As usual, the movie titles link to previews
This was a pleasing enough comedy, if a
bit on the forgettable side. Billy
Crystal and Bette Midler do their best with this formulaic material, and it
comes off as quite charming at times. At
other times, it’s groan-worthy, such as the scene that was played up in the
trailer where the kids use marker on Grandpa Billy Crystal’s face while he’s
sleeping, or the unbelievable scene where Crystal’s character, a sports
announcer, tries to act hip and cool and yet doesn’t know who Tony Hawk is. Even I
know who Tony Hawk is, and I’m not into sports at all! The whole time, he allows his grandson to
wander freely around the skateboard park, and the kid decides to take a wiz on
the skating surface, causing one skateboarder to fall. The film feels more like a vehicle for Billy
Crystal, and there’s actually little here for Bette to do. As she does with most of the movies she’s in,
young Bailee Madison steals this otherwise unremarkable little farce with some
good acting that rises above what is written on the page. When her character stresses over her violin
practice, or gets upset with her mother, you really feel the emotions, and she
also handles the comedy quite well. A
favorite scene is also one featured in the trailer where the kids freak out
after the grandparents hype them up on sugar, and she tussles with her mom over
a cake, exclaiming, “You lied to me!
Yogurt is not like ice cream!”
Not counting Bailee Madison, one more thing I liked about the movie was the way it took modern parenting and
child-rearing techniques to task in favor of more traditional, old-fashioned ideas. While the parents here don’t help their kids
prepare for the real world by not keeping score in their Little League
Baseball, or being overly sensitive when the kids act up, with the kind of
spoiled kids you might expect from such an approach, Crystal’s and Midler’s
more old-fashioned approach ends up reaching the kids where their parents
haven’t all these years. Crystal is even
able to help his stuttering grandson overcome his stutter! That’s one in the win column for
conservativism, which is hard to come by these days in Hollywood! Another thing I liked: It’s not filthy! That’s also hard to come by these days in
Hollywood, even in a family film!
I should have known when the first words out of Aniston's mouth in the TRAILER was, "Do you want to have sex in the bathroom?" while she and her boyfriend are on an airplane. This film posited that the book The Graduate by Charles Webb that
eventually became the movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, and
Katharine Ross about a young man, Ben Braddock, who ends up being seduced by
his girlfriend’s mother, was based on real people and real events.
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| Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in a famous pose from "The Graduate" |
In this update, Jennifer Aniston’s character
discovers it was all based on her family.
It was her deceased mother who was the girlfriend in the movie, and
Aniston confronts her grandmother with this accusation: “You’re Anne Bancroft.” She tracks down the real Ben Braddock, who is
actually Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), rules out the possibility that he’s
her dad, and then promptly sleeps with him, which causes Costner’s character to
wind up sleeping with not only his former lover, but her mother, and now her
daughter. I get the feeling that was
really the impetus for making this update – to get that character into bed with
the new generation! Never mind that
Aniston then finds evidence that he might still be her father (Creepy! Thank God THAT doesn’t pan out!) or that she
ends up screwing up her relationship with her perfectly fine fiancé played by
Mark Ruffalo! But this is the romance
movies we get in America these days, and I’m afraid it’s only reflecting the
times. In the end, Aniston drops the
lothario who bedded her mother and grandmother, apologizes to the boyfriend
(and she has to do a lot of apologizing) and everything is okay in the
end. The movie was charming at times,
and all the actors do some good work, but in the end, it’s nothing to write
home about, and when all is said and done, it’s pretty darn disturbing!
I don’t know about some of these Madea
movies anymore. I first became a fan of Tyler
Perry with Diary of a Mad Black Woman,
which introduced the comic character of Madea to uninitiated audiences in a
story that gave us equal parts broad humor, searing drama, and some Christian
themes. Since then, both Perry and his
character have made a name for themselves, and every so often, he’ll don the
dress again, along with the other costumes, such as Madea’s somewhat blunt but
clueless husband Joe, for another comic go-round with some strong dramatic and
Christian themes. And in all truth, the
character, and the formula, works better for Perry than it does for Eddie
Murphy in the Klump movies or Martin
Lawrence in the Big Momma flicks. Yet it also seems the longer Perry keeps
doing these Madea movies, the more comic, and the less dramatic or Christian
they become. There is still a little bit
of drama and a Christian message buried in this comedy, but it’s much harder to
find than it was in some of the earlier Madea films.
With that said, I will also say this
is an improvement over the last Madea film, though critics and audiences
haven’t been too kind this time around either.
