REVIEW: The Campaign

The Campaign (2012): Dir. Jay Roach. Written by: Chris Hency and Shawn Harwell. Starring: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Katherine LaNasa, Dylan McDermott, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd and Brian Cox. Rated R (Dirty politics and dirtier jokes). Running time: 85 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

The Campaign, directed by Jay Roach and starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, seeks to lampoon the cruel, nasty, dirty game that is contemporary American politics. And what better time to do so than when the country is smack in the middle of a heated election?

The cinematic landscape of 2012 might not at first seem to be the most conducive environment for a savvy political satire. The must-be-as-vulgar-as-possible imperatives of today’s mainstream comedies don’t leave much room for the more nuanced aims of satire. And yet movies like The Campaign prove that these disparate comedic objectives can be merged – and they don’t even need to be accused of flip-flopping. (See also: the films of Sacha Baron Cohen and the Harold & Kumar series which are crude and clever – in that order.)

Satirizing the politics of the present moment is also difficult for another reason. How do you make absurd what is already ridiculous? The Campaign is up to the task, escalating steadily from slight exaggerations of what we see on the news to increasingly outrageous gags. This is also where the film’s second identity as a crude comedy comes in handy. The Campaign is able to enter decidedly R-rated territory the likes of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, say, cannot touch even on late-night TV.

Director Jay Roach is a good fit for the material, having previously directed movies for HBO about two of the more surreal chapters in recent political history – the 2000 recount and the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin. He also helmed two of the bigger hits of the late-90s/early-2000s – Austin Powers and Meet the Parents – so he knows how to put together a comedy. The Campaign skips along at a fast pace, never lingering too long on any one bit.

Having Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis at your disposal certainly helps too. Mr. Ferrell plays Congressman Cam Brady, a Democrat from North Carolina’s 14^th District. Cam Brady doesn’t have much of anything to add to political discourse but has found he can win over just about any crowd by strategically emphasizing the words America, Jesus and Freedom. Also by showing off his wife, Rose (Katherine LaNasa, looking like the spitting image of Ann Romney), who gives a supporting wave from behind the podium, hoping to smile her way into the role of Second Lady.

Cam has grown accustomed to running unopposed and even the worst PR incident – a lewd message meant for his mistress but left on a quaint Southern family’s answering machine is only the most recent – seems unlikely to jeopardize a fifth term for him.

That is, until the Motch brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) decide to intervene. The billionaire brothers need a man on Capitol Hill who will support their latest collaboration with a Chinese manufacturer (they want to build a sweat shop in North Carolina). They decide to fund a PAC that will support Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), the son of their business partner, Raymond (Brian Cox), in a ploy to buy a candidate who will endorse their scheme. Marty, a pudgy oddball with a squeak of a voice, runs the small town of Hammond’s tourism office. He has never thought of himself as a politician but has always hoped his father might one day ask him to run for office.

We know from last year’s The Ides of March that behind every candidate is a campaign advisor pulling the strings. Tim Wattley (a straight-faced and hilarious Dylan McDermott) is called in to work on the Huggins campaign and retool Marty’s public image. (He swaps Marty’s beloved pugs for Labrador retrievers and packs the Huggins household with hunting gear.) Marty’s sweetheart of a wife, Mitzi (Sarah Baker), feels her husband has changed in the name of political ambition but it’s not long before she gets caught up in the campaign as well, and in an especially embarrassing way. Meanwhile, at Camp Brady, Cam’s advisor, Mitch Wilson (Jason Sudeikis playing straight man to Mr. Ferrell), struggles to keep his candidate from imploding.

The satire in The Campaign is blunt and often obvious but subtlety probably isn’t the best approach when your leads are Mr. Ferrell and Mr. Galifianakis. Whenever the script, written by Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell, loses steam, the two actors pick up the slack with energetic performances. They play off one another well. (For those who are looking for a subtler jab at politics, I highly recommend the 2009 British comedy In the Loop.)

The Campaign has the hastily made feel of a movie that was produced quickly in order to hit on a topical subject matter while it’s still relevant. This is also to say that it has a loose and eager-to-please style that doesn’t worry whether or not every joke sticks. The script could be tighter in places and the ending in particular goes out with a whimper but these shortcomings aren’t too detrimental.

