“Friends with Benefits” (Two Stars)

U. S.: Will Gluck, 2011

Falling in love is such great movie material that it’s a pity Hollywood screws it up so often, especially  these days. Friends with Benefits is  supposed to be smarter and funnier than the usual pseudo-romantic comedy of today, but it’s really ust another rommie-commie with more (and faster) dialogue than usual, trying to be a romantic in new hip ways and stumbling — although you can give Friends with Benefits some credit for trying to go classic and stylish in the manner of the best Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn, or Cary Grant & Hepburn, or Jimmy Stewart & Jean Arthur shows, and still be sexy and candid and as packed with nudity and off-color jokes as the contemporary public supposedly expects. And you can even, if you’re kind, recognize the box office insurance of employing a hookup pair like Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. (Timberlake‘s back and Kunis’s got him!)

Timberlake (the famed rocker and boyish looking orgiast of The Social Network) and Kunis (the wet dream of Black Swan) supposedly bring instant sex appeal with them, and they’re type-cast as a couple young, well-salaried, dazzlingly photogenic, full of cash and sex and witty one-liners — and all the things moviemakers think audiences yearn to have and be. He’s Dylan, an art director for a Los Angeles website. She‘s Jamie, a Manhattan-based headhunter who recruits Dylan to become the designer for GQ. Both of them are hell on wheels on wisecracks. They start trading quips before they even meet each other; the film opens with a smarty-pants little scene that juxtaposes two break-up dates, between Dylan and his son-to-be-ex, and between Jamie and hers, inter-cutting them so that, for a while, we think it’s just one date between Dylan and Jamie. It’s kind of a neat idea, but like most of the movie, too full of itself to go anywhere interesting — except maybe to establish that Pretty Woman is regarded somewhere as a stylish classic.

Director Will Gluck and his writers, Keith Merryman and David A. Newman, then send Dylan bustling off to New York City, to rendezvous with Jamie and get interviewed by GQ. There, the moviemakers devise some flash mob scenes (something new to me), and there’s a “meet-cute” for Dylan and Jamie where she clambers all over an airport luggage carousel chasing a suitcase. Kunis has an embarrassed looking smile during this one, and I don’t blame her: Why would a smart New Yorker like Jamie hop on a luggage carousel when she knows the suitcase will be back in a minute or two anyway?

Soon our boy Dylan, who’s already rejected one advance from Tommy, the gay GQ sports editor (Woody Harrelson, elocuting like a gay tobacco auctioneer), is settled down. He’s  in a way-over-swanky Manhattan movie apartment, and Jamie and Dylan are plopped in front of a TV screen watching a typical old romantic comedy. (It’s a fake by director Gluck, starring Jason Segel and Rashida Jones, and they all seem to have forgotten that there’s a com in rom-com.)

Dylan and Jamie crack wise about how silly the movie is, how silly all such movies are — Scream-style — and eventually they start up a liaison where they vow never to make all the mistakes movie couples make, but instead to have an affair strictly physical (not “strictly dickly“ as Tommy cracks after giving up on hetero Dylan ) and not interrupted by the kind of messy conflicts that lead to messy breakups and messy romance bestsellers and messy movies.

If they’d watched a few more movies, messy or otherwise, they’d have found that this strategy — which suggests a reverse spin on an actual Tracy-Hepburn vehicle, the 1945 Without Love (about a supposedly loveless marriage) — has been tried before, in, for example, the recent Natalie Portman-Ashton Kutcher dud No Strings Attached— and that it never, never works. The theme seems to be: Don’t knock loveless sex, which can be better than sexless love, and can lead to both love and sex (and big screen TVs where you can watch better movies about either love or sex). 

But never say die, especially when you’re Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis has got you. Soon these high-priced lovers are wisecracking like mad and screwing like crazy, and falling in love like we knew they would, trading rapid-fire quips and crawling together into the way-over-swanky apartment‘s big roomy bed.  Are the movies the only place where people commit fellatio and cunnilingus while covered by blankets and sheets? You can get a good movie, or a good romantic comedy, with a mix of old and new, as Bridesmaids proves — you can even get a great one like Sideways — but not this time. Friends with Benefits skimps on real feeling and emotion, on the human connections that help make movies both make you laugh and move you (something the equally raunchy Bridesmaids does have).

One of my biggest problems with Friends with Benefits, is that, for me, Timberlake and Kunis lacked — and I hate to use the word — chemistry. (Timberlake and Harrelson had more.) There’s no or little underlying emotion in the Jamie-Dylan scenes, and that’s exactly what they’re ridiculing in the phony Jason-Rashida movie. Underlying emotion is supplied instead by that reliable supporting actor pair of Patricia Clarkson, who plays Lorna, Jamie’s ex-‘70s free spirit mom, and Richard Jenkins, as Mr. Harper, Dylan‘s Alzheimers‘-stricken dad. Clarkson’s and Jenkins’ scenes are sometimes in dubious taste — especially Mr. Harper‘s tendency to deliver pithy wisdom while wandering around in his underpants — but the actors find humanity in them. They have more chemistry than Justin and Mila too, and I don’t even think they had any scenes together. Or blankets.

