Good Luck Chuck *
Upchuck would have been a more accurate title for this abysmal effort — not only does its mere existence instantly elevate the already high standing of such accomplished “raunchy comedies” as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and There’s Something About Mary, it also makes them seem as refined as an Ernst Lubitsch farce from the 1930s by comparison. Dane Cook, whose popularity continues to elude me, plays Chuck, who, as a 10-year-old, was placed by a Goth girl under a hex which states that whenever he sleeps with a woman, she will then marry the next man who woos her. This allows Chuck to have sex with all sorts of buxom babes without worrying about commitment issues. But he grows tired of such a shallow lifestyle, especially after meeting Cam (the eternally vapid Jessica Alba), a klutzy penguin specialist he’s afraid he’ll eventually lose to the curse. Cook and Alba generate about as much chemistry as a mongoose paired with a rattlesnake, while Dan Fogler, as Chuck’s foul-mouthed best friend, will likely endure as the movie year’s most obnoxious sidekick. After the film’s advance screening, sponsors handed out eMusic cards good for 35 free song downloads, perhaps as a goodwill gesture for having to sit through such a torturous experience. In my case, it wasn’t compensation enough: Considering my suffering nothing short of full partnership in eMusic would have sufficed.
The Kingdom **1/2
Just as 1978 saw the release of two Vietnam War flicks that complemented each other in their portrayals of the skirmish — The Deer Hunter and Coming Home — along comes September 2007 and its entree selection of two Iraq War dramas. The Kingdom is basically a Rambo retread outfitted with a thin veneer of topical import. Director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) appears to be an American apologist at heart, which may explain why, after a fascinating title sequence illustrating the United States’ complicated ties to Saudi Arabia the movie quickly devolves into a standard us-against-them revenge flick. The film opens with a shocking sequence in which a base for American families in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is destroyed by terrorists, thereby prompting a group of elite FBI agents to undergo a secret mission to find the culprits once the Saudi and U.S. governments both balk at creating an international incident. Collectively, the four agents — played by Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman — are devoid of much in the way of personality, but that’s OK: Their only purpose in this story is to kill Middle Easterners. Lots of them.
In the Valley of Elah ***1/2
1/2 Writer-director Paul Haggis will forever be lambasted in many circles because his arch drama Crash unfairly shanghaied the clearly superior Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars. But those quick to write off Haggis as a pandering huckster tend to forget that he also penned the exquisite screenplays to two Clint Eastwood triumphs, Million Dollar Baby and Letters From Iwo Jima. It’s that Paul Haggis who shows up with In the Valley of Elah, a powerful drama that employs a murder-mystery template to initially camouflage what ultimately proves to be the picture’s true intent: Examine the repercussions of war on the psyches of the youngsters we ask (or order) to defend us in battle. Tommy Lee Jones, in a superlative performance, stars as Hank Deerfield, a retired officer trying to find out why his son went AWOL upon returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. It’s obvious from the outset that Hank won’t find his son alive, and once it’s ascertained that the boy was murdered, the morose father teams up with equally glum detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) to solve the case. On its own terms, the mystery is set up and followed through in a satisfying matter, and only those expecting an elaborate Agatha Christie-style unmasking of the killer will be disappointed in this aspect of the story, which wraps up well before the actual movie does. Clearly, Haggis’ main story is about the toll that the Iraq War — and, by extension, all battles, especially those (like Iraq) created for bogus reasons — takes not only on the soldiers sent to participate in the bloodshed but also on their families and friends. For all his surface simplicity, Hank Deerfield is a complicated and conflicted individual, a conservative patriot who would never question the military but who can sense that its ideals, along with those of the country he loves, have changed since his time of service. Even more daringly (and likely to spark debates among war vets), Haggis’ film attempts to depict the manner in which the specter of war can follow a soldier back to civilization and inform every subsequent decision and action.
Feast of Love **1/2
A sprawling, messy yet occasionally affecting adaptation of Charles Baxter’s novel, Feast of Love finds Oscar-winning director Robert Benton (whose last film was the grossly underrated The Human Stain) orchestrating a series of intertwined storylines that all push force the notion that the true meaning of life can be found in the arms of a loved one. Morgan Freeman once again plays his stock role, a gentle soul who’s smarter than everyone else around him; here, that translates into the character of a happily married and semiretired professor who notices that love — and, in some cases, lust, deception and betrayal — is all around him. In what could probably be construed as first among equals in terms of the competing storylines, he befriends a coffee shop owner whose wife (Selma Blair) leaves him for another woman and who then becomes involved with a realtor (Radha Mitchell) who can’t seem to break off her affair with a married man (Billy Burke). The Mitchell-Burke relationship is given plenty of screen time on its own; ditto the puppy-love romance between two young coffeehouse employees (Alexa Davalos and Toby Hemingway). Happiness and tragedy are doled out in equal measure — usually falling where we expect — but a fine cast and some touching moments help make the film if not exactly a feast, then at least an edible appetizer that will keep our hunger for a great movie romance at bay a while longer.
