Review: "What Men Want"

I’m not sure if you’d dub “What Men Want” a sequel, a remake or a reboot of “What Women Want” from nearly 20 years ago. Let’s call it a spiritual inheritor.

It’s about a successful, not-particularly-nice person who gets conked on the head and finds themselves able to hear the thoughts of the opposite sex, which leads to lots of zany hijinks but also helps them become a better person.

The first film was a huge hit but wasn’t well-liked by critics, and I suspect this one won’t be, either. But it’s got heart, laughs and more than a little sass.

Taraji P. Henson plays Ali, a hard-charging sports agent at the powerhouse Atlanta firm of SWM. Anticipating being named partner, she leases a Porsche to flaunt her success. (Like anyone who’s spent time in The ATL, I chuckled at the scene showing her driving downtown at rush hour with absolutely zero traffic. Talk about Hollywood fantasies!)

But she doesn’t get the gig, as she’s again passed over in favor of some lunkhead young dude. It’s a boys’ club, and they’ll let her play but not take home the trophy.

“You do great in your lane, so why don’t you stay in your lane?” her smarmy boss (Brian Bosworth) says.

As she’s raging against the injustices of her environment, we also learn that Ali is not a very well-rounded person. She treats her assistant, adorable gay dweeb Brandon (Josh Brener), like dirt. When she seduces a gorgeous bartender named Will (Aldis Hodge), we even learn that she’s pretty lousy in bed.

Redemption lies in the person of Jamal Barry (Shane Paul McGhie), who will soon be the #1 NBA pick for the hometown Hawks. Land Jamal, Ali’s boss offers, and she’ll get her prize. But that also means negotiating around Jamal’s unbalanced control-freak father, Joe “Dolla” Barry, played by Tracy Morgan in a portrayal that is totally not a sendup of LaVar Ball.

The cast is rounded out by Jason Jones and Max Greenfield as adversarial fellow agents; Tamala Jones, Phoebe Robinson and Wendi McLendon-Covey as Ali’s lady crew; Pete Davidson as a donut-pushing office denizen; Erykah Badu as Sister, the kooky psychic/weed dealer who gives Ali the tea that sparks her newfound power; and various sports celebrity cameos by the likes of Lisa Leslie, Shaquille O’Neal, Grant Hill, Karl-Anthony Towns and Mark Cuban.

Richard Roundtree also turns up in a nice, sensitive role as Ali’s patient father.

There’s a lot of things to like about “What Men Want.” Henson oozes a sort of anxious charisma playing a woman who’s never slowed down enough to consider whether she’s making a positive impact on those around her. There’s some good snaps in the dialogue, and a crazy wedding scene that looks like something out of a reality show meltdown.

The movie isn’t terribly insightful about the differences between the genders. And the mostly-male creative team strives mightily to clean up men’s thoughts from the cesspool I’d guess they’d really be.

My guess is what men want most is for women to never find out just how gross we are on the inside.

Video review: "Fist Fight"

All movies have plot holes. Some you can drive a truck through. Others are meager quibbles that only occur to you long after you’ve left the theater.

With “Fist Fight,” the entire movie is a plot hole. As in, its very premise makes not a lick of sense. It’s hard to take a movie seriously, even a comedy, when it insults your intelligence right off the bat.

The set-up is that Charlie Day is Andy, a nebbish-y high school teacher who gets challenged to a fight by Ice Cube, also playing a teacher, but a much meaner one named Strickland. The fisticuffs are supposed to take place in the school parking lot after the last bell, so the entire student body can bear witness to the beat-down.

Huh?

Even swallowing the stupidity that such a thing wouldn’t immediately be shut down by administrators and/or law enforcement -- especially after the challenge goes viral on social media and YouTube -- why wouldn’t Andy just fake a cough and go home? He certainly looks like he’s ill, trembling with fear as he spends the rest of the day contriving to get out of the fight.

Such roles have become Day’s bread-and-butter, usually as the comic relief or sidekick. As for Cube, his acting style hasn’t really varied in 20 years.

“Fist Fight” has a few scraps of funny. Tracy Morgan plays the inept football coach, and he can garner a few laughs just on sheer force of personality. Jillian Bell scores a few more as a drug-addled teacher desperately trying to hook up with one of her students. (Admittedly, it’s funnier than it sounds.)

Mostly, though, watching this movie feels like spending time in special detention for boneheads.

Extra features are pretty apathetic, consisting of some deleted scenes and (on the Blu-ray version) a feature about the Georgia Film Commission, which gives tax credits for film production. Sounds more like homework than a bonus.

Movie:



Extras: D

Review: "Fist Fight"

So “Fist Fight” is based on a concept that doesn’t survive past its first minute: one high school teacher challenging another to a fight in the parking lot after school lets out.

Sure, it’s a comedy -- but even funny films owe us a certain amount of plausible rectitude.

By all rights, this movie should have died in its infancy. Deserved to be slapped down during the pitch meeting in the producer’s office. Flung objects would not have been unwarranted.

But they went ahead and wrote it, filmed it, edited it and put music to it, and pushed it out into theaters. And I had to watch it.

SO many questions…

• What exactly does Mr. Strickland, the surly history teacher played by Ice Cube, think he’s going to accomplish by fighting his offender? He’s already lost his job for taking an axe to a student’s desk – while the student was still in it -- so is he just determined to end his day by getting arrested?

• Maybe he knows something we don’t, because the law enforcement response to the impending fight is astonishingly tepid. The 9-1-1 operators even laugh about it.

• Andy Campbell, the nerdy English teacher played by Charlie Day, spends the entire movie trying to get out of the fight we know is ultimately going to happen, using all sorts of schemes and contretemps. At one point he bribes a student with an expensive laptop to change his story to the principal (Dean Norris). Why doesn’t he just say, “Hey, I’m sick, going home” around lunchtime?

• Why is it that news about the fight spreads through Roosevelt High School like wildfire, and then onto the Internet, even spawning YouTube videos and the hashtag #teacherfight, but none of the school administrators or Andy’s wife (JoAnna Garcia Swisher) ever hear about it?

I will admit to laughing now and then. Tracy Morgan gets a few as Freddie, the brash and utterly incompetent football coach. And I liked Jillian Bell as Holly, the no-boundaries teacher who openly desires hookups with her teenage charges, and takes meth -- but only before school, not during, she says when admonished by Andy.

“Because it’s a gateway?” she asks.

“Well, it’s the finish line,” he responds.

Other than that, it’s a chore to get through. Subplots involving Andy’s very pregnant wife a talent show competition with his daughter don’t provide much comedic ammo, though the latter ends with a shock.

Charlie Day’s motormouth nebbish routine is good at lighting up other movies (“Pacific Rim”), but a lot of that goes a short way. And Cube is just doing that familiar snarly ‘tude thing that has taken his film career a lot further than it deserved.

If there’s a lesson to be taken home from “Fist Fight,” it’s that sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself. Specifically, your right to buy a ticket to something else.

Video review: "The Boxtrolls"

“The Boxtrolls” was easily my favorite animated film of last year – partly because the stop-motion gem is so visually alive and imaginative, but also because there really wasn’t much in the way of competition. Let’s face it, once we got past this movie and one or two others, 2014 was something of a cartoon wasteland.

This picture, based on a book by Alan Snow, simply oozes with British culture and appeal, from the Cockney accents and damp cobblestone streets down to the diaspora of wonky teeth. Set in the late 19th or early 20th century, the story concerns a secret society of gentle pointy-headed critters who live underground and wear castoff cardboard boxes instead of clothes.

They don’t have a discernible language or even names; they each go by whatever picture is on their boxes, which they pilfer – along with many other things – from the humans above. The exception is Eggs (voice of Isaac Hempstead-Wright), a human boy who was kidnapped (sort of) by the boxtrolls as a baby and raised as one of their own.

Their adventures take them above ground, where the terrifying Archibald Snatcher (a delightful Ben Kingsley) has appointed himself chief boxtroll catcher. Soon most of the troll population has been grabbed up and tossed into his dungeons. The daughter of a local lord (Elle Fanning) provides reluctant help, mostly out of resentment toward her absentee father.

It seems Snatcher dreams of joining the cadre of “White Hats” – genteel gentlemen who run the town, ostensibly -- though they don’t seem to do more than sit around sampling exotic cheeses. By portraying the boxtrolls as a scourge, Snatcher hopes to stoke public fear and use it to springboard himself into their good graces.

Visually arresting and impishly funny, “The Boxtrolls” is a family-friendly treat.

Fortunately, the film is being released on video with a host of excellent extra features. There’s a feature-length commentary track by directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, and a raft of featurettes touching on all aspects of production, from casting the voice actors to creating a fancy ballroom dance scene with stop-motion puppets.

There are also preliminary animatic sequences and much more.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Boxtrolls"

I thought last year a slow one for quality animated films, but if anything 2014 has been even duller. “Frozen” finally came along at year’s end to brighten things up, and this time September has delivered its own wondrous surprise: “The Boxtrolls.”

This stop-motion gem is one of the best of its ilk since “Coraline.” It’s a whiz-bang collection of fun action, Dickensian backdrop, cute critters and one really nasty, yet pleasing, villain.

Based on a novel by Alan Snow, the story centers on the titular trolls, who live underground and wear old cardboard boxes instead of clothes. Though they tend to pilfer things left unattended, they’re more tinkerers who love to build junk than malicious marauders. They go by the names of whatever’s on their box: Fish, Shoe, etc.

I just love the trolls’ look, with pasty skin, pointy ears, tufts of random hair and big liquid eyes surrounded by dark patches like a domino mask, which makes them look like vintage cartoon burglars. They don’t really speak, using a collection of croaks, clicks and squeaks to communicate.

The boxtrolls have gotten a bad rap from the humans after they allegedly pilfered a baby years ago. Archibald Snatcher, a lowlife climber who yearns to wear one of the “White Hats” signifying town leaders, appoints himself chief boxtroll catcher, and sets about exterminating the population.

Snatcher is voiced heroically by Ben Kingsley, in one of the best vocal performances in recent memory. Snatcher chews and growls his words as if they are poison to his mouth – not unlike the fine cheeses favored by the White Hats, which he craves to share despite the fact they make him swell up like a landed jellyfish. And he’s got a buxom alter ego.

He has a trio of henchmen who range in malevolence from reluctant to gleeful – Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and Tracy Morgan do the voices. The nicer pair proclaim themselves the good guys, but worry they’re really evil stooges.

Isaac Hepstead-Wright provides the voice of Eggs, a human boy who was the baby kidnapped by the boxtrolls, though there’s more to it than that. He’s grown up with them and is convinced he is a boxtroll, despite evidence to the contrary. (He insists his ability to use English is a “speech impediment.”)

Eggs finds himself stranded on the city streets topside, where he encounters Winnie Portley-Rind (Elle Fanning), daughter of the local lord (Jared Harris). Willful and obstinate, Winnie is infuriated by her parents’ continual ignoring of what she has to say, particularly with regard to the truth about the boxtrolls.

Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi are animation veterans without a lot of experience in the top seat, but prove to be top-notch visualists and storytellers. Irena Brignull and Adam Pava wrote the screenplay.

My guess is the stop-motion work has been augmented with some computer-generated effects, since there some things – like smoke dissipating from Snatcher’s various steamworks contraptions – that couldn’t be achieved otherwise.

I’m no purist myself – whatever works onscreen, works. This is a movie of dense layers, from the grimy cobblestone streets and buildings to extreme close-ups of the characters, which are incredibly detailed and facially expressive. (And those wonky teeth – so British!)

“The Boxtrolls” is the sort of delightfully inventive family picture that parents might be tempted to indulge in a second viewing – on their own, with the kiddies tucked in at home.

Video review: "Rio"

There is much to like about "Rio," a jaunty, fun animated movie about a bunch of exotic birds having adventures in Rio de Janeiro. It's just that it's made for small children, who will probably enjoy it more than I did.

Unlike other, better animated movies that are inviting to adults -- "Kung Fu Panda" and all the Pixar flicks -- "Rio" is pretty much a cinematic clubhouse for those kindergarten age and under. There might as well be a sign: "Parents Keep Out!"

Jesse Eisenberg provides the voice of Blu, a rare blue macaw brought down to Rio to mate with the only known female in captivity, Jewel (Anne Hathaway). But Blu is about as used to domesticated life as any bird can be, while Jewel wants to soar high in the rainforest. She doesn't dig his neurotic personality, not to mention that Blu never learned to fly.

They're shackled together by circumstance, and spend the rest of the movie on the run from poachers, along with a particularly nasty cockatoo working by the bad guys, who's deliciously voiced by Jemaine Clement.

The movie often feels like it's on autopilot, particularly when it spends time with some fairly unoriginal supporting characters, like a slobbery bulldog and a toucan who's henpecked by his wife.

But it's well-made and bright and shiny, and likely will keep toddlers distracted for awhile.

Video extras are similarly geared more to games and other visual baubles for tykes, rather than anything adults would enjoy.

The DVD version comes with a handful of deleted scenes, a "Welcome to Rio" music video, "Rio de JAM-eiro Jukebox" and a music video by Taio Cruz.

The DVD/Blu-ray combo pack includes all those goodies, plus a digital copy and a number of other features: Things like "Carnival Dance-O-Rama," "Boom-Boom Tish-Tish: The Sounds of Rio," and ... well, you get the idea.

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "Rio"

"Rio" is fun, and forgettable. It's a competently-made animated film crafted specifically for the toddler set, who may enjoy the bright colors and boingy action. Older kids and parents will find themselves, if not quite bored, then only modestly engaged.

Still, it's got appealing stars like Anne Hathaway and Jesse Eisenberg doing the voices, and two or three songs worth tapping a toe. I can't quite recommend it, at least not for anyone north of kindergarten age, but the cinematic world is not poorer for having it around.

This film is from Blue Sky Studios, the animation outfit behind those middlebrow "Ice Age" flicks, and director Carlos Saldanha takes a break from prehistoric mammals for a story about modern-day tropical birds. The original -- and I use that term loosely -- screenplay is by Don Rhymer, veteran of bottom-dwelling comedies like "Big Momma's House" and "Deck the Halls."

Eisenberg voices Blu, a rare blue macaw poached from his Brazilian rainforest home as a young'un and shipped to frozen Moose Lake, Minnesota. Things worked out, though, and he was adopted by Linda, a kind-hearted bookworm of a girl who grew into the owner of a bookshop (Leslie Mann, in a nice emotive vocal performance).

True, he's nervous nelly who's a little too fond of his domesticated lifestyle, and never got around to learning to fly. But he's happy.

Or was, until Linda gets talked into bringing him back to Rio de Janeiro by Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro), an avian scientist. It seems he's got the only female blue macaw left in the world, and Linda has the only male -- no word on how Tulio learned this fact, I should note -- and in order to save the species, they've got to make some beautiful eggs together.

But it turns out the lady-in-waiting, Jewel (Hathaway), is not so patient with the dweeby Blu, wanting only to escape to freedom. They're birdnapped by an unscrupulous thief, chained together, and spend the rest of the movie in one big chase to see if they can escape the bad guys, fall in love and learn to fly, not necessarily in that order.

The Rio viewed in this movie is the prototypical image of sun-kissed beaches, colorful buildings and fun-loving people who are perpetually partying in the street. That Rio de Janeiro doesn't exist for me anymore after the bleak truth of "City of God," knowing the paint-splashed tin-roof domiciles hide a festering cancer of crime and crushing poverty. It's not fair, but I resented this movie from trying to pull the veil back over Rio.

Though predictable, the film is not without its charms, derived mostly from a large cast of colorful -- and mostly feathered -- critters. Jamie Foxx and will.i.am. play a pair of local birds who offer Blu romantic advice, and croon a soulful tune or two. George Lopez voices Rafael, a toucan and family man who'd prefer to party at Carnival. And Tracy Morgan plays a slobbery bulldog who can't quite decide if he wants to help the birds or bite their heads off.

Jemaine Clement is a real treat as Nigel, a killer cockatoo who works for the bad guys. He's a dastardly villain, though in a very PG-rated sort of way, sneering in his featured song, "I poop on people and blame it on seagulls!"

Hathaway sings a little too, and I find the sound of her voice never fails to make me smile. Actually, I think the entire cast sings at one point or another, and even the pinch-voiced Eisenberg adds a stanza or two in a surprisingly pleasing tenor.

I'm torn over "Rio." There's enough good stuff here that small children will probably enjoy it, at least in fits, but adults like me will find themselves checking their watches. It never quite achieves liftoff.

2 stars out of four