DVD Review: A Happening of Monumental Proportions (2017)

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The consummate scene-stealer, in some ways it's fitting that – having built an impressive career playing flirty best friends or frenemies in romantic comedies, oddballs who give indie dramas moments of levity, or as in the case of TV's Arrested Development become viewer favorites on par with the main cast – Judy Greer's directorial debut would focus on memorable supporting characters.

From paramedics (Katie Holmes and Nat Faxon) who take a doughnut but leave a body to an HR rep (Kumail Nanjiani) who says, "I may not be a registered therapist but I am a registered friend," A Happening of Monumental Proportions is filled with enough eccentric characters and moments of genuinely amusing dialogue that we imagine Greer would’ve gravitated to even as a performer.

Unfortunately none of it makes much sense as actor Gary Lundy's screenwriting debut plays as though he took a series of half-finished short stories and character sketches and – after unsuccessfully trying to weave them together into a cohesive tapestry – just left it as is and moved on, which is when the film just arbitrarily stops.

Missing an overall plotline, save for what seems to be a main arc revolving around school officials’ attempts to hide the dead body of a groundskeeper from not only the students but (more importantly) the parents on Career Day, there's nothing very Monumental about this particular Happening.

With no real lead save for Common's affable widowed father Daniel who gets fired right before his Career Day presentation thanks to a series of increasingly convoluted events which are brought to life by an enviable cast, A Happening is driven by its supporting players. And although it has its moments, Lundy and Greer's attempt at Altmanesque dramedy is a forgettable mess.

More focused on building scenes than worrying about how they fit into the film overall, the film wastes far too much time on cameos such as the phallus obsessed cuckolded spouse of Jennifer Garner's Nadine, which is played with so much gusto that it will make you look at stoic John Wick actor Keanu Reeves in a whole new light.

To Greer's credit, in the tonally staccato feature moments like this aim for and every once in awhile stick their landing as comedic fodder. Yet far too often – as in the case of poor Reeves – they're so over-the-top that you wonder if they were the result of unrestrained improv.

And by throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, Happening's storytellers miss the forest for the trees, looking past what could have been a much better movie involving the unlikely About a Boy style bond between Anders Holm's suicidal music teacher and a precocious new student that’s hidden in plain sight.

Of course, with so many loose threads, that's just one of many directions that the film (which was actually produced by About a Boy helmers Paul and Chris Weitz) could've gone. Still in the end you wish that – like kids figuring out what they want to be when they grow up on Career Day – the otherwise gifted Greer would've really taken the time to ask herself what she wanted the meandering Happening to be when it made its way from script to screen.

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Movie Review: Love Happens (2009)

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As someone who feels that the self-help industry is in need of self-help and seminars are just a larger version of Paul Dano making Daniel Day Lewis shout "I've abandoned my child" in There Will Be Blood, needless to say I was a tad skeptical about the prospect of a love story set amidst a self-help seminar.

Yet, while I don't believe in the moral and ethical implications of the backdrop of "open your wallet and we'll help you with common sense" or wondering about what happens when someone leaves said seminar and is away from workshops, I do believe in one of the most criminally underrated actors working in American cinema today, Mr. Aaron Eckhart.

Curiously driven to flawed and downright ugly roles perhaps as a determined effort to refocus attention he's no doubt received all his life for his Robert Redford-esque looks whether it's in his tour de force turn in Thank You For Smoking or via vile characters portrayed in Nurse Betty or In the Company of Men or switching up his appearance to win Julia Roberts' heart in Erin Brockovich, the bottom line is there's nothing false about Eckhart when he's onscreen.

This film is (mostly) no exception as he tackles an externally perfect, internally struggling self-help guru who, having tragically lost his wife in a freak traffic accident a few years earlier, took his day job writing columns for Psychology Today and worked through his grief by chronicling it in book form. When his friend and manager, Lane (Dan Fogler) read the book titled A-Okay and gave it to a publisher, it became a phenomenal bestseller earning Eckhart's Dr. Burke Ryan legions of fans before it evolved into sold-out seminars where he helps others grappling with the death of a loved one.

Guilty about the perception of cashing in on his wife's death and not actually managing to have followed his own advice to avoid alcohol since it's like putting a bandage "on a bullet wound" or forcing himself to smile for five minutes every day until it becomes natural, privately Burke is a wreck. Ritually, he puts himself through impossible trials of running up and down several flights of stairs at the hotels he visits around the country and looks ready for a panic attack each time after enlisting the help of liquid courage before he puts on a happy, confident face for the paying participants.Simply put, when we meet Burke, he visibly feels like the other four letter word that usually precedes "happens" in pop culture. Thus, it's quickly evident upon his arrival to host a grief workshop in Seattle where he's confronted by father-in-law Martin Sheen he's avoided for years that Love Happens is not going to be the feel great date movie of the year.

