Review: "The White Tiger"

 

"The White Tiger" stands as something of a self-conscious counterpoint to "Slumdog Millionaire," the Oscar-winning drama set in India that told the story of the chasm between the prospering new elite and the tradition-bound culture mired in poverty and class divisions. Though thematically similar, they couldn't be further apart in tone.

In fact, there's even a moment where it takes a swipe at the earlier film, snidely saying your problems aren't going to be solved by a million-dollar game show. Snort.

Whereas "Slumdog" was hopeful and humanistic, this new piece from writer/director Ramin Bahrani, based on the book by Aravind Adiga, is a slow descent into, if not cynicism, then at least grim-eyed realism.

We identify with our propagandist, Balram, an ambitious young man from a squalid village who charms his way into being the driver for a wealthy family. And yet, over time, even as he morphs from bright-eyed striver into disillusioned businessman and palm-greaser, our understanding for why he does what he does never diminishes. 

If it's possible to make a movie where the main character loses in the audience's admiration but gains in our estimation, then this is it.

It's a revelatory performance by Adarsh Gourav, who should get as much notice in Hollywood as Dev Patel did. His Balram is utterly subservient to his masters -- a word he openly uses to address them -- and yet understands resentment in his bones. A bright child on the way to a scholarship, he was forced to leave school and break charcoal for a living after his father, a rickshaw cyclist, died of tuberculosis.

Bahrani employs the parable of the roosters who are kept in pens, watching as one after another of their fellows are beheaded and torn into pieces of meat, knowing their turn will come. This is likened to the lower caste members like Balram, instilled at birth with the understanding they must not rise up against their landlords and betters.

Only once in a great while does a "white tiger" come along, one who can break out of poverty and become a rich person with a fat belly. Balram is determined that he is to be one of these tigers.

The story starts with the ending, in which Balram is already a well-to-do entrepreneur of some sort, narrating his tale as an email to a Chinese consul who is coming to India to promote business between the nations. It almost gives the narrative a fable-like quality.

Balram convinces his strict grandmother to pay for driving lessons so he can become a driver to the family of The Stork (Mahesh Manjrekar), the landlord of their village who collects one-third of every rupee made. 

He fears the elder son, known as The Mongoose (Vijay Maurya), who cuffs him like an errant slave, but manages to worm his way into the service of the younger son, Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), who is progressive after having lived in New York City, advocating for investments in technology rather than coal and graft of government officials.

(The story is set in the early Aughts, before smartphones and apps were ubiquitous.)

Balram is thrilled to move to the bright lights of New Delhi with Ashok and his similarly minded wife, Pinky (Priyanka Chopra), even if it means sleeping in the garage of their high-rise luxury condo building. 

Pinky and Ashok are emblematic of the new Indian generation, wishing for a more egalitarian system but unwilling to give up any of their inherited luxury to make it happen. Like Balram, we're charmed by them but come to see they're much like Ashok's brother and father, who are at least open about keeping their thumb on the poor.

Things go on, with Balram genuinely happy to be of the most service to his employers. Until a terrible deed occurs, and his faith in a flawed but reliable system is shattered.

Is "The White Tiger" a depressing movie? I don't think so. It takes a young man who is trod upon by virtually everyone in his life and evolves him into an anti-hero eager to turn the tables. 

It's a harsh but penetrating look at how people in Indian, or any, culture line themselves up into predetermined strata they're not supposed to try break out of. Even when someone does so in a less than moral way, it's still an audacious and compelling journey.

 

Review: "Isn't It Romantic"

“It’s like the Matrix for lonely women!”

“Isn’t It Romantic” is a snarky, fairly smart sendup of the romantic comedy genre that still manages to gleefully indulge in every trope and cliché.

Rebel Wilson plays an unappreciated girl who gets conked on the head and wakes up in a romcom fantasy world, where New York City is a happy place that doesn’t smell like doo-doo. Every man she meets looks her in the eye and offers compliments, and at any moment a musical number is in danger of breaking out.

It’s like hell, and she can’t wait to escape.

Wilson has a lot going for her as a star. She’s been playing sidekick roles for about a decade now, and starting to get into a bit of a typecast as the chubby girl who likes to party and get sassy. Now she finally has a chance to break out as the main attraction, and employ her real Australian accent to boot.

She plays Natalie, a young architect who feels ignored in every aspect of her life. She’s got a crummy apartment and a standoffish neighbor, she’s derided and/or ignored at work and feels like no man is willing to give her the time of day because she’s not model-thin and girly.

“They don’t make movies about girls like us,” Nat’s mom chides in a flashback where she’s relishing Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman.”

Of course, just a few cubicles away sits Josh (Adam Devine), a goofy but loveable guy who would, quite obviously, love to get her attention. But Nat has “friend-zoned” him because part of her can’t accept the fact that a man could adore her. Even having her assistant/best pal (Betty Gilpin) point this out doesn’t convince her.

When a guy flirts with her on the subway, Nat can’t believe her luck. Turns out he was just luring her out onto the platform to rob her, and after a scuffle receives a helluva concussion. When she wakes up, the whole world is changed: every man she meets is gorgeous and attentive. Every street is lined with flowers. Her apartment is suddenly five times as big and chic. Even her dog looks like it’s had a bath and several months of obedience training.

She’s nearly run over by the limo of Blake (Liam Hemsworth), the gorgeous billionaire who she made a design pitch to the previous day, though he blew her off as the coffee girl. Suddenly he’s entranced by Nat, calling her “beguiling” -- over and over again -- and somehow has even acquired his own Aussie accent in the meantime.

They soon begin a torrid affair, but alas! Because romcoms are always rated PG-13, there’s no sex since as soon as they start to get busy it cuts to the next morning. She can’t even curse her frustration because every swear word gets bleeped out by car horns, alarm buzzers, etc.

Meanwhile, Josh finds himself romanced by a gorgeous swimsuit model/yoga ambassador (Priyanka Chopra). And her next-door neighbor has morphed into a swishy gay sidekick (a terrific Brandon Scott Jones) who seems to have no life of his own other than showing up everywhere to support his favorite girl.

“Isn’t It Romantic” bends the satire as far as it can go without popping the bubble of the fact that the prime audience for this movie is those who love romcoms. It’s the sort film movie that has just enough ambition to make fun of a thing while also reveling in being it.

Video review: "Baywatch"

Stretching is good if you’re exercising but not if you’re making movies. “Baywatch” is a sorta-spoof of the television show that has about 30 minutes’ worth of decent material, but then tries to string that out to a two-hour movie. The end result is a flick with a few good laughs and a whole bunch of filler in between.

Dwayne Johnson plays Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon, the veteran leader of the local lifeguard crew. (Motto: “Risking Our Lives and Flexing for $9/hour.”) The running joke is that he takes his job way too seriously, behaving more like a special ops operative than a dude in jams and flipflops.

As the story opens Mitch is recruiting two new spots on the team. Matt Brody (Zac Efron) would seem to be the top candidate, an Olympic swimming star who can cut through the water like nobody else. But he’s also an arrogant ass who disgraced himself and is looking to take the next steps.

Summer (Alexandra Daddario) is the competition he takes a shine too, who’s too smart to fall for his bro-dude antics. Rounding out the cast of contenders is Ronnie (Jon Bass), a schlubby but good-hearted guy who would seem to be a long shot to make the team.

It’s a pretty raunchy affair, with the boys showing off a lot more skin than the girls. The plot is a forgettable lark, something about an evil businesswoman buying up the beach. Mitch and his fellow lifeguards take on the extra duty of solving some murder and fraud in between elliptical workouts.

There’s been a whole slew of old TV shows turned into movie spoofs in recent years. I’m not opposed to the idea, but I can’t think of a one of them that’s been better than mediocre. “Baywatch” doesn’t sink, but it doesn’t exactly swim, either.

Bonus features include an extended version of the film with new and longer scenes, plus four-making of featurettes. They’re only available on the Blu-ray, though, as the DVD edition has none.

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Review: "Baywatch"

I never watched a single episode of the "Baywatch" TV show, or wanted to. They couldn't just have lifeguards resuscitating poor swimmers every week, so they brought in drug dealers, inter-squad passion/spats, earthquakes and even a serial killer to spice things up.

It sounded like a weird amalgam of a crime procedural and fleshfest, complete with the slo-mo running "jiggle cam" that became its signature.

Basically, it was a stripper cop show.

"Baywatch" at least seemed aware of its own silliness, and to the extent possible, embraced it. So the logical thing to do if you were going to make a movie out of it is to spoof the TV version, in the way that "21 Jump Street," “The A Team” and the more recent “CHIPS” did.

(Though perhaps these are not the… best examples.)

Director Seth Gordon, a TV and film comedy veteran (“Identity Thief,” “Horrible Bosses”), and screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift start off reasonably well, gathering together a gaggle of eye-pleasing hardbodies and concocting a bunch of goofy, raunchy scenarios to put them through.

But the film loses steam pretty early, and then hangs around way too long -- nearly two hours. If any movie needed to rock an 82-minute run time, it’s this.

It’s very aware of what it’s trying to do, at least for a while. The actors mock the TV show while paying homage to it. For instance, one of the women questions why it is their familiar fire red one-piece bathing suits ride so far up their rear ends. It makes us faster in the water, or something, the other responds… and we all know it’s the “or something.”

Interestingly, a whole lot more male flesh is on display than female which, other than some cleavage and the aforementioned butt-age, is pretty much kept under wraps. That is largely provided by Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, two famously buff actors who butter their bread with getting their kits off.

Johnson is built like the former WWE and NFL prospect he was, massive in the Schwarzeneggerian mold. He basically looks like an 18-wheeler encased in flesh. Efron, a former teen idol, seems intent on completely ridding his body of all fat to the point he resembles those “visible man” cut-out models you saw in biology class, where every muscle strand and the guts are naked to the eye.

Apparently, this is considered attractive nowadays. I guess the next step is for people to start making their internal organs visible. Soon there’ll be a market for cosmetic surgery of the liver.

There is one schlubby guy, a new recruit named Ronnie (Jon Bass), because it’s supposed to be funny to have the rippled crew running on the beach together, and here’s this big belly sloshing around in slo-mo. But the movie awards him… other attributes as compensation.

Other newbies to the Baywatch team are Alexandra Daddario as Summer, a tough and smart girl, and Efron as Matt Brody, a former Olympic champion more famous for his out-of-the-pool tomfoolery than his gold medals. Think Ryan Lochte with gastrointestinal issues. He’s cocky as all get-out and must be put in his place, starting with Summer responding to his brodude overtures.

Johnson is Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon, a legend on the beach with hundreds of confirmed saves. One of the running jokes is that Mitch acts like a military special-ops badass -- the exact origin of his rank is nebulous -- and people have to keep reminding him he’s just a lifeguard.

Ilfenesh Hadera plays Stephanie, Mitch’s seasoned and capable #2. Rob Huebel is the jerk suit ostensibly in command. Kelly Rohrbach rounds out the team as CJ, whom Ronnie is smitten with, and she might just have a little smit running the other direction, too.

There’s a plot, but that’s not really the point. Something about a powerful businesswoman buying up beach properties, muscling politicos and offing anyone who gets in the way.

“Baywatch” actually starts out pretty funny and fresh, but they only really had about two solid “SNL” skits worth of material to go on. The rest is unfunny filler. But I guess they spent so much effort trimming the fat from the beach bods, they couldn’t bother to do the same with the script.

Video review: "Planes"

It’s not just that “Planes” isn’t a very good movie -- because it isn’t.

The very existence of this movie ends up devaluing the brand of Pixar Animation and Disney. This quasi-sequel to the “Cars” movies, animated largely in India, looks and feels like a straight-to-video quickie that somebody decided to shovel into theaters at the last minute. Unsuspecting parents would dutifully take their kids to see it, expecting the same high level of storytelling they’ve come to expect from the gang behind “Finding Nemo” and such.

Instead they got the tepid tale of Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook), a humble crop-dusting plane who dreams of competing in the Wings Around the Globe race. It’s a familiar litany of just-be-yourself pabulum, goofy sidekicks and whiz-bang action scenes.

