Movie Catch-Up: The Way Way Back, Walter Mitty, Carrie, and The Lone Ranger

The Way Way Back is Way Way Cool

Films about estranged, misunderstood teens featuring rather shy and introverted, eccentric kids struggling with finding their way in a rather cold, cruel world, such as with last year’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, remind me so strongly of my own quirky youth.  I see myself quite clearly within some of these socially awkward geeks on the fringes of their worlds, with their sometimes darker but heartfelt emotions showing through and a bit of superior intellect that only helps to further separate them from normalcy.  I’m right there with them!  I often felt like I was at the bottom of a swimming pool in my own out-of-my-depth existence.

This film, like Perks, features a young man of such caliber, 14-year-old Duncan, played with just the right amount of disaffection by Liam James, forced to tag along with his emotionally venerable mom Pam (Toni Collette), her rather smarmy, demeaning (and cheating) new boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) – two great performances here, by the way - and Trent’s hideously self-absorbed, bratty little princess Steph (Zoe Levin) on their summer vacation.  Stumbling into a job at the local water park, which is its own magnet for quirky misfits, Duncan makes a connection with the unreserved Owen (Sam Rockwell) and starts to come out of his shell, making a stand, for both himself and his somewhat fragile mother.  He also develops a crush on a sweet local girl Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb) that makes his vacation the most memorable time of his young life.  The film is filled with great moments, characters, and dialogue, both downhearted and jovial, like the best of dramas.  It was a surprising delight to watch! 

It's No "Secret" I Liked the Life of Walter Mitty

I wasn’t expecting much from this film.  Usually, if they remake an old “classic” almost no one these days has ever heard of, it’s ravaged by the critics as unnecessary, even if we happened to like it.  The film that comes the closest, in my mind, is Mr. Deeds from 2002 starring Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder, which was based on the 1936 original, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur.  Critics ravaged it, yet I found it to be one of Sandler’s better movies.

            

This film follows suit.  I can’t speak to the original from 1947, starring Danny Kaye, because I’ve never seen it, but going in, I knew basically three things:  It was a remake of an old comedy, the plot concerned a quirky loser with an over-active imagination going on an adventure that apparently put his fantasies to shame, and that it stared Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, and Sean Penn in a cameo as a hotshot, globe-trotting photographer whom Mitty must find.  Like Sandler, I sometimes like Stiller, if the role and movie are just right (including Mystery Men), but I often find him over-exaggerated and grating. 

            

Not this time.  This time, the plot of the movie is so well written, it fits Stiller’s character to a T, and winds up being a real and inspirational crowd pleaser, as inventive as what is usually running through its main character’s head.  The dull and directionless Mitty, with the crazily vivid thought-life, not only went on the adventure of a lifetime, trying to track down a missing negative that was to become the cover shot for the last physical issue of Life Magazine, but, in the midst of losing everything, including his job, and having no purpose, he finds not just his reason for being, but finds out he had that purpose all along.  It's a brilliant twist at the end, I thought, once that final, elusive missing negative is found.  Another delight!

Didn't "Care" for the Remake of Carrie 

I’ve been wanting to see this remake of Carrie since it came out in October.  I even rated all the Stephen King theatrical movies around Halloween when it was released (linked here)

            

I think I got it out of my system.

“Chloe Grace Moretz!” I thought to myself.  “She was the one who played that little vampire girl in Let Me In!"  And despite the violence, that Kick-Ass movie was at least inventive, and once again, as Hit Girl, she was more than a match for anyone she was up against, no matter how big.  "She’s playing Carrie in this remake!" I thought, "and Julianne Moore is playing Margaret White.  And those previews, with all the updated CGI effects!  It should be sooooo good!”

