Video review: "I Am Chris Farley"

If you looked at the average lifespan of “Saturday Night Live” alumni compared to the general population, you'd find it’s shockingly low. So many talented comedic fireballs have gone to early graves -- some to disease (Gilda Radner) or violence (Phil Hartman), but far too many to excessive lifestyles and a lack of self-control.

Anyone watching the show in the 1990s initially viewed Chris Farley as the reincarnation of John Belushi: a maniacal tubby guy with a natural grace for physical comedy that belied his girth. “I Am Chris Farley” is the new documentary about his life, where he came from, why he was so popular on the show -- and why he was incapable of doing anything halfway.

Directors Brent Hodge and Derik Murray interview an impressive list of people who knew or worked with Farley, tracing his rise from class cut-up in a bucolic Wisconsin town to king of the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago up through the seemingly ordained call-up to SNL. We learn that he was a man who would literally do anything for a laugh, even being suspended from his Catholic school for exposing himself during typing class.

People like Adam Sandler, Dan Aykroyd, David Spade, Bob Saget, Mike Myers, Christina Applegate, SNL chief Lorne Michaels and many others weigh in with memories, regrets and praise. Farley’s brothers and childhood friends speak of a soul so innocent and pure that there was simply no nastiness in him. His inability to cope with alcohol and drugs was, they say, simply an extension of a man whose appetite for joy was unquenchable.

Myself, I was never a particular fan of Farley’s. He seemed to operate under the principle of “comedy by volume” -- that is, any line of dialogue becomes funny if you shout it loudly and repeatedly. The half-life he could wring out of material was regrettably brief; no doubt the reason his two films in a starring role both bombed as audiences couldn’t summon the endurance for 90 minutes of Farley’s pratfalls and mugging.

His act got old fast, and so did Farley. His death at age 33 of an overdose, compounded by his obesity, came as a shock to exactly no one, his friends say.

Still, if Farley’s brand of merriment wasn’t my bag, I appreciated the devotion he put into his craft. As this doc underlines, no one put more effort into looking like a screw-up.

It’s an insightful, affecting portrait of a misunderstood comedy giant who left us too soon.

As a straight-to-video release that’s also being shown on the Spike TV channel, there are no bonus materials.

Movie:

Extras:

Video review: "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"

The first “Anchorman” movie was spectacularly overrated, and the sequel is a heaping helping of seconds.

Oh, you’ll laugh during “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.” Probably chortle quite uproariously on a half-dozen or so occasions. The rest of the time, though, is waiting around for that next big ROFL moment to arrive. During these portions, which make up the bulk of the overlong 119-minute runtime, the movie barely edges into tolerable.

Will Farrell returns as Ron Burgundy, the worst newscaster in history (circa 1980). As the story opens he loses his job and his marriage simultaneously, but gets a second chance at the then-new enterprise of television news broadcast 24/7.

Relegated to the wee hours of the morning, he and his crew of nitwits (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) soon make a splash by giving the audience exactly what they want – car chases, cute critters and jingoistic patriotism.

As a critique of TV news, “Anchorman 2” is pretty weak tea, hitting all the obvious notes without much originality or flair. So the movie has to rely on its characters and humor, which are the very definition of scattershot.

Director Adam McKay, who co-write the script with Ferrell, favor an ad-lib approach in which actors do take after take, and (supposedly) the best stuff is used for the movie. Ferrell & Co. stand there, barking out absurd dialogue until something sticks.

Their comedy mantra seems to be “Try, try again.” But is one hit to every 20 misses worth your time?
This zany M.O. does, however, allow them to try something truly audacious for the video release. They are giving us three different versions of the film, including a “Super-Sized R-Rated Version” that reportedly includes 763 new jokes.

It’s essentially an alternative edit of the theatrical version (also included), with different lines swapped out. It also includes an unrated version with even filthier gags and language.

Is the “new” version of the movie better than the one we saw in theaters? You’ll have to decide for yourself.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also includes a making-of doc, gag reel, table read by the cast, deleted and extended scenes, audition tapes and more.

You have to spring for the Blu-ray pack to get all these goodies, though; the solo DVD contains only the theatrical version of the movie, and that’s it.

