Review: "Aladdin"

The part we feared most, Will Smith as the genie, actually turns out to be not so bad.

This is Will Smith, after all, an entertainer not without his charms. His genie is goofy and funny and appropriately self-important. The blue CGI body is still a little off. And although he doesn’t make us forget Robin Williams’ manic-yet-slyly-tender voice work in the original animated “Aladdin,” Smith turns out to be an able, updated substitute.

The rest of the cast…

Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott are fine as Aladdin and Princess Jasmine, all a-twinkle and a-dimple as the comely young Arabian couple. (He’s Egyptian and she’s British/Indian, which isn’t too egregiously off by Hollywood standards.) I liked the cartoon version of the sultan as an affable dolt; Navid Negahban seems more haunted than sympathetic.

The big letdown is Jafar, a far fall for one of Disney’s most scrumptious villains.

He had that scarecrow frame and twisty little beard, hooded eyes and a marvelous baritone growl (supplied by Jonathan Freeman). Marwan Kenzari just looks like some guy they plucked out of the street bazaar and put into a vizier’s outfit. Worst of all, his Jafar has a high, almost whiny voice. Not surprisingly, he’s the one character who doesn’t get to do his song from the animated version.

When it comes to screen villains, tenors go home.

You know the story: gold-hearted street rat thief Aladdin (Massoud) falls hard for Jasmine, the princess of Agrabah, who is being courted by a string of foreign princes. After picking up a magical lamp, he summons the big blue genie (Smith) to sorcery him into ersatz royalty, makes a big entrance, and then things go south because of all the lying -- plus those nasty Jafar schemes.

Of all the cartoon movies Disney has turned into a live-action remake, “Aladdin” falls smack in the middle. It’s a bright, fast-paced spectacle that isn’t just a shot-for-shot remake of the original. Director Guy Ritchie, known for turning stodgy Sherlock Holmes into a knife-fighting action star, co-wrote the screenplay with John August.

Some of it works really well. The magic carpet ride to the song “A Whole New World” is still a dazzler, as Aladdin and Jasmine cruise the world and discover love. The entrance of the fictional “Prince Ali” has all the jazz and verve of the original. I appreciated the updating of Jasmine’s character into a strong-willed young woman who doesn’t just resent having the sultan pick her husband, but actually vies to take the sultan’s place.

Other stuff lands with a clunk. Abu the monkey is a little too CGI for his own good. I disliked having Jafar’s henchman, the parrot Iago, relegated to mere dumb beast. The snappy repertoire between the haughty Jafar and his Bronx-cheering, Gilbert Gottfried-voiced pet was the animated film’s main comic engine.

A couple of new songs just plain don’t play. In the oddest one, “Speechless,” Jasmine starts belting while the guards are leading her away, and all her enemies start dissolving into dust a la “Avengers: Infinity War,” and I wondered if she’d suddenly acquired magical powers.

Similarly, a romance contrived for genie and Jasmine’s handmaiden (Nasim Pedrad), falls rather flat. He’s a world-bending cosmic powerhouse -- why he gotta have a dame?

I can’t say as I really wanted a live-action “Aladdin,” but now that it’s here I object to its existence less than I thought I would. My kids enjoyed the heck out of it, and even the stretches that had me sighing with impatience weren’t so interminably long they had me wishing I was somewhere else.

Video review: "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"

I grew up reading and loving the Arthurian Legends, and have mostly groaned at the cinematic adaptations of them. The sub-genre reached its zenith with 1981’s “Excalibur,” and hasn’t come anywhere close since. If John Boorman’s version was the pinnacle, then surely Guy Ritchie’s “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” represents rock bottom.

Some movies are confusing; others are simply confused. I doubt this seemingly random mash-up of King Arthur lore, martial arts chop-socky, steampunk criminal intrigue and New Age-y mysticism made much sense even to the people making the film.

Charlie Hunnan plays Arthur, reimagined here as a street urchin who grew up among thieves and has risen to be their lord. Just a little light extortion and prostitution, if you please. He watched his father, King Uther Pendragon, die at the hands of his evil uncle, Vortigern (Jude Law), and has evolved into a standard-issue Avoiding My Destiny protagonist, a la Simba from “The Lion King.”

