Blu-ray Review: Strange Wilderness (2008)

Now Available on Blu-ray

Also Available on DVD

You have to be a fan of actor Steve Zahn to be able to appreciate the loony mayhem that is director Fred Wolf’s Strange Wilderness. Fortunately, this is one prerequisite that I’ve aced ever since I witnessed my fellow Minnesota native initially playing the sweet, closeted Reality Bites character amidst a terrific ensemble of actors in Ben Stiller’s directorial work.

Balancing out blockbusters with indie films, he followed this up with more great little-seen turns over the years (Safe Men, Happy, Texas), but it wasn't until he finally stole the spotlight away from such larger-than-life celebrity presences as Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and Don Cheadle, first in Hanks’ underrated, sunny ‘60s feel-great musical comedy That Thing You Do! before he brought a bizarre mixture of humor and pathos to his small time hoodlum turn in Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant Out of Sight that people started to pay attention in a bigger way.

Although unfortunately, despite some truly memorable and instantly quotable laugh-out-loud moments in this film penned by Fred Wolf and Peter Gaulke that finds Zahn starring as the inept son who’s inherited his deceased Jack Hanna-like father’s nature television series, Strange Wilderness loses its way shortly after the characters hit the road in a series of escalating, tired, gross out, and cliched “outsiders on a journey” gags.

And despite the fact that only a third of the way into the roughly 90 minute movie, most viewers will feel like channel flipping as though they've stumbled onto the movie on television and moreover feel the strange sense they’ve seen it all before in countless other Happy Madison productions from executive producer Adam Sandler-- the main reason that the film succeeds at all (in the precious few times that it does) and what kept me watching for its entire running time was none other than Steve Zahn.

Coming right off of an impressive dramatic portrayal in Werner Herzog’s acclaimed Vietnam-set biopic Rescue Dawn co-starring Christian Bale, Zahn is instantly believable in familiar comedy mode as the fictitious version of Peter Gaulke.

The ill-prepared host of the now laughably awful series a three a.m. time slot-- Gaulke’s show is just weeks away from justifiable and long overdue cancellation by network executive Jeff Garlin. So in one last ditch attempt to bring back the viewers and make his father proud, Zahn leads his group of even more clueless staffers (including Allen Covert, Jonah Hill and Justin Long) on a journey to find Bigfoot by traveling down into central America.

Of course, we know they're completely unprepared for the dangers that face them given the group's prior tendency to prep for shows with voice-overs written on bar napkins, nonsensical and erroneous “facts” and pseudo-intellectual observations like “it is estimated that the faster a shark swims, the more distance he covers in a given period of time,” and enlisting crew members to don animal costumes to horrific results. And sure enough, it isn’t long before they’re flat broke and find themselves truly trying to survive in some very “strange” wilderness indeed.

A few years following the success of the movie’s origins as comedic shorts from Wolf and Gaulke via an independently produced series of short video “parodies of wildlife shows… which [were] eventually [aired] on Comedy Central,” former Saturday Night Live writers, stand-up comics and TV writers Gaulke and Wolf decided to turn that idea into a feature length work.

Kick-starting their ambition to see it as a movie by crafting their own version of it on video for potential financiers-- Wolf acknowledges that time and again they encountered “a lot of people interested in making it into a TV show… until Adam Sandler and his producing partner Jack Giarraputo read the script.”

With the blessing of Happy Madison Productions and Sandler’s name enabling them to attract some top-notch talent including Ernest Borgnine (in an inspired casting decision made after seeing him on SpongeBob SquarePants), soon the film was set into motion. And while one can’t argue with some of the incredible performers involved like the always-welcome Justin Long as the perpetually stoned, creepily tattooed new crew member and fun cameos with Robert Patrick and Joe Don Baker—- not to long after the movie's incredibly addictive and wholly original set-up-- the film's tone is destroyed by excess.

