Category: Vince Vaughn

FOUR CHRISTMASES

By Marc S. Sanders

I love Christmas cookies.  Those Santa, snowman and tree shaped sugar cookies with the frosting and sprinkles.  They are my weakness come every December.  Cookie cutter, however, is not necessarily a compliment when talking about a movie.  Four Christmases is as cookie cutter as they come.

Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn are Kate and Brad, an unmarried couple happily going on three years and ready to celebrate the holidays alone in Fiji while lying to their divorced parents, on both sides, about doing charitable service within poorly developed countries.  However, when they arrive at the airport and learn that their flight is cancelled, wouldn’t you know it?!?!  A news reporter is there to capture them on live television revealing their ruse.  Now Brad and Kate have no choice but to visit each parent’s home on Christmas.  With less than an hour and a half running time, let’s chop this up evenly, shall we?  Figure there will be about 15-20 minutes devoted to each parent.  Hence the title… (say it with me now) …Four Christmases.

Let’s go see Brad’s dad first, Robert Duvall, who lives with Brad’s aspiring MMA fighting brothers played by Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw.  They live a simple life with a Zenith television set and Christmas presents that are purchased with a ten dollar or less limit. A gift of a satellite dish is not gonna go over well, and will likely mean a fall off the roof.  Side note: doesn’t falling off a roof seem to happen a lot in Christmas movies?  Also, if the bros are into MMA fighting, well you know that Brad is going to have to endure body slams galore while Kate simply gasps in shock at her boyfriend’s demise.

Transition time in this film happens in the car while going to the next Christmas celebration.  Brad and Kate take these opportunities to question the purpose of their relationship.  They think they have relationship troubles licked by NOT getting married and not devoting themselves to time with family, but are they kidding themselves? 

Next stop is at Mary Steenburgen’s house, Kate’s mom.  Kate’s older sister played by Kristin Chenoweth is here too.  Kate’s agonizing childhood is brought up for laughs like attending a fat camp and reminiscing about her being the one with the cooties and fearful of bounce houses.  Oh, look what’s in the backyard!  A bounce house!  How ironic!  Know where this is going?  A visit to the church of an overzealous evangelist (Dwight Yoakum), where Kate and Brad are quickly recruited to participate in the Nativity play, happens. 

This is about midway through the film and I gotta say I can’t blame Brad and Kate for always lying about going somewhere else for the holidays.  Who wants to live with this kind of torment?  There’s some truth to the adage “You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family.”  The movie wants me to recognize the oversight of Brad and Kate and their disregard for family time, but I don’t see it.  These are cruel people that they are confronted with.

Next up, let’s go see Sissy Spacek, Brad’s mom, who is sharing coitus with Brad’s high school best friend.  Enough said there. 

There’s more transitional driving to happen where the question of if Brad wants to get more serious about their relationship is discussed following Kate’s reveal that she took a pregnancy test.  Often in films, it’s the baby factor that tests the relationships.  I wish Hollywood would think outside that box a little.  Having children is not the end all be all, all the time, in building a loving relationship.  Components involving work, religion, and money also come into play.  Mustn’t forget about love too.  Just once, I’d like to see something else.  So many couples live happily without children.  We are even reminded how it’s rude and intrusive to ask “when are you going to have a baby?”  In fact, it is rude to ask that question because it’s too standard and presumptuous.  Hollywood should account for that.  I digress though.

The fourth and final Christmas visit occurs at Jon Voight’s house, Kate’s dad.  Not much wrong here, as we are in the final act of the movie where it’s more about a will they or won’t they conundrum for Brad and Kate.  So, cue the insightful commentary from Voight dressed in a comfy blue sweater.

Look, I can’t deny it.  I laughed at several moments in Four Christmases.  Favreau is hilarious in his tattooed, buzz cut, intimidating presence.  The Nativity play with Brad dressed as Joseph and getting caught up in the hallelujah enthusiasm is funny too.  Duvall is doing his old man redneck routine like he does in Days Of Thunder, and well…c’mon it’s ROBERT DUVALL!!!!

I just wish I didn’t know what was coming from one scene to the next.  In a film this structured, you don’t even have to try to predict what will happen.  You have an involuntary instinct to just know. 

