It took five years to make a sequel to “The LEGO Movie,” but that apparently wasn’t enough time to come with anything more original. This is basically a rehash of the smash animated flick based on the ubiquitous building toys, which most parents are convinced are secretly designed to cause maximum pain when stepped on.
Emmet (voice of Chris Pratt), the everyman hero from the first movie, finds himself shunted aside after his cheery savior shtick has worn thin. The world has become very apocalypse-y in the years since, with daily attacks by brightly-colored aliens.
As you may recall, the toys are living out their lives at the direction of real-world human kids, in this case a brother and sister whose animosity gets played out in the toy realm.
Transported to the aliens’ world, Pratt and his crew --Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks), Unikitty (Alison Brie), MetalBeard (Nick Offerman) and Benny (Charlie Day) -- find themselves faced with a proposed alliance. Specifically, their leader, Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) wants to put a ring on it with the earthlings’ brooding Batman (Will Arnett).
Face-paced to the point of incoherence, “The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part” is made strictly for the kids.
Bonus features are quite good. They include a commentary track by the filmmakers, a sing-along version that includes trivia and games, a music video for the song “Super Cool,” deleted scenes and outtakes, plus several making-of documentary shorts.
There’s a moment that arrives for each of us when we first truly feel old.
Maybe it’s flailing at some athletic endeavor that barely made you break a sweat back in the day. Or it’s a cultural disconnect, when you realize you not only don’t like the music that’s popular right now, but you can’t even name a top artist or song.
For me it was 2014’s “The Lego Movie.” My then-3-year-old found it to be wonderfully zippy, colorful and fun. Although I liked the film, I spent most of it mentally shouting, “Please slow down, this movie is going way too fast for me to follow!!”
Though it’s more palatable on subsequent viewings -- especially on video where you can pause and rewind -- the movie throws so much visual and verbal information at you at once, it can be an overwhelming experience for us past-young folks.
The sequel, “The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part,” doubles down on the blazing incomprehensibility. My son, now 8, declares it even better than the original. My eyes and brain, now five years older, had an even harder time keeping pace.
Though there are certainly some enjoyable sections and throwaway jokes aimed at adults, this is a movie strictly for the kids.
The story picks up exactly where the last left off. If you’ll recall, the LEGO figurines were acting out a version of the playtime of a human father and son, in a very “Toy Story” kind of way. Dad finally learned to let go and allow his son to mess up his elaborate LEGO sets, but since he was letting him play with the stuff it was only fair to bring in his kid sister, too.
Turns out the siblings (Jadon Sand and Brooklynn Prince) did not get along. The utopian LEGO wonderland created by the fall of Lord Business has morphed into a Mad Max-like wasteland dubbed “Apocalypseburg” in which the sullen inhabits fight off near-daily invasions by cutesy aliens courtesy of sister’s more bedazzled imagination.
Emmet (voice of Chris Pratt), the everyman hero whose quest was all about finding out whether he was special -- hint: we all are -- is now seen as hopelessly out of touch. Even his lady friend, Lucy/Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), tells him he needs to grow up and get grimmer. Batman (Will Arnett) is their new savior since he’s already sufficiently dark and brooding.
The trio and a few other key team members -- robot/pirate MetalBeard (Nick Offerman), spaceship-obsessed Benny (Charlie Day) and bipolar unicorn/feline Unikitty (Alison Brie) -- are whisked away to the Systar System where they must face off with their counterparts. But it turns out their leader, shapeshifting Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi (say it out loud), voiced by Tiffany Haddish, is proposing an alliance.
Another newcomer is Rex Dangervest, a dashing adventurer also voiced by Pratt who gives Emmet advice about growing up and being more manly. The joke is that Rex is a mash-up of Pratt’s other big-screen roles as a raptor trainer, space hero and cowboy.
There are a few fun musical sequences, with a new earworm to replace the “Everything Is Awesome” song from the last movie, which also gets a somewhat moody reprise. Haddish gets her own tune, and turns out to be surprisingly more mellifluous than you’d think based on her comedy persona.
“The LEGO Movie 2” is pretty much more of the same. If you’ve seen any of the other LEGO movies you know what you’re getting, and that your kids will undoubtedly like it, and you’ll feel a little dazed after watching it. Take heart that this will be them someday.
“Hearts Beat Loud” is a warm, sad, sweet hug of a movie. It’s got catchy music, genuine adult relationships and a wise heart.
Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons play father and daughter living in in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. He’s a mopey widower who runs a failing record shop and used to be in a band. She’s about to go off to college to become a doctor. They genuinely love each other, but they’re at that stage in life where their gravitational pulls are going in different directions.
Frank (Offerman) does insist that he and Sam (Clemons) still hold their semi-regular “jam sesh” where they punk around with their instruments. One evening it’s especially fruitful, their noodling condenses into an actual song, which Frank records and, on a whim, uploads to Spotify.
