Review: "Missing Link"

Ten years ago I was amazed by the stop-motion animation film “Coraline” from Laika, stating that it took a practiced eye to even tell it apart from standard animation. The action was so smooth and the world it occupied so vast, it was hard to believe it was made by infinitesimal changes to puppets photographed one frame at a time, 24 per second.

The newest from Laika, “Missing Link,” puts that film’s technical achievements to shame. This movie is so visually stunning that I again watched in disbelief. If not for some making-of sequences over the credits showing the painstaking process of putting it together, I might’ve thought the filmmakers were fudging.

They do use CGI animation for some of the backgrounds, but all the characters, clothes and sets are actually miniatures. Astounding.

Alas, I wish the story was a little stronger. Laika movies have been notable for their darker themes and complex narratives. (See -- especially if you already haven’t -- “Kubo and the Two Strings.”) “Missing Link” follows a rather conventional “finding your own path” story with a bigfoot creature.

Aside from similarities to other cinematic tales of late, including last year’s “Smallfoot” and “Abominable” coming out this September, the story makes the mistake of shunting the bigfoot character to sidekick status and putting all the attention on his human companion, a self-involved British explorer, Sir Lionel Frost, voiced by Hugh Jackman.

I’m reminded of the recent “Dumbo,” in which a bunch of humans took over the tale and the little flying elephant lost the spotlight.

The setup is that Frost has been trying and failing for years to be admitted to an elite club of adventurers, but the nasty leader, Lord Piggot-Dunceb (Stephen Fry), is determined to keep him out. Then Frost receives a letter alerting him to sightings of a bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest of America. This is the discovery that will finally secure his status, he figures.

Finding the bigfoot isn’t a problem -- turns out he wrote the letter himself. Resembling an 8-foot orangutan, the mild-mannered creature is voiced by Zach Galifianakis. As the only one of his kind, he’s always felt terribly alone, and wants to enlist Frost’s help in transporting him to the Himalayas to seek out the yeti, whom he feels are his long-lost cousins.

Dressing him up in a comically undersized suit so he can pass as a man, they refer to him as “Mr. Link,” short for missing link, though he later acquires an unexpected nickname.

Along the way they pick up an antagonist in Willard Stenk -- love that name -- a pint-sized shootist with claw marks across his bald head, and some (reluctant, initially) help in Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), a vivacious former girlfriend of Frost who holds a map to Shangri-La, where the Yetis reputedly reside.

The basic dynamic is that Frost is a self-centered jerkwad who only thinks of himself and his reputation, rather than relating to Link as a person with feelings and longings of his own. Adelina doesn’t have much to do but point out to Frost his missteps.

Writer/director Chris Butler previously helmed the excellent “ParaNorman.” I liked a lot of things about “Missing Link,” but it reads like a deliberate attempt by Laika to make a picture that has more mainstream commercial appeal.

Despite its glorious visuals, its lack of originality leaves it as a little better than middling bit of animation.

Video review: "The LEGO Batman Movie"

You've got to love a spin-off where they just added one word to the title: “The LEGO Batman Movie” plucks the breakout character from the first movie and gives him his own flick, with gleeful fun for kiddies resulting.

There is a goodly helping of inside jokes for grownups, but these movies are aimed squarely at the 10-and-under set. They’re colorful, fast-paced, full of action and mildly crude humor.

Will Arnett returns as the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne, who’s a self-centered jerk trying to mask his yearning for a family to stave off his crushing loneliness. One is soon presented to him in the form of a boy ward of the state who will become Robin (Michael Cera), Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) and his own loyal butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes).

Zach Galifianakis voices the Joker, who launches a scheme to free all the villains trapped in the Phantom Zone. He’s stuck somewhere between trying to kill Batman and wanting a relationship with him. Perhaps one will lead to the other.

We get to see virtually every bad guy Batman has fought over the years in LEGO form, along with a bunch of new ones like Condiment Man. (His power his exactly what you think.) The blocky, deceivingly crude animation is slick and appealing.

“The LEGO Batman” movie is entirely a retread of the first movie, but with the pieces changed all around into different forms.

Bonus features are quite extensive, and -- in a move that’s increasingly rare -- you get the same goodies with the standard DVD version as the Blu-ray upgrade.

