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.

Flakes

Director:
Michael Lehman

The premise is ingenious—with allusions to the "battle" between Starbucks and mom and pop coffee houses, screenwriters Chris Poche and Karey Kirkpatrick (Over the Hedge) decide to take a slacker's-eye view of corporate America by setting the bulk of the script’s action in a mom and pop breakfast bar.

Yes, you read that correctly—in Flakes, we’re granted access to the tiny bar by the same name which, although owned by barely functioning airhead hippie Willie (a wasted Christopher Lloyd) is run by young, hardworking manager Neal Downs (Aaron Stanford). Similar to the way that snobbish Rob (John Cusack) coveted obscure albums and cherished Top Five Lists in High Fidelity, Neal is equally fetishistic about the product he peddles— namely, breakfast cereal-- which he serves up like a bartender to the bar’s regulars including stoners, cereal collectors, and even a pretty groupie named Strawberry, mixing equal parts of one with another, knowing when to cut someone off and when to clue them in on a cooler confection.

When his self-employed artist girlfriend, Miss Katz (the fabulous Zooey Deschanel) quits hawking her collection of ironic handpainted t-shirts, she tries to convince Neal to take a week off and hire her in his place so that he’ll finish the CD he’s been working on for ages. Worried that mixing business with the bedroom will kill their relationship, Neal negotiates with Miss Katz to move in with him instead but business interferes anyway when they meet a determined grad school yuppie named Stuart (Keir O’Donnell). Essentially summed up by Neal as a “Banana Republic Guy,” the enthusiastic Stuart decides to rip off both Flakes and Starbucks by opening a larger, cleaner and more professional version of Flakes directly across the street after he’s unable to convince Neal to join him in franchising Willie’s cereal bar. Seemingly confirming Miss Katz’s suspicion that Neal may think of himself more as a cereal guy who plays music and less like a musician just holding down a job, Neal abandons his CD work and declares war on Stuart’s bar, which puts an even greater strain on their relationship when a fed up Katz accepts a job with Stuart to try and force her boyfriend to wake up to what is really important.

Although the terrifically inventive premise coupled with Deschanel’s pitch-perfect delivery of the dialogue consisting of her trademark combination of cynicism and charm temporarily elevates the film from its small-screen set-up, ultimately it’s a forgettable, highly inauthentic time-waster where the characters seem about as real as Tony the Tiger. Initially, Flakes does impress with its enchantingly atmospheric New Orleans location, offering it up like a surprise toy in a box of cereal but unfortunately the setting much like Deschanel and Lloyd, is given very little with which to work in yet another bummer flick from Because I Said So helmer Michael Lehman following his adorable Truth About Cats and Dogs and cult classic Heathers. Overall, the downfall of Flakes comes in trying to combine Reality Bites with High Fidelity by pouring on more sugars and toppings in the hope of disguising the finished product. Instead of a balanced breakfast, in the end you’re left with a woefully unbalanced film... not to mention one with a distinctly bad sour milk and Froot Loops aftertaste when you realize how much potential it had to make it work.

Hannah Takes the Stairs

Director: Joe Swanberg

By now the phrase “We should probably talk later,” seems to echo the same sentiment as “Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” or “I hope we can still be friends,” that all daters seem to use while trying to process how to break up with someone. “We should probably talk later,” is a phrase I’ve personally used (more times than I care to admit since knock on wood, so far I’ve always been the dumper although that’s hardly a victory) and it’s the same one that Hannah (Greta Gerwig) tells her first of three boyfriends shortly into the delightful indie comedy Hannah Takes the Stairs. Although it’s used early on, viewers who, like Hannah, are in their twenties know damn well that it won’t be the last time we hear either those exact words or something similar from our feisty, hyper, annoyingly indecisive and self-obsessed yet unquestionably bright and affable heroine. No, we find ourselves making the decision to break up often before it dawns on Hannah as the young college graduate navigates through the instantly relatable and compulsively addictive terrain of three slightly older men including her twenty-eight year old boyfriend Mike (Puffy Chair writer and star Mark Duplass) who quit his job since work nor rocking out in bands is no longer making him happy, the moody and self-deprecating intellectual narcissist in humility’s clothing Paul (Mutual Appreciation and Funny Ha Ha writer/director Andrew Bujalski), and thanks to the gifts of antidepressants, the higher functioning fellow trumpet playing writer Matt (filmmaker Kent Osborne).

