Movie Review: Our Idiot Brother

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Our Idiot Brother is one of those movies that you watch with your mouth open and think, "can this be real?" You find it very hard to suspend disbelief, but not in a fantasy kind of way. You have a set of characters in what appears to be the real world acting the way that most people do, except for maybe one person. That person would be the brother in question, Ned played by Paul Rudd.

Ned is calm, collected, very at easy and loves his dog named Willie Nelson. He looks like Jesus with the long hair and beard, is living on a farm and selling fruits, vegetables and weed. Well, he really didn't want to sell the weed to the cop, he just wanted to help out someone who was having a tough week, he was going to give it to the cop, but because he took the money that the cop offered he got busted and went to the joint for eight months although, he got off four months early for being the most cooperative prisoner. The way he acts and dresses you expect someone to come up to him and say "Dude, the 1960s called and it wants all its hippies and flower children back!"

After his release from the big house, he can't go back to the farm so he end up spending time living with his mom and sisters Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), and Liz (Emily Mortimer). Miranda is a tightly wound wanna be reporter for Vanity Fair. Natalie is a care free spirit living with five other people including her girlfriend Cindy. Sister Liz is the dutiful wife to a documentary film maker Dylan (Steve Coogan) and mother of two.

With each stay Ned screws up something. Ned doesn't have a mean bone in his body, but he also doesn't have any filters and doesn't try to read any negativity into what he has been told or sees. That's why you sit there with your mouth wide open. Could you believe there is someone who wouldn't try to impose a darker or screwed up or judgmental meaning on what they have seen or heard? When he is given a lame excuse for a situation, Ned just accepts it as is, no questions asked. It's there where the suspension of disbelief becomes really hard to do. But on the other side of the coin, if Ned started to question and then accepted further lies you'd think differently of him. Then you'd really think he was stupid for not discerning the deceit instead of just having the blind faith to think the best of people and hope that they will give the same back to him. He even goes as far as praising his parole officer for the job the officer is doing. How's that for thinking well of people?

There were a couple of slow points in the movie and a little bit more risque comments and sights in the movie than I expected going in. It was rated R for sexual content including nudity, and for language throughout. It was also one of those comedy movies where the trailer shows you scenes or jokes that don't make it into the final 90 minute cut released to theaters. While maybe not worth the price of a movie ticket, it might be worth the DVD or Blu-ray rental because there was a bit of a lesson in there about one way to view life. When you watch, make sure you stay for the credits as a number of bloopers and out takes pass the time while the words scroll up on the side. I would think a future rental would probably have more of a blooper reel than what was included in the feature presentation.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Fright Night

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Slow weekend for choices at the movie theater. You have not one, but two remakes and one sequel. They all appealed about equally on my radar. Conan the Barbarian starring Hawaii born Jason Momoa and Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D which had scratch and sniff cards were two of the three selections available but ultimately, Fright Night won out only because it had the first non 3D showing of the day.

It is a remake of a 1985 version of the same name. Set in Las Vegas, the action starts quickly and keeps moving along. Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is told by former long time best friend Ed (Christoper Mintz-Plasse - McLovin from Superbad) that his new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire responsible for a slew of missing fellow classmates and families in the area. Charlie doesn't want to believe Ed, after all, what vampire would be named Jerry, right? Charlie quickly figures out that Ed was right after all and sets out to protect his stressed out real estate selling mother (Toni Collete) and knock out gorgeous girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) about the danger in the night.

To help with his crusade, Charlie heads over to the Hard Rock Hotel to get advise from a person in the know. This person is Peter Vincent (David Tennent, the tenth Dr over there on Dr Who), the magician whose show is vampire themed and called Fright Night. Of course some actor/magician would know everything you need to know to put down a hard core vampire with mean sharp nasty teeth, because we're dealing with reality here, not some nut job who just thinks they are a vampire.

The movie is rated R for bloody horror violence and language including some sexual reference. My theater must have thought it was scarey enough to keep the house lights on the dimmed but not dark mode for about 20 minutes into the 106 minute running time. Through the whole movie I only found myself startled twice by what happened on screen.

Nothing really ground breaking covered in the remake. The standard stakes, crosses, holy water, turning victims into vampires and belief all come up as well as giving permission for the unholy creature of the night to cross the threshold of your home. We did get answers for two variations of the crossing the threshold dilemma. The first, what if it's not your home and the second, what if you can't call the house a home anymore. Does the logic support the outcome?

Keeping with the genre, the big climatic battle scene seems to occur around the vampire's coffin just as the staking is to occur and right after the sun makes its daily graceful exit behind the horizon. The head vamps eyes pop open and the would be vampire killer is grabbed around the neck, hoisted off the ground and thrown across the room if it's an older tale with a castle, or to the other side of the basement if it's a more modern vampire story. The lived up to the standard. Although, I will give Fright Night a little credit. There was a nice twist on the standard vampire dispatch method to finally vanquish the bad guy.

So, while not a top shelf movie for the weekend, it fits solidly within the standard scope for telling the tale of a creature who needs to feed on human blood in order to remain alive. No day time walking, sparkly skin exposing, synthetic blood drinking, I just want to be your friend and marry you while not sucking your life force from two holes I put in your neck to be found here.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: The Help

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Well I must say, The Help turned out to be much more than I thought based on the trailer. I was expecting more of a comedy about a group of black women working for white families during the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi telling the follies of their experiences for the audience to laugh at. It was directed and the screenplay written by Tate Taylor based on Kathryn Stockett's novel, it was a much more poignant look at race relations at this time and place in American history than I had expected. There were scenes that did make you laugh, but there were more scenes that had I been looking at the audience instead of the movie screen I'm sure I would have seen faces of confusion, bewilderment and anger concerning the treatment of the black women who devoted themselves to these families.

The story is told from the point of view of Aibileen (Viola Davis), a women who doesn't know how to do anything else. Her mother was a maid and her grand mother was a house slave. She's more of a mother to the children in the households she serves than the women who are more concerned about their social standing and appearance in the community. Her best friend Minny (Octavia Spencer) works for the queen bee of the social circle, Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) who professes "separate but equal" with a proposal that homes with black maids must provide them with a separate bathroom.

Returning to Jackson after graduating with a degree in Journalism from Ole Miss is Eugenia Phelan (Emma Stone) who goes by Skeeter. With a name like Eugenia, you'd probably want a cool nick name like Skeeter too, wouldn't you? Skeeter secures a job with the local paper writing a column about cleaning tips and who better to provide accurate and useful information than a maid. That's how Skeeter and Aibileen get to know each other. But Skeeter wants to be a novelist. She decides after seeing how Aibileen and Minny are treated to write a novel about these black women raising white children from the maids point of view.

It's during these observations that the connections between this group of women and their charges is exposed for what is it. Aibileen proudly states that she's raised seventeen children. These strong black women are taking care of the children in ways that their own parents aren't doing. Even with Skeeter, when she returns home she asks for Constantine (Cicely Tyson), the maid who raised her. When she finds out that Constantine is no longer there, she is heart broken and angry.

The dynamic of this complex relationship is the heart of the film. Mothers abdicating their parental role to other women who are considered help and not worthy of using the bathrooms in their employer's house and yet being charged with one of the most important duties and responsibilities of rearing a healthy and responsible human being. Stockett herself was a product of being raised by a black housekeeper while her own mother was largely absent. Words of affirmation like "You are beautiful. You are smart. You are important." played an important part in Stockett's life and echoed in Aibileen's narrative to those she cared for.

Davis does a wonderful job as the bitter Aibileen, as does Spencer as the smart mouthed help Minny. But it's Stone's performance which acts as the glue to pull together and chronicle the stories of these maids and their bosses from the disgust of her own mother's attitudes and actions to the unlikely friendship between Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. A story Skeeter felt demanded to be told against the risk of going up against her own social class and the Jim Crow laws while Medgar Evers and President Kennedy ended up being assassinated. Each of the women are strong individuals to do what they did during the time they were in against confusing and hypocritical standards in place in society.

The 137 minute film goes by quickly and is rated PG-13 for thematic material. There were a few swears and smoking. Lots and lots of smoking. They even managed to poke fun at the smoking. The period piece looks beautiful and the story combined with the acting was enough that not only were there times of laughter, but times when you could hear people sniffling and blowing noses in the theater. Having a few tissues on hand couldn't hurt while you watch The Help.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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We are now into the dog days of summer and the big movies are starting to wind down as families across the nation start heading back to school. The Movie Monkey has been waiting all summer for this particular movie. Not because it was going to be a great movie, but because one simian should support another, don't you think? While not the top of the movie evolutionary chain, Rise of the Planet of the Apes comes in with a very solid upright position.

While 2011 Academy Awards co-host James Franco, Oscar nominated John Lithgow and leading lady Freida Pinto from Academy Award Best Picture winner Slum Dog Millionaire received the top billing, in my opinion, Andy Serkis in his motion capture portrayal of chimpanzee Caesar should have had his name on top of the other three. As Caesar, Serkis' depiction of the primate with ever evolving intelligence was given through his eyes and body language, not through speech. This is when the acting skills need to be sharp and refined. Tied into the character were the good folks over at Weta Digital, the company started by Lord of the Ring's director Peter Jackson who converted the digital plot points generated by the motion capture and rendered out the hairy bodies that became chimpanzees, gorillas, apes and orangutans.

The original Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston came before the public in 1968. The last in the series, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, released in 1973. So it's been almost 40 years between the last time the series appeared on the big screen and lost to many younger people and now we're given the origin story. It would seem rather risky but at the same time not. In the original, it was never disclosed how the apes became the dominant species and humans below them. This unanswered question left the door wide open for exploration and didn't need to be rewritten or reimagined by Hollywood writers as seems to be the case for many pictures today.

In a number of cautionary tales of man creating something that ends up being his downfall the intent was with good and pure motivations. This origins story can be filed in the "good intentions gone wrong" folder. Dr Will Rodman (Franco) is working for a cure for Alzheimers which is afflicting his father Charles (Lithgow). Animal testing on chimps is going positively, especially on one chimp named Bright Eyes. When Bright Eyes goes on a rampage the program is shut down and all the animals are ordered to be put down but not before it is discovered that there was an off spring of Bright Eyes. In a moment of compassion, Will brings the baby chimp home and raises him. When growing chimp Caesar hurts himself and needs medical attention, it's at the vet's where Will meets Caroline (Pinto) and with prompting from Caesar through sign language the two start dating.

Will is able to hold onto his dad and Caesar for about eight years when things start to fall apart. Caesar was learning, reasoning and communicating from the altered genes passed down from his mother. While trying to protect Charles, Caesar injures a neighbor and ends up at a primate sanctuary where for the first time has interaction with other primates. Caesar is exposed to cruelty from humans and fellow apes. One of the handlers, Dodge Landon (Tom Felton) was a reference back to the original movie. If you saw The Green Mile, Percy and Dodge were cut from the same cloth. Both gave inhumane treatment to their charges and both ended up paying for that cruel handling.

In the third act, Caesar takes charge and leads the rebellion. He escapes from the sanctuary and sets free the other captives at the lab and zoo. Primates rampage through San Francisco using primitive weapons like fence spears and man hole covers to take out the opposition leading to the climatic battle on the ultimate icon of the city by the bay. King Kong had the Empire State Building and Caesar had the Golden Gate bridge...sort of symbolic as he crossed over from living in the world of man to living in the world of apes.

The movie runs for 105 minutes and is rated PG-13 for violence, terror, some sexuality and brief strong language. During the running time there are lots of nods to the original series of movies with names, lines and objects given. If you have seen any of the movies you'll appreciate the little tips of the hat. Don't immediately leave when you think the movie is over. Hang for a few moments as a bit of a set up for any possible sequels is given. After you leave the theater you can discuss with your friends some of the moral dilemmas offered ranging from animal treatment and animal experimentation to how far would you go for the care of a sick family member.

There are a few plot holes, but don't let that detract you from the overall experience. My biggest was were there really all that many of our evolutionary cousins located within the city limits of San Francisco? But still, the movie is a solid movie for the summer season praiseworthy of a bucket of popcorn and a cup of soda.

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.