Movie/TV Reviews

Uptown Girls

Susan Granger’s review of “Uptown Girls” (MGM release)

This wannabe female-friendship comedy fails on so many levels that it could serve as a lesson in fluffy, one-dimensional film-making. The story, which was pitched by a studio receptionist (Allison Jacobs), revolves around 22 year-old Molly Gunn (Brittany Murphy), the self-indulgent, orphaned daughter of a wealthy rock ‘n’ roll guitarist When a larcenous accountant absconds with her $100 million inheritance, the irritating and totally incompetent Molly is forced to look for a j-o-b, a loathsome concept to someone whose major exhaustion has come from shopping and partying. She finds employment as a nanny to a nasty, neglected, cynical 8 year-old whose father is in a coma and whose mother (Heather Locklear) is a busy music executive. That’s the set-up: a childlike adult interacting with an adult-like child , both learning lessons about life. Drenched in dull, corny cuteness by writers Julia Dahl, Mo Ogrodnik and Lisa Davidowitz and self-consciously directed by Boaz Yakin, it’s a cotton-candy confection that’s far too superficial, contrived and mannered. Perhaps because of a publicity blitz, sulky Brittany Murphy (“Eight Mile,” “Just Married”) seems distractingly enamored of her own quirky persona, while pixie-faced Dakota Fanning (“I Am Sam”) exudes an unappealingly obnoxious, precocious quality. On the other hand, watching a loser like this makes one muse: wouldn’t it be great if someone thought of teaming Dakota Fanning with Hayley Joel Osment as brother-and-sister in some sort of flaky adventure? Ah, well. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Uptown Girls” is a tedious, tiresome 3. The most appealing character is Moo, the pet potbellied pig. “He was going to be my curry dinner one night in Bangkok, but we fell in love,” Molly explains.

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Finding Nemo

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Finding Nemo” (Disney)

There should be nothing fishy about the success of this underwater adventure. It’s got everything going for it: intriguing anthropomorphic characters, a compelling story and fanciful computer-generated animation. Set in and around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, it’s the tale of Marlin (voiced by an anxious Albert Brooks), a neurotic, overprotective father clownfish, who is searching for Nemo (Alexander Gould), his son who was ‘taken’ by a deep-sea diving dentist. Marlin and his friendly-but-forgetful regal blue tang fish companion Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) must confront perils ranging from scary whales, pink jellyfish, predatory sharks and surfer-dude turtles to sunken ships, deadly mines and dangerous ocean currents (“the swirling vortex of terror”). Honest, heartfelt emotion ebbs and flows along with humor – both low (the inevitable burp/fart jokes) and high (allusions to Alcoholics Anonymous, Alfred Hitchcock, etc.) – plus fluid vocal contributions from Willem Dafoe, Geoffrey Rush, Allison Janney, Brad Garrett, Barry Humphries, Austin Pendleton and Andrew Stanton (the film’s director). The theme is to trust your child enough to let go and to allow him make his own mistakes – with a subplot involving overcoming physical challenges, since little Nemo has a tiny, underdeveloped fin. With its four features – “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.,” now this – Pixar Animation sets a digital high water mark for eye-candy and is, quite simply, the best in the business today. Thomas Newman’s music and Gary Rydstrom’s sound effects are superb, and there’s no more fitting final credit song than “Beyond the Sea,” sung by Robbie Williams. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Finding Nemo” is a fun, bubbly, fantastic 10. Sea it!

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Bruce Almighty

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Bruce Almighty” (Universal Pictures)

What an appealing concept: an ordinary guy becomes God, blessed with the powers of the Almighty. Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) is a shallow, self-centered TV news reporter in Buffalo, New York, who yearns to be Walter Cronkite. But because he’s wacky and amusing, Nolan’s assigned lighter, human-interest stories and passed over for the anchorman position. Yet his life’s pretty darn good. He’s got a devoted, live-in girl-friend (Jennifer Aniston) and a not-quite-house-broken dog. But he’s angry that God has never answered his prayers. In fact, he’s so frustrated and furious that his temper tantrum takes him to an audience with God (Morgan Freeman), who good-naturedly challenges him to do a better job. Predictably, Nolan’s initial reaction to omnipotence is selfish – a new Ferrari, exclusive news scoops, etc. – but, eventually, he gets around to making a mess of mankind’s infinite problems as his divine intervention goes awry. Reminiscent of “Dear God,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” etc., the whimsical story by Steve Koren, Mark O’Keefe & Steve Oedekerk is sappy and melodramatic. But Jim Carrey’s blessed with such incredible comedic talent and precise comedic timing that he elevates the mediocre material. Morgan Freeman embodies an indulgent, dignified deity with infinite patience and a sharp sense of humor. Director Tom Shadyac (“Liar, Liar”) makes the most of several hilarious scenes, particularly when a rival newsman (Steve Carell) spouts gibberish on-air. And there’s a poignant message when Nolan wails, “How do you make someone love you if you can’t affect free will?” To which the Lord replies, “Welcome to my world, son.” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bruce Almighty” is a simplistic, spiritual 7, promoting the power of faith.

