Review: "This Is Where I Leave You"

I'm not sure if "This Is Where I Leave You" is the most original film ever made, but what it lacks in freshness it makes up for with delectable actors and snappy scenes. The Altmans are borderline crazy, self-obsessed and narcissistic, but somehow 103 minutes with them feels like time well spent.

Directed by Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum") from a screenplay by Jonathan Tropper, based on his own novel, the movie brings together the four adult children of the Altman clan after their father passes away. Mom Hillary (Jane Fonda) is a real piece of work, a showboating therapist who wrote a best-selling book, "Cradle and All," in which she spilled the intimate details of her kids' tumultuous upraising.

They have not, unsurprisingly, turned into well-adjusted adults. And they're none too pleased about their mom's insistence that they sit Shiva together for seven days, per their father's dying request. (This, despite being only partially and nominally Jewish.)

Judd (Jason Bateman) is the fulcrum, the character upon which all the others pivot. A successful radio producer and one of those guys who seems to have the perfect little life planned out, he's thrown for a loop when he catches his wife sleeping with his boss.

Sister Wendy (Tina Fey) is brittle and angry, mother to two young kids and married to an on-the-go businessman who can't put down the phone and work for even a few minutes, not to mention witness the miracle if his child's potty training.

Paul (Corey Stoll) is the oldest and most responsible, the one kid who stuck around in his hometown to take over the business from his father. He and his wife (Kathryn Hahn) have been trying without success to get pregnant, and the pressure and constant questions about their progress is like splitting a rail.

The baby of the clan is Phillip (Adam Driver), born years after the others and partially raised by them. A natural-born screw-up with an impish talent for needling others, Phillip is dating a much older woman (Connie Britton) who acts as his enabler and sugar momma.

The filmmakers essentially throw this grab-bag of resentment, sibling rivalry and neuroticism into a pot and set it to a slow boil. There are arguments, jokes, bonding, more fighting, and so on.

It doesn't sound like much, but the cast really drives the material to terrific heights. They click in a way that you rarely see large ensemble casts do; usually each actor is trying to accomplish their own goals for their character and sacrifice the group dynamic. This is the sort of movie that you can't imagine any other performers in those roles.

A few minor characters flit in and out of the foreground. Across the street is Hillary's dependable friend Linda (Debra Monk) and her son Horry (Timothy Olyphant), a former beau of Wendy's who suffered a terrible brain injury years ago. He sort of wanders around, helpful but forgetful, like a more verbally proficient Boo Radley.

Wade's estranged wife (Abigail Spencer) turns up, pleading for a second chance and with more drama to share. Penny Moore is a townie (Rose Byrne) who's stoked a long-burning fire for Wade, and he's at a low point where those glowing embers are looking pretty good. I also enjoyed Ben Schwartz as a young rabbi who can't outrun his horndog teen reputation and nickname.

Despite not a lot of screen time to spread around to every character's story, the film does a good job of making each of them distinct and relatable.

"This Is Where I Leave You" plays out fairly predictably, but I didn't mind the lack of surprises because the journey getting there is so caustically funny and unexpectedly heartwarming. When the Altmans aren't verbally punching each other -- sometimes physically, too -- you want to give them all a good squeeze.

Video review: "Real Steel"

Every year spawns a few movies that fall into the "love-it-or-hate-it" category, or in the case of "Real Steel," the "like-it-or-hate-it" flick of 2011. Several of my local film critic colleagues have even seen fit to toss it onto their "Worst of the Year" list.

Though hardly a cinematic knockout, I found it to be an amusing, if admittedly overly sappy father/son redemption story with impressively cool robots -- "The Champ" with Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Actually, since the movie came I finally figured out why the boxing robots in the movie are so evocative: they bear a startling resemblance to the iron football goon used in promotional bits for NFL games on Fox. People who might abhor the visceral thrill of boxing and other human blood sport can safely revel in watching two automatons turn each other into scrap metal.

Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a former contender in the ring who became a manager of robots when human boxing was outlawed. (The story is set in the near future.) Through a series of unlikely circumstances, Charlie is forced to take Max (Dakota Goya), the son he never met, on the road with him, where they bond through a sequence of misadventures.

