Review: "Brad's Status"

“You’re 50 years old, and you still think the world was made for you.”
“…I’m 47.”

“Status” is one of those words that used to have a different connotation than it does now, due to the quiet revolution of social media. Most of us spend an inordinate amount of time “updating our status,” whether it’s an important life event or (more likely) sharing the quotidian details of our existence.

Most interesting is the phenomenon of social media envy -- looking at other people’s posts and feeling jealous about their fabulous new vacation, car, family portrait, concert they attended, etc. It’s a self-feeding loop, as people then feel compelled to share only the positive stuff going on in their life.

Not sure if anyone’s invented a term for that, but if not, may I suggest “status curation” as an option.

Brad Sloan is positively a ball of status envy. Though “Brad’s Status” does not specifically incorporate social media into its message, this smart black comedy/drama certainly feels the weight of those digital interactions. Brad is a seemingly normal middle-aged guy torn up by the relative success of his college chums.

Thematically, the movie is similar to Nicole Holofcener’s “Friends with Money” from 2006.

Ben Stiller is perfect for this role, and I have little doubt writer/director Mike White (“School of Rock”) crafted it specifically for him. There’s an underlying aspect of self-doubt and neuroticism to his comedic sensibility -- usually playing the smart, talented guy who feels that everyone else is much smarter and more talented.

I noticed that whenever Brad is feeling particularly diminished, director White always manages to place him standing next to taller characters, especially women. Stiller’s not a big guy, and his Brad seems to seethe passively when he’s vertically challenged by others -- as in a choice scene were a haughty restaurant hostess gives him a poor table, and literally looks down on him when he nicely asks for a better.

The story is structured around Brad taking his 17-year-old son, Troy (Austin Abrams), on a whirlwind of college tours/interviews in the Boston area, especially Harvard (where Troy wants to go) and Tufts, Brad’s own alma mater. Meanwhile, his wife, Melanie (Jenna Fischer), is stuck at a work convention and offers her ebullient encouragement from afar.

They live in Sacramento in a nice middle-class house. Brad’s a former journalist who started running a nonprofit after newspapers went south, and Melanie has a stable government job. They seemingly want for nothing.

But four of Brad’s friends are big, famous successes, and it weighs constantly on him. Craig (Michael Sheen) is a former White House communications flak doing the high-power author/speaker thing. Jason (Luke Wilson) runs his own hedge fund and flies his big family around on a private jet. Nick (White himself) is an A-list Hollywood director who just had his house featured in Architectural Digest and hosted a fancy wedding (which Brad wasn’t invited to). Billy (Jemaine Clement) sold his dot-com startup for a bundle and retired at 40, now galivanting around Maui with his two girlfriends.

In his dour narration, Brad ponders the injustices of the haves and have-nots: “For them, the world isn’t a battleground. It’s a playground… a dream. It’s heaven, manifested.”

Troy’s a talented musician, and Brad thinks he's doing his fatherly duty by cautioning him not to get his hopes up. He’s surprised when the youngster relates that his guidance counselor feels he’ll get into Harvard, and anywhere else he applies.

Brad is stunned, and halts his self-pity train long enough to revel vicariously in his kid’s success… before wondering if he’ll start to envy his own son. He even wonders if Melanie’s happy, supportive nature failed to provide the impetus he needed to strive harder.

In case you haven’t figured it out, Brad’s a basically decent guy who blames a lot of other people for his problems, which barely even exist. Watching the movie, I kept thinking how nice it must have been to actually have the time/money to take cross-country trips with your dad to check out colleges in person. I did it all by brochure.

“Brad’s Status” is a funny movie with some unexpectedly deep pokes at our collective tendency to self-criticize and self-aggrandize. Take it from an award-winning film critic!

Review: "While We're Young"

Writer/director Noah Baumbach makes movies that often seem lightweight at first glance, even frivolous, but creep up on you with their hefty themes and cerebral contemplations.

The newest from the filmmaker behind “The Squid and the Whale” and “Frances Ha” is “While We’re Young,” about a married couple in their 40s (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) who fear life has passed them by and want another shot at youthful liberation. They do so using another couple who are about 20 years younger as surrogates, befriending them and absorbing their carefree lifestyle.

“Young” is simultaneously very funny and very thoughtful. The movie is trenchantly observant about how we live today as individuals within a changing society, especially how evolutions in technology have affected the ways in which we communicate with each other and tell stories – for good or ill. (Mostly ill, in Baumbach’s take.)

