DVD Review: Wings (2013)

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If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the movies it’s never to underestimate the impact that an underdog with a dream can have when they’ve been given the opportunity to make that lifelong dream come true.

And this often utilized cinematic adage is doubly familiar when it comes to animated tales of underdogs that undertake heroic quests over the course of a three act film. But as popular as these plotlines are in contemporary CG fare with so many studios copying the successful formulas employed by their rivals to serve up slight variations of the same bankable themes, they’ve also proven so profitable that some animators go back to the well of their own material, cranking out a new spin of a past production before other studios can do the same.

Whether it’s Disney’s Planes spin-off from Pixar’s World of Cars that was originally intended to go straight to DVD or Dreamworks’ Puss In Boots film line that spiraled off the monstrously successful Shrek series, ticket buyers and home video consumers have been treated to a lot of the same over the past decade in an increasingly crowded post-Pixar children’s entertainment market.

And eager to prove that Hollywood isn’t the only place to create vibrant animation, while Japan’s Studio Ghibli and England’s Aardman Animation have been influential for decades, other countries have begun to follow suit in a big way, releasing a wide variety of critical landmarks and contemporary favorites from France’s Persepolis to Israel’s Waltz With Bashir along with many other entertaining and enlightening offerings from around the globe.

Russia has joined in over the last few years, increasing their budgets to create some vastly detailed animated fare including some features that play off of the same plotlines and franchises made popular by Disney.

Their outstanding attention to detail was most notably on display in the country’s recent gorgeous adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Snow Queen which was dubbed in English and released on DVD at the same time that Disney’s Frozen took the box office by storm in late November of 2013.

Although it has none of the pomp and circumstance nor the classical style of the Andersen fairytale, the country’s latest venture to release in the states also ties into Walt Disney with the release of the new Lionsgate DVD send-up of Planes with the aptly titled Wings.

Using the same basic Cars-like plot that Disney also utilized for their recent aviation based animation, Wings milks the underdog formula for all its worth as we meet our aspiring world class flyer and small-town plane Ace (voiced by Josh Duhamel) who, through a one in a million opportunity, winds up accidentally being offered the fifth spot on a championship team just one month before the Super Wings Trophy Competition.

Taking all the help he can get from the film’s requisite wacky sidekicks, Ace befriends Rob Schneider’s wisecracking wingman and unsolicited advice giving bird Dodo, who becomes the surprise scene-stealer of the film as Schneider dives into voice work with the same energy we used to witness from him on Saturday Night Live.

While predictably, Ace also encounters a new love interest voiced by Hilary Duff as Windy, when Ace’s determination and passion inspires Top Gun alumni Tom Skerritt’s veteran coach to come out of hiding following a tragic accident, Ace incurs the wrath of a bullying competitor who tries to manipulate Windy and Ace into losing his place in the race.

Of course, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before and Disney’s far more sophisticated individualized animation made the aircraft characters come much more vibrantly to life in Planes. Nonetheless, I must say that much to my pleasant surprise and largely thanks to Schneider’s sterling voicework and the witty English language adaptation from scripter Mychal Simka, filmmaker Olga Lopato’s energetic, brightly colored children’s film is far more entertaining than I thought it would be.

As such, it ultimately reminds viewers that we never can underestimate an animated underdog as Wings takes flight – captivating the imagination of young viewers for the fun-filled ride along the way.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: The Waterboy (1998)

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In the world of film criticism, it seems as though if say you find Adam Sandler funny, you're committing an offense of the highest order. And while you'll never catch me wanting to watch Click, Little Nicky, or even The Waterboy ever again-- overall and flaws aside, I've still found a lot to like in his comedic work in movies such as The Wedding Singer, Anger Management, Billy Madison and You Don't Mess With the Zohan.

Yet it's also on display when he's working alongside other talents in dramatic performances such as in Paul Thomas Anderson's underrated Punch Drunk Love, James L. Brooks' underrated Spanglish and Mike Binder's underrated Reign Over Me. Gee, are we sensing a pattern? Yes, there is a Sandler prejudice and also Adam Sandler is extremely underrated. To this end, it seems as though very few individuals have realized the extent of his talent which goes way beyond the horrific character he created along with his frequent screenwriter Tim Herlihy in director Frank Coraci's The Waterboy.

Moreover, the Sandler influence seems to crop up everywhere from-- I swear-- a similar voice heard in some of Jon Stewart's impressions on The Daily Show to Jimmy Fallon basically trying to become the next generation's Sandler even going as far as to make his best film with Sandler's greatest female costar Drew Barrymore via Fever Pitch.

