Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a pair of AMERICAN DREAMZ reviews. DREAMZ is Paul Weitz's (AMERICAN PIE) new comedy and we have a pair of reviews here... neither are very positive on the film, but both go into some detail, so beware spoilers. I'm looking forward to the film myself... I'm seeing it myself at SXSW in a week or two, so we'll see. First review up is from DeltaKnightOne who really, really, really, really, really didn't like the movie. Really. How much? Take a look for yourself, but I'm warnin' ya'. It ain't pretty...
Hey Harry,
I just got back from a free test screening of American Dreams, directed by the Load responsible for American Pie, In Good Company, and (the exception that proves the rule) About a Boy. You might have seen the preview for this movie. It's the one that presents the film as a satire of both the Bush presidency and American Idol. How exactly would that work as a narrative? Similar to the way cancer efficiently destroys cells within the human body. This movie is the equivalent of Hitler's reanimated, chlamydia-powered dick skull-fucking Mother Theresa on a pile of stillborn babies in the lobby of the exploding World Trade Center. And the lobby's blasting Billy Corgan's solo album. Hard.
Hyperbole?
Eat shit. You didn't witness this. I was lucky to jump ship on Rumor Has It about fifteen minutes in, right about when I realized that I wasn't in the target audience of twelve-year-old sluts with Down Syndrome. This time I wasn't so lucky. I sat for what must have been seven hours through this piece of shit. I sat through it, so you don't have to.
I'll try to summarize the story, but I might have equal luck trying to face-fuck Jessica Simpson while transcribing The Wasteland into Hindi. Hugh Grant plays an unlikeably depressed Brit (go figure) who happens to be the host of American Dreamz, a knock-off of popular crapshit, American Idol. Hugh Grant is a character with needs, ones so deeply important that they remain completely indiscernable to the audience for the entirety of the movie. We join him just as his show hits #1 in the ratings and as he dumps his girlfriend, managing to muster up every piece of cliched romantic comedy dialogue that's graced the screens of middle-America in the past ten years. It should be no problem for a man like Grant, a tenured actor in many remarkably bad movies, to force the lines to work despite their innate awfulness. Unfortunately, rather than characterize Grant's role, writer/director Paul Weitz relies heavily on the deja-vu effect, hoping that people will remember Grant from better movies (like the one where he was a mobster?), thereby bucking the need for passable writing. Suffice it to say, Hugh Grant is sad. He wants his own show to fail, because he's too emotionally-contrived to remember that money can't buy happiness, but at least it supports a healthy coke habit.
Enter Mandy Moore, playing a self-concerned, chubby cunt with a metaphoric hard-on for singing. Her performance was startlingly believable. Moore should be commended for the sheer amount of willpower it must have taken her to pour over her own autobiography for hours in preparation for the role. Also, her character is from Ohio, which apparently exists only in the 1970's if careful observation of set design can be trusted. Basically, Moore wants to be on American Dreams. Chris Klein, her dopey boyfriend (start preparing next year's Oscar speech, buddy!!!!!), is supportive, but she dumps him, so he joins the army, gets shot, comes back, and she forgives him so that she'll look better on camera. You following this? It's not important. Meanwhile, our protagonist(?), a radical muslim terrorist named Omer (Sam Golzeri) moves to America to live with his extended family. He's inexplicably chosen as another American Dreamz contestant, and his terror cell buddies decide to exploit his newfound fame to kill the President (Dennis Quaid, doing a commendable Bush impersonation) who has been chosen as a guest judge on American Dreamz as a way of upping his PR. Don't think the President doesn't have problems of his own though! He's sad, because he started to realize that the world is bad, mostly because of him.
Not-Dick-Cheney-But-Actually-Dick-Cheney (Willem Defoe) pushes him aroundand so he's sadder. After the first four hours of setting this nonsense up, the director masterfully avoids muddying his film with climax, and heads straight for the falling action, letting all the pieces play to their most obvious and moronic capabilities. Mandy and Omer make it to the finals. Omer decides not to blow up the president. Hugh Grant and Mandy fuck. Chris Klein gets sad, takes Omer's bomb and threatens to kill himself. I'm not going to tell you who dies (Hugh Grant, Chris Klein) but I will tell you that this all takes place in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, which are so retardedly rushed together that they manage to make A Mighty Wind's "six months later" sequence seem likeable and appealing.
