Mistress America

Just two broke girls talkin’.

(2015) Comedy (Fox Searchlight) Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke, Michael Chernus, Rebecca Henderson, Matthew Shear, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Heather Lind, Cindy Cheung, Charlie Gillette, Shelby Rebecca Wong, Joel Marsh Garland, Andrea Chen, Seth Barrish, Shana Dowdeswell, Dean Wareham, Amy Warren, Shoba Narayanan, Morgan Lynch, Adrea Teasdale. Directed by Noah Baumbach

There is New York, and then there is everywhere else. I suppose that those who live there have every right to feel a kind of smug superiority about where they live; after all, they have world class museums, world class concert halls, world class nightclubs, world class restaurants…hell, anyone who is bored in New York isn’t trying very hard.

Tracy (Kirke) is becoming a New Yorker. Well, she’s becoming a college student at Barnard. Keen to be a writer, she’s not the sort that fits in easily. That’s especially true lately, as her mom (Henderson) is getting ready to re-marry. Tracy yearns to become a member of the literary society at Barnard, who celebrate publication of a new author by sneaking into their room at night and throwing a pie in their face while they sleep. Rad, eh? However, she meets rejection even here. Tracy realizes to get in with the literary crowd she’s going to need something special to write about.

As part of her mom’s new marriage, she is going to have a new stepsister, so upon her mom’s insistence she arranges to meet her soon-to-be-sister, Brooke (Gerwig). Tracy takes an immediate liking to Brooke. She’s almost ten years older and established in the city; she’s getting ready to open a fabulous new restaurant and has some really cool ideas. She hangs out with cool people and lives in a loft that’s zoned for commercial use. She’s full of energy and life and talks a mile a minute, sometimes about deep things but sometimes just idle chatter.

When one of the investors in her restaurant – the one who happens to be her boyfriend – pulls out, Brooke is left dangling in the wind. She has no choice but to go to the home of her arch-nemesis Mamie-Claire (Lind) in the Godforsaken wilderness of Greenwich, Connecticut and demand her due. You see, years ago, Mamie-Claire stole an idea of Brooke’s and made a fortune out of it. That wasn’t the only thing she stole though – she took two of Brooke’s cats and her boyfriend at the time Dylan (Chernus) who was himself independently wealthy but is now Mamie-Claire’s somewhat henpecked husband. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

But things go from bad to worse as the discovery is made that Tracy has been writing a story with Brooke as the lead character – and not everything is complimentary. Brooke is feeling betrayed and everybody around her – even Mamie-Claire – think that was a dick move. But was it?

I do think Baumbach and Gerwig, who co-wrote this thing, were out to make a modern screwball comedy. The rhythms of the dialogue are very similar and the patter is snappy, although not in a retro way. I’m thinking that this is a brilliant move on their part because in many ways Gerwig is a modern Carole Lombard.

But as smart an idea it is, the ambitions here are a bit more than the pair can chew. The trouble with screwball comedies is that they are a bitch to pull off right, and there are so many examples of great films in that genre out there that unless you’re damn near perfect from screenplay to final film, your movie is just going to suffer by comparison.

The movie here isn’t perfect. It starts out with a couple of very annoying characters whose dialogue is so unrealistic, whose attitudes are just so smug and self-important that it’s incredibly hard to do anything but despise them. If I ran into Brooke and Tracy at a cocktail party, I’d quickly find other people to chat with – they’re way too pretentious for my taste. When I think of indie films that Baumbach and Gerwig have collaborated on previously, the first half of the movie has the worst characteristics of their worst efforts. I really was ready to write this one off before I was halfway through the movie.

Fortunately it gets better. In fact, it improves a hell of a lot and the scenes set in Greenwich are inspired. Gerwig always seems to do better in large ensembles than in smaller groups; when it’s essentially just her and Tracy with Tracy being a shadowy image of Brooke, the movie is just annoying. When Brooke has a lot of people to bounce off of, the movie is enjoyable. I think that Gerwig is one of those actresses who needs to be diluted a little bit and the more people she has to interact with, the better she is. Da Queen has said that she can only take Gerwig in small doses and I can see why she has that effect on her; there is a bit of a narcissistic quality to the characters Gerwig plays in Baumbach films and those types of characters tend to rub Da Queen the wrong way.

I was very torn with this movie. The first part is excruciating but the second part I really liked. So how does one rate a movie like this? Straight down the middle; a zero for the first half of the film, a ten for the second for a cumulative score of five. Be warned that the first part of the movie is hard to sit through but the second half makes the first half almost worth it.