Yet despite its many, many contrivances, it gets much better as it continues as-- to his amazement-- Burke finds himself attracted and fascinated by Jennifer Aniston's free-spirited florist Eloise who provides the hotel with gorgeous, fresh arrangements. The unlikely and charmingly awkward courtship of the two gets off to a very rocky start as, coming off another romantic letdown with a philandering ex (Joe Anderson), Eloise tries to dodge the Seattle visitor first by pretending she's deaf and then by telling him off in the men's room that she isn't going to be a local girl he can just have a fling with... yet in much more colorful language.

Aniston and Eckhart spark well together which is refreshing to see for Aniston who has struggled in the past with unconvincing chemistry opposite Clive Owen in Derailed and Mark Ruffalo in Rumor Has It and sure enough, this is one of her strongest roles since The Break-Up and Friends With Money as she elevates the film from its Nicholas Sparks air of depression with a fun Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail mixed with Natalie Portman in Garden State vibe.

In fact, I was reminded of Garden State and its influence Harold and Maude numerous times as similarly in Happens, the life-affirming yet slightly screwed up, unconventional woman helps lead the path for a man to heal with love. While the choice to make her a florist is definitely symbolic as romance blooms and flowers die just like people and arrangements are used in times of sympathy and celebration and one of her unique quirks is making copies of "life on a 3x5 card" aka notes that are sent along with flowers that have stuck out in her life, the movie itself brightens whenever Eloise or her flowers are onscreen.

The balance between love and death and moving forward while being stuck in the past is important and emotionally charged since everyone can relate yet at the same time it makes the film slightly uncomfortable viewing if you're getting over a loss yourself. And while I applauded its ambitious nature, ultimately it's way too much to pack into a movie.

Moreover, as Burke tries to own up to the guilt he feels and work through the pain, it never feels authentic and I couldn't help wishing it had done away with the seminar stuff or retooled it somehow since the relationship is more of a flirtation than love and the grief is so rushed, you get through all five stages in two minutes near the end which may work in a self help book by fake doctors but would never have been published as truth in Psychology Today.

This is especially obvious in a confessional scene literally onstage with Martin Sheen that sparked a couple of surprised laughs in the audience because it just didn't work. Likewise you could sense that even Eckhart knew it was too mixed of a bag in not only in this scene but a few other "group therapy" moments involving a terrific turn by Zodiac and Gran Torino actor John Carroll Lynch wherein Eckhart works overtime to try and make us believe that a man can be healed by one shopping trip to Home Depot.

Overall, the film marks an admirable effort that's half successful and more worthy of a rental than a ticket price aside from the fact that it's undeniably bolstered by the always watchable Eckhart and Aniston in two terrific roles. Unfortunately, the characters weren't served well and neither was the audience as in addition to the strange bedfellows of plot-juggling such polar-opposite events, the fact that part of Burke's road to recovery involves a multi-million dollar sell-out leaves us with a sour aftertaste of greed instead of the deliciousness of healing with love.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

The Go-Getter

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It’s become nearly common sense to say that anything you see in the movies you shouldn’t try at home but when it comes to writer/director Martin Hynes’ critically acclaimed Sundance Film Festival indie hit, The Go-Getter, it’d probably be best to extend that warning to your local car wash and parking lots.

Running out of ways for would-be lovers to meet, in a wonderfully inventive alternative to having the two lock eyes and become drawn together with near magnetic force (that’s called lust, my friends) or literally bumping into one another (which looks incredibly painful), Hynes comes up with a Kerouac and Huck Finn inspired humdinger with a felony thrown in for good measure. Why not steal her car?

Of course, this isn’t truly what makes Mercer run in the opening of Hynes’ film—having read Huck Finn and discovering that more than anything else it made him realize just how “stuck” he felt, he crafts plans for a premeditated vehicular heist. Namely-- borrow a friend’s t-shirt to get into the local car-wash without causing speculation, hop into the closest ride that doesn’t look like it’d fall apart, and pick up one’s belongings later on the side of the road.

Mercer (wonderfully played by the subtle and emotive Lou Taylor Pucci) gets away with it too until a cell phone rings and after a mini freak-out, he decides he’ll answer it, since by then he has nothing to lose. Instead of it being the local fuzz, he finds himself talking with the beguiling automobile owner, voiced by independent film’s coolest young actress, Zooey Deschanel. Oddly, yet believably (possibly because she’s voiced by Deschanel who can do anything from fake romantic chemistry with Will Ferrell in Elf or make you laugh and nearly cry all in the same scene in Mumford), she decides she won’t press charges. Eager to make it up to her, Mercer rattles off a laundry list of ideas from helping out with yard work or chores but the forgiving Deschanel says that she’ll let him use her wheels on his trip as long as he calls her regularly to fill him in on what’s happening.