Shot without a script or without much in the way of a plot, Hannah Takes the Stairs isn’t quite as mesmerizing as Bujalski’s films that are also included in the, as The New York Times explains “Do-It-Yourself” style independent movement Bujalski named “mumblecore” with self-involved characters who chat about nothing in films with low-production value. Yet, despite this, Hannah is one that feels less like a vanity project than some other mumblecore offerings and seems to be an articulate, recognizable if slightly ridiculous film that keys into the aimless wanderings of intellectual twentysomethings still trying to figure out just where to go from here. Reared on pop culture, the characters like Hannah admittedly suffer from “chronic dissatisfaction” yet in between their ramblings amidst these messy Cassavetes like glimpses of people all striving to find meaning, they manage to ask some pretty engaging questions about life, art, the manic state of romantic crushes and the fleeting nature of love. In other words, when the conversation is this engaging, suddenly the phrase “we should probably talk later” doesn’t seem so dire after all.

Drillbit Taylor

Director: Steven Brill

Although the screenplay is credited to writers Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Kristofor Brown, the story for the newest offering from producer Judd Apatow was also credited to Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles writer/director John Hughes, who using the pseudonym of Edmond Dantes collaborated on this surprisingly cute offering from director Steven Brill. After having penned the three Mighty Ducks films before moving on to direct the uneven Adam Sandler comedies Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds, Brill does a great job of navigating Rogen and Brown’s alternately funny and heartfelt comedy about the horrors of high school that finds a trio of bullied kids looking to hire a bodyguard on the cheap to protect them from the daily beatings and humiliations they’ve come to expect in the hallways, bathrooms and grounds of their high school.

Eager to make an impression, adorably scrawny and insecure Wade (Nate Hartley) who struggles against his hyper masculine stepfather and brawny stepbrothers at home, decides that he wants nothing more than to be popular and obtain a girlfriend in his high school and he begins plotting out his proactive strategy with fellow geek Ryan (Troy Gentile), an overweight student with a passion for rap who has decided that he will go by the "lady-friendly" nickname of T-Dog. Unfortunately, the two make the spontaneously disastrous decision to wear the same shirt on the first day of school and after Wade intervenes in trying to stop two horrifying bullies from shoving young, small Emmit (David Dorfman) into a locker, they’ve not only inherited a new sidekick in Broadway t-shirt wearing Emmit (fond of Cats and Rent) but also in becoming the frequent targets of the merciless duo of villains that seem to allude the awareness of the clueless school faculty including their principal (Stephen Root). When desperation leads them to outsource protection, homeless army veteran and full time schemer Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson) arrives on the scene first with the intention of swindling the boys to earn enough cash to go to his desired destination of Canada who begins to realize he may be actually starting to care for the three lads, not to mention their gorgeous English teacher Lisa (Leslie Mann).

Although some of the dialogue and the violence near the end of the film felt a bit like overkill, I found myself surprised by the fact that I enjoyed the innocuous Taylor far more than I thought I would, despite being the first to admit that it falls into numerous films of the same underdog paradigm of most of the frat pack comedies of Will Ferrell and company over the last few years by Apatow but also the same Curly Sue, Home Alone and Ferris Bueller anti-authority works of the ever-talented Hughes as well. While the previews make the film appear that it’s Wilson’s show all the way and that the success of Drillbit Taylor depends solely on Wilson, similar to the way his films like You, Me and Dupree were marketed, the three young stars all manage to not only steal our hearts but also remind us of the dangers of high school and burden of bullies that overwhelmed us in our own educational career… that is, unless you were the ones doing the terrorizing.