Movie Nation

Disney’s latest take on Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” with CGI animals and a somewhat less animated human or two, is cleaning up. Friday’s blockbuster numbers suggest it will exceed predictions and reach $82-85 million.

That number soared Saturday and now it looks like over 100 million will have passed into Disney (and theater chains) hands by Midnight Sunday –maybe $104.

The lack of fresh kids’ picture competition (“Zootopia” is still making money, $306 million by Sunday night, also for Disney) helps, but this is doing summer numbers in mid April. Not bad.

“Barbershop,” a dated and weary franchise inexplicably given a new lease on life by a big cast and ridiculously generous reviews, was supposed to do close to $30 million this weekend. Nope. “The Next Cut” will do $20. Not bad, but considering the overhead, not all that.

“The Boss” fell off 61% in its second weekend. Not disastrous, but not good. It may top “Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” at some point. Maybe week after next.

Summit is a studio that has never been quite the same since Lionsgate swallowed it to steal “The Hunger Games” from them. They’ve got that Jesse Eisenberg magic act franchise, “Now You See Me,” but nothing else seems to stick. “Criminal” had Oscar winners Tommy Lee Jones and Kevin Costner, Ryan Reynolds, Gary Oldman, Gal Gadot and Alice Eve.

And it’s still going to be luck to manage $6 million. Not far below admittedly low expectations, out of the top five. Reynolds should swear off body switch movies forever. Hollywood should, too.

“Miracles from Heaven” is still besting “God’s Not Dead 2,” “Hardcore Henry” died a quick death and “Eye in the Sky” is clinging to the top ten one more week.

Seriously flummoxed by the laudatory reviews for the overloaded, stagey/preachy most-laughs-miss “message” comedy “Barbershop: The Next Cut.”

It’s an almost two hour sermon, with characters marching onto center stage, doing their “bit,” then sauntering off. Badly directed, Common can’t play comedy, covers similar ground as the earlier films, tedious misuse of JB Smoove, Anthony Anderson as a stock type, Nicki Minaj? Did Ice Cube suddenly become a good actor? Come on!

The best gag in it might be the pretentiously inventive names the cast chose for themselves — Eve, Tyga, Cedric the Entertainer, Ice Cube, Common, Smoove, Minaj. Cedric’s “Eddie” in the film ought to go off on that.

Ice Cube hectoring his son about pretending to be “hard” when he isn’t (pot, kettle), lecturing about the need to wear a belt in your pants. That could’ve been ironically funny. But no.

Is “Hey, I hate white people, too!” joke from the “conservative” Indian-American hairdresser funny enough to put it over, the “What’s Obama ever done for us?” and “save our neighborhood from gang bangers/the City” debates, the attempted infidelity dismissed without a thought?

Junk movie. Badly written, badly directed, badly acted. Not as good as the first “Barbershop,” not as bad as the last one. Come on, people. Standards! Have some!

A lot of reviewing organizations sent their third stringers to this. And 90%+ on Rottentomatoes is what you get.

The latest CG+actors version of Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” may still be “Disney’s The Jungle Book.” Not their first or second version of it, either. But it’s earned great reviews, too. 

“Criminal” is a simple-minded sci-fi dog from Summit, another body switch movie rendered watchable by a gonzo turn by Kevin Costner, who leaves his stoic heroic persona aside for a fresh walk on the wild side. Watchable, but bad.

Like “Barbershop.” Only shorter.

“Green Room” is a well-regarded horror thriller that hits more screens at the end of the month (smarter to get it way out in front of the summer films, but what do I know?).

Nothing else, including the new musical film from the creators of “Once,” “Sing Street,” is getting a wide release.

“Jungle Book” and probably “Barbershop,” both established brands, will OWN “The Boss” and “Batman v. Superman” at the box office.

Box Office mojo figures $78 and $29 million openings for the two new films.

Box Office Guru figures $70 and $28 (with the all-star “Criminal” managing only $7).

I love Richard Linklater’s movies. He and I are contemporaries, both Southerners and film buffs, so I’m pretty much his target audience.

He should have won the best director Oscar for “Boyhood.”

But his new film, “Everybody Wants Some!!,” while amiably nostalgic, is a real regression — maybe the first Linklater movie worth shrugging off.

I showed up at college in the very car one of his 1980 Southern Texas U. baseball players drives in the film. I had that Marantz/Technics stereo and more than a few of what we now call “classic rock” LPs in my dorm. Ready for that “You want to come up and see my record collection?” moment/cliche.

But I found this exercise in 30ish actors as Texas jocks deep in the throes of first-day-back-at-college horndoggery dreadfully dull — two hours of leering, beering, bedding and philosophizing by unknown/charisma-impaired players reciting memorized catch phrases. Mostly about sex. And drinking.

“I’m a grower, not a show-er…Full throttle to the bottle!” And don’t get caught doing “the five knuckle shuffle.”

“I got your joke, right here.”

Yeah.

The “kids” Jake (Blake Jenner) discovers are his teammates are a collection of “types,” right down to the token African American second baseman.

“What the Charlie Pride are you talkin’ about?”

There’s the dorky, bespectacled, violently intense pitcher from Detroit (Justin Street), the muscle-bound big-leagues-bound jock (Tyler Hoechlin), the naive hick c0untry boy and the “Twilight Zone” stoner from California with the telling “Twilight Zone” name, Willoughy (Wyatt Russell). 

With one exception, they don’t sound like Texans. With no exceptions, they’re all trying ever-so-hard to pull a Matthew McConaughey in “Dazed and Confused.” Sorry, boys (um, men), you can’t manage that without the drawl.

Glenn Powell’s “deep thoughts” bantering/skirt-chasing “Finn” is the closest any of them gets to McConaughey, and that’s mainly due to the mustache.

The ballers rule the roost at this fictional version of UT-Austin. They’re in their own bubble, with big league dreams, puzzled at what all the “other” boys on campus are even there for — boring, ordinary lives await the non-jocks.

It’s the tail-end of disco, the last vestiges of punk and the birth of “country cool,” with its line-dancing to Eddie Rabbit tunes. The guys sample all of the above over the course of that pre-classes weekend in August of 1980.

Jake, of course, is different. The older pitcher Willoughby counsels, “We’re weird” because they’re pitchers — loners, not following the pack. So Jake sets aside his random sex-capades to pursue a theater major (Zoey Deutch) he can have long, deep discussions with.

“Things only matter as much as the meaningfulness we let them have,” Beverly preaches. Without the benefit of cannabis, that sounds exactly like it reads.

Linklater’s movies are famed for their thoughtful, “Before Sunrise” dialogue. Here, every effort at it sounds recited, every attempt like some fuzzy misquoted memory of college. At least the props are accurate — Joni Mitchell posters, passing Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” back and forth, a sea of fetching coeds in cut-off short shorts (they weren’t called “Daisy Dukes” — yet).

And this certainly matches the sophomoric vibe and randomness of “Dazed and Confused,” its more pointed, more thoughtful companion piece. Pre-AIDS sex and rampant sexism, hazing rituals, drinking, breaking “coach’s rules,” discovering yourself and your own priorities in a world of lemmings who accept the pecking order the way it is. It’s the same movie three years down the road.

But “Everybody Wants Some!!” is just Linklater showing he can still summon up the immaturity to do a film like the ones he did when he had no name, no polish and was just starting out.

This is the sort of movie he’d have made had he never grown as a filmmaker, if he’d only been a one-trick indie cinema pony, like Kevin Smith. And the world has already decided one Kevin Smith is more than enough.

MPAA Rating:R for language throughout, sexual content, drug use and some nudity

Cast: Blake Jenner, Glenn Powell, Tyler Hoechlin, Wyatt Russell, Zoey Deutch, Will Brittain
Credits: Written and directed by Richard Linklater. A Paramount release.

Running time:1:57

Look at that face. Kind of Toby Jones meets Aldo Ray on Cellblock 9, right?

That’s character actor Neville Archambault. And if I tell you he plays the pervert/lead in a movie about a creep who installs hidden cameras all over his rental properties to Peeping Tom his renters, you’re beating me to the punchline.

“No shock there.”

You know this guy keeps duct tape in his toolbox.

Archambault’s “on the nose” casting doesn’t help this blandly predictable thriller about what a peeper might see when he rents to a troubled young couple.

We meet “Gerald” as he’s sweating/breathing through his mouth at the security camera store. The smarmy, winking salesman doesn’t know it, but “Gerry” is about to become his best customer.

Because Gerald installs the cameras in his Southern Cal rental to spy on his renters, Ryan (PJ McCabe) and pregnant Claire (Brianne Moncrief). Claire is a worrywart over the baby, Ryan is getting frustrated.

And that’s where his nubile, blonde assistant (Sarah Baldwin) comes in. Ryan is fond of hooking up with Hannah while Claire is out of the house.

And for sweaty, bug-eyed Gerald, the camera in the bedroom and the one in the bottom of the pool won’t be enough. He keeps sneaking in, installing more gear, re-locking the basement door and bribing their dog with bacon cheeseburgers as he does.

Writer-director Victor Zarcoff manages the odd moment of suspense, and does us the favor of throwing a few curves in the very predictable path this genre piece is certain to take.

But “13 Cameras” plays as a tease, not sexual or graphically violent enough to count as exploitation, not suspenseful enough to get by. And with this plot, this “hidden camera” gimmick, without exploitation, it’s nothing.

Just a little on-the-nose casting, a wheezing, sweaty, limping bad guy who should never take his shirt off (dude’s stupidly cut) if he wants to maintain the illusion of the cliche he’s playing.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, adult situations, profanity

Cast: Neville Archambault,Brianne Moncrief, PJ McCabe, Sarah Baldwin, Sean Carrigan
Credits: Written and directed by Victor Zarcoff. A Gravitas release.

Running time: 1:28

Jake Gyllenhaal makes some interesting movie choices, doesn’t he?

You don’t see him in ensemble pictures (“Everest”) often. He leans towards the idiocentric and the Jake-centric.

He’ll occasionally pair up with another “name” for a “Prisoners” or “Southpaw.”

But lately, twisted, front-and-center eccentrics have been more his thing, films like “Enemy”and “Nightcrawler.” Even if his eyes don’t bug out in “Demolition,” it’s easy to see this latest star vehicle as part of a somewhat indulgent pattern.

He plays a wealthy man of finance whose wife dies, who wanders about in a numbed stupor, confessing “I didn’t love my wife” to strangers, weighed down by guilt over not feeling guilty, fuming at a world that doesn’t seem to work or make sense.

Then, his sympathetic father-in-law (Chris Cooper) and boss drops some sage advice on him.

“If you want to fix something, you have to take everything apart…Then, you can put it all back together.”

That becomes a new mantra for Davis. He will take it all apart, everything. Almost.

It starts with glitchy computers and flickering light fixtures, and when he stumbles into a home demolition crew that will let him pitch in with the work, he goes bigger. Tear it all down. Pain? At least he’s feeling something.

One thing he cannot fix was the vending machine in the trauma unit at the hospital where his wife died. He sees Julia (Heather Lind) in every mirror, in every puddle he steps over. And he cannot get over the way that one machine failed him in his hour of need.

That’s what starts the letters, pages-long complaint/confessionals to the vending machine company, heartbreaking self-examinations hurled into the ether.

“Everything has become a metaphor,” he writes. “I am the storm that uprooted the tree.” And so on.

The trouble is, he’s mailing these missives. And this mystery woman, “Karen,” in customer service, is reading them. Can they meet? To, you know, just talk? Maybe. She has to stalk him for a bit, first. And he has to stalk her, as well.

