scene so specific that I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't drawn from real life. Which, of course, only makes it that much funnier.

Chase in the rain, We Own the Night

A lot of people would claim that the chase sequence at the end of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is the year's best action scene, but I'd go to the mat instead for James Gray's We Own the Night. Tarantino's was well-choreographed and nicely sustained to be sure, but it couldn't match the pure visceral impact of Gray's. For one thing, there's real urgency in the scene- Joaquin Phoenix's Bobby has just learned that his former Russian mob associates have not only figured out where he's hiding but are planning to kill his police chief dad, and he's racing through the rain to stop this from happening. In addition, the direction is almost unbearably tense, as Gray shoots the scene entirely from inside Phoenix's car, with brutal violence glimpsed through his windshield as the wiper blades whoosh back and forth. Gray has never been known as an action director, but he shows a gift for it here, which makes me all the more grateful that he's refused to sell his talents short by making a string of mediocre thrillers. Instead, he's done his own thing so far, and although his three films haven't won him a mass audience like Tarantino, he's remained an interesting filmmaker in his own right, and We Own the Night is his best film to date.

Little Anton Ego, Ratatouille

By now most of us expect greatness from Pixar, especially when Brad Bird is directing, but like any truly great filmmaker, Bird is still capable of surprising us with his talent. Nowhere in Ratatouille is this more true than a scene near the end of the film where the dreaded food critic Anton Ego (the inimitable Peter O'Toole) drops in at Gusteau's to review the food prepared by its celebrated new chef, Remy, a rat voiced by Patton Oswalt. Counter to popular logic, Remy serves him the relatively low-class dish ratatouille, the quality of which blindsides Ego so much that he briefly flashes back to the meals of his childhood. The beauty of the moment owes largely to its brevity, as Bird executes the flashback so suddenly and in so few brush strokes that it blindsided me with its simple perfection. Rather than coming off like a cheap Freudian reading of Ego's character, this scene speaks to something more universal, and it's Ratatouille's most vivid illustration of the idea that great food truly belongs to us all.

Making Movies, Singing Songs, and Tanking 'Round the World

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Forbes magazine has crunched the numbers and concluded that the most overpaid star in Hollywood — literally, in terms of how much she’s paid as it compares to how much good her presence onscreen seems to do her movies at the box office—-is Nicole Kidman. What’s that, you say? The talented and discerning star of Cold Mountain, The Human Stain, Eyes Wide Shut, Bewitched, The Interpreter, Fur, The Invasion, Birth, The Stepford Wives, overpaid? David Thomson can’t imagine how anyone could entertain such a churlish notion, but apparently if you run the numbers by someone who can count, it turns out that Big Red’s movies have been earning the studios a return of about eight bucks for every dollar she’s been getting paid--and Kidman got paid fifteen million dollars for her most recent release, The Golden Compass, a fantastically expensive movie intended to serve as the platform for a franchise, though it's proven such a disappointment that it may be lucky to inspire a direct-to-video sequel. She does show a better return than her countryman Russell Crowe, who earned the studios five dollars for every dollar he was paid on such ironically titled duds as Cinderella Man and A Good Year. But Crowe, who maintains a less slavish work schedule than Kidman, has lashed himself to fewer anchors in the last few years, and his current hit, American Gangster, is doing so well, even before the home-video revenues have started rolling in, that much will be forgiven. The usual response to this kind of talk from a star's camp is that a star can only do so much with the material he or she has to work with, and anyway, do you think that a movie like Fur would have done kickass business if it hadn't had Kidman's frosty mug on the poster? In the meantime, as Forbes notes, the golden boy of the moment in Hollywood is Judd Apatow, who’s been behind two modestly budgeted major hits (Knocked Up and Superbad) that didn’t have any stars at all and may have a third before the year is over if Walk Hard with John C. Reilly opens big. Of course, one reason that Apatow’s starless pictures make so much money, even after being subjected to the surreal rigors of Hollywood accounting, is that his budgets aren’t inflated from having to pay one actor fifteen to twenty million dollars right off the bat.