Dumb and Dumber To
Dir. Bobby & Peter Farrelly
In second grade, I got in trouble for proclaiming at room volume: “who’s got the
wiener schnitzel?” Some girl told the teacher thinking I meant something else,
but my young mind only absorbed that line from the funniest movie ever made, Dumb and Dumber. It’s a film I return to
over and over again, and remains my all-time favorite movie. When I was but a
wee boy, my mom received a VHS double-pack of The Mask and Dumb and Dumber for
her birthday. After coercing her to let me watch a PG-13 movie, I would play them so often the video became unwatchably degraded.
To this day, I can still recite large chunks of the movie word-for-word, and it
no doubt shaped my sense of humor growing up (which inevitably led me on the
path to trying stand-up in my undergrad years). It’s a film that means a lot to
me, but through the years, it seems like the powers that be in Hollywood want to take that magic away.
First was the god awful prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, starring two younger
actors doing their best Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels impressions, which was the
comedy equivalent of watching a close family member succumb to a deadly skin
disease. Then came the “unrated” DVD and Blu-Ray re-release. Unless you scour
the internet, the only version you can currently buy is this shitty, re-cut
version which literally takes out some of the best scenes and ruins some of the
funniest moments by adding unnecessary comic beats. So when it was announced
just over a year ago that Jim and Jeff would be returning, a full 20 years
later, to film Dumb and Dumber To, it
seemed like such a cynical cash grab from the Farrelly Brothers.
Both Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels just weren’t the same
people anymore. Jeff was off doing respectable work like The Newsroom, and Jim
Carrey’s stardom had taken a major toll on him – he was depressed, on meds, writing
existential children’s books, and going on whacked out “spiritual journeys.” Like
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it just
seemed their youthful energy would be channeled into forced “old guy” humor to
justify this desperate money-making scheme. And looking at the output of the Farrelly Brothers recently - The Three Stooges, Hall Pass, and The Heartbreak Kid - was hardly promising. But here we are anyway, and out of obligation, I lined up
and bought my ticket to promised disappointment. After seeing the film however,
I have to say, it was a blindsidingly fun (but still unnecessary) swan song to
put an end to things.
As big as those problems were, it was refreshing to see a purely "joke-after-joke" comedy again, harking back to Airplane! where the sheer volume of gags, puns, and slapstick moments ensures that even if a particular joke falls flat, you'll have a new one right around the corner. Especially in this age of "joke-less" comedies, I enjoyed seeing the Farrellys take an old school route. One thing I HATED was the over-use of references to the first film. Almost every scene features a line, joke, or piece of scenery in the background that harkens back to the original, and every time it felt so desperate. Also, what made the first so great was that Harry and Lloyd were the ONLY people in the film who were "dumb," and seeing them inadvertently screw things up for the people around them was the source of most of the comedy; here, the world is much more cartoonish and many of the side characters are just as "outrageous" as the two leads, which diffuses the situations a great deal. The criminals in the first movie actually felt like dangerous people (some of them alumni from popular gangster movies), which added to the humor in Harry and Lloyd's obliviousness, but also to the stakes in general. Here however, for the two "bad guys" we have Daily Show correspondent Rob Riggle and a femme fatale (Laurie Holden) with an unexplainable toe-sucking fetish.
Dumb and Dumber To has an incredible amount of issues: it looks really cheaply made (I've seen internet videos with higher production values), it honestly doesn't treat women very well, and it feels more like an encore of an aged comedy troupe (like the one held by Monty Python recently) than a "height-of-their-game" fresh comedy, but I had a certain amount of fun with it. The jokes only work about half the time, but when they did, I found myself cracking up (having Lloyd and Harry crash a TED Talk was a brilliant idea). Carrey and Daniels give it their all, and succeed in re-capturing some of the magic of their younger days, even if their skin is sagging while doing so. It's flawed for sure, but the effort feels sincere.
