Short Take: Three Horror Movies.

The scariest thing about the Paranormal Activity movies is still how popular they are. How this brand of cheaply done and cheaply looking films can manage to outgross much better projects is a sad reminder that today's audiences are victim of cattle thinking. Once they get used to a "series", they don't care how many times they are told the same story. These movies prove that audiences enjoy the act of not thinking. The third installment in the series, goes back to the very beginning and explores why numbers 1 and 2 happened. To say the reasons are preposterous would be nothing compared to the way in which the filmmakers rely on facile trickery and obvious techniques to try and scare us. The effects have been getting consistently better, something which can't be said about the acting and plot devices. This one, set in the 80s, has us wondering how did these progressive people guess that everything should've been filmed in case a movie was made about them decades later. The film doesn't rely try to adjust itself to the settings and to the spirit of the era, it goes straight for the established process that's worked for them in the past, the only thing they've changed is the medium by which we see the demonic activities. One must wonder, by the time they get to Paranormal Activity 45 will the stories be displayed using cave paintings? Grade *

The only good thing that came out of Dream House must've been Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz getting married. The rest is an outrageously bad attempt at mating Shutter Island, Memento and any Stephen King novel involving snow and houses. If you've seen the trailer, you don't need to bother with the rest of the movie. What remains mysterious is why people like Sheridan, Watts and pretty much everyone else involved in the production (the underrated Elias Koteas for example) saw in the lazy screenplay and the redundant characters.  Grade *

The Change-Up tries to invent the wheel by taking Freaky Friday and adding curse words, boobs and poop jokes. Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds play bets buds who go through a body exchange situation after peeing in a magical fountain. One's a control freak lawyer, the other's a slacker. You don't need to try hard to guess which one plays which; one of the many reasons why you wonder why was this movie even made. Everything about it has been done before and in much better ways. Props to Leslie Mann for always adding a very human layer to her characters. Grade *

I Love You, Phillip Morris *½

Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor
Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Brennan Brown
Trey Burvant, Antoni Corone

It shouldn't be a surprise that movies about gay lead characters are still pretty much dealt with as strange novelties. It should be refreshing however to find a film with recognizable movie stars taking on these characters. This film does both, yet the only truly risque thing about I Love You, Phillip Morris is how often it pushes its condescension towards outrageous bad taste.
Based on the real life story of gay con man Steven Jay Russell (Carrey), it attempts to be Catch Me If You Can by way of a parody of Monster.
The film begins with an unarguably exciting sense of wonder as we meet Steven and his wife Debbie (a sadly underused Mann) a seemingly traditional couple with a secret: he's gay (the revelation by the way is hilarious and has a sense of comedic timing the film never recaptures).
After a life changing accident Steven decides it's time to come out, so he leaves his family, packs his bags and moves to Florida with a man (Santoro).
Seduced by the promise of a new exciting life he soon realizes that "being gay is expensive" leading him to start a life of crime.
He ends up going to jail for fraud and there meets Phillip Morris (McGregor) an angelic looking Southern boy he falls hard for. They begin a relationship and for the rest of the film we see as they try to maintain their love alive, in and out of jail, as Steven copes with his criminal past.
The entire film is plagued with so many tonal discrepancies that for a second or two you might wonder if this indecision by part of the directors to determine what kind of movie they were making is some sort of commentary on sexual unawareness (is this a bicurious movie?).
But of course it's not, it's actually a patronizing, conflicting work that deals with its themes in a completely lost manner.
For starters we begin to wonder why they try so hard to make this into a comedy when the truth is that Russell's life is actually a series of tragedies anchored by what can only be called mentally disturbed behavior.
He's more Tom Ripley than Frank Abagnale Jr. but the directors seem to overlook this because they seem scared of dealing with the darkness in a homosexual character.
Therefore they turn the entire plot into a condescending gag that reveals to us we can only empathize with this man by making fun of his misery.
Carrey, who under able hands can be a brilliant actor, is back to his wacky days here, turning Steven into Liar, Liar with a lisp: a character so devoid of any depth that you can't even muster the energy to dislike him.
All that Carrey does with his performance is turn hissy fits into sissy fits robbing the character (and presumably the real man) from any opportunity to be something more than caricature.
McGregor on the other hand turns in a beautiful, sensitive performance that goes beyond cliché even if the mvoie tries to turn Phillip into a full on Southern belle trapped inside a man.
That he's able to pull off a line like "enough romance, let's fuck" with just enough honesty to make us see the way angst and hormones battle within him as well as making us laugh out hard, makes for a really surprising element and perhaps the one thing that makes this film worthy.
It's a shame that the movie can not commit to being either a fun genre flick or a complex character study because when it's over we just wonder if the title is even right, given that Steven comes off looking as someone who only loves himself and even saying that feels like a lie.