He’s astonished when the tune gets a lot of airtime. A record label guy even shows up at the shop talking about a contract and an LP. Soon Frank’s head is buzzing: maybe Sam can take a gap year while they go on the road, deepen their bond and let him live out his rock god dreams?
Ted Danson is Dave, the silver-tongued bartender who dispenses wisdom and spirits to favored friends. Toni Collette plays Leslie, the landlord for their shop, and also a very available lady Frank has his eyes on. Maybe all his hopes and dreams are suddenly coming to fruition?
Directed by Brett Haley (“The Hero”) from a screenplay he wrote along with Marc Basch, “Hearts Beat Loud” is poignant and heartfelt. It’s a movie about having dreams, but also knowing when it’s time to let go of them and form some new ones.
“Hearts Beat Loud” is a very different take on the familiar “putting together a band” movie. This band consists of just a middle-aged father and his teen daughter, the latter of whom has such disregard for their musical abilities that she insists, “We’re not a band” -- which becomes the group’s name.
And while there are the usual tantalizing dreams of cutting an album, topping the charts, going on tour, etc., we know pretty much from the get-go that this is not really in the cards.
This is not a film about finding fame, but learning to embrace the life you have.
Director Brett Haley, who co-wrote the script with Marc Basch, made the wonderful and (alas) little-scene drama, “The Hero,” last year. Both that film and this one have sadness and regret at their core, but also a strong sense of love and even a smidgen of hope. And they boast not a little humor, with “Hearts” being closer in form to an overt comedy.
It’s probably the best film role that Nick Offerman has had. A TV comedy king (“Parks and Recreation”), he’s been very busy with small supporting parts in mostly smaller movies (including “The Hero.”) Here he gets a chance to play the lead, in a meaty role as a guy going through life with a smirk on his face, but only to hide his pain and disappointment.
Frank Fisher had it all: he was young and in a hot band with a tremendously talented lead singer, who also became his wife and bore them a daughter, Sam (the absolutely radiant Kiersey Clemons). When his wife was killed in an accident, Frank came off the road and opened up Red Hook Records, a dive-ish shop in Brooklyn catering exclusively in LPs.
Seventeen years later, Sam is about to go off to UCLA to study medicine. The store is foundering, as Frank still loves music but is profoundly indifferent to people who want to buy music.
In the opening scene, be blows off a customer, preferring to listen to Jeff Tweedy on his headphones, refusing to put out his cigarette and generally annoying the guy enough he buys the record he had been looking at on Amazon, then taunts Frank, showing him the phone with the transaction. Frank probably deserved it.
What’s worse, Frank has come to realize that Sam sees him as deeply uncool. In fact, as she confides to Rose (Sasha Lane), a quirky artist’s assistant with whom she begins the bloom of first love, she chose a school in Los Angeles primarily to get away from home.
They’ve always dabbled in playing music together, he on guitar and she on keyboards, though these days Frank has to needle Sam to get her nose out of the books long enough to share their semi-regular “jam sesh.” One night, Sam pulls out a hook she’s been noodling with, Frank lays a guitar track on top of it, she sings a few lines and before you know it, they’ve got a song.
Frank is thrilled at this chance to make music and spend time with his daughter. He puts the song on Spotify and is astonished when it makes an indie playlist and gets lots of airtime. A record label guy stops by the store to chat him up. Soon his head is filled: maybe Sam could take a gap year while they go on tour and become rock gods?
Toni Collette is Leslie, Frank’s landlord, who’s also a friend and, he hopes, maybe something more. She cherishes the friendship but is wary about the more. Ted Danson plays Dave, silver of hair and tongue, who runs the neighborhood bar, dispensing “the good stuff” to favored patrons along with sage counsel. “We don’t always get to do what we love, Frankie, so we’ve got to love what we do.”
The music, by Keegan DeWitt, has a slightly dreamy quality, pulsating beats that build upon themselves as plaintive, almost whispered vocals crescendo into cascading emotional peaks and valleys. Clemons is a gifted singer; Offerman is not, though his vocals in a couple of songs have a genuine, rough poignancy.
“Hearts Beat Loud” is a portrait of a father and daughter coming together while at cross ends. Frank knows what he loves, but it’s remained elusive his whole life. Sam is smart enough to know she can’t live her dad’s dream for him, yet isn’t ready to walk out of his life just yet. Together, the music they make isn’t the means to stardom, but the ends of fortifying their bond.
I haven’t read “The Decameron” by Italian master Giovanni Boccaccio, but a bawdy American version complete with modern vernacular, lots of cursing and sex isn’t as out of place as it might seem. The 14th century collection of 100 stories focusing on love, virtue and mercantilism was very much a product of its time, as is this comedic iteration starring a cast of familiar screen humorists.
