'Blind Side' focuses on the feel-good
Published Friday November 20th, 2009
Opening this week: Planet 51, The Blind Side and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, with a Saturday matinee of the Metropolitan Opera's Aida and a Sunday night showing of WWE: Survivor Series 2009.
* 2012 - It's the end of the world as we know it, by way of the P.T. Barnum of the apocalypse, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day). This epic adventure is about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and and offers the chance for heroic struggle to the survivors. With John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson. In the end it's just big, loud and dumb. H½ out of four. Rated PG.
* A Christmas Carol - Lionel Barrymore. Alastair Sim. Laurence Olivier. Albert Finney. George C. Scott. Bill Murray. Michael Caine. Mr. Magoo. Scrooge McDuck. Of the many to play Ebenezer Scrooge, Jim Carrey now adds his name, starring in Disney's new 3-D animation version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The appeal of the part is clear: You get villain and redemptive hero rolled into one, plus you spend most of the movie in your pyjamas. But the allure of Scrooge alone wasn't enough for Carrey. In this latest incarnation of Dickens' Christmas fable, Carrey plays not only the penny-pinching miser, young and old, but also the three ghosts that visit him: the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. On the whole, the film feels suffocated by its design, and the liveliness of Carrey and the rest of the cast (including Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Cary Elwes) struggles to shine through. HH out of four. Rated PG
* Paranormal Activity - The no-budget ghost story Paranormal Activity arrives 10 years after The Blair Witch Project, and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork. Like its predecessor, Paranormal Activity has been making waves through a viral marketing campaign that has been building positive buzz through early, sold-out college town screenings and Internet chatter. Paranormal Activity opens with a title card, thanking the families of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherstone as well as the San Diego Police Department, an immediate signal that the "found footage'' we're about to see won't have a happy outcome. Micah (Micah Sloat) has bought a video camera to document the "weird (stuff)'' that has been happening in the two-story San Diego home he shares with his girlfriend of three years, Katie (Katie Featherstone). Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads. HH out of four. Rated 14A.
* Pirate Radio - The Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix - these are the stars of Pirate Radio, and the well-chosen songs are the main thing keeping the film afloat. The movie's merry deejays, blasting illicit rock 'n' roll into stodgy mid-1960s Britain from a boat offshore, are mere roadies, bearing great songs in service of a sloppy story that has about as much to do with the spirit of rock as a Casey Kasem top-10 countdown.
The film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy and Rhys Ifans and Nick Frost as deejays and support personnel aboard Radio Rock, a tanker anchored in the North Sea broadcasting pop tunes around-the-clock, defying British government efforts to shut them down. The experiences and credos of these maritime rockers are about as inspiring as the pranks and prattlings of a third-rate college radio station. HH out of four.
* Planet 51 - This sci-fi family tale offers passable computer imagery but is an aborted liftoff when it comes to the lame story of a human astronaut among little green aliens who, for some uninspired reason, are living the serene Ozzie and Harriet life of 1950s America. Video-game veteran Jorge Blanco shifts to the big screen with an adventure as bland as the sitcommy decade that fostered it. Likewise, voice stars Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel and Justin Long seem to take their cue from the Ward Cleaver school of parental droning. Even vocal gymnast John Cleese sounds neutered as a partly mad alien scientist, while only Gary Oldman adds some bark as an alien general. Johnson provides vocals for the astronaut hero, who is befriended by a few young aliens while the rest of their planet wants to hunt him down as a monster. Though set on another world, the jokes are as derivative as they come, the filmmakers endlessly mining human pop culture in a vain search for laughs. H½ out of four. Rated PG.
* The Blind Side - This redemption-minded sports flick serves its inspiration straight-up with no twist. Writer-director John Lee Hancock wisely lets the true story of Michael Oher - the African-American teen who found a home and, eventually, football stardom, after being adopted by a wealthy Memphis family - speak for itself. That direct focus delivers a feel-good crowd-pleaser, but it also drains the film of the kind of subtle nuances that might have separated it from other Hollywood Hallmark-like efforts, including Hancock's own The Rookie. For everything he lacked in life (family, food, a place to sleep), Oher had been blessed with the rare blend of size, strength and quickness sought by football coaches for the valuable left tackle position. The Blind Side dutifully chronicles the transformation of Oher (played by newcomer Quinton Aaron with the proper less-is-more approach) from blank slate to a fully formed young man, emphasizing Leigh Ann (Sandra Bullock) at the expense of Sean (Tim McGraw). Bullock brings her trademarked spunkiness to the mother hen role, delivering an iron-willed woman who looks past appearances to do the right thing. Why did the Tuohys take in Oher? Without definitively answering that question, the film poses one of its own: Why don't more people follow their lead? HH½ out of four. Rated PG.
* The Twilight Saga: New Moon - As every Stephenie Meyer fan knows, this is the one where studly vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) dumps human girlfriend Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) for her own safety, and she turns to old chum Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) for solace, unaware that he's a werewolf, and therefore Edward's sworn enemy. Fans will turn out in blockbuster legions, but here are a few of the many things wrong with director Chris Weitz's adaptation: It's really two half moons, or two halves of a movie that don't quite fit. Mopey teenager Bella has all the lustre of, well, a mopey teenager. The real rivalry is whether werewolves or vampires can behave with greater preposterousness and pretension. Finally, "New Moon" is boring, eternally so. The soap-opera melodrama of Stewart, Pattinson and Lautner's performances provides some unintentional laughs. Yet Stewart is on screen almost all the time, and her Bella is just a drag to be around. With her flat speech and listless presence, it's unfathomable how two different sets of monsters could fixate so completely on her. H½ out of four. Rated PG.
- With files from The Canadian Press, the Washington Post, The Associated Press and the New York Times news service.
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