As well, I don’t get a kick out of seeing how uncomfortable characters are made out to be when they are doing nothing but paying a visit.  Poor Brad gets outnumbered by his fighting brothers and suffers the Home Alone slapstick body blows.  Later, a baby spits up all over Kate’s dress, and Brad starts to dry heave at the sight of the mess. That’s not funny.  That’s a shame.  In life that happens.  Babies spit up, but we should feel awful for the victim.  How uncomfortable that must be.  Kate is not Joe Pesci trying to rob a house and getting a deserving paint can to the face.  Kate isn’t laughing at her misfortune.  She’s in shock.  Steenburgen and Chenoworth cackle hysterically, though.  I can’t bring myself to do that.    I feel bad for these two, and all I’m thinking is that it really sucks that they couldn’t make it to Fiji.  I wish they made it to Fiji.  What a shame they never got to Fiji.

Like Home Alone or Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Four Christmases wants to deliver the message that there is nothing better than to spend the holidays with the family, or get married and start a family of your own.  Yet the campaign seems to defeat itself in its demonstration.  I love my family and I love being married, but if I saw this film ahead of what I have now in life, twenty years going strong, I might have thought otherwise. 

Quick reminder: THEIR FAMILIES ARE FRACTURED IN DIVORCE ALREADY!!!!  So, all that Four Christmases tells me is TO HELL WITH FAMILY.  I JUST WANNA GO TO FIJI!!!!!

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK

By Marc S. Sanders

The Lost World: Jurassic Park contains a batch of characters making a lot of stupid decisions all in the name of being stupid for stupidity’s stake.  That doesn’t make it a bad movie though.  Just somewhat…unsophisticated…and stupid.

In the sequel to the monster smash adaptation from Michael Crichton, Steven Spielberg reunites with Jeff Goldblum, now at the top of the credits list, as smarmy mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm.  It really doesn’t matter if the guy is a doctor of any kind of specialty though.  Malcolm doesn’t utter one scientific fact or theory or observation this time around.  Whatever shred of debate regarding the resurrection of dinosaurs that existed in the first film is completely abandoned this time around.  Carnage, mayhem and outrageous ridiculousness take center stage, stage left, stage right, downstage, upstage, off stage, and over a high cliff.

In an early scene, Malcolm is summoned by wealthy entrepreneur John Hammond (Richard Attenborough, in a welcome cameo).  Hammond tells Malcolm that his paleontologist girlfriend (isn’t that a coinkidink), Sarah (Julianne Moore) is on a nearby island to the original one from the first film, and studying the behaviors of the dinosaurs that were developed there.  She will soon be meeting up with a photographer (Vince Vaughn) and another associate (Richard Schiff; I don’t recall the script explaining his specialty).  So, Malcolm sees no choice but to go after Sarah and rescue her from the island.  This is one Daring Mathematician.

One point of order, because this is a Spielberg adventure, a kid has to be involved.  Malcolm’s pre-teen daughter and gymnast extraordinaire Kelly (Vanessa Chester) stows herself away on the excursion. Thank god she’s gymnast.  That may come in handy.

At the same time, Hammond’s greedy nephew, Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) is leading a large expedition crew on the island to recover representatives of each breed of animal to bring back to the mainland in San Diego for show and tell.  The leader of this pack is also the best character in the whole film.  He’s a game hunter named Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite).  Tembo’s price is to hunt down one Tyrannosaurus-Rex for his own game pleasure.  Aaaaand that’s where the story stops. 

I just ticked off a lot of actor names, didn’t I?  Well, this is a sequel and in a monster movie sequel there’s a demand for more casualties of course.  If that’s what you are looking for, you won’t be disappointed. 

You also won’t be disappointed in the assortment of dinosaurs on hand.  This time there are two T-Rex’s and they are used beautifully in a very daring, albeit long for the sake of maximum suspense, scene that involves our heroes dangling within a double RV trailer that has been pushed off a cliff.  When Sarah lands face first on the back windowpane of glass, try your best not to bite your nails.