Namely in unsuccessfully trying to juggle so many different characters (including a bizarre and overdone turn by Jonah Hill that grates on the nerves within seconds) and an increasing over-reliance on disgusting sight gags-- soon the great premise about the dim-witted host is left by the wayside in lieu of sequences involving animals attacking our lead in the privates and-- I'm not kidding-- an entire conversation centering on the fact that a character's name is Dick.

And overall, Wilderness is a movie that holds our interest for the first portion as we see some of the characters in action creating what has to be the worst animal show ever captured on film-- making the screenwriters’ initial feedback that it would’ve probably worked best as a television show seem especially true in hindsight.

With a great deal of enthusiasm, the actors all try their hardest but sadly, there’s not much to like about a film that alienates more viewers with each successive scene that goes for laughs in the crudest possible manner, forgetting just what made the first act so damn funny to begin with.

Typically for the format, the Blu-ray quality of the 2008 work is quite impressive given the stellar sound and heightened depth perception, however since it was purposely filmed to visually hearken back to 1970s wildlife shows, it’s not a great improvement over the DVD so those who already own it may want to skip the upgrade.

Containing some extra features that relish in the repulsion of the infamous “turkey scene,” Jonah Hill’s bizarre Eddie Vedder modeled song performed alongside Justin Long, a veritable press kit extra on the film just added onto the disc and deleted scenes—the sole standout that shows exactly what the cast is capable of is titled “What Do We Do?” which finds Zahn, Long, Hill, Covert, and Borgnine all riffing in a hilarious exchange about Jack Nicholson, Nell Carter, and others.

As they improvise and challenge one another to be funnier, you can sense Long’s polite discomfort as he apologetically blames his crude outbursts on his character rather than himself (while seated next to the legendary Borgnine) but it’s a great example of just putting a bunch of creative and comically gifted people in a room together and letting them rip.

Likewise, it’s a terrific indication that—instead of the gross-out gags and over-the-top effects-- if Gaulke and Wolf would’ve done more scenes like the one featured in this extra over the course of the film, perhaps they’d be sitting with a much more successful and far less formulaic Happy Madison Production that’s memorable for something other than just simply marveling at the next ridiculous nature observation to be uttered by Zahn’s host.

DVD Review: Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who (2008)

Coming Soon,
Available to All,
On DVD & Blu-ray,
You'll Have a Ball!

(12/9/08)

View the Trailer & Photo Gallery

In 2008 with the release of-- what could very well be the most wholly satisfying animated feature of the year-- Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who!, Fox's CGI divisional company Blue Sky Studios proudly announced to Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, "WE ARE HERE!"

Having already burst onto the scene with Ice Age as well as providing some truly spectacular bits of CGI for our pop culture landscape such as augmenting David Fincher's incredible Fight Club and the memorable "talking fish" episode of The Sopranos, Blue Sky has always been one of the best kept secrets in effects work and computer animation.



However, with this tremendous new release of Horton, which-- typical for computer animated works-- stuns in a visually eye-catching transfer to DVD and Blu-ray and in doing so we're actually let behind-the-scenes of the company to see the talented and impossibly young inventors at work. But before I delve into the extra features, here's a reprint of my original theatrical review of Horton.

Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who!

Alternate Title: Horton Hears a Who!
Directors: Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino
Original Publication Date: 3/29/08

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent,” so goes the famous quote from Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hatches the Egg that seems to be even more poignant when scripted for actor Jim Carrey as he lends his vocal talents to bring children’s literature’s best loved elephant to life in Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! From the same studio that created the family films Ice Age and Robots, Blue Sky Studios of 20th Century Fox, directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino craft not only the best adaptation of Dr. Seuss brought to screen thus far but also the best family film of 2008 as of this review.

