eric brochu

A notice to Generation Y: the 1980s were not cool. High school was not like John Hughes movies (except that the seemingly-cool chick usually really did end up with the jock or the rich kid in the end). Nobody wore their legwarmers and teased hair ironically– they were just kind of naive and dumb that way. And the only reason you think that the music was cool is because you listen to things that were never on the radio, anyway, unless maybe you lived in London or New York — it was all Phil Collins and Tom Cochrane and Milli Vanilli. And there was no internet, so even if you somehow heard about The Smiths or The Stone Roses on late-night CBC Radio, you had to go to a record store and special-order a record that *might* show up six weeks later. And don’t get me started on the TV.

Director Greg (Superbad) Mottola’s Adventureland, set in 1987, manages to nod to 80s nostalgia without wallowing in it, or making the era seem cooler than it was. Jesse Eisenberg is a kind of Jewish Michael Cera-type, a Renaissance studies grad who is unexpectedly forced to take a summer job at the titular amusement park. He finds a friend’s bag of joints is a ticket into the inner circles of carny society, including bitter nerd Martin Starr and sharp-tongued Kirsten Stewart, who is carrying on a self-loathing affair with married handyman Ryan Reynolds.

Adventureland is funny, but not uproariously so, and it’s not trying to be. It’s more Dazed and Confused than Superbad 2. Unfortunately, it also feels pretty slight, which makes it’s awkward (and I suspect unintended) tonal shifts all the more jarring. A subplot about Eisenberg’s dad’s alcoholism ends up going nowhere, and does so thuddingly. And Bill Hayder and Kristen Wiig appear as the park’s owners, doing such broad comedy that they seem to be living in a separate universe (it’s like an SNL sketch dropped into American Graffitti). But that said, I was really charmed with the movie. Sure the music sucked at the time, but even for a nostalgia-hater like myself, the pre-ironic 80s is a nice place to spend an hour and a half occassionally.

Janelle and I saw Coraline on Friday, but my reaction was conflicted enough that I needed a couple of days to process my thoughts.

One of my biggest cinematic pet peeves is that Tim Burton gets so much of the credit for Nightmare Before Christmas, which was written by other people and directed by Coraline director Henry Selick. Hopefully, with Coraline, Selick will start to get more appreciation, because it really is a brilliant piece of work.

Coraline is a 3-D stop-motion dark fairy tale based on a novel by the great Neil Gaiman. I haven’t read this novel, but I like everything I’ve ever read from him. The eponymous Coraline is a snarky girl, neglected by her parents, and stuck in an ancient rooming house in what looks like the middle of the Pacific Northwest wilderness. Finding a mysterious hidden doorway, she travels to a mirror-image of her life, where the apartment building is filled with wonders and her Other Mother and Other Father are waiting to dote on her. The only problem is, everyone here has black buttons sewn onto their eyes…

I love stop-motion animation. The intricacy and vividness is captivating, even more than CGI. Coraline probably has the best stop-motion I’ve ever seen. The motion is fluid, but not as perfect as CGI. Maybe I’m alone here, but I think seeing a hint of the figurative seams (in the way water is animated, for instance) makes animation more real, not less. Especially seen in 3D, this film has some absolutely breathtaking moments, even though wearing the 3D glasses over my regular glasses lead to a little eyestrain by the end. And my God, this movie has mood — long before we meet the button-eyed Other Mother, there’s an ominousness to Coraline’s adventures.

But the screenplay seemed really lopsided — a little too slow and exposition-y at the beginning, and then rushed at the end as Coraline has to deal with a series of puzzles and obstacles. In fact, during the last 30 minutes, I couldn’t help but think of old-school hunt-and-click computer adventure games (“You have found two of the three lost eyes! Find the last one to open the door!”). And yes, I know the reason for this is that both the movie and the old games were inspired by similar source material. It’s still distracting. Which is all really strange, because while I don’t think Neil Gaiman is a master of dialogue this kind of storytelling is his bread and butter. (The Sandman story where Lucifer abandons hell and all the gods and angels have to deal with it is one of the best graphic novels I’ve ever read.) I’m really curious to see how it’s handled in the original novel.

So in the end, I didn’t love Coraline as much as I’d hoped I would. Maybe in my second viewing, I’ll be able to just ignore the story and enjoy the brilliantly imaginative world the movie lets us into. But for now, I find it oddly unsatisfying.

You know what? I’m going to come out and say it: I’m not a fan of the gag-based comedy movie. 90 minutes of formulaic wackiness is at least 60 minutes too much. Leave that for TV. 30 Rock may well be the funniest gag comedy on TV since the Conan years of The Simpsons, but a 30 Rock movie is about as necessary as a Simpsons movie. If you’re going to make me sit still that long, you have to make me care about the characters. I don’t have to like them, but you have to give me something to hang on to.

Happy times, indeed, that we live in that this opinion seems to be catching on. Judd Apatow didn’t invent the raunchy, sentimental, character-driven comedy, but he drove it straight into the mainstream like a crazy fat man in a garbage truck, and the results have been just as awesome.

Kevin Smith actually can claim to invent the raunchy, sentimental, character-driven comedy, but in Zack and Miri, he gets a big boost from the Apatow crowd in the form (finally) of actors who can make his dialogue sound like they come from actual people, rather than a series of Kevin Smith mouthpieces (Smith regulars show up in supporting roles, which they mostly nail, especially Jason Mewes). Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks bring their underachieving, cheerfully foul-mouthed characters to life, and make their relationship sweet and touching, even when it becomes obvious where it’s going to go (i.e. around the time the opening credits end). It doesn’t hurt that Smith manages to achieve a much higher hit-to-miss ratio than usual on the laughs, and that he obviously has a lot of affection for the world of no-budget filmmaking. In Smith’s world, there’s not a lot of difference between making an indie comedy in a convenience store and making a porno in a coffee shop.

Role Models, meanwhile, manages to inject a little mainstream into the David Wain-led group behind Wet Hot American Summer. Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks (again), Jane Lynch and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin from Superbad) are among the Apatow players who show up here. Paul Rudd is a miserable, sarcastic energy-drink salesman who ends a particularly bad day by impaling his ad-truck on a statue. (My kind of guy, in other words.) As punishment, he and co-worker Seann William Scott are court-ordered to mentor dorky Christopher Mintz-Plasse and hilariously vicious Bobb’e J Thompson. Paul Rudd is co-writer and while it’s really an ensemble movie, it’s also really about his character, who is awesome when he’s walking around delivering snark like a UPSnark deliveryman, but less awesome when he’s learning life lessons. Unfortunately, he spends a lot of time learning life lessons. I don’t know what it says about me that bitter sarcasm brings a smile to my face and personal growth leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it does. Fortunately, even when that stuff’s going on, the movie brings on the funny on a pretty regular basis, so I can almost forgive it. Actually, I can forgive it — for Jane Lynch’s line delivery alone. “I’m not here to service you, I’m here to service these young boys.”