Yet where Waterboy forgets to incorporate the funny is by failing to successfully blend together the two ingredients that seem to show up repeatedly in the man's various characters whether created by Sandler or others including Binder and Anderson. In other words, the quintessential Sandler character is one that possesses genuine innocent sweetness and a boyish naivete mixed in equal measure with a Warner Brothers Acme stick of dynamite that's ready to explode.

A lot has been written about Sandler's good angel and bad angel schtick as the well-intentioned overgrown juvenile character we've witnessed in Madison, Happy Gilmore or Big Daddy (which co-starred Jon Stewart). Essentially, he seems filled with true sweetness yet he has the capability to move directly into overly violent bully territory within an instant which can honestly alarm viewers.

Whether he's beating up a bathroom in Punch Drunk Love, throwing dodgeballs extremely hard at first graders in Billy Madison, or rough handling any number of people in his films-- in a sense Adam Sandler has taken the classic Laurel and Hardy, Marx Brothers or Three Stooges-like ensemble idea and turned it into one individual.

Basically, when we meet a Sandler character in each successive film, we're never exactly sure whom we're going to encounter as he moves from hugs to hits with frightening speed but one of the reasons it worked better in the aforementioned comedy teams is because they were an ensemble and so it was easier to take when you balanced Harpo with Chico and Laurel with Hardy.

Walking the thin line between physical comedy and downright violence is the task undertaken in The Waterboy when we first encounter Sandler in sugar sweet mode as Bobby Boucher, the overly sheltered, smothered mama's boy still living at home at the age of thirty-one.

Apparently mentally challenged and shy-- he rides his tractor from his cliched Louisiana backwoods bayou swamp home shared with his mother Kathy Bates (a long, long way from her usual Oscar worthy self) to the local university where he delivers high quality water as the football team's official waterboy.

Mercilessly ridiculed with school bus level insults aimed squarely at his disability, when it's the victim Bobby who's accused of distracting the team so much by simply existing as a mentally challenged individual the guys bully to no end, he's fired.

Unwilling to just quit the waterboy gig altogether, Bobby visits a local college whose football team's historic losing streak has made them the laughingstock of ESPN. And much to his shock, he's hired-- obviously for free-- to become the "water distribution engineer" by the formerly great and now frazzled Coach Klein (Henry Winkler).

One of the film's only saving graces--Winkler's Coach Klein is the one who tells Bobby at long last that it's okay to stick up for himself. Although when thirty-one years of pent up frustration boils to the surface, Bobby goes berserk, violently knocking the man to the ground in a way that gives Klein the idea that Bobby may be precisely what his team needs to actually win a single game.

Lying to his mama about becoming a football player and college student as well as spending increasing amounts of time with free-spirited recently released jailbird Vicki Vallencourt (Fairuza Balk), Sandler's Bobby Boucher soon becomes the star of the team.

An obvious retread of not just Happy Gilmore but other underdog sports tales-- where Waterboy goes terribly wrong is by constantly resorting to awful gross-out memories and over-the-top violence as the most frequent source for jokes. Likewise in having way too much fun with the stereotypical southern setting as Bates cooks up squirrels and gators, we're never sure if we're laughing with Bobby and the Louisiana community or at them as the same cliches of "retarded" and "redneck" that the film allegedly is trying to prove are shallow and wrong.

Thus, in the end, it's squirm-inducing, uncomfortable humor that feels like a ninety minute live action version of a cartoon created by a few teens understandably tired of being picked on in high school yet seeking creative justice rather than violent justice. I only wish the same could be said for the journey of Bobby Boucher.

However, at the end of the day, there's nothing creative about a film that Sandler and Herlihy could've penned in a single afternoon that is nowhere near as intricate or clever as the brief skits from SNL where Sandler would star in "The Denise Show," play the "Opera Man" or grab a guitar and sing odes to Hanukkah, red sweatshirts, or lunch ladies.

A waste of all involved save for Winkler whose playful performance earned the sole laugh I could muster when screening the work for the second time in eleven years on Blu-ray disc as he illustrates the need to rebel by sharing his inked appreciation for Roy Orbison.

So instead for angry Sandler, your best bet is still seeing him square off opposite Jack Nicholson in Anger Management when the premise works precisely because he's in denial of the rage he repeatedly lunges towards in his films and for sweet Sandler, he'll never top The Wedding Singer which is still one of my favorite '90s romantic comedies.

Boasting zero bonus features since most likely none of the individuals involved felt like reliving the experience-- the Blu-ray from Touchstone Pictures is otherwise top-notch as it was distributed by Walt Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment which proves on a weekly basis that they have this format down to an exact science.