There’s a feature-length commentary track by director Chris McKay and his crew, deleted scenes, four new Batman animated shorts (favorite title: “Batman is Just Not That Into You”) and another short for the upcoming “LEGO Ninjago” movie. Plus, social media promos, trailers and six making-of featurettes.

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Review: "The Lego Batman Movie"

Batman was the breakout character of “The Lego Movie” -- which is not bad for a guy who’s been hanging around since 1939.

He basically operated as comic relief, voiced by a mock-gravely Will Arnett in a spoof of the character’s grim persona. It worked because on some level I think most of us find Bats a bit teadious after a while. Having something like a dozen movie iterations doesn’t help.

For me, the highest point of parody was when Batman played some music he’d written, pounding thrash rock punctuated by the lyrics, “Darkness!! …No parents!!”

So now he’s got his own movie, and the challenge is to see if they can sustain a parody of a tiresome superhero without it becoming tiresome itself. The answer is: mostly.

I feel sort of ridiculous offering a story summary of the movie. Credited to five (!) writers, it’s a deliberately chaotic mashup of Batman lore, including virtually every villain he’s ever fought, plus a bunch more created on the spot.

One of them, Condiment Man, has a superpower of squirting mustard and ketchup at you. Not even powerful arcs of sauce, just limp little spurts that fall ineffectually at his feet. Maybe try not to be such a traditionalist, dude -- work some salsa or tzatziki into the mix.

Anyway, the joke is that Batman/Bruce Wayne is super arrogant and self-centered, but secretly he’s desperately lonely and in denial about it. He spends his off time loitering around the bat cave, pestered by his butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), about letting people in.

Fortunately, a group of people immediately presents itself as his potential new family, including Alfred himself, a nervous scamp of an orphan who will become Robin (Michael Cera) and Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), the new commissioner of Gotham City. She’s taking over from her dad, Jim Gordon, after graduating from “Harvard Police School.” Dear daddy just pushed the button for the bat signal whenever trouble appeared, but the new sheriff in town has some discomforting ideas about Batman sharing the limelight.

The threat comes from the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), the Batman’s old nemesis who’s feeling a bit neglected these days. Batman won’t even admit to calling Joker his arch-enemy, saying that he likes to fight lots of different people and doesn’t have any preferences. “I like to fight around,” he says, in one of many in-jokes aimed at adults.

So Joker and his gang get the idea to release all the super-villains trapped by Superman in the Phantom Zone, and soon Bats has got more on his hands than he can handle.

Directed by Chris McKay, “The Lego Batman Movie” is a stylistic clone of “The Lego Movie” – ridiculously fast-paced, lots of colorful action that the eye can’t all track, chockful of quips and comedic asides.

It’s aimed squarely at kids, but is smart and savvy enough to throw in enough to keep parents engaged, too. Compared to so many moribund animated flicks lately that couldn’t pull off that trick -- “Sing,” “Trolls” -- it almost seems like a super-power.

Review: "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"

I always thought “Watchmen” was the anti-superhero superhero movie, but this one takes the cake. It’s not so much against superheroes as movies based on their comic books, registering as a spit-flecked denunciation of the way such flicks saturate our culture, almost like a spreading disease that uses up actors’ careers and audiences’ time.

“Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” is an obsidian-black comedy about Riggan Thomson, an over-60 actor who played a costumed hero decades ago and has struggled to do anything equally consequential since. He’s played by Michael Keaton, who knows something about that.

If this sounds like stunt casting, that’s because it is -- but then this whole movie directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (“21 Grams”) is a gimmick, if a very clever one.

Thomson has now sunk most of his heart, soul and bank account into mounting a Broadway production based on the work of short story master Raymond Carver, which he also wrote and is directing.

At one point he finds himself facing off with a hostile New York Times theater critic (Lindsay Duncan), who announces that she’s going to close the play with a vicious review, even though she hasn’t seen it, because she resents Hollywood dilettantes invading her sacred space where real art is made, taking up a theater (the actual St. James) that could be better used for, well, just about anything.

We suspect her lips are channeling the thoughts of Iñárritu, who co-wrote the screenplay (along with three others), and they’re really talking about caped crusader movies.

Keaton is a marvel in this movie, providing an emotionally naked performance as a self-consumed man who has spent so much of his life worrying about being appreciated that he hasn’t ever really inhabited the present tense. Riggan is constantly reminded of this by his estranged daughter, Sam (Emma Thomson), recently graduated from rehab and hired as his assistant -- partly out of a sense of guilt and partly to keep an eye on her for his ex-wife (Amy Ryan).

