Underworld 9/18/2003
What’s Good: The notion of using Vamps and werewolves as an allegory for race relations holds promise…
What's Not in a more thoughtful fantasy thriller. But this film fails for one simple reason: Beckinsale boringsale—I am not a fan.
Directed by Len Wiseman
Outline: Selene (Beckinsale), a beautiful vampire warrior, is entrenched in a war between the vampire and werewolf races. Although she is aligned with the vampires, she falls in love with Michael (Speedman), a werewolf who longs for the war to end.

   “What’s the point of being immortal if you can’t enjoy the simple pleasures in life?” All I have to say is I'm thankful I'm not immortal because that means one day I'll be dead, resting in a blissfully quiet atheist haven where the memory of this film has been erased by the oblivion of nothingness. If you can believe it, a human being actually got paid for writing a straight-faced line like that in this new “modern” vampire noir thriller (i.e. Matrix with fangs) that, fittingly, had audiences running out of the theater with either fits of laughter or deep depression. If you can believe that then you can believe that someone also got paid for dreaming up these character names: Selene, Corvin, Kraven, Lucian, Singe, Viktor and, ooooh watch out, a guy named Raze. To be honest those absurd names, in addition to the whole the film, come across feeling like a fan-fic crossover wet dream where characters from every seminal vampire/fantasy/sci-fi film meet in an entirely lackluster adventure that attempts to invent its own mythology by coping other mythologies... but in that same breath Underworld forgets that the first thing any good amalgamated myth should have is a good character. This film seems to have begun with a story idea first and characters last.

     Underworld creates a Post-Burton/neo-gothic tale of a rogue blood drinker who protects a pale-assed human (Scott Speedman, great in this year's Dark Blue and, well, chained up, shirtless and puppy-dog faced here for two straight hours) from evil conspirators as she, in the process, uncovers dark secrets from her own politically corrupt clan of Vampire leaders blah blah blah the constantly dark Underworld is defined by its lame Vampire pretentious that are wrapped in an even lamer attempt to look trendy. Director Len Wiseman (who either got the job because he's banging Kate Beckinsale or vice versa) bites us in the ass with what he obviously hopes to be a potential franchise—too bad the potentially interesting epic storyline was bled dry by the need to appeal to the crowd who liked the action in Matrix, but not the philosophy. Smart. Which reminds me; a dazzling Vampire/Werewolf history is touched upon briefly in flashbacks where we see the fight between the vamps and werewolves in medieval times (it looks like Lord of the Rings meets Anne Rice) and half way through the film I'm thinking, why not make this the entire film? But what’s the use in exploring this vamped-out/sped-up/spaced-out version of Romeo and Juliet if that exploration means you’ve put more thought into this film than the screenwriters? In the end, all that needs to be said of the film is that it contains an overzealous, “can’t miss” desire to take all the things that work in film’s like Blade, Matrix and Lord of the Rings, puts all this pulpy fiction in a blender, adds a pinch of leather and the result is a murky glob of slop devoid of any color or form and too rough to ever stomach.

     Though she looks good in her Catwoman meets Trinity leather spandex, her character simply goes through the motions and fails to emerge as the distinct and tragic vampyric figure the film is trying to push on us. As Selene, Kate Beckinsale offers us no energy and no sense of adventure, just stone faced mildness with too much back-story and too little, well, present-story. Beckinsale is looking to be the female Keanu except he can at least choose his projects well (usually) and acts just fine within the parameters he’s given as a performer. The drab Beckinsale by comparison seems to be looking for the actor's holy grail: a fast track to the A-list (how else could you explain the abysmal Pearl Harbor and Serendipity). Beckinsale's character has no discernible substance beyond her arduous attempt to look sleek while walking or jumping or whatever in slow-motion (how nineties). Which reminds me, there is no logical reason (within this film's world) why characters can defy gravity but since when does there need to be? If Drew Barrymore can fly then why not Kate Beckinsale? I'll tell you why, because both film's suck... oh, and I totally intended that to be a pun. With that in mind know that Beckinsale’s Selene (a long lost annoying vampire relative of Miss Dion perhaps?) never once felt comfortable in the film’s many tiresome action scenes but what's worse than that is that she also never feels like a genuinely tortured immortal, bearing the weight of her dark heritage. And why is this? Because she doesn’t really seem like anything besides a character trying too hard to look like a dark superhero! Sure it's a relief that, at the very least, Beckinsale looks hot in her tight black clothes but even this caveat is rendered moot considering we also have to put up with the perpetual look of constipation on her face.

D+  Fresh (critics that liked it): 26 / Rotten: 60+me  

Lost In Translation 9/13/2003
What’s Good: Sofia Coppola has given us a remarkable film. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson mark the best screen couple since George Clooney and what's-her-name in Out of Sight. Murray needs an Oscar for this role. Combine the languid, unhurried splendor of In the Mood for Love and the foreign estrangement themes of Spirited Away you would have a film that approaches the cautious brand of romance experienced in Lost in Translation.
What's Not: The temptation to call this film boring. It's not. Also, anyone who skips this film because it looks or sounds too serious is making a mistake. In addition to being touching, this is a laugh out loud funny film that is impossible not to like. It boils down to this: if you at all like Bill Murray then see this film.
Directed by Sofia Coppola
Outline: Two Americans meet and spend a week in Tokyo.

     Lost In Translation is the kind of strange and wonder film I can’t believe got a green light in this flashy cinematic climate. You look at a movie like this and just get lost in the subtle tale of unconsummated and hardly implied love that can exists between two lost individuals. Would believe me if I told you that the stars of this film, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, resonate more than any sexualized relationship in recent screen memory? I know, I know, imagining those two together may seem even more frightening prospect than watching Harold and Maud hook up but give this couple a chance, they will surprise you. Though this odd couple didn't really touch each other they touched me in a way I won't soon forget.

     Bill Murray stars as Bob Harris, a fifty something has-been actor who’s visiting Japan, missing his son’s birthday but collecting a two million payday to do add work peddling some high profile whiskey. When not caught up in a frustratingly unproductive shooting schedule where this actor simply has no way of communicating with his “director” (or anybody else for that matter), Bob resides in the downstairs hotel bar because even in his hotel room the surreal images coming out of the television only remind him of how far away from home he is. The film’s unsaid theme is that everybody needs this mental concept of home --which is actually some higher sense of being-- and here’s what happens during the span of a week when two emotionally despondent characters that find each other. The film's balance of tones is just about perfect. Lost is not all sappy and not all cheeky but, rather, a perfect blend of the two.

     While experiencing the most humorous and poignant portrayal of a mid life crisis since Wonder Boys and Yi Yi, Bob, this gleefully deadened wreck who invites us all to laugh at his stable misery (even better than Jack in About Schmidt) crosses path with another restless hotel resident, a fresh faced twenty-something named Charlotte who’s married the wrong guy and perhaps even more disenfranchised and tired of life as Murray’s character is. At this point, I certainly enjoyed the film but was mistakenly confident about the path it would go down with these two characters—walks in the park lead into hand holding which turns into an incident that brings the two "closer" together then a stolen kisses then anal rape... you know, all that usual romance movie stuff.  But hold on, don’t get the wrong idea just yet. Contrary to what the subject matter practically demands, just because we see an older man and younger woman in the same movie, and just because those two have chemistry doesn’t mean we have to sit through the tired clichés of American Beauty. There is no sex in this film and the strangest thing is that there doesn’t need to be any. And how bout' this-- For the first time ever I didn't need to see Scarlett Johansson naked in a movie (though I wouldn't have objected to seeing her naked in my room). Lost is far too sincere to the oddly realistic world it created to throw in a torrid love affair for our salacious amusement. And with that in mind, again, don’t get the wrong idea: we are also not subjected to pseudo-ponderous art house drivel. Yes, besides not copulating like R-rated movie trained robots, characters also don’t sit around and ponder their role in the universe.

