Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. I have a friend who was so jazzed up about seeing SUNSHINE that he proposed a roadtrip into Mexico, where it just opened last weekend. I’m interested in Danny Boyle’s new film, but I don’t really want to brave kidnapping and dysentery to see it, so I had to say no. In the meantime, one of our Mexican readers sent us a pair of reviews for two other films that already opened there but that won’t be out here in the US for a while. He set aside his paint brushes and his storytelling just long enough to put together this double-feature review:
Hi, guys. Down here, south of the border, I just caught a couple of movies that have not yet been properly released on the states so I thought I’d give you a ridiculously early peek at Rowan Atkinson's new Mr. Bean movie (the American release is scheduled for August 31st) and Aragorn's Spanish epic Alatriste. There are quite a few spoilers scattered throughout but I really doubt this is the kind of material to ejaculate over one way or another. I think I got a little carried away so feel free to chop down at will and use whatever you may find of use. First out, Mr.Bean's Holiday, Atkinson's second theatrical outing with the title character of his hit English TV show. If you missed the first one (lucky you) and you've never seen any of the telly skits then simply picture a sort of physical stand-up, substituting the usual "ever notice how you always realize there's no toilet tissue paper left until after you take the crap?" question with actually showing you the guy wiping the shit off his ass with his bare hands. The material, of course, is never that entertaining (at least not in any of the gags I've ever seen) but the show is pretty watchable, especially because any given sketch lasts no more than five or six minutes, enough to get the point across while still allowing you to use the bathroom whenever needed without any fear of missing out on something. Translating the concept into feature-length material was risky and the movie tells you why. It doesn't work at all -to put it euphemistically - but, oddly enough, it isn't because of any staunch adherence to the source material. Quite the opposite. If the oncoming Simpsons Movie turns out to play like three good episodes glued together, similarly, the Mr. Bean movie I was kinda expecting (if not hoping for) would have been like 20 vignettes in a row. The filmakers, though, clearly tried to turn the show into a real movie, which was flat-out ludicrous, tantamount to writing a genuine screenplay for Stacy Valentine's Sleazy McGuire. So, instead of getting one single, bona-fide Bean routine, we are given about 10 half-assed ones, too preoccupied with making sense and shaping up into a larger, cogent story. This concerns, by the way (I even feel embarrassed discussing a "plot" here), Mr. Bean winning a trip to France and how he becomes involved with a lost boy he decides to help join his father, a jury member in the Cannes Film Festival. One after another the attempts at playing to the core audience fail: there is a crab and oysters meal skit, dependant entirely on our finding Atkinson's mugging endearing (or not annoying enough); a classic bit, as he asks the boy's father to tape him as he hops on the train, is way too brief and completely humorless; some mimicking harassment when he and the kid sit on a bench has been done (and way funnier) a million different times before; a long, dumb sequence as he chases after a bus ticket that sticks onto a chicken's leg; a serendipitous landing in the middle of a commercial filming where he gets a gig as an extra. Those do not constitute the worst problem. That comes with all the gaps in between them. Are these guys expecting us, for real, to actually demand scenes showing us the kid's dad looking all worried, frowning like his dick is itching all over? Are we expected, in a movie like this, to experience anything other than lax, mindless laughter? The screenplay was written (the credits assert it was, indeed, written) partly by Robin Driscoll, one of the show's veteran masterminds but here apparently a rookie who never worked with the character before. The essential charm of Bean's brand of humor resided in its everyday nature, the possibility of encountering ourselves in any such conundrum, and Bean, as off-kilter and eccentric (or plain weird if you will) as he might have been, played the everyman in all of us. Here, they wrote him neither as a simpleton nor a childish coot but as a full-blown retarded, with a short-fused, disconnected brain on top yet of his questionably cute trademark mumbling. The biggest shock of all comes from watching Willem Dafoe (yes:Last temptation of Christ's Willem Dafoe; Mississippi Burning's Willem Dafoe;Shadow of the Vampire's Willem Dafoe's; Speed 2's Willem Dafoe) embarrassing himself by playing an egotistical director/movie star repeatedly haunted by Bean. Seemingly he decided playing a silent movie villain in Jan de Bont's aquatic legacy didn't do whatever penance he is still carrying on his shoulders. Hopefully he got paid in euros. The movie, inexplicably, ends with all the cast gathered in the Cannes beach, singing straight into the camera "Beyond the Sea". By then, anyway, he could have turned (by some magical topsy-turvy) into the newly ordained priest in Four Weddings and a Funeral and it still wouldn't have made one damn of a difference. I'll still watch the show if I ever stumble upon it, especially if they ever have him trying to put on a condom before the hooker's time is up or unable to find a bathroom and forced to urinate in some baby's bottle, but I'd rather going to Johnny English 2 before watching Part 3 and that, I think, should sum up what this made for me. On the other hand we've got Alatriste, the latest from Viggo Mortensen, who plays the title character in this adaptation of El Capitan Alatriste,a bestselling novel by Arturo Perez- Reverte, big shot spanish writer.This played the Miami International Film Festival in early March but I dont think it's been widely released yet. The movie is supposed to be a 17-century spanish adventure epic-at least thats what the filmakers wanted me to expect as I entered the theater. The trailer for this essentially tried to sell The Further Adventures of Aragorn, with a quick-cut succession of swashbuckling action shots that prominently featured Mortensen's widely known face which, it turns out, was the sensible thing to do since he clearly is the selling point here. The real thing, though, lands far away from that illusion. The screenplay feels as if written in a feverish frenzy by an intelligent but helplessly nerdy nebbish kid upon discovering some 10-Volume Iberian History thesis deep inside an uncle's attic; a fascination with details pervades the proceedings and the stories being told feel like an excuse to frame the thorough research rather than the other way around. The expected cliches abound (rowdy comrades-at-arms, a rival mercenary waiting to settle old scores; only the indispensable gold-hearted courtesan is substituted by a coveted actress, as slutty as she can be) but they show up anemically, further proving there was no interest whatsoever in either deconstructing or paying homage to the genre, the movie's own sense of adventure (if existent at all) obnubilated by all the historical data it so eagerly wants to share. The movie is a big tease, once and again: it starts in 1620's war-torn Flandes, a place (we are told repeatedly) way worse than Sunnydale's Hellmouth, Elm Street and South Central all combined. That initial scene -an attack led by Alatriste against an enemy camp by the side of a mist-covered swamp- is competent enough,although the action is strictly run of the mill, strangely static for all the fas-paced editing. It is a teaser that keeps your hopes high, though, making you expect a good war yarn. No such luck. The scene ends with a fellow soldier dying in his arms, whispering the obligatory last words- "My son...¡"- and the next second we are in the peaceful, sunny spanish mainland, the dark-blue damp battlefield left behind. Iñigo, the fallen man's kid, has been taken in by the captain but once again, rather than going for a good pulp tale following a tough-as-nails hero and his young, loyal sidekick, the movie simply drifts away, aimlessly. Alatriste, a goon-for-hire while off-duty takes a job to kill a couple of men coming into town; after a way-too-brief, uninspired swordfight, hechanges his mind for some reason and lets them go. It is then revealed that these guys were secret emissaries from England and yet, one last time, this opened the window of opportunity for a nice, nifty Name of the Rose-like mystery, full with court intrigues and conspiracies. But then he is sent back to the front which was when it finally dawned on me, the dreadful truth: this was going to be nothing but an endless string of meaningless set-ups, none of them leading anywhere. And so it was. From then on, we are offered all sorts of beginnings for all sorts of different stories: back in Flandes ("It is Hell", he reinforces at some point but we can never see by ourselves why is that so); back in idyllic turf, fucking an old married flame; hired as a mercenary to assault a ship loaded with bullion; clashing with Iñigo, the son he never had. There is also, playing alongside Alatriste's episodes, the saga of young Iñigo falling in love and slowly turning from naive, cute schollboy into a tough, manly Alatriste clone, but this can not even qualify as a subplot since there is no plot to talk about in the first place- merely more drivel yet (at least his chick shows her tits but, boy, she is genuinely the flattest tomboy beanpole on the planet). It is all a big tease, allright, in every aspect. Every time there is some action setpiece supposedly coming everyone simply stares menacingly, exchanges a few sword-thrusts (if any at all), and then leaves, promising to settle things on a better occasion that stubbornly refuses to arrive. The longest fight sequence shows the aforementioned assault on the ship with the gold cargo: lots of extras prancing around on a magically steady deck, surrounded by fog so thick you cant make out the soundstage they are filming in, let alone the wide ocean stretching out all around them we are asked to imagine. It is shot so awfully that it should have been funny but it is not- it doesnt even accomplish being good-bad. And then, when the duel against his long-time nemesis they have been promising since the very start finally comes, Alatriste loses in seconds¡ That marked as well the first of several false endings: he exhales exhaustedly in the arms of the love of his life and lies still. Iñigo exacts his revenge, picking up the legacy of his mentor and setting up (please, no) the sequel. Alatriste is alive after all¡ He offers one final declaration of love to his now syphilitic and abandoned older flame. When it finally decides to call it quits, we are in a battlefield in the 1640's, about twenty years after this torment began, Alatriste's face completely unchanged, his inner persona just as obscure. The final shot shows him and his decimated platoon facing the oncoming camera and standing their ground, waiting their demise at the hands of the overpowering enemy. Iñigo tells us in solemn voice-over he was not the kindest or most honest man he'd met (or something to that effect) but how he was brave. And fucking unbelievably boring he should have added. Then our hero goes all Butch Cassidy, screaming defiantly and launching himself forward, the frame freezes, and the nightmare is over. The movie is echnically proficient, with crisp cinematography and sharp sound on a par with any average Hollywood product but other than that I cant find anything going for it. It aims for the intimate storytelling within a lage canvas approach that many greater movies have masterfully accomplished but all talents involved are simply way over their heads; the pace goes well past leisurely- it is narcotic, deadly, and the 2 hour, 7 minute running time feels at the very least one hour longer. All throughout we are treated to wink-wink Forrest Gumpish cameos from standout history players- Francisco de Quevedo, Velazquez, a live-action recreation of the "Breda Surrender" painting- that you will immediately recognise if you are the kind of person who can actually finish a New York Times crossword puzzle (or a sixth-grade spanish kid who did pay attention in class). But even if you are only a cultured enough person, the references result not in a reaction of awe or a self-pleased smile but only a blank stare as you take in one more factoid yet in a pot already brimming over with them. Wisely (as wisely as people who churn out such utter shit are prone to act) the director mostly busies himself the most at presenting us with everpresent, long shots of Mortensen in the hopes (I assume) of bringing home memories from at least shorter -if not better- Hollywood movies, particularly- without doubts- Lord of the Rings. He is Aragorn himself after all and, except for the hat he wears here (sort of like the kind Quakers wear only with a grotesquely larger round crown; it may have been all the rage in 17-century's heroic fashion but now it seems more fit for a hick in a Mark Twain story or as a Beverly Hillbillies prop) his roughly chiseled matinee-idol looks and long, crusty mane along with the dust-covered leather he wears at all times wrap you up with an unavoidable Deja vu feeling. He was the hook and, probably, the reason this whole enterprise was greenlit and given the money to be so lavishly sprawling (read pretentious) as it is, even though his sole paycheck very likely wolfed down a rather large chunk (if not most) of the total budget. He seems concerned with earning it, too, delivering his lines with conviction in completely clear spanish, his anonymous accent setting him apart from everyone else in the cast, commendably professional and devoid of the aloofness expected from someone moving outside the big leagues he is so used to by now. In the end, as the credits roll, you almost expect reading "A Time-Life Production" or something, since more than a movie this felt like one of those preaching, awareness-raising labors of love financed by foundations, or academic institutions, or Rev. Billy Joe Wilson and the faithful parishioners of St. Abraham's Church in Barton, Ala. Alatriste doesnt preach (although I found myself praying for it to finally end) and it didnt make me aware of anything other than my numb butt but it does seem to try to teach you and, one way or another, that sure as hell is not entertainment. Still, if you got your kicks out of hearing all those scenes with Liv Tyler talking gibberish in LOTR, maybe you'll dig him doing it here too. I'd like to think I spent my money to watch these two so you won't have to. From south of the border, where you can drink margaritas and court señoritas, I am Henry Darger. Well, not really.
