A shattered man's world of dolls

Steve Carell portrays a man obsessed with World War II in Welcome to Marwen.

Director Robert Zemeckis has devoted a substantial portion of his career to films that play with cinematic convention. We’re talking about movies ranging from Who Framed Roger Rabbit to The Polar Express to Beowulf to A Christmas Carol. In Welcome to Marwen, Zemeckis continues his fascination with artificial worlds. Throughout the movie, he shifts from "normal" big screen reality to a world full of dolls that resemble characters in the movie's real-world story.

Welcome to Marwen is based on the life of Mark Hogancamp, a photographer whose work consists mostly of taking photos in and around Marwencol, a fictional miniature Belgian town he built in his backyard and populated with dolls and other toys.

If that sounds familiar, it could be for two reasons: Hogancamp’s photographs have been featured in several New York galleries and Hogancamp’s life was the subject of a fascinating 2010 documentary by Jeff Malmberg.

Those who’ve seen Malmberg's documentary already know Hogancamp’s backstory. In 2000, he was severely beaten outside a bar in upstate New York by five thugs who objected to him talking about the enjoyment he got from wearing women’s shoes. Hogancamp was in a coma for 40 days, lost all memory of his personal life prior to the assault and then began to channel his anxieties and rage into World War II tableaus in Marwencol. He had a particular fascination with battling against Nazis and his fantasies took on a pulpy, comic-book quality.

So what was left to say after the documentary? As it turns out, not much.

In Welcome to Marwen, the stories that take place inside of Marwen (all enacted with dolls that resemble characters from Hogancamp's life and voiced by actors) aren't all that interesting and the overall story vacillates between being creepy and heart-warming, never quite making up its mind which map to follow.

Using his terrible beating as an explanation, Carell portrays Hogancamp as a shattered man who long ago lost the ability to read social signals. He's briefly enamored with a new neighbor (Leslie Mann), mistaking her kindness for romantic interest.

Meritt Wever plays the owner of the local hobby shop Hogancamp frequents and Diane Kruger provides the voice of Deja Thoris, a witch-like figure who haunts Hogancamp and his Marwen alter-ego figure, Cap'n Hogie.

Working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Caroline Thompson, Zemeckis takes a stab at illuminating serious issues involving hate crimes, personal freedom (symbolized by Hogancamp's preference for wearing women's high-heeled shoes) and tolerance.

Alan Silvestri's score might have been better suited to a magical fantasy; here, it seems at odds with Hogancamp's story.

I wondered if Tim Burton, a director more willing to lean into weird material, might have been a better choice for this story. Zemeckis largely remains outside of Hogancamp's world, turning us into observers.

Welcome to Marwen offers some clever visual touches but never makes it clear what we're supposed to feel about Hogancamp: Is he a crackpot? An emotionally crippled victim? An artist? The movie didn't need to answer all (or any) of those questions, but unlike the documentary, I left without wanting to give them much further thought.

In 'Blockers,' parents are the joke

A gross-out comedy in which young women occasionally display good judgment -- or the movie's idea of it.

Teen gross-out comedies have become a staple of popular culture, usually tempering their worst (or as some would have it “best”) instincts with last-minute infusions of sentiment.

Directed by a woman, Blockers proves the mildest of exceptions to the rule. The story centers on three young women who pledge to lose their virginity on prom night. Their parents get wind of the plan and decide to do everything in their power to keep their daughters from losing their innocence.

Of course, the kids are more mature than expected and the adults are too stupid to realize that innocence and virtue aren't necessarily related to sexual behavior. So goes the contrivance that, as much as the obligatory gross-out jokes, links the movie to the contemporary teen genre.

The three high school seniors (Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Gideon Aldon want to have a good time, but ultimately approach their project in generally sensible ways. One of the young women even acknowledges her gayness before the night is done.

The adults bear the brunt of the movie's jokes.

Made wary by her own early sexual experiences, one of the girl’s moms (Leslie Mann) can’t help but see the worst outcome if her daughter has sex. Mann’s character is joined by a ludicrously uptight father (John Cena) who works as a coach and another dad (Ike Barinholtz) who hasn’t had much contact with his daughter, but who tries to sound a more reasonable note.

Cena's character, a man with a buzz cut and a head that looks as if it had been carved from granite, looks like a parodic version of a movie superhero that never quite got off the drawing board.

