Why Him?

Talk about a generation gap…

(2016) Comedy (20^th Century Fox) Bryan Cranston, James Franco, Zoey Deutch, Megan Mullally, Cedric the Entertainer, Keegan-Michael Key, Griffin Gluck, Zack Pearlman, Jee Young Han, Tangie Ambrose, Mary Pat Gleason, Kaley Cuoco (voice), Steve Aoki, Richard Blais, Elon Musk, Adam Devine, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Andrew Rannells, Casey Wilson. Directed by John Hamburg

 

The father-daughter relationship is a very special one. A man’s daughter is always his princess; the light of his heart, the twinkle in his eye, she inevitably has him twisted around her little finger. It goes without saying that no man will ever be good enough for Daddy’s Little Princess.

Ned Fleming (Cranston) is by all appearances a successful guy. He’s a pillar of his Michigan community and runs a paper company that has been one of the most successful in the Midwest for years; he has put his daughter Stephanie (Deutch) through college at Stanford where she is nearing graduation and his life is generally going just swell.

His bubble is on the verge of bursting though; his company is in serious financial trouble and there isn’t much of a future for it anyway – paper is going the way of horse and buggy given that most communication is electronic these days. His wife Barb (Mullally) and son Scottie (Gluck) are mainly unaware of this. However, the biggest blow is that Stephanie has a boyfriend that they don’t know about and what’s worse they’ve been together for more than a year. This disturbs Ned who had always assumed that his daughter told him everything. It seems she has a whole lot of secrets that he isn’t aware of. With the holidays coming, Stephanie invites her family to spend them in Northern California.

Said boyfriend is Laird Mayhew (Franco) and rather than being a doe-eyed college boy he turns out to be a 30-something tech magnate who earned his billions developing videogames. With a chest full of tattoos and absolutely no filter, he is a bit of a handful and a lot for the conservative Fleming family to take in. Most parents would be overjoyed that their daughter had caught the eye of a billionaire and seemed to be very much in love with him besides but not Ned. He’s suspicious of Laird and is positive that he’s up to something and Laird, to be honest, is a fairly manipulative guy. His high-tech Palo Alto mansion is full to the brim with all sorts of gadgets and toys, including a Japanese toilet/bidet combination that doesn’t quite work right (and hilarity ensues), a Siri-like house computer whose voice is that of Kaley Cuoco from Big Bang Theory and who tends to get cranky from time to time (more hilarity ensues) and a brand new bowling alley that Laird installed because he heard that Ned loves to bowl. Midwestern, right?

There is also a stuffed moose preserved in an aquarium full of it’s own urine which you just know is going to get all over someone sooner or later (not a spoiler: it does) and a valet named Gustav (Key) who is about every Eastern European goofball that populated sitcoms and movie comedies in the 80s and 90s and who, like Kato in the Pink Panther movies, attacks Laird with martial arts without warning (although to be fair the movie does name drop the series for additional laughs).

Laird means to marry Stephanie and wants Ned’s blessing, a blessing that isn’t forthcoming. It’s Christmas though and miracles can happen – although it might take several miracles to make this happy ending come true. Stephanie tries to make her father see that beneath the cursing (Laird drops F bombs constantly, a product of having no filter) and the sometimes bizarre behavior Laird is really a very nice guy, but that will be a tough sell to a father who already thinks that no guy is good enough for his princess.

In many ways this movie perfectly illustrates the disconnect between Hollywood and Mid-America which in turn spotlights why Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election. Ned and Barb as well as son Scotty are portrayed as extremely naive particularly about pop culture sexuality, not knowing what either motorboating or bukake mean – not that those are common terms but certainly the way that it is portrayed here is that they’re the only ones not in on the joke and quite frankly it’s a bit cruel. The West Coast hip tech types, standing in for the elite liberal crowd, are condescending and a little put off by the squares. It may interest the left to know that there is Internet in the Midwest and most of the people living there are a lot savvier than given credit for.

Cranston and Franco are no strangers to each other and it shows here. The chemistry between them is letter perfect and both exhibit a lot of give and take in terms of who gets the laughs and who is the straight man. Both perform beyond what you’d expect for what is essentially a holiday comedy which often tend to be just paychecks for big name actors. Cranston and Franco earn both of theirs.

But all the good intentions and strong performances can’t save a script that has little bite and feels more like a sitcom than a big screen comedy. There are some really funny moments (like when Laird brings in Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley from KISS for Ned and Barb who are avowed members of the KISS Army) and a few cringe-worthy moments (the aforementioned moose piss gag) but by and large there’s nothing truly offensive here. Neither is there anything truly noteworthy either.

REASONS TO GO: Cranston is on point as always and he has some terrific chemistry with Franco.
REASONS TO STAY: The plot is a little heavy-handed and riddled with clichés.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a fair amount of foul language and some sexual innuendo throughout.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The Ape Assassins game that made Laird Mayhew famous is available for download on the iTunes App Store.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/30/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 39% positive reviews. Metacritic: 39/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Father of the Bride (1991)
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: 13th

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The Pink Panther 2

Looks like Peter Sellers' memory is getting hosed again.