30 Minutes or Less (Two and a Half Stars)

U.S.: Ruben Fleischer, 2011

The first 30 minutes of 30 Minutes or Less — a darkish heist comedy from the director (Ruben Fleischer) and co-star (Jesse Eisenberg) of Zombieland — are actually pretty funny. Two sets of smart comedy actors (Eisenberg & Aziz Ansari and Danny McBride & Nick Swardson) get into their most unpretentious dumb-and-dirty-mouth mode and dispense some fairly edgy, balls-out dialogue delivered dead pan at frenetic speed, while ridiculous things are happening. It reminded me a little of Abbott & Costello‘s stuff, if Abbott & Costello were pizza delivery guys pursued by deranged murderers (which actually is the kind of thing Abbott & Costello often did).

But the last 58 minutes or so of 30 Minutes or Less, get so preposterously out to lunch that not even these actors, and a bomb strapped to Eisenberg’s chest can save things. It’s a comedy about two reasonably smart but hapless doofuses (Eisenberg and Ansari) who fall into the clutches of a couple of murderous nincompoops (McBride and Swardson), and get involved in one of the more idiotic bank robberies ever imagined. That idiocy unfortunately isn’t enough to keep the movie funny. But it does pass the time — in the way that playing tiddlywinks or gin rummy with eccentric strangers on a rainy night in a cheap motel lobby might.

Here’s the mazooza-ganoola (an Abbott & Costello sort of word). We‘re in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on the lower-rent and dopey side of town. Eisenberg is Nick, a whippet swift pizza delivery guy for Vito‘s Pizza, who delivers his pizza in, you guessed it, 30 minutes or less (or it’s free), and who brags that he never uses Face book. (Get it? Eisenberg? Face book?) Ansari is his best friend Chet, an elementary school teacher whose twin sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria) is Nick‘s big crush — which pisses off Chet.

On the higher-rent and dopey side of town, Fred Ward is the Major, a surly macho Marine who won a lottery, and now lives in sort-of-luxury (at least for Grand Rapids), while hurling contempt on his son Dwayne (McBride), an ill-tempered macho jerk and egotistical ding-a-ling whom the Major employs as his pool cleaner, along with Dwayne‘s even dumber (but halfway human) hanger-on/buddy Travis (Swardson).

Dwayne, incensed at his father’s endless stream of vicious insults, is impatient for his inheritance, and consumed by a grand fantasy of using what’s left of the lottery money to open up a combination tanning salon and whorehouse. One night, brooding, Dwayme runs into a mean little stripper named Juicy (Bianc Kajlich), who suggests that he knock off Pops with the help of a hit man she knows named Chango (Michael Pena, very good), and then enjoy her lap dances, just for him, forever. (Chango of course, unbeknownst to Dwayne, is Juicy‘s main squeeze.) The killer’s fee; $100, 000.

How can a buffoon like Dwayne get a hold of $100,000? Rob a bank, naturally. And how does he plan on cracking that bank? By dressing up in ape suits together with Travis, abducting some poor schmuck, wiring him with a C4 explosives vest, and giving him ten hours to rob a local bank or get blown up — while also promising to trail him everywhere to make sure he doesn‘t contact the police. Hmm…And who is that schmuck? Obviously some guy involved with pizzas who doesn’t use Face book.

Now, this absurd scheme is supposedly based on a real life bank robbery which ended violently and tragically. But what makes the movie truly ludicrous — outrageously ludicrous, incomprehensibly ludicrous — are the reactions of Nick and Chet to this plot. Chet forgets their tiff and rushes to his pal’s aid, ultimately joining him in the bank robbery, and not contacting the cops. Nick runs all around Grand Rapids, tries to settle his romance with Kate, and engages in high-speed car chases — despite the bomb and despite the two gun-packing bozos on his trail.

This movie may have invented a new sub-genre: idiot noir. The ending, which will remain unspilled (except to reveal that Grand Rapids still lacks a proper combination tanning salon and whorehouse), is annoying as hell. In fact the whole movie is annoying as hell.

Cinematically, it’s okay. Comedically, its helter-skelter baloney. Morally, it’s obtuse. And though it has a very good cast — Pena, McBride and Swardson  — they’re all, thanks to screenwriter Michael Diliberti, up to no damned good.

Still, that first 30 minutes was pretty entertaining. The actors are on. The dialogue had snap. Maybe, if you time everything right, you can leave 30 Minutes or Less after the first 30 minutes and have a pizza waiting for you at the concession stand. I like pepperoni myself.

One Day (Two and a Half Stars)

Think a bit. Recall the crucial life-changing events in your own life. Did they all take place on the same day? Did even a few of them share a common date, especially if it’s not a birthday or a major holiday, or in this case, maybe the time-crossed couple’s yen to get together and remember? Why then is this mysterious calendar hex happening to Dex and Em? Furthermore, why don’t they begin to get a little spooked, as major revelations or dire consequences keep accumulating each scary new July the 15th?

Might they consider just sleeping all day every July 15 to avoid whatever chastening truth or major catastrophe fate and the calendar have in store? Are they cursed? Are they playthings of fate? Prisoners of successive St. Swithin‘s Days, just as Bill Murray was prisoner of the same Groundhog Day over and over? Maybe there was some explanation for this anomaly, but I missed it (sorry), and it bothered me for the whole running time, and afterwards, and bothers me now.

Since the movie basically made no sense to me, I felt alienated from all of its would-be poignant or memorable happenings, though I was pleased at its literacy, pleased by its sometime intelligence, pleased by its alert direction (the smart ungloomy Dane Ms. Scherfig of An Education), even pleased at times by its attractive but not necessarily well-matched costars, Ms. Hathaway and Mr. Sturgess, as they stumbled ever July 15thward.

There are good supporting actors: the very active Patricia Clarkson pulling some heartstrings as Dexter’s dying mother and Ian Spall (Timothy’s son) as Em’s hapless comedian of a husband. And there’s another fine score by the prolific Rachel Portman. By themselves, the film’s first and last scenes, and the flashback coda, are touching. The whole thing might have worked for me, or at least worked better, if they’d just hopped from year to year, lighting on whatever day was most significant that year (not necessarily the dreaded July 15^th).

But they didn’t. I wonder why. I wish they had. Listen: Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It’s July 15.

Island of Lost Souls (Also Blu-ray) (Three Stars) 

U.S.: Erle Kenton, 1932 (Criterion Collection)

Are we not men?

An ocean cargo ship in a menacingly foggy sea, on a mysterious voyage, drops off some animals and star/hero Richard Arlen on an

uncharted island owned and run by the erudite but dangerous Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton, in his youthful prime), a mad scientist so perverse and evil that he turns animals into pseudo-humans,  and acts as if he wants to have sadomasochistic relations with every species or cross-species possible. Moreau contents himself though with whipping  the Island’s Lost Souls, torturing and humiliating them on the operating table (in “The House of Pain”) and sneering at hero Arlen — who quickly falls in love with Lota, the Panther Woman (Kathleen Burke), a knockout feline-creature who might well have inspired Val Lewton’s Cat People.

 

But who is that strange. hairy, wild-eyed gent, standing in the midst of Moreau’s animal people yelling “Are We Not Men? Are We Not Men?” Is he not Devo?  No, by the cape of Dracula, he’s Bela Lugosi, in his just-as-legendary  ’30s horror-show  performance as the  Sayer of the Law, who acts like an Old Testament prophet, looks like an evil semi-simian and yells like a ’30s Lower East Side revolutionary from Bughouse Square. As for Devo, they’re in the Extras. (See below.)

  

Island of Lost Souls is a genuinely scary  horror movie classic, based on H. G. Wells’ novel  “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” a classic of literary science fiction that has been messed up on two other, later occasions, by  star Burt Lancaster and director Don Taylor in 1977, and sadly enough, by Marlon Brando and John Frankenheimer in 1996. But Wells’ macabre story gets a high style treatment here from Laughton and director Erle Kenton, a prolific journeyman whose strongest credits beside Souls were on House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and on some of the spookier ’40s Abbott & Costello comedies, but who here gets maximum expressionist chill-value from his actors, from cinematographer Karl Struss and from art director Hans Dreier. (So why was it Charles Barton and not Kenton who was assigned the sure-fire Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein? Doesn’t matter; it was a winner anyway.)

This was the heyday of Universal movie horror, but  Paramount gave them a run for their money in 1932, releasing both the bizarrely stylish Rouben Mamoulian-directed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Fredric March’s Oscar-winning schizophrenic star turn as Jekyll/Hyde, and the eerie and truky disturbing Island of Lost Souls, with Laughton and Lugosi and The Panther Woman.

 Are we not men? Here’s your chance to find out.

Includes: Short film In the Beginning was the End: the Truth about De-Evolution (U.S.: Chuck Statler, 1976) Two and a Half Stars. An experimental film, with music by Mark Mothersbaugh and two songs  by Devo: “Secret Agent Man and “Jocko Homo.”

Other Extras: Commentary by Gregory Mank; Conversation with director John Landis, make-up expert Rick Baker and Bob Burns; Interviews with film historian David J. Skal. filmmaker Richard Stanley (screenwriter and original director of the Brando Island of Dr. Moreau) and Devo’s Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale; Stills gallery; Trailer; Booklet with essay by Christine Smallwood.

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