Dusty must face off with Ripslinger, the snarly champion, and bond with new friends from Mexico and India. He’s also got a grizzly older military plane (Stacy Keach) offering reluctant advice, and a dim-witted fuel truck (Brad Garrett) to supply comic relief.

The outcome is never really in doubt, and for that matter the beginning and middle are as predictable as a take-off checklist.

“Planes” is a by-the-numbers movie from a studio that once took pride in being the very best.

Video extras are rather slim, perhaps reflecting the down-market ambitions of this picture.

There are deleted scenes, a “Meet the Racers” feature, a brief look at the greatest real-life aviators, a 15-minute documentary following director Klay Hall’s aviation dreams and how they led him to making this movie, and a new music video featuring a minor character.

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Review: "Planes"

Pixar Animation has been a wondrous success story, churning out hit after hit that pleased children while stirring the emotions and intellects of grown-ups. "Finding Nemo"? "Wall·E"? Those weren't just great pieces of entertainment for kiddies; they were works of great art.

Lately we've seen the inevitable doldrums period, where ideas are being recycled and productions are being handed over to a new wave of creators. "Cars 2," "Brave" and "Monsters University" were pleasant enough, but missing that spark of creative flourish that had been the Pixar hallmark.

This is the first time, though, that it feels like they just weren't trying very hard.

I suppose "Planes" isn't really a Pixar movie, since it doesn't carry the label and comes out of the larger Disney umbrella corporation -- with an animation arm from Mumbai, India providing much of the heavy lifting.

But it's a direct continuation of the "Cars" universe -- "From Above the World of Cars," to use the poster tagline -- was executive-produced by Pixar kingpin John Lasseter, and features the voice talents of some key Pixar veterans (Brad Garrett, John Cleese, John Ratzenberger).

Those who would like to quibble about me knocking Pixar for the lackluster qualities of a movie that's technically not a Pixar product are missing the point. The very fact that the once-infallible geniuses would be willing to spin out a down-market clone of their intellectual creation is a demonstration of how the studio has lost its stamp of specialness.

"Planes" feels like a made-for-TV flick with a higher-than-average budget for CG animation. Overall the looks of the film are decent, although the humanizing of aircraft doesn't work quite as well as it did with cars. With their windshields as eyes and propellers as noses, their outstretched wings make them seem like they're perpetually telling you how they did something thhhiiiisss muuuuuuuch!

Alas, the storytelling is not on par with the visuals. Screenwriter Jeffrey M. Howard and director Klay Hall, who both got their start with Disney "Tinkerbell" videos, approach the material with preadolescent assumptions and mindset.

It plays out as a pretty standard be-who-you-are message, with Dusty Crophopper as a lowly crop-dusting plane who dreams of competing in the Wings Around the Globe race.

He's sort of a diametrical opposite of Lightning McQueen, who suffered from too much confidence. But the familiar roles of curmudgeonly older mentor and humorous truck sidekick are filled by Skipper (Stacy Keach), a brokedown Navy legend, and Chug the goofy fueler (Garrett).

Dusty faces some setbacks, but manages to get into the race and make a serious run at it, impressing the doubting crowds and surprising sneering longtime champ Ripslinger (Roger Craig Smith). He also befriends El Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui), a Mexican stunt plane with an outsized personality, and Ishani (Priyanka Chopra), the Far East champion.

Rounding out the cast are Cleese as an unctuous Brit flyer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a French Canadian racer and Teri Hatcher as Dusty's mechanic/coach.

There are few surprises in the plot, including some nefarious schemes by the villain and the facing of fears by the good guys. In Dusty's case, this includes a phobia of heights -- funny stuff for a plane, huh? Right?

Dane Cook, a rather generic comedian and actor, makes for a pretty generic vocal stand-in for Dusty. He doesn't have a particularly memorable voice, and doesn't infuse the character with any distinct inflections or personality.

Bland and too afraid to soar for the heights -- much the same could be said for "Planes." Whether you want to label it Pixar or not, it's like watching a play in which all the stars broke their legs at once, and the audience has to make do with the understudies.