Gary's Movie Reviews: "Trouble with the Curve" and, Surprisingly, "Pitch Perfect" Were Better Than "The Words"

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Trouble with the Curve

This was exactly what I was expecting it to be, and I was not disappointed.  I loved the story, the characters, and the relationships, even though it wasn’t anywhere near as “real” as a movie like As Good as It Gets.  I mean, we’ve seen these kinds of plots and characters many times before, haven’t we?  We have the old guy who is having difficulty with growing old, the daughter who has issues but is carrying on just fine, and in each case, the father and the daughter, there are other people trying to cut in on what they do best.  In the end, they prove themselves in a way that is very audience pleasing, and the girl gets the charming guy, a rather amiable Justin Timberlake.  Once again it's conventional movie making, but that doesn’t really make it a bad movie… just a little predictable, but never less than enjoyable.  Along with JT, I enjoyed Amy Adams and Clint Eastwood, of course, and liked the performances of many character actors who really know their craft, from Bob Gunton and Robert Patrick to John Goodman and Matthew Lillard.  Additionally, Joe Massingill was appropriately smarmy as the stuck up “Baseball Golden Boy” Bo Gentery, and I liked Jay Galloway as the humble Rigo Sanchez, the one who truly deserved the attention.  Again, these characters were crafted to eventually please the audience by what eventually happens to each of them as the story unfolds, and even if it was rather conservative, it was still very gratifying.  This was another good movie, and might I also add that it’s always a pleasure to see Shaggy, the Liquid Terminator and Fred Flintstone do a scene together in a Clint Eastwood baseball movie!

Pitch Perfect

I didn’t really think I was going to like this movie, about competing a cappella groups.  Do I feel ashamed that I actually liked it?  Yes.  But I still liked it.  

     The plot was predictable and much of the humor was sophomoric, as I expected, but I liked all of the music and some of the characters were appealing, most notably Brittany Snow as the put-upon Chloe, Skylar Astin as the neglected boyfriend Jesse, Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy, and while Adam Devine seemed to be channeling Jack Black as the cocky leader of a rival group, the appealingly goofy Ben Platt (in, so far, his only acting credit) seemed to be channeling Michael Cera.  Funny how I didn’t care much for the lead characters – either of them.   Anna Camp’s character Aubrey was, of course, supposed to be a bitchy control freak, but I didn’t understand why her entire team just allowed it (and that scene where she puked and the quiet Asian girl fell in it and started making a “vomit angel” was disgusting, not funny!).

     I found it interesting that the main character of Beca, played by Anna Kendrick, was so arrogantly non-conformist from the start, looking down her nose at people who might like to sing in these college a cappella groups, not making friends and wearing it like a badge of honor, and then treating the cute guy who was interested in her like so much flotsam.  Of course, as one would expect of a teen romance film, it all works out in the end and they come together.  Interestingly enough, the main character Beca tells Jesse at one point she doesn’t like movies because they are so predictable and she loses interest by the end.  It’s sort of ironic, then, that this particular character is the lead in this particular movie.

The Words

There are a lot of movies that celebrate writing and the writer, or the stories they tell, and the power and magic of words.  Keeping in mind that there are more of these type of film than you would think, and I can’t quite limit this already pared-down list to ten, my absolute favorites over the years have been Bullets Over Broadway, Big Fish, Dead Poets Society, Finding Neverland, Martian Child, Midnight in Paris, Misery, Secret Window, Shakespeare in Love, Stranger Than Fiction, and The World According to Garp (and yes, I did notice that Woody Allen, Stephen King, John Cusack, and Robin Williams are each involved with two movies on this short list).  The question is, does The Words compare with them favorably?

     Well, I don’t think I’ll be adding it to my list of favorites anytime soon.  The film understood the power of words, and the fascination of story, but unfortunately, like many films of this type (meaning “independent”), [SPOILER ALERT] the ending was left up to the audience, which probably wasn’t the best way to write an ending for a story that was all about words and stories – with a beginning and middle, but not much of an end.  Bradley Cooper plays Rory Jansen, a rather untalented writer who stumbles across another man’s transcendent story and then sells it as his own.  Lo and behold, after becoming famous, he’s able to sell his other books that aren’t quite as good.  Then the real author shows up, superbly played by Jeremy Irons, talking about the real emotions and pain that went into that heart-wrenching story and those poignant words when he lost his baby girl and it drove he and his wife apart, especially after she read his brilliant manuscript and then promptly lost it.  It all sends Rory into a guilt-ridden tailspin, and ends up severing his relationship with his wife Dora, played by Zoe Saldana, who cannot deal with what her husband has done, and it eventually causes him to fall into the same sort of existence as the old man.  Yet another story encompasses the entire movie, featuring Dennis Quaid and Olivia Wilde, to set up this parallel (though poor Wilde’s character is never quite fleshed out).  In the end, unlike the other films about writers, writing, and storytelling I mentioned above, this one was not so satisfying a story after all.