For years, I’ve been wondering if I was simply growing too impatient with animated features, having found myself bored by critical smashes such as the overly long Pixar hits The Incredibles and Cars and struggling to stay awake during films such as Curious George and Bee Movie and although there’s been a few notable exceptions (Surf’s Up, Over the Hedge), I’ve found myself steering clear of animation. However, it wasn’t until I saw Horton Hears a Who that I fell back in love with the concept of bright, magical animated family films that manage to blend positive messages with high flying entertainment and quality humor that gave at least this viewer the same kind of amazing theatrical experience that I had while seeing Finding Nemo or the Toy Story films years earlier.

While on one hand, the film, like several animated works filled with A list stars for better or worse (which take jobs away from voice-over actors), has a boast worthy roster that comprise a comedic dream team in the form of not only Carrey but also Steve Carell, the legendary Carol Burnett, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler and Isla Fisher, I found myself forgetting the magnitude of the stars after only a few lines by each were uttered as admirably they began to ham less and instead preferably stick with telling the terrific tale.



For those who, like myself, barely remember the book, I’ll bring you up to speed—moments into the film we meet our unlikely elephant hero Horton who hears a noise coming from a tiny speck on a clover flower, only to discover that he’s listening to residents of the tiny universe Whoville or more accurately, the mayor of Whoville (Steve Carell). Eventually concluding that “a person’s a person, no matter how small,” Horton tries to save Whoville by bringing the flower to a place where it will be protected from outside forces such as the disbelieving kangaroo (Carol Burnett) who feels Horton is becoming a dangerous agitator that must be stopped and hires the Russian vulture Vlad (Will Arnett) to do just that.

Touching, beautifully animated, fast-paced (refreshingly just 88 minutes) and undeniably heroic, Horton Hears a Who is the type of film that will entertain adults just as much, if not more than children as I found myself laughing frequently throughout by the increasingly wild situations and characterizations by the cast.

Note: The book, which was published in 1954 sent some readers and journalists looking at Seuss’ work as a political allegory and in a fascinating sidebar “Who are the Whos?” by Entertainment Weekly’s Adam Markovitz (3/21/08, p. 42) he chronicles three takes on the work, including the two likeliest which saw it as first a look at postwar Japan (which Seuss has admitted) and secondly as yet another 1950’s artistic offering that echoed the political climate of America during the devastating McCarthy hearings.

The DVD

Having seemed to been sent a combination of both the Single Disc and Two-Disc Special Edition of the film all included on one critical screener copy, I'm unable to dissect exactly which version I'm reviewing but wanted to deliver you the inside scoop on the bonuses included throughout. Containing an entertaining director's audio commentary with the filmmakers Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino-- both the single and two-disc versions also boast an all-new animated Ice Age short featuring the memorable characters Sid and Scrat, which is aptly dubbed Surviving Sid.

Reminiscent of vintage Warner Brothers cartoons, Surviving Sid is filled with misadventure and comical peril as little animals try to endure camp counselor Sid and while cute-- it's instantly outdone by two more memorable shorts included with animated features-- the brilliant BURN-E available on the WALL-E DVD as well as the bonus DVD Secrets of the Furious Five which came along with Kung Fu Panda.



Yet, the most fascinating extras for me all surrounded the making of the film. While sometimes we're overwhelmed by insistent and phony Electronic Press Kit styled interviews filled with pompous narration and interviews that nearly seem scripted, what's apparent right from the start of these extras is just how passionately everyone involved felt about the making of Horton. Also containing deleted footage and animation screen tests (with optional introductions and commentaries), it's an amazingly inspiring all-access pass to the dedication and tireless energy of the young animators who tried to stay true to Suess' trademark drawings filled with curves, wrinkles, swirls, and the struggle they had to make the short classic book into a compelling feature that still captured the same heart and spirit of the tale.



Ensuring they had the blessing of Dr. Suess' widow-- the filmmakers note that Suess had never been adapted as a feature length animated work and they discussed the trials and joys of translating the author's 2-D designs into a 3-D world, right down to certain shadings and even making their first version of the screenplay a book-like treatment with the original animation in tact when they made their presentation to the Suess family. Once they received the go-ahead to make the film, Blue Sky developed a critical style guide and complete set of rules for everyone involved to follow as they point out the various Suess qualities that animators had to reproduce faithfully.

