Movie Nation

Movies like “Son-in-Law” force the viewer to ponder the difference between “confused” and “confusing” narratives.

Critics use “confusing” when we’re willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt about tangled and unconventional plotting. “Confused” puts the blame squarely on whoever cooked up this muddled, meandering mess.

“Son-in-Law” is the tale of the rise and fall of a Mexican American — born in San Diego, sent to Mexico to live with an aged uncle for the “discipline” the old man might pass on — who thinks big, marries money and entangles himself in the corruption often associated with Mexico’s narco-politics.

“El Yerno,” as it is titled in Spanish speaking countries, begins in the fictive present, when it all comes bloodily crashing down on Attorney General José Sánchez (Adrien Vazquez). Then it bounces back to 2019, when things started to go wrong, then back to 1985 when the eager-to-fit-in kid took his first chance at impressing a girl by bringing drugs to her birthday party, and then we jump to “20 Years Later.”

This all happens in the first seven or eight minutes. We barely have time to get used to an actor of one age before another leaps into the role, and making heads of tails out of any of it announces itself as the problem that smothers this picture in the cradle.

“Ten years later” and “three years after that” are to come as we see a young man with a passion for transportation — he drops out of law school to drive his uncle’s ancient VW taxi — who sleeps with the sister of his best friend, the senator’s son.

When José gets Lucia (Verónica Bravo) pregnant, Jose finds himself the voiceless “executive vice president” of the family’s bus transit company, the poor stepchild to their shipping empire. He spies the corruption, cozies up to a cartel kingpin, El Lobo (Jero Medina) and finds his way to power by flattering and bucking up his all-powerful in-laws’ political enemy (Rodrigo Virago), literally driving him to power.

The movie, in Spanish and English, struggles to juggle its dispirate elements, losing track of the central anti-“hero’s journey” from working class cabbie to Transporation Minister of the fictional state of Albacruz all the way to Attorney General and perhaps beyond.

He gets that last title because he’s the only one “stupid enough to take the job” in a state run by three warring cartels. José is cynical enough to play the game as corrupt “peace maker,” and the implication is that he’ll cheat, lie, steal and fake assassination attempts when it suits his purposes.

Maybe the best reason for the faked attempt is getting his wife and daughter out of the country by convincing them of “the danger.”

We see the story from José’s point of view, but we never know where we or the movie stand with him. He’s in prison, cooperating with (American) authorities, turning the tables on his in-laws, manipulating his wife, conning assorted cartels and getting things done due to native cunning.

But his daughter’s quinceanara? That’s another matter altogether.

The most famous credited screenwriter here is James Schamus, who has made a mint out of scripting “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman” and “The Wedding Banquet,” and then presiding over remakes of these Ang Lee classics for other cultures and other audiences. He also wrote Marvel’s first crack at “Hulk,” and even though the Mexican co-writers have credits like “This is Not a Comedy” and “Technoboys,” let’s assume this was largely a mess of Schamus’s making.

Not fair, probably. He’s not working with Ang Lee this time and even though director Gerardo Naranjo’s best credit, “Miss Bala,” was 15 years ago, Schamus took the money and kept his name on the credits.

Whoever is primarily to blame, “Son-in-Law” starts out confused and stays confusing almost to the can’t-come-soon-enough closing credits.

Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Adrien Vazquez, Jero Medina,
Verónica Bravo, David Gaitán and Rodrigo Virago

Credits: Directed by Gerardo Naranjo, scripted by James Schamus, Gabriel Nuncio and Aleandro Aljete. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:43

I was overseas this past week, and I couldn’t help but notice that on every flight, the personal entertainment screens were filled with passengers watching “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Twenty years, an Anne Hathaway Oscar and a Stanley Tucci cancer scare later, the sequel owns the first weekend in May at the box office, and long may they reign. At least until a “Star Wars” or comic book or video game adaptation comes along to push them aside.

“The Devil Wears Prada 2” will have cleared $77 million by midnight Sunday. Reviews have been kind, if not exactly generous. But a romance for adults with lots of beloved stars (It’s OK to love Anne Hathaway again, apparently) winning a “summer” weekend at the box office and clocking over $80 million? That’s reassuring.