Plus, you’ve just got to admire the gumption of making a flick based on an obscure (to most people) medieval text that gives an excuse for a bunch of well-known comediennes to get their kits off.
I enjoyed the movie in pieces, though even at a slender 89 minutes it starts to feel like a last-third “Saturday Night Live” sketch that ran too long.
Based on one tale by Boccaccio, writer/director Jeff Baena’s story is centered on a remote convent near Cartagena in 1347. Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly) is the benign and rather ineffectual priest, while Molly Shannon plays Sister Marea, the head nun who really runs the place.
Most of the resident nuns are young, repressed sorts yearning to misbehave and break out of the boredom. Alison Brie is Alessandra, goody-goody daughter of a merchant whose donations largely support the convent. She’s just doing the nun thing while dad (Paul Reiser) builds up the dowry so she can get married, but business is bad.
Genevra (Kate Micucci) is the neurotic, annoying one whose thing is tattling on the other nuns’ misdeeds. (Sister so-and-so took two portions of turnips, doncha know.) Aubrey Plaza is Fernanda, the bitchy nun who keeps wandering off to fetch the runaway donkey, and other things.
It’s a bit shocking at first to hear women in head-to-toe habits dropping f-bombs left and right, not to mention their occasional, inexplicable cruelty.
When a strapping young peasant, Massetto (Dave Franco), takes up residence at Tommasso’s invitation, all of their erotic and/or malevolent energies become focused in his direction. He ran off from servitude to a local nobleman after carrying on an affair with the missus, so Tommasso instructs him to pretend he’s a deaf mute as a cover story.
Massetto’s contretemps with his former master, Lord Bruno, is a festive side adventure of its own, with Nick Offerman as the glowering aristocrat constantly raving about “the Florentine conspiracy” and other threats to his wealth and status. No one does the combination of facial hair and peevishness better than Offerman.
Two late arrivals are Fred Armisen as the area bishop dropping in for an inspection, and Jemima Kirke as Marta, a childhood friend of Fernanda who helps magnify her livelier interests.
Soon Massetto finds himself repeatedly bedded, willingly or not, in what feels like a slowed-down Benny Hill caper. Meanwhile, the ongoing confessions with Father Tommasso become increasingly more interesting. Eventually things wind up in the forest, very bizarre and bare.
A fun and frothy fable about devotion, sex and whether they can be reconciled, “The Little Hours” shows that nuggets of comedy can be panned from just about any stream.
There’s a scene in “The Hero” where Sam Elliott, as aging cowboy actor Lee Hayden, runs through lines for an audition. It’s for one of those generic big-budget spectacles, the sort of movie that could give Lee’s moribund career a life-changing boost.
And the dialogue is just complete garbage -- we’re talking Razzies awards territory here.
Yet Lee invests the lines with so much authority, such hard-wrung emotional intensity, that you’d swear he’d sauntered out of a shot from “Unforgiven.” His reading leaves the buddy running lines with him, and us, just floored.
You could say much the same about the whole of Elliott’s performance, which should be remembered as the zenith of a long and noble career.
Blessed with a voice like creased leather and a face straight out of a Ken Burns historical documentary -- that iron glare, haphazard angles and totemic mustache -- Elliott has spent decades playing cowpokes, deputies and other hard men who support the hero of the story with unflagging loyalty and, when necessary, sterner steps.
Now Elliott is the leading man, playing a sort-of version of himself, if maybe a few rungs down the ladder of fame.
Lee is a TV and film actor whose heyday faded half a lifetime ago. By his own reckoning he only ever made one movie worth a damn, from which this film takes its title. These days he mostly just smokes a lot of weed, hangs around with his former co-star/solitary friend/drug dealer, Jeremy (Nick Offerman), and waits for the phone to ring.
His only real gig is doing voiceovers, commercials for barbecue sauce and such – something the real-life Elliott knows a thing or two about as pitchman for trucks, beef and beer. In the opening scene, he is repeatedly prompted by the offscreen technician to do “just one more” take, ad nauseum.
It’s an apt metaphor for Lee’s career: stuck in a rut, but one he’d like to keep plying if anybody’d let him climb back in the saddle for real.
His agent, who clearly has bigger clients on his mind, drops one piece of news: a group called the Western Appreciation and Preservation Society would like to give him their lifetime achievement award. It’s just a bunch of oldsters who like wearing cowboy hats and throw themselves a party once a year, and Lee brushes it off.
He is long divorced from his wife, Valerie (Katharine Ross, who knows from Westerns), and barely has a relationship with his adult daughter, Lucy (Krysten Ritter). When he bumps into Charlotte (Laura Prepon), a cool, smart chick who’s about his kid’s age and makes goo-goo eyes at him, Lee’s first instinct is to become defensive about the preposterousness of it.
