The Mimic (2020)

One of these guys is just like the other.

(2020) Comedy (Gravitas) Thomas Sadoski, Jake Robinson, Austin Pendleton, Gina Gershon, Jessica Walter, M. Emmett Walsh, Marilu Henner, Tammy Blanchard, Didi Conn, Matthew Maher, Josh Pais, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Doug Plaut, Steve Routman, Teddy Coluca, Vanna Pilgrim, Drew Porschen, Victoria Mahal-Sky, Diane DeSalvo-Beebe, Connie Porcellini. Directed by Thomas F. Mazziotti

 

There’s no telling how we’re going to react to other people upon first meeting them. Some folks just charm the bejeezus out of us and we respond to that; others we can take or leave – most of the others, in fact. Then there are those where are feelings go the other way; we can’t quite put our finger on it, but we know there’s something off about that person and we instinctively dislike them.

Our Narrator (Sadoski) – who is never given a name – works for a community newspaper in a tony small town while he works on a screenplay. A new neighbor comes into his life, a man that the Narrator calls The Kid (Robinson), mainly because it irritates the Kid to be called that. The Kid is almost puppy-eager to please, but amid his wide-eyed gosh shucks demeanor there is an undercurrent that the Kid might not be quite so gosh shucks – trending more towards the No Please Don’t Hurt Me side. The Narrator is quite sure that the Kid is a sociopath.

And so the Narrator takes it upon himself to keep the Kid in close proximity so he can better observe him. The Narrator isn’t always able to hide his contempt for the Kid, and they often have disagreements. The Narrator, a widower, is also beginning to develop feelings for the Kid’s wife (Pilgrim).

The dialogue has a lot of snap to it, taking its cues from screwball comedies (the fact that it’s set at a newspaper could well be a nod to His Gal Friday). But for all the machine gun-like delivery hat Sadoski and Robinson manage, the laugh-out-loud funny quotient is unusually low. A lot of it is because the two leads are mainly just too unlikable; the Narrator is a bit of a pompous know-it-all and the Kid is just downright creepy.

In some ways, Mazziotti is trying too hard to make the movie relevant and fresh. It feels sometimes that he’s not confident enough to let the film stand on its own merits; he has to kind of gink it up a bit with screwy situations that don’t feel real, and with zippy one-liners that occasionally fall flat. I get the sense that Mazziotti is trying a bit too hard; if he had done some punchier jokes and went less for oddball and more for snappy he would have had something here

I do see what Mazziotti was trying to do, and to be honest while he isn’t always successful, he doesn’t always fail either. I can’t say I wouldn’t mind seeing a well-made comedy in this style again; it is definitely a lost art. The movie needs a bit more punch with the humor and a little less highbrow. Never talk down to your audience, a maxim that serves well in all sorts of artistic endeavors. I felt a bit talked down to after viewing this, but on the plus side there is definitely some strong points here to recommend the movie.

REASONS TO SEE: The dialogue is pretty snappy.
REASONS TO AVOID: Tries a little too hard to be different.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some drug references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Mazziotti got his start doing television production at WPIX in New York City
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Redbox, Vimeo, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/12/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 63% positive reviews. Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Keeping Up With the Joneses
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Young Hearts

Advertisement

The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Jennifer Garner. Alias. *sob*

(2012) Family (Disney) Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton, CJ Adams, Odeya Rush, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Rosemarie DeWitt, David Morse, Dianne Wiest, M. Emmett Walsh, Lois Smith, Common, Ron Livingston, James Rebhorn, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Directed by Peter Hedges

 

Raising children can be explained as an imperative drive programmed into our DNA. The urge to reproduce is part of our survival instinct – in this case, survival of the species. We are not always, however, able to reproduce in conventional ways. Sometimes we need a miracle.

Cindy (Garner) and Jim (Edgerton) Green need such a miracle. After years of trying everything to conceive a baby they’ve had to come to the hard realization that it wasn’t going to happen. This is devastating to them both as it was one thing they both desperately wanted. So they grab a bottle of wine and write down all of the components that the fruit of their cohabitation would have had – a big heart, artistic talent (Picasso with a pencil), honest to a fault, and the sort of boy who could make an old man laugh but also score the winning goal.

