movie review: The Way

While Charlie Sheen has been making a lot of headlines lately for his crass and insane behavior, his brother and father stayed under the radar and quietly made a poignant independent film.

The Way stars Martin Sheen (real name, for those of you wondering about the family connection: Ramon Estevez) as Doctor Thomas Avery, a practical man who has been long estranged from his bohemian son, Daniel (played in flashbacks by Emilio Estevez). Daniel inadvertently alienated his father when he decided to abandon his doctorate studies in favor of seeing the world, and in the duration since that decision, the two have gone months at a time without talking or even knowing where the other one is. One day, Tom Avery is informed that his son has died in an accident (the details of which are never explained) while walking the Camino de Santiago, a Catholic pilgrimage route through France and Spain. Tom travels to France to identify Daniel's body, and on a highly uncharacteristic whim, decides to honor Daniel's memory by walking the Camino de Santiago (or "the Way") in Daniel's stead. Along the Way, Tom occasionally stops to sprinkle some of Daniel's ashes.

The conception of this movie began as a documentary, and it shows, as director/ producer/ writer Emilio Estevez goes to great lengths to present the Camino de Santiago in all its wonder: the towns and villages along the way, the beautiful landscapes visible from almost every step of the Way, the cultures of the various people one encounters on the journey, et cetera. One of the supporting characters even explains the history of the Camino de Santiago to Tom, who, knowing nothing about the Way before he sets out on his journey, serves as an audience surrogate in his ignorance.

Along the Way, Tom is joined by three other pilgrims. They are, in order of appearance, Joost, a garrulous and thoroughly friendly Dutchman walking the Camino in order to lose some weight; Sarah, a highly cynical Canadian (minus the cliches) who claims that she will quit smoking upon completion of the journey, although no one believes her; and Jack, a writer who hopes that walking the Camino de Santiago will rid him of his writer's block.

If The Way starts out as a story about Tom's journey of self-discovery, it morphs into a story about how four disparate characters can become friends despite Sarah's cynicism and Tom's grumpiness and impatience with his three traveling companions. This is a highly welcome evolution of the film's focus, as journeys of self-discovery may be fascinating life experiences, but rarely translate well into the cinematic art form.

Writing this review, I am reminded of the formula for a type of film that is, stylistically, a million miles removed from The Way: the buddy action comedy. In a buddy action comedy, two guys (almost always cops) are ostensibly opposites and initially hate each other, but as they bond over cooperating toward a common goal, they gradually learn that they are more alike than different, and end up as friends.

That's the exact same formula followed by The Way, albeit in a very, very different fashion. There are no explosions or fight scenes in The Way. Indeed, it must be emphasized that if you want to see a fast-paced movie, this is not the movie for you. Because of the concept of the film, most of this movie consists of shots of Martin Sheen (sometimes accompanied by his companions) just walking down the Camino de Santiago. Much of this walking is punctuated by dialogue. Much of it isn't. The dialogue is, not entirely, but largely made up of exposition -- exposition about the characters' lives and motivations for walking the Camino, and, because of the film's origins as an intended documentary, exposition about the history of the Camino and the cultures of the peoples who live and walk along the path.

I found most of this highly interesting, although my patience was tried by the long stretches of silence between the dialogue scenes. (Incidentally, however, these silences were nothing when compared to The Mill and the Cross, a movie so inactive and quiet that it would have me tearing my hair out if I had any.) For me, the most interesting scenes, by far, were the scenes about the four pilgrims gradually becoming friends during their journey. As a result of all of this, my emotional reaction to this movie was oddly contradictory: On the one hand, I was relieved when it was finally over, but on the other hand, I thought, "I can see myself enjoying a sequel," just because I really would love to see if, and how, the friendships between these characters could endure after they go their separate ways.

movie review: The Muppets

Lord knows I'm a big Muppet fan. A browse through my previous blog entries will find two (or maybe three, I can't remember if I made that third one public) reviews of early Muppet movies, and those reviews are simply glowing with praise.

But that's the original incarnation of the Muppets, the one that existed while Jim Henson still sat on the Muppet throne and commanded them with benevolent and wise proclamations. He was assisted in no small part by head writer Jerry Juhl, who stayed on after Henson's death, but no longer had the creative freedom he had under the Henson reign, instead responding to decisions by committee.

