Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 3, 2009
The Critic's Corner
David Laprad
I have an uncle who’s famous for telling a joke about a dead horse. When he delivered the punch line at his 90th birthday party, the entire room exploded in laughter, even though everyone had heard the joke many times before. It wasn’t the punch line that was great but the person telling it.
The same can be said of the new movie, “The Proposal,” which stars Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds as two people that detest each other at the beginning of the film and have swung the other way by its end. As a romantic comedy with a fish-out-of-water subplot, “The Proposal” shamelessly piles one cliché on top of another. And yet the chemistry between Bullock and Reynolds gives “The Proposal” undeniable charm as well as some genuine belly laughs.
Bullock is Margaret, who initially appears to be cut from the same cloth as Miranda Priestly from “The Devil Wears Prada.” Reynolds is her whimpering assistant, Andrew. He puts up with his boss because he wants to become a book editor and sees his thankless job as a way of getting his foot in the door.
The balance of power between them shifts when Margaret, a Canadian, learns she’s going to be deported because she failed to update her immigration papers. As she pleads with her bosses, who are going to have to fire her, Andrew enters the office to deliver a message. Seeing an opportunity, Margaret tells her employers she and Andrew have fallen in love and are planning to getting married.
As Andrew picks up on the lie and does his best to play along, Reynolds’ facial expressions and fumbling speech are hilarious. Bullock does just as well a few minutes later when the “happy couple” checks in at immigration and Margaret learns she has to travel to Alaska to meet Andrew’s parents.
Once in Alaska, “The Proposal” becomes hopelessly predictable, but balances every hackneyed step forward with a moment of pleasure. I especially like the scene in which Andrew and Margaret sing hip-hop together as the sun casts a midnight glow in their bedroom.
My only other complaint about “The Proposal” is how it defangs Margaret near the end. Why does a woman have to be vulnerable to be appealing to a man? I liked her better with claws. Rating: Rent it.
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“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has the rare distinction of meeting all of my expectations for a movie. That’s not saying much, though.
I wasn’t looking for wit and humor. If you laughed at the random dog sex in the first “Transformers” movie, though, you need to warm up your funny bone before entering the theater. Director Michael Bay also provides a backside close-up of actor John Turturro in a g-string (something you do NOT want to see on a large screen) and a pair of giant clangers hanging from the groin of a Decepticon. Ho ho!
I wasn’t anticipating a good storyline, either, but the viewers who applauded when the end credits rolled must have picked up on something I missed. In “Transformers 2,” Shia LaBeouf returns as Sam Witwicky. As the movie opens, Sam is college bound, leaving his parents and girlfriend behind. Once settled in at Princeton, he begins drawing alien symbols everywhere and having mental meltdowns in class. Eventually, the Autobot Optimus Prime shows up to tell Sam it’s his destiny to film cheesy reaction shots to battles between giant robots.
Sorry, but I can’t be bothered with explaining the plot. I’m not even convinced the creators of the movie could. One minute, the protagonists are looking for something called energon; the next, a mysterious key; and the next, a weapon that could destroy the sun. None of it makes sense or appears to fit together. If the Decepticons are so desperate for the energy their weapon can draw from our sun, why don’t they just tap into one of the bazillion solar systems that don’t support life?
Because then we’d be denied the pleasure of watching giant robots locked in explosive combat for 149 minutes. I went into “Transformers 2” hoping to be wowed visually, and on that count, Bay delivers the goods. There are several awesome shots, including one in which several vehicles transform into a single Decepticon.
Unfortunately, for every jaw-dropping moment, there are several minutes of confusing clutter in which the action looks like a tornado ripping through a junkyard. The close-ups are especially bad, as it’s impossible to tell one character from another as the camera whooshes around what appears to be a living tangle of spare car parts. Worse, during the battles, there’s rarely a context for where the humans are in relation to the robots.
“Transformers 2” is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Maybe the reason people applauded at the end is because they were glad it was over. Rating: Skip it.
E-mail David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.
com.
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