Baumbach visited some of these same themes in “Greenberg,” which also starred Stiller as a Generation X guy trying to fit in with the Millennials, and looking poorer for the effort.

Josh (Stiller) is a formerly successful documentary filmmaker whose career has been swallowed by his latest project, 10 years in the making and not any closer to completion, or even coherence. It’s something about power in America, but not only is Josh incapable of summing it up in an elevator speech for potential financial backers, he couldn’t even do it if they took the stairs.

His wife Cornelia (Watts) is a producer for her father (Charles Grodin), a storied documentarian – think Pennebaker or Maysles -- who used to be Josh’s mentor until they diverged on aesthetics. Josh promotes the idea of the “personal documentary,” in which the filmmaker is an active participant in shaping a narrative.

Cornelia and Josh get along seemingly well. They’ve got their work, they don’t seem to want for money, and they have a small circle of acquaintances their own age. But there’s an undercurrent of regret there.

They have no children (after failed attempts years ago), and feel estranged from their closest friends, Marina and Fletcher (Maria Dizzia and Adam Horovitz, both terrific), who just had a baby that their lives now revolve around. And Cornelia sits in the middle of the schism between her husband and father.

Things change when they meet Jamie and Darby, played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried. They’re 25-ish hipsters, married but otherwise seemingly untethered to adulthood. He’s an aspiring filmmaker who attends one of Josh’s classes, and she makes her own ice cream. In very short order the two couples have glommed onto each other, with Jamie seeking professional help from Josh and Cornelia finding emotional support from her counterpart.

This section contains quite a lot of laugh moments, such as Cornelia’s horror after being roped into her friend’s baby music class, or Josh pathetically copycatting Jamie’s slouchy fedora and vinyl obsession. There’s also a great scene in which they attend a New Age-y session where people drink ditch water to inspire hallucinations and purge the soul (and stomach). Stiller ponders dizzily, sounding like Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now.” And the shaman, who rides a hip Vespa, frets about his charges purging onto his carpet.

But things get more somber, and smarter, as time goes on. Jamie, played assuredly by Driver, proves to be a sly manipulator, affecting too-cool nonchalance while quietly directing events in his favor. Josh begins to resent his young pupil/guru and his film methodology, especially regarding a project about a disturbed Afghanistan veteran (Brady Corbet).

If the film has a weak spot, it’s that the female characters start out as full partners in the storytelling process and gently recede into the background. The movie becomes more and more focused on Jamie/Josh, with the Grodin character as the third leg.

My objection is a mild one, based not on political correctness but regret for missed opportunities for insight. At 97 minutes, this is the rare film these days that could stand to be longer.

In many ways, “While We’re Young” is Noah Baumbach’s most mature work to date. For a little while I thought the movie had simply forgotten to be funny, but it was deliberately morphing into a second half that is decidedly less jovial but inarguably more profound. Such is life, and moviemaking.

Video review: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” didn’t make much of a splash in theaters last December, but it’s the perfect sort of movie to find a second life on video.

Heart-warming, funny, with a few gentle life-lessons moments that aren’t too preachy, it’s the sort of movie that doesn’t aim very high but hits the modest mark it does set for itself. The film is pretty much a reflection of star Ben Stiller, who also directed from a screenplay by Steve Conrad based on the iconic James Thurber story.

Walter is a meek, reclusive photo editor for Life Magazine, which is about to print its last edition. He daydreams about a grander life full of adventure, mostly involving a co-worker (Kristen Wiig) he’s sweet on.

When the photo negative for the last magazine cover is lost, Walter sets out on an unlikely quest that will take him halfway across the world, and give him some approximation of the wild escapades he’s always envisioned. This includes jumping into shark-infested waters, skateboarding down an erupting volcano and tracking a rare snow leopard in the mountains.

Still being a comedian by background, this version is funnier than previous cinematic iterations of Thurber’s tale. This does have the effect of making Walter a little less sympathetic than he otherwise might have been. Though the laughs are probably worth it.

No one will confuse “Walter Mitty” with great filmmaking. But it’s an earnest, pleasing movie without a lot of fuss or pretension.

The movie is being released on video with an ample amount of extras. The DVD includes a comprehensive making-of documentary, including featurettes on the music, sights and sounds, plus a gallery of reference photographs.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you add five deleted scenes and eight extended scenes, plus a music video of “Stay Alive” by José González.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

There’s a point in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” where the film pokes a little fun at “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a movie I’ve always felt deserved a little poking. The irony is that director/star Ben Stiller and screenwriter Steve Conrad are operating in much the same mode as that 2008 fantasy-drama, and pursuing a similar audience.

