Video review: "The Space Between Us"

Part science fiction, part road movie, a whole lot angst-y teenage romance, “The Space Between Us” shows the limits of what you can do with a good cast of actors.

Asa Butterfield is a talented young thespian (“Hugo,” “Ender’s Game”), Britt Robertson has stood out in some not-so-great flicks (“The Longest Yard”), and Gary Oldman is, of course, Gary Frickin’ Oldman. Toss in Carla Gugino as a supporting figure, and that’s more talent than most movies can muster.

Alas, the story (screenplay by Allan Loeb) is a mish-mash of random themes and plot threads that don’t weave themselves together in any sort of coherent way. It ends up feeling like a combination of the old David-Bowie-as-space-alien movie, “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” with a human boy standing in for the cute outworlder being chased by a small army of scientists and law enforcement.

The set-up is that Gardner Elliott (Butterfield) is the first human born on Mars – an accident, as his mother and the leader of the astronaut expedition got herself pregnant shortly before takeoff. Now 16, he’s a super-smart kid with obvious impulse issues and a clinging longing for a chance to walk on Earth -- preferably in the company of a cute teen girl.

Tulsa (Robertson) is the gal in question. They’ve been communicating via video chat and messages for a while. She’s a tough outcast sort, so they share a sense of loneliness.

Through a lot of high-tech hi jinks, Gardner manages to get himself to Earth and, eventually, hook up with Tulsa. Unfortunately, after growing up in a low-gravity atmosphere, his body isn’t very suited to Earth’s weight. Ignoring the advice from the NASA eggheads, he and Tulsa run off together for an adventure.

After landing the girl, tops on his list is finding out who is father is. All Gardner has to go by is a photo he found in his mother’s stuff. (She died, of course, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a movie.)

Leading the chase for them is Nathaniel Shepherd (Oldman), a super-rich entrepreneur who dreamt up the Mars colony years ago, but has become something of a recluse ever since. He’s very fidgety and prone to neurotic outbursts, and seems able to command government troops and resources with a phone call, for some reason.

Director Peter Chelsom (“Hannah Montana: The Movie”) can’t manage to sustain a consistent tone to the movie or a steady emotional keel from his actors, so it’s not surprising that they seem to go off in different directions from each other. For Butterfield, that means coming across rather flat, while Oldman is a whirligig of haphazard behavior. Robertson tries to break out of the teen romcom prison bars the movie puts her behind.

“The Space Between Us” is a stellar idea for a film that never achieves liftoff.

Bonus features include five deleted scenes and an alternate ending. There is also a feature-length commentary by Chelsome and a 4-minute featurette, “Love.”

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Review: "The Space Between Us"

“The Space Between Us” is a cosmically flawed science fiction love story filled with talented actors striving mightily against bad material.

Some of the scenarios and dialogue ring so false, even the talents of Gary Oldman can’t save him from seeming preposterous at times. Asa Butterfield, who anchors the movie as the first human born on Mars who years to travel to Earth, has been terrific in fare like “Hugo” and the underrated “Ender’s Game.” Here he's a bit stiff and remote.

And Britt Robertson has often been the best thing about some not very good movies like “Tomorrowland” and “The Longest Ride.” She tries hardest of all, attempting to craft a character out of meet-cute tropes and puppy-love-on-the-run contretemps.

(Though somebody needs to tell her people that her days of passing as a teen are behind.)

I didn’t buy this movie for a minute. I didn’t swallow the premise, I didn’t believe in the characters, I wasn’t engaged in the plot the film puts them through. The whole affair is just tiresome and often ridiculous.

It plays like a combination of “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and any one of a dozen teenybopper romances.

Butterfield plays Gardner Elliot. In a long, tedious and largely unnecessary exposition, we learn about how his mother (Janet Montgomery) was the lead astronaut on the mission in 2018 to permanently colonize the red planet. Except she made a little mistake and got pregnant right before the launch. (Apparently none of the 8,500 physical tests they put astronauts through detected this.)

The heads of NASA and the Genesis company that conceived the Mars mission decide to cover up the baby's existence as a potential PR disaster, especially after Gardner's mom dies during child birth. Oldman plays Nathaniel Shepherd, the Steve Jobs-like head honcho who's always flinging his hands in the air and shouting in an exasperated manner.