Comedies such as Blockers need set pieces that are intended to create both laughs and post-movie talk. The biggest of these super-gross-outs involves a scene in which Cena’s character follows his daughter to a prom-night party.

In order to fit in, Cena's character is goaded into engaging in an activity that has all the earmarks of something you wouldn’t want to try at home or anywhere else for that matter: It’s called "butt chugging," an activity that needs no further elaboration.

Director Kay Cannon (author of the Pitch Perfect screenplays), working from a screenplay by Brian and Jim Kehoe, also serves up a scene involving projectile vomiting. You'll find a couple of silly sex farce moments between a horn-dog of a dad (Gary Cole) and his equally lusty wife (Gina Gershon).

A comic veteran, Mann knows how to handle this kind of material, and movies such as Blockers usually manage to find an audience -- even when, as is the case here, they're hit-and-miss affairs. Besides, every generation needs a gross-out extravaganza to call its own. Is there any real point in objecting?

De Niro tries his hand at stand-up

A movie about a comic that's neither funny nor illuminating.

If we didn't already have enough to be depressed about, we can add one more thing to this abysmal winter of teeming discontents.

Robert De Niro has made another movie that probably will disappoint those of us who've been waiting for a great, latter-day return to form from an actor whose recent choices sometimes feel like a betrayal of his talent.

In the new movie, The Comedian, De Niro plays Jackie Burke, a comedian who hit it big with a '90s sitcom. Haunted by the character he once played on TV and unable to build on his early success, Burke has turned into an embittered (and decidedly unfunny) stand-up comic who specializes in insulting any audience has the misfortune of becoming his prey.

Absent the thematic resonance and insight of De Niro's King of Comedy, The Comedian puts De Niro in an awkward position. It's not easy to believe that Jackie has anything resembling worthy comedy chops. We wonder, then, why we're being asked to watch him.

A script credited to Art Linson Richard LaGravenese and Lewis Friedman tries to put Jackie into a variety of situations that illustrate his desperation and persistence.

After a raucous incident in a nightclub, Jackie serves a month in prison followed by a stint of community service. During his community service he meets Harmony (Leslie Mann), a young woman who's also doing community service.

Director Taylor Hackford (Ray), who may be ill-suited to movies with a sneer, can't make much out of a relationship that doesn't really make sense -- at least in any way that isn't a bit distasteful.

We also are shown Jackie's relationship with his long-suffering but indulgent brother (Danny DeVito), a restaurant owner who serves as an ATM machine for the perpetually broke comic.
Patti LuPone portrays the brother's much less supportive wife.

Say this: De Niro's presence draws talent. Edie Falco plays Jackie's manager, and Harvey Keitel shows up as Harmony's father, a man almost as unpleasant as Jackie. Charles Grodin, Cloris Leachman and Billy Crystal appear in cameo.

The big joke that Jackie ultimately unveils centers on a parody of Makin' Whoopee. At a home for seniors in Florida, he offers his mock version entitled Makin' Poopy. Let's just say that this is not a moment of high wit.

It's daring, I suppose, to make a movie about a comedian who isn't particularly funny, but it's not clear whether the filmmakers understand that -- which only makes the movie more difficult to digest.

To be young, ungifted and single

A mush of romcom cliches and self-assertion.

Burdened with a generic-sounding self-help title, How to Be Single proves as superficial as most of the characters it tosses into a romantic stew about recent college grads exploring New York City's social scene. That means they spend lots of times in bars and often can be heard delivering the kind of breezy but forgettable dialogue that it took three screenwriters to concoct.

The movie is based on a 2008 novel by Liz Tuccillo, who also wrote He's Just Not That Into You, another book that was made into a movie. Tuccillo also worked on Sex and the City, and it's possible to view this bit of movie mush as Sex and the City for people who are still paying off their college loans. Don't take that as an endorsement.

Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) plays the central role, a young woman who breaks up with her college boyfriend (Nicholas Braun) so that she can live alone and discover her identity.

Johnson's Alice lands a job as a paralegal at a law firm where she meets Robin (Rebel Wilson), a woman who has dedicated her life to sex, partying and trying to turn herself into the kind of crude character usually played in ribald comedies by Melissa McCarthy.

Alice's older sister (Leslie Mann) is a doctor who never wants to have a relationship or a family, a sure sign that before the movie ends, she'll have both.

The men in Alice's life are an essentially sorry lot. A bartender friend (Anders Holm) is so thoroughly committed to being single that he has devised ways to keep six partners from lingering in the morning; i.e., don't look for food in his fridge.

An attractive real estate developer (Damon Wayans Jr.) can't talk about his late wife with his young daughter, and can't communicate with Alice, either.

A secondary plot involves another newbie to adult life; Allison Brie's Lucy has but one ambition: She wants to get married.

Movies such as this always require at least one of the men be a too-good-to-be-true stalwart. This time, the job falls to Jake Lacy, who plays a man with a good heart, an unreasonable devotion to Mann's character and no apparent flaws.

True to form, the movie tries to redeem its comic sputtering by tacking on a bit of instruction: Alice must learn how to be comfortable being alone.

Fair enough, but couldn't the writers have been generous enough to give poor Alice a credible career path? Is she condemned to a millennial limbo of subsisting on the economy's fringe?

Appealing in the Pitch Perfect movies, Wilson becomes an irritant in a one-note performance as Johnson's BFF.

Occupying the movie's center, Johnson puts in the kind of mandatory effort required of characters who are finding their way to a self-asserting conclusion that you can see coming from several bar stools away.

To the movie's credit, a couple of turns aren't quite so predictable, but it doesn't take much thought to realize that most of the characters in this film need no coaching on how to be single. They're not especially interesting. So who'd really want to live with them anyway?

No funny rest stops in this 'Vacation'

A dud of an attempt to revive a franchise.

If you're looking for a break from stupid comedy, Vacation isn't likely to fill the bill. This lame attempt to revive a dormant franchise -- the last of four Vacation movies hit screens in 1997 -- vainly tries to wring new laughs from an old premise, the one that made the 1983 original a hit.

Ed Helms (of the Bachelor Party movies) plays Rusty Griswold, the grown son of Clark Griswold, the character Chevy Chase portrayed in the original.

A disrespected pilot for an economy airline, Rusty has the same idea that his father had more than 20 years ago. He wants to bring his family closer together by taking them on a car trip from Chicago to California, home of Walley World, the theme park from the first movie.

Christina Applegate portrays wife Debbie Griswold, and Skyler Gisondo and Steele Stebbins play the Griswold kids.

The movie -- which features late-picture cameos from Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, the original Griswold mom -- stuffs its trunk with gags that tend to be more painful than funny, not to mention a few that are disgustingly gross.

How gross? At one point, the Griswolds find themselves covered with excrement, having mistaken a pool full of sewage for an invigorating hot springs.

The trip begins when Helms' dim-witted Rusty rents an Albanian car for the trip. Surprise! Nothing about the Albanian "Prancer" -- which looks the same when viewed from either the back or the front -- works properly.

A running gag involving a Griswold confrontation with the driver of a semi is predictable and dumb. And the youngest Griswold -- the kid played by Stebbins -- is one of the more obnoxious movie kids in some time, a foul-mouthed brat.

Throw in jokes about pedophilia, shabby motels, and the Griswolds' fading sex life and the picture should become clear.

Perhaps to add more connection with the original, Rusty stops to visit his now grown sister (Leslie Mann) who's married to a hunky weatherman (Chris Hemsworth) with a very large ...

Oh, the hell with it.

Vacation qualifies as more R-rated rot for a generation of moviegoers that probably never heard of National Lampoon, the humor magazine that spawned Animal House and the original Vacation .

Does any of this prove anything? Only that one trip to Walley World is enough for any family.

For the record: The original was directed by the late Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) from a script by the late John Hughes (Ferris Bueller's Day Off). This one has two directors: John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, neither of whom previously has directed a feature-length movie. Goldstein and Daley also are credited with having written the script.

Few laughs on this road to revenge

The Other Woman grates more than it amuses.

Three women avenge themselves on a philandering man in The Other Woman, a witless comedy that forces stars Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann into indecorous displays of physical comedy as they grapple with a contrivance-laden script.

When the movie opens, Diaz's Carly Whitten, an attorney, is ensconced in an affair with a handsome businessman (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Carly thinks she's finally found her soul mate.

It doesn't take long for Carly to learn that the man for whom she's scrapped all other relationships is married to a character played by Mann. The script then labors to inform Mann's Kate that her husband Mark is a serial philanderer and all-around louse.

The twist: Carly and Kate develop an awkward, odd-couple friendship that progresses from one in which Kate drives Carly crazy to one of mutual -- if improbable -- respect.

