Snow White as warrior princess

This version of Snow White is great when it comes to upholstery. The rest? Not so much.

Call her "Snow." That's what everyone in the movie Mirror Mirror does, so you might as well join the crowd and bring a heavy helping of contemporary informality to a classic fairy tale.

We're talking about Snow White, the mythic beauty who probably is best known for being a character in Disney's first, full-length animated feature, which hit the nation's screens in 1937 and spawned one of the most durable trivia questions ever: Name all seven dwarfs. I usually forget Bashful, but that's another story.

The Snow White story has been through a variety of mutations, and now arrives on the screen as a tale narrated by the evil queen (Julia Roberts), a woman who presides over her kingdom from a golden clamshell of a throne and who becomes the main attraction in a movie dominated by outlandish costumes, lavish sets and hairdos so preposterous they look as if they belong in a topiary.

It's almost as if the filmmakers knew they lacked a great story and decided to dazzle us with production-value footwork. We're even treated to a CGI monster for Snow (Lily Collins) to fight.

That's right. Director Tarsem Singh (The Cell and Immortals) has concocted a version of the Snow White story that turns pretty, pure Snow into a warrior princess. The screenplay by Melissa Wallack and Jason Keller also transforms the seven dwarfs into mini-warriors and bandits who leap about on stilts and, most irreverently of all, turns the handsome prince (Armie Hammer) into a bit of a bumbling doofus.

The movie thrives on upending fairy-tale conventions, toppling or toying with some of the genre's hoariest cliches. Fairy-tale bashing is always welcome, but this edition of Snow White is more about production design than anything else, and despite a lot of trying, Mirror Mirror can't sustain the spirit of abandon that would have made it soar. The movie creeps right up to Tim Burtonesque weirdness without quite going over the oddball edge.

An ultra-arch Roberts may not make the greatest evil queen ever, but she seems to be having a good time. An under-utilized Nathan Lane has an amusing turn as advisor and henchman to the queen. If you get bored, you can admire the work of the make-up department, which has given Collins's face the radiance of a polished apple. (Yes, the screenwriters find a way to work the fabled apple into the script, but if you're looking for the satisfactions offered by a traditional telling of a beloved tale, you'll be disappointed.)

The dwarfs? They're much less cuddly than in the Disney version, which, I suppose, can be considered a form of progress. But the film doesn't go quite far enough with its wit and has almost no flare for satire.

I had no say in the matter, of course, but if it had been up to me, I'd have scrapped "Snow" and gone with Ms. White -- at least once or twice.

Finding the universal in the obscure

Father and son both are Talmudic scholars, but they're also at odds in Footnote, a movie that tests their very souls.

The Israeli movie Footnote puts its characters into a vice and squeezes until it hurts. Director Joseph Cedar, who also wrote the screenplay, deals with a host of ethical issues embedded in a testy, competitive father-son relationship. To further complicate matters, this particular father and son happen to ply the same trade: They’re both Talmudic scholars.

Talmudic scholarship hardly sounds like the basis for an exciting movie, but if you give Footnote a chance, you’ll soon realize that it’s a story about what can ensue when a son enters the family business and surpasses his father -- not an impossible or uncommon situation aside from the fact that this time the father is an obsessive scholar who has spent this life attempting to prove a single point, only to be eclipsed by another scholar and then by his son. Footnote finds novel ways of dealing with the kinds of tensions that sour a relationship that, perhaps more than any other, plays a key role in defining manhood.

Cedar, who previously directed the combat film Beaufort, this time embeds his story in a different kind of battle, the ruthless competition that often ripples through academic circles, where -- as the old joke has it -- the conniving is great because the stakes are so damn small.

Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi) is a much honored scholar, whose approach to research tends to be cultural and intuitive. Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba), Uriel’s father, is a meticulous, fact-oriented researcher who’s contemptuous of the way in which his more successful son conducts his scholarly business.

But here’s the rub: Uriel has been honored for his work while Eliezer never has received the acclaim he believes he deserves. When Eliezer is told that he’s going to be awarded the prestigious Israel Prize, he feels as if a life of rejection is about to be vindicated. A dedicated philologist, Eliezer finally will emerge from shadows that he believes have been cast over his career by jealous detractors, not the last of which is the devious Professor Grossman (Micah Lowenstein).

No fair telling more, but know that Cedar’s sharp and lively movie puts father and son into a moral quandary that tests each man’s deepest principles and threatens to undermine the entire psychological basis for each man’s character.