Flash forward 16 years, and Gardner is now a hyper-smart, mischievous kid who longs to go back to Earth -- in no small part because he's got a gal pal with whom he exchanges text and video messages. (Despite taking nearly a year to travel between the planets, apparently by 2034 data can ping back and forth without even any buffering.)

Tulsa (Robertson) is a typical tough, alienated girl struggling through high school. She takes her nickname from her hometown, because here she has absolutely no friends. There's this weird scene where she wanders into the band room and starts noodling on an electric piano, and some boys peer over the edge of the window outside to laugh at her. Then they literally chase her out of the school as she tears off angrily on her motorcycle.

Haven't these boys ever seen someone playing a piano before. (Especially in the band room.) Or don't they just have better things to do? It plays out like a fourth-grader's conception of what high school must be like.

Let's skip ahead. Gardner manages to get himself to Earth, but his body isn't suited for the heavier gravity. He skips out from the NASA facility to hunt down Tulsa, and pretty soon they're on the lam while the science guys and lawmen are on their tail. Tagging along with the chasers is Carla Gugino as Kendra, a scientist who acted as Gardner's surrogate mom while they were on Mars.

The second half of the movie is one big chase, interrupted by smooches and the sort of deep, abiding love that normally forms over the course of two days. Gardner and Tulsas commit an astonishing number of crimes along the way, including stealing innumerable cars.

This is low-budget science fiction, so the world of 2034 looks astonishing similar to the one we have right now. The cars, the clothes, the smartphones and tablets -- they didn't even dress it up a little bit. Heck, the astronauts even ride in rockets that wouldn't look out of place in "Apollo 13." The one concession is laptops with clear cases, which are kinda cool.

After hooking up with Tulsa, Gardner's big quest is to find his father. The only evidence he has is a photo of his mom with him at a beach house. I won't say more, other than if you haven't figured out the ending by the midway point, you need some lessons on Screenwriting 101. (Allan Loeb gets the blame... er, the credit, for the script.)

"The Space Between Us" contains a few nice moments, mostly intimate little cues where Butterfield and Robertson are allowed to behave like real people rather than characters in a movie. Most of the rest is otherworldly bad.

Review: "Here Comes the Boom"

"Here Comes the Boom" is the perfect star vehicle for Kevin James, because in many ways it's a reflection of his persona -- goofy, flabby around the middle, a little bit crude but with a soft, heartwarming center.

The movie, about a high school teacher who fights in mixed martial arts bouts to raise money, has a slightly amateurish feel to it and swings wild on a lot of its storytelling punches. But it connects when it counts.

A number of observers have pointed out that "Boom" is essentially a comedic version of last year's "Warrior," in which Joel Edgerton played a teacher who gets back in the ring to earn cash for his family. Scott Voss' motives are in some ways even purer -- he wants to save the job of his pal the music teacher, Marty (Henry Winkler), who faces the axe when the entire music program is threatened with extinction.

Scott was a champion wrestler in college, but that was 20 years ago and time has taken its toll not just on his body but his soul. A former Teacher of the Year a decade ago, the biology instructor is barely phoning it in, showing up late and reading the newspaper while his kids chatter among themselves.

Malia (played by Filipino songstress Charice) is the smart girl in the front row craving for a mentor, but Scott is too wound up in his own cynicism to show any interest. His only act of initiative is continually hitting on the health teacher, Bella (Salma Hayek), whose mouth says no-no but whose eyes say maybe-maybe.

When the evil principal -- are there any good principals in movies anymore? -- threatens to shut down the music program, Scott offers to come up with the $48,000 needed to save it. He doesn't really have any idea how, and his notion of teaching night citizenship classes barely brings in enough to bother.

It does spur an encounter with one of his students, a burly Dutchman named Niko, played by real-life retired MMA fighter Bas Rutten. Niko is a muscle-bound bundle of giddy personality, happily jumping around or singing as the mood strikes him. Rutten can't really act, but he brings a lot of enthusiasm to the role.

Through Niko he gets the idea of getting in the MMA ring, despite a total lack of experience. His first bout goes badly, getting knocked out by a kick within the first two seconds. But he learns to play defense, with the goal of losing but not getting hurt. The money starts piling up.