“Seventy,” Lee snarls when he finally goads her into asking his age, practically spitting out the addendum, “One!”
But they start to have a thing, and Lee decides he might as well go accept that award after all, especially if he can have a pretty thing on his arm. They drop some drugs beforehand to mellow out, stuff happens at the ceremony, and without going into it all, his phone starts to ring again.
There’s one other key piece of information: Lee has just learned he has a deadly form of cancer that is mostly going to put him six feet under before too long. He starts to experience dreams/flashbacks in which he is again the star of a Western, an existentialist jaunt in which old debts have piled up and a reckoning comes creeping.
It’s still stunning how a widebrim and six-shooter fit Elliott so well, less accoutrements than intrinsic parts of the man’s iconography.
Things go from there. Director Brett Haley, who previously worked with Elliott on “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” co-wrote the script with Marc Basch as a clear homage to the actor. It’s a look at a guy who’s been waiting his whole life for his fortune to change, and when it happens it’s at exactly the wrong time.
Sullen yet hopeful, with even a nugget or two of joy, “The Hero” isn’t a swan song to a type of actor whose day has passed, but a showcase for one very much in his prime.
“My Life as a Zucchini” has a very childlike animated look and premise. It’s very much about childhood, though I don’t think children are its proper audience.
This French/Swiss stop-motion gem, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, can be quite glum and even depressing. I daresay most people will shed a tear or two while watching it. But there's also quite a bit of magic and awe packed into its slim 70-minute running time.
It's about a sad, hollow-eyed 9-year-old named Icare, who prefers to go by the nickname his mother has given him, Zucchini. He spends his days in his loft bedroom playing alone, while his mother, despondent over his father's long-ago abandonment, drinks herself into a stupor while watching TV. There is almost certainly abuse happening, emotional and probably physical, too.
"Zucchini" undoubtedly originated as an insult, but now the boy clings to that identity with a clinging sense of desperation.
But then Zucchini accidentally kills her and is sent to an orphanage called Fountaines. The officious policeman handling his case, Raymond, tries to be nice on the way there, letting the boy fly his beloved kite from the police car. He has drawn a picture of his father upon it dressed as a superhero, and if that doesn't make you well up right there, then I can't even.
The other kids are lost souls like him with a mix of tales of parental woe -- missing, deported, dead, high on drugs. The children all bear emotional scars and some on the outside as well.
The biggest boy, a redhead named Simon, takes on the role of bully, though he sees himself more as the unofficial leader and tough-love protector. He collects all the stories behind each orphan and wants Zucchini's, too. Simon teases, and cajoles, and bothers, and eventually things come to blows and we think we know where this is heading. But maybe not.
The other children include the boy who wets the bed and refuses to lie; the girl who hides her face with her hair and nervously taps her fork; the timid lad who buries his sorrows in food; and the girl who runs out excitedly at every approaching car, thinking it's her mother returned.
Things start to ease up with the arrival of Camille. She's been staying with her aunt after the death of her parents, but the uncaring woman can't stand her moping anymore. She and Zucchini form an instant rapport that shows the buds of romance.
The other kids are endlessly fascinated by this, and soon there's lots of talk about love and sex, which in Simon's description involves the man's willy "exploding." The chubby kid, terrified, declares he will remain celibate forever.
(Like I said, not really for little kids. The film's PG-13 rating is more for themes than any explicit violence or language.)
Directed by Claude Barras, who wrote the screenplay along with three others based on the novel by Gilles Paris, "My Life as a Zucchini" has a deliberately throwback look, with the characters and objects seemingly formed out of molded clay. I liked how the animators played with perspective -- cars have tires the size of doughnuts -- and the way the people's elbows just curve, with no bend.
The bright colors and sharp lines are a contrast to the movie's sense of melancholy and ambling story. The situation evolves, but in a naturalistic way rather than via a structured narrative.
The nicely goofy teacher, Mr. Paul, takes up with Rosy, the assistant administrator, prompting more exploding willy talk. Zucchini writes to Raymond the cop, who comes for occasional visits where the other boys drop water balloons on his head. (Most of them have not had positive interactions with law enforcement.) Camille's aunt reappears and causes trouble.
Mostly, the film is an interior look at what it's like to be a kid when they take you to the place where there's "nobody left to love you," to use Simon's words. The children are constantly in conflict with each other, but there's also an unspoken understanding of camaraderie for a diverse set of young souls caught in the same situation.
The way Camille quietly undermines Simon's authority, while appearing to knuckle under to his alpha-male vibe, is quite charming.
I also loved the simple poetry of how the orphanage provides a slider bar for each child to express how they're feeling, with illustrations ranging from sunny to stormy. Simon's is perpetually sunk to the bottom, while the others' rise and fall with the emotional tide.