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The Italian Job

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Italian Job” (Paramount Pictures)

There’s a high-stakes heist, a deadly double-cross, missing gold, a gaggle of guys and one gal. How many times have you seen this kind of movie? Dozens, perhaps? This lackluster remake of Michael Caine’s jaunty 1969 comic caper is almost a complete waste of time. Mark Wahlberg stars as a criminal mastermind who’s taking over for retiring Donald Sutherland after one last heist, the titular Italian job. Inevitably, there’s a glitch, not in the robbery but in the getaway through the Austrian Alps, as one of the gang gets greedy. But you saw all this in the Coming Attractions and commercials, right? Anyway, when duplicitous Edward Norton gets nasty, grabbing $35 million in gold bullion, a revenge scheme is inevitable. The only spark of originality propels the two chase sequences: the first using speedboats through the twisting canals of Venice and the second involving a trio of pint-sized BMW Mini Coopers – red, white and blue – maneuvering through traffic gridlock in Los Angeles with a sinister black helicopter in dogged pursuit. Its resemblance to a video-game is surely not coincidental. Director F. Gary Gray (“A Man Apart”) and his clichŽ-prone screenwriters (husband-and-wife team: Wayne and Donna Powers) seem merely to be going through the methodical motions. As a result, Edward Norton, Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron, who plays Sutherland’s safe-cracking daughter, deliver the most bland, nondescript, uninteresting performances of their respective careers, while Seth Green, Mos Def and Jason Statham score in somewhat comic supporting roles. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Italian Job” is a formulaic, forgettable 4. You’ve seen it all in the trailer, so why bother with this dud?

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Wrong Turn

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Wrong Turn” (20th Century-Fox)

There are bad movies and then there are inexcusably bad movies. This grim, gruesome, blood-drenched ’70s-style slasher scenario falls into the latter category. The story begins as a yuppie (Desmond Harrington) finds himself stuck on a West Virginia highway en route to a job interview in Raleigh. Impatient, he makes a U-turn and heads down a dirt road where he, literally, runs into a disabled Range Rover and a quintet of twentysomethings (Eliza Dushku, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Jeremy Sisto, Kevin Zegers, Lindy Booth). Bear Mountain Road is obviously the road less traveled – except by an ominous, demented trio of mutant, in-bred mountain men who turn out to be cannibals. Ordinarily, one might be rooting for the protagonists to survive but, in this case, they’re too dense and dimwitted to elicit much sympathy as one-by-one they’re slaughtered. The gals are clad in tight tank tops – the better to jiggle, of course. One guy is so dense that when he finds himself in a decrepit cabin filled with bizarre oddities and disgusting debris, his first impulse is to turn off a spinning record-player. Written by Alan B. McElroy (“Spawn”) and directed by Rob Schmidt (“Crime and Punishment in Suburbia”), it’s strictly bottom-of-the-barrel except when one of the men mutters, “Remember those guys in ‘Deliverance.'” Now that’s perceptive. Otherwise, John Bartley’s cinematography and Elia Cmiral’s music are pedestrian, at best. Credit any shred of interest to four-time Oscar-winner Stan Winston who designed the freakish make-up. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Wrong Turn” is a brutal, grisly, gory 1. Bad directions are the least of its problems. Hmmm, I wonder how the West Virginia Board of Tourism feels about this.

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Raising Victor Vargas

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Raising Victor Vargas” (Samuel Goldwyn Films/Fireworks)

