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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 16 January 2004

There are few laughs to be had in Steve Martin’s new comedy, Cheaper By The Dozen.  In fact, I can’t remember exuding more than a sarcastic chuckle at any time during the hour and a half.  This to me is a big problem.  Steve Martin hosted last year’s Academy Awards and I was in hysterics at some of his great out-liners.  Why then is he not funny here?  Simply put, the script is not up to scratch.

Tom (Martin) and Kate (Hunt) live in the country with, as the title tells us, a dozen kids.  It’s exhausting work and they have both sacrificed dreams and given up better work opportunities to keep the family happy together.  Finally though, a window has opened up for both.  Tom has always wanted to coach his college’s football team and an old friend has called upon him for the job.  The problem being that the family will have to move to Chicago and they are none too pleased with the idea.

Within days of the family moving, Kate receives a call from a publisher with the exciting news that her first ever book is to be put into print.  The publisher asks that she go to New York for three days so that details regarding the soon-to-be best seller can be ironed out.  She’s reluctant to leave Tom alone with the kids but he guarantees he can handle the situation and off she goes.

The plot from here dictates that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.  Tom is required to work long hours coaching but the kids need him at home.  Soon, the newspapers are publishing articles questioning his ability to juggle the responsibility.  The kids too are having a rough time.  They are struggling to find friends at their new school and even the eldest are subject to bullying.  The pressure is mounting on Tom to put things right but can he give up his lifelong dream for the sake of the family?  Need I answer this?

This is a G-rated flick so there it’s pretty cut-and-dry.  I like my comedies with a bit more edge and the most apt way of describing this film is that it would be perfect to take my grandmother to see.  What I mean is that the jokes are simple, there’s nothing controversial, there’s some sappy sentimentality, and there’s a happy ending.  There are many out there who enjoy such a movie (including myself sometimes) but as I have already indicated, this isn’t good enough.

It saddens me to say that Steve Martin is the weakest of the cast.  It’s painful to watch him rely on poor jokes and then use zany facial expressions in trying to entertain.  As his wife, Bonnie Hunt was far superior in the acting stakes.  To woo younger audiences, young heartthrobs Piper Perabo, Hilary Duff, Tom Welling and a surprisingly enjoyable Ashton Kutcher have been included amongst the cast.  You won’t see a lot of them but they’re there nonetheless.

Some other critics have made point of the strange inconsistencies in Cheaper By The Dozen with the most obvious being that of salaries.  A job as a college football coach can’t pay that well and yet the family has a very comfortable lifestyle and lives in a mansion with 11 bedrooms in a well-off neighbourhood.  Does this add up?  No.  Once again, the weakness of the script has been exposed.  It’s the tickets themselves for this film which should be cheaper by the dozen.  Much cheaper.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 01 January 2004

Beck (The Rock) is a man who knows how to retrieve things.  He’d rather be a chef but unfortunately he’s working as a hitman to pay off some old debts.  After being screwed over by his mob boss in another job, Beck’s decided to get out of the business.  The boss agrees and will give him $250,000 and his own restaurant if he’ll do one last job for him.

That job is to retrieve the boss’s son, Travis (Scott), who is now living in the Amazon Jungle.  His dad wants him home for reasons which aren’t exactly clear but you sense they aren’t on the best of terms.  Beck has no trouble tracking Travis down and it looks like being a very easy assignment until he encounters the leader of the isolated community.  Hatcher (Walken) is an astute American businessman who is exploiting the cheap African labour in the mines.  He pays them next to nothing and the profit is his for taking.

Hatcher ordinarily wouldn’t have much interest in a nobody like Travis but it’s Travis’s own activities that has captured his attention.  Travis has been searching for a “priceless” gold statue known as the Gato del Diablo and looks to have finally pin-pointed its location (although I’m not sure how).  Hatcher wants that statue for his own and isn’t going to let Beck take Travis without a fight.  To further complicate the situation, a native named Mariana (Dawson) has her own eye on the prize since she knows it can free the citizens of the town from the reign of Hatcher.

There weren’t as many jokes as I expected (especially from Seann William Scott) but there are plenty of well choreographed fight sequences to satisfy those thirsty for action.  I found annoyance though at how unrealistic it all looked.  I’m tired of watching people fight as if they are suspended by strings.  How else could they hang in the air for so long?  How else could they fly miles in the air when kicked and still get up with barely a scratch?  I know this is the trend with modern day action but come on, isn’t someone out there going to try something new?

