Review: "Boundaries"

Just a short review today; the studio wasn't able to get me a screener until late Thursday afternoon.

I was a bit bored and bewildered by "Boundaries." It features two world-class thespians in Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer, playing a daughter and father at cross ends while trying to reconnect during a road trip. It features lots of talking but not much substantive sharing. Characters do things because that's where writer/director Shana Feste wanted a scene to go, not because that's how it would have organically led there.

Farmiga plays Laura, a harried and hectored mother to troublesome teen son Henry (Lewis MacDougall), an ostracized boy who has a penchant for drawing adults in the nude in sexual and unflattering ways. Laura's jerk boyfriend, like most male authority figures, has his male parts, uh, deemphasized.

Her dad is Jack (Plummer), a rapscallion who, at 85, is being kicked out of his retirement community for repeatedly breaking the rules. He was absent during most of Laura's childhood, and they only seem to hook up when someone needs something. Circumstances align that they each have a desperate need: Laura needs money to pay for private school to help Henry with his emotional problems, and Jack needs a ride to Los Angeles.

Jack says he can't fly because of a blood clot in his leg, but Jack says lots of things. Laura has learned not to invest a lot of hope for the truth.

So off they go, driving from Seattle to Los Angeles in Jack's vintage Rolls Royce, the trio of humans along with a few of Laura's collection of castoff dogs. We're not surprised when they pick up more along the way. That's who Laura is: she protects the weak because that's how she's felt herself much of her life.

Things go from there. It turns out Jack got his money from dealing pot, and the trip is largely an excuse to drop off product along the way. Most of customers are old friends, like Stanley, a hippie who never really left the commune. He's played by Christopher Lloyd -- the other one; or rather, I'm the other one -- who gets a hot tub nude scene a la Kathy Bates in "About Schmidt."

(Unlike Farmiga in "Up in the Air," I'm confident my namesake did not use stuntbutt.)

One inevitable stop is to see Laura's ex (Bobby Cavanale), who's sort of a junior version of Jack; he's just a little more honest with himself about his failings.

I should point out that this is one of those movies that stretches out a road trip that should take one long drive into about a week. By my guess, they actually only get about four good hours on the road per day.

"Boundaries" is one of those movies where if people ask you, "What was it about?", you really have no good answer. I was willing to cut this film a lot of slack just because I like the cast so much. But it fumbles at trying to manipulate our emotions, leaving us with a road trip picture that doesn't really go anywhere.

Video review: "Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie"

When a mainstream movie doesn’t get screened for critics, it’s usually an indication the studio knows it has a dog and its hands, and figures no publicity is better than bad publicity. They’re wrong, of course: My own observation is that films that get dumped into theaters with no fanfare or press disappear even quicker than those that got negative reviews.

But every now and then, a decent movie gets this treatment for mystifying reasons. Lately, many of these have been family- or kid-oriented fare like the wonderful “Paddington” from a few years ago.

“Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie” isn’t quite that good, but it’s an amusing and rather clever kiddie flick that had my two boys, ages 4 and 6, rolling with laughter almost the entire time. And even grumpy old dad chortled not a little.

The clever set-up is that the two protagonists, George and Harold (voices by Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch), are fourth-grade cut-ups and budding cartoonists themselves. They spend most of their time creating comic books and pulling pranks on Mr. Krupp, their anger-absorbed principal. One of their favorite subjects is Captain Underpants, about a super-powered hero who only wears a cape and his undies.

Through a little hypnosis, the boys actually convince Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) that he is Captain Underpants, leading to much hilarity as their tubby educator galivants about town in his tighty-whities. Of course, he eventually wakes up and wonders where his clothes are. Later, the Captain manages to obtain actual super-powers to go with his delusion.

Nick Kroll provides the voice of Professor Poopypants, a substitute teacher who turns to evil villainy out of consternation for mockery of his name. It all builds up to a dizzy battle with giant robots and such.

The animation has a deliberately simplistic sort of sheen, interspersed with cut scenes consisting of motion comics from the boys’ illustrations.

Based on the novels by Dav Pilkey, “Captain Underpants” didn’t do so well at the box office. (See section above re: no vs. bad publicity.) It’s definitely worth a look on video, though, as it’s chock-full of boy-centric humor and gross-outs.

Maybe if we do get a sequel, it won’t try to fly under the radar.

Bonus features are pretty good, anchored by six making-of featurettes, including one where Hart and Helms pull real-life surprises on fans. There are also deleted scenes, gallery of stills, music videos including one with theme song writer/performer “Weird All” Yankovic, and a “Tightey-Whitey Q&A with the Stars.”

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Review: "The Boss"

Now that she's a bona fide major star who puts together her own vehicle pictures, it's heartening to see Melissa McCarthy stepping out of her box. We'd seen her do a lot of the same thing in "The Heat" and "Tammy" and other flicks, playing the rough, socially unskilled, blue-collar woman who does outrageously offensive things seemingly without any concept of how it affects others.

McCarthy has mostly carried these roles off, based on a sassy screen presence and deft comic timing. But we could feel the staleness starting to creep in.

She's playing an actual fresh character in "The Boss," the second collaboration with real-life husband Ben Falcone, who also directed. (Steve Mallory shares a screenwriting credit with the pair.) She plays Michelle Darnell, an uber-rich mogul brought low by her own arrogance, who has to start all over by crashing at the apartment of her harried ex-assistant, played by Kristen Bell.

Think Donald Trump mixed with Suze Orman, plus a smidge of Ann Coulter (the nastiness, not the politics).

I love the physical get-up McCarthy has to play Michelle. She has this impervious bob of reddish hair that drapes her head like a stubborn waterfall. She always wears extravagant outfits and jewelry, even while sleeping. And she's got that lacquered makeup seen on cable newscasters you suspect was put on with industrial paint applicators and could withstand anything short of a category 4 hurricane.

Michelle also wears roll-up collars that come right up to her cheeks. You suspect she started doing that because of a troublesome double chin, and now goes through life in perpetual Kilroy mode, looking like she's peeking over a wall at you.

The story's a bit thin, but McCarthy and Bell have decent chemistry and the jokes' funny-to-flop ratio is pretty high. It's a foul-mouthed, harmless good time.

Bell plays Claire, the straight woman in this duo. She's a hardworking single mom, devoted, a little on the dull side. Claire has spent most of her professional life catering to Michelle's every whim, from running her companies to spraying her teeth with whitener in between raucous stadium shows where she promises to make everyone rich.

Of course, the only one who ever gets rich in these deals is the person who already is.

After spending four months in prison for insider trading -- think Martha Stewart -- Michelle shows up at Claire's doorstep because her assets were seized and she's alienated everyone else she ever encountered. Some predictable bonding occurs, with Ella Anderson offering a winning, grounded presence as Claire's kid, Rachel.

When Michelle discovers how much loot Rachel's Dandelions troop makes selling cookies, she hatches on a scheme to start a competing outfit she dubs Darnell's Darlings. Using Claire's kick-butt brownie recipe, and by recruiting all the tough girls in school to act as muscle, they soon put the ersatz Girl Scouts on the ropes. This leads to an "Anchorman" style beatdown between adorable girls.

Yes, it's derivative; but yes, it still works.

Peter Dinklage turns up as the kooky villain, a former beau of Michelle's that she double-crossed long ago. Tyler Labine is agreeable as Claire's coworker and huggable bear of a love interest. Kathy Bates has a too-small role as Michelle's backstabbed mentor.

"The Boss" is moderately filthy, decently funny and features Melissa McCarthy stretching her wings a bit. It's enough to tide us over until the "Ghostbusters" reboot.

Video review: "Despicable Me 2"

“Despicable Me 2” is essentially more of the same, with super-villain-turned-super-daddy Gru (voice of Steve Carell) turning his attentions away from dastardly plots to raising his three adopted daughters and manufacturing “jams and jellies.” But he gets sucked back into the old life, this time on the side of the good guys, and dallies in a little romance to boot.

It’s not the most ambitious sequel ever made, and if you measure your age in more than single digits, it will likely grow a tad monotonous. But for the young’uns there is a lot of zippy action, cool ray guns and other mad scientist hardware, and plenty of gastrointestinal humor featuring Gru’s gibberish-spouting army of little yellow minions.

Kristen Wiig provides the voice of Lucy, a junior agent of the Anti-Villain League who is assigned to be Gru’s partner. Seems a noxious serum has been stolen that turns the imbiber into a purple berserker, and they believe one of the proprietors of the local mall is the culprit. Gru and Lucy pretend to be cupcake bakers and set about mixing things up.

Gru’s chief target is the owner of the local Mexican restaurant, who bears a resemblance to a presumed dead bad guy named El Macho. But his new bosses aren’t buying the suspicion. Meanwhile, ardor blooms between Gru and Lucy, and his oldest daughter gets all swoony for the putative El Macho’s son.

Most of the best gags involve the minions, including a subplot where they are gradually kidnapped and injected with that serum. (If, like me, you’re wondering why they don’t just make a movie featuring the ochre-hued, overall-wearing little dudes – since that’s what the kiddies really want -- “Minions” is set to drop in 2015.)

I’ve despised a lot of lackluster sequels, but not this one. For a movie that doesn’t try very hard, it’s fun and reasonably entertaining.

The movie comes with a host of good extra features, headlined by three new mini-movies further exploring the world of Gru & Co. Of course, the minions get their own wee adventure. They even come with their own making-of featurettes.

There’s also an interview with Steve Carell, a profile of El Macho, featurettes on gadgets and Gru’s girls, and a commentary track by directors Chris Renaud & Pierre Coffin – who also moonlight as the voices of the minions.

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Review: "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2"

I didn't much care for the first "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," and the sequel is no improvement. The characters are flat, the story is unimaginative, and the humor is aimed straight at the pre-kindergarten crowd. If it weren't for the terrific animation and amazing creature designs, it would have nothing to recommend.

For those who don't remember the last flick: never-do-well inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) invented a machine that could spontaneously produce food out of water. Of course, it went berserk and began raining down house-sized cheeseburgers and pizza on his island home town. Flint and a crew of unlikely pals eventually shut it down.

The sequel picks up right where we left off, with the folks celebrating even as their dwellings are uninhabitable. Cue the arrival of Chester V (Will Forte), Flint's childhood hero, a scientist who creates all sorts of neat stuff while exuding a sense of superior cool. He's the best thing about the movie, with his weird body that has the rubbery quality of a yoga master and the studied mannerisms of Steve Jobs.

Chester's company, LIVE Corp., is a not-at-all disguised spoof of Apple. They offer to relocate the people of the town while things are tidied up. Meanwhile, Flint is enticed with a job offer, including the potential to join the ranks of the Thinkonauts -- Chester's geek elite.

But, wouldn't you know, it turns out Flint's food machine is still cranking out exotic eats, so he's recruited to go back and set things right.

Joining him out a sense of camaraderie are meteorologist/girlfriend Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), grumpy beetle-browed dad (James Caan), bully-turned-doofus-sidekick Brent (Andy Samberg), doctor/videographer Manny (Benjamin Bratt), police officer/acrobat Earl (Terry Crews) and Steve (Neil Patrick Harris), Flint's monkey assistant. New to the crew is Barb (Kristen Schaal), Chester's pushy orangutan assistant.

Things get interesting when they arrive on the island, where it turns out the food is not only still getting cranked out, it's actually taken on sentient animal form. So Flint and friends are chased by a cheeseburger spider (much scarier than it sounds) and buddy up with a walking, talking strawberry.

I just loved the huge menagerie of critters the filmmakers came up with -- it's a real feast for the eyes. There are hippos that resemble potatoes, leek brontosaurus, a taco tyrannosaur, "shrimpanzees," and a whole lot more.

I just wish co-directors Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn, and screenwriters John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein and Erica Rivinoja, could've come up with a story and characters to match the excellent visuals. The people struggle to qualify as one-dimensional, since they each have exactly one defining characteristic.

As for the 3-D, I would advise you to skip the upcharge -- the special effects really aren't special enough that you need to see them splayed out across your field of vision.

My almost-3-year-old seemed reasonably engaged throughout the movie, but rarely laughed out loud or started chattering or clapping excitedly. "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2" is competent, nice-looking entertainment for little ones that will soon be forgotten, and deserves to be.

Review: "Despicable Me 2"

The first “Despicable Me” was a bit of a disappointment to me, mostly because I liked the idea of an animated world dominated by super-villains, unencumbered by drippy do-gooders. Of course, the entire story arc was about dastardly scientist Gru learning to find his inner daddy instincts as he adopts three adorable little girls -- trading death rays for unicorns, so to speak.

With "Despicable Me 2," we're already past the hump of Gru's transformation: he's a good guy now, retired from the world domination shtick. His vast underground lair, populated by yellow stump-like minions chattering incoherently, has been given over to producing "delicious jams and jellies."

But then he's recruited by the Anti-Villain League, a global spy agency fighting baddies like his former self. They want Gru to find out which of his ex-colleagues has stolen PX-41, a serum that turns anyone injected with it into an indestructible purple rage monster.

Gru, again voiced with an enthusiastic Slavic dialect by Steve Carell, relishes the chance to get back into the game. Turns out the jam thing wasn't working out -- his ancient assistant (Russell Brand) quit, and even the minions thought the stuff tasted horrid.

It's a whole lot of slapsticky action, mostly involving those minions, some gastrointestinal humor and even a side plot about his oldest daughter (Miranda Cosgrove) having a love interest. Gru does not take well to the idea of suitors, but look at from the boy's perspective: your sweetie's dad resembles a Bond villain.

Of course, Gru's got his own thing with the ladies going on. Kristen Wiig voices Lucy, a junior AVL agent who approaches absolutely everything with over-the-top enthusiasm. She's assigned to be his partner, and things start to get a little touchy-feely.

They set up shop as pretend bakers in a mall, where they start scouting out the fellow store proprietors as potential suspects. Gru insists the florid, hefty owner of a Mexican restaurant looks like El Macho, a villain thought dead after riding a rocket strapped to a shark into a volcano. (Like he said, macho.) But his opinion is dismissed by the League uppity-ups.

Directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud and screenwriters Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul have a lot of fun with this material, keeping it fast and loose. They keep returning to those crazy, gibberish-spouting minions -- which isn't a surprise since Coffin and Renaud supply the voices.

At one point the yellow guys start disappearing, fodder for inevitable experiments with the PX-41. Gru, distracted by the job, his girls and Lucy, doesn't notice at first: "We're going to have to revisit your guys' vacation time ... I can't find anyone lately!"

Visually the film features the same exaggerated biology and zippy action as last time. Lucy looks stretched out like a piece of taffy, and Gru is an amalgamation of round and sharp shapes, punctuated by that nose that could double as a shiv (and so inconvenient for kissing!). I'd advise skipping the 3-D upgrade, which exists only for a few moments of levity where stuff flies at the audience.

"Despicable Me" is essentially more of the same. It's light, amusing, rather unambitious, but agreeable.