I ask, have the Muppets (and here I refer to the "Muppet Show" Muppets, not the "Sesame Street" Muppets who have always seemed to exist in a slightly different reality) really done anything funny, anything worthwhile, since Henson's death? Think before you answer. You may have laughed when the Muppets covered "Bohemian Rhapsody" recently, or when Beaker shows up singing opera in a YouTube video, but are these videos really funny in their own right, or do we laugh only out of pure nostalgia, fondly remembering when the Muppets used to be funny, and responding on a level of recall and recognition, rather than humor? By the very fact that I posed the question, you can probably guess what my answer is.

It has been 13 years since the previous theatrically released Muppet movie, and 20 years since the last good Muppet movie, the last one Henson had a hand in (no pun intended) before his death. Since that death, the Muppets have drifted back and foth between disappointment and outright obscurity. So now that the Muppets are attempting a comeback, it makes sense that the explicit theme behind the plot is the question, "are the Muppets still relevant in today's world?" The movie tries to argue that they are, but its many failings result in a poor argument indeed.

The plot involves three new characters: Schoolteacher Mary (Amy Adams) and her boyfriend Gary (Jason Segel) are intensely happy, nice, and optimistic. They come from such a small town that there is still a milkman who makes deliveries. Gary's brother is Walter, a Muppet. The film, wisely, never tries to explain how a human and a Muppet could be brothers. The story is set in motion when Gary and Mary decide to go to Los Angeles to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Because this is where the Muppet Studio is located, and Walter is obsessed with the Muppets, Gary eagerly agrees to take Walter along with them, despite the fact that this confirms Mary's frustration that Gary's brotherly love always seems to stand in the way of their romance.

Touring the Muppet Studio, the trio find that it is abandoned, forgotten, and falling apart. It is also threatened with foreclosure, as the evil oil baron Tex Richman plans to seize the property and tear it down so that he can drill for oil. Determined to save Muppet Studio, the trio team up with Kermit the Frog to reunite the Muppets -- not just the main characters, but all of the Muppet Show Muppets, even the obscure ones -- to put on a telethon to raise enough money to save the studio from foreclosure.

Okay, so that's the plot, now let's get down to what is right (very little) and wrong (a whole lot) about how all of this is presented to the viewer.

My first big gripe is the couple played by Adams and Segel. These characters are, ostensibly, necessary to set the plot in motion, but once the Muppets decide to reunite, the Muppets themselves rightfully become more central to the story. For the most part, Adams and Segel are reduced to background characters, tagging along with the Muppet gang and reacting as a part of the ensemble, where they stick out like sore thumbs and have absolutely nothing to add. A very few scenes involving their romance are tacked on, perhaps as an after-thought (it certainly felt that way) but these only serve as awkward and unwelcome distractions from the central storyline involving the Muppets. Why even include these characters in the first place? Since Walter is the narrator, his story could have easily been told without the extraneous Gary and Mary characters. Transparently, the only real reason for these characters is because Segel, who co-wrote the film and also plays Gary, simply wanted to write himself into the movie.

The other central human character is Tex Richman, the evil oil baron played by Chris Cooper. Appropriately for a Muppet movie, Cooper plays his villainous role with outright abandon, and I applaud him for providing one of the movie's few -- well, not "bright spots," exactly, but "not as bad" spots. I have strongly ambivalent (now there's an oxymoron for you) feelings about the villain's quirk that he has a tendency to say lines that set up villainous laughter, but instead of laughing, he actually says the words "maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh!" He doesn't even laugh these words, he simply sneers them villainously, and it took me a while to realize that this was intended as an inside joke for anyone who knows how to read a movie script; the whole joke is the implication that Cooper himself read the script and repeatedly mistakes the stage direction "maniacal laugh" as a line to be read. Is this funny? No, not even once, but at least it's creative, and on that minor level, I admired the joke.

The musical numbers in The Muppets are almost embarrassing, and fall under three categories: There are a few original songs which, despite a highly undeserved Oscar nomination, are thoroughly forgettable. There are also a few covers of established pop hits, which comes across as a lazy choice. (Did the previous Muppet movies depend on pop covers? No.) And there are also reprises of earlier Muppet favorites like "Rainbow Connection," which do nothing but remind us of the Muppets at their height, and how far they've fallen since.

But it's the humor behind this movie that is the real flaw. Earlier, I observed that the post-Henson Muppets try to get by on nostalgia alone. While that's sad enough when you're talking about a two or three minute YouTube video, we now have an entire 103-minute movie based on this tactic, and it's a gambit that simply doesn't pay off. The Muppets is chock-full of references to The Muppet Show and the earlier Muppet movies, but do the writers ever even try to observe anything funny about these references, or are they just making the references for their own sake? It's the Family Guy theory of humor, which states that making a reference to pop culture is enough to get a laugh, regardless of whether you actually have anything funny to say about it. I know Family Guy is popular with a lot of people, but that type of humor is inarguably lazy and unimaginative, and for me, it has never worked.

