An overloaded 'Deadpool & Wolverine'

   I saw Deadpool & Wolverine on a giant IMAX screen, yet I wouldn't call this wild foray into the Marvel Universe a movie. It's more like a variety show featuring a surfeit of Marvel characters, two bantering hosts (Deadpool and Wolverine) and enough chaotic action to barrel through two hours and seven minutes. 

  Director Shawn Levy punctuates the show with profane one-liners, self-conscious swipes at Marvel tropes, playful violations of the illusory fourth wall, and an appearance by Peggy, a mixed-breed dog named as Britain's Ugliest Dog in 2023.

    In short, no one will accuse Deadpool & Wolverine of skimping.

    Ryan Reynolds (as Deadpool) and Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) headline the show, which does have a plot of sorts. Deadpool and Wolverine join forces to save the multiverse time stream in which Deadpool (aka Wade Wilson) operates --  or some such.

    Do we really care about the outcome? Not much; the movie has less to do with plot than with the collection of sideshows that dominate its superhero circus.

     A second-tier group of villains includes Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen of Succession fame), Cassandra Nova (Emma Corbin), who happens to be Professor X's evil twin, Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), and Pyro (Aaron Stanford). If these names mean nothing to you, you've either avoided or escaped the MCU web and can stop reading.

     At one point, Deadpool and Wolverine are banished to The Void, which seems to be a place composed of Mad Max outtakes and where characters from various strains of the multiverse mix and mingle. 

     A team of additional Marvel characters eventually joins  Deadpool, whose goal is to earn his place as an important contributor in the Marvel Universe of superheroes. He wants to be part of the Marvel A-team.

    One of the movie's producers,  Reynolds offers a steady stream of Deadpool snark, much of it aimed at Wolverine, whose chiseled torso and bulging biceps suggest an abiding aversion to body fat.

     As for Jackman's performance, let's just say that if there's ever an Oscar for sneers and snarls, challengers should throw in their towels now.

      Nostalgia becomes part of the mix. Wolverine even dons the yellow and blue suit that harkens back to another comic book era. 

      The screenplay makes several references to 20th Century Fox, the studio associated with the X-Men films. Disney acquired Fox and that's mentioned as well, an over-used inside joke that tells us that Marvel fans are supposed to be as familiar with MCU's corporate saga as they are with the characters.

      Need more info? Early on, Deadpool returns to ordinary life, working as a used car salesman. Wolverine's return from the dead receives a humorous gloss. At one point, an army of alternate universe Deadpools appears: A bloated baby Deadpool tops the list of sight gags.

    Known for the Night at the Museum franchise, Levy makes his Marvel debut with a shamelessly raucous addition to the Marvel Universe. It's not worth pointing out instances of fan service in Deadpool & Wolverine; the entire movie qualifies as fan service.

      My bet. Hardcore fans will gorge on this heaping Marvel meal; others might prefer to seek their big-screen nourishment elsewhere.

     

     

'Free Guy' plays a hollow game

     

    If your idea of fun is watching Ryan Reynolds play a character in a video game for an hour and 55 minutes, Free Guy may seem like an amusing look at a video game character who develops self-awareness. 

    A vaguely interesting question arises: What if said character starts to tire of the routine that makes him part of the scenery instead of a character with agency and clout?

    As for me, I found it difficult to connect with a movie which has been directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) with the ping and pizazz of a game world in which there are average Joes and characters who don glasses that put them into an action-oriented reality that’s visible only to them. Think of it as a form of privilege that allows participation in social mayhem.

    Reynolds plays Guy, an NPC (non-player character) * who follows the same routine every day: He awakens in his bland apartment, puts on the same clothes (blue shirt and slacks), stops for coffee, and heads for his job as a bank teller.

    As part of the game, thugs rob the bank multiple times in a day, forcing Guy and his security guard pal (Lil Rel Howery) to the ground. They nonchalantly react to what has become as routine for them as coffee breaks.

    But Guy feels something's missing from his life, notably a love interest. But what woman would want to fall for an NPC? 

    When Guy sees Molotov Girl (an action-oriented character and major player in the game) he’s love-struck. The script soon contrives to give him a pair of the transforming glasses and, bingo, Guy's in the game.

     He pursues the woman who has stirred his heart — or whatever organ an NPC might have, the one that makes him want to share bubblegum-flavored ice cream with his dream girl.

    Shades of movies such as The Truman Show and Ready Player One waft through Levy’s half-bright movie, which is presented as a kind of romp through weightier questions.

    Outside the game, we meet Keys (Joe Keery) who works for the company that controls the game (it’s called Free City). Taika Waititi plays Antoine, the entrepreneur who stole the game and believes in nothing but maximizing profit.

   Jodie Comer portrays Millie, the designer of the game Antoine stole. She participates in the game through an avatar, a character who happens to be Guy's heartthrob, Molotov Girl.

    If I hadn’t seen Comer’s brilliant work as an assassin in Killing Eve, I probably wouldn’t have given her much thought. Ryan easily handles a character who leaps from nebbish to hero in a movie that allows him to ditch his snide side.

    For non-gamers, the movie may prove mildly confusing, although, for some, simply watching the parade of effects may suffice.

    I  suppose there’s an audience for movies such as Free Guy.

    I found myself longing for the old pinball machines that could be jarred into a “tilt,” which would — of course — end the game in less than the hour and 55 minutes it takes for Free Guy to reach inside its virtual chest and put its artificial heart on its computer-generated sleeve.

*A reader helped educate me about the acronym NPC. I originally called it a non-participatory character. The correct designation is non-player character. The review has been amended to reflect the correction. 

  

Another Hollywood family grieves

It's not as bad you might think, but This is Where I Leave You is burdened by formula.

A mother (not Jewish) tells her four grown children that her departed husband (Jewish) made a final request: He wanted his family to sit shiva, the seven-day period of mourning that follows a Jewish death. During the period, the family receives guests who wish to pay condolences.

This is Where I Leave You uses a suburban shiva as a contrivance around which to string a strong comedy cast that's anchored by Jason Bateman and Tina Fey.

If you've seen the much-exposed trailer, you've got a pretty good idea about the movie's humor, which tends toward dismaying predictability.

And you certainly won't be surprised to learn that This is Where I Leave You eventually attempts to wring emotion out of the family's alternately awkward and combative encounters. The movie was directed by Shawn Levy (Date Night and Night at the Museum) from a screenplay by Jonathan Tropper, who adapted his own novel.

The story centers on Bateman's Judd Altman, a pleasant enough fellow who produces a radio talk show. Judd's life comes apart when he arrives home to find his wife (Abigail Spencer) in bed with his boss (Dax Shepard).

We are, of course, talking about an ultimate-bad-day scenario: Almost immediately after Judd's marriage and job go down the drain, he receives a phone call informing him of his father's death.

Judd, who becomes a kind of sitcom version of Job, heads home where he reunites with his mother (Jane Fonda) and siblings.

His older brother (Corey Stoll) runs the family's sporting goods store, and is manfully trying to perform his sexual duty with his wife (Kathryn Hahn). She's desperate to become pregnant.

Judd's sister Wendy (Fey) has a wavering marriage and two small children, one of whom has a fondness for using his potty in public, something the movie apparently regards as so hilarious, it must be repeated several times.

The irresponsible Altman brother (Adam Driver) shows up with an older woman (Connie Britton) in what's supposed to be his first serious relationship.

As the story unfolds, Judd reconnects with Penny (Rose Byrne), a woman who liked him in high school and who looms as a potential love interest. God forbid anyone in a Hollywood movie experience anything resembling lingering dejection and loneliness.

Timothy Olyphant turns up sporadically as one of Wendy's former boyfriends, a guy whose promising future hit the skids when he was brain damaged in an auto accident.

Not enough characters? Throw in Ben Schwartz as the local rabbi, a clergyman who the Altman brothers knew and tormented as a kid, and who now arrives to torment an audience.

The writing mixes sit-com style cleverness with heartfelt exchanges, creating scenes aimed at Hollywood's solid double; i.e., a blend of laughs and tears.

Apart from the fact that none of the siblings looks as if they've sprung from the same gene pool, the movie comes off as a formulaic attempt to be quirky.

Neither as painful as the trailer might lead you to believe nor as successful as it surely wanted to be, This is Where I Leave You feels like a movie that wanted to click in a big way, but put far too much effort into trying. It shows.

Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson go Google

Google may be a high-tech mecca, but The Internship downloads few laughs.
Just what we needed, another fish-out-of-water comedy, this one starring motor mouth Vince Vaughn and reliable goofball Owen Wilson. Make that two fish out of water.

The new comedy, The Internship, focuses on a couple of displaced salesmen who attempt a leap into the digital age.

Absent any other opportunities, this duo of former watch salesmen applies for an internship at Google's California headquarters, the high-tech playground where some of the movie was filmed.

The comedy mostly centers on the way two relics of the old economy try to blend with bright, young hotshots. These youthful techies also face an uncertain economic future, but they're totally prepared for the information-oriented economy that's beginning to attain near-imperial stature.

Overly long and not especially funny, The Internship -- which was directed by Shawn Levy (Date Night) -- misses a chance to bring a sharp satirical edge to material that seems ripe for it. Vaughn plays Billy, a character so mired in the '80s, he uses Flashdance as a source of inspiration. It's not a great joke to begin with, but then the movie acts as if it actually believes that Flashdance really did have something useful to say.

Working from a script by Vaughn and Jared Stern, Levy keeps the humor on obvious levels, but it's not easy to believe that two guys in their 40s could be this deficient in "technical" knowledge, particularly Vaughn's character, who's made to seem dumber than he needs to be.

An example: Instead of talking about going on-line, Billy talks about going "on the line." If that's your idea of wit, have it, but that (and much else about The Internship) struck me as strained and slightly pathetic.

Levy seems to be trying to freshen an old formula by setting his comedy in the middle of a high-tech mecca where the two older guys become part of a team that's competing with other teams for permanent jobs at Google, which the movie seems to regard as the equivalent of ascension into heaven.

The competition makes it possible to add characters who presumably are meant to woo a younger demographic. Dylan O'Brien plays the bright but jaded young teammate; Tobit Raphael portrays a home-schooled Asian mama's boy, and Tiya Sircar appears as the girl in the group who pretends to be more street smart than she really is. Josh Brener plays the team leader, the Google employee who's supposed to whip his charges into fighting shape.

In addition to designing apps and learning how to work Google's help line, the teams even square off in a Quiddich match.
I doubt that we needed more evidence that Google is a nesting place for the kind of young people who are fluent in Harry Potter-speak. At times, the movie makes Google look like summer camp for nerds with Type-A personalities.

Aasif Mandvi provides additional support as the stern Google manager who oversees the competition, and Max Minghella plays an overly competitive and eminently dislikable rival of our sometimes feckless heroes.

Being a red-blooded adult, Wilson's character falls for an older Googler played by Rose Byrne about whom, in this instance, there's little worth saying.

Cameo appearances from Will Ferrell and John Goodman are funnier than some of the more extended roles, although Goodman's playing a variation on the kind of supposedly savvy hustler he's played many times before.

You won't be surprised to know that Vaughn and Wilson, reprising their previous teaming in Wedding Crashers (2005), wind up helping their younger charges, cementing an otherwise uneasy relationship. A night of club-hopping in San Francisco helps build a bridge between generations.

Vaughn does his talk-fast, say-little shtick, as someone in the movie points out; Wilson relies on his oddball sincerity, and the whole thing passes without downloading enough laughs to make it a summer stand-out.

Put another way: Google top funny comedies, and The Internship isn't likely to show up -- unless of course Google -- which, among other things, comes off looking like a beehive of busy creativity -- compiles the list.