Soon enough he pulls Excalibur from the stone, and assumes the leadership of the rebellion consisting of some Uther loyalists, the thieves’ guild, a wayward mage who can control animals and not much else, and the rest of the ragtag.

Meanwhile, Vortigern is building a magical tower that augments his own sorcery, which never really gets all that impressive. Behead that architect!

Ritchie’s whirling dervish directing style, which is the cinematic equivalent of attention deficit disorder, is known for jumping around in time and space with head-snapping velocity. It works in small doses with the right material -- see his 2015 “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” for a prime example.

But “Arthur” often seems like a random assembly of shots without any kind of cohesive aesthetic connecting them. We’ll see Arthur swinging his sword in battle, for instance, and then cut to a shot of the mage standing enchanted on a hill far away, a murder of CGI crows swirling about her in slo-mo.

It’s a great-looking movie, but the story, characters and tone are disconnected from each other, or anything that could be reasonably termed entertaining.

Video extras are decent. The DVD comes only with a single featurette, “Arthur with Swagger,” a profile of Hunnan’s take on the character.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition and you add seven more featurettes, focusing on Ritchie’s vision, sword training for the cast, creating a grimier Camelot, stunt choreography, behind-the-scenes relationships and the mythology behind Excalibur.

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Review: "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"

“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is the sort of movie that ends careers… or ought to.

This is just a stinking garbage pile of a movie. Director/co-writer Guy Ritchie, who turned the Sherlock Holmes stories into a dizzy Ferris wheel of grimy alleys and knife fights, takes on the Arthurian legend with the same aesthetic and considerably less skill.

It plays like a random assembly of Ritchie-esque shots -- slo-mo fights, cutaways to characters standing around looking cool as the wind swirls around them, and that thing he does where the people describe what’s going to happen, intercut with it actually happening.

It’s like they took the cut scenes from the video game version of the movie and made that the movie.

It’s a common insult for critics to say a movie plays like a video game. But I like video games, and such a comparison would be an insult to them.

The entire legend of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, the tragedy of Lancelot and Guinevere, etc. is tossed out the window by Ritchie and fellow script men Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram. Instead, Arthur is a street scamp who rises to become the quiet crime lord of Camelot, running brothels and collecting extortion money from merchants.

He’s played by Charlie Hunnan, wearing a smirk and one of those haircuts that are popular these days where it’s buzzed to the scalp everywhere except the top. (Note to men: If you’re north of age 14, don’t.) He manages to pull the sword from the stone pretty early in the going, and spends the rest of the movie working out his daddy issues.

Eric Bana plays Uther Pendragon, murdered by his brother (!), Vortigern, played by longtime Ritchie thespian Jude Law. He’s trying to build a tower to increase his magic powers, except we never see him do anything more impressive than light a candle with his mind. Well, he does have one other trick up his sleeve, but it’s actually the work of a strange sea creature that resembles Ursula from “The Little Mermaid,” who demands a heavy price.

Merlin is off away doing something, but he has sent another mage, known simply as The Mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), in his stead to help out. It seems Vortigern has been carrying out a genocide against the mages. She can do that thing where her eyes go all-pupil and she takes over the body of wild creatures. We keep thinking she and Arthur are going to hook up, but first somebody needs to feed her.

Rounding out the cast are Djimon Hounsou as Bedivere, a loyal general to Uther who helps out the son; Aiden Gillen from “Game of Thrones,” who apparently is now required to be in every medieval movie, as Goosefat Bill, who makes quips and flings arrows; and Kingsley Ben-Adir and Neil Maskell as Arthur’s criminal lackeys, Wet Stick and Back Lack.

There’s also a martial arts school in the middle of Camelot, with an Asian teacher named George, who tutored young Arthur in the ways of badassery. And David Beckham turns up in a cameo as a flunky with a nasty eye scar.

(Lots of people have eye scars, for some reason, including Arthur.)

Other weird stuff: Arthur passes out a lot. No, really, whenever he touches Excalibur, he just faints dead away like a Southern belle with the vapors. For some reason, the rebels looking to overthrow Vertigern keep following him.