Movie: C
Extras: B-plus

Review: "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"

I admit I never got what the big deal was about "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." The 2004 comedy was a modest commercial hit that somehow went on to gain near-iconic status as a comedic masterpiece. Word of a long-delayed sequel set off a flurry of rapturous attention, followed up by a marketing campaign so omnipresent that folks living in the Himalayas must be thinking Will Ferrell & Co. are becoming a tad overexposed.

The first film had a few uproarious laughs interrupted by long dull spaces in between, and the sequel is much the same.

I will further admit that I laughed three or four times during "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" as hard as anything I've seen this year. But it's a hard slog in between those wonderful moments, particularly in the dull-as-toast second half.

Are a handful of truly great comedic moments enough to make a movie worth a dollar bill with Andy Jackson's face on it, plus two hours of your time? I vote no, and I got to see it for free.

If you're a novice to the world of Burgundy: he's the world's worst newscaster, a dim-bulb egomaniac played by Ferrell with trademark obliviousness. Ron's the sort of guy who can be offending everyone in the room and not even be aware of it.

His look is pure late 1970s: neon-hued suits with ties as wide as a Buick, cheesy mustache, sideburns and a hairdo that's over-primped into ridiculousness.

As the story opens, Ron gets dumped by his San Diego network and his wife (Christina Applegate) in one fell swoop, and ends up as an announcer at the local Sea World. His drunken binges doom even that job, until a new gig lands in his lap with a crazy idea: news 24/7.

Of course, their Global News Network is a barely-concealed spoof on the early days of CNN and the fracturing of the news audience into a thousand little pieces.

Burgundy assembles his old crew and heads to New York, only to find he's relegated to the 2-5 a.m. slot, while slimy top dog Jack Lime (James Marsden) gets the primetime slot and becomes Burgundy's chief tormentor.

They respond by giving people what they want -- cute animals, car chases, jingoistic patriotism and other pap. The audience eats it up, vaulting Burgundy into the stratosphere.

The M.O. of Ferrell and Adam McKay, his director and co-screenwriter, is pretty familiar by now. The characters stand there and spout ridiculously off-the-wall nonsense in the hopes that some of it will be click with the audience.

And some of it does. Steve Carell puts the most points on the board as Brick, the innocent naïf weathercaster. As played by Carell, Brick has the social skills of an infant who was suddenly zapped into adult form. Because it's married to that sweet, dumb persona, his ramblings are funnier because it comes from a place of utter simplicity.

"A black man follows me everywhere when it's sunny," Brick says.

"I think that's your shadow," Ron offers helpfully.

At one point, the gang attends Brick's funeral, and he shows up to give the eulogy, and has to be convinced that he's still alive. He even gets a love interested in Kristen Wiig, who plays his female intellectual and emotional equivalent.

Other weirdo plot twists include having Ron date his black producer (Meagan Good), just so we can have a scene where he sits down to dinner with her family and spout one racially insensitive malaprop after another.

Things culminate in a massive battle between news teams that's more notable for the incredible number of celebrity cameos -- Will Smith, Kanye West, Jim Carrey and Tina Fey among them -- than for any actual humor generated. It's a fitting end for a movie that seems to have fallen in love with its own hype.

Review: "Going the Distance"

"Going the Distance" is this year's "(500) Days of Summer" -- something that superficially resembles a genre film, but is hipper, edgier and about 40 I.Q. points smarter than the average romantic comedy.

Justin Long and Drew Barrymore make for a terrific couple trying to keep a West Coast-East Coast romance alive. Long in particular has developed a really sharp sense of comic timing, and elevates the role just through his quizzical reactions and off-center line deliveries.

But I think it's the creative team that brings a vibe of freshness to a stultifyingly stale genre.

Geoff LaTulippe makes an audacious debut with his original screenplay, and documentarian Nanette Burstein -- she made the wonderful but little-seen "American Teen" a couple years ago -- directs her first narrative film.

The pair behave like a couple of eager kids who don't yet know the romcom rules they're not supposed to break, and deliver a better movie because they fail to acknowledge the boundaries of the familiar boy-meets-girl tale.

For instance, one of the telltale signs of the romantic comedy is the couple's inevitability. Some kind of challenge or set of obstacles is placed in their path, and the entire movie becomes a mechanism to delay that which the audience knows is bound to happen.