     The film is set in the “strange” land of Japan and this factoid is both a punch line and a sincere exploration of how different these two cultures are. As we see the film through the Western eyes of Murray and Scarlett Johansson we see the extent of the culture clash; the Japanese obsession with Kerokie, colorful talk shows and supa furry animals being only the tip of the iceberg. In most movies, being lost in life (as the title suggests) and in a land you don’t know usually spells disaster or is responsible for great sweeps of cathartic “I was never the same again after that trip” exploration (Out of Africa, A Passage to India etc.) but again, it’s futile to attempt to get ahead of this film for nothing --in the brisk Hollywood sense--.particularly extraordinary happens… and that is precisely why the film is so extraordinary. You could also say that through not saying anything deliberately profound via these humble characters, the film is saying something profound. It makes total sense that these two people in this kind of strange relationship would have no idea what to say and have no idea of how express their conflicted feelings and so what comes out instead is dialogue that skims over the surface of what these two are thinking but hints at volumes of deeper feelings left unsaid by the mouths but made perfectly clear by Bob and Charlotte's body language. All the dramatic action and all the fiery passion remains but a glimmer in these two companion's eyes and for that reason Murray and Johansson reminded me of No Face, the restless, wandering spirit in Spirited Away that in some innate way knew what it wanted but could never quite muster the corporal strength and conviction to say or do anything--yet we knew. By the end, the paths these two characters take is so tragic yet so logical. There is a hard core practicality in this situation where two people with established lives meet, find some form of love, then (spoiler ahead) go back to their established lives and this development far outweighs the quixotic and immature notion of two lovers running off with each other.

In many carefully framed scenes peppered throughout the film (set against the ethereal sounds of the band Air) we see shots of these two characters separately gazing off into the Japanese cityscape from a high hotel altitude. It is as if they are searching for beacons of hope or meaning in this world. I took this visual metaphor to signify the notion that angst drives them to wander above the clouds, flying high up in the air only to have the burdens of reality slap us all in the face when, a scene later, these characters are forced back down to earth and forced to accept the fact that love can be fleeting. But the film is not sad. There is a joyful redemption to be seen here. Lost is not out to answer anything for its characters or it's audience. Nor is it out to impose a huge life lesson upon them. What we get instead is the soothing sight of a respect that arises between an older man and a younger woman. But the most amazing thing I got from this film was the clear sense that these two people are learning from each other. Sounds simple, sounds trite but believe me when I say a week after watching Charlotte and Bob together, I cannot think of another onscreen relationship that has approached this level of honesty and sincerity. 

     Murray quite simply delivers his best serious performance of his career as he draws us in with these hints of misery yet makes us laugh with his deadpan delivery and trenchant way of dealing with this otherworldly culture he's currently visiting. Murray, more than any other comedian turned actor, has this masterful way of being accidentally funny... on purpose. I never know exactly what makes Murray funny in a movie, he is the only comedian that can make me laugh by not doing anything funny. The actor's method is a mystery to me and so it is an astonishing reward to see Murray blending his unassuming and lackadaisical humor with such a touchingly sad personality. The beautiful irony of this character hit me when I realized that while Bob may be a sad and lost individual, he is never going to be as happy as when he is with Johansson's Charlotte on this trip. I thought it would be hard to top Rushmore but if the actor finally gets the nomination he disserves and if he wins the be best actor trophy then it will not so much be a makeup Oscar but an Oscar for a performance that’s shining and brilliant and deserved more than any other performance I've seen all year. As for Johansson, well she also gives the best performance of her career. Her similar brand of mixing the polar feelings of sadness with love is a thing of bittersweet beauty. This film can do no wrong.

     In closing I feel I must mention that more than a love story this is a story of deep spiritual connection. This film shows us how love can exist as an ephemeral quality even when it's not a tangible one.  Perhaps you could even look at this as a simple tale of two different people who are, in some strange way, the same person. But here's the strangest thing of all: who would have thought that combining these two polar-opposite performers would yield the best film of the year while the logical pairing the Bennifer couple yielded Gigli, just about the worst thing anyone's ever seen... ever. There's no accounting for onscreen chemistry.

P.S. With her singular direction of a film I consider to be a masterpiece, I am close to forgiving Sofia Coppola for Godfather III. 

A  Fresh (critics that liked it): 95+me / Rotten: 5

\Once Upon A Time In Mexico 9/12/2003
What’s Good: The Summer is over. Movies can only get better. Depp's character makes this film. Even when Sands has blood in the shape of angel wings coming from his blind eyes, this character still kicks ass. I'm clamoring for a Blind Furry-esq spin off.
What's Not: The flashback scenes are dull. And why is Selma Hayek billed over Johnny Depp?
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Outline: Hitman "El Mariachi" becomes involved in international espionage involving a psychotic CIA agent and a corrupt Mexican general.

     A few weeks ago I blabbed “unless QT enters the tumble weed barren field we won’t be seeing any self aware, postmod versions of old school cow boys talking a new school rap” and behold, the stork landed this self effacing (and thoroughly modern) western mextravaganza in our laps. All I have to say is thank god summer is over because here comes a real summer stunner (in spirit) that tallied a three day total of $24 million dollars from filmgoers that I bet were happy to throw in that much. After being spared the phony summer movie conventions that have smothered us these last few months, I reckon Once Upon A Time In Mexico is worth far more than ten dollars per person considering I spent, geez, nearly $100 dollars on Matrix Reloaded, Gigli, Charley’s Angels 2, Hulk, S.W.A.T., Bad Boys 2, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Legally Blond 2, Whale Rider. Pirates of the Caribbean and 2 Fast 2 Stupid. Director Robert Rodriguez’s new action “epic” delivers the kind of pure kinetic delight that the films from that lost hundred dollars were aiming for but fell short due to a lack of soul and spirit. The only good thing to have come out of this summer is that Gigli's  sheer awfulness caused the ever-annoying Ben and J Lo to break up so it's a relief to see an action film with so much soul to spare; copious amounts of squib blood isn’t the only thing oozing for Once Upon A Time In Mexico sweats droplets of kitschy personality out of it’s leathery pours.

     After I saw the first Desperado I was in a tizzy. It was rare, watching such a kinetically fecund action bloodbath. The B-movie hipness was kicked into overdrive without ever turning into one of those nineties era Trainspotting or Guy Ritchie gimmicks. Also, the style of Desperado was not a showy distraction but felt like an actual character in the film. I loved how Rodriguez, in true Sam Ramie fashion, used every trick in his directorial/ editorial/ editing/ musical/camera man lexicon to deliver an incisive action comedy that was nothing short of lovable; too absurd and bloody to be taken literally yet too seamless to scoff at. So many years later and there have so many action films that have entirely missed the point (Antonio was just in one of em’: Ballistic) but this quasi-sequel is all that and a bag of Doritos.

     More than a solid September release (an oxymoron till this year when Once Upon…, Lost In Translation and Anything Else have been released) what we have here is surprisingly taut action-western that grabs onto our expectations and flings them into a new direction by choosing the more difficult path of intrigue and wry visual humor over the messy action El Mariachi and Desperado were known for. Methinks this is a strange way to go for a follow-up to those films but after being privy to the final product I’m fine with the new direction Rodriguez took. Be warned though that the action set-pieces play as though they were an afterthought. The many scenes of crimson tinted action must have been denoted in the elaborate script with nothing more than the description, “insert action scene here.” And while entirely serviceable, the action sequences are not the reason I'm slapping a + onto the B this film should have received. Most ironic of all, however, is that Banderas’ headlining Mariachi character (coming off of two films named after him!!!) is also an afterthought and has been all but lost in the shuffle. I watched in amazement as this once giant presence has been demoted to a secondary character that’s only as deep as his hired hand status. Surprisingly, I'm fine with that too. It seems that the focus and thrust of the film's momentum does not concentrate on who’s doing the killing (the stock bad guys wearing scowls and shades) or who's preventing the killing (Banderas) but, rather, the Iago-like character that’s bluntly orchestrating all this madness.

     Our stoic and sultry friend known only as El Mariachi has been ordered by an agent named Sands to eliminate the bad guy who’s going to eliminate Mexico’s president so that others (the CIA?) may eliminate the Prez and/or cajole others to eliminate him at some later date which Sands claims will “restore balance” to the... you know what, forget the convoluted plot. The only thing potential buyers of this film must know is that the breakaway character is Sands, played by Johnny Depp. The actor fearlessly jumps into this infinitely amusing and entirely duplicitous worldly conman character who, by the end of this fast-talking film, had the audience eating out of his fake hand and spared the film from becoming Not Another Mexican Standoff.

      Banderas as El Mariachi is the character we meet so many years later a fallen man (once again) after tragedy strikes his loved one (Hayak) from the first Desperado. The film centers around the actions of this lone gunman/dashing guitarist who gets convinced into make baby Jesus cry by reverting to his old hit man ways. Lucky for us, not for his victims. After the first film, this mythical folk hero (both within the film’s fictional world and within our world), like any good western movie protagonist, left the town thoroughly wrecked but saved the good people from the tyranny of evil Mexicans with moustaches (watch out for them, they all evil).

     So, yes, the wildcard in this long awaited project is, of course, Depp, who has no business being in a sequel to a film like Desperado but shoots his whacky charm from all cylinders anyways. Depp is the sole reason I would not call this film a sequel and Depp is the reason I’m dying to see a spin-offs of Once Upon… (and even Pirates of the Caribbean) over destined to be crap follow-ups like Jinx and Electra. And sure the actor is going all mainstream on us but few have the ability (or are allowed) to go this mainstream in such an amusingly fringe way. Depp can play within the confines of the system any way he wants; he is a rare case and so we should all be grateful. Equipped with novelty t-shirts, fake arms, silencers, a deadly penchant for pork and coyly inspirational lines like “Are you a Mexican or a Mexican’t?” the slick and swarthy puppet master antihero manipulates all the films sullied players and this actor, in the vein of his own beguilingly seedy character, steals the move outright. Also along for the bumpy ride is a disposable Salma Hayek in a pithy flashback cameo (her third film with Banderas after the first Desperado and the overrated Frida), Danny Trejo as a local gangster (reincarnated by Rodriguez for, like, the thousand time) Cheech as an informant to Sands (again, reincarnated… probably the same foulmouthed vampire-killer that was in Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn), Mickey Rourke as a dog carrying informant to Ruben Blades, a jittery ex-FBI local with a vendetta, and if that wasn't enough there's also Eva Mendes as the same character she’s been playing in every movie she’s been in since Training Day, and as a final little bonus we get William Dafoe as the film’s larger-than-life big bad. Dafoe plays, get this, a ruthless Mexican crime lord whose favorite film must be Scarface. Ripped directly from the Al Pacino book of overacting, the only thing that lets us know that this green eyed oddball is playing a Mexican character is that he replaces the word “you” with “jew.” Ingenious! Using a deliberately canny bad accent, this character evokes more laughter than fear and watch how Dafoe rivals Malkovich in Rounders and himself in Shadow of the Vampire as the most laughably (and lovably) overwrought movie villain of the last ten years. 

     With a cast like this, an easy to use high def shooting process, and not to mention such a large budget being thrown at him by an eternally loving Miramax/Dimension, Robert Rodriguez could have easily turned Once Upon A Time In Mexico into a grotesquely gaudy amusement park ride of shitty, Lethal Weapon 3 and 4 proportions but has instead crafted a self effacing action odyssey worthy of being compared to the films of Sergio Leone. This film proves that, without a doubt, Rodriguez is a Mexican.

once upon a time in mexico B+  Fresh (critics that liked it): 75+me  Rotten: 31

Matchstick Men8/27/2003 Legally Blond 2 and Uptown Girls
What’s Good: Nicholas Cage starts off playing a fascinating character.
What's Not: And ends up a boring dolt. Cage stayed true to his character’s fractured sickness in Leaving Las Vegas and won an Oscar for his work, so why not do the same here?
Directed by Ridley Scott
Outline: A phobic con artist and his protege are on the verge of pulling off a lucrative swindle when the con artist's teenage daughter arrives unexpectedly.

