TONY PORCO”S MOVIE REVIEW NEWSLETTER (SPRING 2005 edition)

Hey, folks–As most of you should know by now, the back issues are now back up on one of my own web sites; the address is http://www.geocities.com/museumcataloging/movierev.html. You can still read many of the old review’s on Chris’s site, as I mentioned last issue. I am going to update the mini-review page soon, and will be adding mini-reviews of Without a Paddle and (possibly) Million Dollar Baby. Until then, I hope you enjoy these....

ON SCREEN:

ROBOTS: I've now sen a lot of the amazingly-animated-talking-characters-who-make-wisecracks-and-entertain-kids-of-all-ages movies now, and it's clear that they are becoming a genre. I've seen the formula done with fantasy cartoon characters (Shrek, my personal favorite), fishes (Shark Tale), and now Robots. Of course, as I've said before, I don't necessarily have any problems with formula movies just because they're formula movies, especially if they are well-written and and well-acted, as Robots is. The story revolves around our hero, a young android-type thing named Rodney Copperbottom (Ewan McGregor), who has a talent for invention and for fix-it-up work (which, in a community of robots, makes him kind of like a doctor). He heads for the big city to make his fame and fortune with the ultimate fix-up guy, Big Weld (an excellent Mel Brooks). Unfortunately, he finds that a crafty and slick mechanical executive (Greg Kinnear, playing a character kind of like the one he played in Someone Like You) has eased Big Weld out of the company and plans to force all the lesser robots to pay for expensive upgrades (sound familiar?) Luckily, Rodney has help from both inside the company (Cappy, a beautifully-designed exec voiced by Halle Berry) and outside (Piper and Fender, two robots voiced by Amanda Bynes and Robin Williams, and their motley crew of robot friends). The planned-obsolescence theme is surprisingly subversive for a Hollywood movie, and that alone makes it quite enjoyable; in fact, I can think of certain software companies who wouldn’t have objected if this movie had never seen the light of day. There are also lots of great lines (written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who are best known for collaborating with Billy Crystal), many of which are delivered (big surprise) by Williams. I was also surprised by how impressed I was by the animation, since I'm now getting jaded by that kind of thing--the sequences where Rodney and Fender hurtle through an increasingly complicated big robot city really are stunning, and become almost surreal. The only major thing I didn't like was that some of the characters are really annoying, and are given more screen time than they deserve; I actually found even Fender to be kind of tiresome by the end. RATING: 7.

ON TAPE:

THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE: Welcome to the wonderful undersea world of Spongebob Squarepants, in which our titular hero, everyone's favorite primitive marine invertebrate (voiced by Tom Kenny) and his buddy, the starfish Patrick (voiced by Bill Fagerbakke), have to save their crabby boss (actually, their boss is a crab!) from the wrath of his archenemy and rival restraunteur, the diminutive Plankton (voiced by Doug Lawrence)! Yes, this movie is as fun to watch as that sentence was to write, although it's not really a better intro to the whole Spongebob thing than just watching an episode on TV. In fact, the movie might be a bit confusing to folks who haven't seen the TV show. It's also a bit longer than it needs to be--my son, who is a Spongebob fan (and who had seen the show with me before we saw the movie), seemed a bit bored and restless by the end. Still, you could do a lot worse for a kid's movie, although it won't be good for all parents and kids (there's some cartoon beating-up, and a lot of threatening and jeopardy). I should mention that the closing credits are absolutely gorgeous, and the coda is really funny. Also, there is a special celebrity appearance near the end that had me rolling on the floor (I can’t say anything more about it, for obvious reasons). Chunks of the film combine live-action and cartoon footage, and the combination is creative and striking, although it's not that different from what we saw years ago in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. RATING: 7.

KISSING JESSICA STEIN: Jessica (Jennifer Westfeldt), an editor for an alternative newspaper in NYC, wants to find the right person, but has the same tough standards in her personal life that she has in her detail-oriented work. After a long series of dating misadventures, aided and abetted by a mother (Tovah Feldshuh) that has a more than passing interest in seeing her married, she sees a personal ad with a quote from one of her favorite authors. She goes ahead and gives the person a call, even though the ad is in the "Women Seeking Women" section. This brings her into contact with bold gallery manager Helen (Heather Juergensen), who seems more experienced with the whole woman-woman thing--or is she? Westfeldt and Juergensen wrote this script based on their own play Lipshtick, about women experimenting with same-sex relationships. The transition works well; it never occurred to me that I was watching an adapted screenplay, because I was too busy watching a fun, insightful, romantically-comic movie. As is so often the case with "gay" movies I've seen in the past--Go Fish, Chasing Amy, Philadelphia, and others--it gets easy to forget that the charaters even are gay, because so much of what happens is so universal (and is comic partly because it is universal), and because the story bears so much resemblance to similar movies past. In fact, it gets rather tempting to think of Jennifer as the female Woody Allen--smart but neurotic, intense but self-observing--and Heather as her perfect foil, a more down-to-earth Diane Keaton. This is not to say that the film is just a ripoff, however; if the material is not totally brand new, the humor and situations really are unique, funny, and even moving on occasion, and show real chemistry between both the characters and the real people who created them in collaboration. (Feldshuh and Westfeldt get far beyond their characters’ stereotypes, and capture the tension of trying to be yourself in a suburban community where it isn’t always easy to do so, in one especially good scene.) Overall, this is an old story told in an original way, and that is just about all that anyone can expect in a romantic comedy. (Before I close, mention must be made of one other supporting actor--Scott Cohen is terrific in a rather complex role, that of Jessica's ex-boyfriend/current friend/foil/nemesis/boss. Many people know that this film was one of the first made in New York City after September 11; as my friend and fellow movie reviewer Dean Oman pointed out, the filmmakers make a point of avoiding shots of downtown NYC without the World Trade Center, and confine themselves to midtown. While I can understand this, I hope it doesn't go on forever; sadly, September 11 and its aftermath are facts of life in New York now, as we found out when we were there two years ago. But I digress.) RATING: 8.

GOING UPRIVER: THE LONG WAR OF JOHN KERRY: Some of you might wonder why I'm bothering to review this strongly pro-John Kerry documentary, months after the election that it hoped to influence is over. I happen to think that this movie is still very worth watching, election or no election. True, Kerry, as a young volunteer Navy officer in the 1960's, is definitely the protagonist, and the movie certainly portrays him positively. That said, the stories it tells--the bravery of the men who served on the "swift boats" on the rivers of Vietnam, the perils they faced, and the later tribulations of those who joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War--go way beyond him. Seeing this film taught me quite a bit about the events of that period, even though I used to have a job that put me in touch with many Vietnam veterans, and I consider myself quite knowledgeable about that time in history. (One thing that I hadn't seen was the debate between Kerry, as a young anti-war leader, and John O'Neill, a fellow veteran handpicked by President Nixon to oppose him one night on the Dick Cavett show. Kerry destroyed O'Neill so easily that you have to wonder if O'Neill's later leadership of the deceitfully-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was meant as personal revenge.) The movie isn't perfect, of course; for one thing, a few of the interviews are cut off too early (in particular, I would have liked to hear more from Kerry's fellow vet and former senator, Max Cleland). In addition, the music is oddly pedestrian, especially considering that it was written by none other than famous minimalist composer Philip Glass. The good points more than outweigh the bad points, however. The footage of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War protests in Washington in 1969 is especially powerful, and brings home the tough decision Kerry faced when he contemplated throwing his medals away as an act of antiwar protest. All in all, this is an excellent movie to see if you want to learn more about the Vietnam generation; if you go away from it wondering if the best man won last year, that's fine with me, too. RATING: 8.