Then a funny thing happens: Scott gets angry and wins a bout. Astonished by the fact that the winner gets paid twice as much as the loser, he starts really putting himself into training. Now the wins start coming, and before long real-life UFC announcer Joe Rogan comes calling to offer a high-profile fight in Las Vegas.

The usual sideline stuff happens. The principal finds out about the fighting and thinks the involvement with MMA reflects badly on the school. The students pass around YouTube videos of their teacher's most embarrassing fight, but nonetheless start to form some respect for him. In turn Scott begins to actually teach in the classroom, and Bella warms up.

It's scriptwriting 1-2-3, with all the pieces falling together in seemingly preordained order. James co-write the screenplay with Rock Reuben and Allan Loeb, while James' frequent co-conspirator Frank Coraci directs.

The fight scenes are well-staged and occasionally thrilling, as Scott loses his green luster and actually starts to show some confidence in the ring. As an MMA brawler James is not unconvincing -- his torso is thick but not jiggly, and he has a powerful chest and shoulders. Even though he's a funnyman, it helps that he actually can appear a little intimidating.

"Here Comes the Boom" -- the title is based on a song by the heavy metal band P.O.D. that Scott plays on his walks from the locker room to the ring -- will not be confused with quality filmmaking. It's often ham-handed and obvious. But Kevin James is an amiable screen presence, and this movie seems infused with his spirit.

Sometimes it's better to be liked than respected.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "The Dilemma"

"You're bouncing around. You do that a lot."

This line, delivered in the opening moments of "The Dilemma," is used to describe Vince Vaughn's character -- which is pretty much the same as every other Vince Vaughn character.

Vaughn's become a bankable star employing the same charming motormouth routine over and over. His signature move is to get rolling on a verbal treadmill from which he cannot easily climb off. We've seen it so many times ("Couples Retreat," "Wedding Crashers") that we've come to understand that what he says isn't important -- it's the feat itself, keeping the words coming faster and faster as he bounces around from one thought to the next.

The standout example of this in "The Dilemma" is when his character, Ronny, is giving a toast at his girlfriend Beth's (Jennifer Connelly) parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Ronny has recently learned that his best friend Nick's (Kevin James) wife Geneva (Winona Ryder) has been playing around on him.

He tries to use the toast to talk about the importance of honesty in marriage, as a way of shaming Geneva into confessing her affair to Nick so Ronny won't have to spill the beans himself. But he gets off on a tangent about temptation, imagining scenarios of Beth's mother dallying with the pool boy, and it's all downhill from there -- zigging and zagging all the way.

"The Dilemma" bounces around a lot, too. The movie can't quite decide what it wants to be when it grows up.

Ostensibly it's a comedy about Ronny's predicament -- whether to tell the man he loves like a brother about his wife's infidelity. The movie simply forgets to be funny for long stretches, as in one sequence where Ronny prays to God for guidance. "I know I'm supposed to give you things, but I'm scared to give you this," he tells the Almighty.

The biggest thing that's missing from the story (screenplay by Allan Loeb) is a sense of how important these relationships really are. Ronny's supposed to cherish his friendship with Nick so much that the prospect of telling him about Geneva tears him up inside. But we never see them doing much more than normal buddy-buddy stuff.

Ronny's relationship with Beth is off-kilter, too. He's a 40-year-old commitment-phobe, and can't bring himself to ask her to marry him. But what she gets out of this pairing is rather murky.

Geneva doesn't make a lick of sense, either. For awhile it's suggested she might actually be nutso, as demonstrated in a scene where Ronny confronts her and she cows him by threatening to claim he's made advances toward her.

Even Ronny and Nick's business partnership is goofy. Nick is supposed to be a brilliant engineer, but their dream is rather mundane: To make electric vehicles that look and sound like muscle cars. So basically they're just installing speakers under the hood to simulate the rumble of a gasoline engine.

(The movie has caused some controversy for a scene where they're pitching some General Motors executives, and Ronny calls electric cars "gay." I'll decline to enter the fray other than saying I think "South Park" already covered this topic sufficiently.)

