A battering shot of comic violence

   First off, it's worth mentioning that I saw a preview of the new action comedy Novocaine in a theater equipped with 4DX. I'd never been exposed to this method of viewing before and to make things clear from the start, I was less than thrilled. 

   4DX aims to provide "extreme sensory cinema." You may feel air blowing against your face when cars speed across the screen or you may feel as if you’re being slammed against a wall during a fight. So called motion seats can shake, rattle, and roll you in synch with the action.

   If you want to know more about this technology, you can  visit a theater that uses it.  My view is simple: What's on the screen should offer sufficient sensory stimulation. How much extra boost do we need?

    I'm not sure what my reaction to Novocaine would have been had I seen it a theater that didn’t help turn the movie into a kind of amusement park ride. In fairness, I should say that Novocaine doesn't seem to aspire to much more than becoming another cinematic thrill ride. It begins softly, then comes on like a battering ram.

    The movie involves a gimmick suggested by its title. Nate (Jack Quaid), an assistant bank manager, suffers from Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis (CIPA). He doesn't feel pain. A loner, Nate was bullied as a boy. His classmates made fun of his malady by dubbing him "Novocaine."

    The premise is simple. Nate decides to pursue a trio of brutal thugs (Evan Hengst, Conrad Kemp, and Ray Nicholson) who kidnap the only woman who ever gave Nate a second look, a bank teller named Sherry (Amber Midthunder). Scenes in which she coaxes him out of his shell are sweet.

    As an old ad once aid about a line of watches, Mate takes a licking but keeps on ticking. Because he feels no pain, he's able to stick his hand into a bubbling deep frier to retrieve a gun that's been tossed into it. He feels nothing when an arrow goes through his leg in house that's been booby trapped. Torture him and he has to fake his screams.

    Two cops (Betty Gabriel and Matt Walsh) also pursue the robbers; they view Nate as a suspect. They don't know he's just a lonely guy who fell for Sherry after she convinced him that it's OK to experience pleasure.

   That's pretty much it for casting, except for Jacob Batalon, who makes a late-picture entrance. Batalon plays a video game enthusiast and online pal of Nate who reluctantly comes to Nate's rescue.

    Quaid, the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, does a good job playing a guy who's entirely out-of-place in the violent, kick-ass world Nate encounters. Nicholson, son of Jack Nicholson and Rebecca Broussard, leads the pack of villains with sadistic verve.

   Fair to say, too, that directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen demonstrate a feel for comic violence. But as the movie unfolds, the set pieces can seem more repetitious than innovative. Moreover, laughs can curdle as the violent "jokes" become increasingly graphic.

    Oh well, I'll sum it up this way: I'm not a fan of amusement park rides -- off screen or on.

Dealing with death at an early age

    Max, a teenager, has fallen into a coma as a result of terminal brain cancer. His mom brings him to a hospice where he'll receive palliative care. As it turns out, the young man has landed in the same Florida hospice where Terry Schiavo's husband is fighting a bitter right-to-die battle. 

   In Suncoast, director Laura Chinn’s debut film, the din of protest surrounds the hospice, but the movie doesn't boil with issue-driven fervor. 

   Instead, Chinn assays the strain caused by a Max's impending death while also exploring his younger sister's struggle to experience something akin to normal adolescence, assuming there is such a thing.

  Understandably unnerved, Max's single mother (Laura Linney) can't focus on much else. It's difficult for her to see that her son's illness also casts a shadow over her daughter (Nico Parker), a high school senior who has had to care for Max so Mom could work.

  Afraid to leave her son alone, Mom decides to move into the hospice with him. Parker's Doris is left on her own, a potentially enviable position for a teenager. 

   Despite some initial wariness, Doris allows a group of girls to host parties at her modest home. She begins to develop friends. She begins to see what she's been missing.

  Chinn mostly avoids mean-girl cliches, obtaining nicely modulated performances from her youthful cast and from Linney as a preoccupied woman who can't always suppress her rage. 

   The movie has a mild Christian backdrop. Woody Harrelson plays a widower and protest regular. Religious but not dogmatic, he tries to befriend Doris, encouraging her to acknowledge her grief.

   Harrelson's Paul doesn't allow his beliefs to stand in the way of trying to help a kid who doesn't share them, a nice touch, but his character seems a bit of digression.

   Doris attends a Christian school but neither she nor her classmates are particularly religious and one of her teachers (Matt Walsh) conducts an ethics class that's so even-handed, it feels contrived.

  Through it all, Chinn doesn't forget that her story hinges on grief and loss. She brings the drama to its tear-jerking peak during Doris's prom, a celebration she's clearly earned even though it's taking place against a backdrop of illness and death.

   This keen sense of loss elevates the movie even when Chinn rounds off the sharp edges a better movie might have had. She makes the heartbreaking finality of what mother and daughter must face feel achingly real.

