Hey folks, Harry here with the latest from that bumbling babbler, Mr Beaks. He's here to weave written words really well regarding wanderers out in OPEN WATER and what Paramount is doing with THE BAD NEWS BEARS remake. Personally, I don't get into a panic about Todd Phillips, so far I've enjoyed all his films... Of course I question the need to remake THE BAD NEWS BEARS as... well the original sold out the Kid's Club screening I hosted in Austin and it was immensely enjoyed by all... AS IS! Personally - I'd love to see a big reissue with the advertising support to launch it. But that's just me. Anyway, here's Mr Beaks...
THIS COLUMN HAS NO NAME, SO GO FIND YOURSELF ANOTHER FOOL, VOL. 9
In the spirit of dedicating as much effort to evaluating THE VILLAGE as M. Night Shyamalan exerted on the composition of the script, I’m going to review the film by sitting on my keyboard. Behold!
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Well, that was disappointing. Used to be you could sit on your keyboard for hours and generate pages upon pages of gobbledygook. It was our technological birthright. And now it’s gone. What a gyp.
ENGLEBERG, *THAT* IS A BUNT
More like a weak comebacker to the mound should Paramount screw up the development of THE BAD NEWS BEARS remake like they’re about to.
I was all ready to work myself up into a lather back in April when Paramount announced that they were updating Michael Ritchie’s inimitable 1976 comedy (much like I did when I stumbled upon the script for Adam Sandler’s THE LONGEST YARD), but three names gave me pause: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa and Billy Bob Thornton. Their work on last year’s BAD SANTA (which, even in its BADDER incarnation, is still much softer than the brilliant, very early version I saw) was acerbic and witty enough to suggest that they might have a shot at making a respectable remake. Though I revere the original, and believe Walter Matthau’s scurrilous Coach Morris Buttermaker will forever occupy a place in the pantheon of comedic film performances, there is absolutely room for another edgy entry in the little league genre. So long as this film is its own coarse animal, I’d easily make my peace with the brand-name invoking of a cherished childhood classic.
But there’s no sense making a film called THE BAD NEWS BEARS if you’re going to defang it, which is precisely what Paramount is looking to do by hiring director Todd Phillips. Now, I generally like Phillips’s films (I was an early defender of OLD SCHOOL on this site), but his brand of comedy is all wrong for something so reliant on character and nuance as THE BAD NEWS BEARS. Phillips’s comedy is all broad strokes, which is why he has worked so well with the outsized likes of Will Ferrell and, to a lesser but still effective extent, Tom Green. He’s all about the maximum impact of the gag, whereas THE BAD NEWS BEARS’ humor, if done right, is far slier. There aren’t many major belly laughs in the original, but there are moments that can elicit a smile or a chuckle just through a mere mention. Jose insisting that wearing a protective cup is a sin against the Church; Buttermaker explaining the finer points of throwing spitballs; a puzzled Miguel waiting for his mitt to drop from the sky. These are smart, whimsical little touches that are as far from the Todd Phillips style as can be.
Luckily, Ficarra and Requa understand what made the original so special; all they need now is more perceptive director (though someone a tad less cynical than Terry Zwigoff) to complement the edginess of the script. You’re already bungling THE LONGEST YARD, folks; please don’t desecrate the memory of THE BAD NEWS BEARS while you’re at it.
LINING UP TO BE A HOT LUNCH AS CAREER ADVANCEMENT
Nothing so instantly unnerves an audience like dropping an actor into the ocean, and placing the camera at surface level; thus, allowing the viewer to indulge their imagination, sifting through a stockpile of sea-bound nightmares that likely began victimizing their subconscious after that first, fateful encounter with Steven Spielberg’s JAWS, and applying these thoughts to the unthinkable circumstance at hand. Of course, it takes no substantial skill to wring anxiety out of such a scenario, even Steve Miner worked up some decent scares in the otherwise silly giant Croc schlocker, LAKE PLACID, but it’s such a reliably effective technique, that I’m genuinely surprised it’s taken nearly thirty years for someone to make a film like OPEN WATER. (Well, there was that classic MAGNUM P.I. episode where Thomas is stranded at sea…)
The premise is thorough simplicity: two recreational divers get stranded at sea and, after a while, sharks show up. That’s it. And, in essence, after seventy-nine minutes, the vicarious experience of that nightmare is all we’re left with. Though Kentis and his producer/co-writer/wife Laura Lau have made the most of their ambitious, possibly lunatic endeavor, attaining a sort of “extreme” neorealism – seriously, I haven’t feared so for the lives of a cast and crew since Schroeder’s OUR LADY OF THE ASSASSINS – that’s utterly refreshing particularly when placed amid yet another summer CG pageant, the film is undone by a killer flaw that seems curiously intentional. The imperiled couple just isn’t that likeable or, worse, interesting.
The damage is largely sustained in the film’s first act. Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) are introduced as two young, workaholic professionals in desperate need of a vacation, and the characterizations never really deepen (I stop keeping track of puns starting… *now*) beyond that. Upon reaching their island getaway, the couple avail themselves of the locale’s tacky tourist establishments, with Daniel pausing to, in a clumsy bit of foreshadowing, playfully stick his head in the jaws of a large mounted shark. It’s all stock couple behavior, which is fine, but there’s no effort expended to give the characters any unique shadings. Eventually, they retire to their hotel room, where it’s revealed that they aren’t exactly on the same page sexually at the time being, but this frustrating tentativeness is suppressed rather than discussed or argued.
Obviously, Kentis and Lau mean for the couple to mentally unravel at sea as they’re swarmed by jellyfish and, ultimately, sharks, which they do, but there’s scant emotional investment on our part because Daniel and Susan have been stubbornly portrayed as shallow careerists. When the time for the breakdown arrives, it’s inorganic – motivated solely by the structural dictates of screenwriting. As a result, rather than ramp up the tension, their shrill squabble defuses it, at which point I found myself longing for a rogue, twenty-foot Tiger Shark to show up for its afternoon feeding. The filmmakers have been very vocal in discussing the thematic elements of this film (a turnoff, more often than not), and there may be a chance that the message – like THE PERFECT STORM or INTO THIN AIR, this is one of those newfangled awe-in-the-destructive-face-of-nature pieces – will find a large audience, but this will likely rely on whatever baggage the viewer brings into it. Though Ryan and Travis both turn in admirable performances, their characters are ciphers.
Devoid of much human interest, OPEN WATER finally exists as an exercise in visceral terror, and, with that camera bobbing topside along with the actors, it at least succeeds on that count. By filming the actors treading water in the middle of a chum-induced feeding frenzy, Kentis has expectedly captured some fantastic, never-before-seen scares, using the sharks’ sudden and violent fin flaps to particularly jolting effect. There are also a few frightening below surface reveals when either actor is forced to don their diving mask that should more than meet the thrill quota for this type of fare. It’s just a shame that it comes up short in the human category.
I’ll be returning very soon with a review of Frank Darabont’s FAHRENHEIT 451.
Faithfully submitted,