In "Going the Distance," we truly don't know if Erin (Barrymore) and Garrett (Long) will end up together. The barriers in their way are not simple hurdles that can be overcome by the telling of an uncomfortable truth, or some other quick fix. They're deep, life-changing conundrums about how much of your own life you're willing to give up in order to share it with someone else.

Burstein and LaTulippe use the form of the raunchy comedy as a prism through which to glimpse some heavy issues.

And there is plenty of raunch. On Garrett's end, he has a couple of excellent wingmen to lubricate the way with dirty jokes and inappropriate behavior. Dan (Charlie Day) is Garrett's roommate, who's not big on the whole person space thing, and cynical Box (Jason Sudeikis) works with Garrett at a New York record label.

Yeah, the music business ... is there any industry facing such a monumental paradigm shift and soul-crushing downturn? Oh wait, I know: Newspapers! Turns out that's Erin's gig. She's just finishing up a summer internship (at age 31) at the New York Sentinel, where she can barely get anything into print.

(Matt Servitto nails the harried, hectored nonchalance of her editor, having to put off eager beavers like Erin asking about permanent jobs when they're about to lay off a hundred veteran journalists.)

Erin and Garrett hook up for a quick six-week romance, after which she has to go back to San Francisco to wait tables while living with her sister and her family. But things go so well, they decide to give the long-distance relationship thing a try.

Their first, desperate coupling after months of separation happens on the sister's dining table. Christina Applegate is priceless in the role of the fussbudget sibling who scrubs the table all day, and probably would burn it if she could afford to.

The film drags a bit about two-thirds of the way through, but it's possibly unavoidable as Erin and Garrett transition from puppy love to the more troublesome, mature kind that requires sacrifice. They struggle and snipe, and the movie turns sadder but wiser.

There are so many dumb movies out there about falling in love. "Going the Distance" is one smart flick that's not afraid to ask what happens next.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore"

It has been nine years since "Cats & Dogs" first exposed us to a secret underground war fought between talking canines and felines, with super-spy agents facing off with James Bond-esque gadgetry.

Now we have a sequel, of sorts, which has improved the sleekness of the computer-generated antics, but not the bone-headed approach to making kiddie flicks.

As near as I can determine, nobody involved with the first movie had anything to do with this one, other than Sean Hayes, Michael Clarke Duncan and a couple others reprising small roles voicing critters -- essentially, they're vocal walk-ons. Even the humans have been swapped out.

By the title, "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore," we might be led to believe that a dastardly arch-villain has returned to wreak more havoc. But no, Kitty Galore is a new creation, a hairless cat voiced by Bette Midler, and with an origin story that's an homage/rip-off of the Joker's.

Kitty wants to broadcast "The Call of the Wild," a nefarious high-pitched recording that will drive all the world's dogs mad, thus estranging them from their human companions, and leaving cats free to take over as, er, top dogs.

Nick Nolte provides the voice of Butch, the veteran dog agent (voiced by Alec Baldwin last time around) forced to partner up with Diggs (James Marsden), an accident-prone police dog recently recruited into the doggie agency. They've got fancy comm links in their dog houses, collars hiding lasers and lockpicks, and subterranean rocket transit tubes for high-speed travel to Dog World Headquarters.

Turns out the cats have their own spy outfit, Mousers Ensuring Our World's Safety (I'll let you figure it out), and Catherine (Christina Applegate) is their top agent. After briefly tangling with Diggs and Butch, she decides to join paws to foil Kitty's evil plot.

Tagging along is Seamus (Katt Williams), a dodo-headed dove who turns out to be an unwitting stool pigeon, but mostly is one jive-talking turkey.

There's a few occasional inspired moments. I liked the trapped room slowly filling with kitty litter. And a houseful of catnip-tripping kittens. And there's a cookie after the end credits worth sticking around for.

But this is low-wattage entertainment aimed at very small children -- kindergartners would likely grow impatient with it. It's an unimaginative collection of shiny things, cute critters and goofy action meant to distract tykes for 82 minutes.

Call me catty, but I think we can do better by our kids, and our pets.

The 3-D effects are decent, but not worth the ticket upgrade. Though "Coyote Falls," a new Road Runner cartoon preceding the movie, is a nostalgic treat.

1.5 stars out of four