'Jennifer's Body' not so hot
Published Friday September 18th, 2009
Opening this week: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Jennifer's Body, Love Happens and The Informant!
* 9 - Despite their roughhewn appearance, the resourceful rag dolls in 9 obviously were crafted with great love and care, both by the scientist who made them in the film and the mastermind behind them in real life, director Shane Acker. If only as much complex thought had gone into the script. The animation is so breathtaking in its originality, so weird and wondrous in its detail, you wish there were more meat to the screenplay from Pamela Pettler, who previously wrote Monster House. 9 follows a group of creatures who represent the last vestige of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world.HHH out of four. Rated PG.
* All About Steve - Kim Barker came up with the script in which Sandra Bullock's character, a crossword puzzle writer named Mary Horowitz, is singularly annoying from the first moment we meet her. Mary is a goofy, clingy, hyperactive chatterbox who bores people everywhere she goes with her arcane bits of trivia and long-winded anecdotes. When Mary finally meets handsome cable-news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper), she immediately throws herself at him. Then she misinterprets a comment he makes in the frenzy of scurrying away from her as an invitation to join him on the road covering breaking news, and ends up stalking him across the country. H out of four. Rated PG.
* Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - A scientist tries to solve world hunger only to see things go awry as food falls from the sky in abundance. With the voices of Bill Hader, Neil Patrick Harris, Anna Faris, James Caan and Andy Samberg. HH out of four. Rated G.
* District 9 - This is one intense, intelligent, well-crafted action movie - one that dazzles the eye with seamless special effects but also makes you think without preaching. District 9 has the esthetic trappings of science fiction but it's really more of a character drama, an examination of how a man responds when he's forced to confront his identity. Aliens who arrived in their spaceship more than 20 years ago have now been quarantined in cramped and dangerous slums; the nerdy bureaucrat charged with moving them to new quarters (the tremendous Sharlto Copley) is transformed in the process. HHH½ out of four. Rated 14A.
* Extract - Mike Judge is back to the daily grind with Extract, but this time the writer-director tells his wacky working tales from the boss' point of view: that of Jason Bateman's Joel Reynold, owner of a flavour extract factory. The characters are so one-note and their misadventures so ridiculous that it's hard to get attached to them or care about how they turn out. Bateman functions in his patented exasperated everyman mode, similar to his Michael Bluth character on Arrested Development, only without the smart, surreal dialogue. His best friend Dean (Ben Affleck), a suave bartender at a generic hotel sports grill, suggests Joel hire a gigolo (Dustin Milligan) to sleep with Suzie, thereby giving him licence to cheat on her with Cindy. HH out of four. Rated 14A.
* G-Force - Highly trained guinea pigs working in covert operations and armed with the latest high-tech spy equipment discover that the fate of the world is in their paws. With the voices of Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, Steve Buscemi, Will Arnett, Jon Favreau, Sam Rockwell and Tracy Morgan. Written by the Wibberleys, Tim Firth, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. H out of four. Rated PG.
* Inglourious Basterds - If only Quentin Tarantino the director weren't so completely in love with Quentin Tarantino the writer, this might have been a great movie rather than a good movie with moments of greatness. Certain scenes of his wildly revisionist Second World War saga have a palpable tension, but then he undermines them by allowing them to go on way too long. As for the plot... well, it might be in there somewhere amid the many meandering threads. HH½ out of four. Rated 14A.
* Jennifer's Body - Part of the allure of the Showtime series Diablo Cody created, The United States of Tara - beyond the versatility of star Toni Collette - is the humour she finds in everyday suburbia, the reality and the absurdity. And that's the best part of Jennifer's Body, too. Never mind that it's a mash-up of horror flick and teen comedy: When her characters talk about regular stuff like awkward adolescent sex and high-school dances, it's funny in a relatable way. It's when Cody tries too hard to dazzle us that she loses her footing; meanwhile, director Karyn Kusama struggles in her own way to find the right tone. The result: Jennifer's Body is never scary and only sporadically amusing. Megan Fox is a great choice, though, to play Jennifer, the queen bee in the small town of Devil's Kettle. One night, after attending a concert by her favourite band that goes disastrously awry, Jennifer seems... different. This is immediately obvious to her childhood best friend, the nerdy Needy (Amanda Seyfried). But soon the whole town knows something's wrong when boys' bodies start turning up eviscerated. HH out of four. Rated 14A.
* Love Happens - Love supposedly happens in this film. We'll have to take their word for it. Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston are so utterly lacking in chemistry with each other (and they're both pretty bland individually) that it's hard to discern any genuine emotion. What first-time director Brandon Camp gives us instead is a cliché-addled romantic drama that's short on both romance and drama, one that's filled with soggy platitudes and contrived catharsis. Eckhart plays self-help guru Burke Ryan, a widower who wrote a book about coping with loss after his wife's death in a car accident three years ago. Now he's a nationwide sensation, playing to sold-out crowds at cultlike seminars and helping others work through their own grief. Aniston co-stars as a florist named Eloise, who creates the flower arrangements at the hotel where Burke's Seattle workshops are taking place. Both are apprehensive about falling in love again, which means that naturally they're meant to do so with each other. Rather obviously, since Burke is supposed to have the answers for everyone else, he has none for himself. Eloise falls in line with a distressingly large number of Aniston roles. Here, there's so little to her character (and to Burke) that you don't care whether they wind up together, even though that's inevitable. Zero stars out of four. Rated PG.
* Sorority Row - When five sorority girls inadvertently cause the murder of one of their sisters in a prank gone wrong, they agree to keep the matter to themselves and never speak of it again, so they can get on with their lives. This proves easier said than done, when after graduation a mysterious killer goes after the five of them and anyone who knows their secret. H out of four. Rated 18A.
* The Final Destination - Crash survivors must figure out how to cheat death before reaching their final destination. With Shantel VanSanten, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella, Richard T. Jones and Mykelti Williamson. Written by Eric Bress. Directed by David R. Ellis. H out of four. Rated 18A.
* The Informant! - The exclamation point in the title is your first clue that Steven Soderbergh's intentions are more than a little askew. Then you notice Matt Damon's helmet of hair, his pouf of a moustache, his corny sportswear and the paunch where the Bourne trilogy star's taut abs used to be. And once the strains of Marvin Hamlisch's jaunty score begin - an ideal accompaniment to the faded, '70s-style cinematography - you know you're in some vividly retro, comic parallel universe. The Informant! is about a serious, real-life subject - a whistle-blower who spied for the FBI to expose corporate corruption - only Soderbergh, directing a script by Scott Z. Burns, approaches it in the goofiest way, rather than as a serious drama like The Insider or even his own Erin Brockovich. It's a kick, really, but it also keeps you guessing: Is Damon, as Mark Whitacre, just a regular guy who gets in over his head? Is he far more scheming and malevolent than his folksy Midwestern demeanour would suggest? Or is something else entirely going on here? HHH out of four. Rated 14 A.
* Whiteout - The only U.S. marshal in Antarctica Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) races to solve a murder before the long winter strands her there with the killer. H out of four. Rated 14A.
- with files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press
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