Sounds heavy, I know, but Cedar -- particularly in the early going -- dishes out the story in playful, spirited chunks. Only gradually does he abandon an overtly comic tone.

Cedar seems to have no special fondness for academia. A meeting of a prize-awarding committee staged in a room the size of a broom closet blisters with comedy and conflict. Amit Poznansky’s score can have a near-antic quality, and Cedar sometimes uses chapter titles to set up a sequence, thus allowing us to maintain perspective while the character’s are rapidly losing theirs.

Cedar is particularly attuned to the absurdities that abound in the quest for recognition and status, even as they’re reflected in the omnipresent face of Israeli security, uniformed guards and metal detectors.

The movie’s title derives from the fact that Eliezer’s great achievement involves having been named in the footnote of his mentor, an important scholar. For Eliezer, this apparent trifle has taken on gargantuan, life-justifying proportions.

Amusing and provocative, Cedar’s movie should not be mistaken for a footnote in the history of Israeli cinema; it’s a major addition, a work of incisive, biting humor and acute observation.

A powerful look inside a mother's torment

We Need to Talk About Kevin isn't for everyone, but this look at a reluctant mother is provocative and haunting.

Director Lynne Ramsey’s We Need to Talk About Kevin had a run on last fall’s film festival circuit, opened commercially in New York and Los Angeles in December of 2011, but only now is beginning to circulate around the country. In conjunction with November's Starz Denver Film Festival, Ramsey and screenwriter Rory Kinnear visited Denver to talk about a movie that involves a killing rampage at a high school. Gifted and unapologetic about her choices, Ramsey made it clear that she understood that some people might reject her movie on its face.

It’s important to take note of the words “on its face” because We Need to Talk About Kevin is not really about a young man who kills fellow students at his high school, although that horrific event does reverberate throughout the story, giving it an extremely disturbing edge.

Unsettling, yes, but I can't agree with a woman who at a festival screening of the movie said We Need to Talk About Kevin never should have been made. There are very few "shoulds" when it comes to art. Many artists like to explore the extremes of human behavior because they know that such extremes often push toward difficult truths. If nothing else, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a movie of extremes.

Based on a novel by Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin has no interest in explaining school murders, which may be unexplainable anyway. What distinguishes both the novel and Ramsey’s movie is a willingness to take a highly subjective look at the main character Eva (Tilda Swinton in the film), a mother who can’t accept her son. Eva probably never wanted to be a wife and mother, and she's forced to re-evaluate her life after her son (Ezra Miller) commits a horrible crime.

Courageously, Ramsey has done what few filmmakers who adapt novels for the screen are willing to do: She has taken only what most intrigued her about Shriver’s dense fiction and discarded the rest. This approach probably was essential because Shriver told the story through a series of letters written by Eva. What remains is a riveting account in which past and present mingle as the movie works its way toward the climax we know is coming.

Ramsey and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey create powerful imagery -- and if you pay attention -- you’ll soon become aware that you are not receiving a rounded, clear-eyed portrait of a troubled family: You’re getting the view from inside of Eva’s head -- and it’s not a pleasant one.

Swinton makes a perfect Eva, a woman who has stepped into a life in which she feels like a stranger. Eva gave up a career as a travel agent to become a wife and mother, but We Need to Talk About Kevin is not a feminist tract that decries Eva’s loss of independence; it’s a mesmerizing, intimate examination Eva’s life as a mother who deals with a child who (for reasons that movie never fully explains) is a handful from day one.

Roll a ball to little Kevin, and he refuses to return it. He just sits there. Long after most kids are toilet trained, Kevin continues to poop in his pants, an act of willful disobedience.

On some level, Kevin knows that he is not a wanted child. He perceives his mother’s rejection and misses no opportunity to punish her for it. Like many a misguided child, Kevin's also smart enough to see through the facade of suburban life that’s supposed to shield people from their demons.

Only Kevin and his mother share this twisted intimacy. Kevin’s dad Franklin (John C. Reilly) takes a boys-will-be-boys attitude toward Kevin, insisting (even when the evidence is overwhelming) that things are OK. Eva and Franklin’s second child (Ursula Parker) somehow seems to have escaped from the family’s loop of rage, denial, frustration and lack of fulfillment: It’s as if she’s been dropped into this nightmare from a more much more pleasant dream.