Iñárritu created the role expressly for Keaton, which was deft, but then unwisely keeps getting in the way of his lead actor.

The director makes all sorts of showy creative choices, like constructing the entire movie out of (seemingly) uninterrupted tracking shots, so we’re constantly shadowing the actors like a ghostly presence. Similarly, the music score (by Antonio Sanchez) is made up almost entirely of percussion instruments, but the disjointed beats bump the movie off its rhythm rather than riding one.

Riggan professes not to think much about being Birdman, but in fact he’s verily haunted by his feathered former alter-ego. The voice of the hero speaks to him (Keaton’s guttural rasp is wonderfully eerie), offering alternate praise and scorn, trying to convince Riggan to give up his ridiculous dream and return to costume work. In private moments when the alter egos are conferring, Riggan performs feats of telekinesis that, even if imagined (?), help buck up his brittle psyche.

The play is teetering on the edge of disaster. Riggan replaces his awful second lead actor, injured during rehearsal, with Mike Shiner, who’s brilliant but notoriously difficult to work with, and he’s played by Edward Norton, who also has a reputation for… but I think you get it now.

Mike is greeted as the production’s rescuer but soon sets about as its chief saboteur, stealing Riggan’s limelight in the press and even stopping a preview performance cold when his (real) gin is confiscated. He’s also the boyfriend of the lead actress, Lesley (Naomi Watts), a bundle of neurotic self-doubt, who recruited him but soon comes to regret it. Meanwhile, Riggan is having an affair with the other, much-younger actress (Andrea Riseborough).

Flitting around the edges of the story is Jake (Zach Galifianakis), Riggan’s lawyer, producing partner and underappreciated fixit man.

The performances are delicious in “Birdman,” particularly Keaton, who will deservedly be the subject of a lot of Academy Awards conversations. I just wish Iñárritu had enough faith in his star to let him shine in the spotlight, instead of constantly distracting us with his showy, look-at-me direction.

Earlier in this review I called the movie clever, and it is that; but it’s the sort of feckless, selfish clever that feels compelled to keep reminding you how clever it is.

Video review: "The Hangover Part III"

If it stood on its own, “The Hangover Part III” would probably go down as a pretty decent comedy, agreeably raunchy without being terribly ambitious. Following in the wake of the brashly original 2009 film, though, it was bound to seem a letdown.

I give writer/director Todd Phillps and company points for recognizing they couldn’t just keep repeating the gimmick of a bunch of early-middle-aged buddies waking up from a night of debauchery and trying assemble the missing pieces to solve some mystery. It worked once, brilliantly, and was already old hat by the second time round. A third retread would’ve been fatal.

This time it’s all about irrepressible man-boy Alan (Zach Galifianakis), the one-time fifth wheel who’s undeniably the star of the show now. After being devastated by the death of his dad, the rest of the “Wolf Pack” – including rakish Phil (Bradley Cooper) and pernickety Stu (Ed Helms) – are driving Alan cross-country to a detox center.

Of course they run into all sorts of trouble, mostly involving an overbearing gangster (John Goodman), but also returning crazed con-man/exhibitionist Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) to the fold. There’s not quite as much nudity and foul behavior as the previous two films, though stick around for the end credits for an extra helping of filth.

“The Hangover Part III” may be a pale shadow of the original, but it’s funny enough to remind us what made it so good in the first place.

Extras are rather good, and in a rare occurrence are the same whether you opt for the Blu-ray combo pack or the regular DVD edition. So many releases today require you to pay more for the really good goodies.

There are extended and deleted scenes, outtakes and a host of making-of featurettes that are intended to be informative as well as ladle on more laughs. Probably the best is a prank pulled on Galifianakis in which they secretly filmed other actors auditioning to replace him in the role of Alan, then let the tapes “leak” out.

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Review: "The Hangover Part III"

After the raunchy brilliance of "The Hangover" in 2009 came the inevitable sequel two years later, which like most second comings was a major letdown. The cast and crew essentially aped the first movie, with our maturity-challenged "Wolf Pack" of 40-ish dudes waking up after a night of debauchery, and attempting to reconstruct the events of which they had no memory.

