Feb
28
“Blood for Dracula” Review
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Before Udo Kier began slumming in Uwe Boll and Rob Zombie junk heaps, he played Dr. Frankenstein and Count Dracula in two Andy Warhol-produced(!) 3D horror films. “Flesh for Frankenstein,” my favorite of the pair, is one of the best movies of its kind. Director Paul Morrissey’s “Flesh” brings the mad doctor to the ’70s in style. Kier’s turn as Frankenstein is hilariously preening and neurotic, playing the character as though he were a deeply insecure college student.
His take on the vampire count in “Blood for Dracula” fully embraces the camp aspects as well. Kier plays him as a pale and sickly aristocrat. Mostly confined to a wheelchair, Dracula has drained every last drop of virgin blood from his countless victims in Romania. Now, he’s dying of thirst. His familiar, Anton, suggests they travel to Italy, which is apparently crawling with chaste, Catholic women. So they pack up his coffin and pay a visit to the home of bankrupt landowner Marchese di Fiori (Vittorio De Sica, director of “The Bicycle Thief!”) and his four young, available daughters. Unfortunately for Drac, two of them have already been devirginized by the rapey Marxist landscaper, Mario (Joe Dallesandro).
What happens when Dracula drinks the blood of an impure woman? Well, he becomes violently ill and pukes his guts out for what seems like half the movie.The first vomiting scene must rival “Team America: World Police” for the most celluloid devoted to reverse paristalsis. It just goes on, and on, and on. You’d think Dracula would just take a little sip of blood and see how it goes down before drinking his victim dry. Nope, he practically does a kegstand on the poor, impure Italian girl before realizing the hard way she wasn’t a virgin after all. Dracula’s not a quick learner, either. He makes the same mistake on another free-spirited sister later in the movie.
Morrissey fuses the gothic elements of the Hammer horror pictures, which I love, with the seismic changes going on in our culture, women’s lib and so forth. The collision is a thing a beauty. No longer is Dracula seductive and supernatural, but a fey cripple, who’s completely out of touch with modern society. Uncharismatic, he utterly fails in his attempts at casting his spell over any of the sisters, unlike the Alpha male Mario. And it’s Mario who vanquishes Dracula in a brutal dismemberment scene at film’s end. Funnily enough, Carlo Rambaldi did the makeup effects work; he’s the same joker who designed E.T.
“Blood for Dracula” eats “Twilight”’s lunch. And barfs it back up again.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
25
“Drive Angry: Shot in 3D” Review
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Shouldn’t it be called “Drive Angrily?” Oh well, even if the title were grammatically correct, the movie would still blow. Nicolas Cage doesn’t save it, the fact it was shot in 3D doesn’t save it, Amber Heard’s nice gams don’t save it — it’s a film that’s beyond salvation. I guess I should’ve known better. Only Brian Collins from Horror Movie a Day and I attended the midnight screening at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks last night. I couldn’t drag any of my friends to this thing. I thought it’d be the perfect exploitation flick, blending elements of horror with high-octane car chases. Turns out, the movie is just aggressively not very good.
Nicolas Cage, apparently basing his entire performance on Nick Nolte’s infamous mugshot, plays fugitive from hell John Milton Get it? Milton? Hell? Yep, this is what we’re dealing with here, hacks who are vaguely familiar with Paradise Lost. At any rate, Milton’s returned to the land of the living — how is never really explained — to rescue his granddaughter from a Satanic cult led by Jonah King (Billy Burke). King has to be perhaps one of cinema’s least intimidating antagonists, ranking right up there with Mark Strong’s barely-there performance in “Sherlock Holmes.”
And so, William Fichtner is the only member of the cast who actually showed up to the set with things called “choices” that I hear actors talking about when they want to sound actorly. He walks away with the movie as The Accountant, a well-dressed lapdog of the Devil, sent to bring Milton back to the inferno. I’d've much rather seen a movie about The Accountant chasing around the Midwest after folks who’ve slipped out of Hell almost unnoticed.
Instead, we get the world’s most slow-moving car chase flick crossed with the world’s least magical supernatural thriller. My drive to the theater was more thrilling than any of the high-speed chases in the film; they’d closed two lanes on the 405. Shouldn’t a movie called “Drive Angry” have some amazing driving stunts in it and some spectacular crashes? This film’s car action pales in comparison even to the anemic “Gone in 60 Seconds” remake, also starring Cage.
The guilty parties here are director Patrick Lussier and writer Todd Farmer. I really dug their collaboration on “My Bloody Valentine,” perhaps the only horror remake within the last 10 years that justifies its existence. With “Drive Angry,” I expected nothing less than B-movie greatness. Sadly, I got significantly less than B-movie greatness. I got a bunch of hungover actors giving uninspired line readings while trying to keep their lunch down.
How’s the 3D? Well, it’s becoming perfectly clear that movies shot in the format still don’t really take full advantage of it, unless CGI bullets fired in super-slow motion are your thing. The 3D in “Drive Angry” is about as negligible as the character development. The effects in this movie are so fakey, they look like animatics. Having them all up in your business doesn’t make the viewing experience more visceral. Crap effects shots are crap effects shots in any dimension.
And so, whatever goodwill I had extended to Nicolas Cage after “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” and “Kick-Ass” has been lost. I was willing to look the other way when “Season of the Witch” dropped last month, since it had been on the shelf for awhile. But with “Drive Angry,” it seems like he just is back to not caring about the quality of the material again.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
24
“Lady Terminator” Review
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I’ve been at my current job for four years now and was recently rewarded for my loyalty to the company with a Target gift card. I later poked around on Target.com, seeing if I could scare up some DVDs to add to my collection, when I stumbled upon the 1988 Indonesian “exploitica” film, “Lady Terminator.” I was vaguely aware of the movie as I’m a fan of cheapjack ripoffs of American blockbusters. It’s incredibly hard to find, too. Netflix doesn’t have it. I’ve made it a point not to blind buy movies, but technically, I wouldn’t be spending my money on the thing; I had a gift card. And so, I added “Lady Terminator” to my cart.
How does “Lady Terminator” stack up? Well, it’s better than “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.” That’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, I know. But when it comes to female killing machines, I’d rank Barbara Anne Constable’s Lady Terminator over Kristanna Loken’s T-X, maybe even over Angelina Jolie’s early-career turn as Cash Reese in the DTV cheapie, “Cyborg 2.” Yup, I own “Cyborg 2.”
“Lady Terminator” opens with a sex-filled prologue that sets up the Legend of the South Sea Queen. Bizarrely, the film doesn’t start out as a beat-for-beat remake of James Cameron’s “Terminator.” After the incomprehensible first scene that involves gauzy camerawork, eels and vagina dentata, we flash forward to 100 years later and anthropology student Tania Wilson (Constable). She’s performing research in Indonesia for her thesis on the South Sea Queen. While scuba diving in search of a mystical dagger, she’s possessed by the South Sea Queen’s malevolent spirit. This turns her into a leather-clad, kill-crazy, sex fiend, and we go into full-on “Terminator” ripoff mode.
I’d say about 60 minutes of the film’s 82-minute running time is directly culled from the first “Terminator” film. Although the setup is wildly different, “Lady Terminator” still manages to ape the bulk of Cameron’s original. Here’s a quick list of scenes/moments/characters the two films share:
_An afflectless and naked Terminator killing punks.
_A shootout in a night club that ends with the Terminator getting blasted through a window.
_A woman who’s targeted by the Terminator and a man sworn to protect her.
_The Terminator jumping through fire onto the hood of a car.
_A high-speed chase with guns blazing.
_The Terminator stealing a police car then disappearing from the police car to avoid arrest.
_The Terminator driving through the front of a police station and obliterating the desk sergeant.
_A shootout in a police station where the Terminator douses the lights.
_The lone protector sustaining a gunshot wound to the arm that he barely seems to notice.
_The Terminator removing its damaged left eye with an X-Acto knife.
_The Terminator being seemingly blown to kingdom come in a tanker explosion, but then it emerges from the fire, stripped of its flesh sheath.
I’m sure I forgot a beat or two (or three). It was kind of hilarious to watch the film go through the same motions as Cameron’s with its marginal level of competence and total abandonment of internal logic. I LOL’d when the flinty hero plucks a bullet out of his arm with his thumb and forefinger, all the while expressing sort of a casual indifference about the ordeal.
Also hilarious is the degree of maliciousness Constable brings to her performance as the Lady Terminator. There’s a scene where she kicks someone in the balls after pumping him full of bullets. Talk about adding insult to injury.
But what else can you expect from a film that has an “Ass. Cameramen” credit? One thing I always love about films like these is their overlong opening title sequences that pad out their truncated running times. The names linger on the screen for way too long as this motley group of nobodies get their drawn out moment in the sun. I noticed that Constable did double-duty as the star and a part of the makeup department.
I’m kind of glad I have “Lady Terminator” in my DVD collection and even more glad that I didn’t pay for it. Any movie with the alternate title, “Snake Terminator: The Snake Wench Dies Twice,” should live on my shelf alongside some of the other crap I have an inexplicable fondness for.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
22
Liam Neeson on “Miami Vice”
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Believe it or not, I’d never seen an episode of “Miami Vice” before last weekend. I’ve seen the incomprehensible 2006 Michael Mann film, but never the source material upon which it’s based. As it turns out, the show starred many then-unknown actors — including the star of “Unknown,” Liam Neeson — who’ve gone on to enjoy A-list status. And so, I think I’ll start doing a regular column about “Miami Vice” episodes with celebrity guest stars before they became celebrities.
The Actor: Liam Neeson as ex-IRA terrorist, Sean Carroon.
The Ep: “When Irish Eyes Are Crying” (3.1).
Best Line: Det. Gina Calabrese laments, “I just wanted to do something where I could help people; never thought I’d be killing kids.”
Who Else Is in It? Jeff Fahey as weapons dealer, Eddie Kaye.
Best Moment: Eddie Kaye blows up Crockett’s $150,000 Ferrari with a Stinger missile during a product demo.
Hilarious Anachronisms: Terrorists are portrayed as handsome Irishmen with lilting accents.
Fun Trivia: Liam Neeson played the titular character in 1990’s “Darkman.” Jeff Fahey later starred in “Darkman III: Die Darkman Die” as the villain and as Darkman in disguise as Jeff Fahey’s character; so, they both played technically played Darkman.
“When Irish Eyes Are Crying” starts off the third pastel-drenched season of “Miami Vice” with a bang when Det. Gina Calabrese (Saundra Santiago) saves ex-IRA terrorist Sean Carroon (Liam Neeson) from an assassin’s bullet and quickly finds herself rather — ahem — TAKEN by him. Although Carroon’s pillow talk has him reminiscing about making his first kill at 15, Gina nonetheless believes he’s a reformed freedom fighter, seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, Crockett and Tubbs go undercover as South African weapons smugglers to nab arms dealer Eddie Kaye (Jeff Fahey). Their order calls for a pile of Stinger missiles along with the usual automatic weapons and grenades and suchlike. When Crockett and Tubbs find out that the Stingers are from 1980, seemingly past their sell-by date, Eddie Kaye loads one into a launcher and blows Crockett’s black Ferrari to hell. This scene is what sold me on “Miami Vice.” The reflection of the burning wreck of the car in Crockett’s sunglasses — and everyone’s apparent invincibility to things like traumatic brain injury — convinced me that I need to see every single episode of this program.
Crockett and Tubbs’ bust goes sideways, though, when they find out they were outbid by someone else for the Stingers. But who? Why, it’s none other than the tall, dark[man] and handsome Sean Carroon, who wants to blow up a Concord. Once an IRA terrorist, always an IRA terrorist, I guess. Gina corners Carroon — missile launcher in hand — on the rooftop of a parking structure, and a super-sad ’80s love song swells over the soundtrack. She has him dead to rights but waits for Crockett to show up and gun him down; Don Johnson’s the star, after all. Liam Neeson’s obvious stunt double then does a header off the parking structure.
“When Irish Eyes Are Crying” is a terrific point-of-entry into the series. It has everything you could ask for: character, emotion, a car blowing up. Liam Neeson’s great in a rare turn as a villain. I simply can’t wait to see another star-studded episode of “Miami Vice.”
-Brad Lohan
Feb
21
It’s rare that I get anyone to post a comment on my blog, so when I do, and when it’s especially vitriolic, it’s always a treat. Here’s a recent comment I got from someone calling himself “anti-hero fan” in response to this post. Apparently, I’m not as smart as I think I am. J’accuse!
According to anti-hero fan, “You, sir, [are] a friggin’ know-it-all. Anti-heroes come in many shades of gray. But you seem to think in terms of black and white.
“Don’t think that you know everything about anti-heroes because obvious that you don’t.
“Anti-heroes AREN’T villains. They’re beings who aren’t true heroes because they behave like villains.
“I’ve learned about anti-heroes. But unlike [you], I know that I don’t know everything about them. You just think and claim that you’re expert on them even though you aren’t.
“And no, Harvey Dent isn’t an anti-hero. He became the villain who’s known as Two-Face.
“So don’t give me your arrogant I-know-everything-so-that-makes-me-smarter than-everyone-else attitude. There are things that other people know about but you don’t know about.”
I haven’t revisited my treatise on anti-heroes in awhile, nor do I plan to, as I’m probably even less of a fan of my writing than anti-hero fan. At any rate, keep on drinking the Haterade, dear readers!
-Brad Lohan
Feb
17
Surprisingly, I’d never seen a Russ Meyer flick before. “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” had been on my radar since I was an undergrad in film school; one of my professors had the poster hanging in his office. When star Tura Satana passed away recently, I decided it was finally time to catch the movie.
And what a weird movie it is. “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” is about three go-go dancers — Varla (Tura Satana), Billie (Lori Williams) and Rosie (Haji) — who go tooling around So Cal in their roadsters; the close-ups of the driving shots are clearly done by filming the actresses at a low angle in a stationary car as they bounce up and down. Billie, the blonde and my favorite of the trio, pulls over and, apropos of nothing, goes for a swim in a lake with all of her clothes on; this is the most chaste T&A picture I’ve seen to date. Varla sends Rosie (whose Italian accent and wild gesticulations must’ve been Danny Nucci’s inspiration for his performance in “Titanic”) to retrieve Billie, and they wrestle around in the water for awhile. They then go play chicken at the Salt Flats until a bohunk named Tommy (Ray Barlow) and his bikini-clad girlfriend Linda (Sandra Bernard) show up. They challenge Tommy to a race, and apropos of nothing, Varla kills him when it’s over.
The girls kidnap Linda to a gas station, where they learn from the toothless attendant that a crippled Old Man (Stuart Lancaster) who lives nearby received a huge settlement after being hit by a train(!). They cook up some bogus story and pay the old lech a visit at his dilapidated ranch. But he’s not alone. The Old Man lives there with his two sons, the musclebound and not-very-bright Vegetable (Dennis Busch) and the gangly but somewhat brighter Kirk (Paul Trinka). From there, more things happen apropos of nothing.
“Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” isn’t something I would classify as a *good* movie. Describing it as loosely plotted is charitable. The “acting” is amateur hour. And yet, I was never tempted to turn the film off because it’s made endlessly watchable by the staggering amount of cleavage on display. Holy cats, Tura Satana is the queen of the plunging neckline. I’m not really a fan of the penciled-on eyebrows, but who’s looking at her eyebrows? And now I will return to the slightly less misogynistic portion of the review.
They certainly don’t really make bad movies like they used to. And they’ve tried. Last year, I saw the Russ Meyer homage “Bitch Slap,” which should be an argument for the criminalization of homage pictures. Any movie that makes T&A actively boring (“Showgirls” also qualifies for this dishonor) cannot be classified as “so bad, it’s good.” And now I will return to the only slightly less misogynistic portion of the review.
Let’s talk about Billie. I’m not even really into blondes, but Billie, oh my god, Billie. Okay, I think I’m doing talking about Billie.
I need to see some more Russ Meyer flicks, like immediately, before I can get a sense of where “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” fits within the scope of his output. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re into that sort of thing. And if you’re not into that sort of thing, well, it must be a helluva thing, having taste.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
10
Shane Black to Direct “Iron Man 3?”
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Last December, Cinefamily had a double-bill of Shane Black-scripted thrillers, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” and the man himself was in attendance to discuss the films. What a night. Black’s films are almost always set around the holidays, so Cinefamily provided eggnog and cookies for the audience to enjoy alongside all the snark and carnage on the screen.
Black’s an inimitable force as a screenwriter. He wrote the first two “Lethal Weapon” films, and his spec for “The Long Kiss Goodnight” sold to New Line Cinema for an astounding $4 million back in the early-’90s when studios still bought specs. His voice is unlike any other. I’ve always envied his ability to infuse his work with his trademark wit that doesn’t feel forced or shoehorned in by a dozen punch-up writers.
Now, word is that Black might be directing “Iron Man 3.” I can’t think of a better candidate for the job. Black’s directorial debut, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” is a stylish neo-noir and a criminally overlooked gem. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are in top form in the film. It’s become perennial viewing for me.
Re-teaming Black with Downey, and on “Iron Man 3″ no less, would be a synergistic love explosion and would restore my faith in the Disney/Marvel franchise machine. At the moment, I think they’re more interested in churning out product than movies that succeed because they’re really and truly good. We’ll see how things shake out.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
3
Tom Green High-Fived Me
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I’ve been a fan of Tom Green’s since I first saw “The Tom Green Show” on MTV in 1999. His unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate a dead moose on the side of the highway by humping it had me convinced I was watching nothing short of genius. Green’s street-level, gotcha antics would inform the equally-brilliant pranksters on “Jackass” and later Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” and “Bruno.” He pioneered the art of making average dopes uncomfortable. I’ve longed for MTV to release “The Tom Green Show” on DVD and for Green to make a triumphant return to the limelight.
Last night, Tom Green did stand-up at Flappers in Burbank. I’d seen him there before, trying out new material in the Yoo-Hoo Room on the day after Christmas. This time he was on the main stage. And he was great. Green strikes a unique balance between being the craziest person in the room and the most deadpan. The pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, and it’s endlessly entertaining to see how he brings his nervous energy to the stage.
Green addressed a variety of topics, both personal and observational. His opening bit about the KFC Museum in Kentucky absolutely killed me. Then he went on the discuss his short-lived stint on “Celebrity Apprentice,” how social networking has ruined human interaction, finding an issue of “Penthouse” in the woods at 15, the rogue wave that nearly killed him in Costa Rica, and getting older. He left out a couple bits from his earlier performance, but everything was gold.
When Green exited the stage, he high-fived a number of people in the audience, including me. What a profound moment that was. I finally got to touch the hand that had once waved a horse’s penis at the camera in “Freddy Got Fingered.” I am now complete.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
2
“Fantastic Four” #587 lol wut??
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I bought two copies of “Fantastic Four” #587. The issue was polybagged, so I needed to have one I could open and one for future generations to not open. So, what’s the big deal with “FF” #587 anyway? Does somebody die in it or what? As a matter of fact, Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch) bites it. I guess. I don’t know. The writing was so incomprehensible and the art so muddy, I gathered that he demise is part of the proceedings. To me, it looks more like he’s having group sex with insectoids.
I haven’t been following “Fantastic Four” since Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s run. The current creative team seems to be trying to ape that widescreen storytelling style. Unfortunately, the plot is so Byzantine, it’s completely impenetrable to casual readers or jokers like me who only buy comics because some major character dies. I had no idea what was going on.
First of all, the characters are scattered to the [fantastic] four winds. Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) is on Nu-World, battling the planet-chomping big bad, Galactus; Sue Storm (the Invisible Woman) is at the bottom of the sea in Atlantis, where she’s made queen or something, much to the chagrin of Prince Namor, her sometimes-boyfriend; and Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm (the Thing) are facing down an army of insectoids led by Annihilius. For some reason, Ben Grimm has returned to his human form, so he resembles Holt McCallany from “Lights Out,” not a hulking rock monster.
I kept thinking that Johnny Storm was going to be talked to death by the other characters. Everyone speaks in massive reams of exposition. This worked in comics when someone like Stan Lee was writing the dialogue. Now it’s just nonsensical prattle. When it comes to talky scenes, less is more. I mean that seriously. Even worse, there was no character to be found in these endless passages, either. It was like reading a tech manual.
Perhaps the dumbest thing the book does is something I already touched upon: it breaks up the team before the big moment. Only Ben Grimm is on hand to react to Johnny’s apparent death. Wouldn’t the event have more gravity to it if Reed and Sue were also there to witness Johnny’s exit? Their finding out in a subsequent issue, long after the fact (and probably in two pages worth of monologuing), just seems undramatic to me.
The deaths of major characters in comics are always treated like a big, hairy deal, and yet they almost always return. Dying in a comic book is akin to getting a bout of the flu in real life. I’m sure that Johnny Storm will return at some point. The question is, Will I care enough to read the issue?
Welp, rest in peace, Johnny Storm. Flame on, brother. Flame on.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
1
“The Happening” at the NuArt
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I skipped M. Night Shyamalan’s comedy event of 2008, “The Happening,” during its original theatrical run because I was under the impression — based on its 18% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes — that it was a bigger disaster than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The red-band trailer promised loads of carnage, but I assumed that it also spoiled all the kills. So, I held off on seeing it. Then the NuArt programmed the film at midnight last Friday. Was “The Happening” potentially a new camp classic? Maybe I needed to see it after all.
About a dozen or so people turned out for the screening. One of the door prizes was a mini bottle of Jack Daniels, so we could participate in a drinking game: take a shot every time Mark Wahlberg looks confused. This was going to be quite a night out at the movies. I love getting in on the ground floor for new cult curios.
How is “The Happening?” Well, as a horror movie, it’s an absolute failure, basically a Uwe Boll film with an A-picture budget. As a comedy, though, it’s funnier than most Kevin Smith movies. Dante from “Clerks” even shows up briefly before doing a header through the windshield of a car. The tragedy is that he wasn’t even supposed to be here today.
“The Happening” is about a high school science teacher named Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) who finds out that some neuro-toxin has been unleashed in Central Park, driving people to commit mass suicide. The toxin has begun to spread across the Northeast, so Elliot and his saucer-eyed wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) leave their hometown of Philadelphia. Elliot and Alma are having some sort of martial crisis because, dig this, Alma had tiramisu with some guy named Joey who now won’t stop calling her.
Elliot and Alma are accompanied by math teacher Julian (John Leguizamo) and Julian’s daughter, Jess. We know Julian’s a math teacher because he does math all the time. He even makes up some bullshit statistic about the likelihood of his wife’s still being alive in Princeton, but he doesn’t show his work.
Julian’s promptly written out of the movie, leaving Jess in Elliot and Alma’s care. Why Jess wasn’t written as Elliot and Alma’s daughter (or Joey and Alma’s daughter!) to begin with is puzzling, but by this point in the film, who cares? Elliot manages to find some horticulturist who thinks that this neuro-toxin is being spread by plants, plants hell-bent on eliminating our self-preservation instincts.
(A year and a half ago, I ended up staying the night in a motel in Salt Lake City after a flight I was supposed to be on had been canceled. I turned on the TV around 1 am and saw the part in this movie where some guy is wandering around the lion habitat at the zoo with two bloodied stumps where his arms used to be. I was like, “What the shit?!” Seeing that scene in the context of the rest of the movie, I was still like, “What the shit?!”)
At any rate, people are being driven to suicide by some sort of plant pheromone that’s being blown around by the wind, giving us a fantastic scene in which Elliot and Alma attempt to outrun wind. This might be almost as great as the scene in “The Day After Tomorrow” when they try to outrun cold. Later, I’m going to try to outrun this movie.
I just felt kind of embarrassed for everyone involved with this movie, even the Best Boy. Poor Mark Wahlberg, fresh off his Oscar win for “The Departed,” has a scene where he must deliver this monologue to a house plant:
“Hello. My name is Elliot Moore. I’m just going to talk in a very positive manner, giving off good vibes. We’re just here to use the bathroom, and we’re just going to leave. I hope that’s okay.”
Zooey Deschanel, who I’ve decided looks like Sailor Mars from “Sailor Moon,” is woefully miscast as the tiramisu temptress. Worse, Shyamalan insists on shooting her in this tight close-ups with a wide-angle lens that make her features look even more exaggerated cartoonish. She’s simply too adorable to be in a movie where a guy’s eaten by a lawnmower.
But that’s kind of what’s great about the film. Every note “The Happening” hits is completely wrong. There’s not a line of dialogue that rings true, not a character beat that feels earned, not a plot point that’s remotely logical, nothing. This is “Epic Fail: The Movie.” I laughed harder at “The Happening” than I have at some intentional comedies. I hope this finds an audience on the midnight movie circuit because that’s a happening place.
-Brad Lohan