It gives nothing away to say that Naomi Watts plays Karen, a single-mom strangely drawn to his man in mourning. She has a son (Judah Lewis) who is “fifteen, and looks twelve,” a sour, confused kid who bonds with this stranger, for good or ill.

And with Davis, it could go either way — trashing his house, goofing around with guns, giving advice on how to not over-use “the F-word” and sex.

“Demolition” is never less than interesting, thanks to Gyllenhaal’s thoughtful, considered performance. But it’s an indulgent movie, drifting through grief on a sea of cliches.

Watts disappears for much of the picture, and the family-wide grieving takes on distracting “Seinfeld” story elements.

But there is Gyllenhaal, first to last, in every scene and almost every shot. As he was in “Enemy” and “Nightcrawler” and, for that matter, “Donnie Darko” — a weird guy giving in to his weirdness, an actor lured by the promise of a showy, all-consuming performance. Even if the movie around that performance is more frustrating than cathartic.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual references, drug use and disturbing behavior

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis, Polly Draper
Credits: Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, script by Brian Sipe. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:41

“Criminal” is a Kevin Costner vehicle. But he can wait. Let’s say a little prayer of thanks for Ryan Reynolds first.

It’s a sci-fi spy thriller that has the CIA (Gary Oldman, Alice Eve) order a scientist dabbling in memory preservation (Tommy Lee Jones) to save the last things a dying agent (Reynolds) thought about in the head of a psychopathic killer/convict (Costner).

Yeah.

So Costner’s killer is to walk around with Reynolds’ memories tucked into his head, keeping at least a hint of him alive until the CIA can prevent a terrorist from scoring some doomsday technological breakthrough.

It represents the THIRD body-switch movie of Reynolds’ career, after “The Change-Up” and “Self/less.” How did THAT happen?

Thank-you, “Deadpool,” for saving Reynolds from becoming the new Nicolas Cage. Amen.

Reynolds’ Agent Pope in chased and killed in the first scenes in “Criminal.” It’s in London, and the CIA station, led by Oldman speaking Brooklynese, can access all the city’s surveillance cameras and see what is happening. They just can’t stop it.

Amusingly, the CIA doesn’t involve, you know, British intelligence or the London PD. They’ve seen “London Has Fallen.” They know that’s fruitless.

There’s this rich Spanish anarchist (Jordi Molla) who can access those same cameras, and about anything else that routes through a computer. And he’s in pursuit of this one hacker, “The Dutchman,” who has found his way into the American military’s master control button.

You know, the one that allows launching nuclear weapons which could bring down governments, demolish civilization, create anarchy.

Agent Pope was trying to buy off The Dutchman (Michael Pitt), but died before he could deliver him. That has the CIA reel in their scientist (Jones, who physically recoils from this role), a man who can transfer short-term memory to another brain. For the short term.

So there are all these deadlines, ticking clocks, built into the story.

And who is the best candidate for a memory transfer? A brain-damaged psychotic with no empathy, no guilt, “no impulse control.” He’s played by Costner with a kinetic impatience that is the best thing about the movie.

Because you know no sooner has Jericho Stewart undergone this procedure than he escapes and goes rogue — a rude, violent and impulsive American on the loose in London. Those poor limeys.

“Hurt me,” he growls, “I hurt you worse.”

Barging into the front of lines at the coffee shop, speaking French to the barista (because Pope did), cursing strangers and grabbing what he wants. “I’m hungry…I’m taking your van.” Followed by a beating when this or that Brit protests.

Hilarious.

Gal Gadot, the new Wonder Woman, plays Pope’s widow. Because the memories that are the strongest are Pope’s routines — how he lived at home with his wife and daughter, etc.

Costner’s psychotic outbursts are hyper-violent, yet amusing. The chases passably handled. The surveillance camera plot device is played to death, as is the “hero” having to carry out surgery on himself after an injury.

The plot is nonsensical, a script forever breaking its own rules. Go to IMDB.com and read the cast list to see who was edited out and guess if this ever made more sense in a longer cut.

Israeli director Ariel Vroman seemed so promising after his Hollywood debut, “Iceman.” Here, he just flounders, his only contribution was giving a job to his fellow Israeli Gadot in a supporting part.

Costner gives fair value every time he steps on set, and this Jericho fellow is a lot more fun and interesting and noble, even, than he had any right to be.

And Reynolds? Put your money on him hitting his knees tonight and thanking Marvel for that red suit and all those zingers that “Deadpool” gets to deliver. They saved him from duds like this.

MPAA Rating:R for strong violence and language throughout

Cast: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Alice Eve, Gal Gadot, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds
Credits: Directed by Ariel Vroman, script by Douglas Cook, David Weisberg. A Summit release.

Running time: 1:48

The cast is too dolled-up and the titular “Barbershop” has become a shiny, unisex salon. So “scruffy” and “scrappy” no longer applies to Ice Cube’s comic franchise.

But “Barbershop: The Next Cut” still has that patchwork, under-scripted feel, lurching from lowdown laughs to higher-purpose lecturing and preaching. There’s even more of the latter with this re-launch, an urban neighborhood comedy intent on addressing Chicago’s soaring, bullet-riddled murder rate.

However, there’s just enough slangy sass for this top-heavy cast to deliver chuckles and the occasional out-loud laugh. Which is more than “Meet the Blacks” or “Fifty Shades of Black,” which tried and failed to pander to the same audience, could manage.

Calvin (Ice Cube) is still running his father’s old Southside Chicago barbershop. He’s sharing it with Angie (Regina Hall), who runs a salon. The unisex environment earns the usual gripes from customers who just hang out (Deon Cole) and the crusty, wig-wearing old school barber Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer).

But the neighborhood has gone to hell. Armed teens, as Eddie describes them, “a buncha conjugal visits gone bad,” have turned the area into a war zone. Calvin and his friend and business partner Rashad (Common) are both married and raising sons. The pressure for Calvin to move out and make a better life for young Jalen (Michael Reiney Jr.) is growing.

The debate over that and what they can do about the violence, the causes of that violence, Obama, sex and hair dominates the hubbub of the shop.

Lamorne Morris is the barber they all think is gay, Margot Bingham’s the stylist going for an Alicia Keys look, JB Smoove is the barber/hustler running all manner of side-businesses out of the chair he rents from Calvin.

And speaking of “top heavy,” and bottom heavy, Nicki Minaj, that parody of 21st century post-Kardashian femininity, is Draya, the bombshell stylist whose attention to Rashad is irking his “stylist to the stars” wife (Eve).

Everybody’s business is out in the open, argued about — loudly — within the earshot of everybody else.

“It’s like a ‘Love & Hip Hip’ reunion up in here.”

“Out there,” meanwhile, the guns are still blazing, with gang-leaders Marquis (Jamal Woolard of “Notorious”) and Jay (Renell Gibs) threatening to bring the fight indoors. What’s worse, a local gang banger (Tyga) is giving Calvin’s kid the hard-sell, recruiting him. The city might take extreme measures against the whole neighborhood if the shooting doesn’t stop.

Anthony Anderson is the local entrepreneur whose food truck, “Gangsta Grub,” which serves “Soul food to save fool’s souls,” earns rebukes from Calvin about “sending the wrong message.”It’s petty to point out the comic irony of NWA founder Ice Cube lecturing his on-screen kid about trying to look “hard” when he isn’t, about wearing a belt with his pants, or chewing out somebody else for getting rich out of “gangsta” branding. But it’s worth a smirk.

The oversized cast means that nobody gets much of a chance to stand out, and the theatrical script breaks far too many scenes into stagey moments — characters declaring this or declaiming that.

“When was the last time you seen Barack Obama do something for us?”

“We black. It’s hard.”

The token in the room is Raja, and Indian-American (Utkarsh Ambudkar) inclined to critique black culture from the outside for its problems until he’s called on it.

“Hey, I hate white people, too!”

“Black lives” matter jokes and Angie’s rip of Draya/Kardashian culture — “It’s a war, the good girls and the ho’s. And the ho’s have won,” stick. Beyonce gags (the salon is all about hair-relaxers and weaves) are tried.

Not much else does in this overlong, polished but drab civics lesson of a comedy. This “Barbershop” is in sore need of a trim, and not just a little off the top, either.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual material and language

Cast: Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Nicki Minaj, Common, Eve, JB Smoove,  Utkarsh Ambudkar

Credits: Directed by Malcolm D. Lee, script by  Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver. A Warner Brothers release. 

Running time: 1:52

“Spunky” never dies. It just hides its liver spots, dons spinster glasses and never lets the strain that maintaining “perky”past retirement age show.

Sally Field brings a bubbly, misdirected vitality to “Hello, My Name is Doris,” a cute better-late-than-never romance tailor-made for her talents and lifelong image.

A flippant blurb for it might be “Granny Gidget Gets Busy,” except the teeny bopper of Field’s TV-youth lived and loved. A lot. And Doris plainly hasn’t.

She’s a legacy hire at a New York apparel company who has lived her whole life in the house she grew up in, an unassuming, cluttered two-storey on Staten Island. She’s taken the ferry in to work every day for decades, coming home each night to look after her mother and a Persian cat. The only sign of life in her is her wildly colorful wardrobe.

But her mother died. And knitting and the occasional gals-night-out with her widowed pal Roz (Tyne Daly) isn’t going to lift her spirits. The cute 20something new to her office, John (Max Greenfield) is just eye candy she’s never going to be able to sample.

A YMCA lecture changes all that. Peter Gallagher is perfectly cast as a charismatic self-help guru, author of “I’m Possible.” As in, “There’s no such thing as IMPOSSIBLE.” He tells her,”I’M possible!…Fear is just another four-letter word that begins with F.”

Dowdy, ditzy Doris figures What the F? She sets out to win the attentions of a man one third her age.

She watches John’s every move, gets Roz’s teen granddaughter (Isabella Acres, cute) to help her set up a fake Facebook account (handy for stalking), and starts putting herself in his path — at techno-pop concerts and the like. And John seems charmed and surprised, even if he never quite gets that she’s “into” him.

“You’re a baller, Doris. Straight up.”

“Doris,” based on a short film by screenwriter Laura Terruso, is cute crossing into cutesie and cloying at times. Doris, with her loud, garish bag-lady fashion sense and lack of irony, fits right in with the emo-techno-“healer/maker” hipsters of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. She could be their queen. A lot of characters have to pretend not to see the obvious for this misplaced crush to feel believable. Plenty of moments make you wince for Doris.

Meanwhile, her peers Roz, her brother (Stephen Root) and the shrink (Elizabeth Reaser) the brother and his shrill wife (Wendi McClendon-Covey) worry about Doris, how she’s kidding herself and how she’s living her life now that her reason for staying there all these years is dead and gone.

But Field is funny and empathetic and game, and when the script gives her that one, understated and poignant scene where Doris explains who she is and what she’s missed out on, she delivers 45 seconds of pure acting magic.

Every spring, Hollywood tosses a bone to filmgoers over 65, and “Doris” could be this year’s “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”It mocks the younger generation, panders to the sacrifices made by the older generation and is just racy enough to remind filmgoers that they’re not at home watching network TV.

Thanks to Field, a feisty Tyne Daly and a winning supporting cast that includes Natasha Lyonne and Beth Behrs (TV’s “2 Broke Girls”), “Doris” becomes that character you’ve ignored but shouldn’t, that movie you might’ve passed by but won’t want to.