There’s also Arthur’s odd montage quest to the Darklands, which is supposed to be his big descent into darkness and accepting of his lineage. Except he’s still a prick when he comes back.

I grew up reading and loving the Arthurian legends -- what, most 9-year-olds don’t tear through “Le Morte d’Arthur”? -- so to see them used for this sneering bit of tomfoolery pains me to no end.

There’s not a spark of magic in “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.” It’s a visually splendid movie that proves the limits of what eye candy alone can do.

Video review: "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."

“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” cost a bundle to make and made not such a large bundle at the box office, so it’s already been written off as one of 2015’s biggest flops. Actually, it’s all disinformation and propaganda: this was probably the most fun I’ve had at the cinema this year.

Based (loosely) on the 1960s TV series, it pits East-versus-West superspies who are forced to join forces to get back the nuclear technology that’s been stolen. Henry Cavill plays CIA star Napoleon Solo, a rakish scamp who gets by on charm and improvisation. Armie Hammer is Illya Kuryakin, a KGB agent who’s all iron and cold fury.

They clash, they grudge, they clash some more.

Of course there’s a damsel, though she tends to distribute distress rather than needing to be saved from it. Alicia Vikander plays Gaby, a German mechanic whose dad was a Nazi scientist and is now at the center of the trouble. Napoleon goes for the frontal romantic assault, but she’s got eyes for the dour Russian.

Director Guy Ritchie breaks out every trick in his book, with lots of jump-cutting, musical interludes and time displacement. The movie is festooned with dashing suits, nifty gadgets, sexy villains and lots of color. The result is jazzy and loose, an ironic tug at the smug façade of the spy genre.

Forget what you’ve heard and remember this message (though you may have to destroy it afterward): “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” is the best time this side of Bond.

Bonus features are pretty good, though the DVD comes with only one featurette, “A Higher Class of Hero.”

Upgrade to the blu-ray combo pack, and you add more making-of mini-docs: “Spy Vision: Recreating ‘60s Cool,” “Metisse Motorcycles: Proper -- And Very British,” “The Guys from U.N.C.L.E.,” “A Man of Extraordinary Talents” and “U.N.C.L.E: On-Set Spy.”

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Review: "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."

Brisk, daring and deliciously sexy, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." is the end-of-summer surprise we've been waiting for.

Let's face it, August has historically become the summer movie season's dumping ground. Many kids are already back in school, vacations are mostly wound down, and films with lower profiles and stars of lesser wattage don't want to compete with the behemoths of May and June. I get it.

So it's always a thrill to encounter a flick that shakes off expectations and bounds over the doldrums. "Man," based on the TV show from the 1960s and set during that same period, is the best August time at the cinema since 2011's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." Both were based on moldy franchises that went from moribund to magnificent under the spell of energetic filmmakers and an electrifying cast.

Director Guy Ritchie did much the same to rejuvenate the "Sherlock Holmes" movies, though not to my liking. The dim steampunk streets and slo-mo chop-socky quickly grew tiring. Perhaps I like "Man" so much because it is those films' total opposite in tone and hue.

It's a gorgeous-looking movie, with vibrant primary colors and crisp focus. Henry Cavill's blue eyes, black forelock and incisor-sharp jawline practically seem to leap off a clothing designer's onionskin. Of course, he's helped by the splendid full-chested suits he wears. With a lavish production design, it's a world where even the thick glass tumblers the characters grab to fill with scotch look expensive and just-so tasteful.

Cavill plays Napoleon Solo, who if you'll recall is the rakish thief who got caught by the C.I.A. and threatened with jail if he didn't join their ranks. His opposite is Illya Kuryakin, a cold-blooded KGB tough who gets thrown in with him as his enforced partner. (He's played by Armie Hammer, who somehow wrangled top billing out of Superman's hands.) They form a ying-and-yang duo, the smooth operator and the psycho ready to snap, to get the job done.

"The job" is a nearly comprehensible MacGuffin of the classic order: some bad people have gotten their hands on nuclear technology, are building a bomb and trying to sell it to the Nazis, who somehow haven't heard about their surrender 18 years earlier. Don't worry about following the plot; it's just an excuse to set up big action spectacles, face-downs and hiss-able villains.