The blond trifuckta: Three movies about blond girls who change everybody’s lives and teach us all a lesion.

Matchstick Men     
    If you are not familiar with this site you should know that heist/con man movies trouble me so much only because I admire the formula so much. Like the austere father who never loved you, I'm hard on the genre but that's only because I love it so. I’m more than happy to watch even the worst of the heist/con man offerings (from Ocean's 11 to this year's The Good Thief). The only catch is that my expectations of them are usually a bit high considering I've seen so many good ones. So in a year when so many poorly executed heist movies have played before my apathetic eyes (2 Fast 2 Furious, The Good Thief, Confidence, and to a smaller degree, the decent but nowhere near great The Italian Job) it's sad that within this abundance of genre films being released, I have been unable to find one good one since 2001's Sexy Beast. Hell, these days I can't even find a film that's Snatch-worthy. Which reminds me, Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men is a rather odd con man dramedy that opens with a singular premise and gets robbed of its former charm by a conventional script.

     Nicholas Cage stars as Roy, a whacked out con man who is good at his job but bad at his life. The con men we see in the cinema are usually smooth at their game and slick bachelors in their private lives—the con man’s esteem and confidence seems to inform his or her lifestyle and I am drawn to these films because they make these fascinating and duplicitous jobs look so easy and perhaps even a little fun. This character, however, is so maladroit that even if it were Ocean’s 10,000, Clooney wouldn’t dream of choosing Cage’s exasperating (yet talented) Roy for a job. Why? Well, for starters, it must be hard for Roy to be a successful criminal who's a jittery agoraphobic that can’t even go outdoors. This tormented criminal stutters, hyperventilates, can’t stop cleaning his house, whoops, says “pigmies” when something goes wrong (which is always), winces, mumbles and can’t stand to be around individuals of the human variety. The man doesn’t so much have ticks as the ticks have him. He’s a full-on obsessive compulsive wreck, but one that goes into a zone when doing his job… kind of like a mix between Bill Pullman’s character in the much better Zero Effect and John Cusack in the brilliant The Grifters. Sam Rockwell (whose presence never hurt a movie, not even Charlie's Angels) is evoking some residual Mamet-movie vibes from his tasty role in Heist for he plays, yet again, the jocular and cocky protégé con artist who puts up with Roy's eccentric ways. This is a funny and menacing character that, unlike Cage's Roy, only gains layers after the film is over. The film centers these two characters as they plan a big heist that Rockwell's character brought to Roy but this is not really about that job. So, yeah, the premise of an OCD criminal and the comic relief partner doing jobs is a damn fine story I want to see told. Too bad this film doesn’t tell that story. Why? Enter Angela (White Oleander's Alison Lohman), Roy's precocious long lost daughter, who CHANGES THIS MAN’S LIFE. Why? Because she’s young and blonde and cute and, according to Hollywood, being around that can cure any mental illness.

     Like the nice-try Bruce Willis/Billy Bob film, Bandits, Matchstick Men is also more about idiosyncratic personalities than the actual things these personalities are doing (or stealing) and while I admire this personalized approach, how the film uses that is entirely the problem. You see, Matchstick Men has a nice shaky cam style and Ridley Scott directs with a sure vision but the film’s debilitating flaw is ironically its selling point– and that's Roy’s arc. Or, rather, the story’s desire to impose one on him. Why is it that if you make a movie about an interesting character who doesn’t conform to the idealized version of a consumer-happy American, must he be changed by the end? Why is Hollywood’s “happier” ending one that takes a thoughtful character and castrates his unique qualities by categorizing him into that morally safe, 2.5 kids, dog, Volvo-driving tub of lard. And why must young blondes always transform people (see reviews below)? Here’s the thing: Hollywood thinks it can logically explain why a deeply troubled man with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can be miraculously cured solely by the love of another. From Russell Crowe in Beautiful Mind to Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets to Bruce Willis in Disney’s The Kid, the love-conquers-all mentality to life is quaint and poetic and sometimes works quite well (As Good As It Gets hits a nice middle ground, as does The Royal Tenenbaums) but is more often than not a bland sentiment about the “troubled artist” character we see so often in the movies.

     Nothing about Matchstick Men surprised me except for the actual surprise, which, for reasons I shouldn’t get into, was a nice enough con-movie dupe but a little too labored to base a whole movie on. So the final con is clever but the impact of it was lost because my allegiance to Roy was lost. I sat through this touchy feely melodrama with an odd range of emotions. Either it was intense annoyance at the trite father-daughter angle where, in true Paper Moon fashion, the father teaches the daughter how to con with a smile; or it was intense hatred towards a film that betrayed Cage’s once quirky personality that I wanted back; or, oddly enough, a strange reverence for the small moments that do work. Sure, there are many aspects of these characters that charmed me (Nick Cage’s early scenes as a troubled con man are brilliant and Alison Lohman has a great career ahead of her), and sure it's refreshing to see Ridley Scott’s career take a break from those exhausting epics to do this intimate film, but the sometimes likable characters and well intending director both go down an infuriatingly predictable path. Friends double cross in the vein of Mamet’s House of Games, an interesting sick man is transformed by love to become boring family guy (note that Cage was in a similarly awful film called The Family Man) and the little girl learns a life lesson from her absentee father… I’ve seen all of this before and I’ve hated it all this before. I don’t want to watch a rough draft, con man version of the insipid I Am Sam, I want a film where the interesting sick guy stays interesting and sick. Arc is not always a good thing.

Legally Blond 2 The second annoying blond girl with preternatural redemptive powers....
     Here is my review of the first Legally Blond in it's entirety: “What the fuck is this shit.” Now, bear in mind that this remains to be the shortest review I’ve ever written on the site and that's because no 1,000 word review could relay my antipathy any more than those few words. To me, every joke in that film not only missed the target but Reece’s portrayal of the capricious socialite, Ell, is perhaps one of the most annoying comic personalities in cinema history—now that I’ve sat through Gigli I can still stay that so heed those words. Yes Ell's bubbly, yes I get that people see her pastel naiveté and underestimate her on sight, yes she’s blond and (as in the other three films here) this alone causes people to be transformed by her luminously blond ways (whatever), yes she might not actually be as smart as her actions but she’s a brave little engine that thinks positive, loves people and this cockeyed optimism within a pessimistic world allows Ell to achieve major goals as her very presence is a slap in the face of all those who get caught up in the minutia of conformity and follow the male-driven status quo. Yes she is all that and yes, I’ve never wanted this character to shut up more than I have after seeing Legally Blond 2, a film in which every sentiments from the first film is repeated, repeated, repeated but this time Ell has an even broader smile.

From Being There to Forrest Gump to The Irresponsible Capt Tyler to Buffy the Vampire Slayer the notion of societal outsiders catching the “civilized world” off guard with their unique otherness has been told before and has never been relayed as dimly as in the Legally Blond films. This franchise, like Charlie’s Angels can only important to the community of sane filmgoers if we discount the obvious fact that both films are void of all humor and instead study how the story garbles postfeminist ideology and, in fact, may be more dangerous to the young women of America than the flat out chauvinistic Freddy Vs. Jason because at least Freddy is sincere in it’s overt in it's satiric exploitation and you can learn something about that—this film hides it’s exploitation with positive and positively inane commercialized, corrupted girl power message making. Reece’s grinning and coy debutant shtick grew tedious and abrasive within the first five minutes of the first film so any guesses as to how well that overused novelty of dumb people fumbling their way into great achievements holds up in the second film?