Another exceptional scene is when the expedition runs into a tall grass raptor nest.  This is like Jaws on land.  With the help of much CGI, but also puppetry from Stan Winston’s imagination factory, Spielberg gets great overhead shots of fast forming black lines that quickly cut through the meadow taking out one poor soul after another where beast overcomes man. These moments occur in the large second act of the film where it’s nothing but action done with Spielberg’s skill to oversee. 

The third act is questionable, but I found a nostalgic admiration for it.  Spielberg goes for the salute to King Kong, the grand daddy of all monster movies.  Ludlow’s hubris and what remains of his expedition team trap and bring back the male T-Rex to San Diego aboard a large freighter.  In the dead of night, garbed in his finest suit, he’s ready to give a speech to a press junket that must work a graveyard shift introducing the marvelous attraction.  Naturally, we know things will not go as planned.  Now, we know this is not New York City and the Empire State Building is not nearby, but this T-Rex will naturally run amok anyway and settle for destroying a suburban dog house, about a dozen cars and a 76-gas station.  No, it is not King Kong, but the salute is appreciated nonetheless.  There’s even a wink and nod to Godzilla.  I laughed.

Pretty stupid of Ludlow to do this, right?  Well, he’s the villain.  So, let’s give him a pass.  On the other hand, the heroes are dumb as rocks.  Sarah takes a baby T-Rex away from its quarters. Ian gets up into a high area platform with his daughter as an escape to safety…but then he comes down again!!!!!  The hunters simply think they are hunting kittens no matter the stature of any of the game they are pursuing.  The telephone doesn’t get answered when it really, really should.  You’ll find yourself shaking your head and outstretching your arms at the screen (palms up) as if to say “WHY????????”. 

It really doesn’t matter.  The first Jurassic Park film never had a fully developed brain.  This installment, unabashedly, never even stops to think.  It’s as if a collection of characters in a shoebox raised their hand for volunteer slaughter. 

My wife watched this with me recently, and at times she would ask “Why are you doing this or why not just call such and such?”  I’d have to remind her it’s not that simple.  Cuz if it were that simple, then they would have picked up the phone.  We all have a destiny in life.  I truly believe that.  The destiny of the cast of The Lost World: Jurassic Park was to run and maybe or maybe not get chomped on and eaten.  This is what they were groomed for their whole lives. So, let’s not interfere with the laws of nature.

WEDDING CRASHERS

By Marc S. Sanders

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn make a perfect comedy pair close to the same vein as Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. Close, but not as legendary, and nowhere near the statures of Newman and Redford.

Wedding Crashers was the the first of their two collaborations to date. The movie works as it charges forth in its raunchiness and unabashed thrust to not hold back. Fortunately, a guy named David Dobkin directed a script from Steve Faber and Bob Fisher long before the age of “Me Too.” What a denial of a great idea we would have, had this film been made later. Reader, Wedding Crashers was never intended to be politically correct. If it even thought about it for a second, the entire production would have failed.

Just go with this. Wilson and Vaughn are John and Jeremy, practicing marital law mediators (I said go with it!), who relish in debauchery by crashing weddings as an opportunity to score one babe after another. Dobkin and crew assemble a fantastic early montage of various nuptials to show how well John and Jeremy play this field of formality. We get to see them in action in all of the different methods. At one time they are charming the parents. They are telling sob stories and crying false tears. They are making balloon animals for the youngsters as a means to catch the attention of a beautiful bridesmaid caught up in the sanctum of love. One after the other a braless gal pal is tossed onto a bed ready for John and/or Jeremy. Call it refreshing, but at least these players are equal opportunists; Jewish, Irish, Italian, Indian. Every kind of wedding ceremony imaginable is given attention. These guys are so fine-tuned at what they do that there is even a rule book, which you can reference on IMDB, or on the Blu Ray extra.

When Secretary Cleary’s (Christopher Walken with not nearly enough to do) daughter is getting married, one last hurrah before wedding season closes is upon them. John immediately becomes attracted to the bride’s sister, played spiritually by Rachel McAdams, while Jeremy oversteps himself with the youngest and overly clingy sister who makes sadomasochism seem G rated. She is played by Isla Fisher. To my surprise, following the success of this film, Fisher never really became more mainstream. She’s the scene stealer. When she begs Walken to let the men stay for the weekend at their New England island home, I lost it. I was dying at her antics. Fisher is so good. She had to have invented some of this material herself. An amazing comedienne. The stomping feet. The poutiness. This is comedy. Fisher never holds back in every scene she’s in and because of her, Vaughn as her lustful prey is all the better in his tormented state.

Another scene stealer is Bradley Cooper, playing McAdams bullying boyfriend. Cooper probably made this character bigger than the script intended. Again, I lost it as the family and guests warm up for a friendly game of flag football. Cooper is in his own element apart from the others as he goes through regiment drills of what equates to an unhinged Marine. He’s cruelly brutal but he’s terribly funny. Later in the film his part might get too sadistic though as he punches Wilson bare knuckled which truly sounds like a crack of his skull. There’s nothing really funny there. This is beyond a Three Stooges slap or eye poke. Sometimes less is more. Blame that on Dobkin.

Other parts are wasted though they start out promising like Jane Seymour as Walken’s wife and Fisher & McAdams mother, who serves as a sex craved Mrs. Robinson. She’s given a presence, though her story never really delivers. As well, there’s a resentful gay brother (Kier O’Donnell) who dresses in black and bears a striking resemblance to Gru from Despicable Me. The character makes a good entrance but is primarily there to further torment Vaughn in a quick bed hop scene. Then there’s not much else.

McAdams plays meet cute just fine with Wilson. Though with much interference from the rest of the characters during the course of the weekend you really don’t get a sense of how McAdams falls for Wilson as well as why Wilson goes against his Crasher Code and obsessively falls for her. Not much beyond dream like gazes at each other across the room. For the romance to really work, these characters have to talk with each other a whole lot more than just a token wave crashing beach scene.

The 3rd act is expected. The boy loses the girl. He takes lonely walks down the street, he becomes a slob and he makes one failed effort after another to win the girl back. For a raunchy comedy that was moving with lightning hilarity, this 3rd act really slows the movie down. It ran way too long.

Still, Wedding Crashers is a great comedy most especially thanks to the concept of taking advantage of what can typically happen at any wedding reception, and the uncompromising comedy of both Isla Fisher and most of Bradley Cooper’s material.

Put your morals aside and RSVP to the event.

HACKSAW RIDGE

By Marc S. Sanders

“Please Lord. Help me get one more.”

Desmond Dawes rescued 75 American soldiers during the assault on Hacksaw Ridge in Okinawa, Japan following the United States’ entry into World War II, and he did it without ever lifting a weapon.

War pictures have become somewhat boring to me lately. The battle scenes all blend together. The main characters seem to be the same each time. They all have a different heritage (Polish, Jewish, Italian). There’s the soldier who is the bully. The one who’s brother died in battle so he enlisted. The platoon leader has to bark orders to such a degree that audience must hate him, only to love him later on when he makes the ultimate sacrifice. It’s become all the same.

Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge overcomes those tropes for most of the picture but at times it still suffers from that curse of sameness. It’s only when he returns to focus on his lead actor, Andrew Garfield, who plays Dawes, that we see something special. Dawes’ reasons for not lifting a weapon are vastly explored and they are convincingly justifiable when his domestic life is depicted under the tyranny of an abusive, alcoholic father suffering from his own demons of war. Hugo Weaving is Desmond’s father. Why isn’t he getting any accolades for his performance? He’s fantastic.

Garfield is very good in the role even if he really doesn’t have to shape a character arc for himself. His performance is all about maintaining his character’s convictions. He doesn’t change. Rather, the men he serves with do.

Teresa Palmer plays his wife, Dorothy, and she’s good as well. She’s not wasted in the script (like I found Michelle Williams in Manchester By The Sea or Rooney Mara to be in Lion.). I only wish Gibson showed one last scene between the characters before the film closed out.

Vince Vaughn was an issue for me, miscast as the platoon’s drill sergeant. He’s been pigeonholed in too many comedic roles I guess that he failed to convince me of his authority here. Maybe that’s my problem. I dunno.

Hacksaw Ridge is another very good picture from 2016, but it is weighted down by graphic battle scenes, all well played out, mind you, but all done before. It’s not until late in the film that Garfield steps up to show why Dawes was so special to this particular moment in history. That’s when the emotion of the film kicks in and the interest heightens itself.