Welcome To The Jungle wasn’t the box-office smash that some predicted in the States and it took just $47m at the box-office on a $85m budget.  Australian marketers must have attributed some of the poor performance to the film’s name since in America the film was released under the title The Rundown.  Such trivial detail means little when you look at some of the film’s bigger problems.  More could have been made of this.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 16 January 2004

63-year-old Harry Sanborn (Nicholson) loves dating younger women.  He’s always got the upper hand which allows him to complete the phase of dating them, sleeping with them and then dumping them.  It sounds perverse but he does this will elegance and class.  In fact, a leading New York magazine recently wrote a glowing article on this wealthy, never-married bachelor.

Harry’s latest flame is a cute twenty-something named Marin Barry (Peet).  She’s invited him to her mother’s empty beach house for the weekend but don’t intend on spending too much time outside the bedroom.  Harry’s packed his Viagra and is set to roll.

A few major glitches will then ruin his weekend but more importantly they will change his life forever.  Firstly, Marin’s mother arrives unexpectedly at the beach house.  Erica Barry (Keaton) is a very successful playwright and has come to the house to clear her mind and work on her latest play.  She is horrified to see Marin dating someone older than herself but her sister, Zoe (McDormand), pleads with her to be reasonable and give Harry a chance.

That first night at the beach house, Harry suffers a mild heart-attack and is rushed by Erica and Marin to the hospital.  There he is treated by Dr Julian Mercer (Reeves) who agrees to release him under the condition that he stay close to the hospital for a few days in case there are any further complications.  Of course the only such place is the beach house and with Marin returning back to the city, it’s just Harry and Erica on their own…

Jack Nicholson is his usual suave self and a fitting choice for the role but it’s the amazing Diane Keaton who shines in one of her best ever performances.  Her character is strong on the outside but as we learn as the film progresses, she is highly vulnerable on the inside.  You do feel for her and credit to Keaton for bringing out these feelings in the audience.

Writer/director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want) doesn’t let the film get too bogged down in the drama and keeps things light with appropriate comedy.  There’s a scene where Erica cries at her keyboard but then starts laughing, then crying, then laughing again.  This sums up in a nutshell the mix of drama and comedy on display.  It’s a little long in duration (over two hours) but one can be excused considering we’re looking at two of the greatest actors going around.

With a few subplots working in the background, the ending isn’t quite as predictable as you might think.  I was kept on my toes throughout and often outsmarted when trying to pre-empt the story.  There are strong messages underlying the plot and those of an older age will appreciate them most.  Although having made close to $100m in the United States so far, you’d have to say the film is appealing to all age-groups.

Something’s Gotta Give will undoubtedly be one of the best films of the romance genre we’ll see in 2004.  Reward yourself and appreciate its intelligence before the usual sappy, predictable garbage comes back to litter our screens for the rest of the year.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 28 December 2003

Nicole Kidman has recently been in Australia to plug the already heavily promoted Cold Mountain but you may not know that there’s another Kidman film now playing in selected theatres.  Dogville has been written and directed by the Denmark’s Lars Von Trier – a man who is anything but conventional.  He has been making films in his own country since the 70s but it wasn’t until 1996 when I saw my first Von Trier film, Breaking The Waves, at the Brisbane International Film Festival.  The only other film of his you are likely to know is 2000’s Dancer In The Dark (starring Bjork) but I’ll presume you haven’t seen that either.

Dogville premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and is the story of a woman named Grace (played by Kidman).  The mob is after her and she has escaped into the mountains and comes across the very small town of Dogville where there are only 15 adult residents.  It is Tom (Bettany) who first meets her and he puts his argument to the town that she should be allowed to stay.  They are reluctant to believe her story and don’t want any trouble brought to their community but they allow her to stay on a trial basis.

Helping the townsfolk out with their businesses and chores, Grace starts fitting in.  Even when the mob offers a substantial reward for her capture, they keep her presence a closely guarded secret.  Things change though after time and Grace is soon taken for granted.  There is a realisation amongst those in the town that she is theirs for the taking.  They can make work her like a slave and take advantage of her sexually because she has nowhere else to turn.  Grace, so willing for their help, now wants anything but.