It had its moments, but the novel premise was no longer fresh, and the jokes just didn't hit like the first time around.

"The Hangover Part III" falls somewhere in the middle of the two, funny enough to recommend but lacking the frisson of the original. It also abandons the flashback storytelling gimmick of the first two films, opting for a straight-ahead narrative. Instead of creating new mischief while on a bender, they're soberly dealing with the consequences of their previous (mis)adventures.

That's all well and good, and it was probably the right move to make the third (and, by all accounts, final) movie stand out from the rest. But I feel compelled to point out that we're watching a movie with "Hangover" in the title during which no one experiences a hangover.

Until, that is ... well, I don't want to spoil the surprise. Suffice it to say, I highly advise you to keep your fanny parked in your seat when the credits roll.

Zach Galifianakis, who made such an oddball sidekick in the first movie, is now pretty much the center of the show. As delusionally obtuse man-boy Alan, Galifianakis has created an enduring comic character, a man who is somehow innocent and yet repulsive at the same time.

Alan is the sort of guy who can meet a woman (a nice cameo by Melissa McCarthy) seemingly as mucked up as he is, initiate the beginnings of a romance, and then pull down his pants, coyly informing her that he "saw it in a pornography" -- and yet still come across as dimly sweet.

All the other characters pretty much react to what Alan's doing, including smoother operator-turned minivan-driving schlep Phil (Bradley Cooper) and uptight dentist Stu (Ed Helms). Alan even seems to command our attention when he shares the screen with Leslie Chow -- the certifiably insane, cocaine-snorting, generic Asian accent-spouting, wild-partying criminal played by Ken Jeong.

Spoiler alert: I can confirm that Jeong's penis returns for a third outing ... if you're patient.

The set-up is the guys are driving Alan, who's depressed and off his meds after his father's death, to a detox center in Arizona when they're kidnapped by a homicidal gangster named Marshall (John Goodman). It seems Chow stole $21 million in gold bars from him with the Wolf Pack's unwitting help, so he wants them to get it back for him. As insurance, Marshall kidnaps their friend Doug, once again giving Justin Bartha a reason to disappear for most of the movie (which is probably just as well).

The rest of the flick plays out as a series of chases and double-crosses, as the guys quickly track down Chow but have difficulty keeping their hands on him. Alan, who had secretly been exchanging letters and emails with Chow while he was in a Bangkok prison, incorrectly sees it as rescuing Chow rather than capturing him.

There's a few clever bits, including a neat reversal at a Mexican villa, and of course the action ends up in Las Vegas, the beginning of all their troubles.

There are no celebrity appearances a la Mike Tyson like last time around, though the hi jinks are intermittently funny and occasionally hilarious.

"The Hangover Part III" pales in comparison to the first film, but it feels less cynical and rote than the middle one. It's a fun outing, with enough laughs to remind us why we liked the first movie so much.

Review: "The Campaign"

"The Candidate" really slows down in its last half-hour or so, as this raunchy, no-holds-barred take on modern politics pulls up its pants, gets a little serious and tries to say Something Important. But the first hour or so is loose and carefree, and is as gut-bustingly funny as anything I've seen in awhile.

Call it two-thirds of the funniest movie of the year.

There's one scene that nearly made me cough up a lung. Marty Huggins, the prissy Christian family man played by Zach Galifianakis, is telling his clan the sort of scrutiny they can expect now that he's running for Congress. He asks them to lay any embarrassing secrets out on the dinner table so they can confront them. The two cherubic young boys and his prim wife proceed to lay out a litany of scatological transgressions that would have Dante warming up his inferno.

His opponent, four-term incumbent Cam Brady (Will Ferrell), gets into plenty of his own hilarious escapades. One involves babies, and in his zeal to beat out Marty to lay some kisses on them in the time-honored political tradition, he ends up ... well, kind of the opposite of kissing the baby.

Much of the humor is over-the-top and zany, and bears no relation to even the worst antics we've seen in this or any election cycle. (Thought Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got pretty close with his line, "He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain.")

Later on, though, things go from crazy-funny to crazy-implausible -- such as when one candidate shoots another during a hunting "accident," or another seduces his opponent's wife, tapes it, and uses the footage as the basis for a campaign ad. In both instances, their poll numbers go up.