They take these scraps of paper and bury them in a box in their garden. Lo and behold, as such movies are wont to do, a magic storm arises and lightning strikes. From out of the garden a young boy (Adams), covered in dirt, emerges. They are, of course, aghast and at first think he’s some sort of runaway. But as he addresses them as Mom and Dad, they slowly realize that this is the perfect child they dreamed of.

Say you want about the good citizens of Stanleyville, Pencil Capital of the World, but this small town in the Heartland takes the sudden appearance of a child in their midst in stride. Amber alerts are for big city kids; why, the Greens say he’s theirs so he must be. Of course Timothy (that’s his name, after all – the only boy’s name on the Greens’ list of names – there are 53 girls names on there to give you an idea) has leaves growing out of his legs but he keeps those hidden. And he also has a tendency to turn his face to the sun and stretch, much like a plant. Me, I’d be looking for a pod somewhere.

However, Timothy isn’t there to take over the planet. In fact, it’s not quite certain what he’s there for. He apparently is there to figure out if Cindy and Jim are decent parents and they appear to be, although they tell everyone repeatedly that they make a lot of mistakes. They’re both under a lot of pressure though, particularly Jim. The pencil plant where he works, run by Franklin Crudstaff (Livingston), his father (Rebhorn) and his iceberg-cold Aunt Bernice (Wiest), is in danger of being shut down and layoffs are happening in waves.

Cindy works at the pencil museum which is run by Bernice, with whom Cindy doesn’t get along well. Take You Kid to Work day is a recipe for disaster when you have a kid who’s honest to a fault but that’s not Timothy’s doing so much.

Timothy is far more interested in wooing Joni Jerome (Rush), an outsider like himself who looks to be about five years older in the way of girls the same age. The two are both artistic, but in hidden ways and they bring out the best in each other. That lead to affection that is more than friendly. Still, Timothy has much to do and a limited time to do it in – because every bloom must one day fade to make way for the next bloom.

This was written by Ahmet Zappa, Dweezil’s younger brother. It has the quirky element his dad would have appreciated, but it’s much more mainstream than he would have liked. In fact, in a lot of ways, the story is pretty predictable which probably doesn’t matter for the younger demographic of the target audience but their parents might not appreciate it as much.

The good thing is that the movie is well cast. Edgerton and Garner play like a sincere but somewhat inept couple who are in turns overprotective and at other times wanting their son to be his own man. These aren’t perfect Ozzie and Harriet parents by any stretch of the imagination, which makes the movie far more accessible.

The story is told mostly as a flashback during an interview with an Adoption Agency official (Aghdashloo) who is determining if the Greens are ready for a child, so we know that Timothy is out of the picture in some way. Which way isn’t clear, but it won’t be hard to figure out.

The movie is frank about loss and grieving, and there are several scenes of pathos that might be a bit much for the really small children. The movie is frankly manipulative which I usually don’t mind so much but I think that they could have been a little bit less formulaic about it.

I like the Midwestern charm here; the film seems to exist in a perpetual sunny autumn, a Hollywood Indian summer that allow for beautiful rainless days and harvest sunsets. It’s beautiful to look at, and I’m a sucker for the fall anyway so my snide remarks about the seasons will remain unsaid.

This has the pitfalls and positives of the average 21st century family film. The elements of the supernatural harkens back to such Disney classics as Darby O’Gill and the Little People only with much better special effects. There’s enough schmaltz to make an atheist choke and the inherent messages of accepting those who are different and never giving up no matter what the odds pass muster for Disney kid messages. Despite the fine performances from the adults and the fine chemistry between Adams and Rush, at the end of the day the movie is merely adequate and certainly fine if you want to take the family to a non-offensive family movie that isn’t a blatant marketing ploy to sell toys and Happy Meals.

REASONS TO GO: Nice chemistry between Garner and Edgerton, and Adams and Rush. Very sweet in feeling. Doesn’t shy away from pathos.

REASONS TO STAY: Feels manipulative. Not always true to its own internal logic.

FAMILY VALUES: There are a few bad words and some of the themes here might go over the heads of the very young.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The house used here was the same one where Halloween II was filmed.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/27/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 38% positive reviews. Metacritic: 48/100. The reviews are somewhat negative but more towards the mixed side.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Race to Witch Mountain

SOCCER LOVERS: Timothy shows off some pretty impressive moves in his moment of glory on the pitch.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Burke and Hare

Big Stan

The authorities catch up to Rob Schneider after the last Deuce Bigalow movie.