(2009) Comedy (MGM) Steve Martin, Jean Reno, John Cleese, Andy Garcia, Alfred Molina, Emily Mortimer, Lily Tomlin, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Yuki Matsuzaki, Jeremy Irons, Johnnie Hallyday. Directed by Harald Zwart

Some movies shouldn’t have been remade, and once remade, they should never have generated sequels. However, upon rare occasion, the sequel turns out better than the original remake. Not so much the original original. Oh, my brain hurts!

Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Martin) has been relegated to traffic duty by his nemesis, the stiff-necked Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Cleese, taking over from Kevin Kline who played the role in the reboot – Herbert Lom made the role famous in the sequels to the original that were made more than a decade than the original, but almost 30 years before the reboot…did I mention my brain hurts?). As with most things, he makes a hash of it, delivering chaos without really intending to. However, that’s all about to change. A skilled thief who calls himself “the Tornado” has stolen such artifacts as the Shroud of Turin, the Magna Carta and the sword of the Japanese Emperor. Notice he didn’t go after anything American of value ; our national symbol perhaps, one that sums up our identity more than any other. I’m speaking of course of the Vince Lombardi Trophy given to the winner of the Super Bowl each year. Then again, if someone were to steal that, they’d have a hundred million angry football fans clamoring to kick their ass.

Um, moving along, the French prime minister fears that the Pink Panther, the national symbol of France (but was originally the symbol of the fictional country of Lugash in the original and its sequels and I think the reboot too but I can’t remember very well anymore because my brain is really beginning to hurt now), will be next. He wants Jacques Clouseau on the case, joining a dream team of international detectives that have been assigned to apprehending the thief. They are Vincenzo Doncorleone (Garcia), an Italian lothario; Kenji (Matsuzaki), a Japanese computer whiz; Pepperidge (Molina), a Sherlock Holmes-like analyzer of clues and Sonia (Rai Bachchan), the world’s foremost authority on the Tornado and damned gorgeous to boot.

Along for the ride is Nicole (Mortimer), Clouseau’s long-suffering and clearly smitten with him secretary, and Ponton (Reno), Clouseau’s long-suffering and able assistant inspector. They’ll question a retired jewel thief (Irons) and visit the Pope when the Tornado steals the papal signet ring from his finger while he’s asleep. Along the way there’ll be pratfalls, mistaken identities, property damage and romantic interludes. A restaurant will burn down – twice, and Nicole, tired of waiting for Clouseau to make a move, allows herself to be romanced by Vincenzo, especially after Clouseau disgraces himself by dressing up like the pope, appearing on the balcony in St. Peter’s Square and then proceeding to fall out of the balcony, giving billions of Catholics angina. But you know how things go in this kind of movie; no matter how big a buffoon he is, only Clouseau can save the day – even if he gets his ass handed to him by a couple of karate kids, an angry old lady and Lily Tomlin, who may have been angry but isn’t the old lady I was thinking about. Oh, my brain is exploding!

The original Pink Panther series had Peter Sellars as Clouseau and rightly or wrongly, that role is associated with him as much as James Bond is with Sean Connery and Harry Potter with Daniel Radcliffe. Some roles just leave indelible marks on the careers of an actor.

Remaking movies with other actors in those roles may bring people out for curiosity’s sake, particularly when the originator of the role is long dead, but it rarely ends up well. Most film lovers spend the entire movie comparing the performances (and usually the new guy doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt) and the studios, for their part, rarely see fit to spend much money or time on a project which is, to them, an attempt to milk a cash cow one last time.

Strangely, though, as bad as the first reboot of the series was, this one is slightly better. Martin has settled in a bit more to the Clouseau role, and while he can do the physical comedy required of the role, he seems better suited to the verbal buffoonery that comes from Clouseau’s impenetrable accent.

There are some charming moments, however; a re-teaming of All of Me co-stars Martin and Tomlin, the latter as a very politically correct instructor on…um, political correctness, something which the bumbling Clouseau can’t begin to comprehend, using racial and sexual slurs at nearly every turnpoint but with a guileless charm that makes it more like a child saying it. In the hands of a less gifted comedian, you might wind up despising Clouseau.

Unfortunately, this is a comedy and you kind of expect a few laughs. There are a few, but only a few; much of the movie seems very ill-timed and rushed, and you get the feeling that there was more of a sense of getting everything in the can so that the all-star cast could move on to more worthy pursuits. There’s nothing here that’s edgy or outrageous; for the most part, the comedy is as inoffensive as that of Father of the Bride, a like-minded Martin comedy that is also much better than this.

WHY RENT THIS: Pretty much non-offensive comedy that while not laugh-out-loud funny isn’t uncomfortably unfunny either. Rai is very pleasant to look at and some of the physical comedy bits were well-staged.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: This isn’t very bad but it isn’t very good either. The movie degenerates into downright silliness often enough to be irritating.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some innuendo and a little bit of mild violence but otherwise this is suitable for most audiences.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first movie in the franchise, either with Peter Sellers or without, that has had a number in the title.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: Not a lot; there is a gag reel that might well be funnier than the movie, and a feature deconstructing some of the more physical comedy gags which was kind of interesting.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $76M on an unreported production budget; I doubt the budget was even $30M so I’d think this was profitable.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

TOMORROW: The Signal