I mentioned The Ides of March earlier and the more I think about it, the more I’m amused at how much the two movies have in common (they follow similar story beats and set their sights on basically the same targets). For my money, The Campaign does a better job exposing the hypocrisies of political campaigns and takes the more appropriate approach to the subject. With things the way they are, maybe a handful of goofy jokes are the only proper response.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/13/12

REVIEW: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011): Dir. Rupert Wyatt. Written by: Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Starring James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton and David Oyelowo. Rated PG-13 (Violent riots carried out by apes). Running time: 105 minutes.

1 ½ stars (out of four)

Many years from now, long after human society has crumbled, when whatever living sentient race is examining the Planet of the Apes films, I hope they do not linger on the six films that followed the 1968 original starring Charlton Heston. And if they do, let them take the four sequels from the early 70s, Tim Burton’s supremely silly remake in 2001 and now Rise of the Planet of the Apes as examples of Hollywood’s relentless desire to repeat any and all past successes if doing so means a chance at more commercial gain.

The original Planet of the Apes is already something of an old relic, a classic that still resonates in spite of the fact that it now feels a little dated. The Twilight Zone-esque story (Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling co-wrote the script) with its now famous twist ending was very much a product of its time and though its allegorical comments on nuclear war and modern society are as true as they have ever been, they do not necessarily translate to contemporary blockbuster success.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an attempt to reboot the franchise from a different narrative starting point. Will Rodman (James Franco) is a scientist at a company called GEN-SYS working on a cutting edge drug that could cure Alzheimer’s. His boss, Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo), is a pharmaceutical mogul excited about the drug’s financial potential but Will’s stakes in the drug are more personal; his father (John Lithgow) suffers from the degenerative disease. Tests in the lab successfully enhance the brainpower of chimps and the drug’s prospects look good until an accident in the lab puts the project on hold.

In the wake of the project’s failure, Will acquires a newborn chimp birthed by one of the test apes. Caesar, as he is symbolically named, has inherited the effects of the drug from his mother and over the next few years Will nurtures the ape’s inborn intelligence, a choice that leads humanity down a dangerous path the scientists from Project Nim only narrowly avoided.

Unlike the 1968 original or the 2001 remake, the human protagonist is not terribly important here. Rise is very much the apes’ story and because of this, the film makes little effort to offer any worthwhile human characters. Franco, who has a smirking charm in other films, gives a bland and sleepy performance. Mostly he exists to restate plot points in case you miss any of those subversive, glaring looks on the expressive faces of the computer-animated apes.

The rest of the film’s Homo sapiens are equally dull. Will’s girlfriend (Freida Pinto) isn’t given a single thing to do, though she is very pretty and occasionally chimes in a cautious word. And much time is wasted on a handful of feeble human antagonists including Tom Felton of Harry Potter fame as an oddly vicious caretaker at a primate facility who bears more than a little resemblance to the actor’s Draco Malfoy role. The venerable Brian Cox also appears as the facility’s owner but he is underused. The real villain is (or rather, should be) Jacobs, the corporate-minded pharmaceutical exec who pushes for hasty and reckless testing of the drug on as many apes as possible.

But Rise of the Planet of the Apes explores the subtleties of scientific ethics with all the grace of one of its 400-pound stars. “I make money and you make history!” Jacobs shouts to Will late in the film, trying to convince him to go through with the risky tests. The film lumbers along with tedious exposition and clunky dialogue for most of its running time until the final stretch when the uprising promised by the title occurs.

The film’s stupidity does provide some giddy entertainment, if perhaps unintentionally. One scene features Caesar engaging an orangutan in a sign language conversation that is – hilariously – subtitled. Once the action gets going, we also learn that the apes have an unusual affinity for leaping through glass, a feat that apparently does them no harm but makes for a dramatic entrance.

