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Posted by totallywrite
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Posted by totallywrite
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Posted by totallywrite
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Posted by totallywrite
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Posted by totallywrite
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Posted by totallywrite
Overall Impression – A big hit with small laughs.
THE FOUR QUESTIONS
Who is your main character? – Paul Blart.
What is he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Protect the mall. Personal: Get Amy to love him. Private: Not be the loser he’s always been all his life.
Who’s trying to stop him? – Veck Sims, the leader of the crooks trying to rob the mall.
What happens if he fails? – Veck escapes with both Amy and Paul’s daughter.
THE FOUR ARCHETYPES
Orphan – Paul has been abandoned by his wife, has failed the test 8 times to be a state trooper, is overweight and lonely.
Wanderer – After a setup that goes on waaaaaaaay too long, the mall is taken over by crooks. At first, Paul tries to figure out what’s going on. After running into one of the robbers and escaping, Paul realizes that the mall is under siege. He wants to escape, and makes it out of the mall only to realize that Amy’s car is still in the parking lot. He turns around and goes back in.
Warrior – Paul hapless encounters several robbers around the mall, knocking them out. He makes it to where the hostages are being held captive and tries to get them out, unsuccessfully.
Martyr – Veck escapes and Blart pursues. He eventually stops him and saves the day, winning Amy’s love. Blart is offered a spot as a state trooper and he declines, instead opting to stay on at the mall.
AND, IN THE END…
There’s nothing terribly wrong about PAUL BLART: MALL COP, and I found it interesting for what it sort of understood about the conventions of the “DIE HARD in an office building/aircraft carrier/airport/jumbo jet” genre. The movie borrows so heavily from DIE HARD that it’s obviously meant to be as much homage as rip-off.
When you see this movie — IF you see this movie – ignore the goofiness of the bad guys (skateboards and BMX bikes?!?!?!?) and learn from all of the things that the film does almost right; there were too many third act solutions, the obstacles in act two don’t really become increasingly difficult, the martyr moment doesn’t lead to the main character’s success, and the main character gives up his life-long dream for no real reason. These were all things that could have been easily fixed in the scripting…but hindsight is 20-20. Assuming you know what to look for.
– Jeffrey Alan Schechter
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Posted by totallywrite
Overall Impression – Despite the evidence, Eastwood never gets old.
THE FOUR QUESTIONS
Who’s your main character? – Walt Kowalski.
What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: save his Hmong neighbors from the local gang. Personal: teach Thao to be a man. Private: find a reason to keep living after his wife’s death.
Who’s trying to stop him? – The gang and, to a lesser extent, himself.
What happens if he fails? – The gang will tear the Hmong family apart, if they don’t kill them first.
THE FOUR ARCHETYPES
Orphan – Walt is a widower who wants nothing to do with his two disrespectful sons, whom he doesn’t consider good men. He’s also a racist living in an increasingly Hmong dominated community.
Wanderer – Walt catches Thao (the teenage Hmong boy next door) stealing his Gran Torino as part of his forced initiation into a gang. When the gang later tries to take Thao, their fight spills onto Walt’s property and he warns the gang to get off his lawn. Not only does Walt put himself in the gang’s sights, he’s now the reluctant hero of the local Hmong. They adorn him with gifts, even though Walt just wants to be left alone. In town, Walt involves himself further when he saves Thao’s sister from thugs. They become friends, Walt learns about the Hmong family, their culture and the problems they face with the gang.
Warrior – Walt opens up and agrees to take Thao under his wing to let him atone for attempting to steal the Gran Torino. The punishment turns into a friendship, and Walt takes an interest in teaching Thao to be the kind of man his sons should have been. However, the gang continues the trouble Thao, and when Walt learns that he’s dying, he seeks to protect Thao by taking the fight into his own hands. Unfortunately, the confrontations escalate until Thao’s sister is raped and the gang does a drive-by on the Hmong neighbors’ house. Walt realizes that Thao’s family will never have a life unless he stops the gang for good.
Martyr – Walt literally sacrifices himself by tricking the gang into killing him in front of witnesses, ensuring that they go to jail for good.
AND, IN THE END…
I enjoyed Gran Torino on a number of levels, but the movie’s tone had me on edge.
I was particularly uncomfortable when it came to Walt’s racist remarks, and not merely because they were racist remarks. It’s because I found them funny. I even laughed out loud sometimes – and I certainly wasn’t the only audience member. Walt’s racism is comically delivered, which leads me to think that the makers wanted the audience to laugh, or at least feel awkward about wanting to.
If I was forced to experience discomfort by laughing at racism, then I felt discomfort because of racism – which feels like it should be right. But is it? Was the filmmakers’ tactic fair? I’d never laugh at that in the real world. Maybe that’s part of the ‘movie experience’.
– Dan Pilditch
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Posted by danpilditch
Overall Impression – Never trust anyone over 17. Or human.
THE FOUR QUESTIONS
Who are your main characters? – Bruce and Andi.
What are they trying to accomplish? – Professional: Rescue all the stray dogs of Central City. Personal: Not be split up. Private: Find a real family of their very own.
Who’s trying to stop them? – Alternates between their foster parents and the animal control officers at the pound.
What happens if they fail? – They are split up and all the dogs are destroyed.
THE FOUR ARCHETYPES
Orphan – Bruce and Andi are real, honest to goodness orphans.
Wanderer – Andi and Bruce discover the abandoned hotel and try to figure out how to take care of all of the dogs they seem to be collecting.
Warrior – As the number of dogs grows, they have to stay a step ahead of their step parents who are suspecting that something’s up, as well as animal control whom they thwart by getting to the strays before they do.
Martyr – Once split up, Andi leaves her Dickensian Home for Girls and gets Bruce from his Dickensian Home for Boys where they make a daring rescue of all the dogs who are now in the pound.
AND, IN THE END…
All writers of children’s stories eventually face the dilemma of having to write a “Dad’s An Idiot” story wherein kids are preternaturally smart and one or more adults are insufferably stupid. HOTEL FOR DOGS elevates this concept to new heights (or new lows, as the case may be) by making almost every adult in the story not only stupid, but evil.
Why would adults — presumably the demographic who made this movie — make a movie that paints them in the worst possible light? For the money? That’s like me taking the gig to do an adaptation of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The real crime here is that some really heroic, compassionate people such as foster parents and people who work for animal control are portrayed as scumbags. If you want to see a good movie about orphaned kids, people who work with animals, and foster parents re-rent FREE WILLY.
Beyond this, HOTEL FOR DOGS does a disservice to writing in that it panders to its youthful audience. The gaps of logic and story glue are so pronounced that you can almost hear the creators saying “That’s okay, it’s for kids! They won’t notice.” And judging by the kids I saw this with, they didn’t. It’s not unlike BEDTIME STORIES in that way. It’s the story logic version of Woody Allen’s observation of the systematic lowering of standards. It used to be that a kid’s story was LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE or CHARLOTTE’S WEB. Now it’s HOTEL FOR DOGS.
The problem is that the next generation of writers will learn their craft from fond memories of movies like this. We’re mortgaging our storytelling future on the cheap, I fear.
– Jeffrey Alan Schechter
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Posted by totallywrite
Overall Impression – Fun, but it felt like something was missing.
THE FOUR QUESTIONS
Who’s your main character? – Carl Allen.
What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: become a ‘Yes Man’. Personal: win over Allison. Private: not spend his life alone.
Who’s trying to stop him? – Minor obstacles along the way… mostly his own cynical self, but there’s no real antagonist.
What happens if he fails? – He remains alone.
THE FOUR ARCHETYPES
Orphan – After being spurned by his wife, Carl lives alone, brushes off his friends and takes no joy in life. He’s the ultimate cynic, saying “no” to every opportunity that comes his way.
Wanderer – When Carl attends a ‘Yes Man’ seminar, he’s convinced to change his life around by saying “YES!” to every opportunity. Carl’s skepticism is well founded. Every time he says “yes”, something bad happens, but when he decides he’s done with the program, a dog nearly mauls him, so Carl now believes in the ‘covenant’: that bad things happen to those who say “no”! So, he continues saying “yes” and remains a skeptic… until he meets Allison.
Warrior – Encouraged, Carl starts saying “yes” to every opportunity – and it works! He gets promoted, he and Allison begin dating… until Allison learns about the ‘Yes Man’ program and thinks Carl only agreed to their whirlwind romance because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to.
Martyr – Carl risks everything to win Allison back, going so far as to cause a car crash to get Terrance Stamp to remove the ‘covenant’ – even though there isn’t one.
AND, IN THE END…
This was a fun movie, but the something that I felt was missing lies in the concept.
YES MAN follows the ultimate cynic who starts saying “yes” to every opportunity that comes his way. The obvious comedic potential lies in saying “yes” to weird opportunities (which he does), and then we have Jim Carrey, who acts funny wherever he is (which he does).
Many people likened YES MAN to LIAR LIAR, and found the latter to be superior. I agree, because the concept for LIAR LIAR elevated everything comedically, instead of merely facilitating it. Carrey plays a lawyer who doesn’t want to tell the truth, but has to, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it. Fletcher has to deal with his worst nightmare (and ours): telling the truth all the time.
In YES MAN, Carl throws himself into a bunch of outlandish situations. Why? Because he has to say “yes”. Why must he say “yes?” Because of that covenant thing… which doesn’t really exist. Then why’s he really doing it? Maybe it’s because he wants to change. Would LIAR LIAR be funny if Fletcher wanted to tell the truth?
In my mind, this kind of comedy has to have a hero who absolutely doesn’t want to change, but doesn’t have a choice. That’s the “something”. LIAR LIAR had it. I’m not sure YES MAN did.
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Posted by danpilditch
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