Cavill and Hammer are just about perfect in their respective parts. Cavill has got a Bond-esque thing going, cherishing his own unflappability, and he speaks his lines in a distinctive way that's somehow both charming and condescending. You've heard of "mansplaining"? He's spysplaining.

Since his breakout in "The Social Network," Hollywood really hasn't figured out what to do with Hammer, casting him as a hapless prince ("Mirror Mirror") or suffering the humiliation of making him the Lone Ranger and then having the cowboy icon usurped by his sidekick. He's flat-out terrific here, playing it straight and finding comedy by never winking at the camera. His Illya is simultaneously chilling and touching, a resentful lost boy in a superman's (small "s") body.

Alicia Vikander is Gaby, an East German mechanic who gets smuggled across the Berlin Wall because her dad was a nuke scientist for the Nazis, and is now suspected of helping some Italian aristocrats with the aforementioned bomb. The expected thing here would be to have her ensorcelled by the suave Napoleon, but she seems to only have well-mascaraed eyes for the sullen, withdrawn Russian.

Elizabeth Debicki is slithery and seductive as Victoria Vinciguerra -- just try saying that name, you'll love it -- who regards Napoleon like some viperous insect, something with which to copulate and then consume. Hugh Grant pops up as a likeable Brit harboring a secret agenda.

Ritchie pulls all the tricks out of his considerable director's bag: backward time jumps, split screens that keep splitting different directions, letting the music swell up and take over the movie for a moment, etc. Here the fancy stuff complements the material, rather than trying to dazzle us for its own sake.

But dazzle "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." does. It's a fresh cut on an old suit that plays its cards as they lay, and plays them with panache.

Review: "Sherlock Holmes"

"Sherlock Holmes" at least has the good manners to be honest about its intentions: It's an amped-up, action-packed take on the iconic British detective, with calm deductive reasoning and deerstalker hats jettisoned for lots of science nerd tech-talk, slo-mo explosions and knife fights.
It's "CSI: Victorian Age."

Guy Ritchie brings his distinctive feverish directing style to the Industrial Age crime procedural. Robert Downey Jr., as Holmes, likes to go about bare-chested and relishes getting into brawls, so he can map out his bone-crunching moves beforehand -- thus, we get to see his fights twice, first in slow time and then sped up.

This version of Holmes also possesses observational powers that border on superhuman; after a brief glance at a person, he can tell you everything about them from their occupation to their progeny. He can discern exact chemical compositions from odor or taste.

I don't necessarily object to this modernized version of Sherlock Holmes -- the conception of the sleuth as a charming gentleman, best exemplified by actor Basil Rathbone in a swath of midcentury films, had grown rather quaint. And Holmes' knowledge of martial arts and boxing are part of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories.

But Ritchie, Downey and a slew of writers seem so intent on branding their Holmes a bold departure, they forget to assemble a believable character.

Downey plays the detective as an obsessive scoundrel, who when he's not solving crimes goes into extended periods of torpor and pharmacological experimentation. The actor uses a clipped delivery designed to mask a middling British accent.

Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Holmes' right-hand man and best friend. As the story opens, Watson is leaving their shared house and partnership to settle down with an eligible lady (Kelly Reilly), so there's a bit of tension between them.

Holmes' own romantic entanglement arrives in the form of Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), the only criminal ever to give Holmes the slip -- twice. She and Holmes play a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship, with Irene's exact loyalties in doubt.

The plot is an utterly forgettable mishmash of black magic and science, with the mysterious Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) as the bogeyman. The story opens with Holmes and Watson catching Blackwood in the act of a dark sacrificial ritual, but he somehow survives his hanging execution to wreak havoc on London.

His plan is to enlist the aid of the Temple of the Four Orders, a variation on the old Masonic legends, in taking over the world.

The action scenes are quite a lot of fun, if a bit hard to follow at times. I especially liked Holmes' facing off with a giant French thug who actually gets to spout better one-liners than the hero.
This new "Sherlock Holmes" strives desperately to be new and fresh, and the strain of the effort shows.

2.5 stars