Love the Coopers

For F*** Magazine

LOVE THE COOPERS

Director : Jessie Nelson
Cast : Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Diane Keaton, Amanda Seyfried, Ed Helms, Anthony Mackie, June Squibb, Marisa Tomei, Olivia Wilde, Jake Lacy, Steve Martin
Genre : Comedy
Run Time : 107 mins
Opens : 10 December 2015
Rating : PG13 (Some Sexual References)

Family reunions are often where grinning and bearing it is the order of the day. This Christmas comedy-drama follows four generations of the Cooper clan as they reunite to celebrate Christmas as one big, not-so-happy family. Sam (Goodman) and Charlotte (Keaton) have been married for 40 years but on the brink of calling it quits, both reluctantly agreeing to put on a brave front for everyone coming over. Their son Hank (Helms) is recently divorced from Angie (Borstein) and is looking for a job, having to provide for his kids Charlie (Timothée Chalamet), Madison (Blake Baumgartner) and Bo (Maxwell Simkins). Hank’s sister Eleanor (Wilde), a struggling playwright, meets military man Joe (Lacy) at an airport bar and they kind of hit it off. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s sister Emma (Tomei) gets arrested for shoplifting by Officer Percy Williams (Mackie). Grandpa Bucky (Arkin) befriends diner waitress Ruby (Seyfried). Christmas dinner doesn’t go according to plan as a series of events unfolds, events that could drive the family further apart or bring them together in the spirit of the holiday.

            Every Chinese New Year, we get star-studded comedies like All’s Well that Ends Well, with posters that have Andy Lau, Chow Yun Fatt, Cecilia Cheung or Carina Lau grinning and holding their chopsticks up in the air. Well, Hollywood has movies like Love the Coopers. This is the kind of film which one can bring grandpa and grandma to during the holidays and it’s meant to please everyone, naturally pleasing nobody in the process. The goings-on are at once mundane and over the top, with the Coopers depicted as dysfunctional in a relatively pedestrian manner. Before everyone gets together a little after the halfway mark, the film flits from character to character, stringing the vignettes together. Every line of screenwriter Steven Rogers’ dialogue sounds like stock romantic comedy-drama drivel and it’s altogether very cloying and syrupy. There are attempts to temper this with some cynicism, but it seems like Rogers and director Jessie Nelson are constantly asking themselves “we can be a little bitter here without alienating all the grandparents, right?”

            We’re going to dust off that old chestnut one hears whenever there’s a movie that entirely wastes the collective talents of its cast: “imagine what Robert Altman could do with these actors.” Indeed, the collective wattage of the star power could eclipse even the Star of Bethlehem itself. Love the Coopers manages to be tolerable in the slightest because many of the actors are innately watchable, Goodman in particular. While he and Keaton are believable as a squabbling elderly married couple, the material is still very rote. At one point, Sam even asks Charlotte “what happened to us?” Excuse us if we can’t gather up the sympathy. There are flashbacks to every single character when they were kids and it feels more like a cheap heartstring pull than a worthwhile storytelling device.

Wilde and Lacy have decent chemistry and there is a degree of development to their relationship, even though it is heavy on the “oh, he’s a Republican and she’s a Democrat!” jokes. Tomei is shrill and casting the usually-engaging Mackie as a stoic police officer and the token black guy is a crying shame. Arkin mopes about and looks sad a bunch with Seyfried playing opposite him as the diner waitress anyone would have a crush on. There are hints of romance in their interaction, which given the 52 year age difference, is creepy in spite of both actors’ best efforts. Helms is pretty much a non-entity and Squibb is the doddering senile aunt whose dementia is played for laughs. While nobody is sleepwalking through the movie per se, it’s obvious that Love the Coopers demands precious little from its cast, literally half of whom have won or been nominated for Oscars.

While Love the Coopers isn’t an insufferable gag-heavy Christmas comedy in the Deck the Halls mould, it still provides plenty of cringe-worthy moments. All of this is tied together by painfully on-the-nose narration by Steve Martin, with an end reveal as to the mystery narrator’s true identity that is worthy of an almighty eye-roll. This isn’t one of those films that’s joy and cheer from start to finish and it does take stabs at drama, albeit very ham-fisted ones. Make no mistake, with the fluffy St. Bernard and the adorable moppet granddaughter, this is still engineered for maximum “aww” factor and that’s going to make a significant portion of the audience throw up in their mouths a little. It’s not even cheesy and corny in an endearing, old-fashioned manner. Love the Coopers oozes insincerity and sitting through it ends up being quite like being forced to spend the holidays with relatives you’re not entirely fond of.