First-time writer-director Peter Sollett scores a solid hit with this coming-of-age story set in the heat of summer on New York’s Lower East Side. With his adolescent hormones aflame, skinny, callous, cocky 16 year-old Victor Vargas (Victor Rasuk) has his heart set on “Juicy Judy” Ramirez (Judy Marte), the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Their courtship begins at the neighborhood pool in a scene reminiscent of “Raging Bull.” Victor has two younger siblings: a beatific brother (Silvestre Rasuk, the real-life Victor’s younger brother) who “always tries to make the family happy” and a scowling, overweight sister (Krystal Podriguez). But the most memorable character is Victor’s grandmother (Altagracia Guzman) who is determined to raise her grandchildren with Old World values, albeit in a shabby tenement. She’s suspicious of Victor’s macho strutting, viewing him as yet another preening stud in the familial line, particularly when he alludes to the portrait of his late grandfather that hangs in the living room. There’s an indelible moment when Grandma delivers a plaintive monologue about growing up in a family of 14 children on a farm in the Dominican Republic and a hilarious interlude when she tries to palm Victor off on a welfare caseworker for being a bad influence. Using a primarily non-professional cast, 27 year-old Peter Sollett creates the kind of warm-hearted, anecdotal yet truthful story-telling that is often found only in documentaries. He evokes a rarely-seen kind of character authenticity that originated in his student award-winning short film, “Five Feet High and Rising,” which he made while at NYU. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Raising Victor Vargas” is an obviously improvised, poignant 8. Victor victorious!

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Coral Reef Adventure

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Coral Reef Adventure” (IMAX Theater)

Only IMAX cameras have the ability to transport you into outer space and under the seas in an unforgettable giant-screen adventure. This time, you submerge with ocean divers delving into the mystery of why a coral reef near the coast of Fiji is dying. More than a lesson in reef biology, it’s the very personal, real-life story of a husband-and-wife cinematography team, Michele and Howard Hall, who answered the distress call of Fijian scientist Rusi Vulakoro and went on a 10-month journey to create a lasting cinematic record of the reefs as they exist today. The Halls’ first stop was the South Pacific where, using aerial photography, they discovered that a lethal combination of global warming, resulting in a two-degree increase in water temperature; over-fishing; and silt, a result of coastal logging, was covering Rusi Vulkoro’s village reef in a white, ashy blanket of death. Noting that observation is the first step in science, they then went to examine Australia’s protected Great Barrier Reef, where they found thriving corals whose fragile eco-systems are still intact. Coral reefs are over 100 million years old and are Earth’s largest living structures. They provide homes for over 25% of all marine life, yet take up less than 1% of the ocean floor. Coral reefs are a tremendous medical resource, providing chemical compounds used in antihistamines, antibiotics and other treatments ranging from asthma to leukemia and heart disease. Oceanographer Tracey Medway gets up-close-and-personal with an enormous potato cod who opens its mouth to allow a living toothbrush, a tiny wrasse fish, scrub the parasites off its teeth. That’s followed by a deliciously memorable sequence in which scuba-diver Michele Hall opens her mouth wide, inviting the shrimp-like sea creature to crawl inside and clean her teeth! Their final stop was in French Polynesia, where near the Rangiroa atoll they were forced to swim against a powerful current to find an elusive school of more than 300 gray reef sharks clustered in a narrow passage. All-in-all, the Halls made 2,421 dives, logged 2,810 hours underwater and had to spend up to four hours a day decompressing in order to make this film. The underwater footage is stunning. Lush, colorful whip and fan corals sway with the current, like immense flowers in a breeze, eels bare their powerful teeth, huge manta rays glide by, and a busy bulldozer shrimp clears a safe haven for its symbiotic protector fish. Written by Osha Gray Davidson and Stephen Judson, the diverse presentation’s the only weakness is out-of-the-water, where filmmaker Greg MacGillivray (“The Living Sea,” “Dolphins”) stages unconvincing shots of Vulakoro, the Halls and South Pacific children awkwardly interacting. The obviously contrived pathos is even more inopportune when the pressure of a 370′ deep-water dive causes Howard Hall to develop the bends, a potentially fatal build-up of nitrogen and helium bubbles in the blood, and production is halted for six weeks while he recovers in Fiji’s only hyperbaric chamber. Narrated by Liam Neeson, the cautionary tale flows – with particularly notable crossfades from a map to an ocean vista – and is punctuated by the pop music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Its conclusion reveals that according to the United Nations’ Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network and Reef Check Network, 10% of the world’s reefs have died within the past four years and nearly a quarter are currently suffering. “Coral reefs are the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is sick and dying,” concludes Jean-Michel Costeau, son of the late oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Coral Reef Adventure” is a spectacular, exciting 8, delivering a vital ecological message that our coral reefs are in great danger and could cease to exist within the next 30 years.