Swinton’s masterful performance turns Eva into a witness as much as a participant in her life. Eva’s encountering an awful truth, so it’s not surprising that Swinton often looks stunned and shattered. Try as she may, Eva can’t change what seems to be an indestructible part of her nature, a resistance to being Kevin’s mother.

Ramsey’s casting is spot-on: Reilly’s perfect as a deluded dad. The actors who play Kevin as a boy (Rock Duer and Jasper Newell) are equally good, as is Miller, who takes over when Kevin becomes an adolescent.

Ramsey, whose last movie was the equally difficult Morvern Collar (2002), is alert to the satirical possibilities in even the darkest material. She doesn't approach her characters with soggy sympathy but with a cool - even cruel -- eye.

Ramsey made We Need To Talk About Kevin for very little money. She and her crew had to work fast. I think the haste served the material, which also boasts provocatively fragmented storytelling, remarkable sound design and a haunting score by Jonny Greenwood.

In a community that lives with the memory of Columbine, some may wish to avoid the provocations and occasional horror of We Need To Talk About Kevin. I wouldn’t try to argue anyone out of such a position.

But those who see We Need to Talk About Kevin will find a fevered nightmare with humor nipping at its edges. For me, We Need To Talk About Kevin stands as a small masterpiece of subjective cinema; its febrile tremors infiltrate, challenge and ultimately haunt the mind. And know this: We Need to Talk About Kevin is not an exercise in social realism; it's an exercise in emotional realism: rampant, dark and unafraid.

What about kids killing kids?

A reply to a Facebook post, wondering why people should want to see a film about children killing children, and asking why I didn't object to the movie based on such offensive subject matter:

Although Suzanne Collins's best-selling The Hunger Games -- the first book in a trilogy -- may not rank among the great works of sci-fi history, it's eminently readable and follows a familiar sic-fi path, pushing toward a horrible extreme -- children killing children -- as a means of exposing contemporary truths.

Among other things, Collins seems interested in mounting a critique of a society much like our own, a society that hungers for the dangers of "reality," but only as observed from a safe distance; i.e., while watching television. It's also important to know that in The Hunger Games, the children do not kill for kicks or because they are inherently evil. They kill because they're forced into a situation in which they have no choice. Each participant in the games is selected by lot and thrust into a lethal game that allows for only one winner.

Kids are also human, so it's hardly surprising that some are buoyed by the attention they receive prior to the games, that some form self-serving killing alliances during the games and that some are more eager participants than others. By the story's end, though, Collins introduces an act of resistance that can't be written about in more detail without introducing spoilers, but which should be taken into account when evaluating the movie.

There are no inviolable rules when it comes to criticism, but rejecting a work because of its subject usually makes little sense. It's not necessarily a film's subject that matters, but how a filmmaker deals with that subject. Whether The Hunger Games succeeds or not can be debated, but -- in my view -- neither the movie nor the book qualifies as exploitation.

Apart from all of this, it's not my business to tell people why they should or should not see a movie, but to think and write about whether a movie succeeds or fails -- or does a bit of both. It's up to readers to decide for themselves whether they're interested enough to see the work in question or prefer to stay home.

And if you're looking for a guideline about the age at which The Hunger Games becomes appropriate viewing for young people, you can note the movie's PG-13 rating. An even better guide may come from the book itself: Katniss -- the young woman we follow throughout the book and movie -- is 16.

Odds favor big-screen 'Hunger Games'

It's not as good as the book, but The Hunger Games has lots to recommend it.

Movie, good. Book, better.

We’re talking The Hunger Games, one of the more anticipated movies of a year that has yet to produce an entertainment with blockbuster potential. Adapted from the first in a trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins,The Hunger Games surely will be scrutinized in the way all novels with devoted followings are; i.e., there will be intense interest in whether director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit and Pleasantville) has honored both the letter and the spirit of Collins’s novel.

Burdened by too much exposition and less emotionally resonant than the novel, the big-screen version of The Hunger Games nonetheless is marked by sufficient fear and fervor to push it onto the plus side of the ledger. Just as important, the filmmakers have found an actress (Jennifer Lawrence) who's capable of displaying the mixture of toughness and vulnerability the story demands.

For those unfamiliar with Collins’s work, a brief introduction:

The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence), a 16-year-old living in yet another dystopian future. After an unexplained apocalypse, the country of Panem replaced what we know as North America. The Capitol -- the most advanced part of Panem -- exploits and rules each of Panem’s 12 districts. Katniss hails from District 12, formerly Appalachia and one of the poorest sections of Panem.