These moments pierce the bubble of carefully cultivated disbelief, and the movie just becomes one big goof job.

Finally, there's the schmaltzy finale, in which we're asked to believe that one candidate would take an action that has never been performed in the history of politics, and probably isn't even legal. Also, oddly, that both campaigns would share the same hall for their victory parties. All to set up a big moment where things get tender and teary.

You can practically hear the windbag gas escaping.

Director Jay Roach and screenwriters Chris Hency and Shawn Harwell are careful to keep the political barbs nonpartisan, or more accurately multi-partisan: everybody comes off looking bad.

In a bit of a switch, it's the Democrat Brady who's a boozing, corrupt tool of the big corporations, represented by the not-even-slightly subtle duo of super-rich brothers named Motch. They're played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd, and their presence mostly serves to remind us that Aykroyd is now old enough to play the aged evil tycoons he battled in "Trading Places."

Huggins, meanwhile, is the humble do-gooder who's chosen to run as a patsy, and even has to take lessons on how to appear more manly from his appointed svengali, played by Dylan McDermott. With his Cheetos mustache and slightly swishy manner, Galifianakis paints a complex comedic portrait of a man who doesn't really fit into any neat box.

Ferrell, meanwhile, is mostly doing a takeoff on his caricature of George W. Bush, with a thick coating of North Carolina molasses. Think of a DNA splicing of John Edwards and Sean Hannity. (His motto: "America. Jesus. Freedom.")

"The Campaign" is definitely worth a ticket, though be forewarned the language and sexual terminology is about as nasty as you can get without an NC-17 rating. Keep the little ones at home, and keep your expectations low for the last act, and you'll have a good time.

3 stars out of four

Review: "The Hangover Part II"

Perhaps inevitably, the sequel to "The Hangover," the surprise comedy smash of 2009, cannot quite live up to expectations. It's still plenty funny, and it's doubtful many fans of the original will walk out disappointed. Still, the novelty has worn thin.

The only thing that really distinguished the first film from any number of comedies about boys getting debauched and behaving badly was its clever narrative construction: They wake up after a wild night of pre-wedding partying with no memory of what happened, and have to piece together events based on clues.
More than one person has described it as "Bachelor Party" meets "Memento."

"Part II" is pretty much a repeat, with the action moved from Las Vegas to Bangkok. The same players are up for another round: Stu, the confidence-challenged dentist (Ed Helms) who's the bridegroom this time; Phil (Bradley Cooper), the hedonistic alpha male; and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), the clueless man-child perpetually fascinated by a world that mystifies him.

The lost boy this time is Teddy (Mason Lee), the 16-year-old younger brother to Lauren (Jamie Chung), Stu's bride-to-be. The "Wolfpack" wakes up in a scummy Bangkok hotel to find Alan's head shaved bald, Stu's face freshly etched with the same tattoo on Mike Tyson's, and Teddy gone missing ... well, mostly missing.

Instead of a lost baby to serve as their mascot, there is a chain-smoking monkey and a wordless monk in a wheelchair. They've got until the next day to find Teddy and make the wedding in time.

Also popping up again is Chow, an Asian-American crime boss with very politically incorrect speech patterns and a nose for trouble. Actor Ken Jeong, who gave a rather revealing performance in the first film, raises his game to new, um, levels.

(I should point out that the movie's release was nearly scuttled by a lawsuit by the tattoo artist who inked Mike Tyson's face for copyright infringement. Fortunately, the justice system interrupted its trivial duties prosecuting rapists to lift the injunction.)

Director Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the screenplay with Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, still has a few fresh tricks up his sleeve. The dialogue is sharp as ever -- Alan describes himself as "a stay-at-home son" -- and the repartee between the fellows is somehow simultaneously combative and brotherly.

Still, other sequences seem practically preordained. A visit to a local monastery is bound to lead to the boys being laid low by chop-socky. An excursion to a seedy strip club results in some uncomfortable revelations for Stu that halfway clever audience members will see coming a mile off. And Paul Giamatti is ill-used as a blustery gangster who's a lynchpin for the plot.

