When Borat first hit theaters in 2006, it became fashionable for hipsters to hold up Jewish comedians of the past--Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers--and claim Sasha Baron Cohen pales next to these giants. Personally, I'll take Borat over Duck Soup any day. The fact that this debate even exists says something about Cohen's comic genius, though; nobody makes those claims about Seth Rogen because they do not need to be made.
Now comes Bruno, the story of a flamboyant Austrain fashion journalist who is ostracized in his own country after a disastrous Velcro-related fashion incident and moves to the United States to become a celebrity. After a TV pilot, a Ron Paul sex tape, and the adoption of an African baby he names O.J. all end in failure, Bruno decides the best way to be famous in homophobic America is to become "straight"-- you know, just like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kevin Spacey. He seeks the help of a bigoted Alabama pastor who believes accepting Christ will turn Bruno--Bruno!!--into a skirt-chasing ladies' man.
This might be the ballsiest improv comedy ever made. Bruno informs said pastor that he has "blow job lips." He calls an ex-Mossad agent and a Palestinian "these two queens." He tells a terrorist that Osama bin Laden looks like "a dirty wizard or a homeless Santa." He asks a group of hunters which Sex and the City character they are. He swishes down an all-Orthodox street in Israel dressed in what can only be described as the gayest frum outfit ever.
Oh yeah, and it's funny as hell. Just like in Borat, there is a thin narrative structure that propels the plot and allows Cohen and director Larry Charles to expose prejudice and hypocrisy. Watch Paula Abdul pontificate about how helping other people is like the air she breathes while she sits on a human chair. See a Dallas talk show audience erupt into scary hatred just because Bruno is gay (before he actually gives them a reason to hate him.) Listen and cringe as parents offer their small children to participate in liposuction, riding in cars without car seats or seat belts, and antisemitic Nazi imagery, as long as it gets their kids into showbiz.
Funny, scary, and frighteningly illuminating all at the same time. Cohen and Charles have fashioned another comedic masterpiece. A hundred years from now, some talented new comic genius will make a great, hilarious film, and critics will say that he's good, but he's no Sasha Baron Cohen.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Michael Bay's latest suck-fest is charmless, derivative, and about an hour too long. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the mega-budget sequel to the 2007 toy-inspired blockbuster. It's Paramount's summer tent-pole, and it looks set to be one of the season's biggest hits, despite being little more than . . . noise. Coming out the theater, you feel like you've been watching silverware get mixed in a blender for nearly three hours.
The effects are jaw-dropping--some of ILM's best work ever. Cars transform into giant robots that crash through buildings and speed down highways without the slightest clue there is trickery involved. Completely, utterly seamless. All that visual splendor is wasted, though, on an amateurish script that makes no sense. The film just flows along--LaBeouf goes to college and all hell breaks loose--while Bay throws more and more CGI chases at us until we start to suffer from sensory overload near the first hour mark.
Shiah LaBeouf is still a credible, affable Everyman we want to cheer for, and his ridiculously hot, Maxim cover-ish girlfriend (Megan Fox) is pleasant eye candy. There is nothing wrong with making a film based on action-figures or toys. Movie ideas can spring from any source. It's just that Michael Bay is a bad director. He would make a great photographer; he knows how to frame cool images. But the stuff that makes cinema cinematic--such as suspense, drama, mise en scene, atmosphere, etc? He doesn't have a clue.
Take his action scenes. Sure, they look stylish when you see still frames of them, but when you actually watch them in motion, they lack visual logic and suspense. Bay's car chases are fun to look at, but after a while you find yourself texting or checking the time because you don't care who is chasing who, or why. Bay's chases do not engage you the way the action scenes in The Matrix or The French Connection or Raiders of the Lost Ark do.
Transformers has all the ingredients for a movie I would have loved as a boy. I love car chases and gun fights and non-stop action. But when I got older I realized those same ingredients could be found in movies that were actually good. Wall-to-wall action and coherent storytelling are not mutually exclusive. Kids deserve movies that have both.
The effects are jaw-dropping--some of ILM's best work ever. Cars transform into giant robots that crash through buildings and speed down highways without the slightest clue there is trickery involved. Completely, utterly seamless. All that visual splendor is wasted, though, on an amateurish script that makes no sense. The film just flows along--LaBeouf goes to college and all hell breaks loose--while Bay throws more and more CGI chases at us until we start to suffer from sensory overload near the first hour mark.
Shiah LaBeouf is still a credible, affable Everyman we want to cheer for, and his ridiculously hot, Maxim cover-ish girlfriend (Megan Fox) is pleasant eye candy. There is nothing wrong with making a film based on action-figures or toys. Movie ideas can spring from any source. It's just that Michael Bay is a bad director. He would make a great photographer; he knows how to frame cool images. But the stuff that makes cinema cinematic--such as suspense, drama, mise en scene, atmosphere, etc? He doesn't have a clue.
Take his action scenes. Sure, they look stylish when you see still frames of them, but when you actually watch them in motion, they lack visual logic and suspense. Bay's car chases are fun to look at, but after a while you find yourself texting or checking the time because you don't care who is chasing who, or why. Bay's chases do not engage you the way the action scenes in The Matrix or The French Connection or Raiders of the Lost Ark do.
Transformers has all the ingredients for a movie I would have loved as a boy. I love car chases and gun fights and non-stop action. But when I got older I realized those same ingredients could be found in movies that were actually good. Wall-to-wall action and coherent storytelling are not mutually exclusive. Kids deserve movies that have both.
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