It’s all ‘Downhill’ from here

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell star in an American remake of a much better Swedish movie.

What didn’t make sense in 2014’s Force Majeure, a film from Swedish director Ruben Ostlund, makes even less sense in Downhill, an American remake starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell. Though still set in Europe, this American version suffers from one of the worst things that can happen to a film: indecision about what it wants to be.

Hovering in limbo between comedy and drama, Downhill won't be helped by audience expectations. Both Louis-Dreyfus and Ferrell are gifted comic actors and you can’t fault an audience for expecting some major laughs, particularly when the film’s trailer plays up moments that can be read as comedy.

At heart, though, Force Majeure was a film about a failing marriage. It explored issues of manhood and fatherhood and tried to understand the mentality of a middle-aged man who was drifting away from his wife and two children. That movie’s darkly comic elements have absorbed too much sunlight in this meager translation. Though brightened, the comic moments feel as slushy as melting snow.

The dynamic of a troubled marriage remains in directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s version of the film, but it has lost the subtle flavors that helped elevate Force Majeure.

As with the original, the story revolves around a pivotal event. Louis-Dreyfus’ Billie and Ferrell’s Pete are the mother and father of an American family that has traveled to Europe to ski and regroup.

On a break from the slopes, Billie and Pete are having lunch with their two young sons (Julian Grey and Ammon Jacob Ford). An explosion is heard in the distance. A controlled avalanche has been set off, not an unusual occurrence at ski resorts.

Suddenly, though, a large cloud of snow descends on the restaurant. It doesn’t look as if it's going to stop. Those dining on the outdoor deck where the family is eating scream in panic. Ferrell’s Pete grabs his phone and runs, leaving his family behind.

As it turns out, everyone’s safe but major questions linger. Why did Pete run? What did his flight mean? Can his marriage survive this act of cowardice? Should it?

Initially, Pete tries to downplay his behavior. Everyone’s fine. What’s the big deal?

The growing tension between Billie and Pete proves as annoying as it is revealing with Louis-Dreyfus drawing sharper lines than Ferrell, whose character often seems a trifle pathetic. The fact that Ferrell is considerably taller than Louis-Dreyfuss creates a kind of jarring visual contrast that doesn’t help, either.

The story introduces a few supporting characters. Zach Woods and Zoe Chao play a touring couple. Pete knows Woods' character from the States. Eager to escape the routine of a family trip, Pete asks the couple to visit. The blind-sided Billie doesn't want company. She views the trip as an opportunity for the family to renew bonds that were fraying in the wake of Pete's grief over his father's recent death.

Miranda Otto shows up as a concierge, an out-sized bombshell of a character who espouses sexual freedom; Otto's Charlotte splashes through the movie like a tipped-over can of paint.

Individually, Louis-Dreyfus and Ferrell do some interesting things, but both struggle to find the right rhythm for material that’s not sure whether to go for laughs or dive into the messy world of a foundering marriage. Not surprisingly, Downhill doesn't do much of either.

Jack Black's 'D-Train' derails

A quasi-serious comedy that makes mince meat out of credibility.

Suppose some of the young men who admired the most popular guy in high school weren't just envious. What if they were flirting with unacknowledged homoerotic urges? That's the underlying question raised by The D-Train, an unbelievable (and I don't mean that in a good way) movie about nebbish Dan (Jack Black), a guy who's chairman of his high school's alumni committee. In hopes of upping attendance at his 20th class reunion, Dan creates an elaborate ruse that requires him and his boss (Jeffrey Tambor) to travel from Pittsburgh to LA in pursuit of a major business deal. Married with a teen-age son, Dan really wants to persuade one of his high school's former big shots (James Marsden) to attend the reunion. Marsden's Oliver Lawless moved to LA to pursue a show-business career: He's had no success, but Dan can't see through the glow of his high school admiration for Oliver. He's so caught up in Oliver's world that he actually sleeps with the former hotshot after a drug-fueled night on the town. Oliver's sexual preferences apparently are ... well ... casually eclectic. As a result of his business ruse and his foray into homosexual sex, Jack's life begins to unravel. His wife (Kathryn Hahn) can't figure out what's happening with her husband until the night of reunion, which results in an excruciatingly embarrassing scene for Dan -- not to mention the audience. Black is burdened with an impossible role; Marsden looks as if he's doing a James Franco imitation, and the movie winds up just as you might expect -- with a late-picture turn to sentiment.

Melissa McCarthy's summer stumble

Tammy's as crude as you'd expect, but not as funny as you might have hoped.

Few things are more painful than being stuck in a moving vehicle with people who you find annoying. That's exactly how I felt watching Tammy, a movie that puts Melissa McCarthy and Susan Sarandon on the road.