Although it initially felt as though the idea to “go west, young man,” was spontaneous, soon we realize—and it is an indie (read: grab your tissues) after all – that Mercer is a nineteen-year-old kid on a mission. Having lost his mother to slow, excruciating cancer eight months earlier, he decides to track down his estranged brother Arlen (Jsu Garcia) who is eighteen years his senior and whom he’d last seen at the age of five and inform him about what has happened. And along the path to Arlen, he begins realizing that he may not really know his brother as well as he thinks when he receives everything from a punch to a threat as he tries retracing the man’s steps.

Larceny, it seems runs in the family but Arlen’s crimes have been far more severe, ruining relationships and causing heartache wherever he’s set foot as Mercer meets a pot-smoking hippie played by Judy Greer, a former jailbird played by Maura Tierney and many others riding all the way from Oregon through Nevada, California, and ultimately ending up in Ensenada, Mexico.

Mercer takes advantage of the gift of close proximity when chasing the rumor that Arlen has wound up in Reno to look up an old middle-school classmate and crush named Joley, played by Jena Malone. Getting sidetracked by the flirtatious, sexually confident, and manipulative Joley who teases him into submission with ecstasy and her feminine wiles before endangering Mercer when she invites other men along, Mercer soon comes to realize that the girl he’s pining for isn’t the one for whom he’d carried a torch all those years ago but the one taking his calls back in Oregon.

When she shows up later on and is identified as a slightly older local girl he barely knew named Kate, Deschanel and Pucci elevate a film that had begun spiraling out of control with one odd adventure after the next (including meeting a creepy would-be adult filmmaker who exploits teenagers and one too many warnings about Arlen) into something genuinely touching and emotionally rich.

Additionally it offers a great contemporary soundtrack as well as music by M. Ward who has joined forces with Deschanel off camera to form the band She & Him. Including some impressive craftsmanship including an overwhelming homage to the French New Wave (especially evidenced in a scene taken right out of Godard’s Band of Outsiders), it’s the type of film sure to gain instant fans in those who latched onto Braff’s Garden State, provided they seek it out when it hits DVD shelves on 10/21.

Featuring filmmaker commentary, exclusive interviews, and other behind the scenes bonus footage, the film’s DVD release from Peace Arch Entertainment taps right into its target demographic by including not just a Digital Copy of the film for your PC, Mac, iPod, iPhone, or other portable device but also access to an exclusive free download of a musical track by Ward and Deschanel’s band She & Him.

Beautifully shot completely in sequence as a “creative decision” so that all would need to “go on the trip”—the film wears its high style and artistry proudly from its USC-educated and George Lucas in Love award-nominated helmer Hynes in some of the earliest scenes as Mercer imagines what the girl on the other end of the phone looks like and then pictures her riding along in the backseat.

Despite his admission that he isn’t religious and “given the fairly raw language and sexuality,” Hynes doesn’t quite get why it’s being labeled as such but noted that Christian seminary students who attended “one of the Sundance screenings… were intrigued by the threads of [what they assumed were] spiritual confusion that run through [the] road trip.”

Likewise I agreed with Hynes, feeling that-- no matter how outrageous and highly unbelievable the situations were throughout the film from asking us to buy into its laid-back negotiation to car theft early on-- it’s a relatable, nonreligious road movie that taps right into its 18- to 24-year-old target demographic of trying to discover just who they are, what’s important, and whom they’d like to invite with them along the way. Although, speaking as someone whose car has been broken into before, I can’t stress enough the importance of leaving thievery in the movies where it belongs as that’s not the world’s best conversation starter when you meet someone new in the real world.

The Grand

Director:
Zak Penn

In The Grand, Woody Harrelson’s character Jack Faro is proof that for addicts, sometimes admitting you have a problem is not the first step. In fact, in his case, it seems to have been the gateway that perhaps just having only one, two, or eight addictions weren’t enough as—cheaper by the dozen—it’s Jack’s policy to “bring ‘em on” becoming addicted to every possible drug known to man. And while we’re at it, he threw marriage into the mix, making Elizabeth Taylor look like a blushing amateur, having walked down the aisle exactly 74 times and although he tells the camera in Zak Penn’s hilarious Christopher Guest-like mockumentary that he loved each and every one of his wives, within minutes we realize that he can’t exactly place them all.

Soon, true to form, Jack completely forgets the fact that he’d once wed the lovely, Shannon Elizabeth who works as an employee of the casino he’d inherited from his grandfather. Incidentally, it's the same place he’s darn near run into the ground with disastrous theme choices for its reconstruction including renovating the classic old school Rabbit’s Foot Casino so that it resembles a nuclear reactor or pays homage to the great Chicago Fire. Obviously, the drugs have affected his mental state and rock bottom for Jack came when he was kicked out of his own casino and-- although he can’t honestly remember-- he believes he’d given the order himself.