MPAA Rating:R for language

Cast: Sally Field, Max Greenfield, Tyne Daly, Stephen Root, Wendi McClendon-Covey, Peter Gallagher, Elizabeth Reaser
Credits: Directed by Michael Showalter, script by Laura Terruso and Michael Showalter. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:30

It’s derivative, it’s dark, it’s jokey and bloody. And it’s an August comic book movie release. So, “Guardians of the Galaxy” or…something less?

Will Smith is the biggest name in it, re-teamed with Margot Robbie, it turns out. Jared Leto you’ve been seeing still-shots of.

There’s been some barbed discussion of the vintage music used in the trailer — mimicking the “Guardians” formula.

I don’t know. Not seeing anything new, but Smith handles this sort of joke/serious comic violence well (“Hancock”). August 5.

Remember, acting guru Constantin Stanislavski preached, “There are no small parts, only small actors.”

He must have dreamed there’d be a film as closely scrutinized, with its tiniest performances parsed and scrutinized, as “Star Wars.”

“Elstree 1976” is a documentary that takes us back to the British soundstages where the film that would come to be called “Star Wars: A New Hope,” was shot.

But stars in the making Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher or Mark Hamill are not who he talked with to create this behind-the-scenes remembrance. Spira’s twist was that he’d talk to Dave Prowse, who wore the Darth Vader suit and acted out a performance that James Earl Jones’ voice would make legendary. There’s Paul Blake, stuffed inside a green mask and turned into “Greedo,” the guy Han Solo shoots in the cantina bar.

And Pam Rose, given an addition to her noggin to play a waitress at that bar.

Jeremy Bulloch’s character became an icon and an action figure — bounty hunter Boba Fett. The character became famous, not Bulloch.

And Angus MacInnes had lines, barking out orders as “Gold Leader” among the rebel pilots, a Canadian character actor you might recognize from “Witness” or “Atlantic City,” “Hellboy” or most recently, “Captain Phillips.”

They were bit players, often covered in helmets or makeup, anonymous cogs in the machine that was George Lucas’s vision for “Star Wars.” They looked right, like storm troopers or what have you.

Spira tracks them down and introduces them — first names only — just people tackling “another job of work,” a bit of sci-fi they were sure “was being made for TV.”

It wasn’t. And rather than have their months of tedium pass into the ether, it made them immortal — with a lifetime income, many of them — just for showing up at conventions and signing autographs.

The towering Prowse was a semi-famous British bodybuilder who broke through in film with Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.” He had no idea his voice would be replaced as Darth Vader. And his attempts to own Vader since have put him on the outs with Disney and Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars Celebration” conventions.

This or that extra remembers bonking his head into an archway in those cumbersome storm trooper suits.  Another relates how he tricked the assistant director by snapping his helmet visor up in the honors ceremony scene so that his face would show up.

One had his character cut from the film, but was squeezed into a storm trooper uniform for a different scene, and made immortal with the line “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.”

They all laugh, and marvel at how their tiny, sometimes unbilled turns in the film led to this afterlife of conventions. They tell stories of directing instructions from technician George Lucas.

“Just play like they do in the movies.”

Spira uses archival footage (outtakes), GIF frames of the actor in his or her part, clips from other films these players appeared in and recreations (not enough) to tell his story. He takes his time — entirely too long, I must say — masking the actors’ identities and filling in their background. It’s the way a fan would treat them, giving us tales of folk music busking, reasons “I never went to acting school” or “How a Canadian ended up acting in London” or “I played ‘HAMLET’!” anecdotes.

The testy hierarchy between actors (speaking lines) and extras (set dressing) is laid out. And the lives and career-changes (for most of them) that followed “Star Wars” are touched on, touchingly.

The whole adds up to a charming portrait of the micro-fame and full, rich (not that rich) lives of the big actors who played little roles in the most carefully watched and memorized movie since “Citizen Kane.”

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Dave Prowse, Jeremy Bulloch, Paul Blake, Pam Rose,  Garrick Hagon, Angus MacInnes
Credits: Written and directed by John Spira. A FilmRise release.

Running time: 1:30