Granted, a lot of this movie is intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but somehow winds up tongue-in-ass. It's supposed to be a comedy, and there about fourteen successful jokes across two full hours of otherwise dead space. Quaid and Defoe are excellent in their roles, although there's no material to work with. Nothing is sadder than watching an actor deliver what both performer and audience know is intended to be a punch-line, both sides knowing that there is no hope for joy in an outcome. This experience repeats like endlessly in American Dreams, like some torturous mobius strip in comedy Hell.
Also, could someone explain to Paul Weitz that there are other shots than medium close-up? As fun as it is to see the world from the perspective of a shoulder, I'd also like someone with talent to take the helm as cinematographer from time to time, you know, spice things up with some--I don't know--vision?
The only thing this movie has going for it legitimately is SNL's Seth Meyers as Mandy's agent. His asshole smirk and delivery keep a few scenes from sinking, although he's barely onscreen enough to merit more than a blip on dead radar.
Paul Weitz is a bad writer. American Pie is not a funny movie; it's stupid and obvious. Could we therefore reason that Weitz himself is stupid, and doesn't understand comedic execution? Think for a minute about a man whose success relies on the baudy predictability of jokes revolving around bodily functions and formulaic delivery, and then imagine his attempt at writing a thinking man's comedy about the state of American life. The result is American Dreamz, a failed satire that refuses to take risks until its bizzarely morbid conclusion, and even then, the movie fails to deliver a cohesive message except that it'd be nice if people stopped exploding so much.
90 minutes of "Bush is dumb, American Idol is dumb," man-handled by a writer incapable of reconciling the two concepts. Could it be that America's increasing willingness to accept televised images and words as their own opinions leads to a (to quote the Simpson's) "dumbening" of our culture as a whole? Who knows. Paul Weitz refuses to make a point, instead taking ineffectual potshots based on banal stereotypes.
You know your comedy is bad, when the things its mocking are funnier on their own than as viewed through the lens of fiction.
I'll be seeing advanced screenings of 16 Blocks tomorrow and The Hills Have Eyes next week, so expect an e-mail, or check out my blog .
Call me: DeltaKnightOne.
Told ya' he didn't like the movie. Now on to the slightly more positive review. Enjoy it, but beware... the synopsis goes over the whole movie beat by beat. If you like that kinda stuff... there you go!
Feel free to use either or both my review and synopsis.
Review: Well last night i got the privilege to attend an advance screening of American Dreamz. Granted this was in a great escape theatre hosted by Western Kentucky University's CAB, it overall was a decent setup. We arrived to be informed that this was the final product and that there would be no survey or recording of our reactions. So it begins with a lackluster opening sequence that in my opinion needs to be redone, it just bugged me. All of the actors were very believable in their roles, it was just that none of them you felt as if you could really connect with. It felt as if at some points they were forced to be in the roles. The only character that you feel any compassion for is Omar (Sam Golzari). I felt as though William Dafoe, John Cho, Jennifer Collidge, Marcia Gay Harden, were all way under used in this movie. There were way too many supporting big name characters for any of them to really have a stand out role. I wish that they would have surveyed me because this movie does need some work, the ending is too cookie cutter and rushed. I expected more from a Paul Weitz movie, what i got was a "B" rating average movie. Overall i would give it a 2/4 stars, its worth seeing but nothing really stands out other than some very funny moments of dialogue.
Synopsis (Heavily Spoiled):
The movie starts off with Hugh Grant ( a Ryan Seacrest spoof) receiving a fax showing that his show American Dreamz is the top show in the nation. American Dreamz if you haven't figured it out by now is a spoof of American idol. Grant is then told by his girlfriend that shes leaving him and that she feels sorry for him, grant on the other hand instead of being sad goes on to tell her how hes happy to be rid of her. This then goes to the movie opening title sequence which in my opinion needed to be redone completely.
It then goes on to being in president Staton's (Dennis Quaid) bedroom. The president has decided to go into seclusion after winning the election. This movie is suppose to be a satire, so it pokes fun at the current president as well as things like American idol. In comes William Dafoe as the presidents adviser who pretty much tells the president what to do for the greater part of the movie, but more on that later. Dafoe is funny at times and they end up making a funny reference to spider man, which had the theatre chuckling.