And while it's a riot to watch the all-star cast record their scenes, which then sends the animators back to the storyboard panels to re-imagine and invent the animation yet again-- going as far as to literally act out the scenes themselves in front of computer cameras, just lip-syncing to the actors to get their movements, it's even more intriguing to watch the brainy, young animators themselves. Agonizing over different reads and styles of relaying a thought or action with varying body language by bringing in other colleagues to do an alternate "read" of their scene, one reveals they shoot twenty minutes of live video, then edit it until they have a usable tiny amount they animate to fit the right emotional core of the scene and stay faithful to the actor's voice work. And thankfully, they note that some of the actors allowed themselves to be filmed while they were in-house doing their voice-work, and the artists noted that they'd take some strange visual cues or movements possessed by cast-mates such as Steve Carrell, Will Arnett, and Amy Poehler and incorporate it directly into the drawings.

Horton also offers a treasure trove of features from elephant fun facts, interviewing kids about how the smallest of actions can help promote a more peaceful existence, to the importance of being open-minded and without judgment in others with "A Person is a Person: A Universal Message," along with games and cast interviews. Additionally, saving the best for last-- there is some terrific footage of Jim Carrey as he relishes in completing his first CG cartoon and what drew him to the part of Horton-- the innocent elephant and it's humbling and admirable to witness his own anxieties and perfectionism in wanting it to be a success. Moreover, it's a wonderful addition to an already superior year of animated DVDs and Blu-rays, along with the recent releases of Panda, WALL-E, Tinker Bell, Sleeping Beauty, and others.

Also available as a special gift set with a Horton plush toy available this coming Tuesday right in time for holiday shopping-- no matter which version of Horton you pick up, the result is anything but "small" as it's sure to become a modern, childhood favorite. Moreover, it's a highly recommended, life-affirming, positive, and inspiring film. And it's truly exciting to anticipate what Blue Sky and the other first-rate animation studios will release next to a world that desperately needs to be reminded right now that we're more alike than one thinks and in this time of conflict (as opposed to the brilliant yet bleak last forty-five minutes of WALL-E) that there's always hope if we band together. So clean out those ears, pick up a flower, and get ready to listen to some Whos.

Read the Books

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

The Real Heartbreak Kid

When your significant other begins a sentence with the phrase “we need to talk,” or “look, you know I love you but,” or any derivation thereof, not only is it code that a breakup is in your near future, but unlike Jason Segel’s character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it’s probably best if you’re fully dressed.

Although his girlfriend of five and a half years, Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell), the TV star on a sexy crime scene show, pleas with him to pick up his post-shower towel or go get dressed, the devastated Peter Bretter (Segel) pitifully rationalizes that if he were to put on clothes then the whole situation would become real and it’s over. Unfortunately it turns out that Sarah’s resolution to end their relationship doesn’t necessarily follow Peter’s impromptu rules (that we can all relate to when trying desperately to hold onto something like a kid in a toy store) and soon enough he’s good and dumped.

A struggling musician, Peter is now unable to continue providing the score to Sarah’s show with zero melody and a preference for “just dark, ominous tones” without attacking the studio screen in anguish fearing that she’s traded up for an affair with her handsome costar Billy Baldwin. Soon Peter seeks gender stereotypical comfort by engaging in meaningless one night stands with whatever freaky skank will take him home. After the first one ends in tears — Peter’s tears, that is — Peter rushes to his pediatrician out of fear that he’s been given a disease. And although he doesn’t quit trying to forget Sarah in the arms of strangers, eventually he retreats into a depression of listening to Sinead O’Conner’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” in a grimy apartment, trying to burn everything that reminds him of her, and refusing to delete all of the photos of his ex stored on his computer. Now figuratively at rock bottom after a much needed intervention by his best friend, soon Peter takes his friend’s advice to get the hell out of Dodge.