The critically battered and morally less defensible “Michael” cleared $54 million on its second weekend. That’s a 44% drop, pretty good for a movie about a child star turned superstar, abused kid turned pedophile.

Both films are huge hits overseas.

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” added another $12 million as it clears the $400 million mark, domestically.

In fourth place, “Project Hail Mary” added $8.5 million to its running $300 million since opening count.

A Neon horror release starring Adam Scott, “Hokum,” did $6.4 million on its opening weekend, good enough for the Top Five and a reminder that in today’s cinema, it’s go blockbuster or go home.

The new critically derided “Animal Farm” is in sixth — $3.4 million.

Lee Cronin attaching his name to the title of “The Mummy” only added up to a $2.23 million seventh place on its third weekend. It will clear the $30 million mark by next week, and not much more than that all in.

A new distributor/new thriller release called “Deep Water” made only a $2.15 million splash, good enough for eighth.

Sony/Crunchyroll’s latest anime release, “That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime: The Movie — Tears of the Azure Sea” may barely clear a $million. That ungainly title didn’t help.

And the romantic thriller “The Drama” is still in the top ten, almost adding another $million as it crawls towards the $50 million mark.

The great ones make it look effortless, with their mere presence in a role affirming the story’s unimpeachable reality.

Charlotte Rampling started her career in the ’60s, came into her own in the ’70s (“Farewell, My Lovely”) and by the early ’80s (“The Verdict”) any sense of artifice had vanished from her performances.

Her subtlety, unhurried timing and understated performances invite us in, getting across the verisimilitude of every classic character from Dickens or Chekhov, making us come to her and believe her as a Russian spy trainer in “Red Sparrow,” callous abbesse or inscrutable conjure woman of “Dune.”

We see her play with sensitivity and the assurance of a legendary Chopin concert pianist in “Two Pianos.” We don’t need to see her fingers soulfully manipulating the keys, but we do. Her eyes and expressions have already made the sale.

Rampling never strikes a false note, even if the multi-handed and frankly melodramatic script of Arnaud Desplechin’s (“My Golden Days,” “King and Queen”) latest, has its atonal and dischordant moments.

The screen legend plays the aged mentor of a once-promising pianist who returns from teaching in Japan to join her for what she’s decided will be her “farewell” concerts.

Mathias (François Civil, D’Artagnan in the recent French “Three Musketeers” movies) is the brooding sort, devoted to his demanding, self-described “monster” of a mentor Elena and to his long-suffering agent Max (Hippolyte Girardot) but someone who walked away from it all to teach.

He’s barely renewed both acquaintances when a chance encounter with a former lover (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) makes him faint and her flee the scene of the fainting.

As Lyon isn’t a gigantic city, he is later haunted by the sight of her little boy, a dead ringer for Mathias at age eight.

We start to get a sense of why he says (in French with English subtitles) “I broke my life in two.” The imperious Elena’s orders that he “focus” and Max’s pleas that this “full house, cloaked in contempt” that awaits him means he has to be good enough to “crucify them” will be ignored as fragile Mathias crawls into a guilty bottle or three.

The sensitivity of the performances adorn this coincidence-riddled romance with some magical moments in between the eye-rolling turns of the plot.

A sudden trauma, a Jewish funeral, misguided sex, a concert that may or may not come off and the bizarre suggestion there might be a happy ending in all this messiness are folded into a scenario that is far less convincing than the actors starring in it.

Civil, a composer and actor, looks comfortable at the keyboard even as Mathias struggles with guilt, the knowledge of unfulfilled potential and hangovers when he is supposed to perform.

Tereszkiewicz struggles to master the script’s tricky demands of playing a flighty woman ill-prepared for reopening old emotional wounds or facing new ones.

But old pros Girardot (“The French Dispatch,” “Mama Weed”) and Rampling renew the tale’s connection to reality and our commitment to “Two Pianos” every time they join a scene.

It may be straight-up melodrama, from its lone, corny, over-explaining flashback to the cliched drunk tank our hero finds himself in to the grim hysteria of an ambulance ride. Desplechin’s film still strikes enough of the right notes to be entertaining.

Rating: unrated, sex, nudity, alcohol abuse, smoking

Cast: François Civil, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Hippolyte Giradot, Jeremy Lewen, Alba Gaïa Bellugi, Anne Kessler, and Charlotte Rampling

Credits: Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, scripted by Arnaud Desplechin, Kamen Velkovsky, Ondine Lauriot dit Prévost and Anne Berest. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:55

There’s something almost criminal about Amazon acquiring the 2020 immigration “comedy” “Deported,” and passing it off as a “new” “2026” release on their streaming service.

There hasn’t been a good time to unleash a raunchy, tone deaf and whitewashed farce about immigration in the past decade. But putting this Trump I era disaster in front of eyeballs in the middle of the murderously inhumane Trump II regime is damned near criminal.

It’s a familiar-faces/little-known-names romp buried under f-bombs, coarse sex jokes and a cascade of cameos. It’s tooth-grindingly bad, so much so that even Sandler hanger-on Nick Swardson seems embarassed in his scenes in it.

Robert Davi as a customs agent? He seems disappointed the guy isn’t more sadistic.

Director and co-writer Tyler Spindel (“The Wrong Missy”) chickened-out straight away by making this about a Canadian blonde (Megan Park) our “illegal” — “Deported” and banned for messing up some paperwork.

So rather than something edgy, like Cheech and Chong’s decades old “Born in East L.A.,” he makes an unromantic and almost wholly unfunny “Green Card,” about blonde Harper’s dizzy-but-not-nearly-dizzy-enough beau Ross (Whitmer Thomas) refusing to commit to marrying her so that she can finish chef school and, you know, take a chef’s job from an “American” so that she can realize her dreams.

Threatened by his girlfriend’s hunkier and more eager to help friend (Greg Sulkin), Ross’s plan involves marrying her off to this slovenly lout (Mickey Gooch, Jr.) who crashed the Halloween party where Ross and Harper first met.

The odd early tasteless joke has promise — one costumed partygoer shows up nude and years past her last sit-up.

“I’m LENA DUNHAM! I’m COMFORTABLE with my body?”

The “GET it?” is implied in this and most every other “joke” rolled out from here on out.

Ross’s big tech idea is a “Dick Face” app he’s pushing, which adds a penis cap to any photo you post in it.

His sort-of-separated-under-the-same-roof parents (Brenda Strong, Kurt Fuller) trot out testiness about “getting married too young” and intolerance of this would-be-chef who was caught re-entering the country from an Indian cooking school’s seminar.

“She got a dot?”

That much of the movie’s messaging seems on the mark, the idea that America is a nation of descendents of immigrants but roiling with casual, off-the-cuff bigots.

As “there is no such thing as a fake marriage in a REAL relationship,” as on-the-make lesbian and Ross pal Tammy (Fortune Feimster) declares, this is where Doug Lipinski (Gooch) fits in.

He may be a walking, belching, unbathed butt-crack. He may not know how to pronounce his own name (first or last). He may be “definitely on the spectrum.” But he’s willing to sneak into Canada for a quickie fake wedding just to get Harper back across the border.

Conchata Ferrell (“Two and a Half Men”) is his brassy, bare-knuckled, not-quite-disapproving mom. Swardson plays his jealous, over-bearing brother.

Jokes about women as “fire breathing whore dragons,” life onboard Doug’s barely-floating converted-tug houseboat’s resident lava-lamp-humping rat, “butt chugging” and the like don’t move any thinking or sentient person’s needle.

Clint Howard, Missi Pyle, Steven Bauer and others trot by in unfunny cameos.

And the attempted story “arc,” where we glimpse Doug’s unhappy humanity and Ross grows a pair while Harper considers her options but not really, are all clumsily handled

“Cringe comedy” is one thing, and raunchy fare like this still plays to sensory-deprived stoners.

But this is just bad, and Bezos & Co. know it. Which is why they tried to pass it off as “new.”

Rating:

Cast: Whitmer Thomas, Megan Park, Mickey Gooch, Jr.,Fortune Feimster, Kurt Fuller, Brenda Strong, Steven Bauer, Missi Pyle, Clint Howard, Nick Swardson, Conchata Ferrell and Robert Davi.

Credits: Directed by Tyler Spindel, scripted by Tyler Spindel and Dean Ward. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:31