Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
All the hubbub about these two films at the start of the week so far has been about which one is really number one at the box-office.
And honestly... who cares?
I am constantly delighted that no one expects box-office analysis from me. I consider it about as interesting as discussing insurance policies or tax law. Going into this weekend, all I knew is that I wanted to see both films equally, and that I hoped both were good.
Now, early Tuesday morning, I’ve finally seen them, my viewings bookending the last few days for me, and as I reflect, I find that I’m surprised by my reactions. Once again, I am reminded that a script is just a script, and good intentions mean nothing when it comes to the end result in movies. Until something is locked and shipped to theaters, it is a work in progress, and anything can happen.
On Friday night, I picked my girlfriend up from work and took her straight over to the Galleria for a bite to eat and a movie. Didn’t really matter what. I knew they’d be playing something I hadn’t seen yet, so we just picked based on what was starting when. LILO & STITCH... 8:05... perfect. We found ourselves in a little tiny theater tucked all the way back in the inner recesses of the Galleria’s 300-plex.
I’ll be honest. Disney stopped mattering to me a long time ago. I think they do technically beautiful work, but it’s all become so plastic and so uninspired that it just doesn’t mean anything to me as a viewer. I remember how exciting it was in the early ‘90s to go to the El Capitan when BEAUTY & THE BEAST opened or ALADDIN or THE LION KING. People were excited to see each new picture. People were talking about Academy Awards for these films. And now, the standard seems to be amiable but uninspired films like THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE or ATLANTIS.
I must be a sucker for the “kid-gets-friend-from-somewhere-else” story because I keep falling for it. I was 12 when E.T. came out, and I remember seeing it over and over that summer with various friends and family. I am still a great admirer of William Dear’s charming HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS, due in large part to just how remarkable Rick Baker’s work was in the film, and how well John Lithgow played off of it. My feelings for Brad Bird’s powerful IRON GIANT are no secret; I was one of the film’s earliest and most vocal cheerleaders. As a result, it should be no shock to anyone that I thought LILO & STITCH was a vast improvement on the fare that the House of Mouse has been offering as of late, and a pretty wonderful all-audiences film overall.
I was convinced by the end of the opening sequence, in which Experiment 626 is revealed in front of a meeting of the High Galactic Council. When was the last time ANY Disney film had a sentence that cool at the start of a story summary? The design of the film walks a fine line between cute/funny and science fiction, but with soft-edged watercolor backgrounds, and the result is visually appealing in a way that I thought Disney had forgotten how to do. It’s easy to just get lost looking at the detail in the film, the characters at the edge of the frame. There’s wit to spare on display here. I loved the way the creator of Experiment 626 looked with his freaky spider eyes, and when the Experiment is brought in front of the council and revealed to be a strange blue koala bear looking thing, it’s both a laugh and a challenge. How can something this innocuous be a dangerous menace, a genetically designed super-weapon intended to do one thing only: destroy? Still, it scares the council enough to order it to be sent into permanent exile on a rock where no one else lives. The creature does what it’s supposed to do, though, and manages to not only escape but also disable the council’s chase ships and steal a personal space cruiser which it uses to flee to a planet nearby.
That, of course, would be Earth.
The opening credits finally start here, after the long and dizzying prologue, and you’ll know right away if this film is for you. Alan Silvestri’s Hawaiian-influenced songs for the film and seas of colorful fish set a mood, a time and a place, in a few dazzling images.
And on the beach we meet Lilo (voiced by Daveigh Chase), a round-bodied little Hawaiian girl, who is late for something. In animation, design is everything. If you can make a character visually appealing, you’ve done half the work for the audience. Lilo’s got Calvin’s wide triangular smile, Charlie Brown’s giant beach ball head, and a pudgy little frame that should win special awards just for promoting a positive self-image. She doesn’t look like the typical Disney hero or heroine. Her skin’s too dark. Her legs are too short. She’s not glamourous, and no one would ever mistake her for a princess. Beyond that, she’s got emotional problems. She goes to a rehearsal for a dance recital and ends up starting a fight, punching another little girl in the face and actually biting her. She gives her sister Nani (voiced by Tia Carrere) fits with her obstinance and her violent outbursts, and Nani is afraid that she’s going to lose Lilo to the social services system, especially when she meets Mr. Bubbles (Ving Rhames), who gives her a day to work things out, or at least show that she has a plan.
One of the things that Nani can’t help but react to is Lilo’s extreme loneliness. She doesn’t get along with other kids her age, and since the death of their parents in a car accident, Nani’s too busy working to spend any time with Lilo. Nani takes her to get a pet, and that’s where Lilo meets “Stitch,” as she names Experiment 626, who is desperate to find some safe place to hide. He figures he’ll just use the kid for a while, then move on when he can. He’s designed for urban destruction, though, and there are no major cities on the island where they are, so he finds himself stymied. He can’t do what he was built to do. This forces him to look inside himself to figure out what to do instead. And once he’s done that, Stitch begins to change in ways that no one... not the Galactic High Council, not his “evil genius” creator, and not even Stitch himself... could have guessed.