Summary: A monumentally talented cast by any standards is entirely squandered in this schmaltzy holiday flick which repeatedly attempts to trick us into thinking it’s making wise observations about family.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

For F*** Magazine

THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE

Director: Don Scardino
Cast: Steve Carell, Olivia Wilde, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey
Genre: Comedy
Run Time: 100 mins
Opens: 14 March 2013
Rating: PG13 (Some Drug References and Coarse Language)

There is much drama to be mined from the world of magic. There’s a sort of romanticism, danger and mystique associated with the heyday of such performers as Houdini, a world where reality and make-believe dangerously collide, a world where smoke can suffocate and mirrors can shatter…but let’s face it, there’s just as much, if not even more, comedy in there too.

Las Vegas stage magicians have long been associated with cheesy theatrics, ridiculous costumes, unruly big cats and even unrulier bad hair. Burt Wonderstone (Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Buscemi) are a pair of magicians in that grand tradition, best friends since their mutual love of magic brought them together as kids. However, a tiresome routine, waning ticket sales and Wonderstone’s increasing self-absorption put a strain on their working and personal relationship.



On top of that, new magic sensation Steve Gray (Carrey), a self-styled street illusionist renowned for his wince-inducing, “extreme” stunts, has poised himself as competition for a residence at a new hotel. After falling out of a glass box and from grace, Burt is forced to eat his humble pie working in a retirement community, where he meets his idol Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin), a curmudgeon whose magician days are far behind him. However, perhaps there’s a spark to ignite yet, as Wonderstone strives to recapture his glory days and win the affection of Jane (Wilde), a beautiful assistant and aspiring magician he once spurned.

We’ll come right out and say it – The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is pretty much formula from start to finish. There’s the hero whose early success has gotten to his head and who has lost his drive, the loyal best friend whom he abandons, the ageing mentor whose wisdom has yet to run out, the despicable professional rival, and of course the girl who motivates him to get his groove back.



We’ve seen it hundreds and hundreds of times and yet, the film is somehow able to rise just above the clichés from which it is constructed. There isn’t very much to the characters beyond Burt’s requisite “hero’s journey”, and many of them are not very much more than one-note caricatures – the hotel/casino tycoon played by James Gandolfini is actually named “Munny”!  Still, the cast musters enough charm to get us to actually enjoy this familiar ride.

Decked out in low-cut, bejewelled jumpsuits and sporting the most vivid spray tan this side of the Jersey Shore, Carell is, as usual, just very fun to watch. However, it is a little more difficult to buy him as the sort of guy who’d actually have groupies. The film also showcases Steve Buscemi at his least creepy and most sympathetic, and he and Carell do make a decent team. As the subversive, manic illusionist who relies more on gross-out, shocking feats than actual magic, Jim Carrey is clearly having the time of his life, and it is the craziest he’s been in a movie in a while. Olivia Wilde and Alan Arkin don’t do all that much in their supporting roles, but Wilde’s lower-key performance is a good counterpoint to the broad comedy and Arkin being the actor that he is, is effortlessly hilarious and threatens to steal the show each time he appears.



As a satire of the Las Vegas stage magic scene, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is not particularly insightful or biting, and its parody of street magicians who trade on shock factor is around ten years too late. However, there are a good number of laughs to be had and some pretty inspired gags. For example, Steve Gray’s show is named “Brain Rapist”, a side-splitting riff on “Mindfreak”, and magician David Copperfield’s cameo as himself is something of a treat. The closest the film gets to being offensive is a vignette in which Anton Marvelton visits a poor village in Cambodia, only to find that the villagers aren’t interested in magic kits and are much more in need of food and clean water – but that bit is indeed funny.

The movie’s high-energy first half is certainly its better one, and the climactic trick is both ethically and logistically dubious – but director Don Scardino ultimately succeeds in serving up silly, old-fashioned fun. Sure, the story mechanics are well-worn, but if done proficiently enough, there’s still magic to be found in even the oldest of tricks.