Economic exploitation being insufficient torment for the residents of the districts, the Capitol each year stages The Hunger Games, a lethal contest that resembles the TV show Survivor. The name of every district child from the ages of 12 to 18 is put into a national lottery. One boy and one girl from each district are then selected to compete. The 24 competitors -- known as Tributes -- battle to the death. The last remaining Tribute wins. And it’s all on TV, of course.

Katniss, whose father died in a mining accident, has had plenty of time to hone her survival skills. She engages in illegal poaching to feed her emotionally crippled mother and her younger sister, exploring the forbidden forests around District 12 with her pal (and potential boyfriend) Gale (Liam Hemsworth).

The story begins in earnest when Katniss’s sister Prim (Willow Shields) is selected to represent District 12 in The Hunger Games. Katniss immediately volunteers to replace her sister, a substitution allowed by the rules of what otherwise seems an arbitrary game, which is manipulated by high-tech gamesmakers who control the game’s physical environments.

I won’t bother you with additional details except to say that Collins’s book, which consists of Katniss’s first-person account of the games, does a better job when it comes to exposition, probably because everything transpires from Katniss’ highly focused point-of-view.

In order to handle expository chores on screen, Ross is forced outside the arena, where we see the control room where technicians oversee the games. The bearded Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) runs the control room. Look, it's never a good sign when a movie has to stop to explain itself.

In the book, Collins’s propulsive narrative gathers momentum from Katniss’s observations, doubts, craftiness and occasional deliriums. On screen, Katniss’s inner life becomes the responsibility of Lawrence, the young actress who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in Winter’s Bone. Lawrence must suggest with looks and presence what Katniss was able to convey with words in the novel. She gets awfully close, although I have to say that Lawrence wasn't quite as battered, desperate and crafty as the Katniss of my imagination, the one put there by Collins's prose.

Josh Hutcherson plays Peeta Melark, the other competitor from District 12. A baker’s son, Peeta falls for Katniss, a development that gives the movie a bit of romantic spin -- or does it? Can competitors in this deadly game allow themselves to have feelings for one another? Are Peeta’s feelings real or are they part of a strategy related to winning the game?

The movie tries to include most of the events that kept the novel percolating, but shortchanges the more resonant emotions of Collins’s book, particularly those involving Katniss and Rue (Amandla Stenberg). A 12-year-old competitor from an agricultural district, Rue develops a touching relationship with Katniss during the games.

The movie’s adults are mostly well cast. Woody Harrelson plays a watered-down version of the dissolute Haymitch Abernathy, a District 12 competitor who won the 50th Hunger Games and a reluctant mentor to Peeta and Katniss, who have been thrust into the 74th edition of the games. Elizabeth Banks portrays Effie Trinket, the ridiculously pretentious woman appointed to escort Katniss and Peeta to the Capitol. Stanley Tucci shows up as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Game TV interviews and a master of faux sincerity. Lenny Kravitz has a nice turn as Cinna, the Capitol resident who’s responsible for helping to shape Katniss’ public image. And Donald Sutherland plays the head of Panem, a cunning and cruel leader who seems to have been inserted mostly in preparation for the next installment.

Ross and cinematographer Tom Stern do a good job creating District 12, a grim, coal-mining area that has been given a look that evokes the Great Depression. But The Hunger Games isn’t exactly coy when it comes to dealing with themes such as the degradations of poverty, as well as exploitative TV, voyeurism, and political oppression. In a way, the movie is another hybrid, a picture that has been crossbred from Survivor, The Truman Show and maybe Lord of the Flies.

Collins’s book seems better paced than the movie, which -- in its quieter moments --falls a little flat, and I’m not sure how much the big-screen version will astonish and captivate those who haven’t read the book.

But Hunger Games is smarter than most fiction aimed at young adults, and it isn’t afraid to explore the dark, bloody terrain of a society that’s willing to amuse itself by brutalizing its children. To the Tributes, the games are a matter of life and death. For everyone else, they’re a TV show.


So a recommendation with only mild reservations. Taking a cue from Katniss’s weapon of choice -- the bow -- I’d say that The Hunger Games definitely hits the target, although it's no bull's eye. And now that the world of Collins’s novels has been established, it should be easier to give us an ever better second helping.

Fishing for romance in an unlikely spot

Everything about the romantic comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen sounds unappealing, maybe even ridiculous. Here's the drill: A wealthy sheikh (Amir Waked) wants to create a river for salmon in the parched deserts of Yemen. His British financial representative (Emily Blunt) asks a fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) to design the salmon habitat, a multi-million dollar task that he views as sheer folly. McGregor's Fred, who works for the government, resists until he's pushed by his boss who's being pushed by his boss, Kristin Scott Thomas as a manipulative PR woman who works for the Prime Minister. Scott Thomas's Patricia Maxwell thinks that the salmon project might be a welcome rarity: a feel-good story from the usually distressed Middle East. Director Lasse Halstrom works his way through Fred's crumbling marriage, which must fall apart for romance to blossom between Fred and Blunt's Harriet. Harriet's slowly developing attraction for Fred also faces an obstacle: Harriet is involved with a British soldier serving in Afghanistan. When she receives word that her beau is missing and presumed dead, she goes into the expected funk. McGregor does a nice job of allowing Fred's charms slowly to peek through the character's geeky devotion to fish. Scott Thomas makes spectacularly officious PR woman, and Waked, as the sheikh, projects wisdom and whimsy as a ruler with an outlandish dream and equally outlandish amounts of money to pay for it. But Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is only intermittently rewarding, with Lasstrom serving up a bit low-key humor and a plot that's not particularly compelling. See it for McGregor's charming turn or, better yet, wait for the DVD. Know this though: McGregor and Blunt have a lot more to offer than Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, the stars of Hallstrom's last romance, Dear John.

An unlikely (but funny) return to high school

I can't imagine that the world's population has been trembling with anticipation at thought of a 21 Jump Street movie. Who among us spends significant time yearning to revisit '80s television, even with a series that spawned Johnny Depp's mega-career? Beyond that, the idea of undercover cops re-enrolling in high school to smash a drug ring doesn't pulsate with originality. And who wants to return to high school under any circumstances?

All this by way of saying that the big-screen rendition of 21 Jump Street should have been a notable dud rather than an amusing (if intentionally silly) attempt to cast a parodic spell over a TV show that took itself fairly seriously.

21 Jump Street teams Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as screw-up police officers who are assigned to a unit that investigates youth crime and which is run by a scowling police captain played by Ice Cube .

You can tell that the movie is more interested in comedy than credibility because Hill and Tatum -- in defiance of the imperatives of any known gene pool -- try to pass themselves off as brothers once they're assigned to a school.

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) have one exceptionally smart trick up their sleeves. The script, based on a story by Hill and screenwriter Michael Bacall, flips the script on Hill and Tatum. Hill's Schmidt, a scorned nerd in high school, discovers that he actually fits into the the politically sensitive school environment of the 21st century. Suddenly, he's cool. Tatum's Jenko, a much-admired jock when he attended the high school, seems like a dumb oaf when seen through an updated contemporary lens. He gets roped into going to band practice, and is forced to figure out a way to fake his way through advanced chemistry.

Hill has plenty of comic experience, but Tatum -- usually cast as a gooey-eyed hunk in movies such as The Vow -- handles his comic assignment with surprising aplomb, playing a character who can be dumb and dumber all by himself.

Beyond that, Hill and Tatum work well enough together to keep the movie from tumbling into the usual garbage heap of crude, intentionally stupid humor. Their growing bromance seems heartfelt, encouragement that it's possible to outgrow high school prejudices.

The supporting cast includes Brie Larson, as a high school drama student who thinks Schmidt's cool, and Dave Franco, brother of James Franco, as a high-school wheeler-dealer, who traffics in a drug that's supposed to break new ground in hallucinogenic experience.

I could have done without the movie's noisy attempts at action, which include a mind-numbing car chase, and not all of the jokes connect, but 21 Jump Street is the kind of movie that's best summed up by the collective sigh of relief it seems to have engendered from the critical community. And in fairness, it should be noted that the primary audience for a movie such as this probably will be ready and willing to forgive a few wrong turns.

Adrift and waiting for a sign

To date, the best film from the Duplass brothers (Jay and Mark) remains 2010's Cyrus, a comedy starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei. Cyrus began a movement by the brothers toward movies that retain the offbeat mumblecore edge of previous work (The Puffy Chair and Baghead), but also incorporate mainstream elements, particularly when it came to casting. Jeff Who Lives at Home, the latest from the Duplass brothers, continues the brothers' mash-up approach, this time putting Jason Segel and Ed Helms at the center of a comedy about two very different brothers, each weird in his own way.

Segel's 30-year-old Jeff -- the title character -- lives with his widowed mother (Susan Sarandon), and seems to be stuck in life's mud. Jeff smokes a lot of dope, and appears to have been unduly influenced by M. Night Shyamalan's movie, Signs. Jeff's waiting for his prolonged state of limbo to be shattered by something semi-miraculous. He can't get on with his life until he receives a message from the universe, a sign that will help him chart a course out of his mother's basement. To the rest of the world, this may look like emotional paralysis, but Jeff has confidence that his destiny will be revealed to him.

Brother Pat (Helms) isn't housebound; he has a job working in a paint store and a wife (Judy Greer). Avid and ambitious, Pat longs to climb the ladder of success. He buys things he can't afford (a Porsche) and neglects his wife, who was planning to use the Porsche money to put a down payment on a house. Using household money to indulge a male fantasy is never a good idea, and Pat's purchase leads to trouble. So does his overly aggressive personality.

Not surprisingly, Jeff eventually receives his sign -- or what the takes to be his sign. It arrives in the form of a phone call that introduces him to the name Kevin. Jeff's new mission: find Kevin, a search that produces laughs -- albeit in a low-key register. In keeping with the brothers' scaled-down approach, the story unfolds during the course of one day in Jeff's life.

At a fleet 82 minutes, Jeff Who Lives at Home makes room for some well-executed comic scenes. When Pat and Jeff spy on Pat's wife Linda in hopes of catching her in the midst of an affair, the movie flirts with classic farce.

Meanwhile, Sarandon's Sharon tells a workmate (Rae Dawn Chong) that she's been receiving messages from a secret admirer. Sharon's wary, but the messages quicken her pulse. Could romance be lurking? Will a long-smouldering fire suddenly be re-lit? Can she ever get Jeff to complete a chore?

The Duplass brothers are good at finding absurd humor in moments of fallibility. Jeff Who Lives at Home isn't nearly as sharp or distinctive as Cyrus, but it has enough offbeat humor to get by, and Segal makes Jeff seem like a decent enough slacker, a good-hearted fellow who's mired in a world where cosmic jolts are a definite rarity.

Will Ferrell, the Spanish-language edition

If you know nothing about Mexican cinema, you might be fooled by Casa de me Padre into thinking that films produced in Mexico are poorly made, overly melodramatic, embarrassingly cheap and inadvertently silly. Those who know Mexican film understand that nothing could be further from the truth. Mexican cinema, though often neglected in the U.S., has had many periods of high achievement. What Will Ferrell & company have done in Casa de me Padre is to make a parodic version of the kind of movie they believe characterized Mexican cinema in the 1970s. Some critics have suggested that this subtitled movie, in which Ferrell and all the other actors speak Spanish, is more indicative of the work found in popular Spanish-language telenovelas. If you can get past all that, you may find some chuckles in what amounts to a courageous gamble for Ferrell, starring in a Spanish-language movie that may not appeal to his generally avid fan base. Ferrell plays Armando, the nerdy son of a rancher (Pedro Armendariz Jr.) Armendariz's Miguel Ernesto regards Armando as a lovable dolt, favoring his more wayward son Raul (Diego Luna).* When Raul arrives home with a beautiful woman (Genesis Rodriguez), papa is overjoyed. The smart son has returned. But all is not well. An illicit and often-brutal drug trade (led by a gangster known as La Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal) flourishes on the ranch. The movie plays a bit like an extended sketch, but Ferrell and his spirited comic cohorts plunge happily into material that draws much of its humor from the self-consciously shoddy way in which the film has been made. At one point, Ferrell and Rodriguez ride fake horses, a phony looking white cat adds mystical flourish, and no attempt is made to paper over holes in the movie's low-rent artifice. It's quite possible that Casa de me Padre -- a hit-and-miss affair that includes some amusing moments -- will become a footnote in Ferrell's career. Despite occasional burst of violence, the movie plays like a good-natured spoof that pokes fun at the kind of movies that, though presented with great seriousness, can't help but be perceived as preposterous.

*For those who like to keep track of passing time, it has been 11 years since Bernal and Luna appeared in the popular comedy, Y Tu Mamá También.