            

I was soooo wrong.  Director Kimberly Pierce’s first mistake was doing the same thing Gus Van Zant did with the remake of Psycho.  Though they didn’t make a shot for shot remake, they still obviously used the same script as the first one, changing only just a few plot points here or there.  It made a person who might be familiar with the first one aware of the lesser acting, not only from the leads, but everyone from Judy Greer as the gym teacher to Portia Doubleday as Chris Hargensen.  A few people came out relatively unscathed here, from an acting standpoint, most notably Ansel Elgort as Tommy Ross, and Moretz and Moore don’t do too bad with their roles if you don’t compare them too closely to Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie in the original movie.  Still, it’s disheartening going in, expecting something a bit fresher, and finding almost the exact same dialogue from the original movie, like the scene where the gym teacher punishes the girls and Chris refuses to take it, or when Carrie is about to go to the prom and her mother says of her dress, “Red… I might have known it would be red…” and “I can see you’re dirty pillows…” and “They’re all gonna laugh at you.”  They also copied the tone, from the comedic prom preparation of Tommy and his buddies to the prom scene itself, with Carrie backlit when the stage catches fire, and Carrie’s fatal knife fight with her mother at the end.  Yet everything in the original was better, even those crazy, inexplicable candles all over Carrie’s house when she got home.  The only thing different here, besides the workmanlike direction of Pierce (of Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss), are the CGI effects, which actually take the place of Brian DePalma’s expert direction, Mario Tosi’s superb camera work, and Paul Hirsh’s inspired editing from the original.  The 1976 film is a classic supernatural thriller in the great Hitchcock tradition.  The prom scene is almost a case study in how to make a classic Hitchcockian thriller, with Sue following the line of a rope with her eyes, up to the rafters, attached to a bucket right above Carrie's head, and then looks for the other end, finding it underneath the stage, held by Chris.  It was scenes like this that turned into a fondly remembered, bonafide classic horror film from the 70’s.  Even with the CGI effects, and Moretz doing her crazy best as the freak, dripping with blood, unleashing her awesome telekinetic power, it still just feels like such a cheap knock-off. 

            

And what about those effects?  DePalma had wanted to do Carrie’s rampage on the town from the novel, but didn’t have the money for it, so he settled for a quick shot of Carrie rolling and blowing up Chris and Billy’s car.  Here, she stomps her foot and makes the road nearly swallow it, then holds it in midair as Chris’s face pushes slowly through the cracked windshield.  It’s okay, but overall, still can’t compare with the original.

            

And the fact of the matter is, this special effects update has been done once before, with the two night TV miniseries from 2002 starring Angela Bettis and Patricia Clarkson as Carrie and her mother.  That one wasn’t as good as the DePalma classic either, but at least it used a different script, one much closer to the novel.  Despite finding Moretz and Moore doing an okay job in the acting department here, if you’re looking for a better remake of the novel with an original script and updated effects, I suggest you check out the TV miniseries.

The Lone Ranger Really IS Lone: Nobody Went To See Him in Theaters

Wow!  Cut it some slack, guys!

It’s already gone down in history as one of the biggest box office flops of recent years, right next to R.I.P.D., also from this year.  But don’t let that stop you from enjoying a mindless and fun action comedy starring Armie Hammer as the masked cowboy of legend, and Johnny Depp as his (somewhat) faithful sidekick Tonto.  I found this to be in the same vein as the Antonio Bandaras Zorro movies and the Brendan Fraser Mummy flicks.  I’ve certainly seen worse of this type.  The Will Smith Wild Wild West comes most readily to mind.  This one had about as much action and comedy as the Zorro and Mummy movies, so I don’t understand why it was such a flop, unless cynical critical and audience reaction merely kept more audiences away in droves.  Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, but then, neither are any Hollywood action comedies.  Just what was it about this one that made it so much worse than all the others that it deserved such a moniker as “one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history”?  Beats me?  Maybe they did overspend, but so did the makers of Hudson Hawk, and this thing is light years beyond that one! 

            

There, see.  And I barely even mentioned Johnny Depp’s very weird turn here as Tonto.  That’s because, if Johnny Depp is in it, playing anything even slightly unconventional, you can best believe it’s going to be a very weird turn.  But like all his other bizarre characters – and there have been many – I enjoyed Tonto too.