Notes from Underdog.

Damned United.

2009-10-30T14:51:57-07:00

Based on David Peace's novel, which is itself [loosely] based on the true story of Brian Clough's quite doomed 44-day stint as manager in 1974 of the then reigning champions of English football Leeds United, Damned United is both a sport film and a character study and succeeds pretty damned well at both.

Different audiences will have varying levels of appreciation for the film; clearly, football/soccer fans will have higher regard for it though it is not simply a film about sport but a film about male relationships, both friend and professional, and about the damage rendered by the male ego. It is a most lovingly portrayed period piece, capturing the 60s and 70s United Kingdom with bang on accuracy.

Damned United screenwriter Peter Morgan (the gifted Oscar winner behind The Queen and Frost/Nixon) also does a smart job of reducing the book's back and forth, almost subconscious (look up other ways of saying this) meandering style into a more cohesive shorthand -- while still maintaining the novel's chronological jumps. These flashes backward and forward make the narrative more interesting than it might have been had it stayed on a steady line through Clough's difficult, short period as Leeds manager.

Tom Hooper, who made history of an entirely different sort come alive in HBO's John Adams and Longford, does well with a more recent bit of history, capturing well the 60s and 70s culture, not just the look but the feel and mood of England at the time -- with a very able assist from cinematographer Ben Smithard (Cranford).

But what really keeps it together is the effortlessly charming Michael Sheen's performance as Clough. Sheen's continues on from his David Frost, once again displaying his talent for playing arrogance with enough charm and likability to make even a heel root-able. Clough was a talented player in his own right before segueing into coaching, though the film hints that he may not have been as good a player or coach as he believed, and Sheen is able to capture some of his playing talent as well as his strong-willed coaching style.

It also should be noted that Timothy Spall, forever doomed to be an underrated character actor, or "that bloke from that Mike Leigh movie", more than holds his own with Sheen on screen. The droop-faced Spall plays Clough's longtime sharp-minded and level-headed right-hand man Peter Taylor, whom a lot of people considered to be a major reason that Clough got as far as he did. Their eventual falling out due to a disagreement over their career paths forms the major spine of the film -- as important as the story of Clough's rivalry with Don Revie. Morgan and Hooper smartly realize that the friendship is more interesting and painful than the story of the two enemies. Where the film fudges on reality (spoiler alert of sorts: but while it has them eventually coming reconciling at the end, in real life their rift was not repaired by the time Peter Taylor passed away in 1990 -- though Clough and his family attended the funeral. Still, hard to blame the film for making that choice. Their fantasy is much more satisfying than the sadder reality.)

Colm Meaney is quite fine as the arrogant, veteran manager whose incredibly huge shoes Clough has to fill and Jim Broadbent is at his broadbentiest playing put-upon Derby County owner Sam Longson. Also notable is Stephen Graham, a recognizable, short-statured actor who looks about as spot-on as Leeds captain Billy Bremner as any capable actor could possibly look. And Graham captures his taciturn quiet stubborness quite well, his chippy on the field style and his cool surface with rage boiling underneath off the field.

I think even more than the Leeds years I enjoyed the period where Clough built the ramshackle Derby County team (both the stadium/pitch, and the team itself, were rotting). That part of the story is one of those getting the band/team back together sequences that I find irresistible, and the meetings between his Derby team and Revie's famous, more supported Leeds squad are memorable, indeed. (One odd sequence shows Clough unable to watch his own team playing, either out of superstition and/or nerves, and we becomes as tense and in the dark as he is. It's not your typical way of showing a climactic sports match but it works because you're in Clough's point of view.)

And the soccer -- sorry, football, for those in the UK -- scenes they do depict, whether practice scenes or actual matches, are expertly captured. From the mud and muck in a rainy Derby field to a disastrous Leeds match, you get enough of a taste of the sport to get the sense of the players and the teams' growth (or lack of it).

