Review: "The Mitchells vs. the Machines"

“The Mitchells vs. the Machines” is a pretty curious animal: a slick-looking CGI movie from a major animation studio (Sony) playing on the biggest streaming service (Netflix) that’s all about how people are letting technology interfere with their interpersonal relationships. It takes shots at Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Google and all the other big digital players.

This is pretty bold stuff. It’s like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union deciding to serve gin martinis at their next meeting to juice up attendance.

At one point the titular family is sitting around the dinner table and everybody’s nose is in their phone. (Chances are at least one of them is watching Netflix.) Dad has to beg them to make eye contact for 10 seconds before the strain does them in. Later they take on a literal army of evil robots let loose by our own increasing reliance on technological crutches… like the very ones you’ll probably use to watch this movie.

Holy conflicting signals, Batman!

Rather than shy away from the cognitive dissonance, director Mike Rianda and co-screenwriter Jeff Rowe gleefully embrace the crazy in a freewheeling, fast-paced story full of action, sharp wit and not a little pathos. It’s the best animated flick I’ve seen since “Wolfwalkers.”

The setup is that teen heroine Katie Mitchell (voice of Abbi Jacobson) is a queen of geek culture and an aspiring filmmaker. She has a popular YouTube channel for her shorts, a series starring the family’s barely-there pug, Monchi, as Cop Dog. She uses a mix of live action, filters and animation -- a style the movie mimics, so characters will have little emoticons pop over their heads and whatnot.

She’s jacked to move away to California to start film school and connect with her tribe of fellow weirdos. But there’s also the usual teen disconnect with her family, especially with her well-meaning but clueless dad, Rick (Danny McBride). He’s a technophobe who doesn’t understand Katie’s tools and wants her to have a backup in case filmmaking doesn’t work out. Recalling their close bond when she was little, Rick is hurt that Katie seems so eager to cut the ties that bind.

Her mom, Linda (Maya Rudolph), is a first-grade teacher and domestic goddess, handling the daily chaos and gently pushing Rick to reach out and connect. Younger brother Aaron (voiced by Rianda himself) is anxious and dinosaur-obsessed, and is worried about losing his closest (read: only) friend when Katie moves away.

Rick comes up with the (not so) brilliant idea of a cross-country road trip to reconnect, but it only seems to push them further away. The action sets in when the PAL mega-corporation, led by the callow young tech billionaire Mark “Totally Not Zuckerberg” Bowman (Eric Andre) introduces the next big technological leap: personal assistant robots to not just control all your communications and interactions, but make you breakfast and clean up the house while doing it.

Unfortunately, the old PAL operating system (Olivia Colman), represented as a emotive face within a phone, is none too pleased about being displaced, and soon takes over the system. Humans across the globe are scooped and placed into glowing blue pods to be shot off into the cold, dark reaches of unknown space -- but hey, we’ll still have Wifi!

With the help of a pair of captured robots who have incurred damage that renders them more human-like, the Mitchells set out to upload a backdoor shutdown program into the mainframe, dodging legions of enemies and multitudinous explosions. Their only weapons are Katie’s canny brain, Rick’s old-school crafty brain, and a can of whup-tush that gets unleashed by the unlikeliest member of the clan.

There’s lots of zany action to please kids as well as a few gross moments to draw titters. I was more lured toward the clever throwaway jokes, various side characters offering social commentary and surprisingly heartfelt rumination about the challenges of maintaining a father-daughter bond.

I’d prefer to watch a fun spectacle like “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” in a movie theater, but in this age of isolation we have to watch where and whenever we can. It’s still astounding that a movie that makes use of the technology it mocks could result in such a delightfully human story.

Video review: "Halloween"

Why in the world did we need another entry in the exhausted “Halloween” franchise? The studio can give you 253 million reasons.

That was the box office tally of the newest Michael Myers slasher flick, and the first one to feature Jamie Lee Curtis since “Halloween: Resurrection” 17 years ago. It completely retcons the series, banishing all the movies since the second one from its memory -- the sequels, the reboots, the remakes -- and taking us back to square of the smart, tenacious girl and the masked psycho who wants to slash her to bits.