Painfully misguided, Tammy is the result of a collaboration between McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone, who co-wrote the screenplay with McCarthy and who also handled the directing chores.

Tammy finds McCarthy playing the title character, the wayward granddaughter of an aging alcoholic (Sarandon).

After being fired from her job at a fast-food franchise, McCarthy's Tammy sets out on a road trip with her grandmother, who supplies the car -- an aging Cadillac -- and the money that supports a journey toward Niagara Falls, a stop on grandma's bucket list.

All of this takes place over the objections of Tammy's mother (Allison Janney), who understands that grandma is both a diabetic and a drunk, and shouldn't be let loose on an unsuspecting world.

Sarandon may be game for anything, but she's given scenes that struck me as embarrassing: carrying on in the backseat of a car with a guy (Cary Cole) she meets in a bar or having a drunken outburst at a Fourth of July party thrown by her lesbian cousin (Kathy Bates).

McCarthy's luckier: Her previous comic roles have immunized her against embarrassment. Here, she plays a foul-mouthed woman whose husband (Nat Faxon) is having an affair with a neighbor (Toni Collette).

As is the case with many crude comedies, Tammy feels the need to sentimentalize its main character before it's done, something like an boisterous drunk who ends the evening crying in his beer.

Tammy 's told -- via lame dialogue Bates delivers with unnecessary conviction -- that she needs to take control of her life and stop wallowing in self-pity.

She's supposed to do this even though her drunken aunt has grabbed a microphone and told the partying lesbians that Tammy's a fat loser worthy of the nickname "cheeseburger."

Sarandon has been made to look as old as possible, even to the point of donning artificially swollen ankles, but she's never convincingly dissolute.

In what may have been intended as a comic high point, Tammy puts a paper bag on her head and robs a fast-food outlet after fashioning another paper bag into a pretend revolver. She needs money to bail grandma out of jail.

If this was intended as the movie's comic high point, it's not much of one.

Mark Duplass plays the son of the man who picked up grandma in a bar and a potential love interest for Tammy, the movie's lone representative of normalcy.

Tammy tries to get by making lame jokes about old folks, dishing out crude humor and toying with the image McCarthy has created in previous comedies such as Identity Thief, The Heat and, of course, in Bridesmaids, the movie that provided her with a breakthrough role.

Maybe because it's summer, Tammy even finds an excuse to blow up grandma's car. If only that had happened before grandma and Tammy had had a chance to get into it.

On blending comedy and drama

After winning an Oscar for their screenplay for The Descendants, Jim Rash and Nat Faxon take a shot at directing.

If you don’t remember that Jim Rash (left) and Nat Faxon (right) won an Oscar for adapting the screenplay for The Descendants -- the 2011 big-screen version of Kaui Hart Hemmings's much-acclaimed novel -- you may know them as actors. Rash plays a community-college dean on NBC's Community; Faxon worked on the late Fox sitcom, Ben and Kate.

Graduates of the famed Los Angeles improvisational troupe, The Groundlings, Faxon and Rash took their first shot at directing with The Way, Way Back, a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old who begins to hit his stride under the mentorship of the owner of a Massachusetts water park called Water Wizz.

Rash and Faxon wrote the screenplay for The Way, Way Back before they were hired by Payne to work on The Descendants. Their movie went through a variety of incarnations before the writing duo decided to direct it themselves. In all, The Way, Way Back -- now opening around the country -- took eight years to reach the screen. On a recent visit to Denver, Faxon and Rash discussed their movie.

Q: Can you talk a little about why we seem so endlessly fascinated by coming-of-age stories?
Rash: I would argue that we all probably had some kind of rite of passage -- either big or small -- when we were kids. There’s something about looking back at that that’s almost therapeutic. Inevitably, people are going to connect with those moments because there’s a promise of hope in a coming-of-age story, a promise of growth. We all tend to look back on our lives and think, ‘That was a tough time. I’m glad I survived it.’

Q. You (Rash) have said that there’s a scene in the movie that came directly from your own life. Early in the film, Steve Carell’s character -- a guy who might wind up as the stepfather of the movie's 14-year-old main character -- asks his potential stepson to rate himself on a scale of one to 10. When the kid hesitates, Carell’s Trent gives him a three, an obviously cruel slap for any adolescent.
Rash: My stepfather did do that, but we had to heighten it a bit. When I look back at that time, I don’t really think, ‘How dare you?’ I don’t believe in rating people by numbers. I’m not saying that’s right. That said, I understood the message. He was telling me to suck it up, to get out there and meet people.