Based on the James Thurber short story but diverging sharply from it, this is a comfortable, life-affirming movie that doesn’t challenge audiences too much. Yet it’s still an enjoyable, heart-warming time. The movie starts slowly … okay, very slowly … but when it hits its stride it’s as engaging as anything I’ve seen lately.

Walter (Stiller) is a workaday drone at Life magazine, heading up the cave-like photo archive. He’s just turned 42, has no close relationships or connections, and seems to have had his personality slowly extracted out of him over time. He is also prone to fits of fancy – “zoned out,” his family and friends call his little spells – where he imagines himself living a life of notoriety and high adventure.

These days the chief object of his daydreams is Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), a new worker who plays a starring role in the movies playing inside his head. Mostly these involve coming to her rescue, or performing some kind of heroic deed, or otherwise impressing her enough to instantly ensorcel her into becoming his love-mate.

But disaster happens when the magazine is set to publish its final print edition, seguing over to an online-only production with most of the staff losing their jobs. (In the journalism game, we call this “transitioning.”) The changeover team is headed up by a colossal jerk (Adam Scott) who alights upon the mild-mannered Walter as his chief whipping boy.

They want to use a shot by legendary photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) for the final cover, and he’s sent Walter his last roll of film (he’s old-fashioned that way) with still #25 described as his best photo ever: “the quintessence of life.”

Trouble is, photo 25 is missing, so after some prevaricating Walter sets off on a journey to Greenland, Iceland and eventually Afghanistan in search of the elusive photo. He finds himself living exactly the sort of adventures he once only dreamed of: fighting off sharks, jumping aboard a helicopter with a really drunk pilot, etc.

There are a lot of things the filmmakers do right, and some they do wrong. Stiller being a comedian at heart, he inserts some obvious laugh moments to perk up the dreary parts. (The Benjamin Button scene is undoubtedly the funniest.) This has the effect, though, of making the tragedy of Walter’s humdrum life less tragic. We feel less for him than we might have.

I also disliked the fact the screenplay didn’t give Wiig more to do. As we’ve seen from her starring roles, she can be quite a distinct onscreen presence; here, she exists more or less as a vessel for Walter’s fantasies. Pity.

The cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh is just spectacular, as Walter careens on a skateboard toward an erupting volcano or traverses a high mountain ridge. (I think they used the same one from the “Lord of the Rings” movies, but it’s still impressive.)

The use of product placement in the film is bold, and interesting. Rather than having products and logos hanging around in the background as subliminal cues, Stiller & Co. bring it right to the fore, working company brands directly into the storyline. For example, Walter has a running conversation with an eHarmony consultant (Patton Oswalt) about beefing up his profile. And his teenage experience working at Papa John’s pizzeria comes in handy.

And of course there’s Life magazine itself, which is presented in the movie as a last bastion for vivid photographs and stories, a place where every employee embraces the company’s mantra as their personal mission. (I feel compelled to point out the real Life ceased publishing as standalone magazine 13 years ago.)

I enjoyed myself at this movie, even as I realized it didn’t quite hit the mark, and its aim was not all that high to begin with. It’s a perfectly agreeable film that perhaps, a few years down the line, another movie will gently mock, and we’ll smile.

Review: "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted"

I have not been a fan of the "Madagascar" animated films, but the third one won me over. Perhaps it's a result of my becoming a parent, but I see now how the franchise's combination of kid-friendly boingy action, annoyingly catchy musical numbers and cutesy, simplistic life lessons is never dull to the kindergarten-and-down crowd.

After the packed screening I attended, literally dozens of tots were shaking their booties in the aisles as they imitated the tunes, especially a particularly egregious ditty called "Afro Circus," written and sung by Chris Rock. It consists of just those two words with a few "polka dot" throw-ins, but apparently to wee ones this is sublime comedic styling.

By all rights we should judge our entertainment by a higher standard than just keeping our offspring distracted for an hour and a half. But that's the yardstick by which "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" operates, and judged in those terms it's slickly effective.

As the story opens, the gang from the zoo finds themselves stuck in Africa, wanting to get back to their home in New York City. Their friends the penguins, who talk like spies out of the "Mad Men" era, have ditched them to play high rollers at the casinos in Monte Carlo, so that's where they follow.