The film is being released in both its original French with subtitles and with English dubbing. The French voices include Gaspard Schlatter, Sixtine Murat, Paulin Jaccoud, Michel Vuillermoz and Brigitte Rosset, while the American cast has Erick Abbate, Ness Krell, Romy Beckman, Nick Offerman, Will Forte, Ellen Page and Amy Sedaris.
It's a wonderful movie in any tongue, smart and tender yet straight-eyed and unsentimental. It grasps that children understand a lot of what is going on when things turn bad, even when they seem confused and non-responsive.
That was the three-word review provided by a pal who saw the movie before me, and it sums up “Sing” better than I could.
This is a breezy, glitzy animated jukebox show in which movie stars play singing critters getting together for a big talent competition. It will probably win with most children, especially those who like pop songs and want to hear Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson and the like belting them out through the mouths of pigs and porcupines.
Grownups may find it a bit tedious -- I came awfully close to catching a few Zzzs during our screening -- but it builds a good head of steam toward a showstopper finale.
Written and directed by Garth Jennings, who also provides the voices of one of the minor characters, “Sing” is set in an all-animal metropolis very much like the one in “Zootopia,” where humans are neither seen nor heard, and may not even exist in this world. (Christophe Lourdelet is co-director.)
Matthew McConaughey, who turns out to be a real vocal chameleon between this and his voice acting in “Kubo and the Two Strings,” plays Buster Moon. He’s a koala bear charlatan who runs a grand old theater that’s had one big failure after another.
McConaughey plays Moon light and schmaltzy, employing the upper register of his voice without a hint of that famous Texas drawl. Moon is an old-school “let’s put on a show” type with a heart of gold, but isn’t above stiffing contractors and a dab of flim-flam.
With the bank threatening repossession, he comes up with an idea for a huge singing contest using local unknowns. Scraping together his last bit of cash, he instructs his elderly iguana secretary to put out flyers advertising a $1,000 prize, but through some slapstick action it gets turned into $100,000. Soon every critter in town who thinks they can warble worth a darn is beating down his door.
McConaughey doesn’t get past humming, but there is a great deal of singing, both old standards and a few new tunes. Some of the actors we already knew could sing -- Johansson, Seth MacFarlane. But it’s a treat to hear Reese Witherspoon, as hectored porcine housewife Rosita, fry up some bacon and serve it with style.
Pop singer Tori Kelly plays Meena, an elephant who takes a job as stagehand because she’s too shy to show her talent. Johansson is Ash, a surly teen porcupine rocker who gets to step out of the shadow of her controlling boyfriend. MacFarlane voices Mike, a streetwise mouse who dresses, behaves and sings like he stepped right out of Sinatra’s Rat Pack.
The real sensation is Taron Egerton, the affable Brit you may remember from “Eddie the Eagle” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” He plays Johnny, a Cockney gorilla who comes from a clan of career criminals, and doesn’t want to follow in the family footsteps. Egerton’s got some truly golden pipes, soft and silky.
There’s really not a whole lot of narrative ambition to “Sing.” Each character has a mini arc to travel along, and we know where they’re going to land two minutes after we meet them. But the songs are nice to listen to, the creatures are crazy cute and your kids will be entertained for 108 minutes.
It’s rare to see a film character as clearly drawn as Greg, the narrator and protagonist of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.”
Most of the people we encounter in movies we instinctively recognize as constructs, things created for the purposes of telling a story. But Greg, who’s adeptly played by Thomas Mann, seems to step through the screen and sit down next to us, cracking jokes and infecting us with his geeky charm.
This Sundance favorite is based on the book by Jesse Andrews, who also wrote the screenplay, and directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. It’s the second feature as a director for Gomez-Rejon, who spent years as an apprentice and second unit director for the likes of Martin Scorsese and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Together they’ve crafted a film that is both very cinematic and un-movie-like. It pokes fun at some of the conventions of filmmaking, such as title cards that say things like, “The part after all the other parts.” Their main triumph, though, is in giving us a young man who’s such a confounding and interesting mix of flaws and virtues.
He’s like a 21st-century Holden Caulfield, though Greg’s ire is mostly projected inward rather than out at the world around him.
Greg is a 17-year-old floater. He wanders between the various cliques of Pittsburgh’s Schenley High School with friendly detachment, an emissary to all but a member of none. Insecure and self-effacing, he is so afraid of causing or receiving pain that he tends not to feel anything. Even his best friend since kindergarten, Earl (RJ Cyler), is referred to as a “coworker” because of the short films they make parodying well-known ones.
(Greg likes to brag about how awful they are, but they’re little 1-minute slices of brilliance. “A Sockwork Orange” is played out entirely with tube socks, while “2:48 Cowboy” emulates the seediness of a male gigolo attempting to ply his trade in the middle of the afternoon.)