If it were to stand on its own, "The Hangover Part II" would register as a better-than-average smutty comedy. Despite a few slow patches, it is loaded with gut-busting laughs. After its much brainier predecessor, though, it feels like a well-meaning kid forced to follow in the footsteps of his genius older sibling.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Dinner for Schmucks"

 Steve Carell gives an off-kilter, weird performance in "Dinner for Schmucks." As Barry, an IRS agent whose social skills appear to have stopped developing around third grade, Carell creates a character that we do not believe could really live and breathe in the real world. But it's such a pitifully funny creation, we go along with the gag.

Barry's hobby -- his only passion in life, really -- is stuffing dead mice and placing them in diorama poses, what he calls "mousterpieces." When he runs into Tim (Paul Rudd), he's soon made the patsy in a nasty game run by Tim's boss: Each man has to invite the most pathetic loser they can find to a dinner party. The guy who brings the most laughable guest wins.

A remake of a French comedy, "Dinner for Schmucks" doesn't contain joke-a-minute laughs. But when a scene hits high gear, it's as funny as anything I saw in 2010. Zach Galifianakis has a hilarious turn as Barry's boss, who's a dork himself but just enough less of a dork than Barry to convince him that he can control Barry's mind.

Lucy Punch also has a great walk-on scene as a sexual stalker who tries to put the moves on Barry, but he's too much of a moron to realize he's being seduced.
"Dinner for Schmucks" contains a full course of mirth.

Video features are a bit light, but worth a look.

On the DVD version, there are deleted scenes, a gag reel -- dubbed "Schmuck Ups" -- and a feature on the Biggest Schmucks in the World.

In addition, the Blu-ray edition contains a featurette on "The Man Behind the Mousterpieces," another called "Meet the Winners" and a spoof of LeBron James' "The Decision" press conference starring Carell and Rudd.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Due Date"

Let's not endure any illusions that "Due Date" is anything other than a raunchy updating of 1987's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" from the director and breakout star of "The Hangover."

Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis play the Steve Martin and John Candy roles as, respectively, an uptight professional type trying to get home to his family and a wacky interloper who screws up his plans, steering him straight into road trip comedy territory.

Over time, the jerk realizes he's a jerk, and comes to accept his dim-witted, accident-prone traveling companion as his new best friend, embracing the chaos that's been introduced into his stale little life.

Todd Phillips, who directed and co-wrote the script (along with three other guys I don't feel like mentioning) adroitly sets up the big laughs, of which there are plenty. He really knows how to use Galifianakis' strange, beetle-brow peevish charm to comic effect.

My big problem with the movie is that I just didn't buy these two guys as real people. Since I don't believe them as legitimate characters who could exist in the real world, I didn't feel anything for them when the movie turns mushy and serious.

It's pretty obvious that Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) is a movie-made edifice. He's a wannabe actor heading to Hollywood who's colossally clueless about acting, and movies, and basic human interaction.

When asked if he knows who Shakespeare is, he insists that he's a pirate, and that it's pronounced "Shakesbeard." After mimicking Marlon Brando's opening speech in "The Godfather" (badly and inaccurately), Ethan demurs when asked if he wrote that, saying "the Mafia did."

"'Two and a Half Men' is the reason I wanted to become an actor," Ethan says without guile. "Especially the second season."

Ethan carries around a tiny pug dog named Sonny, has a prissy little walk like he's trying to balance a fresh egg between his thighs, and is toting his father's ashes cross-country.

Such a bizarre assortment of ticks strains credulity, but even the supposed straight man seems implausible.

As played by Downey, Peter Highman is an architect who's built a cathedral of ironic detachment around himself. When Ethan (or anyone) behaves in a way Peter thinks infringes on his sensibilities, his reaction is to do a dead-pan patter and project exasperation that such a thing could possibly happen to him.

He doesn't actually roll his eyes, but you can feel him doing it internally.

The set-up is that Ethan gets both of them thrown off the plane from Atlanta to Los Angeles by repeatedly mentioning the words "bomb" and "terrorist," and then Peter's insufferable attitude toward the flight crew does the rest. Having lost his ID, Peter can't even rent a car to get back home in time for the birth of his first child.

You can guess the rest yourself. Forced to share a car with Ethan, they proceed to get into one scrape after another, with Peter growing progressively vexed and Ethan perpetually oblivious to it.

The script borrows from "Planes, Trains" again and again. There's a bit where Ethan falls asleep at the wheel, and another where Peter looks over at Ethan and hallucinates him into a demonic figure. All that's missing is the "two pillows" joke.