Lest the men in the audience become bored with all of this sisterly solidarity, Melissa Stack's screenplay introduces another mistress, a bombshell played by model Kate Upton, who nicely fills out a swimsuit, as she did in the recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Upton's playing a character named Amber, and director Nick Cassavetes takes as much advantage of her pulchritudinous glow as possible.

Mann overdoes Kate's whining to the point where it becomes abrasive: Diaz soldiers on as best she can, playing the savviest woman of this trio, a lawyer who's never seen practicing law.

Moderation is not a virtue here: Not content with turning Coster-Waldau's character into a rotten husband, the screenplay also contrives to make him a felonious fraud.

I suppose it's necessary to point out that Don Johnson (remember him?) makes a brief appearance as Carly's pleasure-seeking father, and that a lively Niki Minaj portrays Carly's secretary.

If you believe in any of these characters, you may be able to enjoy a comedy with a jukebox musical score and a sense of humor that turns a laxative joke into a comic high point. Need I say more?

'Bling Ring' explores a gimme-more ethos

Sophia Coppola's latest is lively, engaging and a little too obvious.

The Bling Ring might be director Sophia Coppola's liveliest film to date. Working with a mostly unfamiliar cast of young actors, Coppola brilliantly recreates the morality-free atmosphere in which a group of California teen-agers set out to burglarize the homes of celebrities.

In looking at these materialistic, style-obsessed young people, Coppola can't help but make us complicit in their avaricious ways. Would you turn away if you had an opportunity to look into Paris Hilton's closets? Would you decline if offered a chance to savor a bit of the opulence that surrounds some of the well-heeled folks in show business?

Coppola's flash-obsessed characters understand that at certain social levels, the car you drive and shoes you wear can be taken as worthy expressions of character. She knows that to some, a watch is more than an instrument with which to tell time: It's a statement of status and taste, a bejeweled form of validation that puts one in the same high-living stratosphere as the those who get recognized -- even if it's only for being recognizable.

The Bling Ring does not tell a story about latter-day Robin Hoods. These high-schoolers don't rob from the rich and give to the poor. They rob from the rich for their own amusement -- half expecting that their victims are so well stocked they won't notice anyway. They seem to be children of affluence upset that they're not children of monstrous money. For them, theft becomes a perverted form of shopping.

F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly told Ernest Hemingway that the rich "are different from you and me." Hemingway supposedly replied, "Yeah, they have more money."

These kids believe that the line between the rich and them easily can be blurred: The rich accumulate; so do these youngsters. Does it really matter how they cross the acquisitive threshold to get to the diamond-studded goodies?

Rebecca (Katie Chang) is the author of the burglary scheme. Rebecca enlists the help of her pal Marc (Israel Broussard), a new kid at her school. Together, they invade Paris Hilton's home after reading (on-line, of course) that Hilton is out of town.

The gang also includes Sam (Taissa Farmiga) and Nicki (Emma Watson), teens who are being home-schooled by a mother (Leslie Mann) who specializes in motivational aphorisms. Chloe (Claire Julien) also joins the group, which occasionally expands to include other teen-agers, as well.

Together, these youngsters apply the art of breaking and entry at the homes of various celebrities.

In some ways, The Bling Ring is a glitzy sociological exercise that reveals what life is like in a strata impenetrable to most of us. Fueled by a near ravenous energy, The Bling Ring eventually begins to look like an episode of something we might call "Lifestyles of the rich and vapid."

Mostly, these young thieves are oblivious to any moral and psychological implications of a) taking other people's stuff and b) craving all these expensive trinkets in the first place.

These are cunning, self-absorbed kids. In her best performance to date, Watson (of Harry Potter fame) demonstrates that Nicki has a chameleon-like willingness to project herself as situations dictate. After being caught, she says she's learned a lesson and now aspires to charitable work. Her responses sound as if they might have been prepared for the question portion of a beauty contest.

The tone, energy, performances and voyeuristic tug of The Bling Ring prove considerable, but it's equally true that at the end of the movie's glitzy crime spree, I was left to wonder whether this true story -- reported in a Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales -- afforded Coppola sufficient opportunity to leave an audience with something more substantial.

Coppola (Marie Antoionette and Somewhere) is a skilled enough filmmaker to keep us engaged by The Bling Ring even as we fret that she may have demonstrated something some of us already suspected: Shallow people really are ... well ... shallow.

