Nostalgia seems to kick in earlier and younger, at least to those of us of the “St. Elmo’s Fire” or “Big Chill” generations.
Thus, the legion of 28 year-olds getting misty-eyed over high school in “10 Years,” a high school reunion dramedy full of alcohol, last chance romance, memories both bitter and bittersweet, big secrets and bigger revelations.
It’s a movie that doesn’t take its own advice — “Why spend your time looking back when you’ve got so much to look forward to?”
Vanilla Ice is back, back baby.
And for that crime alone, Adam Sandler should get the chair.
Alas, it’s a minor offense in “That’s My Boy,” a no-holds-barred raunch-fest that combines bits of “Saturday Night Live” skits and “The Hangover” with every ugly Sandler laugher ever made.
There’s something about the frozen Northern Plains, filled with folksy, trusting and righteous Dakotans, Minnesotans and Wisconsinites, that screams “insurance fraud” to screenwriters. The notion that there’s nowhere in America quite so honest adds appeal to giving that phrase, “You can’t cheat an honest man” a workout.
That’s what drives “Thin Ice,” a darkly funny indie waltz–or polka– down “Fargo” and “Cedar Rapids” lane. Greg Kinnear plays an on-the-ropes, ethically-challenged insurance agent who stumbles onto a new customer, tumbles into the idea of defrauding him out of a valuable old violin and steps through the “Thin Ice” and in over his head as murder, blackmail and ruin pile up around him like a Kenosha, Wisconsin blizzard.
A humorous self-help relationship book becomes an amusing and often biting take on the war between the sexes with “Think Like a Man,” based on comic polymath Steve Harvey’s “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.”
Funny people in funny situations deliver funny lines with, thanks to director Tim “Barbershop” story, zippy timing in this somewhat overlong but still hilarious romp through the world of “players,” “Mama’s boys,” and “90 Day Rule Girls.”
OK, who knew Tom Hardy, the new Batman villain and “Warrior” warrior, could be funny?
Reese Witherspoon? Sure. Chris Pine? No surprise there.
But Hardy?
Eddie Murphy finds inner piece — but precious few laughs in “A Thousand Words,” an ambitious new comedy from a guy whose ambition abandoned him sometime in the ’90s.
“The Odd Life of Timothy Green” is an achingly sweet parent-and-child tearjerker that’s every bit as precious as its title.
But it’s an oddly emotion-free fantasy, a film that strains to find the magic, joy and heartbreak in a story manufactured with those traits in mind.
Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton (“Warrior”) play the Greens, a small-town couple who long to have a child of their own. They’ve hit the end of the road, medically, for accomplishing that. In tears, Cindy Green declares “We’re moving on.” And husband Jim takes that one step further. They’ll write the baby-they-never-had’s traits on slips of paper.
A good-hearted child, a “glass half-full” sort of kid. “Honest to a fault.”
Musical? “Definitely! Our kid will rock!”
Artistic?
“Picasso with a pencil.”
That’s important, because they live in Stanleyville, “America’s pencil capital.” Jim works at the ancient pencilworks, and Cindy works in the pencil capital museum.
The Greens bury the slips of paper in a box in their garden. And one dark and stormy night, a ten year-old boy (CJ Adams) pops out of the Earth, calls them “Mom” and “Dad,” and lives up to every trait they gave him. Oddly, Timothy Green has leaves growing out of his calves and feet.
The parents react to this stunning turn of events with conflicted feelings of science (they try to snip off the leaves) and faith. “Is he for us?” They immediately cover up his origins and plop him into school. And they get him lots of long athletic socks, because they want him “not to be treated as different,” but as “a normal kid.” And children can be cruel to the different.
The film’s charm, romance, comedy and heartache come from Timothy’s naive, open-hearted efforts to fit in, to live up to the credo his parents wrote for him. He melts the hearts of older relatives (M. Emmett Walsh, David Morse), wins the affections of tweenage siren Joni (Odeya Rush, a dead ringer for a young Mila Kunis) and underwhelms his soccer coach (Common), while his parents fret and fuss over him and the way he impacts their home, social and working lives.
Garner is quite good at making us connect with a character’s emotions and if “Odd Life” has a hope of earning tears, it’s through Cindy. The rough-edged Edgerton is more earnest and eager than good as a dad with dad issues of his own (Morse plays his father). But the kid is radiant, a convincingly buoyant boy who makes innocent mistakes because he is just that — utterly innocent.
Here is the film’s fatal flaw. The story is told in flashback, with the Greens trying to convince an adoption counselor (Shohreh Aghdashloo) to give them another try at parenthood. Something went wrong with Timothy, but if they can just tell their incredible story to her, maybe they’ll get another shot.
Writer-director Peter Hedges (“Dan in Real Life,” “Pieces of April”) isn’t telling a story with enough magic, emotion or mystery to it to overcome that give-away. This cumbersome device, interrupting whatever flow this “Edward Scissorhands” variation can muster (even the music sounds similar), robs the tale of the poignancy it aims for.
And without that heart, no delightful musical moments (Garner and Edgerton sing and dance), no wistful surprises built on Timothy’s pre-written character traits, earn anything more than a grin or a shrug.
MPAA Rating: PG for mild thematic elements and brief language
Cast: Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton, CJ Adams, Shohreh Aghdashloo, M. Emmett Walsh, Rosemarie DeWitt, Common
Credits: Directed by Peter Hedges, written by Ahmet Zappa and Peter Hedges. A Walt Disney release.
Running time: 1:45
“The Adventures of Tintin” is the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” sequel Steven Spielberg might have made if he hadn’t felt the need to keep Shia LaBeouf on the payroll. A rollicking, breezy motion-capture animated romp, Spielberg & Co. have adapted the legendary comic book character Tintin in a way that avoids all that worry about killing stuntmen and all that fuss about obeying the laws of physics.
“You can be blasé about some things, Rose,” Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) pretentiously sniffs in this famous movie you may have heard about. “But not about Titanic!'”
And so it with the movie about that famous ship. Love it or hate it, there’s little to be blase about regarding the biggest screen hit of all time.
Fifteen years later, and the film isn’t any shorter. The dialogue is still peppered groaners like Mr. Zane’s “blase” line.
But “Titanic,” back on the big screen 100 years after the famous ocean liner went down, and back in 3D, wears its blockbuster weight with ease. And thanks to the 3D conversion — which may be a tad darker than when first released — it is aging surprisingly well, a meticulous recreation of a great ship and a great tragedy built around a good, old-fashioned popcorn picture.
What’s the old saying, “3D fool me once, shame on you, 3D fool me twice, shame on me?”
“Clash of the Titans” was a nearly humorless, overly digitized remake of a piece of sword and sorcery cheese from the 1980s, an inoffensive big budget trifle whose biggest sin was a post-production conversion to 3D.
“Wrath of the Titans,” the sequel, wasn’t converted, so the 3D is a lot better. And the director of “Battle Los Angeles” and the screenwriters give it a lighter touch, a bit of mythic whimsy amongst all the muddle about gods, demi-gods, the father of gods and the end of the age of gods.