Moreover it duplicates the same experience I'd had viewing the film originally in theatres back in '98 with a clear soundtrack that balances the sound of a roaring crowd and the dialogue well across your speakers that syncs up perfectly with razor sharp picture quality. Yet, given the price-tag of Blu-ray discs, my advice would be to hold off on making the upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray for this feature based on the poor content alone (regardless of its superior quality) in the hopes that eventually, a definitive Sandler set will be put together on Blu-ray that will make the price increase worth the switch.

However, one major hurdle that will no doubt get in the way of this becoming a reality-- as Jack Lemmon's son Chris explained in our recent interview while discussing the complexities of sets regarding his dad's body of work-- is the number of studios that would have to work together and film property that's owned by several different corporations. Although, I'm still optimistic that in the future more cross-promotional efforts will be made since studios have begun to realize the home entertainment boom in lieu of poor box office returns.

Likewise, in a society where so much content is available online, perhaps thinking outside the box for business reasons in sharing material to give fans what they'd want and a reason to shell out money would be one extremely profitable and beneficial way to combat the problems facing the entertainment industry in the new millennium.

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

You Don't Mess With the Zohan

Director: Dennis Dugan

Lathering up with frightening amounts of shampoo, the women in director Joshua Logan’s 1958 South Pacific sang Rodgers and Hammerstein’s memorable battle cry, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.” Now fifty years later, elderly women from the era of South Pacific dutifully line up along a busy New York street for their opportunity to wash that man right into their hair in Adam Sandler’s latest Happy Madison production, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.

And while the hairstyles taken from an early 1980’s Paul Mitchell book leave much to be desired, the suggestive shampoo and titillating trim provided by their freakishly acrobatic stylist Zohan (Sandler) seem to serve as foreplay to the man who goes to extreme carnal lengths to ensure his clients leave the salon completely satisfied. Although Warren Beatty’s stylist George Roundy in director Hal Asbhy’s 1975 classic Shampoo tried to hide his philandering nymphomania, to the outrageously frank Zohan, it seems as though it’s never occurred to him that there were any other way to finish his appointments or display his gratitude to any woman who offers him the slightest hint of kindness than by offering them a trip to the back room.

This being said, while in most movies, we’d label him a simple gigolo (or to use my favorite term “manwhore”), in the hands of writers Sandler, Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) and Robert Smigel (the former SNL staff writer most famous for voicing Conan O’Brien’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), it becomes far more ridiculously complicated as we’re first introduced to Zohan in his native Israel where he’s one of the country’s most popular and none too top secret counterterrorist commandos. Admitting that he just wants “to make people silky smooth,” and beginning to tire of the endless fighting and hatred that’s been continuing for thousands of years, Zohan makes a bold decision to fake his death at the hands of his sworn Palestinian enemy The Phantom (an underwritten John Turturro) so he can escape to New York City and fulfill his dreams to become a stylist. Adopting the name of two dogs he stowed away with on his flight, Zohan transforms his look and persona, renaming himself Scrappy Coco.

After a few failed attempts, Zohan/Scrappy accepts a position initially as a hair sweeper until fate intervenes and like an understudy awaiting a big break, Zohan gets the chance to “perform” as the neighborhood lothario hairdresser, winning the hearts of the city’s seniors while losing his own to his gorgeous Palestinian boss Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui). However, predictably, Zohan’s future is threatened when both the past catches up with him and new corporate villains of present begin to come out of the woodwork, culminating into a rushed, unsatisfying result—similar to cleansing one’s hair with a drug store 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner.

Still Zohan is surprisingly much better than one would think, especially given the disastrous recent Happy Madison releases including Click. Although Sandler reunites all of his friends including Henry Winkler, Chris Rock, Kevin Nealon, Rob Schneider and more (including a pointless Mariah Carey cameo) for wasted walk-ons, the film is unexpectedly successful in its first sixty minutes when the inventive laughs derived directly from Zohan’s outrageous, unpredictable antics which were best spotlighted in the salon sequences.

While it’s a bit rough around the edges and the ends begin to split as the film passes the eighty minute mark in an entirely unconvincing and painfully unfunny “We Are the World” inspired climax, which would have benefited considerably with a new style at the writing stage, it’s Sandler’s most enjoyable work since Spanglish and his most comedic since 50 First Dates. Even though Zohan may make you think twice before giving your grandmother a gift card to a salon, the high energy displayed by Sandler as he dances his way right into elderly women’s hair is worth the price of admission alone and one of the funniest sequences you’re likely to see in a rather unremarkable looking crop of ’08 summer comedies.