Needless to say he’s got a lot of work to do and fittingly we first encounter Jack where he’s resided for two years at rehab where he’s up to his Casanova like old ways, wooing his doctor with a song about the twelve steps, although he’s only on the first one. Promising his lovesick doctor that he’ll write, he’s convinced to leave rehab to try and save his family’s Rabbit’s Foot Casino by playing for a place in the final round of the six person North American Indoor Poker League winner take all tournament, complete with a ten million dollar prize.

Harrelson’s hilarious performance serves as the film’s anchor and coming off the heels of his impressive work in the somber No Country for Old Men and The Walker, it's a nice stepping stone to an even funnier ensemble piece than his work alongside Will Ferrell in Semi-Pro. In order to give Harrelson more to work with, Zak Penn invites numerous veteran comedians to the cinematic party as well. Although IMDb reports the script was a mere twenty-nine pages, in the hands of improvisational pros and versatile entertainers like Cheryl Hines, David Cross, Ray Romano, Jason Alexander, Richard Kind, Judy Greer, and countless others, they elevate what should have been a lackluster forgettable rental into one of the most surprisingly entertaining DVD sleepers of 2008.

One of the first and incidentally least likable competitors we meet is Chris Parnell’s angry, anal-retentive, mathematically obsessed Harold who not only lives with his mother but makes her life a living hell ensuring she’s always preparing his nutritious brain food, complete with supplements. Moving the action to Massapequa, we meet one of the competition’s likeliest frontrunners, Lainie (Cheryl Hines), who given the rarity of her gender in the finals is merely dubbed “The Woman” instead of being served up one of the memorable, alternately cheesy, and hip nicknames. Having been raised by a hyper masculine, challenge hungry, dysfunctional father (Gabe Kaplan) alongside her fellow aggressive and obnoxious player and brother Larry (David Cross), Lainie is used to dealing with difficult men. However, her main preoccupation away from cards seems to be tirelessly supporting her husband Ray Romano who hasn’t been the same since he survived a lightning strike. Now filling his time by inventing new ideas such as “the round beach towel,” nonsensical sayings, and odd handshakes, Romano’s biggest concern seems to be in negotiating with his wife over who has to look after their children if her shot at the championship conflicts with his Yahoo Fantasy Football draft time slot.

Of course, Vegas isn’t Vegas without veteran old-timers and they arrive in the form of an odd turn from legendary director Werner Herzog as a surprisingly hilarious and frightening man simply dubbed “The German” who shares that he feels most alive and ensures maximum human energy by killing an animal everyday. We also meet Dennis Farina’s cowboy-hat-and-boot-wearing Deuce Fairbanks who, when he isn’t threatening to whack those who annoy him, bemoans the downfall of Sin City when they began letting people wearing culottes into the casinos.

Ordinarily with that many players, one would think they’d have their work cut out for them already, but the biggest question mark arrives later on. The players don't know exactly what to think when the laughably amateurish and earnestly friendly, successful online party poker winner Andy Andrews (Richard Kind) abandons the icy temperatures of Wisconsin, complete with his supportive wife (Judy Greer) in tow, hoping they’ll be the ones to capture the ten million dollar booty in order to flee the cold weather and Greer’s self-owned Ribbon Store to move somewhere warm.

One of the perils of releasing a mockumentary after Spinal Tap performer turned director Christopher Guest has basically perfected the art and turned it into a science with his brilliant classics Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, is that one will never be able to reach the astronomically high bar set by those films. However, as mock-docs go, I’ve seen far worse, and I was quite surprised by the freewheeling, rapid-fire humor of The Grand which seemed to belong to the vintage Woody Allen and Steve Martin school of a gag-a-minute approach (with only half being successful). I’d even go as far as to say I’d watch this one again in a heartbeat before I popped Guest’s sharp but largely melancholy A Mighty Wind back into my disc player.

Predictably most critics employed a “party” analogy to utilize in their critiques in describing The Grand’s overwhelmingly large cast that’s nearly bursting at the seams, thus pointing out that with that many “attendees” it’s hard for viewers to become attentive hosts, giving each an adequate amount of attention. This being said, Penn knows which individuals are worth spending more time with and which cameos are best left trimmed for by the editors (for example: only a few moments of Brett Ratner and much more Jason Alexander). And with the one exception of wanting to see more of the scene stealing Herzog as we’ve never seen him before—amazed that this tyrannical, mad Dr. Strangelove like character is embodied by the same person who brought us the masterful Rescue Dawn-- when our attention is largely directed at veteran performers like Harrelson and Hines, we know we’re in good hands.

So when Incredible Hulk writer Zak Penn is the one holding The Grand’s deck of cards, the audience can lean back and say, as Shirley MacLaine famously quipped at the end of The Apartment, “shut up and deal.”