The plot, which feels like a randomly generated Final Draft Pro glitch penned this film, revolves around Ell planning her wedding and deciding to, get this, track her toy dog’s mother to send her a wedding invitation and she discovers that, get this, her pet dog Bruiser’s mother is in a, get this, animal research center. This bothers Ell. Of course it does, anyone incapable of understanding the notion of "the greater good" would believe that the death of one stupid dog is unacceptable even though that death could save thousands in the long run. And if the premise wasn’t sitcom lame enough, Ell then quits her job, goes to Washington, turns into a silly but savvy politician that everyone hates at first (they all wear dreary black suits and she wears pink… get it, get it). She then passes a, get this, “Bruiser’s Bill” through legislation even though that bill will further hurt our faltering economy and leave thousands of harder workers of jobs and poor, and in the process of saving all  test animals (well, the cute animals at least, the ugly ones can die for all she cares), she “changes the system” and “gets my voice heard.” The End. To Ell,  I say: Bravo you dumb fuck. I hope your brilliant political strategies and implausible (even in the realm of comedy) politicking causes not only cosmetic testing to get banned but all medical testing too. That way we could all watch you get colon cancer and the third film could center around a zany plot where you die a slow and painful death that could have been prevented.

Uptown Girls
     The final blond Christ figure movie is Uptown Girls and this one’s a peroxide doozey. If I was annoyed by the mentally retarded Ell and wanted to see her die "a slow and painful death" (I'm thinking: perhaps Angel could punch a hole through a maggoty head that nobody sees but me), but even watching an illegal download of that mess a day before didn’t quite prepare me for Uptown Girls, an unlikable and, as in the above films, predictable tale about a rich girl (Britney Murphy) who looses her family's millions to someone named Bob, meets the blond Annoya-Goya in training, Dakota Fanning (after I Am Sam, I am not this little one’s biggest fan), meets a "hot" musician, gets dumped by a hot musician who finds her too annoying (get in line, bro), gets a job at a posh clothes store, gets fired for being a nasty ho, gets a new job babysitting the brooding young girl, gets fired for being a bloody stupid twit, gets hired again, gets fired and hired once more, and goes around New York with the crabby young girl. What can you say about a film who's supposed inspirational high point consists of Murphy's character force feeding Fanning a hot dog? Hopefully nothing except I have no idea why I sat through this movie. 

     So what we have here is a movie about an rich princess turned poor whiner and an bothersome seven-year-old hypochondriac that overacts to the point of, um, Al Pacino as the little articulate scholar squawks as if she's a 35-year-old screenwriter who graduated from Vassar. Which begs the question: and we care about these two people, because...?  The only moral of the story that I could extract is that when two woeful blond chicks get together they change and enrich each other’s lives because that’s what feisty blond chicks do when they’re together, don’t ya know. To give you an example of how cumbersome the film's narrative flow feels consider the obligatory scene where the two characters, once adversaries, are now required by the script to bond (as must happen in all films about an adult and a child if you use Dutch as a model for these kinds of movies), "(Mozart) happens to be depressing and if we're going to have fun we need to listen to music that's fun" the wheezy sounding Murphy proclaims using those oh-so-poetic diction while trying to spice up Fanning outlook on life. Yeah kids, don't listen to Mozart, he sooo boring ("this is music you slit your wrists to" Murphy says) I guess instead we should all loosen up and watch Uptown Girls because surely pop junk like this is more enriching than some jerk-off named Wolfgang. Uh-huh. 

That a film titled Uptown Girls fails to charm on even a basic level was no surprise, that we dislike the two shrill characters in a film titled Uptown Girls is almost a given considering the casting, that this project was directed by Boaz Yakin who gave us the masterful Fresh and, yes, charming Remember The Titans, well, is why my heart aches.   

matchstick men D+  
Legally Blond 2:  D-  
Uptown Girls: D