For one thing, this film made you believe that Eugene Levy, in fine
comic form as a shmuck at the heart of a ponzi scheme, is married
to Denise Richards, of all people! Even
at the age of 41, she doesn’t seem the type to be caught dead married to Eugene
Levy (who, at the age of 66, is still 25 years her senior), though this role
was actually more believable than the nuclear physicist she played in the James
Bond movie The World is Not Enough. And poor Doris Roberts is in the thankless
role of Levy’s ditzy mother on the verge of Alzheimer’s. The drama was mostly supplied by the story of
Jake, played by Romeo Miller, a family member who lost money for his father’s
church in the same ponzi scheme, meaning that the climax must center around the
two families’ attempts to get the money back.
I find it odd that not only does the conclusion rip off the movie Ghost, when Whoopi Goldberg’s character
goes to the bank pretending to be somebody else to get money out of a fake
account, but they even show this scene in this movie before they rip it off,
using it as inspiration to do the same thing!
Most of the movie rests squarely on Tyler Perry’s shoulders, and most of
the good jokes center on his outspoken Madea character, though Eugene Levy is a
welcome addition to the cast. But why
does it still feel like they’re all slumming here?
Truthfully, Ghost was better!
Steve Carell (great as Grue in the
Despicable Me animated films), Steve Buscemi, and Jim Carey take on the world
of modern stage and street magicians a la Penn & Teller, David Copperfield
(who has a cameo here), David Blaine, and Criss Angel (Mind Freak).
The results aren’t really comedy gold, and
despite a valiant effort, they don’t really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Like the main characters, and many a movie
these days, it’s watchable, but nothing really Incredible. It’s competent,
but in the end, Wonderstone isn’t all that wonderful.
I was going to say I liked it, and shame on all these online critics who don’t appreciate the artistry that went into it, or the cute storyline. I’m fascinated by the way these animators can make these guinea pigs and hamsters look so real. There’s a scene in this movie about half-way through where the main guinea pig Darwin (get the reference?) is on the run with a normal guinea pig Hurley (who thinks Darwin is his long lost brother) and Hurley ends up sitting on a sprinkler head, which turns on and douses him with water. The animation of the water, and Hurley’s wet fur, is spot on, and looks so realistic, just like almost everything else in this movie!
On the other hand, this is no longer such a spectacle in and of itself, and after once again enjoying the technical aspect of what they’re able to do with CGI animation these days, one has to ask, as with any movie, “What else you got?” Well, the premise is just about as cute as those guinea pigs and hamsters, about a team of trained, super-spy rodents saving the day, but it really starts to get tiresome by the second half, which devolves into another Jerry Bruckheimer slick action flick, with chase scenes and amazing explosions galore, which actually turns it into somewhat of an action film parody. I would have preferred something less bombastic. With the exception of Steve Buscemi, the voice actors are nothing more than perfunctory, and Tracey Morgan, as usual, is gratingly annoying, and the human actors are nothing special either, and that includes Zach Galifianakis, Bill Nighy, and Will Arnett. Add to that the silly, Disney channel writing, and the simplistic solution when the mole turns out to be “the mole”, and the over-the-top ending, and I’m afraid I’d have to agree with the majority of the critics. This is a mess. It is technically amazing, and often cute, with a few nice action scenes, and a message or two, as any CGI film has to have these days, but it’s a bit of a mess none-the-less.
What was I just saying about computer animated movies above?
Some
people won’t give even the good ones a chance.
However, on the downside of all this animation, it also means we get
lackluster movies like this mix of CGI animation and live action, based on the
old Hannah Barbera cartoons. As usual,
the quality of the animation is not the issue here. In fact, given the material, the animators,
the voice actors (Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake as Yogi and Boo Boo), and
the live actors Tom Cavanagh, Anna Faris, T.J. Miller, Nathan Corddry, and
Andrew Daly all do what they can. The
operative part of this last sentence, however, was “given the material”. The script is flat.
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| The cast of Yogi Bear - the voices, the famous actors, the unknown actors, are all quite appealing, but wasted! |
We know from the TV show Ed and the Scary
Movie franchise that Cavanagh and Faris are good comedians with some great
comic timing, and the same goes for Aykroyd, Timberlake, and Corddry from
Harry’s Law. Unfortunately, there’s not
much here they can really hang their hats on.
This movie wasn’t God-awful. In
fact, it is much, much better than Furry Vengeance, a film in a similar vein. By the same token, the flat characters, plot,
and a lack of funny comedy has it pale when compared to analogous films like
Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and even Scooby Doo.
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