The group dynamic remains virtually unchanged since the birth of the franchise. Alex the lion (Ben Stiller) is the ostensible leader, who puts on a brave face but has a neurotic craving for attention. His best bud Marty the zebra (Rock) is the goofy sidekick who sometimes yearns to be leader of the pack. Hypochondriac giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer) and groovy hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) have hooked up into an interspecies couple, the sheer mechanics of which beggars the imagination.

While in Monte Carlo they run afoul of Captain Chantel DuBois, head of the animal control unit. Voiced by Frances McDormand, DuBois makes for a dastardly Ahab-like villain who chases the gang all over the globe, jurisdiction be danged. With her hook-sharp nose, roomy hips and squared shoulders, DuBois is a formidable enemy.

Alex and the gang end up hiding out with the Circus Zaragoza, a motley collection of animals whose act has grown stale. Passing themselves off as fellow circus critters, the four friends resolve to add some Cirque du Soleil extravagance into the drab proceedings.

The new partners include Stefano, an exuberantly Italian sea lion (Martin Short) who dreams of being considered of average intelligence; Gia (Jessica Chastain), a feline trapeze artist who rests her hopes -- and affections -- on Alex; and Vitaly (an excellent Bryan Cranston), a Russian daredevil tiger and one-time star of the show, who got burned performing his signature act.

I should also mention Julien, the lemur king voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen, who's back to sing his "move it, move it" song again and supply some mildly suggestive humor. The computer-generated animation is a smash, particularly a couple of the big circus show numbers, which grow pleasantly psychedelic for awhile.

Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, who co-directed the first two movies, are joined by Conrad Vernon for a threesome that knows this material and its limitations, and focuses on what it can do best. Darnell also handles the screenplay, joined by indie filmmaker Noah Baumbach, best known for eclectic fare like "The Squid and the Whale" and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." (Someone need a paycheck?)

I'm not sure if I'd call "Madagascar 3" good bad movie-making, or bad good. Either way, I grudgingly admire the way it expertly achieves its own low expectations. This positive review is not so much a recommendation as a surrender.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Tower Heist"

The tower in “Tower Heist” is, literally, The Tower, a Trump Towers-esque palatial home to the Manhattan super-rich elite who live there and the small army of working-class stiffs who keep their pillows fluffed and the old ladies’ frou-frou dogs walked. The bad guy is a Bernie Madoff-style oligarch who gleefully steals from the rich and the not-so-rich alike, pocketing it all and depending on his money and connections to protect him from the Defarges of the world.

The heist part takes up the second half of the movie, as Ben Stiller leads a team of amateur thieves – and one professional, played by Eddie Murphy – into The Tower penthouse to reclaim their stolen pension money. It’s all about the righteous 99 percent thwarting the evil 1 percent.

It’s like Occupy Wall Street, rewritten as a goofy caper comedy.

I did not buy any of the characters in the movie as real people, and the mechanics of the actual heist doesn’t so much strain credulity as smash it into little pieces and stomp on it. At one point the film asks us to believe that hundreds of thousands of people attending the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade could be looking up into the air at all the floats, and not one of them notices something astonishing taking place at the top of The Tower.

Still, once the actual heist gets going, the movie revs up a decent amount of momentum and finds some sustainable laughs. It’s not quite enough to recommend it, but I’ll admit “Tower Heist” is a lot better than my exceedingly low expectations.

The first thing any potential ticket-buyer needs is to be disabused of the notion that this is a Stiller/Murphy buddy picture. Murphy plays Slide, who remains a fringe character until the 45-minute mark. He’s just some local loudmouth ex-con who shouts at neighbor Josh Kovacs (Stiller) whenever he walks by.

Later, after Josh is canned as the general manager of The Tower for standing up to top resident Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), he invites Slide to join his crew of bumbling burglars. He reminds Slide they used to be nursery-school classmates, which Josh seems to think means they have a relationship, despite having no true interaction for 40 years.

The lack of any real Murphy/Stiller pairing is the biggest disappointment about “Tower Heist.” Both actors have been stuck in a rut of middlebrow comedies lately, so the idea of a couple of aging but still potent funnymen tag-teaming has a great deal of appeal.

Alas, they’re reduced to a few lame, sniping exchanges: “That’s it! I don’t want to talk to you for the rest of the robbery!”

Director Brett Ratner and screenwriters Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson never really kick the action out of tame screwball comedy territory, despite the daring Occupy overtones.