Except, of course, both Laurie Strode (Curtis) and Myers aka The Shape (played this time by Nick Castle) are both grandparent age by now. Indeed, Myers spends more time chasing Strode’s granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak) than Laurie, who has become a pistol-packin’ grandma and recluse who seems to have done little over the past 40 years but wait for Myers to get out of prison.

Supporting characters include Will Patton as a veteran cop in Haddonfield, the fictional city where all the mayhem takes place; Judy Greer as Laurie’s estranged daughter; and Haluk Bilginer as Dr. Sartain, the oddball psychiatrist who’s been treating Myers without much success, just as Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis did.

The new “Halloween” has a creative team from a comedy background: director David Gordon Green and his fellow screenwriters, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. It’s not a total yuk-fest, but they do slip in some comedic moments to lighten the mood.

Me? I likes my scary movies pure scary.

Bonus features are decent. They include seven deleted or extended scenes and the following documentary shorts:

• Back in Haddonfield: Making Halloween
• The Original Scream Queen
• The Sound of Fear
• Journey of the Mask
• The Legacy of Halloween

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Extras:

Review: "Halloween"

“Halloween” is a decently energetic horror flickershow. But it doesn’t pass the basic litmus test of, “Does this movie need to exist?”

As you know, this film reunites Jamie Lee Curtis, in her most seminal role as Laurie Strode, with Michael Myers, with white-masked, silent killer who tried unsuccessfully to off her in the original movie of the same title from 40 years ago. It’s essentially a reunion.

But then, they already held this party in 1998 for “Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.” She managed to whack off Michael’s head with an axe in that one, Lizzie Borden-style. Undeterred, he reappeared a few years later for “Halloween: Resurrection,” and returned the favor by killing Laurie.

And this doesn’t even take into account the Rob Zombie reboot and its own sequel a few years back, or the various Laurie-less sequels of the 1980s and ‘90s. “Halloween III” didn’t even bother with featuring Michael or Laurie, making television the villain, or something.

The point is, it’s impossible to take this franchise seriously any longer. It’s been rebooted and remade and retconned to hell and back again. There is no sense of consequences because anybody who dies can just be brought back for the next iteration by the next round of filmmakers. Rinse and repeat.

This 40th anniversary reunion is part homage to the original and part new story jag. It requires us to ignore all the previous Halloween movies since the second one. It even asks us to forget that Laurie and Michael are supposed to be brother and sister -- a key piece of the franchise’s iconography for five decades.

In this telling, Michael Myers has been rotting in a mental institution for the past 40 years, never speaking a word to anyone. Meanwhile, Laurie seems to have done little in the years between other than arming herself and preparing for the eventual day he would come after her again.

There’s another creepy, vaguely European doctor trying to puzzle his way into Michael’s brain, Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer). Laurie takes on look at him and cuts to the chase: “You’re the new Loomis,” she says, referring to Donald Pleasance’s psychiatrist, whose obsession turned from curing Michael to ending him. I think Pleasance has actually been in more Halloween movies than Curtis.

Judy Greer plays Laurie’s estranged adult daughter, who was raised under the threat of Michael’s return, and has her own teen daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak). She goes off to a Halloween party with her friends, and soon finds herself stalked by her grandmother’s not-brother.

Will Patton turns up as Frank Hawkins, a veteran cop in the fictional town of Haddonfield, who reputedly was the first one on the scene for the 1978 murders. He putters around here and there, discovering the bodies Michael leaves in his wake, killing time until his own inevitable offing.

Nowhere in the movie is it ever mentioned that Michael would have to be close to 70 years old now. You’d think at some point even maniacal serial killers would segue from slicing horny teenagers to Metamucil and a nice day in the park.

Directed by David Gordon Green, who comes from a comedy background and co-wrote the screenplay with funnyman Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, “Halloween” contains a smattering of funny moments, such as two police officers comparing their lunches while sitting in their patrol car waiting to be stabbed.