One of the film’s biggest flaws is the apes themselves. The CGI (including a motion-capture performance from CGI veteran Andy Serkis as Caesar) is impressive but cannot hide the fact that all the apes are animated creatures. The overuse of CGI takes the life out of the apes despite the filmmakers’ best efforts to do the opposite. I recall the effectiveness of the original’s costumes – silly though they may now seem – or the eerie unreality of Stanley Kubrick’s apes in the “Dawn of Man” sequence from 2001. Heck, even Tim Burton’s version had great costumes. No degree of skillful animation can beat the tactile pleasure of watching an actor in a monkey costume and I mean that with the utmost sincerity.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes wants to revive an outdated franchise but doesn’t have any drive or purpose beyond the commercial obligation to use the rights to the title while the studio still has it. In another ten years we may get another Apes film (be it remake, reboot or regurgitation) and when that happens, will anyone care about this film? Will they even remember it? Or will it be wait to be scrutinized an eon or two from now as a prime example of perfunctory summer entertainment?

- Steve Avigliano, 8/11/11

BEST OF THE DECADE - #1: Adaptation

Adaptation (2003): Dir. Spike Jonze. Written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman, based on the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Starring: Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox. Rated R (language, sexuality, some drug use and violent images). Running time: 114 minutes.

**NOTE: This review freely discusses the ending of the film, so be forewarned of spoilers.

The first time I saw Adaptation, I sat in a daze, staring blankly at the credits scrolling up the screen, trying to grapple with the film’s ending. The opening scenes had me hooked early, and the insecurities of neurotic screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage), in both his personal and professional life had struck a chord with me. That the real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman had written Adaptation’s screenplay made the film wonderfully self-deprecating. I appreciated the character Charlie’s mockery of Hollywood clichés, his witty banter with his less cerebral twin brother, Donald (also Nicholas Cage), and the smart and biting jabs at the movie takes at the film industry. However, as the film follows Charlie’s struggle to adapt a seemingly un-adaptable book called The Orchid Thief, something strange happens. Kaufman the character writes himself into his screenplay and it becomes apparent that the script he is writing is the film we are watching. Now I was positively delighted by the film’s unabashed self-reference, but soon found the film had at least one more trick up its sleeves. The real-life Charlie Kaufman wisely avoids self-reference simply for the sake of it, and ends the film by throwing in every Hollywood convention in the book, leaving the film on an odd note of uncertainty. Why would a film so deliberately cop out in the final scenes? After many more viewings of the film, the true goals of Adaptation begin to reveal themselves. Though the film has much to say about the film industry and Hollywood clichés, it is ultimately about how we live our lives and how our expectations for the way our lives should be affect the way we live.

Charlie Kaufman, as depicted in Adaptation, is socially inept and desperate for female affection, but terrified of making of the first move. He drops a woman off at her house after a date, neglecting to kiss her when he had the chance. Idling in the car, he kicks himself for missing the opportunity and wonders what would happen if he just got out of the car, knocked on her door and kissed her. “It would be romantic,” he says in a voice-over, “Something we could someday tell our kids.” These are the expectations he gained from a lifetime of watching romantic movies and, lacking the courage to play the part of a romantic, he drives away dejected. Magazine writer Susan Orlean (Merryl Streep), in scenes that loosely dramatize The Orchid Thief, is a spiritual partner to Charlie, also wishing she had the courage to make a major change in her life. She wants to feel passionate about something in the same way her subject, the eccentric John Laroche (Chris Cooper), feels about orchids. Both Charlie and Orlean have dramatic foils that show them a seemingly better way of living. Charlie’s foil is Donald, who has no trouble writing successful screenplays or flirting with women. Meanwhile, Orlean envies Laroche for being able to detach himself so easily from something and move on.

On one level, the film’s ending is an extension of these themes. Let’s assume for a moment that the ending, which includes everything Charlie claims to despise in Hollywood movies (drugs, sex, guns, car chases, characters learning profound life lessons), actually happens within the reality of the film. The final shot in particular, featuring The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” is strangely upbeat considering Donald has just died in a car accident, Laroche was eaten by alligators, and Orlean’s life is in shambles. Kaufman seemingly betrays everything that has come before by tacking on a fluff ending that provides no real dramatic or emotional closure. This “fluff ending” might, however, be viewed as a satirical look at the ways in which individuals try to live their lives like a Hollywood film. After attending a screenwriting seminar by Robert McKee (Brian Cox), Charlie tells McKee that the seminar hit him deeper than his screenwriting choices. McKee’s advice that things must happen in a screenplay reflects poignantly on Charlie’s “choices as a human being.” Following the seminar, Charlie decides to find Susan in Florida, and in his spying escapade, he finds life as Hollywood sees it: secret affairs, exotic drugs and an exhilarating encounter with death. Little has changed about Charlie by the final scene, and yet he smiles after he learns the woman he loves will never be with him. Despite the sadness that has entered his life, he seems content with the Hollywood ending.