It’s too bad, considering the killer cast they assembled: in addition to Stiller, Murphy and Alda, there’s Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick, Judd Hirsch, Michael Peña, Téa Leoni and Gabourey Sidibe. That’s five Academy Award nominees by my count – quite a lot of firepower considering the low-wattage material.

Affleck plays Josh’s dim brother-in-law; Peña is Dev’Reaux, the brash new elevator man; Sidibe is Odessa, a Jamaican maid with an outsize personality; Hirsch plays the unctuous Tower boss; and Leoni is the hard-wired FBI agent gunning for Shaw.

I particularly liked Broderick as Fitzhugh, a former Wall Street whiz turned unemployed evictee, who’s got an air of bottled-up middle-aged desperation just waiting to blow. Broderick has gray hair now, a couple of chins and a mid-life spread, but his boyish face still holds a hint of puckish Bueller charm.

Though held back by its sophomoric, self-imposed limitations, “Tower Heist” rises higher than it has any right to.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Greenberg"

"Greenberg" wants desperately to be a 1970s Robert Altman film, but it fails. Altman, for all his stylistic flourishes with naturalistic, overlapping dialogue and ensemble casts, always relied on a narrative through line to bind things together. He didn't just like to observe characters for their own sake; he wanted them to do things.

Roger Greenberg, the protagonist of this black comedy/drama from writer/director Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale"), doesn't do much of anything. After being released from a mental hospital and moving to Los Angeles to stay at his brother's home while they're away, he hooks up with an old girlfriend.

"Right now I'm trying to do nothing for awhile," he says.

"That's brave at our age," says the ex, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh (who also co-wrote the story).

Roger is self-hating and occasionally abusive to those around him, like his brother's assistant Florence (a vibrant Greta Gerwig) and his old pal Ivan (Rhys Ifans). Roger was in a band with Ivan 15 years earlier, but walked away from a record contract. He didn't want to compromise his integrity, but didn't grasp it would end the dream for all of them.

Roger hangs around the house, drinks a lot, looks after the family dog when it takes sick (though clearly annoyed at having to do so) and begins a fumbling, hot-and-cold romance with Florence.
He's an unlikable guy, but Ben Stiller plays him with an emotional center that carries us through the film's meandering course.

Video extras are, in a word, pathetic.

I was excited at first to see three featurettes included (extras are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray versions). There's a making-of featurette, another about the role of Los Angeles in the film, and a third about Baumbach's literary influences.

Then I actually popped them in, and found they total less than six minutes of combined running time.

They're essentially extended trailers, with short snippets of the stars and filmmakers thrown in for hype.

It's quite disappointing. It reminded me of a moment in the film when Greenberg learns that his friends think he doesn't make much of an effort at anything. We can certainly say that about Baumbach's approach to video releases.

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 1.5 stars

Video Review: "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"

The "Night at the Museum" movies are the epitome of everything wrong with modern filmmaking. They have lots of whiz-bang special effects, two or three humorous moments, and no heart or brains.

Night museum guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) survived a job inside a museum where all the exhibits come to life. Since then, he's moved on to a successful career as a TV product pitchman -- which brings monetary benefits but not much fulfillment.

Meanwhile, the living exhibits (which turn inanimate during daytime) are shipped off to storage at the Smithsonian museum complex, where the magic tablet brings all those exhibits to life, too.
Unfortunately, one of them is an Egyptian pharaoh (Hank Azaria) who wants to use the tablet to rule the world; he has recruited Ivan the Terrible, Al Capone and Napoleon as his henchman.

And Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) fleshes out a bomber jacket long enough to give Larry a hand, along with a few slaps and smooches.

There's a few clever jokes -- the Jonas Brothers as cupids is cute, and I liked the spoof of the slo-mo action sequences from "300" performed by 2-inch-tall Romans.

But mostly, it's goofy computer-generated mayhem without much point.

Video extras are quite ample. Separate commentary tracks are provided by director Shawn Levy and screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. There's a 19-minute making-of documentary that touches on most aspects of filmmaking, though it's a lot of glad-handing.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also comes with a gag reel of outtakes, about a dozen deleted/alternate scenes, and more. I particularly liked the "Phinding Pharaoh" featurette, which has screen tests of Azaria trying out various accents for his character -- including a Southern one -- before settling on what he dubs a Boris Karloff impression.

A limited edition "Monkey Mischief" disc adds games and featurettes about the monkey star and his handler.

The combo pack also includes a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 1.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars