Kick-Ass 2: Still bustin' skulls

Kick-Ass 2 (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, brief nudity, crude sexuality, plenty of violence and buckets o' blood
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.16.13

Sequels are de rigueur in the comic book world, even when the material doesn’t necessarily demand subsequent chapters.

It all builds to this: As Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) watches from the sidelines,
Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, center) confronts his wildly garbed arch-nemesis
(Christopher Mintz-Plasse) in anticipation of a true battle royale.

I’m pretty sure writer Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr. never expected 2008’s Kick-Ass to be more than an eight-issue miniseries, although Millar did leave himself an out, with the aggrieved young snot Red Mist demanding revenge in the final panel, following his evil father’s quite fitting death.

But the original series became a smash success, and director Matthew Vaughn’s 2010 film adaptation — which he co-scripted, with Jane Goldman — was one of that summer’s biggest surprises: a gleefully violent guilty pleasure that delivered the right blend of snarky humor and gory mayhem.

No surprise, then, that Millar and Romita re-teamed for the seven-issue Kick-Ass 2, which kicked off in December 2010 ... followed by the five-issue Hit-Girl, which began last August; and the ongoing-as-we-speak Kick-Ass 3, which debuted in July.

No surprise, as well, that director/scripter Jeff Wadlow has unleashed a big-screen sequel.

But I approached this second movie outing with more than a little concern. Millar has a reputation for pushing the envelope of good taste — hell, he shredded the damn thing several years ago — and his comic book Kick-Ass 2 is unforgivably mean-spirited, even given the violent realm within which his characters operate.

Fortunately, Wadlow’s cooler head prevailed, and he recognized — quite correctly — that mainstream viewers wouldn’t tolerate casual rapes or the pointless execution of little children (a needless story element I suspect Millar would like to recant, in this post-Sandy Hook era). Indeed, Wadlow makes his point rather emphatically, when this film’s über-villain — Red Mist, albeit with a new nom de bad, and back for his predictable revenge — balks at the offer of killing a dog, insisting “I’m not that evil.”

In yo’ face, Mr. Millar.

Wadlow actually bases his script on elements from both the Kick-Ass 2 and Hit-Girl story arcs, opening as our two triumphant heroes — Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) — attempt to resume normal lives. For Dave, that means hanging out with best friends Marty (Clark Duke) and Todd (Augustus Prew), or watching TV at home with his father (Garrett M. Brown).

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: Hey, presto!

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity, sexual candor, fleeting drug content and dangerous stunts
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.15.13

Las Vegas magic acts — with their glitzy, overwrought buffoonery — are ripe for parody, and director Don Scardino attacks this subculture with verve, in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

Having discovered that his childhood idol is living in a retirement home, Burt
Wonderstone (Steve Carell, left) is delighted when Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin)
eventually consents to do a few tricks for the other residents.

Armed with a witty script that hits most of the right notes, Scardino demonstrates his own gift for prestidigitation, by shaping a gaggle of scene-stealing camera hogs into a well-balanced ensemble comedy troupe. That’s no small thing, when dealing with the likes of Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi and Jim Carrey, any one of whom could ruin a project by being too uninhibited ... and all have done so, in the past (in Carrey’s case, rather frequently).

Not this time. Scardino keeps his stars on point while also drawing deft supporting performances from Alan Arkin, James Gandolfini and Olivia Wilde. The latter, in particular, demonstrates an unexpected talent for comic timing that was nowhere to be seen in her token hottie roles in Tron: Legacy and Cowboys & Aliens. Given her work here, Wilde actually may have an acting career in her future.

The biggest miracle, though, is that this film’s script manages to stay reasonably well focused — and dead-on perceptive, as it skewers Vegas’ wretched excess — despite being a committee affair from four writers: Jonathan M. Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chad Kultgen and Tyler Mitchell.

Gentlemen, my black top hat’s off to you.

Scardino clearly learned well from a long, Emmy Award-winning television career that has seen him helm shows as diverse as 30 Rock, Law & Order, Ed and even the wonderful Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. The common element: rich ensemble casts with characters we care about.

The story opens with a brief prologue in the early 1980s, as latchkey kid Burt (Mason Cook) celebrates a birthday by himself, forced by his working mother’s absence to bake his own cake (a droll and endearing touch that hints of great things to come). His one present: a celebrity magic set that will evoke strong memories from viewers who remember being a kid back in that era, when Marshall Brodien — as Wizzo the Wizard —hawked his “TV Magic Kit” of “mystifying tricks” on syndicated stations.

In this case, young Burt is awestruck by the kit’s videotape, wherein tuxedo-garbed Rance Holloway (Arkin) promises that magic can change one’s life. Burt, enchanted, starts pulling scarves out of thin air; his school time antics attract the attention of the similarly geeky — and bullied — Anton (Luke Vanek). The two become fast friends, energized by a desire to invent newer, fresher and ever more amazing tricks.

A Christmas Carol: What the Dickens?

A Christmas Carol (2009) • View trailer for A Christmas Carol
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG, despite considerable dramatic intensity and quite scary scenes
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.6.09
Buy DVD: A Christmas Carol• Buy Blu-Ray: Disney's A Christmas Carol (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

Despite the frequently awkward blend of Charles Dickens, Jim Carrey and 21st century computer graphics, director/scripter Robert Zemeckis gets an impressive number of things just right: enough that, at first, we have reason to be optimistic about this rather unusual adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

Sadly, Zemeckis also gets a lot of things disastrously, jaw-droppingly wrong.

Ebenezer Scrooge (sorta-kinda Jim Carrey, right) reluctantly allows the Ghost
of Christmas Present (Carrey again) to begin a journey through London -- a
trip that will reveal painful details about Scrooge's clerk, Bob Cratchit -- in
director Robert Zemeckis' ill-advised CGI adaptation of Charles Dickens'
classic holiday tale.

By the time the Ghost of Christmas Future shows up, you'll wonder if Zemeckis is designing a Disneyland theme park ride, rather than honoring the legacy of the most famous holiday story in recent history.

Zemeckis clearly is fixated by this hybrid animation process — which builds its characters, like the old-fashioned rotoscoping technique, by re-imaging actual people — that he first used in his adaptation of The Polar Express (2004) and then in Beowulf (2007). Although the technology has improved with each film, it remains distracting on many levels.

The core argument is the most basic: If one hires the likes of a Jim Carrey, why not simply use him?

Granted, animation allows a filmmaker the ability to put his "cast" through trials and tribulations that no flesh-and-blood actor ever could attempt, let alone survive. Zemeckis takes advantage of this many, many times during A Christmas Carol, and the simple touches often are the best: a sneer that not even Carrey's malleable features could produce, a disturbingly bony finger beckoning from a distance.

And Scrooge's encounter with the seven-years-dead Marley, late one dark night, is a masterpiece of editing, pacing and dialogue lifted faithfully from Dickens' novella. Unsettling camera angles blend with a truly frightening phantasm to produce an encounter that no man could soon forget. Nor do we.

But then, almost as if drunk with a puppeteer's power, Zemeckis overplays these techniques. Whizzing through the streets of London, passing in and around obstacles inserted to juice up the 3-D "in our face" effects, is breathtaking and exciting. The first time. Even the second time. But Zemeckis repeats this gag over and over and over again, until it becomes both tiresome and quite likely to induce nausea in vertigo-sensitive viewers.

It's an old lesson, and one worth remembering: The mere fact that one possesses the ability to design a dramatic sequence a certain way, doesn't mean that one should over-indulge and yield to it at every opportunity.

Yes Man: Affirmative!

Yes Man (2008) • View trailer for Yes Man
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for brief profanity, fleeting nudity and smutty sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.18.08
Buy DVD: Yes Man • Buy Blu-Ray: Yes Man [Blu-ray]

After a depressing stretch that began with 2000's The Majestic and continued through Fun with Dick and Jane and last year's gawdawful Number 23 — with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the only ray of, well, sunshine — I'm happy to report that Jim Carrey is back.

The clever and funny Jim Carrey. The guy who made such a splash with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber.