(2007) Comedy (Crystal Sky) Rob Schneider, David Carradine, Jennifer Morrison, Scott Wilson, Richard Kind, Sally Kirkland, M. Emmett Walsh, Henry Gibson, Jackson Rathbone, Kevin Gage, Bob Sapp, Brandon Jackson, Dan Haggerty, Richard Riehle, Marcia Wallace, Randy Couture. Directed by Rob Schneider

 

Fear can be an awfully effective motivator. When something makes us quake in our boots, it’s amazing the things we can do to protect ourselves or at the very least, keep our worst fears from coming true.

Big Stan (Schneider) is a real estate salesman whose real job is to swindle the elderly out of their hard earned dollars to buy timeshares in undesirable neighborhoods and make a killing by convincing them to pay luxury accommodation prices. He gets caught eventually and convicted although his conniving lawyer (Walsh) convinces the judge (Riehle) to give Stan six months to settle up his affairs before heading off to jail.

Stan is not the biggest rooster in the henhouse, although he has a gorgeous wife (Morrison) whom he’s crazy about. However, what he’s even crazier about is the thought that he’s going to be raped repeatedly in prison; he’s paranoid about it like Nixon. He finds himself a martial arts teacher who calls himself The Master (Carradine) who agrees to teach him how to defend himself. His methods are, to say the least, unusual. Even so, Stan manages to become an adept martial artist, so much so that the Master labels him his number two disciple.

Eventually Stan is sent to prison where he encounters some of the meanest, roughest prisoners you’ll ever meet – and Stan kicks all of their asses. He becomes the prison’s number one badass and the warden (Wilson), knowing about Stan’s real estate expertise, seeks out his help in a scheme to raze the prison and turn the site into luxury condos. Stan and the prisoners get together to expose the warden’s nefarious plan but can they stand together? Or will Stan, targeted by the Master’s number one student, fall alone?

Schneider’s film career has been checkered to say the least. His Deuce Bigalow films have made Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura films look positively highbrow by comparison. Schneider himself however has always been a likable presence even in the movies with the least amount of appeal. I was fortunate enough to interview him years ago (just after he left SNL) and found him to be a really nice guy and one of the most fun interviews I’ve ever done. I know there are a lot of people who don’t like his persona, but I’m not one of them.

This is a bit of a departure for Schneider in that there are martial arts sequences and action, something he hasn’t done in most of his studio films except for comic effect. The action sequences here – considering that Schneider hasn’t directed such things before and he has to direct himself in them – are surprisingly well done, and Schneider (who does his own stunt work) is a very competent martial artist. I was mildly surprised to say the least.

Now the movie is almost like two movies – the first part when the Master trains Stan is one movie with one tone and the second part set in the prison another movie with a different tone. I’m not sure which movie I liked better – the first part had the most funny portions of the film (and there aren’t many) but I liked the action portions in the second, so I’d give it to the second by a hair if pressed. The tonal shift however is a bit disconcerting to the casual viewer.

I wish the script had been funnier but there is a sweetness factor that gives it some points. There is far too much reliance on prison rape and the fear of it as a comedy point and it gets driven home a little too much. We get it. Prison rape is bad. Stan doesn’t want to get raped in prison. His butt is sacred. No need to nag.

The movie never got a theatrical release despite being on the schedule for five different dates. The distributors ultimately thought the movie would be unprofitable in any sort of limited release (although it did surprisingly well overseas) and wound up being sold to another distributor who immediately put it on direct-to-video. I’m not going to lie and tell you that this is the second coming of Gone With the Wind but it’s better than a lot of releases that make it onto the schedule. You could do a lot worse than renting this.

WHY RENT THIS: Despite everything Schneider is kind of lovable despite himself. He acquits himself nicely doing his own martial arts sequences. 

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Not particularly funny and there’s a little too much emphasis on prison rape.

FAMILY VALUES: Some of the humor is crude and sexual in places. The language is pretty rough throughout.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The prison scenes were shot in a closed women’s prison in Stockton. During filming there Schneider collapsed from heat exhaustion and food poisoning  when temperatures soared during the summer shoot.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $8.7M on an unreported production budget; it’s likely that the movie broke even at least or made a modest profit.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Longest Yard

FINAL RATING: 4.5/10

NEXT: Chop Shop