His world gets thrown for a loop when Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a classmate in his class with whom he’s barely acquainted, is diagnosed with leukemia. Greg’s well-meaning parents (Connie Britton and Nick Offerman), who are friend’s with the girl’s mother (Molly Shannon), insist that he visit her and offer companionship.
Their first meeting is awkward -- that’s pretty much baked into all of Greg’s interpersonal relations -- but goes well enough to justify another, and then another. Soon they’re hanging out, watching movies, talking about teen stuff, and bonding. She gets sicker, they grow closer, and he and Earl embark on a mission to make movie just for Rachel.
Rachel and Earl aren’t as focused as characters as Greg is, but that's intentional. The movie is about him, and they are realized only through his eyes. Other side players stroll in and out of his personal frame, each with the sort of distinct traits you only see in quality films.
For instance, Greg’s dad is a tenured sociology professor, which he translates as meaning he doesn’t have to work a lot, so he mostly stays home and experiments with strange culinary dishes. (When Earl comes over, he offers the boys a snack of dried cuttlefish.)
His history teacher (Jon Bernthal) is a strutting, tatted-up rock star who admonishes them to “respect the research.” Shannon is exquisite as Rachel’s mom, who drinks and flirts to hide her pain. Katherine C. Hughes shines as Madison, a pretty girl who unwittingly stomps on Greg’s heart on a virtually daily basis.
In his narration, Greg warns us repeatedly that this is not a sappy love story in which he and Rachel fall in love and then she dies. This is true and also not entirely true, but I’ll leave it to you to discover where verity lies.
Somewhere in this review I should mention that “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” is also very, very funny. Andrews gives us all sorts of wonderful comedic situations and dialogue. (Of Rachel’s absent father, Greg says, “You need to apply for a dad refund.”) In one scene, Greg drafts his college application personal essay in the voice and perspective of Werner Herzog.
If you don’t know who Werner Herzog is… well, maybe it’s best if you just move along.
Not everything is awesome about “The Lego Movie” -- despite the assertion of that obsessively earworm-y song from Tegan and Sara featured in the kiddie animated flick from earlier this year. However, it is a boingy, entertaining thrill ride that is sure to keep younger children occupied for a goodly chunk of their summer vacation.
It might get old pretty quick for parents – I’ve already watched it three times with my 3½-year-old, and am ready to bring a book to our next couch time together. But this hyperactive flick isn’t made for oldsters.
Told mostly in Lego format, with the people, places and things made up of the iconic construction toys, the film follows the adventures of Emmet (spiffily voiced by Chris Pratt). A normal, generic, rather anonymous worker, he lives in a world where everyone follows the rules of their banal society.
Then he falls in with Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a member of the gang of Master Builder insurgents rebelling against the tyrannical Lord Business (Will Ferrell), who hates it when people use their imaginations rather than following the instructions that come with each Lego set.
There’s also a wise wizard (Morgan Freeman), a cop who’s both good and bad (Liam Neeson), pirate/robot Metal Beard (Nick Offerman) and Batman (Will Arnett), who’s additionally Wyldstyle’s bad-boy beau.
The animation is funky, and funny. It’s meant to look low-tech, as if everything really were made of the blocky toys. So the characters have drawn-on faces (watch out for nail polish remover!) and claw hands. Yet the computer-generated look is flashy and textured. I loved how when Emmet takes a shower, blue blocks representing water spill over his body.
Just like the song, “The Lego Movie” will grow increasingly irritating with repetition. But your kids will enjoy it the first time, and the 47th.
The movie comes with a host of video extras, including a feature-length commentary track. There are also outtakes, deleted scenes, storyboards, animations tests, making-of featurettes and spotlights on particular characters like Batman. There are even short movies made by fans using Lego blocks.
If you're tempted to make a joke about "22 Jump Street," the sequel to the hit comedy starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, continuing with future iterations of "23 Jump Street," and so on, don't bother. The movie has already beaten you to the punch at poking fun at itself.
In fact, one of the most refreshing thing about this reboot of the 1980s TV show is that it gleefully wallows in its own crass commercialism. It's a wicked send-up of not only the whole buddy-cop genre, but of itself.
Our film comedies have now reached the level of ironic detachment where the snake is eating its own tail. Nothing we see is meant to be taken at face value. So the stars aren't playing the roles of undercover cops posing as college students -- one the brainy dweeb and the other the lunkhead bruiser -- but the parody versions of them.
At one point, Hill and Tatum walk into their new "undercover" police headquarters, which happens to be right across the street from their old one. Next door, the "23 Jump Street Apartments" are currently under construction.
If you think that's hip and hilarious, wait till the end credits, which takes the same joke and runs it into the end zone, spikes the ball, bursts out of the stadium into the parking lot, and keeps going.