This is 40 -- and it's pretty funny

Judd Apatow puts a toe into mature waters, but doesn't forget to bring along the laughs.

It takes a long time to get to her, but when the new Judd Apatow comedy, This is 40, arrives at a scene that's stolen by Melissa McCarthy, the humor suddenly becomes incendiary, foul-mouthed and very funny. Building on the crudeness she established in Bridesmaids, McCarthy scores big -- so big, in fact, that writer/director Apatow had the good sense to include one of her character's rants in an outtake.

But I digress, even before I begin.

In this mostly enjoyable outing, Apatow casts Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow's real-life wife) as a husband and wife who also happen to be the self-absorbed parents of two daughters (Apatow's real daughters, Maude and Iris). Rudd's Pete runs a Los Angeles-based record company devoted to indulging his passion for '70s rock. Mann's Debbie owns an upscale boutique. And, yes, This is 40 represents a reunion for Rudd and Mann, both of whom appeared in Apatow's 2007 comedy, Knocked Up.

Of course, Pete and Debbie are way past knocked up. They're deeply ensconced in the grind of family life. Over the years, their relationship has lost a good deal of its romantic luster. Not surprisingly, Pete and Debbie have issues -- not the least of which revolves around the financial help Pete gives to his father (Albert Brooks), a likable freeloader who has started a new family.

A sharply funny Brooks -- who immediately raises the movie's comic ante -- plays an older man married to a younger woman and now grappling with three young children. Long on gall, Dad views any resistance by Pete as evidence of his son's selfishness. Never mind that Pete has financial troubles of his own.

Perhaps to balance things, Debbie's father (John Lithgow) enters the picture, as well. He's also married to a younger woman, and has been estranged from his daughter for years.

As the movie progresses, Lithgow's character sheds the bonds of caricature and becomes a real, flesh-and-blood father. Credit Apatow with mixing some expectedly crude humor (not all of it funny) with a few well-played scenes in which the writer/director makes a welcome journey into adult territory. Hey, at least he's putting a toe in deeper waters.

Unlike a comedy such as The Guilt Trip, This is 40 is no anemic two-hander. Apatow not only makes room for Brooks and Lithgow, but for Jason Siegel (as an overly confident physical trainer), Graham Parker (as a musician who can't sell any of his new recordings), Chris O'Dowd (as one of Pete's employees) and Megan Fox (as a woman who works in Debbie's boutique).

That's a decent amount of support for a comedy that aspires to be attuned to the debilitations of middle-age, many of them shockingly trivial. Pete is a little too fond of cupcakes. Debbie likes to sneak cigarettes. In this sun-splashed and mostly prosperous LA world, what could be more sinful than overeating or doing something that poses a direct threat to robust good health?

At 134 minutes, This is 40 probably overstays its welcome, and no one's likely to confuse it with Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, which Apatow reportedly watched before making his movie. OK, so Apatow isn't making great art, but, then again, Bergman didn't get many laughs, either.

'The Change-Up' confuses gross and funny

Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds wallow in another raunchy Hollywood comedy.

There's a difference between raunchy and funny, but the new comedy The Change-Up hasn't figured out what it is. That's why The Change-Up opens with a baby spraying a stream of excrement into a frustrated father's face. Yuck and double yuck! **** I suppose there'll be some who happily go along with the movie's shopworn conceit: a married lawyer (Jason Bateman) switches bodies with his reprobate pal (Ryan Reynolds). .... Each man gets a taste of the other's life, and -- here's a surprise -- each becomes a better person because of the swap. The sober married guy discovers that his humdrum life isn't so bad after all, and the single slothful guy learns something about the satisfaction of living up to one's responsibilities. .... Essentially, The Change-Up is one more buddy movie, which means the women serve as props. Looking more fetching than she did in last week's Cowboys & Aliens) Olivia Wilde portrays a hot-looking lawyer with a wild streak. Leslie Mann appears as the wife of Bateman's character. **** Bateman's a capable comic actor, and Reynolds -- last seen in the abysmal Green Lantern -- seems a fine fit for an odd-couple pairing built around the idea that, one way or another, American manhood is a story of failed dreams. But, for what little there is of my money, Bridesmaids was a smarter, raunchy comedy than this silly and extremely distasteful, R-rated mess.