A disappointing 'Ella McCay'

 

 If you have fond memories of Terms of Endearment,  Broadcast News, and Good As It Gets, you've probably been looking forward to a new movie from director James L. Brooks. 

  No slouch as a writer/director, Brooks not only directed the three movies I mentioned, he also played a role in creating the landmark TV comedies, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi.  Additionally, he's known as a creator and developer of The Simpsons.

 Ella McCay is Brooks's first movie since 2010's How Do You Know, which wasn't greeted with much enthusiasm. Still, as an admirer of Brooks's ability to create memorable characters in movies that hit plenty of strong notes, I was hoping for a bullseye.

  Aside from enjoying the always-welcome presence of Albert Brooks -- this time as a governor who resigns his position to take a job as Secretary of the Interior -- I spent much of Ella McCay fighting off disappointment. I expected a movie that spoke to the moment, and found one that seemed to have been taken from the day-old cinematic shelf.  

   Set in 2008, the movie gives a major role to Emma Mackey (Netflix's Sex Education). Mackey plays the title character, an amped-up policy wonk. As  a 34-year-old lieutenant governor, Ella lands the governor's job when Brooks' s character departs for Washington. 

   If you're looking for intermittent displays of charm, Mackey's performance may hit the spot, but the character she's playing didn't strike me as intriguing  enough to carry the film past Ella's commitment to   political pablum: She wants to help mothers and children.

   Perhaps to add some conflict, Brooks adds wrinkles involving a misuse of government property and the brewing jealousy of Ella's increasingly bitter husband (Jack Lowden). The owner of a pizza restaurant, Lowden's Ryan begins to resent his wife's success.

  A promising supporting cast can't put much spring into Ella McCay's step, either. Jamie Lee Curtis signs on as Ella's no-nonsense aunt, the woman who raised her. Woody Harrelson portrays Ella's philandering father, and Kumail Nanjiani plays Trooper Nash, the state cop who becomes Ella's loyal driver.

   Spike Fearn appears as Ella's brother Casey, a computer genius who's trying to win back the woman (Ayo Edebiri) he didn't know how to court. Brooks resolves the relationship a little too easily.

    Despite a variety of complications, the comedy often flatlines. We never learn what state Ella is governing, and her work as governor often plays second fiddle to her personal issues: coaxing her nerdy brother out of isolation, visiting her aunt, or dealing with her husband.

     No more need be said: My heart sank for Brooks, now 85, and for myself; I was hoping that Ella McCay would serve as a sparkling addendum to a strong career. What I got instead was what an admired editor I knew used to say when confronted with something he found wanting: "a tepid potato."

More body swaps in a lesser movie

    During the first 15 minutes of Freakier Friday, a sequel to the popular 2003 movie, a food fight disrupts a high school bake sale. As the sloppy mayhem unfolded, I surrendered any hope that this broadly played cinematic reunion tour for Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan would bubble with Wildean wit.

  Working from a screenplay credited to a trio of writers, director Nisha Ganatra doubles the number of characters involved in body swaps from two to four, but that that doesn't make her movie any better than its predecessor. Sadly it's probably not as good.

  This time, the body-swapping adventures of Curtis and Lohan are joined by Julia Butters, as the daughter of Lohan's now-grown Anna, and Sophie Hammons, as Lily, a teenager who'll be blended into a new family should Anna go through with her plan to marry Lily's father, a widowed British restaurateur played by Manny Jacinto.

  Ganatra keeps things peppy as she builds toward the inevitable body swaps, this time resulting from the unwanted help of a faux psychic (Vanessa Bayer). 

   The idea behind the plot goes something like this: Both teenagers (Butters and Hammons) despise one another and have no desire to become stepsisters. Once they find themselves in different bodies, they follow a sitcom playbook, scheming to derail Anna and Eric's impending wedding. 

    Lohan and Butters do well, with Curtis' broader performance adding dashes of slapstick.  Hammons ably fulfills her obligations as a conceited London-raised teenager who hasn't gotten over the death of her mother. Lohan's Anna, by the way, opted for single motherhood long before the story began.

    All of this rattles on for one hour and 51 minutes while the characters learn how to resolve their problems.