Funny People **1/2

Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann
Jason Schwartzman, Jonah Hill, Aubrey Plaza, Eric Bana

"Comedy usually is for funny people" says George Simmons (Sandler) and the usually in that quote is the keyword to best describe the mood of this film.
Judd Apatow's third film as a director takes an inside look at Hollywood, filtered through a comedian's eyes.
Simmons is a comedy superstar, in the vein of Sandler, who made a name for himself starring in raunchy adolescent oriented comedies and crass stand up routines.
He's a millionaire but lives a pretty lonely life. Things change for him when he learns he has a terminal disease and he tries to make things right.
Not in a Frank Capra way, but right by his own standards; therefore he hires a down on his luck comedian named Ira (Rogen) to be his assistant and also tries to rekindle his love with old flame Laura (Mann) who has a husband (Bana) and children.
Sandler, who rarely gets enough credit as an actor (because of his career choices mostly) makes George someone we have a hard time liking.
He's the kind of conceited superstar who thinks the world asks too much of him-he even sings it-and only reaches down from his Olympus when he needs something.
But Sandler also gives him a soul. He doesn't turn him into a fable character ready for a big change; even when the screenplay tries to make us see him with both pity and disdain, the actor makes George someone who won't give a damn about how we perceive him, until he needs an audience to turn his next movie into a blockbuster.
It's a brave performance because he's never afraid of showing his ugly side, which is most of it.
Apatow as usual gives the supporting cast great moments and Mann once again shines as the complicated Laura. Her kind of down to earth sexiness is incredibly appealing and this time around she plays someone we'd have no trouble believing existed.
Some of her choices are ridiculous, but Mann plays them out like a grown up (perhaps the only real adult in the movie). Rogen once again plays the sweet, slightly awkward sidekick and he's good at it, while Hill bores with his umpteenth take on the potty mouthed nerd.
Bana was a real surprise, he plays an Australian and when the movie wants us to hate him (he's the only character who isn't in show business and has a corporate job) we simply can't, because the actor makes us realize that even something a Hollywood star can find boring, can be dignified.
His comedic timing is ace and the dislikeability factor the screenplay attributes him comes only looking as a manifestation of how he represents people like Simmon's worst nightmares, both in and outside the movie.
He's very handsome, while the other guys often make jokes about their average looks, he's successful and he gets the girl they wanted.
And as an actor Bana is proving that you don't have to say "fart" and "cock" to make people laugh; his sarcasm might just steal more laughs than Sandler's funny voice shticks.
With him the movie reveals its weakest link because Apatow never stops to ask what it means to be funny, he has forgotten that comedy isn't a universal language.
He takes for granted that by thinking of funny we must be the kind of people who laugh at his' and Sandler's jokes.
With this unintentionally arrogant move he assumes that he is a fine comedian.
And he can be; but his kind of comedy has only gained importance during this decade and "Funny People" is an egocentric-slightly self critical- ode to himself and his newly founded reign.

17 Again ***

Director: Burr Steers
Cast: Zac Efron, Matthew Perry
Leslie Mann, Thomas Lennon, Michelle Trachtenberg, Sterling Knight

Mike O'Donnell (Perry) is a middle aged pharmaceutical salesman, crashing at his best friend, Ned's (a scene stealing Lennon) house after his wife Scarlet (the always brilliant Mann) asked him for divorce.
His two kids (Trachtenberg and Knight) practically have no communication with him and he finds himself being passed for promotions at the job he hates.
Wallowing in regret and self pity he wishes he could go back in time to fix everything he did wrong and with the help of some movie magic he falls into a river, following a freaky accident and finds himself back in his 17-year-old body.
And only in the movies can Perry become Zac Efron. With his newfound youth he goes back to high school and tries to fix his relationship with his children and tries to get back with his wife leading to all kinds of inappropriate, yet somehow not disturbing, situations that lead to all sorts of comedic twists.
If this sounds too much like an inverted "Big", "13 Going on 30" and at least two dozen TV show premises it's because it completely is, so how do you turn a cliché ridden, predictable film into a successful, entertaining piece of pop culture?
Apparently by hiring Zac Efron in the lead role.
The 21-year-old drives the entire movie counting basically on pure charm and star magnetism. Obviously his presence will attract fans of his previous tween work and screaming schoolgirls (and some grownups who will act like that too), but after a while of just playing it cool Efron unveils layers that show that he can also act!
And he's pretty good at it; very few young actors would be able to convey the sense of loss and regret Efron achieves in a particularly moving scene in a courtroom and then work it like a pro in the dancefloor.
While the filmmakers childishly try to make the most out of his smile and abs, Efron is working on a completely different league.