Finding Dory

For F*** Magazine

FINDING DORY

Director : Andrew Stanton
Cast : Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence, Ed O’Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Idris Elba, Dominic West
Genre : Animation
Run Time : 1 hr 40 mins
Opens : 16 June 2016
Rating : PG

Pixar beckons us back fathoms below in the sequel to Finding Nemo. In real life, it’s been 13 years since the first film, but our story picks up a year after the events of Finding Nemo. Dory (DeGeneres), the blue tang stricken with acute short-term memory loss, begins to have flashbacks to her childhood, hitherto entirely forgotten. Dory recalls her parents Charlie (Levy) and Jenny (Keaton), and sets out on a quest to track them down. Dory’s friends, the clownfish Marlin (Brooks) and his son Nemo (Rolence), accompany her from the Great Barrier Reef to the Marine Life Institute in California. There, they become acquainted with the cantankerous ‘septopus’ (he’s lost an arm) named Hank (O’Neill); Destiny (Olson), a near-sighted whale shark who was Dory’s childhood friend; Bailey (Burrell), a beluga whale with self-confidence issue, and the sea lions Fluke (Elba) and Rudder (West). While Marlin wants nothing more than to stay home, he has to brave the unexpected yet again so his friend can be reunited with her family.

Over the years, DeGeneres has relentlessly lobbied for a Finding Nemo sequel on her talk show. Not only has she gotten her wish, Dory has been bumped up to the main character. In addition to voice actors DeGeneres and Brooks, director Andrew Stanton has returned. Stanton also co-wrote the screenplay with Victoria Strouse, with Bob Peterson and Stanton receiving a “story by” credit. There was always the danger of this being a mere retread of the first film, now considered a classic of contemporary animation. While it does cover some of the same territory and doesn’t arrive at the same purity of emotion that Finding Nemo did, the sequel is still packed with heart and offers entertainment by the tank-full.

Sequels have a tendency to lose sight of what made the first film work in their pursuit of being “bigger and better”. Finding Dory is actually smaller in scope than the first film, with most of the action taking place within the Marine Life Institute, modelled on the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium. As we’ve come to expect from the studio, the animation is awe-inspiring and suffused with life, the environments spilling over with realistic detail. The animators have a lot of fun guiding Dory through the various mini-environments within the Marine Life Institute and the action sequences have a dynamic theme park ride feel about them.

Like its predecessor, it’s still a road movie: our heroes meet weird and wonderful personalities as they journey far from home in search of something, or someone. The story possesses a crucial forward momentum: there’s never a dull moment and the characters get from point A to point B in increasingly inventive ways. Not only is it fast-paced, it’s also frequently funny, with many jokes eliciting guffaws from this reviewer. A well-known actor who has appeared in a Pixar film before gets a riotous vocal cameo.

This reviewer was worried that Dory would be the latest victim of what we call “breakout character-itis”, wherein a supporting character becomes such a hit with audiences that their screen-time is massively increased in the sequel, sometimes to the film’s detriment. Dory’s appeal remains untarnished – much comedy is derived from the character’s ailment, but the film also recognises it as a source of profound tragedy, and this becomes the driving force in the plot. Dory’s back-story is established from the outset, and while it doesn’t quite tug on the heartstrings the way Nemo and Marlin’s bond did in the first one, there will still be no shortage of tears. Keaton and Levy bring understated warmth to the roles of Dory’s long-lost parents.

Marlin and Nemo receive just the right amount of character development: while they’ve both learned from their harrowing adventure, the essence of who they are remains unchanged. The pragmatism and impatience that Brooks brings to his performances ensure that Marlin remains an excellent example of the “comically serious” trope, while Rolence is as ideal a replacement for original Nemo voice actor Alexander Gould as any imaginable. Gould, now 22, has a vocal cameo.

O’Neill can play the curmudgeon in his sleep, and Hank is eminently endearing despite, or perhaps because of, his crankiness. Hank is the focus of many clever visual gags that make playful use of an octopus’ ability to contort itself and change its skin colour with the help of chromatophores to blend seamlessly into the background. Some of the other new characters, while often amusing, are not quite so memorable, and each of them have an obvious hook which seems like something a lesser animated film might fall back on. It’s always great to hear Elba’s distinct baritone, but he was better in Zootopia earlier this year.

Finding Dory isn’t as good as Finding Nemo, but considering the stratospheric watermark that film set, it’s to be expected. This film reunites us with the characters we love, just as we remember them, plunged into zany new scenarios. Pixar knows how to reel an audience in, and there’s so much here to hook on to. The short film preceding the feature, Piper, is an exercise in straightforward storytelling, starring a particularly adorable feathered hero and boasting some of the most sublime computer-generated animation this reviewer has ever seen. Oh, stick around for a post-credits stinger!

Summary: Seek and ye shall find all those Pixar hallmarks: beautiful animation, humour, moving sentiment and family-friendly thrills. It’s not as profound as some of the studio's other work, but it’s so entertaining that its shortcomings are easy to forgive.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

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 

Quoted!

Hooray! Best thing ever.

Morning Glory

As published in F*** Magazine Issue 14 (March 2011), pg. 101

MORNING GLORY

(2010 US Wide Release)

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson

Directed by: Roger Michell

Bad Robot Productions/Dist. Paramount Pictures.

            Here in Singapore, a large number of us start our day with Primetime Morning, a morning news and variety program on Channel News Asia. On the bus travelling to school, while the sky was still dark outside, I often wondered how these show anchors managed to look so awake and preppy at that ungodly hour, and what went into the production of such a show.