    Look, because there's no suspense about how the movie will end, I don't consider it a spoiler to tell you that a truly freaky movie would have put Butters' 15-year-old Harper in her 36-year-old mother's body indefinitely, skipping the end of adolescence for the entrapments of middle age. 

   Too freaky? I suppose so.

   The movie has other things in mind as it works to generate  feel-good spirit, culminating with a showy musical production number involving Lohan, Butters, and a singer (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) Anna manages. Anna, we learn, became a talent agent after abandoning performing ambitions she displayed in the earlier movie, partly to concentrate on being a mom.

     Perhaps to provide connection points for those who loved the 2003 movie, the filmmakers contrive small roles for additional returnees, notably Stephen Tobolowsky, as an aging teacher, Chad Michael Murray, as Anna's old high school flame, and Mark Harmon, as Tess's husband.

    The movie's end credits feature outtakes that suggest the movie was fun to make. The performances capture some of that giddy flavor, but Freakier Friday wraps its family-oriented sentiments in a package that 22 years of aging hasn't done much to improve.*

    *For the record, I haven't seen the 1976 version of Freaky Friday that starred Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris.

     

A mansion haunted by a lack of fun

 

I didn’t expect much from Haunted Mansion, Disney’s second big-screen version of a movie inspired by one of its popular theme park attractions. That's precisely what the movie delivers: not much. Gone is Eddie Murphy of the crummy 2003 installment, replaced by a team led by LaKeith Stanfield and supplemented by Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, and in a smaller role, Jamie Lee Curtis. An effects-laden amusement that seldom engages, Haunted Mansion  casts Stanfield as a disaffected astrophysicist and ghost skeptic who’s grieving the loss of his wife. Dawson plays a mother who, along with her nine-year-old son (Chase W. Dillon), moves into a dilapidated New Orleans mansion that might as well sport a neon sign, something on the order of “this way to the ghosts.”  Mother and son miss the boy’s late father. Haunted Mansion feels more like a dated amusement park fun house than a contemporary chiller — but without much of the “fun.’’ Had Disney allowed Haddish — who plays a medium — to cut loose, the movie might have saved itself, although it also might have sacrificed its PG-13 rating. Buried by CGI and make-up, Jared Leto plays the Hatbox Ghost, the badass ghost who wants to trap the rest of the cast in the mansion. Hotbox must be vanquished to lift a long-standing curse -- or some such. Attempts to deal with issues involving grief prove shallow; director  Justin Simien’s movie falls short as either comedy or frightfest. The cast deserved better — and so did we.

This movie wants to "stop making sense"

 

     Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert -- a directing duo known as The Daniels -- overwhelm the screen with the aptly titled Everything Everywhere All at Once, a movie that spends more than two hours racing through a multiverse in which characters suddenly morph into alternate versions of themselves. 

     It's impossible to watch the Daniels maneuver through the chaos without acknowledging their ability to crack visual jokes, rip through dense helpings of exposition, and commit to a full-scale creative bombardment of the audience. 

     Now, it should be said that there are people who will enjoy this teeming barrage of a movie precisely because the Daniels don't skimp on invention. But those who don't think that comprehension and creativity are mortal enemies may find themselves looking for guard rails.

     No stranger to martial arts action, Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant to the US who runs a laundromat with her husband (Ke Huy Quan). Quan, you may remember, appeared in The Goonies as a kid. 

     Mired in a listless marriage, the exasperated Evelyn tries to deal with a lesbian daughter (Stephanie Hsu) who, in one of the movie's alternate universes, assumes an entirely different identity.

    If you see the film, keep an eye out for a character named Jobu Tupaki. Also watch for the giant everything bagel.

     No, I'm not kidding, although the Daniels probably are — at least I hope so.

     The Daniels seem to have dedicated themselves to the idea that quiet equals boredom. Blink and you'll be watching a fight scene in which Quan's Waymond turns a fanny pack into a weapon. 

     During a scene in a tax office, Waymond reveals a new side of himself, providing Evelyn with instruction about how to "jump" from her current life into a parallel one in which she's a martial arts maven with a mission. She’ll find additional identities as the movie barrels forward, including a stint as a movie star.

    To further complicate matters Evelyn's visiting father (James Hong) never approved of her marriage to the feckless Waymond.

      Other characters pop in and out of various universes. Damn the transitions, it's full speed ahead. 

      Sporting a puffy paunch, Jamie Lee Curtis turns herself into a sight gag; she plays a dictatorial tax auditor who's appalled by Evelyn's haphazard record keeping. 

    The Daniels (Swiss Army Knife) convert distraction into attraction -- or at least they try. In one alternate universe, the characters have hotdogs for fingers, for example. In another, Evelyn and Joy turn up as rocks. 

    And, yes, it does feel as if everything we're seeing is happening all at once. Serious issues morph into cartoon-like jests. Sure lines blur but don’t we all live in a state of disorientation? So what if the movie’s scenes play like an explosion of hyperactive production numbers?

    Everything Everywhere All at Once will delight some and confound others as it offers a cafeteria-style variety of pleasures: a terrific costume here, a funny bit there, an ingenious fight in another place.

     All frantic all the time, the movie gallops toward a conciliatory -- and I guess -- happy hug of an ending. 

     The trouble with this bumper serving of creativity is that the meal is not only glutted but served so fast, it's difficult to digest.

     Somewhere up there on the screen, there's a movie. Maybe dozens of them. If this sounds like your cup of chaos, have fun. As for me,  I guess I still prefer my movies one at a time.

An entertaining mystery with a great cast

Knives Out couples a traditional approach with a cast of colorful contemporary characters.

Knives Out, a movie that unashamedly evokes memories of traditional whodunits, begins where it must: A group of disagreeable relatives gather in hopes of inheriting the fortune of the family’s obscenely rich patriarch.

Conveniently, the wealthy head of the family, a mystery writer played by Christopher Plummer, dies on the night of his 85th birthday celebration. Was it murder or suicide?

Director Rian Johnson isn't shy about declaring his intentions. The movie’s production design includes a rather large and prominently displayed collection of knives, part of the decor of the mansion where family members gather to snipe at one another and wait for the writer's will to be read. A greedy, duplicitous lot, the relatives all become instant suspects should it turn out that Plummer's Harlan Thrombey did not depart this life willingly.

To spark interest, the movie plays some intriguing games with casting.

To begin with, Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Brothers Bloom and Brick) gives Daniel Craig an opportunity to break the Bond mold. Craig portrays a private detective with an overdone Southern drawl that sounds as if the actor mastered it by bathing his vocal cords in Southern Comfort. Craig's improbably named Benoit Blanc claims that an unidentified person has hired him to assist the police in an investigation.

Michael Shannon also plays against expectation, stepping out of scary villain mode to play Harlan's pathetically ineffectual son, a man who has spent most of his life in his father’s shadow.

The writer's nurse (Mara Cabrera), an immigrant who's devoted to her boss, might be the lone character without an ulterior motive for wanting to see Harlan end his earthly journey.

Johnson flirts with caricature but a great cast won't let him get away with it. Toni Collette plays the widow of one of the late writer's sons, a woman who operates a company called Flam. The firm's business: the suspiciously broad theme of wellness. Jamie Lee Curtis appears as the haughty Linda, the writer's daughter. She's married to Don Johnson's Richard.

Like everyone else, Johnson’s character has his eye on the late writer's fortune -- as well as on the occasional woman who wanders into his view. He also delivers an anti-immigrant rant that adds a bit of topicality.

Then there's Ransom (Chris Evans), the writer's grandson, a guy who doesn't seem to care about money, but who nonetheless has become pretty good at spending it. In disdaining the rest of the family, the character of Ransom provides Evans with what must have been a welcome chance not to be Captain America.

I doubt you'll leave the theater burdened by heavy philosophical baggage. Most post-movie conversations likely will focus on Johnson's preposterously wily characters and the actors who seem to be having such a good time playing them.

The point here is entertainment and aside from allowing the proceedings to run a trifle long (two hours and 11 minutes), Johnson delivers what Knives Out promises: wry amusement, a mystery resolved at the last moment, and enough snide observation to justify the appropriately caustic treatment these characters so richly deserve.