After this we go back to grant who gives a amusing speech on where to go when your on top of the world. This speech is in front of the people who go out to find the contestants to be on American Dreamz. So with this in mind we cut to the home of Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore)and her mother (Jennifer Coolidge) in some Podunk town in Ohio. John Cho as well as another actress inform Mandy that she will be on American dreamz. But it then cuts to a terrorist training camp where they are filming a training video, this is where we meet Omar (Sam Golzari) who of all the many characters in this movie is the only one you really end up caring anything about. Omar keeps flubbing up things so the terrorists send him to be a sleeper unit in Orange County with his Rich relatives. His cousins Shazzy (Noureen Dewulf) and Iqbal (Tony Yalda) are both the typical spoiled o.c. type except Iqbal has the dream to be on American Dreamz.
Sorry if this seems jumpy but the movie was just that, very jumpy. It then cuts to Hugh grant telling Cho and the other girl that he wants an Arab this season, and the speech that he gives on this is quite funny as well. I'm not a Hugh Grant fan but this movie was kind of a smaller role and it was nice to see him as kind of a asshole for a change. So Cho goes to the house of Iqbal with a camera crew only to find that Omar is singing. They then decide to pick up Omar instead for American dreamz. During this time Dafoe has to defend president staton because staton has been reading nonstop. Over the course of the movie Staton comes to realize that hes been saying what people have been telling him to and he hasn't been able to speak his mind. Dafoe has the idea to go on a public relations binge in order to improve the presidents approval ratings, so they schedule him to be on the finale of American Dreamz as a guest judge.
So back to Podunk ville Ohio where Sally's boyfriend (Chris Klein) is introduced, sally decides to dump Klein because she feels as though hes going nowhere. So Klein decides to enlist in the army, in which after a short 2 weeks hes shipped over seas and is shot in the arm almost right off the bat so is sent home. In the mean time Sally gets an agent which is played by a snl cast member. Sally's boyfriend comes home as a "Injured veteran" in which the agent films the footage and sends it to the American Dreamz folks. Sally mentions in the video "Did you get that?" and this causes grant to pay a personal visit to Podunk Ohio to meet sally. The two discover each other as kind of counterfeit and from that point on you see a relationship start to prosper.
Well the premiere episode of American Dreamz is shown and the terrorist in the other country notice on their tivo that Omar has made it onto the show so they activate his sleeper status. The plan is that he will make it to the final round and blow up the president with a small explosive device. So now comes the long montage of the course of a season of American Dreamz. And as you guessed it, it comes down to Sally and Omar in the final competition. So now that Klein is back as Sally's boyfriend, he decided to propose to her, but the agent determines that it would be a better idea to do it on the show in order to get more votes, so it is agreed that he will do this. Omar on the other hand is now in a battle within himself to do the right thing or to kill the president.
Well it comes down to the night of the competition. Grant meets with sally in her room and the 2 determine that they want one another and start to go at it. Omar's terrorist pals have made a bomb and hid it in the bathroom backstage. Omar put it on. Klein walks by Sally's dressing room to find that she is doing the horizontal mambo by looking through the keyhole. The show starts and President Staton has an earpiece in which Dafoe is speaking directly too him, but due to radios throughout the set, interference occurs and causes some memorable scenes. Omar at the last second decided to take off the bomb, and disposes of it in the bathroom. He makes it back to stage to sing his number just in time. Klein storms into the bathroom moping about how could he be so dumb, and while throwing a tissue away stumbles upon the bomb Omar had thrown away. During the performance the earpiece falls out of the presidents ear. The president then comes down with grant to shake Omar's hand, and for once the president is allowed to make a decision on his own. Well then Sally comes out to do her song, when Klein walks onstage and calls out the fact that sally and grant slept together, at that point he reveals that he has a bomb and doesn't want to live anymore. Everyone runs and the agents grab the president. The president slips away from the agents and gives Klein a word of advice, at this point Klein begins to sing and sally slips away. Grant on the other hand thinking of the amount of TVs that it is being brodcasted on takes control of a camera and moves in slowly on Klein. And that's where the camera hits the switch that sets off the bomb killing both Klein and grant.
It then goes to 6 months later
Sally is now the host of American Dreamz and it is announced that even though Klein died he received the most votes and ended up winning American dreamz. And that's where the movie ends.