I don't mind a clever tip of the hat to another, better movie. But "Due Date" steals so often and so shamelessly that, despite an abundance of genuinely funny moments, we're happy when the ride ends.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Dinner for Schmucks"

"Dinner for Schmucks" is a pretty darn funny comedy. Not laugh-a-minute funny, as the good bits are spread a little thin. When it hits, though, it hits on all cylinders.

Mostly I think this is due to an extraordinarily strange performance by Steve Carell. But we'll get to that in a minute. First I'd like to discuss the title.

"Schmuck" is Yiddish, a pejorative for the male sex organ, and is generally considered to be a swear word. If it weren't the title of a mainstream Hollywood movie, it's unlikely any newspaper would allow me to use it in print (or even the wild, wild Web).

The interesting thing is that nobody in the film is identified as being Jewish. In fact, the rich businessman who organizes the titular dinners -- in which his lackeys compete to see who can bring the biggest idiot as his guest -- is about as WASP-y as you can get.

No one even uses the word "schmuck" at any point in the movie. So while I'm all in favor of using foreign swear words for the coy naughtiness, I'm a little confused as to how they arrived at this title. Anyway.

The straight man is played by Paul Rudd, a perpetual cinematic wing man finally getting a shot at the lead. (If only we could cast him and Judy Greer together in a romantic comedy, the world would feel right.)

Rudd plays Tim, an analyst at a company specializing in buying up distressed companies, stripping and selling them. He wants to move up to the seventh floor where the big boys play, leapfrogging each other to impress the top dog, Fender (Bruce Greenwood).

The boss likes Tim's gumption in pursuing a deal with an eccentric Swiss tycoon, but has a condition for the promotion: He must take part in the monthly dinner competition. But where is he to find an idiot?

Then Barry arrives, as if sent from above. Played by Carell with a bad haircut and some prosthetic teeth, Barry is an IRS agent whose real passion is taxidermy. In his case, Barry likes to collect dead mice, stuff them and pose them in romantic little dioramas -- having picnics, riding bikes, etc.

Tim runs Barry over with his car, and immediately senses that something is amiss when Barry offers to pay him to make the whole thing going away. Clearly, the patsy has arrived.

Carell gives Barry a dim-witted sweetness that's hard not to like. It's not so much that he's stupid, but his experience with meaningful human interaction is so limited, he's like a kindergartner among surly eighth-graders.

For instance, Barry has a boss who has convinced him he can take control of his mind through hypnosis, even though he's only marginally more sophisticated than Barry. He's played by Zach Galifianakis in hilariously self-serious turn -- at one point, he turns his face dark purple and then back to normal again, like switching a light. They don't teach that at the Actor's Studio.

The actual dinner happens rather late in the game. Barry shows up at Tim's a day early, and in a matter of hours has managed to estrange his girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostack), a sensitive artistic type who's appalled that Tim would participate in the cruel game.

This sends her running into the hirsute arms of Keiran (Jemaine Clement), a pretentious artist whose works all involve depictions of himself. Keiran envisions himself as some kind of wise, horny satyr with the lower half of a goat, but the real hindquarters he resembles belong to a horse.

Things really get rolling with the arrival of Darla (Lucy Punch), a stalker ex-girlfriend of Tim's. She tries playing a sex game with Barry, who remains colossally clueless.

"Would you like to lick cheese off my naked body?" Darla teases. "Oh, I'm sure Tim has plates," Barry responds.

Directed by Jay Roach from a screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman, "Dinner" is a fast-paced farce with a decent helping of big laughs. Oh, and it's based on a French comedy called "Dinner for Idiots" ... so still no clue on where the schmucks came from.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Youth in Revolt"

Michael Cera has become an unlikely but bonafide movie star by essentially playing the same role over and over. (Don't knock it; John Wayne lasted 40 years that way.)

In Cera's case, he's always the smart, verbose kid of ironic disposition and dubious social skills who's desperate to win the attention of a particular girl, or just one in general.

"Youth in Revolt" is a refreshing turn for him because he plays the prototypical Cera character, Nick Twisp, but also Francois Dillinger, the "supplementary persona" Nick creates to lend him the bad-boy courage he needs to land the girl of his dreams.

This comes about from Nick's accurate observation, "In movies, the good guy gets the girl. In real life, it's usually the (jerk)."

Francois looks just like Nick, though a bit older, more sallow, with a faint mustache and facial peach fuzz. He's perpetually smoking a cigarette, staring at Nick with disquieting blue eyes while suggesting he do all sorts of unpleasant and usually illegal things.

Nick is naturally so nice and meek that Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), the smart, French-loving girl he meets while staying at the Restless Axles Trailer Park in Ukiah, Calif., has to hurry along their dawdling courtship with the instruction, "Kiss me, you weenie!"

Alas, events keep conspiring to keep them apart. Soon Nick has to move back to his home in Oakland with his mom (Jean Smart) and her ignoramus boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis).

With Francois' help, Nick arranges to get thrown out of his mother's home and move in with his dad (an ill-used Steve Buscemi), whom he finds a job for in Ukiah. But then Sheeni's overly religious parents send her to a private school in Santa Cruz.

Even worse, Sheeni's longtime suitor, the poet/athlete Trent -- who's heard of but not seen -- just happens to be transferred to the same school.

The film was adapted from C.D. Payne's novel (actually, a series) by Gustin Nash and directed by Miguel Arteta, who's mostly been doing TV lately but got his start with similarly quirky indie fare like "Chuck & Buck" and "The Good Girl."

It's funny in an urbane way, and I enjoyed the characters and spending time with them.
A few things don't quite add up. Sheeni remains something of a mystery -- she's more a collection of a traits a geekboy would imagine his perfect mate to have rather than a believable character.

The movie also has a habit of discovering and discarding interesting minor characters that we wish would stick around a little longer. There's Lefty, Nick's ostensible best friend, who's in the first couple of scenes, goes away for an hour, comes back and then disappears permanently.

Fred Willard has the beginnings of a nice turn as a kooky neighbor with a thing for helping illegal aliens, but again, by the time he turns up again we'd mostly forgotten about him.

Sheeni's brother (Justin Long) shows up just long enough to get everyone stoned and then leave. Vijay, a fellow sex-addled student at Nick's new school, accompanies him on an excursion to Sheeni's school that seems like it was lifted entirely from an '80s T&A flick.

But the good traits of "Youth in Revolt" outweigh its detractions. Francois steals every scene he's in, which is appropriate for a movie that celebrates, or at least recognizes the usefulness of, bad boys.

2.5 stars

Review: "G-Force"

It's hard to play nice with a movie like "G-Force." Yes, I know films like this are designed for audiences that are only a small fraction of my age. It features cute computer-generated critters who act out, dance to hip-hop music and engage in noisome bodily functions that are eternally delightful to those who measure their years in single digits.

But is it too much to ask for a kiddie flick that's at least passably endurable for parents and other grown-ups? I know not every children's movie can be "Finding Nemo," but is "The Rescuers Down Under" too high to aim?

"G-Force" is about a group of guinea pigs who are trained as secret agents for the government. Oh, there's also a mole who hangs out underground and handles the computers.

The rodents' voices are done by Tracy Morgan, Penelope Cruz, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi and Jon Favreau, so you know exactly what kind of character each is doing. Morgan does an Ebonix-spewing dude named Blaster; Cruz is the saucy Latina Juarez; Rockwell is the heroic team leader Darwin; Buscemi is a nervous guinea pig accused of ferret ancestry; and Favreau is the chubby non-spy pig with delusions of awesomeness.

The actors appear to have recorded their scripted lines, and then spent some studio time reeling off non-sequitar exclamations that are then animated into the action scenes. So you'll see CG guinea pigs flying through the air or running from explosions, and they'll say something that doesn't even fit the moment.

Anyway, the plot: A scheming industrialist (Bill Nighy) has cooked up some plan named Clusterstorm that will activate the computer chips he has secretly embedded in his vast array of consumer electronics. They set a 30-hour countdown, at which point he will activate the plot and all the gizmos will do something ... well, we don't know what, but really nasty.

Problem: After at least a dozen references to the ever-dwindling time count, Nighy finally sets things in motion by pushing a button. At one point he even shows off the button he's going to press. Question: If you have a button that can do what you want right now, why do you need a countdown? Why wouldn't you just push the button immediately?

I should mention that the human leader of G-Force is played by Zach Galifianakis, who played the man-child in this summer's biggest sleeper hit, the raunchfest "The Hangover." I can only hope there's no crossover audience.

1 star