How very different the horror genre has gotten in the last 40 years. I don’t think the original “Halloween” would’ve become anything like the iconic film it is with this sort of verbal diarrhea and passing attempts at levity.

John Carpenter knew that when you’re trying to scare people, concentrate on the scaring.

Video review: "The Angry Birds Movie"

“The Angry Birds Movie” is an exemplar of the generational divide: I loathe it, but my kids love it.

Since the Blu-ray showed up in the mail, my 5-year-old has watched it twice and asked about a third, at which point a parent’s protective instincts kick in. The quality of entertainment for children has gone through the roof since my day, so lazy and inept stuff like this is even more egregious.

People like to disparage movies based on video games as dredging the bottom of the cultural barrel. But Angry Birds isn’t even a real video game, in the same way that tic-tac-toe bears little resemblance to Monopoly. It’s a smartphone app in which birds hurl themselves via a giant slingshot at the buildings and other structures of evil green pigs.

(Oddly, no one has ever thought to question why none of these birds have functioning wings. I mean, you figure any multicultural bird community is going to have a few penguins, ostriches and the odd emu here and there. But 100% flightless? Darwin says, “Uh uh.”)

Directors Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly and screenwriter Jon Vitti give us a paint-by-numbers cast and story. Red (voice of Jason Sudeikis) is a bird with anger management problems and the ostensible hero. His buddies include Chuck, a motor-mouth yellow guy voiced by Josh Gad, and Bomb (Danny McBride), who does as his name implies when he gets excited.

There’s also Terence, a massive red fellow who just growls at everyone, never speaking. He’s voiced (if you can call it that) by Sean Penn.

When the pigs land on bird island, they befriend the locals before making off with all their eggs. Bill Hader does the voice of Leonard, their smarmy leader. It’s only a matter of time before Red and company follow them back home and start slinging themselves at piggy places.

Perhaps the film’s only genuine laugh is provided by Peter Dinklage as Mighty Eagle, the mascot/mythical protector of the birds, who lives the high life up in his eyrie.

The rest is a generic jumble of fart jokes and zippy pratfalls. It’s just lazy moviemaking.

But enough parents got dragged to the theater by their kids to make this a huge hit, so get ready for the sequel. In the meantime, “The Angry Birds Movie” is the sort of thing you set your little guys up with in the living with some popcorn, and go get 97 minutes to yourself.

Bonus features are middling. With the DVD there is a single deleted scene; the Blake Shelton music video, “Friends”; character sketch gallery; music vignettes with composer Heitor Pareira; and a “symphony mode” where you can watch the movie with only music.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version and you add five making-of featurettes; more deleted scenes; several mini-movies featuring the Hatchlings characters; and the short film, “The Early Hatchling Gets the Worm.”

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Extras:

Review: "The Angry Birds Movie"

Movies fail for all kinds of reasons. Poor casting, bad story structure, uninspired direction -- even the music can ruin a moment. I’ve seen it all, and generally don’t hold it against the filmmakers. They swung, they whiffed, maybe they’ll do better at their next at bat.

The one reason I can’t abide, though, is sheer brute laziness.

“The Angry Birds Movie” is a merchandising opportunity in search of a movie. It’s based on a video game, and the batting average for that conversion is still .000. And the Angry Birds games aren’t even really games, they’re apps -- ways to pass the time on your smartphone while you’re waiting for the dentist.

There are no characters, no story, no drama. You just plink bird ordnance at pig structures to smash them. Ostensibly it’s because the pigs stole the birds’ eggs and they’re angry about it… but you never even get to the eggs.

You might as well try to make a film out of tic-tac-toe.

Still, the total lack of a format means rookie directors Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly and screenwriter Jon Vitti had no structure to hold them back. They could make up any kind of scenario they wanted and inserted imaginative characters and situations into them. Totally free reign.

Instead, they slapped together a droning mélange of quips, crude body humor and zippy action. Entire scenes and exchanges of dialogue seem improvised on the spot, which is impressive (in a way) for an animated film with an estimated budget of $80 million.

Little kids may be carried along by the bright colors and goofy action. But this parent was bored nearly to the point of walking out.

Here the birds all live on one happy island, protected by legendary guardian Mighty Eagle, who’s more aspirational than operational these days. The one malcontent is Red (voice of Jason Sudeikis), a pugnacious bird with Groucho Marx eyebrows and a tendency to lose his cool. For his crimes he’s sentenced to anger management class, led by hippy-dippy chickie Matilda (Maya Rudolph).

His classmates are Chuck, a hyper-fast yellow bird voiced by the excitable Josh Gad, and Bomb (Danny McBride), a burly black fellow with a tendency to literally explode when stressed, though his body is only slightly singed in the process. (The movie’s metaphysics are suspect.)

Oh, and there’s a massive red bird named Terence the size of a blimp -- he mostly resembles Red on steroids, eyebrows and all – who only ever glares at people and grumbles. I’m astonished to learn he is voiced by Sean Penn, who has hereby accomplished the Method Acting pinnacle of getting paid to grunt.

Anyway, the green pigs roll up on the beach one day offering friendship, led by the officious Leonard (Bill Hader), and they quickly set about spoiling bird paradise with their machines and noise. It’s all an excuse to make off with the birds’ eggs for their feast … which they sure seem to take their time getting around to. (Three-minute boil, anyone?)

Eventually, an hour into the movie, the birds starting launching themselves into the pig town via a giant slingshot the pigs brought with them, also for reasons unknown.

Mighty Eagle makes an appearance, gallantly voiced by Peter Dinklage, having now gone to seed. His first undertaking, after Bomb and Chuck have bathed in the mystical lake on top of his mountain, provides the movie’s sole laugh-out-loud moment.

As I say, I don’t often get mad about bad movies. But when you can feel the people who made them not trying, consider my feathers ruffled.

Review: "This Is the End"

What could have been a terribly tiresome joke turns out to be an extravagantly funny one. Young(ish) Hollywood stars playing themselves convene for a wild party at James Franco's house, which gets broken up by ... the Apocalypse.

Yeah, really: brimstone, demons, the whole bit. Needless to say, they aren't among those who ascend into heaven during The Rapture, which leaves these entitled stars feeling rather miffed. Things grow progressively worse, the food and water run low and they start turning on each other, with merrily over-the-top results.

I think what makes it a giddy romp instead of a giant sandwich of self-indulgence is that the versions of themselves played by the comedy stars are thoroughly unlikable and selfish. Each seems to be doing an amalgam of their various film roles, with all the negative characteristics played up.

It goes so far that they crack on each other for bad role choices or movies that underwhelmed. Seth Rogen, who co-directed and co-wrote the film with Evan Goldberg, gets a lot of abuse for the mush-brained "The Green Hornet" ... for which, of course, Rogen and Goldberg did the screenplay.

The bare-bones setup is that Seth is hosting his old friend Jay Baruchel in L.A. for a few days. Jay is estranged from Seth's new buddies, including Franco, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson. He gets strong-armed into attending a shindig at Franco's swank new Hollywood pad, it gets kinda awkward -- until death rains from the sky and holes open up in the earth.

Most of the guests and other celebrities get killed off rather quickly, including Mindy Kaling, Rihanna, Paul Rudd and Jason Segal. Michael Cera, playing an arrogant coked-up version of himself, meets an especially messy end.

The survivors spend the next days and weeks holed up in Franco's house (which somehow manages to retain electricity even as the rest of town is fried into a smoking cinder).

The humor is really, really raunchy, with a bend toward the scatological. The running thread is that the entire bunch is ruled by narcissism, even when it seems like they're playing buddy-buddy.

Jay is the lone voice of reason, suggesting they repent their sins and hope for salvation. But it's a hard sell with this bunch. Their facility with religious faith extends only as far as Franco comparing the Holy Trinity to Neapolitan ice cream.

Emma Watson has a wicked turn playing herself, who busts into the boys' house with an axe and can't wait to bust out again.

"This Is the End" is essentially a one-joke movie, but it's one these young show biz funnymen gleefully -- and skillfully -- play on themselves.

