Hey folks, Harry here. Well the man who can not laugh is at it again. He's sitting there like a forgotten cigarette just burning in an ashtray for minutes on end, till finally all that there is left is a butt... an ass... a bum. Hehehe, I radically disagree with Massawyrm's take on the film, but heck... what else is new. Here ya go...
Hola all. Everyone's favorite Chain-smoking, Dr. Pepper swilling, indie schilling bastard here, wanting none other than to drive needles into my eyes, for tonight I fell victim to this seasons drag ass, pathetic excuse for a waste of talent known to the world as Orange County.
Well, its January again, the national time of rebirth. A time for reflection, for change, for losing those holiday pounds. Yes, and to us film lovers, its the yearly dumping ground for flicks not fit to be pissed on. And January it is. Let the season begin this Friday with this pitifully lame mockery of a teen trying to get into college film. Not since Zoolander has the screen been this painfully unfunny. But even Zoolander made me laugh. Twice. This sadly elicited only a chuckle. Once. That's it. If my life were as dull and humorless as this film, I would have put a bullet in my skull years ago. And I prayed that the protagonist of this film would have done the same, very early on.
So here's the deal. Colin Hanks is a kid in his senior year of high school. His best friend has died (in the movies one humorous moment) and he is depressed. He finds a copy of the book 'Straight Jacket' by a Stanford professor on the beach and reads it. Cover to cover. Some 57 times. It is only then that he realizes that not only must he be a writer, but that he must study at Stanford under this professor. But due to a comedy (and I use that term VERY loosely) of errors, he is rejected. Incorrectly. So he now sets about trying to get admitted, despite his severely dysfunctional family. Hilarity ensues. Or at least, tries to ensue.
This is the type of film that just went in the wrong direction from minute one. I've been rolling around in my brain what might have happened had this film been done by someone like Wes Anderson, or even someone desperately trying to be like Wes Anderson. Someone who understands how to put both dysfunction and comedy mixed with teen angst on the screen and make it entertaining. Instead this, well, this is crap.
Now I've been told that the initial, test screening version of this had edge. That there was some adult level comedy in this that had to be trimmed out to obtain a PG-13. Well Paramount, MTV Films: its shows. Butt picking jokes? Butt picking jokes??? Are you kidding me? "We're gonna be out in the van picking each others butts"? Dear Christ Almighty ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Yes, masturbation jokes tend to be in poor taste, but Butt picking jokes are so much further down on the evolutionary chain that it's frightening that anyone thought they would be suitable replacements.
Now for those of you who have read several of my other reviews, you know I always try to find something good about the film and give it its fair shake. But I'm really struggling here. This film hurt, bad. It reached down into my soul and tried desperately to crush it with the power of sheer mediocrity. How does anybody put Jack Black in a film and not make him funny? How hard up were Catherine O'Hara, Chevy Chase, Lily Tomlin and Harold Ramis for money? These people rule. These are seasoned comedic veterans, people who defined comedy for the modern era. And yet here they're used for hapless cameos, comedic starpower to try and convince us we're watching a solid comedy. Alas we are not.
And all the while, between bouts of terribly mediocre attempts at comedy, we are subjected to a soundtrack composed of all the songs MTV and local radio stations have forced down our throats for the past six months. There's even one song we're subjected to twice. And a third time even as one of the main characters sings it to herself with her headphones on. Until this film I even liked the song. I used to crank it in my car while driving to work. Now it holds only agony for me, memories of an hour and a half lost in a dark theatre.
Okay, you know what, no, there is one truly good moment in the film. The moment at which we meet the fabled professor. That moment actually brought a smile to my face. It was a shaft of light in the dreariness of this cinematic wasteland. The casting here was spot on perfect and the first scene with him is well written and executed. Unfortunately there is a second scene, a scene in which the professor proceeds to pat the film on the back for its "Well drawn characters". He says "The mother. Drunk. The brother, passing out all the time. The bleeding heart environmentalist girlfriend. She was my favorite." Wow. A brilliant writer applauding flimsy rehashes of characters done a thousand times better in a thousand other films. I'll bet you this guy reads Nicolas Sparks novels cover to cover and really loved the characterization in "Hannibal". The maniac. Dark, brooding, infatuated. The F.B.I. agent. Troubled, passing out all the time. And the bleeding faced, half eaten man. He was my favorite.
Please.
You see, at this point in the film the professor is speaking to Colin Hanks about the story he sent him titled (Dun Dun Dun) Orange County. And this is where the film really gets offensive to me. You see, when the Professor speaks of the writing there is no mention of anything but the characters. He thinks the characters are brilliant. Of course, our intrepid hero didn't conjure these characters from the depths of his creativity, he wrote about the people he lived with. There was no mention of story, of character arcs, of anything really writing related aside from this smattering of characters. Maybe this is where the writer went wrong. Maybe he honestly thinks throwing a bunch of wacky, cartoonish versions of dysfunction into a film will make it a well written piece. Well, it certainly doesn't here.
And the direction in this is just mind bogglingly terrible. The jokes, what jokes could have been funny, are so over sold that any hopes of laughing are squelched. And when they're not oversold, they're telegraphed moments before they come to fruition. I mean, how does a director, I don't care how young he is, go from writing and directing a brilliant film like Zero Effect, a film with wonderfully "well drawn characters" that truly epitomize dysfunction and laughs that are funny over and over again, to this? This? Oh what a sad day for the director that might have been. God I hope his next project is good. Jake, baby, sweetheart. Watch Zero Effect again. Watch it repeatedly if you have to. That, that right there is what you're good at. Please, not this. You've shown yourself to have too much talent for this.
I guess the main problem with this film, aside from the stunning lack of humor, is that every obstacle that befalls our hero gets way too easily wrapped up without any real struggle whatsoever. His parents are divorced and unhappily remarried? That's okay, they'll just say I love you and get back together. Colin and his girlfriend have a spat (and a really piss poor one at that)? That's okay, he'll just say I love you and they'll get back together. Brother's a jackass that's caused all sorts of problems? That's okay, he'll just say I love you, bro, and they'll get back together. I'm all for easy reconciliation in light hearted comedies, but come on. At least give us something to work with here, something that cleverly brings everyone back together. Showing up on the doorstep and saying I'm unhappy and I love you is only a way out if our character has some major realization. Look at Jerry Maguire. It worked for Jerry because he realized what he'd done wrong, we saw him realize this, we felt him realize this. There's nothing that even comes close in this movie. This movie is like a Christmas gift in a brown paper bag: sure everything's covered, but it's obvious no one spent any real time wrapping it up.
And this isn't just a problem with the end of the film. Every problem gets brushed aside easily, from the very beginning. There isn't one, real, persistent problem that doesn't get obliterated by lucky circumstances. No one ever really suffers the consequences of their actions, they only reap the rewards.
And that's the sum it. A lot of good talent and Kodak gone to waste. Lets hope this movie dries up, vanishes from our collective unconscious and fades into obscurity, never to bother our frontal lobes again. God, if only such things could be.
Until next time, friends. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em. I know I will.
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