Something about Damned United keeps it from being an utter classic -- whether it's the the schizophrenic nature of the story that makes it hard to connect to or frustration with Clough's choices, true though they may be -- but despite that I have to say that it is quite likely one of the best soccer films ever. This may not be high praise given the lack of a wide array of choices in that arena, but it's undeniably about as good as we've gotten. As a soccer film, it's in the first division.

Withnail and you.

2009-10-24T23:07:56-07:00

There's a fine little documentary on Criterion's WITHNAIL & I DVD which features marvelous, priceless home movie footage that Bruce Robinson, the film's writer/director who based the story on his own experiences, shot while living in his squalid flat with his drunken thespian roommates.

The film itself is one of absolute favorites, with Robinson's vivid, hilarious script and a bang-on cast: Richard E. Grant, unforgettable as the titular Withnail (a name, Robinson tells us on the DVD, that came from an older kid from his childhood whose name he slightly mispronounced); the underated Paul McGann as "I" (aka Marwood), Withnail's more level-headed flatmate; Richard Griffiths, as Withnail's wealthy poofter uncle who lends them his cottage (when they go "on holiday by mistake"); and just as memorable, Ralph Brown's [who's had a long career, including the new Pirate Radio] Danny, the mellow drug dealer who looks like he'd be at home in an episode of "The Young Ones" and who says clever things even while his brain is presumably melting ("You have done something to your brain. You have made it high.")

It was a flop when first released but rightly became a cult favorite pretty quickly. And it looks much better (natch) in the Criterion DVD than it ever did. It was filmed on a low budget and Robinson would be the first to tell you that the way it is shot is not the main reason to see it -- it is the script and the cast, and it's unforgettable.

Favorite scenes: The early moment in their squalid kitchen when they become terrified of their trashed sink; their first night in the cottage; Uncle Monty's home and his arrival in the cottage.

Excerpt from commentary on Criterion's The Hit DVD

2009-10-07T23:22:15-07:00

The film The Hit (1984) is by Stephen Frears and remains one of my favorites of all his films. It recently came out on DVD at last, in a lovely DVD from, natch, Criterion. It's the story of two hitmen sent to retrieve a stool pigeon (they call 'em grass or supergrass in UK parlance) who fled to Spain after he turned on his gang. The hitmen (John Hurt and Tim Roth, in his first major film role, and quite charming) and their bounty (Terence Stamp, terrific as always) play mind games on each other, as they travel back toward France by car. Things are complicated when they end up with a woman rider as well. I won't say more except that you should absolutely see the film, and read the script, too, if you can find it.

At any rate, among many gems to be found in the DVD commentary, I ran across this:

I believe this is either the film's writer Peter Prince or editor Mick Audsley (they alternate so frequently it's a bit hard to tell -- Frears is also on the DVD commentary, as is Tim Roth and John Hurt) but regardless, these are excellent words of wisdom for budding filmmakers, scribes and editors:

"We were intent to always strip away the dialogue to its most boiled down form, so that the cinematic experience is complete. It's giving you the imagery and the framing and the cutting and the sizes of the images is giving you as much information as is coming from the characters' mouths. It's in our nature as filmmakers to want to boil down to the bone the dramatic spine of the movie. Get it down to its rawest form at any time is part of the editorial process, and it's certainly something that we develop later on when I'm working on scripts before they're shot -- always trying to reduce, reduce, reduce.

Because in the end audiences' minds work very quickly. They make deductions very quickly, and the cinematic image's so powerful that it communicates so rapidly. Often a look will say a great deal more than a line of dialogue."

MyPDF Scripts: New resource for screenwriters

2009-09-30T15:54:02-07:00

Just wanted to give a plug to a great new resource for screenwriters looking for scripts to read:
MyPDFScripts

Which has quite an extensive selection of screenplays in pdf format, both new and older.

Okay, I love David Goyer's stuff, but I can probably skip Ghost Rider. But, Young Frankenstein? They have it. Children of Men? Check. Juno? Check.

You can sort by ascending and descending date (or title or author) order.

So have at it. And soon, just in case someone shuts them down (not sure about the legality of all this, but hopefully it will stay around for the public good).

Observe and Report DVD review

2009-09-30T11:59:00-07:00

Observe and Report

Originally published on GreenCine Guru

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***

Jody Hill's Observe and Report is a tough nut to crack about a tough nut who cracks. The dark, dark comedy, which Hill wrote and directed, is a more subversive take on the bedraggled mall cop comedy than patrons watching it (ironically) in mall multiplexes probably expected, so it's little surprise it wasn't a huge box office hit. But because Observe is more challenging, in both good and bad ways, it's far more interesting because of it.

Seth Rogen plays Ronnie Barnhardt, a mall security guard with delusions of grandeur who becomes obsessed with a serial flasher accosting unsuspecting mall patrons. Ronnie is also quite taken with an airheaded, self-involved cosmetics counter girl (played unforgettably by Anna Faris, who does this better than anyone these days), seeing himself as her knight in shining armor after she is traumatized from a run-in with the flasher (Randy Gambill, now a Jody Hill regular). From there, Ronnie has to work with -- or more accurately around -- a policeman (Ray Liotta) assigned to the case, as well as deal with his own personal demons the whole case brings out of him.

Even if he still doesn't display a great amount of range, this may be Rogen's best performance, as it's not easy to make you care about a guy who behaves this reprehensibly -- he's racist, paranoid and doesn't take direction well from others, for starters -- but he gets under your skin. A scene where he does a psychological profile interview to fulfill his dream of making the police force is more heartbreaking than funny, especially given how honest Ronnie is in revealing his past transgressions. (Thankfully, too; makes you wonder how many future cops get let in if they're dishonest in answering those questions, but never mind.) A few brief scenes with Ronnie and his sweet but alcoholic mother (the ubiquitous but underrated Celia Weston) also skirt the line between funny and depressing.

The film unabashedly takes after Taxi Driver in that regard, presenting a new sort of Travis Bickle, a fully human but often contemptible character who you can't help but be fascinated by; even if Rogen's Ronnie is still more comic than Bickle and even if O&R is not as important a film as Taxi Driver, it does capture well a bi-polar character's downward spiral brought on by both paranoia and a very real feeling that society doesn't understand, or give a shit about, them.

A scene where Ronnie finally manages a pseudo-date with Faris' Brandi is like the knucklehead dining with the bubblehead, but Rogen and Faris turn it into an inspired, unforgettably pathetic date, even if it ends in disturbing fashion, an unsettling scene that is the subject of much debate. While the film doesn't pass judgment on Ronnie's behavior here, it seemed clear to me the audience isn't meant to support it. Still, it's discomfiting, and hard to find it all that funny. The film does occasionally have trouble walking the line between caring about its characters and deriding them, an issue that sometimes pop up in Hill's other projects as well.

The climax may not have the power of a Scorsese film but it's a far cry from the disposable Paul Blart Mall Cop, too. (Without getting too spoiler-ish here, I will add that I didn't quite buy the Ronnie vs. Flasher resolution, but I did respect the film's character consistency and refusal to go too maudlin.)

Besides Faris' breathlessly funny Brandi, Observe and Report's sharp supporting cast includes Liotta, bringing his best temperamental exasperation to the table; Michael Pena (World Trade Center) as Ronnie's cohort and partner-in-crime (as it were); comedian/actor Patton Oswalt as an asshole manager of a chain Cin-a-Bun knockoff; Friday Night Lights' Jesse Plemons as a more even-keeled mall cop; Parks and Rec's Aziz Ansari, very funny as a foul-mouthed, smooth salesman and arch-nemesis of Ronnie's; and a very sweet Collette Wolfe as the cashier who Ronnie should be more interested in if he could get his head out of the Charles Bronson movie landscape in which its planted.

One frustrating side-note: this DVD from Warner Brothers comes sans extras, and I particularly would've liked a commentary from Hill and Rogen over some of the more controversial scenes. I'm sure down the road they'll do a "special edition" with that included, but this one feels like a rush job. Still, for fans of very black comedy this future cult movie is worth a rental.

Looped into In the Loop

2009-09-18T22:31:45-07:00

Before I could finally spit out a review of the brilliant political satire IN THE LOOP -- which is an absolute scream, see it if you haven't -- much of the critical world has already reviewed it.

But I gleaned a few interesting things from listening to the director/co-writer Armando Iannucci (a Scottish chap with an Italian name, who created The Thick of It, a TV forebear for In the Loop) interviewing with Elvis Mitchell on KCRW's The Treatment.

Mitchell: We were talking about screwball comedy, and that was something I noticed when watching the film. It almost feels like something like the Front Page, one of those dialogue-driven comedies where people are really going after each other... It's like watching a play, there has to be that kind of character doesn't there?

Iannucci: We spent an awful lot of time not just in the shooting process, but in advance fleshing out the characters. I cast the film really early on. So that the writers know precisely who it is who is playing each part, what they look like, sound like, what their own natural verbal tics are -- so that they can then write those parts to that actor. Actors do their own research but then we spent about 2-3 weeks rehearsing the scenes, workshopping them, improvising around the scenes. Just to get the relationships between characters going. The shoot is very cast driven.
... I really don't consider the final writing process to have happened until I've watched that first take of the scene. Sometimes in the end I'm taking some of my favorite lines out, simply because I think that though it's a funny line it destroys the atmosphere and the reality. If it comes on a point where you can't believe that character under that load of stress at that point would ever come up with something so well thought out... And also we don't give the actors that much time to learn their lines or indeed to say them. [laughs] Because I want to capture that essence of in politics people are making things up, I want to capture that look of panic in their eyes as they say the words.

I was very much aware of those Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks, those fast talking dialogue-driven films of the 30s and 40s, and I really liked that model as something to structure the script around. The plot underneath all the profanity and realism and so on, was deliberately structured along the lines of a screwball comedy, where two or 3 different things are happening in different environments, and they all start coming closer toward each other and affecting each other and then a madcap climax in the last 15 minutes. That's something I always found satisfying watching so I was very keen to get that sense of screwball comedy.

Listen to the rest here: KCRW The Treatment: Armando Iannucci

ACT's Brief Encounter: British import that delights

2009-09-17T23:36:36-07:00

The American Conservatory Theater's production of BRIEF ENCOUNTER, now at the Geary Theater in San Francisco, adapted by Emma Rice and imported from her London production with the same Kneehigh Theater troupe, takes essentially an old chestnut, Noel Coward's play Still Life (later adapted by Coward into the fine 1945 film Brief Encounter) and reimagines it, reanimates it. By using the romantic framework -- a man and a woman in WWII era Britain, both married, fall for each other but are destined to never be together for good -- and adding invigorating creative layers to it, the play comes alive.

This modern take on Brief Encounter integrates mixed media into the staging, using projected film that integrate the actors, who step into the screen, timed just right with their counterpart in the projected film. In one powerful effect late in the play, a stage-long screen is unfurled to project a passing train.

The use of music -- it's not quite a musical per se but it almost feels like one, with cast members bridging scenes and ideas together with lively songs -- combined with the actors' movement, gives the play a non-stop rhythm, like a Sally Cruikshank or (going way back) Betty Boop cartoon.