When his socially inept boss invites him to a Harry Potter theme party, the
suddenly always agreeable Carl (Jim Carrey) embraces the moment — in a
rented costume several sizes too small — with his new girlfriend, Allison
(Zooey Deschanel).

The actor who knew, once upon a time, how to modulate his goofy, giddy deliver in order to maximize genuine laughs ... as opposed to wigging out entirely on camera, and becoming the sort of tediously desperate man-child on which the likes of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly have built entire careers.

Carrey's always had much more talent than that, but many of his artistic decisions have been ... inadvisable. Like Robin Williams, Carrey wants to stretch and exercise his more serious side: display the inner human being who hides beneath the exterior clown. Sometimes the results have been captivating, as with The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine.

Then again, The Majestic and Number 23 were anything but captivating.

Happily, though, Carrey and director Peyton Reed have found the sweet spot with Yes Man. Carrey's Carl Allen, while frequently an unrestrained cut-up, never goes too far overboard; we're always able to relate to him as an actual person, which persuasively sells this guy's response to an unusual life-path decision.

Then again, maybe the success of Yes Man can be attributed to co-star Zooey Deschanel, who I've decided is one of Hollywood's best secret weapons. She also contributed to the charm of Elf, one of the few palatable Will Ferrell comedies. Deschanel's measured snarkiness helps ground the puffed-up tendencies of her high-profile co-stars; she has both a deadpan stare and comic timing to die for.

Deschanel made Ferrell better than he deserved to be in Elf, and she similarly helps Carrey's character here. They fit well together.

Carl, still pining over a marriage that hit the shoals several years earlier, has become a nabob of negativity. It comes easily at work, where as a bank loan officer he routinely stamps "rejected" on every application that crosses his desk. But this attitude also spills over into his social life, to the growing consternation of best buds Peter (Bradley Cooper, late of TV's Alias) and Rooney (Danny Masterson).

Indeed, Carl has become such a shut-in that he's in danger of losing his friends forever.

Horton Hears a Who: Hear ye, hear ye!

Horton Hears a Who (2008) • View trailer for Horton Hears a Who
Four stars (out of five). Rating: G, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.14.08
Buy DVD: Horton Hears a Who • Buy Blu-Ray: Horton Hears a Who! [Blu-ray]

On the 15th of May,

In the jungle of Nool,

In the heat of the day,

In the cool of the pool,

Kangaroo, accustomed to making all the rules in the jungle of Nool, gets quite
put out when Horton the elephant refuses to surrender his clover ... because, as
he insists, it's sheltering a dust mote that is, in turn, home to an entire
microcosmic civilization. And how does he know this? Because every time he
cocks an ear and listens carefully, Horton hears a Who!

He was splashing —

Enjoying the jungle's great joys —

When Horton the elephant

Heard a small noise.

I can think of no higher compliment to pay directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, than to say that their big-screen adaptation of Horton Hears a Who looks, sounds and feels like a Dr. Seuss book come to life ... or, better still, like a film Theodor Geisel would have made himself, had he embraced the film medium (and been given a gazillion-dollar budget).

But then I shouldn't be surprised, because Blue Sky Studios — famed for its deservedly popular Ice Age franchise — is, along with Pixar, one of the few contemporary animation houses that understands the need to make story and voice performance as important as the eye-popping visuals.

In this case, scripters Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio have skillfully expanded upon the original children's picture-book, and done so with such finesses that you'll be hard-pressed to determine where Dr. Seuss' original rhyming prose — half a century old at this point, but still sounding fresh — yields to 21st century embellishment (although I'll bet most 5-year-olds could tell you).

And as if to remind us that Dr. Seuss is best enjoyed when read aloud, narrator Charles Osgood interrupts the on-screen action every so often, just to remind us of where we are in the captivating narrative.

Many of Dr. Seuss' books have an important moral; Horton Hears a Who comes with several. Indeed, hearing our pachyderm protagonist insist that "a person's a person, no matter how small" carries even more weight these days, with so many people feeling disenfranchised by political and corporate monoliths. We all need a protective Horton in our lives.