Let me provide an example of just how unsuccessful this tactic is: At one point, a TV executive (gamely played by Rashisa Jones) points out to the Muppets that they haven't been popular since the days when Dom DeLouise and Julie Andrews were considered big, cutting-edge guest stars. Now at this point, you may be expecting me to explain the joke, but I'm done. That's the whole joke. A Dom DeLouise reference. My god. Half the audience won't even know who Dom DeLouise is, and the other half will be waiting for a punchline. Do you see what I mean when I say how big a mistake it was to base this entire movie on the question of whether the Muppets are still relevant? Despite the film's intention to argue that they are, the execution of that argument ends up going a long way to prove that they aren't.

So how do I feel about the Muppets? Do I agree with this film's intended message, that they are still relevant and entertaining, or do I agree with the unintended argument made by this film's many failures, which strongly implies that the Muppets are outdated and passe? Let me answer with this observation: I would rather watch a 70s episode of the The Muppet Show for a tenth time than watch this movie or any other post-Henson Muppet production even once. That attitude isn't about living in the past, or being grumpy, closed-minded, or even nostalgic. It's just recognizing the difference between good and bad entertainment.

online review: "Barats & Bereta"

I've never been a fan of the "in your face" style of comedy featured in some Hollywood films and countless TV commercials and YouTube videos. You know what I'm talking about, the kind that pounds you over the head by mixing aggression and arrogance into its humor, with the message, "isn't this hilarious?"

That being said, the impressively prolific YouTube comedy duo of Barats & Bereta is very much of the "in your face" school, but, perhaps as the exception that proves the rule, because these guys are, quite simply, very, very, very funny. I refer to them as the exception that proves the rule because, in their case, their arrogance is really the point of the joke -- meaning that even if Barats and Bereta both specialize in playing arrogant characters, the performers themselves (who seem to do their own brilliant writing) are actually quite eager to please their audience, and are shameless in their lengths to do so. That includes poking fun at themselves, of course, as best displayed in their video "Barats and Bereta Theme Song," which ostensibly seeks to explain the differences between the two, but ends up illustrating how interchangable they are. (And yet, that's just a joke, because they're really not interchangable; Luke Barats tends to mix his arrogance with an undercurrent of vulnerability, while Joe Bereta's characters have a hint of jockiness to them.)

Despite their own mastery over comic delivery, Barats and Bereta are not afraid to share the spotlight. Note how, for example, the girl in the "Pick-up Lines" sketches is more than just a straight-man; her reactions and (sparse) dialogue form a big part of the humor. Then there's "Call From Jail," in which guest star Dan Oster takes the spotlight in a tour-de-force of one great character or impression after another.

I wouldn't go quite so far to say that everything they touch turns to gold. Their one weak point seems to be long-form comedy: While some of their biggest laughs appear in "skitlets" that are each only a few seconds long, their longer stuff is less impressive. The multi-episode storyline "Ad Guys," for example, has the same comic skill in the performances, and has a great premise, with Barats and Bereta playing a team in an advertising agency who become rivals when they are told that only one of them can be promoted. But nothing funny ever really comes from this idea. Then there's Scott and Zander's Crazy Night, a perpetually unfinished movie project that teams Barats and Bereta with Tony Danza (who plays himself). Granted, the clips are out of context, but there is not one laugh amongst them, and the storyline itself seems unoriginal, like a "Harold and Kumar" without the ethnic humor.

Still, such laughless videos are actually few and far between for this duo. These guys are amazingly prolific, and with the exceptions of "Ad Guys" and Scott and Zander's Crazy Night, every video is a winner. These guys are funny, and more than that, creative. Yes, there's some slapstick involved, but their humor is mostly absurdist in nature, and it's been a long time -- if ever -- that I've seen such a unique view on what makes us laugh.

AVOID: Scott and Zander's Crazy Night clips, also, arguably, "Ad Guys" and "Patrick Stewart's Christmas Story"

CHECK OUT: Pretty much anything else they've ever done. "Pick-up Lines," "Skitlets," etc. The list goes on and on, each video even better than the last.

PURE GENIUS: "Bible in a Minute"