            Rachel McAdams plays Becky Fuller, a hardworking, bubbly and likeable producer of a morning show quite like Primetime Morning. She joins a struggling show called DayBreak, which faces stiff competition from NBC’s The Today Show and others like it. She is immediately pushed into the deep end of the pool, dealing with temperamental hosts, patently ridiculous and pointless stories and segments, flagging ratings and the feeling that her dedication to her job is jeopardizing every other aspect of her life – including a possible relationship with Adam Bennett (Wilson), the affable and handsome producer of a show just upstairs.

            Becky manages to wrangle experienced and respected (and very serious) news anchor Mike Pomeroy to do DayBreak, and he is the latest in a long line of exasperated anchors unable to deal with the whims of co-host Colleen Peck (Keaton). Pomeroy makes no effort to hide that he feels humiliated, having been reduced from being the first reporter to arrive at Ground Zero on 9/11 to doing arts and craft segments involving Papier-mâché masks. And in the middle of it all, Becky has to hold the fort – despite it quickly spiraling out of her control.

            It’s no secret that Hollywood has been experiencing a serious drought in quality romantic-comedies. Caricatures of handsome, rich and amorous men and having Adam Sandler hook up with the likes of Emmanuelle Chriqui, Brooklyn Decker and Salma Hayek weren’t enjoyable to start with - and are now even worse.

            As such, I really did enjoy Morning Glory. From the get-go, it is tonally assured and the performances are consistently strong throughout. The film quickly establishes that morning television is far from the fun and games that comprise its content, stays away from making sweeping generalizations about working in that genre of TV, and is able to mine a great deal of genuine laughs from this very concept. I was very pleasantly surprised at Aline Brosh McKenna’s screenplay; her effort to make each character have more than two dimensions and her knack for some side-splitting dialogue almost, just almost, Sorkin-esque.

            By dint of being in the same genre with such classics as Network and Broadcast News, expectations are justifiably high. However, many subtle winks and nods are made towards these films, and a strong character arc and plot that moves efficiently towards a satisfying ending are big players in making Morning Glory as much a hoot to watch as it is.

            Rachel McAdams is a casting coup. She effortlessly exudes likeable energy, and seems so much more comfortable with this role than with that of the femme fatale Irene Adler in 2009’s Sherlock Holmes. Her character is friendly and has a bit of a gawkish charm, but is serious and dedicated when it comes to her work. She seems to be chanelling 30 Rock’s Tina Fey, and McAdams is more than able to handle every comedy and dramatic note the script throws away. The kooky and almost realistic approach to the character drags the viewer right in.

           

It’s no secret to those who know me that Harrison Ford has long been my favourite actor, and as such it feels like a bit of a waste when modern films cast him as the scowling guy holding a gun in the background, banking solely on his action star pedigree. The man definitely can act, and his performance in this film as the curmudgeon is easily some of his best work in the past decade or so. A large part of the appeal of his defining roles as Han Solo and Indiana Jones was the sense of humour they had. Here, Ford maxes out his comic timing, and replaces his patented “oh no!” face of shock as the wrongly-accused guy on the lam with an equally fantastic “this is embarrassing, I want to kill myself” expression. He’s cranky and rude, but when audiences can finally get under his skin, it’s an amazing payoff. Also, hearing the actor say lines such as “now you think I’m your bitch” and the single word “menopause” is, inherently, hysterical fun.

            Truth be told, Diane Keaton is the only performer who hams it way up for comedic value (in addition to Ty Burrell, whose appearance as a lecherous show anchor is not much more than a cameo). Her barbs towards Pomeroy are stinging and bitchy, but Keaton and Ford make good use of their chemistry to create two characters that we love to see at each others’ throats. Patrick Wilson as Adam is basically the perfect man, but the decision to let the romance between him and Becky take a back seat to the comedic and dramatic elements was very wise, and he and McAdams look great together, their characters’ relationship progressing in a realistic way and at just the right pace.

            Jeff Goldblum pops up as a network executive at DayBreak’s station IBS, and plays a serious but thoughtful businessman-type with cool and measured ease, respectful of the talent under his wing but also showing reasonable concern when losses rear their heads. It seems that both he and Harrison Ford and to an extent Patrick Wilson (fresh off The A-Team) have brought a lot of their experience from astronomically-budgeted blockbusters and that it has helped them as actors in this comedy too.

            Unfortunately, there is one “cardinal sin of romantic comedy” that this movie commits – drowning its soundtrack in pop ditty after pop ditty, almost threatening to dilute the charm of the rest of the movie. Indeed, the most effective uses of music in Morning Glory with re-interpretations of classics – especially the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. It’s like how Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross arranged Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, for The Social Network.

            There are amazing gags aplenty in the film, from an editing mistake that leaves the line “sexual offender” under the photograph when former President Jimmy Carter’s face replaces that of the wanted molester from the previous story, all the way to having weatherman Ernie (Matt Malloy) ride a crazy new roller coaster as the camera is fixed on his face, live for TV audiences nationwide to see, but none of it feels cheap or shoehorned-in.

At one point in the film, Pomeroy complains angrily to Becky that the morning show genre of TV is all sugar-coated empty calories, a far cry from his experience interviewing the likes of Mother Teresa and Dick Cheney in serious news shows. Becky, pushed to the brink, still attempts to be reasonable, and explains that he could mesh his strengths, resulting in a “branded donut”. And that’s exactly what this movie is – a delicious treat made with fine ingredients and all the more tasty for it.

RATING: 4/5 STARS           

Jedd Jong