Video review: "Your Highness"

Merging the stoner comedy genre with sword-and-sorcery films seemed like a good idea on the surface, but this lame-brained flick from the "Pineapple Express" crew is more buzzkill than gut-busting funny.

On the one hand, I'm happy that we live in a world in which Danny McBride can become a movie star. Let's face it, with his mullet coif, cheeseburger mustache and beer gut, he looks like a guy who drives a Camaro IROC-Z to his job at the sewer treatment plant than somebody who makes movies with people who rule at the Oscars.

But comedy is the ultimate meritocracy, and McBride is funny. Unfortunately, "Your Highness" isn't.

He plays Thadeous, a prince who'd rather lay around the castle smoking "glorious herbs" than go out questing like his older brother, Fabious (James Franco). When his brother's new bride (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux), Thadeous agrees to tag along.

When the greatest warrior in the land turns out to be a comely lass (Natalie Portman), things look up for awhile. But there are still despotic woodland kings and amorous minotaurs to overcome.

"Your Highness" is a medieval low point -- a great idea, badly botched.

Details on video extras were still sketchy at press time, but here's what I have gathered. Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions include an unrated extended version of the film, a making-of documentary, commentary track with Director David Gordon Green, McBride, Franco and Theroux, deleted/alternate scenes and a gag reel.

The Blu-ray also includes "Perverted Visions," an extended version of the Great Wise Wizard sequence, more extended scenes and a montage of alternative jokes from various scenes.

Movie: 1.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Your Highness"

The sword-and-sorcery genre isn't exactly going gangbusters. After a brief heyday of schlocky movies in the early 1980s and a high point with the "Lord of the Ring" trilogy, things have been pretty sketchy for fantasy films. But that hasn't stopped the "Pineapple Express" crew from unnecessarily spoofing them.

Like "Pineapple," a modern ode to toking weed from 2008, "Your Highness" isn't nearly as funny as it seems to think it is. Danny McBride and James Franco play princely brothers on a quest to stop an evil warlock from bringing about end times, and they get a helping hand from Natalie Portman as a female warrior who kicks butt, and then shows hers.

The running joke is that it's a Dungeons & Dragons kind of world, but everyone acts and speaks like modern hipster doofuses. Thus McBride is a portly lay-about who'd rather smoke "glorious herbs" than go questing, and tosses the f-word about a lot more liberally than we're used to hearing in sword-and-sandals flicks.

McBride, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ben Best, also ladles on a generous helping of raunch -- including a wicked woodland king with a coterie of nude female retainers, and a minotaur who's a lot more, um, amorous than the mythical beast of yore. (How they got the latter past the censors, even with computer-generated imagery, boggles the mind.)

Thadeous (McBride) is the envious brother of Fabious (Franco), heir to the throne and veteran of many adventures. Having just returned from his latest one, Fabious reveals the maiden he rescued, Belladonna. She's played by Zooey Deschanel, in a role that asks her only to sing a short song and act loopy, and wastes her considerable talents.

Leezar (Justin Theroux), the aforementioned evil wizard, kidnaps Belladonna so he can pluck her virginity at the exact moment of a twin lunar eclipse, thus giving rise to a dragon only he can control, or something.
Fabious insists that his younger brother accompany him on this most perilous quest, which Thadeous does only reluctantly, bringing along his nebbishy manservant Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) to get in the way of any arrows or blades coming his way.

During their journeys they encounter Isabel (Portman), perhaps the greatest fighter in the land, who saves their bacon and then rebuffs the piggish advances of Thadeous. After much consternation and fisticuffs, they eventually band together to defeat Leezar.

The action scenes are staged clumsily and without any flair, although some of the special effects scenes are cool to look at.

I will admit to responding to four or five good jokes in "Your Highness," mostly one-offs and throwaway lines that tickle the funny bone fleetingly, and then are gone. When director David Gordon Green, his cast and crew are trying to build a sustained comedic mood, though, the film goes flat.

What a buzzkill.

1.5 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