Review: San Andreas

Anything you (or anyone else) can do, the Rock can do better.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at his resume and you will find that it is littered with projects that have re-imagined and re-engineered other films simply by turning up the volume on the action and infusing Johnson's larger than life screen presence into the plot.  The results at the box office have been nothing short of impressive.  They don’t - after all - half-jokingly refer to him as The Franchise Viagra.

The plot of Johnson’s most recent movie, San Andreas, follows three simple steps.  First, establish the credentials of the protagonist.  Second, unleash unfathomable disasters of epic proportions on an unsuspecting public.  Third, follow the protagonist as he/she sets out to save endangered family members.  If this also sounds like the plot of The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012, you would be correct.  In fact, this is the plot of nearly every disaster flick ever created.  So what makes San Andreas worth watching?

For starters, the visuals are epic.  Major kudos go to the artists involved with the special effects, who really utilized the vast majestic California landscape to paint a sweeping disaster scenario that is both horrific and breathtaking.  It helps that the scenario feels incredibly real.  Whereas most disaster films tend to depict radically accelerated climate change incidents that could only manifest on the silver screen, San Andreas fictionalizes an earthquake scenario that could occur at any moment.  That’s not to say, the film’s account is accurate and grounded in sound science (because it’s not), but the notion of it is quite real.

Still, if special effects was the sole criteria upon which the quality of a movie measured, then the second Star Wars trilogy would have surpassed the original trio.  No, it takes something more and in this case, Johnson is just that something more.  His ability to bring credibility to lines that on paper must be cringe inducing is one of his greatest skills.  It’s an ability he no doubt crafted during his WWE days, delivering over-the-top one liners to live crowds with unwavering commitment and conviction.  So when Johnson makes a daring declaration or an ill-timed comment about getting to second based while facing insurmountable odds, it allows the audience to both groan and chuckle.  And that he has a larger-than-life presence, allows the audience to suspend just enough disbelief to buy-in.

However, none of this means that San Andreas is a great movie, because ultimately it’s not.  Some might say it’s not even good.  What most could agree on is that it’s entertaining.  Watching the California coast - from the glitz of the Hollywood hills to the nouveau riche technological epicenter that is San Francisco – crumble to the ground offers a horrifically exhilarating backdrop to the perfectly melodramatic chemistry between Johnson, longtime screen veteran Carla Gugino, and Alexandra Daddario.  More simply put, it’s watching good-looking people survive or not (no spoilers!) a stunningly visual disaster.  And who could possibly decry a gluttony of eye candy.

So long story short, it’s worth a watch.  The summer slate has been and will be fairly tepid this for the remainder of 2015 and the list is short on films that really bask in being an unapologetic popcorn flick.  The visuals are massive and worth that big screen treatment and will provide you with a nice break from having to think, process, or decipher.

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Review: New Year's Eve

Let’s fast forward through the diatribe I typically express whenever I come across one of those ensemble cast movies that features half of Hollywood (Valentine’s Day, What to Expect When You Are Expecting).  Let’s just accept the fact that I think they are terrible, lack character development, and feature actors just mailing it in.  Having just seen the movie New Year’s Eve I can tell that I saw nothing in this movie that makes me feel otherwise. 

New Year’s Eve follows the lives of a bunch of people in New York City on New Year’s Eve battling the holidays, the elements, and the trite sentimentality that drives their respective matters of the heart.  Why director Garry Marshall – he of Pretty Woman, Beaches, and The Princess Diaries fame – keeps venturing into this genre is beyond me, but rather than completely dismiss the film as a complete write off, I am going to highlight the glorified vignettes and how they don’t work to varying degrees.

Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele star in the “love in the elevator” portion of the movie and their collective performance plays like two high school drama students acting out a series of romantic clichés.  Not much better than that, is the “mending the fences” storyline as brought to life by Jon Bon Jovi and Katherine Heigl, though there is a thin layer of authenticity to this plot line as Heigl is asked to play a bitter and domineering woman and Bon Jovi a selfish self-centered musician.  On the opposite end of the authenticity spectrum is the performance of Josh Duhamel who plays the role of a cad that has come to grips with his own sentimentality and hopes to find a special someone that he once shared a moment with.  As to who that is, well it is a mystery easily solved about ten minutes into the movie.

Not to be upstaged in the unbelievablity department is the competition between two couples to have the first baby born in the new year for a monetary prize.  Is it unbelievable that this might happen in real life?  No - crazier things have been done in the real world for the almighty dollar.  It is in fact the performances of Seth Myers and Jessica Biel that are hard to fathom.  Myers delivers every other line with his hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar expression from SNL: Weekend Update, and Biel has yet to master the ability to convince anyone that she can actually act. 

Then there is the arc shared by Michelle Pfeiffer and Zac Efron.  I was sure I would hate this one the most.  I cannot stress how overly contrived, incredibly cliché, and so overused the paradigm for their story line is, however it is still represents the most entertaining parts of the movie.  Effron is believable as a douchebag (obviously) bike messenger, but it is Michelle Pfeiffer who carries their story.  Of the one million characters in the movie, hers is the most sympathetic and the only one that seems to have any real depth despite the limited screen time.

As for the rest of the cast, Hilary Swank is there and fairly dour as she is charged with shouldering the gravitas of the movie.  Likewise Robert DeNiro, Abigail Breslin and Sarah Jessica Parker negotiate the mother-daughter relationship in ways that are not compelling.  Also appearing in the movie are Halle Berry, Common, Cary Elwes, Alyssa Milano (yes, apparently she still acts), Sofia Vergara, Carla Gugino, and so on and so forth and none of them do anything of significance to impact the movie one way or another.  As glorified extras, their presence actually breaks what little reality exist in the film as you find yourself thinking more about actor recognition rather than investing in the characters they are attempting to portray.

So I could sit here and tell you not to watch it (which is what I would suggest) but for the most part it probably won’t make much of a difference.  This is one of those movies that from the moment people first see the trailer, they instantly decide whether or not they are willing to invest their time and/or money on this project.  But if I can save even one person from this disaster, I will say it again: this is not a good movie.  It’s an exercise in quantity over quality so in lieu of one really good plotline you get five terribly weak ones.  The best recommendation I can make is to not only skip this movie, but to quit the genre altogether.

Standout Performance:  Michael Bloomberg and Ryan Seacrest.  They were asked to pay themselves.  It’s about as easy as acting can get.

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Review: Sucker Punch

When you walk into a movie directed by Zack Snyder – he of "300" and "Watchmen" fame, you more or less know what you are going to get – a highly stylized film loaded with digital effects. In this regard, “Sucker Punch” does not disappoint. In this film, Snyder immerses us into a dark world that snakes its way between reality and fantasy with a stunning brand of visual bravado. While this film differs from his last two live action jaunts in that it does not come from comic book source material, its roots lay in the genre and pander to every fetish and whim of that segment of fandom.

What works about this film is the action. Say what you will about Snyder, whether it involves the clanging of razor-sharp blades or the rat-a-tat-tat of semi-automatic firearms, the man knows how to frame a fight scene. In “Sucker Punch” we have a film that revolves around four major action sequences that have the complexity of a cutting edge PRG video game with the accompanying near visual overload. While at times it felt like Snyder went a little too John Woo/Michael Bay with the slow motion, his attention to detail in these scenes is his ultimate strength.

What does not work about this film is that the characters seem like mere vehicles to deliver four action sequences. The plot that threads these pieces together is contrived. Taking a group of individuals – each bearing a layer of catastrophe, does not add depth to the proceedings. Of course this can be easily remedied if the major players develop throughout the narrative, but unfortunately more attention has been paid to the visual than the cerebral. Cinematic gravitas only bears true weight when one is invested in the character of the protagonists and this is hard to do when the filmmaker himself pays little attention to such details.

As for the cast, Emily Browning as Baby Doll is bland and unconvincing; Abbie Cornish and Jena Malone inject a bit of genuine grittiness to the sense of noir that underlies the sets; Hudgens and Chung are pure eye candy; Oscar Isaac plays a stock heavy; while the presence of Jon Hamm and Carla Gugino serve only to provide a modicum of credibility to the cast.

I did not hate this movie, though I did not particularly like it. It feels a lot like “Scott Pilgrim versus the World”- a movie I really enjoyed - without the humor and no way near as fun. Throughout this film, I spent most of my time wondering (and worrying) how Snyder’s style would translate to his next project (produced by WB golden boy Christopher Nolan) – Man of Steel.  At the end of the day, if you liked Michael Bay’s Transformers movies then you will find entertainment value here via Netflix or On Demand. If not, then you should steer clear. This one has “caveat emptor” written all over it.

Notable Performance: Jena Malone of Life as a House fame outshines the rest of the cast.

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