However, instead of hitting Vegas or some other dark place where you can hide in corners and forget, Peter decides to visit the most romantic vacation spot on Earth, journeying to Hawaii to the exact same location that Sarah always talked about. Of course, this being a comedy from the Apatow gang, sure enough, Sarah is there as well, vacationing with her new lover, an obnoxious, self-involved, tattooed, British rock star named Aldous (Russell Brand). Seven years sober and prone to giving odd lectures about his right to basically screw anything that moves, Aldous is the anti-Peter who unlike our sad-sack hero, would never have withstood a relationship with Sarah’s emasculating diva demands of holding her purse at awards shows or stepping out of photos on the red carpet.

Of course, just like in the thematically similar Farrelly Brothers remake of Elaine May’s classic The Heartbreak Kid (based on Neil Simon’s script), sure enough Peter realizes that the woman he’d assumed was of his dreams, was in fact his nightmare when he encounters a new woman of his dreams, this time in the form of carefree, supportive, and endlessly cheery hotel employee named Rachel (Mila Kunis).

Although as an island and complete with Sarah and Peter staying at the exact same resort, Hawaii isn’t big enough for the both of them as their plans overlap and they find themselves on awkward double dates, strange confrontations that lead to increasingly bizarre and embarrassing sight gags as Peter realizes he underestimated how hard it was to go about forgetting Sarah Marshall.

View the Trailer

Featuring likable cameos by additional members of the Apatow gang like the hilariously underrated Paul Rudd as a forgetful surf instructor and Jonah Hill as an aspiring musician, the film, directed by Nicholas Stoller, written by its star Jason Segel and produced by Judd Apatow and Shauna Robertson makes its way to DVD in a multitude of formats on Tuesday, September 30. Available in Blu-ray, the standard theatrical edition DVD, or as part of a seven-disc Unrated Comedy Collection that also includes The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, the three-disc unrated collector’s edition DVD that I explored is filled with uproarious extras including more than two hours of deleted and extended scenes, gag reels, bonus featurettes, hilarious montages, behind the scenes clips with the cast and crew, an episode of Cinemax Final Cut: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, raw footage, filmmaker commentary as well as a bonus digital copy of the film that conveniently downloads to your PC, Mac, or iPod within minutes.

Infinitely more hilarious than the downright offensive and anti-feminist yet thematically similar The Heartbreak Kid (famously featured as one of the worst films of 2007 in Top Ten Lists by some prominent critics) Sarah Marshall has a bit more heart than most gross-out rom-coms post-There’s Something About Mary (incidentally also made by the Farrelly Brothers). And while we instinctively side with Segel, the overly long conclusion and finale involving a Dracula rock opera starring puppets may have been a much funnier joke on paper than it was on film and twenty minutes could’ve easily been edited out of the nearly two hour film.

Yet despite this and the fact that by now I’ve begun growing weary of the overused formula served up by the frat pack, post-Mary comedies where 99% of the jokes derive below the waist, it’s the supporting players that eventually make the film work. These include Russell Brand’s scene-stealing Aldous, who manages to garner laughs even before he opens his mouth, the ever-reliable Paul Rudd, as well as 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer as a devoutly religious newlywed who’s struggling to fulfill his sexual duties as a new husband. Kunis is adorable and makes a terrific foil to Bell’s Sarah, who actually legitimately gains some sympathy throughout as opposed to simply lampooning her like the wife character in Heartbreak Kid.

And while on the level of laughs per scene ratio it still doesn’t touch The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, it beats the hell out of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (despite John C. Reilly’s hilarious Golden Globe nominated performance). Sure to be a comedy with lines you’ll find impossible to forget, Stoller and Segel’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall never fails to entertain in whatever version you decide to bring home.

Just Add Water

Director: Hart Bochner

Speaking as someone who doesn’t even have power windows let alone a GPS directional system, I’ve graduated from the headache inducing cumbersome maps with size nine font and an overreliance on geometry to the friendlier, although sometimes erroneous MapQuest directions. And, while it’s always nerve-wracking to venture out on my own-- armed with a terrific mix CD or programmed iPod and a questionable cheat sheet from a computer website to get myself where I need to be-- I love taking in the scenery as I go. Not only am I constantly amazed by the homogeny of mini-malls, fast food places, and chain stores, but it’s always intriguing when I get out of the cityscape and drive through one of those under-populated desert ghost towns where you only see one main grocery store with a mostly vacant lot, a few scattered shops including the obligatory gas station and then one small community of homes amidst an unforgiving, desolate backdrop, where it’s quiet for miles and... when global warming is at its worst, it climbs to an extreme one hundred and thirty degrees. As I whip by in air-conditioned luxury, knowing it’s just one numeric direction on my MapQuest list, the writer in me wonders what life is like in one of those sleepy towns.

In Just Add Water, writer/director Hart Bochner’s unrelentingly dark yet sweet and sour flavored comedy, we have the opportunity to find out as we meet our unlikely sad sack hero Ray Tuckby (Nip/Tuck’s Dylan Walsh), who lives in the bleak town of Trona, California where the toxic waste poisoned soil caused the river to be diverted as most citizens including the law enforcement all jumped ship (or rather town), and a group of unruly young meth lab running punks including Justin Long and led by the particularly vile Dirk (Will Rothaar) purchased up all the property they could get their greasy hands on to run the show as greedy landlords, shutting off the electricity (and therefore air conditioning) when one of their residents blows their welfare checks and forgets to pay up, or threatening to harm Ray’s son if they’re not granted a new five dollar toll for driving down a public street.

Needless to say, life in Trona is miserable and for Ray it’s no exception with a shut-in wife who coupon clips and as Ray soon learns has a devastating secret all her own along with Eddie (Jonah Hill), an aimless son who keeps reminding his father that he’d like to visit a hooker for his belated graduation present, although really-- when all is said and done-- he realizes that he’d rather be a proper boyfriend to the lovely R’Ch’lle (Anika Noni Rose).

With more family drama piled on early in the film via a medical emergency that—in predictable dark comic fashion—ends with shocking laughter in a questionably tasteless confrontation, it seems that the only ray of light for Ray himself comes from his daily trips to the local market when he gets a precious few uninterrupted minutes with the girl he’s loved since grade school-- the sweet, adorable checkout woman Nora (Tracy Middendorf). However, as we all know—one of the greatest obstacles of finding love is timing—it’s not enough that you meet someone you’re compatible with, what’s more, you need to be fortunate enough that when the feeling goes from one-sided to mutual, you’re both free.

Lucky for Ray, he’s released from the old ball-and-chain but true to the film’s sardonic nature, his decoupling occurs in one of the most emasculating ways. Thus after Ray’s life is turned upside down and he finds himself single again, he tries to build up enough courage to give in to the crush he’s harbored for nearly two decades and Walsh’s scenes with Middendorf provide a much needed earnest and romantic relief to the otherwise dire film where the overwhelmingly unlikable characters and situations threaten to destroy any hope of finding humor in the outrageous situations that grow much more dismal as it continues.

Yet, thanks to a great, understated turn by Walsh whose quintessential good guy everyman we’re rooting for from the start and an amusing smaller role from Danny DeVito as the new Chevron station independent operator, this otherwise lackluster, below average comedy which initially made me recall the horrors of DeVito’s Drowning Mona and Death to Smoochy, becomes surprisingly watchable Saturday afternoon fare—especially one that would be much more enjoyable after days of endless rain has left one longing for the type of sun they can’t avoid and for which they would love to trade in order to Just Add Water in Bochner’s desolate, downbeat depiction of Trona, California.