After inept rookie cops Schmidt and Jenko (Hill and Tatum, respectively) managed to break up a huge high school drug ring, they're tasked with doing the same thing again at MC State. When Schmidt tries to suggest other approaches, their deputy chief (Nick Offerman) sternly enforces the rule of sequels: do exactly the same thing as last time.
This they do, with the socially awkward Schmidt struggling to fit into the college party scene, while Jenko makes the football team as a walk-on and bonds with their charismatic quarterback (Wyatt Russell), who may or may not be lynchpin of campus narcotics trafficking.
The specifics of the plot are so tiresome that co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and their trio of screenwriters barely even bother to pay attention to them. The movie mostly jumps from scene to scene, generally involving Hill and Tatum spewing out motormouth gibberish, making fools of themselves while also commenting on the proceedings as they're unfolding. The movie doesn't so much do jokes as stages uncomfortable situations.
This is the comedy of embarrassment. Much of this is painful to watch, and in seeing our boys squirm we are intended to derive laughs.
And there are a lot of them, though there are long stretches in the middle where we feel more sorry for the people we're following than amused by them.
The lead actors are both in their 30s, and look it, and one of the running gags is that absolutely no one they meet believes they are college age.
"I'm 19," Schmidt says, straight-faced.
"Nineteen minutes late to the pinochle game?" a snarky girl responds.
After awhile, though, the shtick starts to wear thin and we know everything that's going to happen -- like that no gunfight can commence without an extended back-and-forth of insults and quips between the antagonists.
At nearly two hours long, "22 Jump Street" far outstays its welcome. Like an actual college party, it's raucous and intoxicating for awhile, but after 90 minutes you've seen all there is to see, and the music shuffle starts to repeat.
"The Lego Movie" is utterly forgettable but also undeniably fun. It's aimed straight at the single-digit age group, and is so fast-paced that older, slower minds may have trouble following all the action. But as disposable entertainment for kids, its hits its mark square-on.
If you're not aware of the franchise of Lego entertainment based on the iconic snap-together toys, then you must have had your head buried or not be a parent to young children. Often used to recreate populist favorites like Star Wars, they are near-ubiquitous in videos and gaming. Those little Lego-people with blocky bodies torsos and hook hands are the stars.
This is the first feature film featuring the yellow gang, and they've brought in a team of animation veterans with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs"), who co-wrote and -directed. They keep the movie bright, light and zany.
The set-up is rather cute: all the people live in a multi-faceted universe divided up into realms that match various Lego theme sets -- medieval, pirates, wild West, etc. All are ruled by Lord Business (voice by Will Ferrell), who likes for everything to be put together exactly according to the instructions to match the pictures on the front of the box. Any "weird stuff" is perpetually torn down and rebuilt.
Emmet (a terrific Chris Pratt) is an ordinary construction work -- so ordinary, in fact, that he's virtually indistinguishable from the crowd and doesn't have any friends. But like all the others he's been brainwashed into a life of superficial happiness, where everyone watches the same TV show ("Where Are My Pants?"), eats only at chain restaurants and sing and dance to the same omnipresent song ("Everything Is Awesome!", which actually is catchy in a supremely annoying way.)
But there is a rebellion afoot led by the Master Builders -- figures who can instantly piece together complex objects and vehicles from the various Lego pieces lying about. Emmet stumbles right into their plot and finds himself stuck to the Piece of Resistance, a nondescript block, that marks him as the Chosen One who will lead the overthrow of the tyrannical Business.
Trouble is, Emmet is such an unimaginative, vanilla type of guy that he seems to lack the basic skill set of a savior. A better choice would be Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a super-smart and talented rainbow-haired rebel who hitches on as Emmet's resentful sidekick.
Emmet is soon smitten by her, though she's in a committed relationship with her boyfriend, Batman ... yes, the Batman, deliciously voiced by Will Arnett. In this universe, anybody can appear in Lego form, so Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern also make cameos.
Rounding out the cast are Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius, an old sage and prophet; Nick Offerman as pirate/robot Metalbeard; Liam Neeson as Bad Cop/Good Cop, whose mood is determined by which way his head is turned; Uni-Kitty (Alison Brie), a cat/unicorn hybrid; and Benny, a "1980s space guy" voiced by Charlie Day.
The animation looks deceptively simplistic at first, since everything and everyone is made up of Lego parts. But the CG is actually quite detailed, and the pieces fly together so quickly it must have been a chore to animate.
"The Lego Movie" surprises with its carefree attitude and zippy antics. This won't make anyone's best-of list, but as throwaway entertainment during cinema's frigid season, it's a superb fit.
A redolent back-to-nature manifesto mixed with an ironic teen romp, “The Kings of Summer” is a quirky, enjoyable rite-of-passage indie.
The characters are smarter and more perceptive than one usually sees in this sort of movie, which comes from a pair of feature film rookies: director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and screenwriter Chris Galletta. I see a bright future for both, based on their work here.