The audience, on the other hand, has a pretty good idea where this is going, so don’t expect to be surprised by some innovative turn of the story here. This isn’t that kind of film. Instead, it’s all about the process of figuring out that you need someone in your life. Stitch’s transformation is believably etched, and aside from one bit of dialogue repeated about two too many times, never heavy-handed.
I also have to give special thanks to whoever cast Kevin McDonald, KIDS IN THE HALL veteran, to voice one of the aliens sent to retrieve Stitch. I can’t get enough of McDonald, and he doesn’t work the way he should, so finding out he was in this as the film progressed just pushed me into delight overload. The use of the Elvis Presley music throughout is much more enjoyable than it originally sounded to me, and the choice of “Devil In Disguise” and “Suspicious Minds” indicates some taste on the part of the filmmakers. Hats off to Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders and their entire crew. I don’t think this will ever be thought of as one of Disney’s “significant” films, and that’s a real shame, because for the first time in a long time, they seem to have made an entertaining animated feature that feels effortless, and that alone makes it significant. Let’s hope they learn from this one and that TREASURE PLANET can live up to its stunningly beautiful trailer.
Now... I’ve gotten a lot of mail about MINORITY REPORT over the last few days, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me if I thought the film was as good as the script. They’re such different beasts, though, that I’m going to try to avoid playing the game about “Well, in the script, they did it THIS way.” It’s not fair, since that’s not the way most people saw the film. When I walked into the 10:15 late show on Monday night, I had no baggage with me. Not Harry’s negative review. Not Ebert’s glowing review. I didn’t take in anything except the desire to see what Spielberg and Cruise were up to, and the hope that it was good.
And, for most of the film’s running time, it is good. There are flashes of the old Spielberg here, but wrapped in a new more complicated aesthetic, and I enjoyed that. He can never go back to making movies the way he did during the days of JAWS or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS or RAIDERS, and it’s not because he’s a “sell-out” or a “hack” or any of the woefully ignorant terms that our Talk Backers use. It’s because he’s simply not that person anymore. He’s like a shark, always pushing forward, always moving, and I admire that about him. Many of his peers have fallen stagnant as artists as they’ve gotten older, but Spielberg doesn’t seem content. He always seems to have something to prove, if only to himself.
Spielberg is working with a remarkable collaborative team here, headed up by production designer Alex McDowell, whose work on this, FIGHT CLUB, FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, and THE CROW makes him not only one of the best in the business, but also an intriguing choice for next year’s CAT IN THE HAT. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski continues to help Spielberg redefine his style with each new picture, and however they decided to shoot in 2.35:1 this time, I wish it would happen more often. I love Spielberg’s eye in scope, and I realized as I watched this just how much I’ve missed it since he quit making Indiana Jones movies. Michael Kahn’s editing is, as always, crisp and exciting. He gives Spielberg’s movies a distinct pulse. Many people wrote to tell me that I was an idiot because I complained about Danny Elfman’s SPIDER-MAN score this summer. “Not every score has to have a big theme!” they said, and they’re right. I still think Elfman’s score was recycled wallpaper, but John Williams contributes a score to this film that doesn’t have any big memorable themes, but that provides solid support to every sequence, doing its job without ever distracting. It is a great underscore, and proof that Williams doesn’t have to just rely on bombast to elicit a response.
But all of what I’m talking about so far is the icing on the cake. It’s gravy. It’s extra, the sort of thing that we have come to expect from Spielberg. I would be shocked if his collaborators hadn’t all come to the table with such exceptional contributions. This is really a two-person show. Tom Cruise has to carry us emotionally through the story, and Spielberg is the one who has to get us to not only suspend our disbelief, but engage our hearts and minds in equal measure. No small feat, that, especially when dealing with a truly bizarre concept like Philip K. Dick’s. Scott Frank’s script struck a smart, consistent tone that gave room for both dark humor and emotional annihilation. It was a challenge, a dare to Spielberg, and so much of this movie is made up of Spielberg trying to rise to that challenge that I want to just brush aside my nitpicks and say, “Great job” and move on.
I want to...
... but I can’t.
Perhaps I need to reset my expectations for Spielberg now. Perhaps I have to learn to expect flawed films of enormous ambition that are technically accomplished on a level that most filmmakers can only hope to achieve. Both A.I. and MINORITY REPORT have left me sputtering in frustration at the end now, although I think MINORITY REPORT comes closer to working as a whole. And I’m not of the school of mind that says “Lop off the last 20 minutes and it’s a masterpiece” that seems to have developed around the two films, since I think they both go where they need to structurally. They work when you break them down to ideas and theories, but it’s in the execution that I find myself simply numb. They don’t connect with me in any sort of significant way, and I am near-manic about that sense of being stroked without any release. It makes me crazy. And much of it boils down to a tonal difference of opinion. There’s a tone that this material suggests that Spielberg seems to only occasionally settle into here, and the slapstick nonsense with bouncing eyeballs and the wacky cartoon grotesquerie of Peter Stormare’s snot-machine of a doctor and his ass-grabbing mole-faced nurse and the way he tosses aside some of the better notions here unexplored all ends up rubbing me the wrong way as I watch it unfold.
Is it remarkably different from the script? No... not really. There are things that I didn’t really notice on the page that seem more evident on the bigscreen, like the almost pointless nature of the business with the eyes. If he’s going to have his changed, then why use his to get into the Temple? That’s one of those glaring things that can pull you out of a film as you wrestle with the logic of it. Yes, he would need his because of security clearances, but why weren’t his clearances yanked when he was accused of murder? His car turns against him, so it’s obvious PreCrime can get into the system and alert it to Anderton’s new status. All I can figure is that the guilty party wanted him to be able to waltz in and out of PreCrime, that he wanted Anderton to keep people distracted while PreCrime was being voted on. But that explanation isn’t in the movie, so it becomes a distraction.
I like that people are arguing about whether or not the Leo Crow situation would count as “premeditation.” I think it would, considering how the real murderer worked to set Anderton up. There was obviously thought and malice behind those actions, and that’s what the precogs picked up.
I just wish Spielberg had given us more to argue about. A film like this should force to walk outside with your friends and start debating what certain things meant and what was real and what happened. Much of this film plays like an homage to BRAZIL, with the police figures crashing through skylights and sliding down cables and the way justice and punishment have become slippery, morally questionable things. If Spielberg could have found a way as a director to force us to question all of act three, everything after Cruise is put in the halo, then he could have left people debating the ambiguity of the thing forever. Instead, he works very hard to wrap it up and put a bow on it at the end, something I wouldn’t have minded if he could have at least just left the final line of dialogue.
The following is a SPOILER, so don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movie yet:
The film ends with shots of the PreCrime division, now closed down, and the empty precog tanks and Cruise with his wife, now pregnant, and then finally the precogs, alone on an island, where no one is around, and where they are free of the visions of murder. Over all of this, Cruise talks about how the division was closed down and everyone was given an unconditional pardon, although police departments kept a close eye on some of the released for years afterwards, and how the precogs found a place for some peace. As the camera starts to pull back, there was one final line that Spielberg cut just before the film started screening for critics: “The following year, there were 161 murders in the District of Columbia.” To me, that line alone redeems much of the “happy” ending, forcing you to think about what is good and what is bad, and what is acceptable if we want a world without fear. It refuses to let the viewer of the hook. Cutting it says volumes to me about how Spielberg views his audience. He loves you. He’s afraid to hurt you. He desperately wants to avoid leaving you unhappy as you head for the theater doors. And I can respect that. I just wish that sometimes he’d realize that we sign up for darker rides, and that we’re prepared to forgive him for taking us someplace painful as long as he does it with the same skill as he’s always shown us the light.
The performances in the film range from good to very good, and I think Colin Farrell (as Danny Witwer, not Ed, as people keep mystifyingly calling him in reviews) is on the very good side of things. He and Max Von Sydow provide valuable support to Cruise in the film, and looking at Von Sydow now just confirms how much of a genius Dick Smith was when he did THE EXORCIST. Von Sydow has finally become Father Merrin completely. With Cruise, the verdict is a little more mixed. There are places here where I think he’s very good, and I do feel for Anderton in the film’s first half. I think Cruise finds a way to play both detached and destroyed at the same time, and it’s effective. As the film goes on though, we don’t see him shake off the fog that Anderton lives in. Instead, he simply is Tom Cruise in one moment, the broken and troubled Anderton in the next. It’s inconsistent work, and a bit of a surprise. I actually consider Cruise a very good actor for a movie star, and he’s normally so sharp about how to build a performance. Here, he’s all over the map, and part of that seems to be a desire to match Spielberg’s radical shifts in tone. It doesn’t work, though, and the result is that by the end, I wasn’t rooting for Anderton anymore. I wasn’t caught up in his guilt or his innocence. Instead, I was more interested in his supporting cast, never a good thing.
One last thing... I’ve heard people complaining about the “product placement” in the film. Good. It means you notice it. But it’s not product placement for the purpose of selling you anything, and that’s where Spielberg got subversive. He got Nokia and Lexus and Pepsi to all pony up and plaster their logos all over his film, never realizing that he was making a movie that is, in part, about how invasive consumer culture is already becoming, and how much worse it’s going to get. That scene where all the ads are calling his name as he walks between them is my personal nightmare. I crave anonymity when I am out in public, and I hate being marketed to directly. Phone solicitors, spam e-mail, good ol’ fashioned junk mail... it all offends me. The idea that companies are going to get more aggressive about how they sell us what they sell us and how they keep track of what we bought is as terrifying to me as any other concept in the film, and if you can’t see this film as a warning about that, then maybe the steady stream of commercials has already dulled you too much.
So is this a positive or a negative review? Neither. It’s mixed. I am glad I saw the film, and there are things in it to like. I was not satisfied, and I do have my gripes. In the end, I think you’ll have a very personal reaction to the picture, and that’s why I would suggest you see it. You may love it, or you may hate it, but you will not walk away unmoved. For that reason alone, MINORITY REPORT stands out in a summer movie season. Ambition counts, and this movie has it in spades.
"Moriarty" out.
