Film Yap: Planet 51

I will give the movie this: the initial premise of Planet 51 is clever. The story is about an American astronaut who lands on a planet 20 billion miles away and is treated as a typical alien invader. This is also the extent of the cleverness of the movie.

The film is never offensive, but is incredibly boring and underdeveloped. It makes sense that Planet 51 ought to be thematically similar, but it’s almost unnerving how it is exactly the same as Earth. The only differences are they have green skin, antennae, and floating cars. Animation provides the opportunity to create a whole new magical world. If a character travels to a new planet, majority of the film should be parading the new creative differences on that planet. Instead the planet looks like America did during the 1950s. They do everything the same including speaking English.

The movie also suffers from the syndrome of too many themes. In this movie I think it wants us to be ourselves and be more than ourselves and to embrace the unknown and to be tolerant and to hate NASA. It’s very complex. This comes from Chuck the astronaut (voiced incompetently by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) befriending a young native named Lem. He has a crush on Neera but is too shy. He also wants to become an astronomer one day. Justin Long does a solid job about making Lem likable, but he’s too dull to root for. He complains that once Chuck arrives he just “wants his life to go back to normal.” His life really isn’t that different with Chuck. I think he’s just complaining because that’s what other people do in his situations.

Also Chuck shouldn’t be helped. He only has 73 hours to return to his ship. It’s unclear why he only had a weekend to investigate a planet, but I digress. The problem is that he’s way too obnoxious. He’s constantly showing off how awesome he is. He’s screaming various pop culture references that don’t make any sense like telling a group of elderly aliens to find him on Facebook. Meh. The movie goes to great lengths to show how incompetent he is and constantly suggests that astronauts are untrained button pushers. I’m pretty sure if they send you up in space, you are a heavily educated scientist but I could be wrong. His robot sidekick is amusing though. Sure it is an accidental rip-off of WALL-E and sounds like the Pixar lamp, but the idea of a NASA probe only being interested in rocks is amusing.

The film moves in a predictable pace and it is hard to decipher if kids will even like this. They’re not going to understand the numerous Star Wars jokes and the homages to 1950s B-movies. There are no joke set-pieces to really get behind or even fun action scenes. The movie is instantly forgettable, like a reverse Polaroid.

The extras reflect this. There are a few featurettes where key voice actors talk about the plot. There is an ironic feature called “The World of Planet 51” where they just move the camera around various animated locations. There isn’t anyone talking about how they designed these places or what were the creative decisions. It is just a quasi-tour juxtaposed with a song. At least that was better than the irritating game.

Movie: 1 Yap

Extras: 2 Yaps

http://www.thefilmyap.com/2010/03/09/planet-51-2/

MovieSet: The Ghost Writer

It has become increasingly difficult to adapt a mystery as a big budget movie. It is probably because the books they are adapted don’t call for that much money. Most of the time mysteries are about puzzle solving with motivations towards justice. Explosions aren’t necessary in that task, but can serve as amusing plot points. At the end of the day, with mysteries, the things that stick with you are the intelligence. If that is properly captured on film, then the film succeeded.

Roman Polanski adapted Robert Harris’s novel, The Ghost, with the right mentality. The film is focused on what the characters and situations are actually capable of. This creates honest paranoia and stakes. There are no Bourne-esque chase scenes or elaborate gun fights. This is not a criticism, but a compliment. Those elements work for Bourne and Bond because they are more than human. Most thrillers aren’t about those types of people. The last film I’ve seen to do this properly was a French film called Tell No One, also based off an American mystery novel.

The Ghost Writer is about an unnamed writer (Ewan McGregor) who is called to serve as a replacement writer for Adam Lang’s (Pierce Brosnan) memoirs. Lang used to be Prime Minister of Great Brittan and is not subtly Tony Blair. Bravo for not casting Michael Sheen in this role. The original ghost for Lang’s memoirs drowned. The publisher is anxious to get the book out because scandals are making Lang more infamous than ever. There is something about the memoirs that are having a lot of people nervous including Lang’s personal secretary (Kim Cattrall) and his wife (the wonderful Olivia Williams).

The conspiracy unravels in a naturally peculiar pace, but Polanski does a great job at establishing a certain tone throughout the whole film. There is uneasiness to go from several shots overlooking the distant, shifting sand to shots where people feel a little too close to the camera. Ordinary places become prisons and nobody is saying what they are truly thinking.

The writer knows he is supposed to stay within the shadows, but his own curiosity and morality makes him want to pursue this story. He often states that he is not political so he has a certain objectivity that others do not. This is McGregor at his best playing a very witty man who is not a superhero. (Isn’t it refreshing to have an on-screen writer actually write good stuff?) He is allowed to be scared and uncertain. One of his best scenes is a conversation with the always-fantastic Tom Wilkinson. The clues have led him to this house and he knows there is significance, but he is not sure what it is. So he just carefully balances the line without revealing too much.

The film is very satisfying, but it is easy to pick out the clues that sustain believability. They never succumb to Scooby-Doo level—Jinkees, look at these footprints—but the way the final twist is revealed is a bit groan-worthy. Aside from that moment, the film treats the audience with a degree of intelligence that has become rare in films. These types of films allow for performances and screenplays with depth. It is for those reasons this is the type of thriller that will be remembered and recommended ten years from now instead of dying in the $2 bin.

http://blog.movieset.com/movie-reviews/ticket-stubs-the-ghost-writer

Film Yap: The Boring Art of Tim Burton

Last weekend I decided I was going to talk about Tim Burton and how I don’t think his vision is very unique. I was thinking of the different elements to discuss when CollegeHumor.com burst my bubble. Usually they are one of my favorite sources of creative videos, but I don’t appreciate it when they take my topic. I’ve embedded the video below and unfortunately it is quite funny and spot-on.

The video brings up my biggest problem with Burton: his “creative” vision has become stale and predictable. I was never one among my generation to really connect to his quirky dark tone. What I find interesting is that for such a unique cinematic niche, he has rarely worked on original screenplays.

Most of the times, the adaptations are from well-known works. Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd, Planet of the Apes, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and now Alice in Wonderland are all stories that have had plenty of adaptations. The only one of those that seems justified would be Sweeney Todd because that never had a proper film version. (That said, the original Broadway cast of Todd was filmed and it’s really worth renting. Angela Lansbury >>> Helena Bonham Carter.) So with the other examples, there really ought to be more of a reason to make another film. Those original sources already have a strong tone to them so when Burton adapts them he feels like more of a journeyman director instead of a provocative auteur.

The filmmakers I respect are the ones that are always striving to test themselves as storytellers. The projects Burton chooses lately are not challenging and then the final products appear to be too easy. The last film of his I’ve responded to was Big Fish, a film that does not look like the clichéd Burton flick. Yes, it was based off a book but it wasn’t mainstream of even good. This was perfect because there was opportunity to put his own touch on the source and improved it. There was more heart in this project and that made it memorable.

His earlier films had that spark and energy to make something that hasn’t been done before. Even with his Batman films, he was taking risks and involving elements of German Expressionism. Now he approaches the material too comfortably. It has been announced that his next film will be a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from Maleficent’s point of view. Great.

Someone needs to go all Lars von Trier on Burton. von Trier set these ridiculous rules from his Dogme 95 manifesto to filmmakers to encourage them to step outside their boundaries. I’m not even saying that they have to be harsh demands. I want to see Burton make a movie for under five million dollars. I want him to work outside his acting troupe. I want him to craft an original story again. I just want something interesting!

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1929453

http://www.thefilmyap.com/2010/03/05/the-boring-art-of-tim-burton/