SUMMARY: More like a card trick than making the Statue of Liberty vanish, but it coasts by with the help of a game, charming cast and a healthy number of laugh-inducing moments.

RATING: 3 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Argo

As published in Issue #34 of F*** Magazine, Singapore

ARGO

Director: Ben Affleck
Cast:  Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Run Time: 120 mins
Opens: 13 November 2012
Rating: PG13 – Coarse Language

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently released his autobiography, entitled ‘Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story’. Well Arnie, it seems you have some serious competition in that department; because Argo is as unbelievable as true stories come. Ben Affleck’s historical political thriller recounts the U.S.-Canadian joint covert rescue operation nicknamed ‘The Canadian Caper’, drawing on declassified documents and personal accounts, laying it all out in incredible fashion.

It is 1979, and Iranian militants have stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. Six others manage to escape and seek refuge at the residence of the kindly Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). The CIA calls upon exfiltration and disguise expert Tony Mendez (Affleck), working with his boss Jack O’Donnell (Cranston) to devise a plan to rescue the six consulate workers. When his son watches Battle for the Planet of the Apes on TV, Mendez is inspired and hatches a crazy plan: he will enter Iran under the pretence of doing location scouting for a science-fiction fantasy film. With the help of Oscar-winning make-up artist John Chambers (Goodman) and Hollywood film producer Lester Siegel (Arkin), Mendez concocts the sham-movie Argo, and thus begins the harrowing mission to smuggle the six Americans out of Iran, having them pose as a Canadian film crew.



Producers George Clooney, David Klawans and Grant Heslov read an article in Wired magazine about the ‘Canadian Caper’ and thought it would make for a great movie. Guess what: they were absolutely right. Ben Affleck delivers a crackling thriller which hits all the right notes: it feels thoroughly authentic with meticulous details ensuring the audience is convinced of the '70s period setting; it’s taut and exciting with the very high stakes feeling very real and it’s leavened with a good helping of humour revolving around the fickle Hollywood machine.

When the trailer was released, some concerns arose that the tone of the film would be uneven, lurching from serious political drama to light-hearted movie business satire. Well, you can rest assured that director Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio have managed to weave both elements of the story together and very cleverly presented an interesting juxtaposition. In the film and, presumably, in real life too, nobody seemed convinced for a second that the idea would work, and just as Mendez had to sell the CIA on it, so Affleck has to sell the idea to the film-going public – and that, he does. Goodman and Arkin are welcome presences, their affability providing much-needed respite from the intense goings-on in Iran. Hollywood is presented as a place where nothing is meant to be taken seriously, vis-à-vis Washington D.C. and Langley Virginia, where everything is meant to be taken seriously, and we get to see just how much trouble Tony Mendez had to go to in order to assemble ‘The Hollywood Option’, and in how short an amount of time he had as well.



Ben Affleck seems to have regained all the credibility he lost following the likes of Gigli and Daredevil with his directing stints in recent years, and this film most definitely continues that winning streak. He presides over the picture with a sure hand, expertly ratcheting up the tension (though he sometimes appears overly dependent on 360 degree camera moves) and giving the film something of a retro feel (notice the old-school Warner Bros. logo at the beginning) without going overboard. The climactic airport tarmac pursuit is a bona fide edge-of-your-seat moment. He’s not too shabby in front of the camera either, putting in a low-key performance while conveying the quiet valour and determination of the Mendez character very well.

During the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, there were some murmurs from the Canadian crowd that the film unfairly overlooked the involvement of the Canadian government in the rescue operation – it’s called the ‘Canadian Caper’ after all. Ben Affleck agreed to augment the postscript text, noting that the CIA’s actions were performed in conjunction with Canadian intelligence. This reviewer can’t vouch for the veracity of the film’s portrayal of historical events, but he can say this: it really doesn’t feel like your average overly-embellished ‘loosely based on a true story’ Hollywood deal, and that’s something to be admired. Argo is an expertly-crafted tribute to the power of ingenuity, bravery and co-operation (cheesy though that may sound) and makes for engrossing, compelling and powerful entertainment.

SUMMARY: Ben Affleck has a monumental success on his hands with this intriguing, exciting and smart historical political thriller. Go see Argo now!

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong