Hey folks, Harry here with the latest from Capone, the infamous slacker that let Cuaron and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban slip through his vaunted grip... Who failed MISERABLY to attend that screening! Who... who... argh... Anyway, he attempts to make it up with reviews of JERSEY GIRL, STARSKY & HUTCH and GREENDALE... We're not letting him off are we?
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here, still trying to figure out just how the hell I didn't get word of the HARRY POTTER screening a couple weekends ago. Asses need to be soundly whomped for that infraction. I figured the only way to console myself was to spend a little time with Kevin Smith and his latest work, JERSEY GIRL The funny thing about the Kevin Smith Q&A that followed this screening was that audience members wanted to know more about what he's up to in the coming years or when he's going to do something new with Jay and Silent Bob. Questions about the film we'd just watched were few and far between. It's a shame too, because I found it sweet and charming while still maintaining Smith's legendary irreverence, even in a PG-13 framework.
JERSEY GIRL has been reviewed to death on this site, so I won't dwell on recapping the plot. I did manage to ask Kevin about scenes he'd cut from the film, and all of the ones he mentioned featured Jennifer Lopez. Based on past accounts of early test screenings of JERSEY GIRL, the reports of the excised wedding sequence, and a clip I heard him play on Howard Stern's show last year, I'm starting to understand just how truncated the section of the film featuring Lopez really is. What did make it in the film is nice. Previous accounts said these scenes were the worst part of the film, and in early edits, this may have been true. It's not anymore. Get over it. Lopez looks beautiful, her performance is on par with everyone else's, particularly in the sequence where she meets Ben Affleck's father, played with more heart than I would have ever thought possible by George Carlin. And even though she's only in the film briefly, when she dies in childbirth (this is officially not a spoiler anymore, yes?), people in my audience cried right along with Ben.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The film is set in mid-1990s Manhattan, and Affleck plays entertainment p.r. whiz kid Ollie Trinke, who meets a lovely woman named Gertrude (Lopez), falls in love, and gets married. Gert dies giving birth to a baby girl. Ollie to completely unprepared to raise a child on his own, so he moves in with his father Bart (Carlin) in New Jersey. Buckling under the pressure of child-rearing and his job, Ollie loses his cool in room full of reporters waiting for the arrival of a major music star who is just getting his acting career off the ground. The star is late, the reporters are chanting, and Ollie insults them as they richly deserve, leaving Ollie without a job. Jump ahead seven years. Ollie works with his dad for the Streets and Sanitation Department of their town. Young Gertie (named after her mother and played by newcomer Raquel Castro) is a bright, sweet girl who stuns you for a second with her resemblance to Ms. Lopez. And the two are still living with Bart in Jersey.
Enter Maya (Liv Tyler in her absolute best performance ever; she's never been this charming), a video store clerk with whom Ollie attempts at getting his love life kick-started again. The rest of the film is comprised of two types of scenes. Ollie trying desperately to get p.r. work again in New York and he and Maya making awkward stabs at being a couple. Gertie likes her, dad likes her, and Ollie is still madly in love with his late wife that a new relationship seems doomed to fail. Their first conversation in the video store when Ben is clandestinely trying to rent porn while his daughter is searching for a "family" film is a scream, only to be topped by Maya's interviewing of Ollie for her thesis on human pornographic consumption. Great moments like these fill JERSEY GIRL, Kevin Smith's first film set completely outside the world of Jay and Silent Bob (which is not to say you won't encounter a few familiar faces from the Askew-niverse). I especially liked Ollie attempts at getting his daughter to fall in love with New York City by taking her to any Broadway play of her choice (except "Cats"); she picks "Sweeney Todd."
Let me explain JERSEY GIRL's appeal this way. You know how SCHOOL OF ROCK on paper sounded like a disaster waiting to happen to all fans of Jack Black. Come on! Black surrounded by children in a PG-13 film? Who wants that shit? No one was more shocked at how great that film was than I. JERSEY GIRL isn't quite that good, but it's damn close. I realize that on paper the idea of Kevin Smith doing a "family film" doesn't sit well with many devoted fans of his. But Smith's script shows remarkable maturity between the edgy jokes. And while I still crack up when I see Affleck crying like a little girl (as he does a couple times here), he also gets to rage a little in JERSEY GIRL and is thoroughly convincing, particularly in a scene where he yells at Gertie for ruining his life. Perhaps now is as good a time as any to put aside the Bennifer jokes that were never funny, forget the broken relationship, admit that GIGLI was not the worst movie of 2003, and accept JERSEY GIRL for exactly what it is: a fantastic story of loss, family, new love, and sacrifice that should probably perform very well with critics and audiences if they'd just leave the baggage in the crapper where it belongs. JERSEY GIRL is set to open March 19.
As for the Kevin's decidedly R-rated Q&A, he talked briefly about GREEN HORNET, which he says he hasn't started casting yet, but I don't believe him. He says that after that he's committed to diving into FLETCH WON. In terms of DVD-only releases, he says he's preparing to film additional college campus visits for AN EVENING WITH KEVIN SMITH, VOL. 2; he's animating one of the "Jay and Silent Bob" comic book stories for a 10th Anniversary CLERKS DVD release. And he's planning to do an animated CLERKS film per year for direct-to-DVD release. He also said that he wouldn't do another Jay and Silent Bob feature unless Jason Mewes stayed clean and sober.
STARSKY & HUTCH
I hope that Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson stay friends forever. I hope that Will Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Snoop Dogg, and some member of the Wilson family are contractually obliged to be in every film that Todd Phillips (OLD SCHOOL) does from now until the end of time. If these two things are true, then I know my comedic cinema needs will be taken care of forever. STARSKY & HUTCH is the amalgam of so many good things. Based on a mid-'70s television show that whose fashion sense alone is ripe for parody, starring two comedic actors who know their way around each other so well that chemistry is a given, and directed by a man who made the funniest film of 2003, STARSKY & HUTCH is a giggle-fest of the highest order. Stiller and Wilson play the titular roles made infamous by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, and they do so without insulting the faux machismo that made the T.V. show so great. In a way this film acts as a prologue to the series as it shows us the origin of their pairing up. Wilson's laid-back Ken Hutchinson is a dirty cop who regularly robs bookies, keeps the money, and claims it was all done in the name of undercover work. Stiller's David Starsky is the by-the-books guy prone to huge lapses in judgement when chasing down criminals. The frustrated Capt. Doby (Fred "The Hammer" Williamson) sees the two as each others last chance at staying on the force, and he puts them in charge of a floater found in the San Francisco Bay.
The film's villain is Jewish drug dealer and world-class philanderer Reese Feldman (Vaughn), who more often seen in the company of a girlfriend (often one named Kitty, played by Juliette Lewis) than his own wife. Feldman is importing a brand of cocaine (referred to as "new coke," which apparently tastes sweeter) that is undetectable by drug-sniffing dogs or crime labs. And the dead body in the bay was that of a man working for Feldman that was killed for losing a shipment of the stuff. As Starsky and Hutch get closer to tying the body to Feldman's operation, the threats to their lives becomes very real. Helping them build their case is club owner Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg), who has a couple of priceless sequences, including one very racially charged scene with Feldman on a golf course. Also on hand to help solve the case (sort of) are bouncy cheerleaders Staci and Holly (Carmen Electra and ROAD TRIP's Amy Smart), and Starsky's legendary red-and-white Ford Torino.
The drug-deal storyline doesn't really add up to anything, but it's just an excuse to exploit the '70s setting of the film. There's an unreal dance-off sequence with an accidentally coked-up Stiller that had me rolling. The scene where the cops are wiring Huggy Bear looks like that bought out a Radio Shack and taped it to his scrawny body. And Wilson's rendition of Soul's hit "Don't Give Up On Us Baby" almost brought a tear to my eye. The music selection is fantastic, the clothes are perfectly selected, and the acting is very funny without going overboard with the '70s cliches. I could sit here for an hour and recap my favorite lines and moments. Instead, I'll simply say see this magnificent piece of comedy filmmaking.
GREENDALE
I'm a mid-level Neil Young fan. I have a couple of what are considered his classic albums, but I don't keep up with what he's doing until it's actually done. For example, I was aware from reviews I'd read that he had a new album come out last summer that had a flowing storyline. The concerts he's been playing lately have featuring actors on stage, playing the characters from the Greendale album. And as intriguing as this concept-album approach was to me, I was never really inspired to buy or download the music or see him live. But shortly after Young recorded his album, he made a film to accompany the stories told on the record. This I would check out and I have. Billed as "A Neil Young Film" (though the film's credited director is one "Bernard Shakey," a well-established Young alias), GREENDALE the film opened my eyes to Young's vision, more of a musical short story than a concept album. Many of the album's lyrics feature the character's talking, and visually this is done by actually having the actors lip-sync the dialogue parts of the lyrics. The soundtrack for the film (not surprisingly) is the Greendale album in its entirety and nothing else. Young (who is also credited as director of photography) has been hit and miss with his concert films over the years, but GREENDALE is a piercing examination of both American and global life that is, at times, critical, nostalgic, and ultimately hopeful.
You probably won't recognize any of the actors in GREENDALE, but placing a cast of unknowns probably works to the film's advantage. The town is meant to stand as a miniature world in crisis. The film is as much a testament to making the world a better place as it is to human misery. Young tackles the intrusive media, small-town violence, corrupt business and politicians, and activism. It's clear that Young hopes that the future of the world rests in the hands of people like his character Sun Green, who by the film's end takes on an energy conglomerate and travels to Alaska to save the wilderness. Oh, and the music is rockin'. Young, the storyteller, is a healthy mix of cynicism, paranoia, passion, and idealism; and his film is sincere and many times beautiful (despite the grainy quality of the work). The film probably won't open wide, but if you're in a larger city, you may find it at one of your local arthouses. It's scheduled to open in Chicago on March 12 at the Landmark Century Center Theatres.
Capone
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