Adaptation also functions, perhaps more obviously, as a criticism of Hollywood movies and the advice of story seminars such as McKee’s. Throughout the film, Donald is a comic figure and his script pitches to his brother are some of the film’s funniest moments, poking fun at cookie-cutter scripts and genre films. At one point, Donald describes a chase scene in his movie where the protagonist rides a motorcycle in pursuit of a serial killer on horseback. “It’s like a battle between motors and horses,” he explains, “Like technology versus horse.” The McKee seminar is similarly mocked. “A last act makes a film,” says McKee, “Wow them in the end, you got a hit.” Charlie does just that. He deliberately packs the final forty minutes with all the contrived drama he can in an effort to show how absurd McKee’s philosophy is.

Despite its many contrivances, however, the last act of Adaptation genuinely works. Kaufman wisely makes the “Hollywood” ending compelling enough that its deliberate artifice does not call attention to itself until the final scenes. Adaptation works on a first viewing, and not until revisiting the film is it clear just how early Kaufman begins his detour into the realm of Hollywood intrigue. The characters are still convincingly played even as they carry out clichés, and the film retains the humor of earlier scenes. By identifying the third act as contrived, Kaufman is able to get away with his forced ending, even creating some heartfelt moments, most notably between the two brothers. Kaufman mocks Hollywood conventions by inserting all of the movie vices Charlie the character scorns in an earlier scene, all the while showing how these films can actually be rather effective when executed well enough.

Long before the ending, however, Adaptation identifies itself as self-aware, making many playful self-references. The title itself refers to Charlie’s adaptation of Orlean’s book, the theory of evolution (Darwin is referenced several times throughout the film), and the more basic theme of adapting to the changes that occur in everyday life. When Charlie asks his brother how an outlandish script idea could ever make logistical sense, Donald shrugs and replies, “Trick photography,” a device that very scene uses to allow Nicholas Cage to talk to himself. Later, McKee interrupts Charlie mid-voice-over to shout, “God help you if you use voice-over narration in your work! It’s flaccid, sloppy writing.” Even as Kaufman skewers the clichés of Hollywood scripts, he can’t help but make fun of himself too, a strategy that is as modest as it is self-deprecating.

With all the layers Kaufman gives his screenplay, its easy to take for granted the work of director Spike Jonze here. Jonze, who also directed Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich, presents the complexities of Kaufman’s script in a digestible way, moving between Charlie’s scenes and Orlean’s storyline with clever transitions. Jonze seamlessly moves from Florida “Three Years Earlier” to Charlie’s bedroom in the present by turning Orlean’s voice-over into the narration of her book as Charlie reads it. Other small touches, such as a book jacket photo of Orlean that changes poses as Charlie plays out a conversation with it, are part of Jonze’s style and visual inventiveness. Jonze succeeds in not only making Kaufman’s script understandable, but enjoyable as well, a difficult task to be sure.

I couldn’t tell you how much of Adaptation is based in truth, but the true story is rendered irrelevant by the reality of the film. The real-life Kaufman does not have a twin brother, but that didn’t stop Donald Kaufman from getting an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay – though perhaps Charlie and Donald are just two halves of the same screenwriter. Did Kaufman really try to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief before finally writing this film? No doubt one could read interviews with Kaufman and Jonze to find out, but what would be the point? In one scene, Charlie reads aloud a book review of The Orchid Thief that explains how since there wasn’t enough story to fill up a book, Orlean adds “that sprawling New Yorker shit” about her hopes, her desires and her own life to fill the pages. It seems impossible to Charlie to adapt something so personal and intimate. What Kaufman does to remain spiritually faithful to the book is replace Orlean’s sprawling reflections on life with his own, and in doing so, he writes a film that sheds insight into a more universal concept. In order to live our lives, we must search for meaning, for purpose. These purposes differ from person to person, but the search itself is shared by all.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/13/10

BEST OF THE DECADE - #9: 25th Hour

25th Hour (2002): Dir. Spike Lee. Written by David Benioff and based of his novel, The 25th Hour. Starring: Ed Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Brian Cox, Anna Paquin. Rated R (strong language and some violence). Running time: 135 min.

**NOTE: This review freely discusses the film's ending, so if you do not wish to know what happens before you see it, I would recommend skipping over the second-to-last paragraph.

There’s practically a subgenre in crime films for the redemption film. Redemption films deal less with the actual crimes than with the individuals who commit them and the events that follow. 25^th Hour sounds like it could be a redemption film. A drug dealer, Monty (Ed Norton), has been caught and faces his last day before a seven-year prison sentence. Through the course of the day he talks to his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson) about their future, has lunch his father (Brian Cox), ends relations with the Russian mobsters he worked for and finally meets up with his childhood friends, Jacob and Frank (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper) for one last night out. However, Spike Lee’s film, based on a novel by David Benioff (who also penned the screenplay), does not allow Monty any redemption. The film instead takes the events of his final day and makes them emotionally engrossing by focusing less on plot than on honestly portraying its characters and their situations. Just as life does not wrap things up neatly for us, not all loose ends are tied before the final scene.

Casting a long shadow over the film are the attacks of September 11, 2001. As a New York filmmaker, Spike Lee cannot ignore the events, and sets the film, his first since the attacks, in early 2002 as Americans begin to move on and live their lives again. The opening titles make this expressly clear, featuring beautiful shots of the New York skyline during the initial run of the “Tribute of Light” memorial that cast beams of light into the night sky to symbolize the fallen towers. Later, Lee presents us with a chilling shot of Ground Zero as seen from Frank’s apartment window. Lee keeps the wreckage in the shot as Frank and Jacob discuss air pollution in the city following the attack before eventually moving onto the main subject at hand, Monty. Lee acknowledges that 9/11 happened but never calls attention to it so much that it obscures the plot. Just as people did in the months following 9/11, the characters of 25^th Hour continue to live their lives, albeit in a city that has suffered a great loss.

Life in a post-9/11 world is treated again in the memorable “Fuck You” scene that has Monty responding to bathroom graffiti by going off on a cathartic rant that indicts the many races and peoples of New York, his friends, his family and Osama Bin Laden. The scene recalls the racial slur sequence from Lee’s Do the Right Thing but where that scene highlights the film’s racial tensions, this scene focuses on Monty’s personalized anger and hatefulness. Like so many Americans, Monty needs to blame someone for the misery in his life and he points a finger at all the familiar scapegoats until he ultimately turns the rant back onto himself and takes responsibility for his actions.

Ed Norton’s performance in the film is deceivingly restrained, and Norton makes Monty a calm man with deep undercurrents of fear, suspicion and resentment. However, the best performances here come from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper. Hoffman’s committed portrayal to his lonely high school teacher justifies the tangential storyline about an inappropriate relationship with a young student (Anna Paquin), and Pepper, who for years has been an excellent character actor, has something of a breakout role here. His sleazy Wall Street trader disappears into backrooms with waitresses but has an intense loyalty to his friends that comes out in the final scenes.

Brian Cox, who only appears in two scenes, conveys depths of history between father and son. In the devastating final scene, he offers Monty a glimpse of how life might have been and narrates an alternate future for his son. As he drives Monty to the prison he offers to turn off the highway and take the blame for allowing his son to run away. The extended scene that follows is a fantasy of the American dream – moving to the country, opening a business, raising a family – and Lee shoots it in such a way that we’re not sure if the events are actually happening. When the scene cuts back to Monty in the present, the crushing reality of the next seven years sets in. There is no second chance, no redemption. The fantasy remains the lost opportunity of what might have happened if Monty chose to live a better life.

At 135 minutes, the movie might be overlong, and it drags a bit in the middle, but there are moments of greatness here that stand next to Spike Lee’s best work. In the opening scene, Monty saves a dying dog and gives him a home, suggesting the possibility of his own redemption, but by the film’s end, there is no one to save him, no second chance to be had. 25^th Hour makes its characters face reality, and reality, it should go without saying, is rarely kind.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/2/10