REASONS TO GO: Gets better as it goes along. Gerwig is always charming.
REASONS TO STAY: Horrible first half. Characters act and speak like they’re in a 21st century screwball comedy.
FAMILY VALUES: A fair amount of foul language and some sexual references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In Lola Versus Gerwig played a character named Lola. In Gone Girl Kirke played a character named Greta.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/31/15: Rotten Tomatoes 83% positive reviews. Metacritic: 76/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: :Frances Ha
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Digging for Fire

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MacGruber

"I'm Hutch. So where's Starsky?"

(2010) Comedy (Rogue) Will Forte, Val Kilmer, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph, Rhys Coiro, Andy Mackenzie, Jasper Cole, Timothy V. Murphy, Kevin Skousen, Jimmy G. Geisler, Chris Jericho, Mark Henry, MVP, The Great Khali, Kane, The Big Show.  Directed by Jorma Taccone

When the world needs saving, a hero must rise. Sometimes, when there are no heroes available, you must make do with what you’ve got.

MacGruber (Forte) is a former Navy SEAL, Army Ranger and all-around go-to guy when the world is threatened. However, after the murder of his fiancée by the notorious bad guy Dieter von Cunth (Kilmer), he has retreated to a monastery where he has resided the past fifteen years.

But von Cunth has reared his ugly head again and has captured a nuclear weapon which he is threatening to detonate in our nation’s capital. Only one man can stop him – and that’s MacGruber. Colonel Faith (Boothe) dispatches gung ho Lt. Dixon Piper (Phillippe) to fetch him and once MacGruber learns that von Cunth is involved, he’s all in.

MacGruber assembles a crack tam of operatives but accidentally gets them all killed, so he must settle for Piper and Vicky St. Elmo (Wiig), a former superspy who has turned lounge singer in hopes of forgetting her troubled past and the torch she holds for MacGruber, a torch still burning brightly.

However, as each attempt to foil the plot fails miserably, it’s beginning to look more and more like Washington is toast. MacGruber will have to find that inner hero – or else millions of lives may be snuffed out.

This started life as a series of five-minute SNL sketches that spoofed the old 1980s action series “MacGyver,” which was once a cultural touchstone with a hero that was able to extricate himself with odd household items. Kind of like the Science Guy meets a gun-phobic James Bond (MacGyver hated guns and never used ‘em) but in the last 20 years, the show has fallen out of favor. Younger viewers of SNL could be excused if they didn’t get the initial references.

Taccone, like Forte Wiig and Rudolph, also got his start on SNL doing short films (although not the MacGruber ones). There is a sense that the movie is padded; several jokes are repeated more than once, like a bit about a celery stalk in the buttocks (don’t ask). It wasn’t funny the first time and it wasn’t funny any of the following times either. Nobody ever said repetition was the soul of wit.

Forte is ok as MacGruber; the hair, flannel shirt and vest are pure 80s kitsch. It’s not the best role in the world to tackle – spoofs don’t really offer a whole lot of acting opportunities to be blunt. Still, Forte is likable enough even though MacGruber is an idiot; that’s kind of the down side of movies like this – being an idiot is sustainable only so long.

I am a big Powers Boothe fan and it was nice to see him in a role on the big screen once again, even in a movie like this. Ditto for Kilmer who was once one of the most promising leads in Hollywood but has made some poor role choices and has mostly been relegating to direct-to-home video schlock of late.

There are some action sequences straight out of the 80s action movie playbook, nothing to write home about but on the other hand nothing that makes you groan out loud either. You’re not going to be disappointed but you aren’t going to be doing much fist-pumping either.

There are those who love this kind of stuff and sure, there were enough jokes that worked that allowed me to write a review instead of writing it off. However there aren’t enough to give it much of a recommendation beyond to those who love raunchy spoofs – and this is plenty raunchy, believe you me.

So definitely an acquired taste – but not a taste I’ve acquired, so take my low rating with a grain of salt. Wiig would do so much better in this year’s Bridesmaids and Kilmer was better in movies like Real Genius.  Unfortunately, this isn’t as good as either of those movies no matter how you slice it. Even MacGyver couldn’t figure a way out of that one.

WHY RENT THIS: Forte captures the 80s action vibe nicely. Always good to see Boothe on the big screen.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: An SNL skit padded out to feature length. Just not funny enough to sustain a full length feature. 

FAMILY VALUES: Some of the material is a bit crude, there’s some violence, a bit of nudity, some sexuality and a bit of foul language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: There are six active (at the time of filming) WWE wrestlers in the cast, the most ever in a single film.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There’s a gag reel and not much else.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $9.3M on a $10M production budget; the movie was a flop.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

TOMORROW: Incendies