Q: Devoting eight years to getting a movie made shows real perseverance. The movie went through a bunch of false starts before it actually got rolling.
Rash: The Way, Way Back took a while to get made, but it did open a lot of doors for us. It got us in the door to meet with Alexander Payne, and we got to adapt The Descendants. Coming off that success, we were able to get some momentum. We used it to come back to this script.

Q: For a small movie, The Way, Way Back has a big-name cast that includes Steve Carell and Toni Collette. How did the cast come together?

Rash: We went after actors we loved. Allison Janney (who plays one of Carell's neighbors) is someone we both knew. She signed on first. After that we met Sam Rockwell (who plays the owner of Water Wizz) and then Toni Collette (who plays the mother of the movie's 14-year-old protagonist).
It wasn’t only the material that attracted these actors, but the chance for them to work with great actors who chose the movie for the right reasons.
They knew it was a small, independent movie, and there probably wasn’t a huge financial gain for them. But creatively, it fulfilled something -- not only in their individual roles -- but in the opportunity to work with one another.

Q: You finally got to make the movie, but you also bit off a lot -- writing, directing and even playing small roles in the film. How did you handle all that?
Faxon: It was fun, but a lot of stress, close to overwhelming. Most of that was the result of a tight shooting schedule .... It rained the first days, and we immediately got behind, so the stress level shot through the roof.
But we were comforted by the fact that we were surrounded by actors who were all great talents and great people. We never had to worry about any diva type moments. We also were surrounded by an incredible crew. Being first-time directors we knew we needed experienced, veteran hands.

Q: How did you select Liam James to play Duncan, the teen-ager who occupies the film's center?
Rash: We had a number of sessions with our casting director. Liam came somewhere in the middle. We’d seen lots of kids. There are a lot of kid actors who work professionally. They come in. They know how to work a room. They’re like adults. ... Liam came in pretty much as himself. He was slumped over and pale. ... He’s natural and very believable.

Q: How do you find the balance between drama and comedy? That seems like a pretty tricky business.
Faxon: We received our training from The Groundlings (the fabled Los Angeles improv group). We were taught early on about character and character development. There’s always a fine line between the very serious moments and the ones you laugh about later -- or even during.

Rash: The writing process starts more dramatic and then comedy seeps into it as opposed to trying to write a comedic thing and then realizing in the third act that it doesn't have any heart, and you have to make something happen. That’s a trap. You see it in a lot of big comedies. .... As people, we’re always in some kind of weird head space. We’re conflicted with anger and sadness and stuff, but some funny things can come out of that. We find humor in those type of moments. ...

My predictions: Best screenplays

The predictions continue. Here's another installment in the march toward Oscar, my predictions for the best screenplays (adapted and original). Remember, the Oscars will be awarded on Sun. Feb. 26.

Best adapted screenplay, the nominees:
The Ides of March, George Clooney, Beau Willimon & Grant Heslov
The Descendants, Nat Faxon, Alexander Payne & Jim Rash
Hugo, John Logan
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Bridget O'Connor & Peter Straughan
Moneyball, Aaron Sorkin, Steven Zaillian & Stan Chervin

The Descendants is the likely winner here. The movie's trio of credited writers did a fine job adapting Kaui Hart Hemmings' 2007 novel for the screen. The three main characters -- a father and his two daughters -- were memorable, and the movie managed an exceptionally difficult feat, mixing humor and serious drama without capsizing.

Best original screenplay, the nominees:
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen
Margin Call, JC Chandor
A Separation, Asghar Farhadi
The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius
Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumulo

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris is the front runner (and my pick) in a category that -- with the exception of Bridesmaids -- includes nothing but award-worthy nominees. A Separation likely will win best foreign-language film, so it probably will miss out in this category. It's possible, if unlikely, that the intricate and literate Margin Call screenplay could prevail.

I pick Allen because the movie was one of his most popular, and because every awards show needs to honor someone who isn't likely to show up.

Caveats: It's always dangerous to count Aaron Sorkin out, and if The Artist goes crazy, it might win best original screenplay.

*


Join me, Denver Post Film Critic Lisa Kennedy, Starz Denver Film Festival Director Britta Erickson and Oscar maven Bob Becker for an Oscar preview Cinema Salon, 7:30 p.m., Wed., Feb. 22 at the FilmCenter/Colfax, 2510 E. Colfax Ave. We'll predict, I'm sure, but we'll also talk about why we still care (if we do) about the whole damn business anyway.

*An update: The Writers Guild of America Sunday (Feb. 19) announced that The Descendants won its award for best adapted screenplay, and Midnight in Paris took the award for best original screenplay. After I originally posted my predictions in this category, a reader commented negatively on Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (See below). I wouldn't have voted for it as best original screenplay, either, but the professionals evidently admired it more than any other picture in the competition.