"Grown Ups"
Richard's Review: 2 stars
The once edgy comics of "Saturday Night Live" have gotten older and a little rounder in the middle but judging by their work in the ironically named "Grown Ups" they haven't actually grown up.
Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Kevin James and Rob Schneider star in this celebration of arrested adolescence as five friends reunited at the funeral of their beloved high school basketball coach.
All married, except for the childlike Spade, they are at different stages of their lives. Schneider is a new age guru with a much older wife, Rock is a henpecked house husband, Sandler the hottest agent in Hollywood, with the hot wife (Salma Hayek) and James is the fat guy who falls down a lot. Like, a lot a lot.
To spread their coach's ashes they head to a cottage by a lake to spend the weekend, reconnect and endlessly trade good natured jibes. Over the course of the Fourth of July weekend their spoiled kids learn to live without cell phones, the boys play a dangerous game with a bow and arrow and ogle Schneider's babelicious daughters.
"Grown Ups" isn't quite rude enough for the Apatow crowd, but yet, not quite family friendly enough for grandma and the kids. For every outrageous joke about breast milk there's a faux emotive or cutesy kid moment. The one-liners come fast and furious -- these guys only seem to be able to communicate by busting one another's chops -- but for the first hour there is precious little in the way of real jokes. It's titter worthy rather than laugh out loud funny.
The guys have good chemistry, which they should, having spent years doing live television together, but it looks like the kind of movie that might have been more fun to make than to watch. These are (mostly) likeable actors but they're not doing their most likeable work here. Sandler, for instance ruins a funny moment when his daughter says, "I want to get chocolate wasted!" with a snorting reaction that steps on the joke.
In the second hour Sandler is in heart warming mode but even this comes off as false. He spends the whole movie shrugging off his "Mr. Hollywood" nickname, but then in the climax -- and I'll be careful not to give anything away here -- acts like a rich city slicker doing the local yokels a favor.
Luckily Sandler regular Steve Buscemi and the mangling of the name of a Canadian city provide some silly laughs.
"Grown Ups" is lowbrow with warm and fuzzy aspirations but misses the mark.
"Knight and Day"
Richard's Review: 2 stars
"Knight and Day," the new couple-on-the-run movie starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, borrows elements from "North by Northwest," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and even "There's Something About Mary" to form one whole that is slightly less than the sum of it's parts.
If this was "North by Northwest" Diaz would have the Cary Grant role. Here she plays June Havens, a single woman who gets sucked into a very dangerous situation. A routine flight from Wichita, Kansas to Boston becomes not so routine when she meets Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), a handsome but deadly spy whose world is divided into two kinds of people -- "bad guys" and "worse guys." Following a crash landing, some globetrotting and briefings and de-briefings by good guys and bad, June must learn who to trust and more importantly, who not to trust. At stake is a tiny battery that could power an entire city, a nerdy inventor and possibly, just possibly, June's romantic future.
"Knight and Day" attempts to combine the specialties of its two stars -- romantic comedy and action -- but it's not exactly a seamless package. Diaz has years of rom com experience under her stylish Gucci belt and Cruise adds a comedic edge to his standard issue action hero but the two never quite gel. The movie can't decide whether it is screwball spy movie like "Get Smart" with bigger guns or a romantic comedy with explosions. It is weighted heavier toward the action, but I couldn't help but think it would have worked better as a straight up spy drama without the punch lines or the romantic yuks.
It's a movie that wants us to care more about the characters than we actually do. Cruise and Diaz are working it here, dodging bullets, exchanging the odd kiss and trying to create some heat, but every time we start to get to know the characters the movie slams the pedal to the metal and kicks into action movie mode. Much of the action is fun, some of it inventive, but none of it is really exciting, perhaps because the stakes are so low. When you don't really care about the characters who cares if they get blown to bits by Spanish terrorists?
It could be that the on-screen personas of Cruise and Diaz are so firmly etched in our minds -- he's the heroic man of action, she's going to end up with the guy in the end -- that it's hard to build excitement when you know how it's likely to end. That's not a spoiler… just an observation.
Not that the whole thing is a flat line. Far from it. It's a slickly made movie that shies away from the new norm of action photography. Here you can actually see what is happening as things blow up and Cruise catches some air on his motorcycle, unlike the recent "A-Team" movie that confused frenetic camera work with exciting action.
"Knight and Day" tries to use the star wattage of Cruise and Diaz to sell a story that tries to be an action movie that will appeal to the rom com set, or a romantic comedy that action fans will like. Unfortunately it falls somewhere down the middle.
"Cyrus"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
Freud would have had a ball with Molly (Marisa Tomei) and Cyrus (Jonah Hill). Molly is what the Viennese sexologist would have called an engulfing mother, a single mom with an extra strong connection to her son. Cyrus is, well, he's Cyrus -- an overweight 21-year-old with an Oedipus complex and an attitude. Enter John, played by John C. Reilly, a single sad sack who falls for Molly and feels the wrath of Cyrus. As Freud said, "How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved."
When we first meet John he's been single for seven years and still pines for his ex wife (Catherine Keener) even though she is about to be remarried. At her insistence he goes to a party and following some of the most awkward attempts at picking up women ever put on screen, he meets Molly, a pretty partygoer who is attracted to his awkwardness and honesty and begins a relationship with him. After a one night stand and the words nobody wants to hear -- "My life is really complicated right now" -- John follows her home and meets Cyrus, her man-child son.
Cyrus pretends to be happy that John is around. "You deserve someone to love you in the way that I can't love you," he tells his mother, but secretly he is plotting to drive a wedge between the two.
"Cyrus" is a dark character study disguised as a comedy. Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, a Coen-lite brother team best known for making no budget indies like "The Puffy Chair" that make the Dogme 95 films look like slick Michael Bay movies, it has a few chuckles sprinkled throughout, but don't expect a John C. Reilly laughfest like "Stepbrothers."
"Cyrus" is about broken people, unhealthy relationships and how people act when they feel threatened. Like real life, sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sad, other times it's awkward, but the brothers and actors ensure that whatever the tone of any given scene, and no matter how outrageous the situation, that it rings true.
Tomei is the glue that holds the film together. As Molly, mother of Cyrus, girlfriend to John, she's caught between two men she loves and must provide balance as their emotional war escalates. She's warm and believable, but also vulnerable and unpredictable. It's another great performance from an actor who should be a bigger star than she is.
Reilly finds a balance between the character work he does for Paul Thomas Anderson in movies like "Magnolia" and the slapstick he's been doing lately with Will Ferrell in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." It's his most layered performance in some time and it is refreshing to see an average-guy leading man on the big screen.
Like Reilly, Jonah Hill adds dimension to Cyrus, taking a character who could have been played for laughs and adding some intensity and depth. Freud might have been speaking about him when he said, "One is very crazy when in love."
"Cyrus" is an odd film. Not quite a comedy, not quite a drama it falls somewhere in between. Just like real life.
