"DESPICABLE ME" ☆☆ 1/2
A better title than idea, about underground-suburbanite, James-Bondian villain Gru (who in the advertising trailers looks like the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock) trying to steal the moon, and beat his nemesis, younger, pretentious nerd, Vector, for the # 1 spot as super-baddie of the world. And in order to do so adopts three darling orphans, hopeful, but disdainful Margo, troublesome Edith, and all around cuttie pie Agnes, from the local shelter, and he hopes to use the kids and just as easily dispose of them for his master plan. And the kids hope to warm Gru's heart, and ours, to find the adoptive father in Gru they, nor he, never knew he had. Can we hope, too?
The gags are all funny and relatively light (no potty humor, thank you), the story follows a good arc, the characters are rounded okay (I had my problems with Mr. Nerfario, who jumped from compliant gadget maker of Gru to being his aggressive outer conscious), but the sentiment, however trying to get there, doesn't pull our heart strings enough. "Despicable Me" could have used deeper moments with Gru and the kids, having finer ground to feel for them. And with that, to make the movie better from there, a bit more whimsy, more funny, and more character stuff. Maybe make Vector less pompous and idiotic and more venomous, and evil banker Mr. Perkins more menacing making him the real villain of the movie, and orphanage warden Miss Hattie more like the abominable chaperones of "Harry Potter's" the Dursleys; and why isn't Gru more of a spiteful scoundrel than just a troublesome school bully on the playground, possibly making him a more attractive, or unattractive, character? The little yellow minions were funny enough, but could have been just as hysterical as Universal had marketed them to be. The girls, Margo, Agnes and Edith, are easily the most interesting because they are the center of the human factor in this (and they are really cute!). But despite them, we still needed more bittersweet.
I didn't like the idea, but it works enough, I just would have wanted to see the "Despicable" that was in the title, with the more balancing wit and emotion. The pop songs were good, though. Groove on, Pharrell Williams!
"THE LAST AIRBENDER" ☆
M. Night Shyamalan is a writer, director, and producer with the privilege to even write, direct and produce at all. A once talented and intriguing moviemaker, Shyamalan is now a confectuous self-promotor whose works turn inside out once torn apart by outside common sense, aka the critics who once admired him and the audience who flocked to every original pic he dished out. Since then, he has fallen victim to his own "genius," making movies that are flat, poor and fail on every level. M. Night's latest, the CGI fantasy "The Last Airbender," a property that he didn't originally create, is another on his failing resume, and possibly is his worst. There is no going into it much, everything about the movie stinks.
Except for the crew: DP Andrew Lesnie (The Lord of the Rings); effects house ILM, with Pablo Helman as the VFX supervisor (Stars Wars, among various films for Steven Spielberg); production designer Philip Messina and costumer Judianna Makovsky. They all do top-notch work here, and composer James Newton Howard's score made the movie a little better at times.
Still, even with all that talent, "The Last Airbender" is atrociously bad. Sorry kids, go back to watching reruns of the animated show...That includes you, too, Night.
"KNIGHT AND DAY" ☆☆☆
Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz serve up classic hollywood actor chemistry, entertaining the audience and allowing us to laugh at the very reckless/brainless plot that doesn't make much sense. That's why it works. Still, the movie could have used more logic.
"THE KARATE KID" (2010) ☆☆☆
I haven't seen John G. Avildsen's 80's "The Karate Kid," another rise-up underdog story that got audiences as easily as Avildsen's own "Rocky" did, and this new "Karate Kid" - directed by Harald Zwart with terrific newcomer Jaden Smith (just like his dad, Will Smith, and he was also the film's Executive Producer) as Kung-Fu Kid Dre Parker and Jackie Chan (possibly the role he was born to play, he just needed to wait a few years) as Zen Master Mr. Han - is another grandstander as well. It's the type of movie, with a house-raising finale, we've seen before, a hundred, a thousand times, where the underdog overcomes his fears, wins in glory, earns the respect of his opponents, friends and family, and gets the girl. We've seen it so much we know the formula better than Hollywood does, and if it doesn't please us the way a good crowd-pleaser should, than we can't really say it was pleasing at all. "The Karate Kid" follows that tradition, and in turn earns our respect, that we know what we want in an underdog sports drama, to jump and cheer and rout for Dre Parker and be charmed by him and be touched by him, and feel and be mystified by Mr. Han. This "Karate Kid" hugely succeeds on that level. The movie could have been shorter, though.
"ROBIN HOOD" (2010) ☆☆☆ 1/2
This is the glorified version of Robin Hood, done in that terrifically chilled, gritty and romantically mesmerizing style that director Ridley Scott can only do and all others, mostly patchy imitators, fail at. Of lush landscape, cold and mystifying woods, formidable fortresses, and bang-up action. Scott has made some of his best work when doing high genre works like this: "Alien"/"Blade Runner" for science fiction, "American Gangster" for the old-fashioned 70's crime drama, and "Kingdom of Heaven"/"Gladiator" for the medieval epic, and the styles of those, as well as Scott's signature retro pace, is some of the best you'll see around.
A great A-list cast, Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, William Hurt, Max von Sydow, among others, with Scott's impeccable crew, and Brain Helgelad penning the script (the guy who wrote "Mystic River"), create the best Robin Hood yet.
I could care less that it tries to be historically accurate (What?), "Robin Hood" is a rousing, roaring medieval action film that works up to being a true heros' legend.
However, I would have preferred more of Robin stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Maybe that comes with the half-baked history.
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