It's one of those stories in which the supporting characters, most of them employees of the train station in which the play is set, are more interesting than the protagonists (though all the actors are quite good, and play multiple roles seamlessly). lead actor Milo Twomey, who plays Alec, the doctor, reminded me a bit of a handsomer Rowan Atkinson, and the object of his affection is the lovely, appropriately classical-looking Hannah Yelland as Laura, the ennui-laden housewife. But the supporting cast really keep things humming, including a most amusing Beverly Rudd as the robust, rotund Beryl, who has an affair of her own (and Rudd is also priceless as a couple of older matrons, one with a prissy dog, played by a stuffed animal on a taut leash), and Annette McLaughlin as the station cafe owner Myrtle, who reminded me of British comedienne Carol Cleveland, who was one of the few actual women in supporting roles on Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Even if there are still a few moments where the thin romance threatens to dull the proceedings, those moments are few and far between. ACT and Kneehigh's Brief Encounter is a marvelous staging, a passing train you should jump on.

(Note: The play has now been extended at ACT until October 11.)

Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers on collaborating and adapting Where the Wild Things Are (from Script Magazine)

2009-09-04T19:03:08-07:00

Highlights from Script Magazine piece by/on Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers on the writing of the Where the Wild Things Are script, and the challenges of adapting a very, very short book.

(Most of this isn't available online otherwise. And you should buy the darned magazine on newsstands anyway.)

Spike Jonze: The early draft primarily focused on the characters. I wanted to be really specific about who Max is and who the Wild Things are and let the story become their relationships to each other. Dave and I would sit together in the same room, mostly just talking through scenes, One of us would make notes or riff and the other would try and write it down.

Dave Eggers: We had fun every day writing it. There were a lot of days we'd just take two or three hours of warming up before we put a word down. And we have 80 pages of dialogue that's not being used for every one of those characters because we just went on and on. We'd have a whole inner-life and backstory and everything, and then, of course, we couldn't fit it all in there. The book was only 70 something words, so we had to do a lot of filling in.

Jonze: First and foremost I was concerned with who Max is, and what's going on in his life that he's trying to figure out. I wanted to make a movie that takes kids seriously. Maurice [Sendak] said: "Make sure you don't just take the heavy side of the kid seriously. You take the imagination seriously, his sense of joy seriously."

Eggers: We never thought "are kids going to like this?" Not once. This is the way it has to be written. We never dumbed anything down or said no, that's too much of an adult theme. We were determined not to do anything that would cheapen the material.

...

Eggers: Spike wanted to explore to deeply as possible the psyches of the Wild Things--that they are these giant, manic-depressive creatures that came from Maurice because they're all based on his aunts and uncles, and their giant faces and their bad breath and their giant teeth coming down. So we started with the Wild Things. They're all meant to represent different things and be tangential relationships with Max's world a little without being direct representations.

[What's interesting too is the revelation in this piece that Jonze came up to San Francisco to live here for awhile while he worked directly with Eggers. Eggers saw himself "as more of a facilitator" helping Jonze put his ideas onto paper and so on. But while the ideas may be Spike's, it's clear from reading this that the beauty of the script (which I'm admittedly just presuming from little I've read of it, and from the clips and trailers) was assisted greatly by their collaborative process.]

Eggers: Spike's method of working is the definition of organic. It had to be very real. I always would prefer to write alone, and send stuff online, and write marks on a piece of paper, and send it back. That's how I do things. But he really wanted it to be like, "Let's talk this through. Let's act this through, figure it out. What would he say here?"

Jonze: I think sometimes that was really frustrating for Dave because he just wanted to be productive. I definitely work a lot slower than Dave. He's very experienced as a writer, very disciplined, always moving forward. If he gets stuck, he just puts something in a placeholder and keeps moving. But, if it doesn't feel right I'll stay in that place until I find what feels real or right or true. I don't want to let go, I don't want to leave it.

Eggers: It was a real learning process for me, in terms of you do get at some incredibly real stuff if you actually put yourself in the shoes of the character.

Basterds of young

2009-08-26T16:40:44-07:00

***1/2 out of 5

Quentin Tarantino's new film Inglourious Basterds is meant to be enjoyed on a visceral/gut/emotive level, not on a logical level.
In a way, as different as the two films are on the surface, on a gut level IB reminds me of reactions to District 9 -- if you start to deconstruct it, there are places it feels awfully familiar. But it is fresh and enthralling in the presentation. Basterds in particular is clearly made by someone who loves cinema (which we all already knew about Tarantino, of course). This means there are the some scenes that are victimized by either running on too long -- Tarantino in love with his dialogue -- or giving off the "Hey look at me! This is a movie!" vibe, and the requisite nods to other films (even Cinderella gets a rather obvious shoutout) -- but more often than not the film pushes all the right buttons. It clasps on to the WWII movie tension and wratchets it up expertly multiple times over, and cathartically gives us release.

But I can't top screenwriter John August's summation (in less than 140 characters, on twitter): "Inglourious Basterds is A Night of Short Plays about Nervous Liars by QT, but they're wildly enjoyable and well-shot plays."

The BBC's Mark Kermode also made a fair point -- though I liked the film better than he -- that Tarantino is excellent with set pieces, as he is here, but not as good connecting the overall vision to a more cohesive whole. I don't mind the chapters-of-a-book idea as a way of unfurling the story,

It is clearly channeling in spirit a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western (it even borrows at least a couple of snippets of music score from those films). It is also, as QT himself said, "a bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission movie; but, it's more than that."

It is indeed a collection of connected sequences, set pieces, many of which are built around characters with secrets trying not to be found out.

Criticisms that the film runs too long seem less valid to me, especially after he'd made some trims post-Cannes, or at least to me the film rarely feels like it's flagging along. But criticisms that certain scenes are overlong are more valid, that QT is still so enamored with his dialogue that he can't find any place to edit down even if we the audience can.

And yet on the other hand, even some of the talkier bits are usually so well-written that, I, too, become in danger of getting mesmerized by the conversation. In other words, Tarantino may still overwrite at times, but he really does have such a fine ear for back-and-forth dialogue, and in IB, unlike in, say, Death Proof, the conversation at least is almost always on point. revealing character and/or pushing the plot ahead, that it didn't bother me as much here. And there are undeniably some great scene-chewing lines for Brad Pitt.

I also really did appreciate the way Tarantino, so front and center a film buff to the extreme, wove in film itself (both projected and the physical manifestation of it on celluloid) to the plot. Even if the climax itself is a bit over the top, it's hard not to become enthralled by the movie theater scenes.

But again, the film is at its most distracting when we're reminded, oh yeah, we're watching a film. QT is so clearly talented and much of the film works so beautifully that when these moments happen they are doubly frustrating; it's as if Tarantino, as confident as he may seem on the surface, doesn't always appreciate his own talents to just tell the story naturally. He's certainly matured in that regard, but it makes the moments when he regresses all the more noticeable. Bits here and there, like using a snippet of the Moroder "Cat People" score, or the casting of comic Mike Myers, covered with "old British officer's pockmarked skin" makeup -- a small role to be sure, and Myers carries off the British accent, as if he's channeling Colonel Blimp, but it still ends up being slightly distracting.

Film director Eli Roth reminded me physically of film director-slash-actorJohn Cassavetes' roles in similar war movies; except Cassavetes was a good, experienced actor and I'm not sure we can say the same for Roth, but he inarguably has a presence here. He and many of the other Basterds seem cast for their similar looks -- including The Office's BJ Novak and Freaks and Geeks Samm Levine.

Which reminds me of one other minor debit: Might be due to some late editing QT had to do but some of the Basterds characters (not Novak's Utivich but certainly Levine's character) just sort of disappear in the third act -- what happens to them? Where did they go? I guess we'll find out in the inevitable director's cut on DVD.

The ending at the theater is of course not meant to be realistic and it certainly provides a cathartic thrill but it still felt too over the top, even for QT. The script sets up the climax to come from several possible angles, as there are multiple "blow up the movie theater" plots that work in tandem toward the finale. While each of the parallel stories work pretty well on their own, as separate chapters of this book that is the film, I'm not fully convinced they all create the most coherent climax in the movie theater. That said, it's still satisfying, and the very last moments with Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine (which sounds suspiciously like Aldo Ray) and Christoph Waltz's Col. Randa are terrific. It's almost too bad it isn't until the very end that these two memorable characters come face to face at last, but it is most satisfying when they do.

And is there a better film discovery in recent memory (as it were, as he's known to German audiences) than Waltz? His Randa is a challenging character; Tarantino says it may be the best one he's ever written and I can't disagree, but it also requires speaking multiple languages, including many long speeches in English, and playing a character who is part abhorrent Nazi "Jew Hunter", part detective, with an upper class, Rules of the Game-ish manner, and yet with a sense of humor that is hard not to take to. Waltz takes it and runs with it.

He and Pitt have a blast.

The beautiful Mélanie Laurent (I'm Fine, Don't Worry) also more than holds her own as Shoshanna, the character that gives the film the most weight. If it weren't for this actress and the character's story, there is not enough from the male characters alone to glom on to. She's terrific. In a scene where she has to keep her calm and her origins a secret while dining lavishly with Nazis, and then has to meet the man responsible for the death of her family, her quick shift from pleasant poker face to emotional breakdown is beautifully played.
All in all, while there are problems with Basterds, I can't deny how enormously entertained I was by the whole thing, riveted throughout. And anyone complaining that it's not historically accurate should also then complain of the same with Raiders of the Lost Ark. This film lets you know from the very start that it takes place in an alternate universe; people who complain about that seem to be living in a parallel one.
I just want to see Tarantino, while still being QT, let his next film take us in to its world entirely, with less of the "hey! we're watching a movie" decorations.

Anyway, here's your Basterds outside reading list:

The Evening Class Q&A with Tarantino
Glenn Kenny on Some Came Running

Elvis Mitchell Interview with Tarantino on The Treatment (KCRW)

The Inglourious Basterds screenplay!

Lastly, check out this pretty awesome unused Basterds poster [thanks Film School Rejects], which has shades of, yes, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Nick and Norah's Night Off

2009-08-21T19:07:54-07:00

It's not meant as a dismissal of the film, but something about Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist reminded me of the films of (the now departed) John Hughes, Or it's as if Ferris Bueller's Day Off got with Scorsese's After Hours, and had an indie rock, hipster baby.

Two smart teenagers coming out of wrongheaded relationships are thrust together for one night in New York in search of both a lost, drunken friend and a mythical band that keeps its venues a secret. That's it and that's all you need.

The script has its bumpy moments and contrivances but it's still pretty charming, and helped immeasurably by the even more charming Kat Dennings and Michael Cera. Add a catchy, college rockish soundtrack, natch, and some genuinely funny moments, and despite the occasional wrong turn Playlist works.

Admittedly Cera's Nick is more Cameron Frye than Ferris Bueller, but there are a few other Hughes-ian elements: Nick's sweet gay bandmates sort of remind of John Cusack and buddy palling around with the trying-to-be-cool Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles (Okay, except for being gay and hip); then there's the blonde friend of Norah's who spends most of the film wasted; the forgivable plot contrivances; the older-than-their-age teenagers.

But the film also improves on Hughes' comedies tendency toward caricature for the supporting characters. Here even the antagonists -- particularly Nick's ex-girlfriend (Alexis Dziena) and Norah's wannabe-famous-pseudo-boyfriend (an atypical role for Jay Baruchel, who fares well) are well-shaded and understandable, even if not fully likable.

And would Hughes throw in a drag cabaret version of a Christmas pageant? (A hilarious moment.)

In short, if there's any Hughes legacy here it's probably more a wisp, something only in the subconscious of Rachel Cohn (who wrote the book), Lorene Scafaria (who wrote the screenplay) and director Peter Sollett (who made Raising Victor Vargas, and clearly knows New York as well as anyone).

It's not a great film, but maybe someday Gen Y-ers will be referencing back to it as much as Gen X-ers do John Hughes' films.