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2 Fast 2 Furious

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “2 Fast 2 Furious” (Universal Pictures)

Exactly how much do you love the va-va-vroom of a car’s engine? That kind of soul-searching is pivotal to choosing whether this is your kind of movie. While “The Fast and the Furious” was a big hit back in 2001, its dynamic star, Vin Diesel, has left the franchise in the dust for epics like “XXX” and “A Man Apart.” Now it’s model/rapper Tyrese Gibson who’s revving up for street-racing with Paul Walker, who once again plays the disgraced LAPD cop. Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas & Gary Scott Thompson and directed by John Singleton, this story finds the ex-cop Walker looking for redemption by going undercover in Miami for the FBI with restless, ex-con Gibson as his thrill-seeking partner. Their mission is to break up a money-laundering cartel run as an import/export business by sadistic Cole Hauser. Unlike the original film, however, there’s a curious, even disconcerting undercurrent of homoerotic tension as the buff protagonists grip the phallic stickshift and writhe in the dirt with their legs entwined. In fact, the camera lingers just as long on Gibson’s well-defined muscles and as it does on the cleavage of curvaceous Eva Mendes, who plays an undercover customs agent whose hot pink attire matches her convertible. Which gets to the turbo-charged crux of the film: the cool candy-colored cars, including a Nissan Skyline GTR, Mitsubishi EVO 7, 1970 Hemi Dodge Challenger, 1969 Yenko Camaro, 1998 BMW M3, 2003 Dodge Viper, Chevy Corvette, 1994 Toyota Supra, 1994 Mazda RX7, 2001 Honda S2000 and 1993 Acura NSX. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “2 Fast 2 Furious” peels out with a high-octane, low-IQ 4. It’s a wild ride recommended only for chrome-plated adrenaline-junkies.

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Man on the Train

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Man on the Train” (Paramount Classics)

Patrice Leconte’s comic melodrama begins as Milan (Johnny Hallyday), a grizzled, mysterious man with piercing blue eyes, disembarks from the train in a small, deserted French town. While buying aspirin at a pharmacy, he meets hospitable, garrulous Manesquier (Jean Rochefort), a retired educator, who not only offers water to wash down his headache pills but also a room in his family chateau since the local hotel is closed for the season. As their wary relationship slowly develops, it becomes obvious that taciturn Milan intends to rob the provincial bank, a daring act that refined Manesquier had concocted for many years but only in his fantasies. Because beneath his veneer, Manesquier longs to be Wyatt Earp, while Milan is weary of the nomadic life. And Saturday, when Milan has decided to pull off his bank robbery, is the same day that Manesquier faces open-heart surgery. As the fateful day approaches, each man – the thief and the teacher – reveals unexpected quirks of character that define his destiny. For those not into French culture, Johnny Hallyday is a legendary pop icon (a photo of him in his youth drops out of Milan’s jacket pocket in a kind of homage), while Jean Rochefort is a veteran actor and director Patrice Leconte (“The Girl on the Bridge”) is renown for his poignant, emotionally evocative film-making. This time, Leconte, along with writer Claude Klotz, has created a cerebral Gallic version of the buddy movie, relying on the solemn, modest characters to propel the plot. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Man on the Train” is a surreal, ambiguous 8. Winner of the Best Picture Audience Award at the Venice Film Festival, along with the Best Actor Audience Award, it’s in French with English subtitles.

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Hollywood Homicide

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Hollywood Homicide” (Columbia Pictures)

Working two jobs takes on an absurd new meaning in this irreverent, fast-paced action-comedy. Harrison Ford is a veteran LAPD detective, Joe Gavilan, who doubles as a not-too-successful real estate agent, while his rookie partner, K.C. Calden, played by Josh Hartnett, really wants to be an actor. That’s why it’s hard to keep their focus as they find themselves caught up in the hip-hop music scene while investigating the killing of a rap music group in a local nightclub. While the Ford/Hartnett duo fails to ignite like Chris Tucker/ Jackie Chan in “Rush Hour” or Mel Gibson/Danny Glover in “Lethal Weapon,” credit writer/director Ron Shelton and ex-cop Robert Souza for developing fleshed-out characters as opposed to stereotypical cop buddies. Joe Gavilan’s not only got a drinking habit, three ex-wives to support and a new sexy/psychic girl-friend but he’s operating under the scrutiny of the suspicious Internal Affairs Division. The son of a slain policeman, spiritual K.C. Calden would rather be teaching New Age yoga or rehearsing as Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Much of the humor derives from the fact that these two men just don’t understand each other. Plus there are strong supporting turns from Lena Olin, Martin Landau, Keith David, Bruce Greenwood and cameos by Eric Idle, Lou Diamond Phillips. Problem is: despite a few zany, amusing moments, the contrived script doesn’t measure up to the off-beat performances. Where there should have been more sharp comedy, there are seemingly-endless sub-plots, chase sequences and car crashes – although it is comic to see Ford hijacking a child’s bike to chase a crook. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Hollywood Homicide” is a slick 6, but what it lacks in substance, it makes up for in fun.

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