Video review: "White House Down"

Big, dumb and fun – that’s the definition of what a good summer popcorn movie should be, and “White House Down” delivers on all counts. This big-budget thriller bombed hard at the box office, but now that it’s hitting video you’ve got the perfect chance to indulge in its schlocky charm.

Jamie Foxx plays President of the United States James Sawyer, in a thinly-veiled riff on our real-life POTUS. And Channing Tatum plays John Cale, a D.C. cop looking to break into the Secret Service. While on a job interview at the White House, it gets invaded by a pack of right-wing paramilitary types.

Cale gets to pose as Bruce Willis in the “Die Hard” movies, the lone do-gooder trapped in a confined space with nihilistic terrorists and a bunch of helpless captives – including his own young daughter (Joey King). Bloody mayhem ensues, and before long the wannabe guardian and the cat-cool president have teamed up to take out the bad guys.

Watching these two trade quips like a buddy-cop duo is both silly and sublime. Because the movie is in on the joke of how goofy it is, we’re invited to laugh along rather than at it.

To call the plot improbable is a compliment. It’s a totally absurd hodgepodge of gunfights and one-liners, culminating in a car chase around the White House grounds with RPGs flying hither and thither.

It may have all the plausibility of a teenager’s video game, but this movie is a total gas.

Video goodies are ample and lightweight, just like the movie. The DVD comes with four making-of featurettes, focusing on the two stars, supporting cast, stunts and director Roland Emmerich – a seasoned hand at flicks like this (“Independence Day”).

Opt for the Blu-ray version and you add a gag reel and nine more featurettes focusing on various aspects of production, including what it’s like to recreate the White House down to the smallest detail – and then blow it all up.

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Review: "White House Down"

I think I’ve put my finger on what this summer’s spate of movies has been sorely lacking: fun.

Everything’s so gosh darn dark. Iron Man’s wrestling with his psyche. Superman’s all angsty. Vin Diesel can’t spare a smirk. Heck, the new “Star Trek” flick put “Darkness” in the title. Even the comedies have seemed more a chore than a lark.

Count on Roland Emmerich, the auteur of disaster/action spectacle, to remind us what summer movies should be all about: goofy, cheeky, action-packed and silly. The man who launched his Hollywood career blowing up the White House in “Independence Day” now merely has terrorists invade it in “White House Down.”

And it’s up to one lone lawman to rescue the likable President, perforate the bad guys, save a cute kid and give an inside-man-turned-traitor his comeuppance -- preferably messily.

If this plot sounds overly familiar, that’s because we saw almost the exact same story in this spring’s “Olympus Has Fallen.” Which, come to think of it, was also one of the year’s most enjoyable cinematic jaunts.

Whereas “Olympus” was grim and tight, “Down” is giddy and loose. Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt infuse plenty of light moments and outright humor into the proceedings. Leads Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx take these soft pitches and gleefully wallop them over the wall, at times resembling a buddy-comedy duo.

You might think all the hoots would undermine the action sequences. But in acknowledging its own preposterousness, the movie invites us to laugh along with, rather than at, all the loopy plot points.

I’m not saying this is a dumb movie. But it is the sort that asks you to lower your suspension-of-disbelief shields and just go with it. For me, this happened right around the moment Tatum and Foxx were screaming around the White House grounds in the presidential limousine, terrorists chasing them in Hummers outfitted with machine guns, with more bad guys firing RPGs at them from the roof.

Absurd? Over-the-top? Fun as all get-out? Yes to all.

The set-up is that President James M. Sawyer (Foxx) is pushing a Mideast peace plan, and a lot of people are nervous. So when a bunch of mercenaries invade the White House, it seems much more motivated by vengeance than the $400 million in cash they’re demanding.

John Cale (Tatum) is an Army veteran and D.C. police sergeant who’s got a mind to join the Secret Service – mostly to impress his precocious tween daughter, Emily. He takes her to the White House for a tour while he has a job interview – which turns out to be with an old college flame (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who lets him down easy.

Emily is played by Joey King, whose mix of smarts, screen presence and moxie virtually guarantee greats things ahead. In one moment of extreme duress, Emily growls at a gunman, “Get away from me” – quite possibly the gutsiest character moment in the movie.