Their fortunes take a turn for the better when they uncover a mysterious robot fighter buried in a junkyard, dub him Atom, and before long they're headed to the championship bout.

The CGI battles hit that sweet spot where the robots are just humanistic enough that the audience feels like it has a stake in the outcome, but can safely cheer on the mayhem. We certainly feel more for Atom than we did any of the Transformers in their movies.

"Real Steel" may be overly maudlin, but as lightweight entertainment with a little heart, it's the real deal.

Extras for DVD are fairly OK: a blooper reel, two making-of featurettes, and audio commentary by director Shawn Levy.

The blu-ray edition includes a few upgrades, the centerpiece of which is an interactive "second screen" with videos and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Plus deleted and extended scenes and two more featurettes, including one about Sugar Ray Leonard, who served as boxing consultant on the production.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Real Steel"

With "Real Steel," I was expecting a slick and soulless bit of computer-generated mayhem. The story is set about a decade or so in the future, where regular human boxing has been outlawed and the only kind allowed is between 2,000-pound robots.

In other words, "Rocky" meets "Transformers."

What I got instead was a tender and treacly tale about a no-account father bonding with his long-lost (well, abandoned) son. If anything, the movie went too far in the other direction from my expectations . Instead of being overly reliant on special effects for cheap action thrills, it's really a somewhat maudlin story with an excess of gooey emotions.

So, "Transformers" meets "The Champ."

Hugh Jackman plays the dad, Charlie Kenton, a former fighter who always went for the knockout -- and got it a lot, but also ended up on the mat a lot. He's much the same as a robot owner/manager, always seeking the big payoff in the big fight when what he really needs is a few sure things under his belt.

Dakota Goyo plays Max, the son he's barely even met. When his mother dies, it's up to the courts to decide if Max goes with Charlie or with his rich aunt (Hope Davis). Charlie extorts 50 grand out of his sister-in-law's husband to give up custody, but not until the end of summer so they can enjoy a swanky European vacation.

It's all just an excuse to get Charlie on the road with Max, hustling fights and trying to keep their last aging robot on its feet. Charlie uses the extortion money to buy a fancy, famous robot named Noisy Boy, but doesn't even bother to learn the functions of the gizmo's voice command system before pitting him against an opponent against which he's clearly overmatched.

Soon Charlie and Max are out of robots, with a killer cowboy named Ricky on their tail for the money he's owed. Ricky is played by Kevin Durand, who can just look into the camera for three seconds and be scary.

Then Max stumbles upon an old rust-bucket robot buried in a junkyard, names him Atom and proceeds to train him with his dad's reluctant help, putting them on an unlikely path to the championship fight.

The best thing about "Real Steel" are the robots, which seem to convincingly occupy the same space as the humans. Using a combination of CGI and animatronics, they're hefty, clanky behemoths that not coincidentally resemble giant versions of the old Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Robot boxing is perhaps the logical evolution of cinematic boxing. People have often complained that more punches are landed in a single round of a movie bout than a dozen real ones -- no human can take such punishment. With mammoth metal automatons, it stands to reason they can take a licking.

Especially Atom. One of the curious things about the story (screenplay by John Gatins, based on a sci-fi story from the 1950s by Richard Matheson) is that Atom's origins remain stubbornly mysterious. He's an older-generation robot, but boasts a few cutting-edge tricks like a "shadow function" that allows him to mimic Charlie's boxing moves. Built as a sparring robot, Atom can take a ton of hits, but is relatively small and weak on offense.

The top champ is a fearsome robot named Zeus, who not only has never lost a fight, but never had an opponent last beyond the first round. Yet Zeus' Russian oligarch owner, Farra Lemcova (Olga Fonda), and Japanese programmer, Tak Mashido (Karl Yune), exchange troubled looks when they lay eyes on Atom, as if a mechanical ghost had just lumbered across their grave.

Director Shawn Levy is a certified lightweight ("Night at the Museum") who always goes for the easiest emotional payoff. But Jackman's lovable as a loser, Goyo has spunk and charm, and the robot battles are genuinely thrilling.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Date Night"

Tina Fey and Steve Carell are gifted comedians and likable performers. They're the centerpieces on their smartly-written back-to-back TV shows, "30 Rock" and "The Office."

