Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here, with reviews of two very stupid movies, and not stupid in a good way. Read on and consider yourselves warned.

The Quiet

The film begins when the recently orphaned Dot (the stunning Camilla Belle, she of the bee-stung lips) comes to live with her adoptive godparents (Martin Donovan and Edie Falco). Their real daughter, Nina (Cuthbert), is an extremely popular high school girl who wants no part of Dot or the embarrassment of having a deaf sister. But slowly, all three family members begin to confide their most awful secrets to Dot, thinking she either can’t hear them or would never repeat them (she also seems to be mute). Among these family issues are Falco’s substance abuse and the more troubling incestuous affair between Nina and her father, a relationship that seems very much mutual (he digs the cheerleader outfit as much as I do, by the way).

Even some of Nina’s friends start to trust Dot with their innermost thoughts, a development that drives Nina crazy. Chief among the high school crowd is Connor, played by X-Men’s Iceman Shawn Ashmore, who starts to fall for Dot and reveals maybe a little too much about his sexual proclivities. So, let me ask you wise and intelligent people out there a question: what do you think Dot’s big secret is? What oh-so-cleverly-held bit of information do we find out about Dot that threatens to blow the roof off the lives of every person in her adopted family’s circle? Do I even have to fucking ask? The Quiet is a stupid movie, a fact made all the more frustrating by the presence of some exceptional cast members, like Falco and Donovan. The film manufactures drama where there isn’t any, and wants us to pretend like everybody’s secrets are so elusive and deep when, in fact, they are laughably obvious and shallow. The entire film is about as subtle as rockslide.

I most resent The Quiet because it made me so frustrated and angry at its trivial nature that my deep and meaningful love for Elisha Cuthbert was tempered by her simply appearing in this film. How could you betray me, Elisha? How? About the only place the film doesn’t let you down is with her wardrobe choices. Everything else about The Quiet is worse than pointless.

Surviving Eden

Here’s another stupid-ass movie, but this one is a comedy and doesn’t feature incest. Sorry. I was prepared to begin this review with an proclamation that only Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, Best in Show) should be allowed to use the mockumentary style of filmmaking from now on. However, I just recently saw a British comedy called Confetti (which I’ll review in a couple weeks) that makes no bones about copping Guest’s technique, but does so lovingly and with sidesplitting results. So, my revised request is that only Guest and some British filmmakers should make mockumentaries from this day forward, because when less talented, less funny, and less capable people make them, you get Surviving Eden, a pot shot (and not exactly a timely one at that) at reality television.

More specifically, director Greg Pritikin (who made the curious but highly watchable offering Dummy in 2002) takes a look at reality show stars and how they let fame go to their head without really having earned the right to be famous or respected. Pritikin (who shares a writing credit with Joanne Storkan) sees these reality stars as the human equivalent of novelty records, who are wildly popular for a couple of months and then people simply move on. On this point, he is correct (with the exception of Kelly Clarkson, I suppose).

Michael Panes plays Dennis Flotchky, a pathetic and overweight (because fat equal loser, right?) man who auditions and wins a spot on a “Survivor”-like show called “Surviving Eden.” Other contestants include Cheri Oteri’s Maria and Savannah Haske as the hot nun, Sister Agnes, who seems to have a great deal of affection for Dennis even before he ends up winning the contest and $1 million. But Maria has different plans for Dennis, and claims that off-camera during the shoot he knocked her up. The two become inseparable, not surprisingly, Dennis goes through a major personality change once he becomes rich and famous. His most obvious transformation is that he loses all of his loser weight. Beyond that, he also abandons his stoner best friend Sterno (Peter Dinklage, having a busy week between this and Lassie).

As if to drive home the Christopher Guest thievery, Jane Lynch co-stars as one of “Surviving Eden’s” producers (along with Sam Robards). Lynch is a solid talent, as can be clearly seen in the Guest films as well as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Talladega Nights, so what the hell is she doing in this film? She’s so much better at the comedy improv thing than anybody else in the movie that she should have her name above the title and her photo front and center on the poster. Surviving Eden squanders the talent it somehow convinced to be in this crummy piece of shit (such as Lynch, Dinklage, and Haske), while unnecessarily throwing the spotlight on Panes and Oteri, who simply aren’t that funny in this film.

What Pritikin and company fail to understand is that Guest’s films are funny because there is more than a little truth to the characters. The wacky bunch in Surviving Eden seem like caricatures, like retarded exaggerations. These people are clearly acting like fools, thinking it will make us laugh. They are grossly mistaken. I honestly don’t remember even slightly chuckling a single time during this film. Coma patients are funnier than Surviving Eden.

Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com