Michael Murphy plays the vice president, who’s a little overeager to take on the POTUS mantle, while Richard Jenkins is the humbler Speaker of the House, next in line. Jason Stenz is effective as the paramilitary leader, Jimmi Simpson has fun with the over-caffeinated computer hacker role, and Kevin Rankin is memorable as a loathsome skinhead baddie.

I also liked Nicolas Wright as the comic relief, an enthusiastic White House tour guide, and Lane Reddick as the by-the-book military man. James Woods shines as the grizzled Secret Service chief closing out his last week on the job.

If “Olympus Has Fallen” had a distinctive right-wing flavor, it’s hard to ignore an obvious but unobtrusive liberal tilt in “White House Down.” Foxx’s Sawyer is a thinly-veiled Obama substitute, a young academic with a cooler-than-thou attitude, flashy wife and Nicorette gum habit.

At one point Sawyer dons his favorite sneakers during their flight, and when one of the villains grabs his leg the president forcefully delivers a kick and a quip: “Get. Your. Hands. Off. My. Jordans!!”

Say what you will about Emmerich, but the man knows how to do popcorn movies right.

All I know is we’re almost at the year’s halfway point, and if you asked me to name my Top 10 List right now, it would include two ludicrous movies about the White House getting taken over. Hey, fun’s fun.

Review: "Oz the Great and Powerful"

"Oz the Great and Powerful" is one of those movie projects that likely began in earnestness, progressed with craftsmanship and joy, and was completely doomed from the outset.

And not because it's some sort of cinematic travesty to make a prequel to "The Wizard of Oz," one of the most iconic films ever made. The writings of L. Frank Baum (and his descendents) have been translated many times before and after 1939, including two "official" sequels, one of them animated, neither of which anyone remembers.

This "Oz," alas, is destined to join them.

Director Sam Raimi, his cast and crew started from a place of puzzlement rather than wonderment, which is what this material should be all about. Their film never quite decides if it wants to be parody, comedy or fantasy. The result is a smug, overly ornamented amalgam of all three.

James Franco as the titular character, a charlatan magician turned wizard savior, feels like he belongs to another movie. Screenwriters Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire construct him as a self-deluding dreamer, a man with an outsized conception of himself. Franco and Raimi, though, keep nudging him toward charming rapscallion.

This Oz is too full of himself to be sympathetic, and too smarmy to be endearing. Franco's omnipresent grin is somewhere between the Cheshire cat's smile and a discomfiting leer. Oz knows he's fraud, and isn't bothered about it, other than it keeps him from attaining the greatness he feels he deserves. This character is missing a key ingredient of self-loathing.

Not only is this wizard not wonderful, he's not even particularly likeable.

Like the original, "Oz the Great and Powerful" begins in Kansas in the early 20th century, rendered in murky black-and-white. Oz is a carnival huckster plying his trade before unschooled hayseeds, teasing the simple-minded women with gifts and flattery. When a crippled girl asks him to use his "magic" to make her walk, he seems affronted that she would demand any substantial feat of him.

One balloon ride through a tornado later, Oz descends into the multi-colored world that bears his name, and also carries his prophecy: a mighty wizard will defeat the evil witches who have killed the king and usurped his land.

A charming young lass named Theodora (Mila Kunis) presents herself as his guide and, she announces, his future queen once Oz has slain the witches and assumed the throne. Kunis' transparent lack of basic thespian skills, and the fact that she keeps getting cast in movies that require them, is one of Hollywood's most enduring peculiarities.

She introduces him to her sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz), who dispatches Oz off to slay the villainous witch. But when he finally encounters her (played by Michelle Williams), things are not all as they seem.

Much like Dorothy before him, Oz collects companions along the way. A flying monkey in a bellhop costume (voiced by Zach Braff) becomes his sworn servant, while a little doll girl made literally out of delicate china (Joey King) is saved by some of his technological magic.

There are also the prerequisite Munchkins, who are basically trotted out for one aborted musical bit, plus helpful townsfolk and some industrious tinkers (led by Bill Cobbs).

The computer-generated imagery is spectacular, and it's meant to be. Rather than making the CGI subservient to the narrative, Raimi often goes in for long, lingering shots of landscapes, flora and fauna -- sheer spectacle for its own sake.

Like its supposed wizard, "Oz the Great and Powerful" is too enamored with itself to stir up any real magic.

2 stars out of four