Melissa McCarthy parties on -- and on

A mother joins her daughter as a college student in Life of the Party.

It’s entirely possible that a woman who gave up her career ambitions when she committed to marriage and raising a daughter might return to college to complete her senior year, particularly after being dumped by her husband of 23 years. It’s also possible that enough time would have passed that the woman's daughter could have arrived at her senior year in college, as well. It's even possible that mother and daughter would find themselves enrolled at the same university.

Considering all this, it’s not too much of a stretch to view Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy, Life of the Party, as a plausible effort to show what might happen if such a mother/daughter situation developed in the hallowed halls of fictional Decatur University.

But that’s where credibility ends and comedy (or what passes for it) begins in Life of the Party, a movie that provides an answer to a question you probably haven’t spent much time considering -- at least I hope not. What could be less appealing than an R-rated McCarthy comedy directed by her real-life husband Ben Falcone (Tammy and The Boss)? Yep, it’s a PG-13 rated comedy from the same team.

The mostly wan Life of the Party follows McCarthy’s Deanna into the dorms of Decatur and turns her into an archeology student who doesn’t dig up enough laughs to earn Life of the Party a passing grade.

At first, Deanna’s daughter’s (Molly Gordon) expresses embarrassment at having her mom around campus. But without much by way of transition, mother and daughter find a new bond as gal pals.

Daughter helps Mom with a fashion makeover that takes her from prim and proper to a woman who appeals to a college kid (Luke Benward) with whom she has hot sex. As Deanna puts it, she rocks his world.

Of the supporting cast, Maya Rudolph, as Deanna's best friend, gives a ribald edge of an otherwise staid suburban woman. Matt Walsh is wasted as Deanna’s ex, a man who has taken up with a realtor (Julie Brown) who bosses him around and immediately sells the home in which he and Deanna lived. The house was in his name.

Deanna has a sullen, self-isolating roommate (Heidi Gardner), but the sisters in her daughter's sorority are a fairly generic group for whom Deanna morphs from a fish-out-of-water woman into an inspirational figure.

Supposed high points protrude self-consciously from the mix. These include a scene in which Deanna and her college cohorts trash her ex-husband’s wedding, a scene at an 80s themed party at which Deanna dominates the dance floor, and a restaurant scene which Deanna confronts her former husband.

The restaurant scene lands some laughs, perhaps because it contains one of the movie's few surprises.

The only moment I found slightly amusing was a bit of physical comedy in which Deanna fumbles her way through an oral archaeology mid-term, engaging in battle with a recalcitrant lectern. Maybe I’m clutching at straws but the bit reminded me of Jerry Lewis. A little?

Otherwise, Life of the Party suggests that the filmmakers might do well to return to comedy school for a refresher in how to avoid the kind of formula traps that tend to neuter comic potential.

'Brigsby Bear' and 'Dave Made A Maze'

It's unusual that two movies, both of which risk silliness and both of which achieve some success, open during the same week. But that's the case with Brigsby Bear and Dave Made A Maze, both of which arrive in Denver and presumably around the country this week.

Brigsby Bear, the more engaging of the two movies, tells the story of a young man who was kidnapped as an infant. Kyle Mooney plays James, a man who's freed from captivity after 25 years.

James wasn't physically abused by his kidnappers; instead, he was isolated from everyone else by two people (Mark Hammil and Jane Adams) who claimed to be his parents and who evidently told him that the world was too contaminated for him to venture beyond their well-sealed home.

During his years of captivity, James became totally absorbed in the world of Brigsby Bear, a TV show that he watches on videotapes which his faux father, who dons a gas mask when he leaves the family compound, brings home.

Clunky looking and amusingly amateurish, Brigsby Bear introduces James to a complex fantasy universe that encompasses a variety of different worlds and villains.

There's no reason why the now-grown James should continue his interest in something as child-centered as Brigsby Bear, a series that wouldn't cut it even during the less sophisticated 1970s.

But the totally isolated James no longer makes any distinction between Brigsby's world and his own.

The movie shifts gears when the local police -- led by an amiable detective (Greg Kinnear) -- liberate James. He's returned to his biological parents (Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins. They try to bring James up to speed about a world that has passed him by.

When James's interest in Brigsby doesn't subside, his parents decide that he ought to see a therapist (Claire Danes). She tries -- without much success -- to convince James to abandon Brigsby and drop in on the "real" world once in a while.

But James persists, so much so that he and a new pal (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) decide to continue making Brigsby Bear videos. James wants to fulfill the only destiny he can imagine, bringing the series to its conclusion.

James becomes author, filmmaker, and star (in a bear suit) of the Brigsby Bear show.