It’s a very interesting story where the power shifts between its characters.  It’s difficult to predict where it all may end and I thoroughly enjoyed the surprises contained within the ending.  Nicole Kidman is beautifully sedated in her portrayal of Grace and the remaining cast do a great job in adding intrigue to their characters.  Just who can be trusted?

When you look at the above analysis, you’d think this is a rather conventional film which would be showing at most cinemas across the country.  Well there are some details regarding the production which I should elaborate on.  Firstly, there are no sets.  It is filmed completely on a sound stage and apart from a few chairs and tables, there’s nothing there.  A character will open a door and you hear the sound effect of a door opening but you just don’t see the door.  You just have to imagine the walls of the houses, the bushes in the gardens and even the view of the surrounding area.  During the day, the lights above the set are turned up and to represent the night, they are dimmed.   I can’t say I’ve seen a film made quite this way before.

Secondly, the film is put together like a book.  It is heavily narrated (by John Hurt) and is split into a prologue and nine chapters.  Before each chapter begins, we are given a brief description of what is about to happen.  You’d think this would spoil the tension but it does not.  It even adds to the excitement in places because you know something important is about to happen.  On a side note, the chapters also make it easy to gauge how long there is to go in the film so there’s no need to squint at your watch in the darkness.

Dogville is a strange experiment in filmmaking and as evident from the reactions on SBS’s The Movie Show, it will divide audiences.  Margaret Pomeranz described the film as one “you discuss standing on the footpath afterwards” in giving in five stars.  Alternatively, David Stratton said his “junior school production of Willow Pattern Plate was more exciting” and thought only one star was a worthy score.  I’ll take Margaret’s side here and like Lars Von Trier’s other films, I applaud him for taking a chance and giving us something interesting to watch.  Do see it.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 01 January 2004

Cold Mountain, adapted from the novel by Charles Frazier, is a love story set against the backdrop of the American Civil War.  Those looking for battle scenes and detailed information on this tragic war will not find that here.  The film begins with Inman (Law) barely escaping a massive gunpowder blast on the war front but from there he is transported to a hospital where he will begin his journey home.

During these scenes, Director Anthony Minghella takes us back shortly before the war began.  Inman was a quiet tradesman living in the small town of Cold Mountain.  He was working on the construction of a chapel for the new Reverend (Sutherland), when he first caught glimpse of Ada Monroe (Kidman), the Reverend’s daughter.  There is a definite attraction between the two but both are hesitant at instigating contact.  They soon have no choice when the war breaks out, Inman is forced to leave and as he does so, the two confess their love for each other.  Ada promises to wait at Cold Mountain for his return.

Three years then pass which takes us into the present tense.  Bands of troops roam the countryside in search of “deserters” – those men in hiding who refuse to fight.  Prepared to take his chances, Inman flees from the hospital and begins the long trek to Cold Mountain.  At home, Ada desperately continues to wait although she has fallen on tough times.  Her father has passed away, she has no servants to tend to the farm, the house is a pig-sty and there’s hardly any food to eat.  Help though will soon arrive when a young lady named Ruby (Zellweger) comes to her doorstep offering assistance.  The two will need the comfort of each other as more troubling times lie ahead…

It’s unusual to see a romantic drama where the leading characters spend so much time apart from each other.  It has made it somewhat difficult to create feeling in the audience but Minghella has still done a great job in doing so.  He is helped largely by Jude Law and Nicole Kidman who deliver marvellously passionate performances.  You can sense the hurt as they think of the other so very far away but as they get closer together, you excitedly await the scene where both with finally come together.

The film cost a staggering $83m and thankfully the recent Golden Globe nominations will ensure audiences go out to see the film.  It certainly was a huge financial risk for Miramax but you could not ask for a better crew behind the camera.  Anthony Minghella has assembled the same gifted team which he worked with on his previous two films, The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley.  Gabriel Yared provides a haunting film score, Australian John Seale immaculately captures the setting with his lens, Dante Ferretti has crafted some wonderful production sets, and Walter Murch has brilliantly brought the entire 155 minutes together in the editing room.

Cold Mountain is a little long and some of the secondary characters could have been sliced without detriment to the film.  Natalie Portman plays a single mother and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a corrupted priest but their talent seems wasted considering their characters serve little purpose.  The same could be said for Jena Malone and Giovanni Ribisi.

The award season is once again in full swing and I can’t help but lick my fingers at the enticing list of films slated for release in the first two months of 2004.  Cold Mountain is not the pick of the bunch but it ranks very highly.