Review: "The Grinch"

“The Grinch” is bright, joyful, goofy and largely misguided.

Personally I always liked the darker undertones of Dr. Seuss’ tales. The Grinch is literally green with envy, a nasty old crank who looks down on the perpetually happy denizens of Whoville, while obviously wishing he could join in their caroling and merry-making.

He has to find his bottom before he can grow -- three sizes, heart-wise.

This new animated version jettisons much of the nastiness of the book, 1966 television special and 2000 live-action version starring Jim Carrey. He’s sad rather than loathsome, more worthy of pity than scorn. I certainly can’t imagine someone writing a whole song about how mean he is.

Dratted, he’s even nice to his dog, Max. He still makes him pull the sleigh, but it’s not all that hard and he gives lots of praises. “You’re the best dog a Grinch could hope for,” he practically purrs.

There are lots of changes from the original story. (Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney directed by a screenplay adaptation by Michael LeSieur and Tommy Swerdlow.) Instead of being an outcast, Grinch is a member of the community who occasionally drops into town to buy groceries. A flashback places him at the Whoville orphanage as a lad, and it’s possible he’s actually a Who himself. I noticed they all have furry faces, though not so hirsute as the Grinch’s bounteous neon body hair.

Though, in one of the better throwaway jokes, it’s suggested that Grinchy is going gray and the green is a dye job.

Grinch is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, who’s proven himself to be a true vocal chameleon who can do both this and the dragon Smaug from the “Hobbit” movies. He lives in his vast mountain cave lair, getting about mostly by automatic chair. In his iteration he’s essentially a brilliant inventor throwing together contraptions to serve his whims.

Cindy Lou Who (Cameron Seely), the adorable little girl who helps teach Grinch the spirit of Christmas, even gets a backstory as the daughter of a harried single mom (Rashida Jones). She hatches a scheme to capture Santa on Christmas Eve so she can ask him to help her mother out, recruiting her friends to rig cookie traps. I don’t think Cindy Lou thought this out very well.

There’s lots of boingy action and kiddie-friendly humor thrown in to pump up the entertainment quotient. For instance, there’s a mountain goat that just randomly screams instead of braying. And an apprentice reindeer, Fred, who’s immensely fat but willing.

“The Grinch” is one of those movies that comes along, entertains children and is soon forgotten by adults.

Review: "Celeste and Jesse Forever"

I really wanted to like "Celeste and Jesse Forever" more than I did. It's a smart, wryly funny dramedy about a divorcing couple who can't quite seem to let go. Rashida Jones is a revelation in it, playing as distinctly drawn a female character as we've seen in a while.

My disconnect is that it's supposed to be the story of two people, when really it's about Celeste. Jesse is certainly in the picture, but his role is more to hold up the frame and let the audience gaze at her. We never get into his head the way we do Celeste's.

Given that this is a pet project of Jones -- she also is a producer and co-wrote the screenplay with Will McCormack -- it's not surprising that the light shines mostly on her. But the imbalanced nature of the way they're presented leaves us with a film that feels only partially complete.

Late in the story, Jesse complains to Celeste that she never saw him as an equal in their relationship. The same can be said for the movie.

Things aren't helped by Andy Samberg's lackluster performance as Jesse. A goofy actor from "Saturday Night Live" and several film comedies, Samberg simply doesn't have the acting chops to pull off something like this, with aspirations toward depth and complexity. He reads his lines as if he's searching for the hidden joke inside.

Although there are plenty of funny moments in the film, its essence veers more toward the somber than the profane. Samberg's presence makes the material seem more lightweight than it wants to be.

The story opens with a typical evening of the pair hanging out, cracking jokes and generally fitting together like hand in glove. These are the rare lovers who are also best friends. Except, at the end of their reverie, we learn they split up six months ago, and divorce proceedings are underway.

Certainly their friends have difficulty grasping the notion. They tell the couple they're just putting off the pain, but Jesse and Celeste insist their friendship will outlive their breakup. That seems a possibility, until they start getting interested in other people and sparks of friction begin flying.

Celeste is the more ambitious of the pair, a professional "trend forecaster" who's co-founder of a successful marketing firm. Elijah Wood has a neat little turn as her partner, who keeps making lame attempts to play the role of the catty gay pal, except he's too much of a business type to be convincing.

Meanwhile, Jesse is a failed artist who's never had a real job or even a checking account. Without it being said directly (at least initially), it would seem their breakup was initiated by doubts about Jesse's fitness to be a father, both hers and his.

The movie, directed by Lee Toland Krieger, is at its best when it's not trying to do too much. The story has a loose, easygoing feel and the characters interact the way real people do (or at least they way we'd like to think we do).

Most every person we meet turns out to be a little more nuanced than our first impression. For instance, Celeste's firm takes on a Ke$ha-like singer as a client, the sort of shallow pop songstress she despises, and finds out there's more to the young woman (Emma Roberts) than she thought. Or the slick business guy (Chris Messina) who tries to pick her up at yoga class.

"Celeste and Jesse Forever" is still a worthy movie, even if it's really more about one-half of a breakup than a whole.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "The Muppets"

The Muppets are back, and now they're Oscar-winning Muppets!

The successful reboot of the dormant puppet franchise of Jim Henson is a joyous walk down memory lane for Generation X kids like me who grew up on Kermit, Missy Piggy, Fozzie Bear and the rest of the gang. Now they can bring their own moppets to see the Muppets, and the cinematic circle of life is competed.

The film even picked up an Academy Award for best song (though I am compelled to point out it only had one competitor, in one of the weakest contests in Oscar history).

Jason Segal and Amy Adams are the human stars, though they're mostly just hanging around to set up the Muppets and their antics. (Segal also co-wrote the screenplay.) The running gag is that the Muppets are washed up and forgotten, until their old theater in Los Angeles is scheduled to be demolished by an evil oil tycoon (Chris Cooper), who thinks there's black gold underneath it.

The new character is Walter (voiced by Peter Linz), a Muppet who grew up with humans and thinks he is one, too. He's always been obsessed with Kermit & Co., and gets a chance to track down his old heroes and bring them back together for the proverbial One Last Show.

Director James Bobin goes for a blend of high and low humor -- pratfalls and silliness for the kiddies, and wry puns and breaking of the fourth wall for their parents. It's a good mix, and it's good to see the old gang again.

Video extras are quite good, though you have to ante up for the Blu-ray combo edition to get most of the best stuff. The DVD comes with a single featurette, dubbed "The Longest Blooper Reel Ever Made."

Upgrade to the DVD/Blu-ray combo pack and you gain several more featurettes, including the full version of the rap song sung by villain Tex Richman. You also get deleted scenes, Easter eggs and audio commentary with the director and screenwriters.

Go for the three-disc "Wocka-Wocka Value Pack," and you add the musical soundtrack.
The feature that's the most fun: when you pause the Blu-ray, the Muppets take over the screen for a special "Disney intermission."

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "The Muppets"

The recurring theme of "The Muppets" is that the whole gang hasn't seen each other for years, and all their fans have forgotten about them. They're trying to get back together for one last show, ostensibly to save their old theater from destruction but really to remind the world that they're still around, still funny and still capable of putting on a big to-do.

In reality, the return of Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and the rest of the Muppets is charming and welcome reintroduction of the puppets created by Jim Henson decades ago (an early version of Kermit debuted in 1955). They haven't been forgotten so much as misplaced in weak movies and third-rate television appearances.

Rather than returning like a lot of other beloved children's franchises, spiffed up in CGI and modern attitudes -- "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Garfield," "Yogi Bear" -- the Muppets are stubbornly old-school and kinda schmaltzy. They were a throwback to vaudeville even when the first Muppet movie came out in 1979, and now their boisterous singing and razzmatazz feels positively kitschy.

A whole generation of kids grew up on the Muppets, old enough now to bring their own children and catch up with Kermit & Co. The preview audience I attended of 30- and 40-something parents positively swayed with glee when the banjo strumming kicked off "Rainbow Connection."

Jason Segal is the Muppet savior, co-writing the script (with Nicholas Stoller) and starring as Gary. Segal, best known for R-rated comedies and adult-oriented television, mostly stays in the background and plays straight man, letting the Muppets take center stage.

Gary's brother is Walter (voiced by Peter Linz), who is obsessed with the Muppets and actually is one himself, although he doesn't seem to realize it. (One hint was a montage of their parents measuring their height, and Gary sprouts up while Walter never grows.) The stubborn conceit of the Muppets is that they're living creatures who don't know they have human hands manipulating them from the inside.

There appears to be little conscious attempt to age the Muppets or even acknowledge that the passage of time weighs on them. What exactly is the age span of frog made out of felt? Though it did seem to me that Fozzie Bear's eyebrows had acquired a touch of gray.

In the one nod to modern irony, there is plenty of breaking of the fourth wall, as the Muppets and their human tag-a-longs comment on the fact they are starring in a film. After assembling Kermit (voice of Steve Whitmire), Fozzie Bear (Eric Jacobson), Gonzo (Dave Goelz), and a few others, someone suggests that they save time by picking up the rest of the crew via musical montage.

I also guffawed when Gary's long-suffering girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) quips after the Muppets' pitch for a live telethon is turned down by every television studio in town: "This is going to be an awfully short movie!"

The heavy is Tex Richman, a wealthy oilman who's made an unlikely discovery of oil right beneath the Muppets' old Los Angeles theater. Chris Cooper, known for dramatic roles, attacks the part with obvious glee, even breaking into a rap assisted by his Muppet henchmen. ("Do you think we're working for the bad guy?" one asks the other.)

In one great throwaway joke, whenever Tex Richman is savoring his evil plans, he doesn't just break out into a maniacal laugh, but actually narrates it: "Maniacal laaauuuuugh!!"

Director James Bobin, a TV veteran, seems to grasp the tone and pitch of the Muppets, combining broad physical humor for kiddies with wry observations aimed at their parents. Though the story does get a big draggy near the middle, and the movie feels a little bit overlong.

Still, "The Muppets" is a joyful and successful reboot of a beloved franchise.

The movie is preceded by a 7-minute "Toy Story" short that finds Buzz Lightyear usurped by a micro-version of himself from a fast-food promotional giveaway. It's moderately amusing, though I savored the wink to Disney's mega-merchandising.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "The Social Network"

Who would've thought a few short months ago that a verbose drama about computer nerds would end up as the front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar?

But it's true: "The Social Network," which contains zero sex or violence, and consists mostly of legal depositions and flashbacks of college kids hunched over computers, was the best movie of 2010.

It's the story of the founding of Facebook, an experiment to link college students on the Web, and became a phenomenon -- and a company worth billions. It might not surprise you that Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who was recently named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, was not universally liked by those who knew him.
Especially those who ended up suing him.

The movie, which is a self-conscious evocation of "Citizen Kane," may not bear much resemblance to the actual Zuckerberg, in the same way that Orson Welles' opus was a fictionalized account of another media mogul, William Randolph Hearst.

But in a performance of contrasting attraction and repulsion, Jesse Eisenberg paints a portrait of a young man who would change the world by bringing friends together, even as he pushed his own away.

Extras, which are identical for the Blu-ray and two-disc DVD editions, are rife with goodies.

There are two separate feature-length commentary tracks: One by director David Fincher, and another with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and cast members Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence.

There is also a feature-length documentary, "How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?". Plus several featurettes on various aspects of production, including editing, musical score and soundtrack, visual effects and more.

I'm double-clicking "Like" on this one.

Movie: 4 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "The Social Network"

I cannot tell you if "The Social Network" is an accurate account of the founding of Facebook, the Internet colossus the lets people project their identity -- even create one -- on the Web.

The book it was based on by Ben Mezrich has been accused of being a highly fictionalized, one-sided affair that paints a portrait of Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a brilliant but destructive genius who estranged anyone close to him.

The irony being, of course, that the wunderkind who helped connect 500 million friends doesn't have any of his own. The few people he hadn't turned off with his abrasive, domineering personality he drove away through his obsessive need to build the millennium's Next Cool Thing.

What I can say about this film directed by David Fincher from a script by Aaron Sorkin is that it's an altogether mesmerizing tale, filled with unexpected dark humor, that plucks a lot of resonant strings about the Digital Age. On the surface it's a legal drama, but the story underneath the story is how techno-savvy nerds are using computer code to rewrite the power structures that have endured for generations.

It's an extravaganza of greed, ambition, stupendous egos and cutthroat business deals. It is certainly one of the best movies of the year.

In a bravura performance brimming with nervous energy, Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg, a computer science sophomore at Harvard who is dumped by his girlfriend in the film's opening minutes. Angry and half-drunk, Mark rushes back to his dorm and performs the Internet equivalent of a drive-by shooting, creating a nasty site called Facesmash where male students can rate the attractiveness of their female peers side-by-side.

The stunt crashes the school's servers and earns Mark academic probation from Harvard, but also demonstrates the power of social connections transported online.

When a pair of blueblood twin upperclassmen, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, pitch him the idea of creating an exclusive social networking site for Harvard, Mark immediately walks it across the street to his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who has an affinity for business and the cash to get them started.

The site goes live and is an immediate sensation, spreading to dozens of schools. The Winklevosses -- or Winklevi, as Mark dismissively dubs them -- try to use their old-money connections to shut Facebook down. When that fails, they sue.

The narrative unfolds as a series of flashbacks framed by depositions for the Winklevoss lawsuit ... and also, Eduardo's. As we learn early on, a massive split grew between the two co-founders, leading to Eduardo suing Mark for pushing him out of the company right as it was headed to the stratosphere.

The performances are universally terrific. Armie Hammer is a hoot playing both Winklevosses -- through the magic of CGI -- portraying basically decent young men trapped by the arrogance of the bubble of entitlement in which they've lived their whole lives.

And Justin Timberlake has a sly, scene-stealing turn as Sean Parker, the rogue entrepreneur behind music-sharing site Napster. Parker gloms onto Mark like a metrosexual Rasputin, coaxing him into moving the fledgling operation out to Silicon Valley and whispering sweet nothings in his ear about becoming billionaires.

Eduardo wants to play it conservative, building Facebook through conventional advertising, but Sean senses that Mark is more of a social outcast at heart, longing to flip his middle finger at the establishment -- encouraging stunts like showing up to an investor's meeting in a bathrobe, or printing business cards that say, "I'm CEO, Bitch."

The final, compelling shot of "The Social Network" shows Mark Zuckerberg sitting at his laptop on Facebook, hitting the refresh key in search of his Rosebud. It's an exquisite moment that reveals the character's interior better than any words could. What matters if it's true?

4 stars out of four