Look, all of this sounds a bit ridiculous, but director Dave McCary, working from a screenplay by Mooney and Kevin Costello, displays a light, sensitive touch that eschews ridicule, even as it examines the role fantasy plays in keeping James going.

McCary could have put a sneer on the movie's face, turning it into a kind of hip satire about the danger of losing oneself in pop-cultural fantasies. Instead, he has made a captivating charmer of a movie about a young man trying to negotiate a world he may never fully understand.

Dave Made A Maze takes a different tack with its silliness, introducing mild elements of horror and danger along with a healthy dose of 20something dislocation.

Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) arrives home from a weekend trip to discover that her boyfriend Dave (Nick Thune) has erected a cardboard maze in their small living room.

The structure looks entirely wobbly and unsophisticated, a warren of boxes and smoking chimneys that might not withstand a strong wind.

From inside the maze, we hear Dave telling Annie that he's lost. He also makes the preposterous claim that the maze is much bigger on the inside than it appears when viewed from the outside.

Not knowing what to do, Annie asks for help from Dave's pal Gordon (Adam Busch). Others turn up, including a guy (James Urbaniak) who wants to make a documentary about the maze.

Eventually, Annie and company enter the maze, where they discover that Dave was right about the scale of the structure -- and also about its dangers. Booby traps lurk everywhere and a lethal Minotaur roams the premises.

Like Dave's maze, the movie adds creative, low-rent effects, some quite clever and most making inspired use of cardboard.

Dave Made A Maze ultimately wears out a thin premise. But at a swift 80-minutes, it proves more engaging than you'd think for a movie with a substantial number of cardboard sets.

Tornadoes rip through 'Into the Storm'

Great tornadoes. Everything else? Like I said, great tornadoes.

If you're steadfast in your belief that all movies should involve fascinating character development, intriguing plots, scintillating dialogue, memorable acting and a smidgeon or two of nuance, there's no reason for you to see Into the Storm, a disaster movie in which tornadoes have more presence than any cast member.

If, on the other hand, you're looking (apologies in advance for the upcoming pun) to be blown away by weather effects that come raging out of Hollywood's increasingly sophisticated bag of tricks, Into the Storm may be just your cup of destruction.

A confession: I've always been partial to disaster movies, and, no, I don't care what that says about my twisted psyche. I'm probably dating myself, but I developed my love of big-screen mayhem with such '70s disaster classics as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). More recently, I enjoyed 1996's Twister. I even gave the benefit of a very large doubt to director Roland Emerich's much-derided The Day After Tomorrow(2004).

I could name more, but those films give you an idea about the kind of movies that tempt me to set critical standards aside and enjoy massive bouts of big-screen destruction.

That returns us to Into the Storm, a movie that uses the worn-out concept of footage shot by amateurs (I hate that) and a no-name cast to support an intense special effects show that culminates with the largest tornado ever.

We're talking an ominous black mass that descends on a small Oklahoma community, filling the screen and moving toward us with unforgiving fury.

Into the Storm gets off to a rocky start, but I'd be lying if a I said I didn't feel the movie's visceral impact as it chronicles a single day in the life of a tornado-besieged Oklahoma community.

Still, a few less-than-favorable observations are necessary:
This late-summer weather orgy would have been better had the filmmakers avoided a stupid late-picture joke, refused to dispense hopeful -- but thoroughly unconvincing -- end-of-picture bromides and taken enough time to give the characters a few hints of real complexity.

Among the characters who share screen time with the tornadoes: a widowed high school principal (Richard Armitage) with two video-shooting sons (Max Deacon and Nathan Kress), a storm-chasing meteorologist (Sarah Wayne Callies), and a maniacal storm-chaser (Matt Walsh) who'll risk anything to capture tornado footage. Alycia Debnam Carey) plays a high school student who becomes stranded in a paper mill with one of the aforementioned brothers.

Two gleefully moronic characters (Kyle Davis and Jon Reep) have been added, presumably as someone's idea of comic relief.

John Swetnam's screenplay makes a stab at providing background and conflict, but these efforts seem like perfunctory acknowledgements of screenwriting duties in a movie that's really trying to be a seat-rattling stormfest.

High points from director Steven Quale include a ruined high school graduation, subsequent destruction of the entire school, cars that are tossed into the air as easily as volley balls, fallen electrical wires, eerie funnel clouds and vast expanses of flattened tract homes.

The movie's contribution to the world of big-screen vehicles is a tank-like gas guzzler called Titus, which features extensions that spring from the vehicle's sides and bore into the ground to make it tornado resistant -- at least that's the plan.

It's difficult not to think that the movie's string of tornadoes blew away the script along with most of the small fictional town of Silverton, but this is a case of forewarned is forearmed.

Need I say more? Probablyk not. My advice: Know what you're getting into, and if you like this sort of thing, go get hammered.