Rating: C+
Big Hero 6
Dir. Don Hall & Chris Williams
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Considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe's ridiculous success, it's strange that Big Hero 6, Disney's first animated Marvel property, barely mentions its connection to the tried and true brand in the advertising or even the movie itself. Based off of an obscure, short-lived comic series (that apparently is very different from the movie), Big Hero 6 follows a young robotics prodigy, Hiro Hamada, who's involved in the underground robot-fighting circuit in the hybrid futuristic city of San Fransokyo. His older brother, Tadashi, another robot-enthusiast, convinces Hiro to try to get into a prestigious Tech Institute and introduces him to a colorful cast of characters with various skill sets that will obviously come in handy later on. Here, Hiro meets Tadashi's creation, Baymax, a health-care robot with a balloon-like body. Without spoilers, when shit hits the fan and a bad guy takes control of Hiro's "nanobot" technology, it's up to Hiro, with the help of his brother's creation, to save the day. Along with a standard revenge-action plot, the story is as much, if not moreso, about loss and grief. Big Hero 6 has a problem with broadcasting its themes a mile away, and heavy-handedly, but the world is so colorful and full of life, and the entire movie is laugh-out-loud funny, that it totally redeems itself.
Baymax is one of the most well-conceived animated characters I've seen in a long time. He's the heart of the film, as well as the comic relief, and the physics of the character is unlike anything I've seen before. His clumsy way of hopping around, even in dire situations, is brilliantly executed. The animation all around is spectacular here, and not since "Mr. Tortilla Head" in Toy Story 3 have I been so taken aback by how wonderfully imagined an animated character moved. The same goes for Hiro's "crew," whose intellectual "specialties" make them into makeshift superheroes; in a Guardians of the Galaxy way, each has their own distinct personality.
One of the major problems I found though, had to do with the villain. I won't spoil anything, but I just found his motivation for "stopping" our heroes to be pretty thin. His control over thousands of "nanobots" was spectacular to watch, but by the end of the film, his end goal didn't warrant trying to squash out this kid and his pals. The villain's identity remains a mystery until later on in the film, so if he'd just kept to himself this whole time, he would've gotten away with his master plan. Maybe I missed something, but there's no denying that this film, again like Guardians, is more about the heroes than the villain.
This is a genuinely funny, action-packed, beautifully crafted adventure, even if it is really predictable in parts, and some of the dialogue is expository to a fault ("OK, Tadashi, don't you remember that my parents died when I was three?" ...No one talks like that!). Baymax is worth the admission price alone. Like the best Disney films, there's a lot of laughs and a lot of heart, but it stops just short of the brilliant "Pixar-level" productions we saw with Up and WALL-E.
Rating: B+
Whiplash
Dir. Damien Chazelle
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Since his debut appearance in the underrated indie Rabbit Hole, Miles Teller has slowly turned into one of the more interesting up-and-coming young actors. After The Spectacular Now he has a permanent spot on my "I'll see anything he's in" list, so with Whiplash, the Sundance-winning film about a young, talented drummer (Teller) attending a prestigious music school with dreams of becoming the next Buddy Rich, and his verbally abusive limit-pushing teacher (J.K. Simmons), I was ready to rock. Or to use a more appropriate music pun: I was jazzed. Though it marks Damien Chazelle's feature film debut, Whiplash is an amazing film through and through; the acting is superb, the music is dynamic, complex, and exciting, and the tight, spot-on writing and editing make this one of the leanest movies of the year. There's not a single wasted moment.
Miles Teller plays the "new guy" extremely well. Unlike his frat boy cocky attitude from The Spectacular Now, here he's a nebbish, wide-eyed freshie whose aspirations come before anything else (including his health). Unlike the guitar or saxophone, there's no way to "fake" playing the drums, as it's such a physical instrument, and Teller goes all-out. He puts every ounce of himself into his insane drum solos, and adds a level of tension, energy, and frustration into every hit. Likewise, Simmons is an absolute master in this film. Every single word, pause, breath, finger-twich, or verbally abusive drill sergeant rant is mesmerizing. The way he teeter-totters on the edge of tough love and straight emotional/physical harm by pushing his students to their absolute limits had me, to use a cliched term, on the edge of my seat.
Having come from a musical background, both Chazelle and Simmons bring an air of authenticity to the film. I don't know if I've ever been so immersed into the world of music as I was in this film. The film takes a lot of chances, and I was both gasping and nervously laughing throughout the film as both the teacher and his student form a love/hate bond with each other, until everything ultimately crescendos into one of the best musical scenes I've ever seen. Whiplash is a fantastic film that effectively shows the cost and reward of attempting to be not great, but "one of the greats."
Rating: A
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