Joe and Patrick are lifelong best buddies who are annoyed to the extreme by their home life. So they decide to spend their summer before sophomore year as runaways – they build a ramshackle house in the woods and live there, becoming one with nature and growing into men at the same time.
Joe is played by Nick Robinson and Gabriel Basso plays Patrick. Both offer naturalistic, smart performances that resemble real teenagers, not the usual too-cool types who sound like every word out of their mouths has been penned for them.
Joe is the more outspoken of the two, who hatches the idea to live as wood kings. His mother died a few years ago and his sister (Alison Brie) is already past college and moving into a settled relationship. That leaves Joe to contend with his obnoxious father, Frank, played in full grouch mode by Nick Offerman.
Frank is the sort of guy whose acerbic sense of humor was probably once quite engaging, but it’s taken on a bitter, antagonistic flavor. Frank is deeply unhappy, and he’s doing a great job of making everyone around him the same.
“Look at it this way, in a few years he’s going to pay for you to leave,” Joe’s sister offers as consolation.
Patrick’s parents (Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson) are nicer – too nice. They hover and fret like honeybees over a favored flower, which is so showered with attention it withers away. Patrick agrees to Joe’s plan not so much because he wants to live in the forest, but because anywhere else beats under their roof.
They construct a serviceable abode from spare parts – their front door is from a Port-a-Potty – and set up shop. Somewhere along the way they acquire a sidekick/mascot/hanger-on named Biaggio (Moises Arias), the strange runty kid from their class who speaks in odd declarative non-sequiturs. At first they worry about him killing them in their sleep, but before long Biaggio has become part of the troupe.
The trio of boy-men grow wispy beard-wannabes, bathe in the river and lackadaisically hunt animals with swords (for some reason, they have swords). Though when their food procuring efforts run dry, there’s a Boston Market a short hike away.
Things go alright for a while, with Frank and Patrick’s parents worked into a tizzy that would probably delight them if they were around to see it. But eventually the outside world must intrude, in the form of Kelly (a plucky Erin Moriarty), the girl who Joe is sweet on. She comes for a secret visit that spurs unforeseen complications.
The photography (by Ross Riege) is fantastic, and the by-play of dialogue is clever and biting. “The Kings of Summer” rides off the rails a little bit around two-thirds of the way through, as the story gets sidetracked into romantic turbulence that feels contrived. But like a gifted youth learning a new craft, the filmmakers right the ship and end their adventure on the right note.
Ever since Ray Milland first showed us the sweaty shakes of a desperate drinker in "The Lost Weekend" nearly 70 years ago, alcoholism has been a favorite, recurring subject for Hollywood. "Smashed" doesn't really add anything innovative to the picture, but this indie drama is still an unnerving portrayal, buoyed by a terrific performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Probably the biggest departure is that the drunks in "Smashed" are not suicidal or obviously self-destructive, a la "Leaving Las Vegas." Rather, they're functional alcoholics who manage to hold jobs and have relatively stable lives, while consuming astonishing quantities of booze.
To Kate (Winstead) and her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul), drinking is a lifestyle choice, not an addiction. They were raised with boozing parents, drank socially all through their teens and early 20s, and have just kept the party going.
"Everyone I know drinks. A lot," Kate confides.
Director James Ponsoldt, who co-wrote the screenplay with Susan Burke, focuses on Kate, and it's through her eyes we glimpse her cherished sense of normalcy slowly crumbling. Charlie remains a secondary character, a good-hearted guy from a wealthy family who's never had to earn anything in his life. When Kate finally makes a vow to change her life for the better and swear off booze, Charlie isn't willing to make the same leap, forcing a heavy choice on her.
The story opens with Kate waking up hung over and running late for work. It turns out she's a first-grade schoolteacher, and a good one who brings genuine enthusiasm to the classroom. But her drinking catches up with her, and she vomits in front of her kids.
Worse yet, when one of the tykes asks if she's pregnant, she assents rather than tell the truth. Unfortunately, it gets back to her principal (Megan Mullally), and the small white lie blossoms into a parade of deceit.
Dave (Nick Offerman), a co-worker who's been sober for nine years, encourages her to go to AA meetings, and that's where things really move into a higher plane. Winstead's performance during her first talk is a mix of brutal honesty, fear and a touch of despair.
Here is a young, smart woman who's forcing herself to face up to the fact that the things she used to do for fun are increasingly becoming what is harming her. It's a revelatory scene, almost giddy in its honesty and authenticity.
Octavia Spencer has a strong, small turn as Kate's AA mentor, and Mary Kay Place shows up as her mother -- and a frightening glimpse into her own possible future.
At a crisp 81 minutes, the film leaves some areas underexplored, especially Kate's relationship with Charlie. But "Smashed" works as more of a harrowing character portrait than a full-throated narrative.