Queen Latifah pops up as Susan, the liaison between the car company and our boys, who has a tendency to talk in inappropriate, hyper-sexualized terms. The joke is supposed to be that usually it's the guys in movies like this who speak that way. But she just comes across as another unexplained weird quirk of the movie.

The strangest thing about "The Dilemma" is that it was directed by Ron Howard, and has to be the most un-Ron-Howard-like film he's ever made.

The depressing part is not that it's not very good, or that a guy who's mostly done serious Oscar-bait movies has returned to his comedy roots. It's that this movie could have been directed by anyone.

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" starts out as a big-stakes film attempting a grand statement about the rift lines in the machine of American capitalism. It ends up going small-time, as a miserly story about people we do not understand behaving in ways we don't believe.

It has been 23 years since Oliver Stone solidified the image of the Decade of Greed in the pop culture zeitgeist, and the sequel wants to be an update of how things have changed -- for the worse. It's set in 2008, when our entire financial system nearly sputtered to a standstill, and instead of being the merchant of inside information, this time Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) has positioned himself as the oracle of fiscal sanity.

Or is he?

After spending eight years in prison for insider trading and other crimes, Gekko is out hocking his book, "Is Greed Good?" He gives speeches to rapt audiences talking about how the leveraged debt and other shady dealings carried on now put anything he did to shame.

"While I was away it seems greed got greedier, with a little bit of envy mixed in," he says.

His would-be protege this time is Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), a hungry young trader with a passion for green technology. He's also engaged to one Winnie Gekko (Carey Mulligan), the estranged daughter of Gordon. She won't speak to her dad, and runs an anti-Wall Street web site called Frozen Truth.

Now, think about that for a minute. Here's a principled young woman who despises her father, despises the abuses of the financial markets, and has centered her career around denigrating them both. And yet she would fall for a young shark like Jake who relishes making deals and cutting the throats of the competition? The sort of guy who buys her an engagement ring worth a house in the suburbs?

Winnie remains an unbelievable figure throughout. She's supposed to be smart, but a few words from Jake and she's ready to turn over the keys to her family legacy (amortizing in a Swiss bank) to him. A few words from Gordon and she's ready to forgive him, too.

Stone was never very good with centered, plausible female characters, and Winnie is just another in a long line of women who exist merely to further the plot.

The heavy is Bretton James (Josh Brolin), head of the powerful firm of Churchill-Schwartz. There's bad blood between him and Gekko, and Gordon's looking to use Jake to exact a little revenge -- some for himself, and some for sending Jake's company down the tubes, and his beloved mentor (Frank Langella) along with it.

But Bretton throws them a surprise, by offering Jake a job instead of crushing him. Soon the idealistic young Jake is inside the enemy's camp, carrying water for Gekko and keeping secrets from Winnie. At this point, a little more than halfway through, the movie has no more secrets that we haven't already guessed.

Stone displays his usual visual flair, sending his camera spinning around stock tickers and up and down the sleek walls of Wall Street, showing us the environment of steel dedicated to the hoarding of wealth for its own sake. "Money is a one-eyed bitch who lays in bed staring at you ... if you're not careful, in the morning she'll be gone," is how Gekko puts it.

The screenplay by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff is filled with zippy dialogue and crisp scenes. I especially liked one where Gekko, having dinner with Winnie and Jake at a swank Manhattan restaurant, greets one of the Wall Street titans and the guy blows him off, not even recognizing him. Douglas gives a terrific reaction that reveals his mortification -- not at the social faux pas, but at the fact it demonstrates he's not a player anymore.

I also loved when Gekko calls a bunch of college students the "Ninja generation": No income, no jobs or assets.

But despite these slick elements, the movie is a confused mix of personal story and indictment of the financial sector that never really tie together. The central dynamic seems to be whether Gekko has truly reformed or not, but he's really a secondary character who flits in and out of the background for most of the film, until he takes on a sudden importance close to the end.

The Bretton James angle holds no mystery -- the way Brolin snorts and glares, we know it's just a matter of time before he's buried under a mountain of his own arrogant missteps.

Fairly or not, "Wall Street" nailed the culture of avarice that undeniably existed in the 1980s ... but so it did in the '90s, '00s and every decade before (and will after). Stone's haphazard sequel reshuffles the deck, but relies on the same old cinematic card tricks.

2 stars out of four