They're so good, in fact, that watching them slum their way through inferior material like this is depressing.

"Date Night" is a lower-middle-brow comedy about an upper-middle-class New Jersey couple who get their marriage spark reignited by a crazy night in Manhattan where they're mistaken for blackmailers and chased by cops and bad guys alike. I don't know about you, but I'm actually getting sleepy just describing it.

Fey and Carell make for a good team, and they invest themselves in every joke, managing to save a few scenes that end up being pretty funny.

Yeah, they're more or less playing variations on their television characters -- Liz Lemon's self-deprecating neurotic charm and Michael Scott's diffident discomfort in his own skin -- but we enjoy those people so much, it's not a big deal that they're repurposing.

When the pair are just inhabiting a scene, riffing and ad-libbing, the effects are pleasurable. But then the movie has to fall back on its idiot plot -- car chases, scary guys with guns, etc.

They do make for a believable couple. Phil Foster is a tax accountant, and Claire is a real estate agent. Harried and worn out, they barely keep the romance on life support with the occasional date night.

There's a great little moment where Claire is fixing herself up for a night out, and Phil barely glances at her when he walks in the door, and we can see she's crushed. But he redeems himself by taking her to Claw, the hottest new Tribeca restaurant. They have $50 soup, a month-long backlog for reservations and snootily answer the phone, "Claw, you're welcome."

When another couple misses their reservation, the Fosters pretend to be them. Unfortunately, a pair of toughs show up and, thinking they're the other couple, to demand a Flash drive with some juicy material on it.

It's all one big lame case of mistaken identity, and the rest of the movie is spent with the Fosters on the lam, trying to track down this mysterious drive while skirting the hoods and the police.

Directed by Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum") from a script by Josh Klausner, "Date Night" features a lot of cameos by well-known actors who run into the Fosters. Some are pleasing -- I liked James Franco as a skeevy character who dubs himself "Taste" -- while others just lie there.

Their stale adventures take the Fosters through Central Park, breaking into a friend's office, and showing up on the doorstep of an old client of Claire's (Mark Wahlberg) who has a background in security and is apparently incapable of wearing a shirt.

Throwaway jokes are usually the best ones. There's one bit where they have to infiltrate a mobbed-up strip club, and Claire sneaks into the strippers' locker room and emerges in a tart little outfit. "It's the only one long enough to cover my Caesarean scar," she explains.

Chuckle-worthy little moments like this almost -- almost -- save "Date Night" from itself.

2 stars out of four

Video Review: "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"

The "Night at the Museum" movies are the epitome of everything wrong with modern filmmaking. They have lots of whiz-bang special effects, two or three humorous moments, and no heart or brains.

Night museum guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) survived a job inside a museum where all the exhibits come to life. Since then, he's moved on to a successful career as a TV product pitchman -- which brings monetary benefits but not much fulfillment.

Meanwhile, the living exhibits (which turn inanimate during daytime) are shipped off to storage at the Smithsonian museum complex, where the magic tablet brings all those exhibits to life, too.
Unfortunately, one of them is an Egyptian pharaoh (Hank Azaria) who wants to use the tablet to rule the world; he has recruited Ivan the Terrible, Al Capone and Napoleon as his henchman.

And Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) fleshes out a bomber jacket long enough to give Larry a hand, along with a few slaps and smooches.

There's a few clever jokes -- the Jonas Brothers as cupids is cute, and I liked the spoof of the slo-mo action sequences from "300" performed by 2-inch-tall Romans.

But mostly, it's goofy computer-generated mayhem without much point.

Video extras are quite ample. Separate commentary tracks are provided by director Shawn Levy and screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. There's a 19-minute making-of documentary that touches on most aspects of filmmaking, though it's a lot of glad-handing.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also comes with a gag reel of outtakes, about a dozen deleted/alternate scenes, and more. I particularly liked the "Phinding Pharaoh" featurette, which has screen tests of Azaria trying out various accents for his character -- including a Southern one -- before settling on what he dubs a Boris Karloff impression.

A limited edition "Monkey Mischief" disc adds games and featurettes about the monkey star and his handler.

The combo pack also includes a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 1.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars