Author: Bo List

Happy Valentine’s Day, beloved readership! It’s time to celebrate love. Love for anyone — a spouse, a sweetheart, a friend, your family, or even yourself. Valentine’s Day is also other things: chocolates, roses, plush animals, Hallmark, those chalky but wise candy hearts, and cuddling up to romantic movies. Below, I have combined these last two, candy hearts and cuddly movies, to help you send just the right message to him or her this Valentine’s Day.

Trying to find the right time for “I love you”? Time to take a trip to the dump? Maybe you’re trying to fend off marriage another year. It can all be communicated in the magical language of the movies!

Candy Heart: “I love you!”

What is the perfect date movie? Ideally, it’s the one that will best facilitate cuddling, kisses, or action before the date is through. Allow me to submit, for your consideration, four films that will push you and your sweetheart closer — by force if necessary!

Jerry Maguire. Maybe you want to tell your significant other “You complete me” or “You had me at hello.” This quirky 1996 Tom Cruise romancer is just the ticket to bring two seemingly incompatible people together. Added bonus: If your message is “Get over yourself and your oppressive selfishness” or “Please date me even though I have a child,” Jerry Maguire takes care of both.

Say Anything. This 1989 sleeper classic, featuring John Cusack at his noblest monotone, is most famous for the moment when Cusack holds a boombox above his head outside his sweetheart’s window, blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Chick-flick haters, never fear. Say Anything is strong enough for a man, but it’s made for a woman. Bonus message: “You can say anything to me.”

Ghost. The strains of “Oh, my love, my darling, I’ve hungered for your touch a long, lonely time ” will echo through the hearts of girls (and this boy) forever — etched permanently to the ultra-hot image of Demi Moore spinning her clay wheel, as a shirtless Patrick Swayze steals behind her to likewise get messy. Thus, 1990’s Ghost and the Righteous Brothers’ incomparable “Unchained Melody” became immortal. Also works to say “If I die, you’d better not get it on with my best friend for I will haunt you both.”

Titanic. At three-plus hours, this is not a movie to watch if you’ve not yet shared a first kiss. The tension will be unbearable. But if you’ve been together a while, there are plenty of slow, wordy scenes that can easily be broken up by making out, and Leonardo DiCaprio is just scrawny enough that the lady won’t be distracted from the Prince Charming who’s right next to her. Added bonus messages: “Never let go!” and “If you die, I will find the strength to move on and live productively. For a long time.”

And now for some more specific messages …

Candy Heart: “It’s been a good ride.”

The Way We Were. Picture it: 1973. Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand are at the height of their glamour. They’re perfect for each other — oil and vinegar. Two passionate people who find emotional life and challenge only in each other but whose passions only tear them apart. Romantic, epic (the ’50s Hollywood witch hunt features prominently), and florid (Streisand). Bonus message: “Meanwhile, as we’re breaking up, consider that never seeing each other again could be a good thing.”

Candy Heart: “Maybe marriage isn’t for us. In fact, maybe ‘us’ isn’t for us.”

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Whether you’re a weathered academic trying to unload a shrill, boozy harpy or the other way around, nothing quite like 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to steer you away from the altar fast and furiously. George Bush should give this one a viewing next time he whips out a “sanctity of marriage” spiel. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor make wedding vows look like the Patriot Act. Bonus message: Taylor plus marriage equals unmitigated disaster.

Candy Heart: “Honey, about those magazines you found …”

In and Out. Paul Rudnick’s sharp 1997 pop satire makes coming out at the altar look perfectly festive. Romantic, hilarious, wise, and quietly political, In and Out is a great date movie even if he’s not probably gay.

And speaking of gay … “We can put our political, sexual, and racial differences aside.”

My Beautiful Laundrette. Amazingly progressive for 1985, this unconventional tale of outsiders making their way in London brings together two cultural opposites: upstanding Pakistani youth Nasser and rough, pseudo-fascist street tough Johnny. My Beautiful Laundrette makes them lovers despite their differences and shows that attraction is a more powerful force than society. P.S.: Daniel Day-Lewis plays Johnny and his scene with Nasser in the back of the laundry with the champagne is HOT. Bonus message: “Leave your life among the street punks and join me in running a small business.” That’s universal, right?

Candy Heart: “Grow up.”

Big. A boy wishes he could be “big” and grows up overnight into Oscar nominee Tom Hanks who has a beautifully honest romance with Elizabeth Perkins. This too must end, though, because he has to earn his “big”-ness with age. I asked my friends what their favorite romantic movies were, and one e-mailed back, citing 1988’s Big as “Best movie to watch if you’re dating a big kid.” Two days later, she dumped her big kid! So, ladies, this earns my highest rating for “Best movie to watch with your ‘big kid’ when it’s time to send him back to the playground.”

And speaking of breakups … “Hey, crazy person — scram!”

Fatal Attraction. Nobody does “psycho ex” like Glenn Close in this 1987 horror. Your companion need boil no rabbits to deserve the boot — calling and hanging up or stalking in general is quite enough. Bonus message: “Cheaters never win.” See also The English Patient, Unfaithful. For a healthy stalker movie, see Sleepless in Seattle.

For infidels … “If you’re going to cheat, cheat with eternity.”

Shakespeare in Love. It’s a sumptuous, romantic, classy, passionate affair between bard and muse. But, hey, where’s Mrs. Shakespeare? Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes heat things up and put on a good play in this 1998 Best Picture winner that leaves infidelity curiously unscathed. Bonus message: “Though I must return to my wife, our love will help me to reinvent the English language and you will live forever in the hearts of lovers everywhere.”

That’s it, beloved readership. This is all you need for a productive and communicative Valentine’s Day. You’ll get the results you need with these films and the sage lessons they teach.

And now, I follow my own advice with my own special, cinematic Valentine’s Day message to my indefinable friend J.C. — “You had me at hello. You had me at hello.”

Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) is a smart, attractive college guy. He had some rough spots in childhood, but he’s grown beyond them fairly successfully, thanks, in part, to a series of blackouts that occurred at crucial, difficult moments. But he’s been blackout-free for seven years cause for celebration with his enormous, amorous Goth roomie Thumper (Ethan Suplee).

When Evan takes a snoopy girl back to the dorm, a pile of journals is uncovered journals Evan was told to keep as a kid to help him fend off blackouts. The date goes bad when Evan is suddenly transported back to a creepy moment with a childhood girl pal’s father (Eric Stoltz) who has a new video camera and sleazy intentions for it.

Back in the future (er, the present), Evan tracks down the old friend, Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart) to figure out what happened that night years ago. She gets upset and runs off, and later her nasty, violent brother Tommy leaves a voice-mail to let Evan know that he screwed up and that Kayleigh had killed herself.

It turns out that Evan’s journals hold secrets to several key moments in his childhood that served as turning points in his development: a vandalism prank that went awry and killed a mother and child, Tommy’s vicious incineration of Evan’s dog, a troubling drawing Evan did as a child showing what he wanted to be when he grew up, etc. It turns out also that by staring reeeeeeaaaallly hard at a journal entry, Evan can go back and relive an important moment. And he does, with predictably tragic results.

It’s not enough to stop the molestation of him and Kayleigh or to save the dog. Invariably, each resulting scenario is worse than the one before. Every time the past is changed, the future is also changed. In one variation, Evan becomes a frat guy, living blissfully with Kayleigh as his girlfriend but because he prevented the molestation of only him and Kayleigh, it turns out that brother Tommy got the brunt of it and turns out messed up. And Evan winds up in prison. Then in a psych ward. Then Kayleigh is a hooker, then a sorority girl again. Every future is different.

I would like to afford Kutcher some credit for the ambition behind this film. Known chiefly for his antic performances in That 70’s Show, MTV’s Punk’d, sophomoric movie comedies, and Demi Moore, he is tabloid fodder and the unfair target of Ben Affleck-sized scrutiny. Many will see this film to determine his acting ability. Let me save you some time: Yeah, he can act. He’s green and the inexperience shows in the form of nuance and diction (he mumbles some). But he’s earnest and committed and not remotely showy unless the strange script or direction forces him. Bravo, Ashton. If only the rest of the film were as earnest and wholesome as he.

The first 30 minutes are a parade of horrors: the exploding baby, an attack on an innocent moviegoer, the burning dog. Hell, back in the past they even go see the movie Seven and we relive the horrifying scene in that film where the murder investigation leads to the badly decayed corpse of a morbidly obese glutton. As if the bad luck in this film were not sufficiently terrible.

“The Butterfly Effect” is a component of chaos theory that suggests “if a butterfly flaps its wings where I am standing, then it can create a monsoon halfway around the world.” For that matter, so can a sneeze or a handshake or any decision whatsoever. Makes you think twice about doing anything. The problem in this movie (among a handful) is that the Butterfly Effect seems only to affect the “here” and gives no sense of “there.” Evan’s decisions have no bearing on anything outside of his own life. It’s like tossing a pebble in a pond and watching the ripples more than anything involving monsoons.

There is an amusing battle among nature, chaos, fate, and free will in this film, and by the end, we lose patience with Evan because his decisions are never very smart. When he goes back in time he always seems to do or say the wrong thing never learning from one trip back to the next. No wonder life gets so screwy! Kutcher, in his first attempt at generating box-office gravitas, deserves better than this complicated script that lets him go nowhere. While Kutcher goes back to the past for his gravitas, serious fans of time travel should go Back to the Future.

If the kids from 7th Heaven were real, they’d be allowed to see this movie.” So spake my roommate Jared on the appeal of the latest teen romance, Chasing Liberty. The subject: mildly entertaining, inoffensive pap. This particular pap, which is indeed inoffensive and mildly entertaining, headlines pop star Mandy Moore. Moore’s musical career is as light and breezy and insubstantial as her work in film, and certainly her flimsy but appealing talent could stand a little extra support if she’s going to become big.

Moore is Anna Foster, daughter to the president of the United States. Behind all the Secret Service agents and privileged upbringing, Anna is just like any other full-blooded American teen-ager only most American teens don’t have their dates interrupted by a storm of government agents the moment danger seems possible. (Friends of a suitor are roughed by guards when one reaches into his jacket for a camera, not a gun as they suspect.)

When an official visit to Prague offers the opportunity to let loose a little, President Dad (Mark Harmon) relents and allows Anna to accompany the wild daughter of the French ambassador to a concert with minimal security. But Dad breaks his promise (the one presidential thing his character does in this film) and sends in a full battalion. Anna manages to wriggle free long enough to hop on the back of a handsome stranger’s motorcycle and speed away, not knowing that the handsome stranger (Matthew Goode) is also an agent, Ben Calder. Knowing this, the prez decides to give his daughter a little controlled freedom and let her think she’s rebelling her way across Europe with a mysterious hunk, when she’s really on a chaperoned vacation.

Along the way, Anna and Ben encounter a small handful of mild zanies (including an Austrian beefcake named Gus Gus and a funny Italian mama-mia who scolds her gondolier son for bringing the couple home but then welcomes them when she thinks they are newlyweds) and one big zany: McGruff. McGruff (Martin Hancock) is not the dog detective who will take a bite out of crime but a bizarro, eccentric Brit with a strange face, spastic demeanor, and a life mission to distribute decals portraying the Six Million Dollar Man. He also picks pockets. McGruff is a kind of enigma in this film. He is the comic relief injected halfway through a mostly unfunny romantic comedy and, despite picking the pockets of the first daughter and her bodyguard, is quickly forgiven and embraced again by both. That wacky McGruff! Nice guy, just don’t let him near your purse.

I guess someone on the script committee realized as the film was being shot: “Hey, guys! Any of you notice that after the first half hour, but before the last 15 minutes, this sucker has no plot? Um, any ideas?” And then someone else invariably chimed: “How about a very strange, dirty British train passenger who distributes decals with the Six Million Dollar Man on them and who picks pockets and likes to go on montage-ready shopping sprees?” The committee: “Hmmmmmmm, but what to name him?” Meanwhile, a nearby TV set plays a commercial for crime prevention.

As one might guess from the film’s status as a mild romantic comedy, hearts flutter between Anna and her agent-gentleman. It is not long before her troublesome American charm wins over his coolish Brit aloofness, and Ben is soon torn between his duty as Anna’s protector and as the studly British secret agent who wants to shag her. This makes for some interestingly tense moments, since there is always that big secret between them: She wants him to think that she’s just some normal, rebellious, nonpresidential teen, and he wants her to think I dunno, really. We don’t get to know him very well in this film. Ho hum.

Going to Chasing Liberty in a bad mood wasn’t a grand idea, nor was lamenting that better films weren’t opening as the trailers for similarly insipid teen comedies scrolled by before the movie’s start. But I guess I’m kind of disappointed in a romantic comedy that isn’t very funny, wastes B-grade but fine talent like Harmon, Caroline Goodall (as the first lady), and the bumbling duo of Annabella Sciorra and Jeremy Piven as flirty agents, and then uses the “L” word to describe a weekend’s worth of romantic antics based solely on attraction and not a bit on any kind of real intimacy. I tend to look at deep thoughts in shallow wells as a trend, but if these movies are among the first cinematic role models that teen girls have for romance and love, aren’t we all a little bit in trouble?

Who is the “Next John Wayne”? John Wayne was a leader. In films he commanded squadrons from every war since the Revolutionary all the way up to Vietnam, led assaults against Native Americans, Nazis, the French, the English, everyone, AND he was Genghis Khan! Were he alive today (at age 97), he would doubtlessly be figuring out how to cinematically take out Saddam, Osama, and whatever other evildoers might be out there working to undo the American Way. (Watch out, France!) While Clint Eastwood may be a good candidate for Hollywood’s Numero Uno Macho Tough Guy based on his rÇsumÇ of flinty cops and cowboys, I submit Russell Crowe as the inheritor of the Duke’s brand of hunky, sensitive command. Equally at home as captain of a warship, wrasslin’ tigers in the Colosseum, or bedding Meg Ryan, Crowe is the real deal.

In Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Crowe is Jack Aubrey, captain of the Surprise, charged with capturing or destroying the Acheron, a French vessel that, unbeknownst to Aubrey, outmans, outguns, and outsails the Surprise. That is really the whole plot. Aubrey’s orders are to capture the ship, and by the end, we find out if they succeed. The narrative is as singleminded as the Surprise‘s captain, and the in-between story is as incidental as life at sea: storms, mutinies, accidents, droughts, life, death. Each of these details is brought to life in almost 3-D vividness — particularly the storms, the best I’ve seen on film.

Master and Commander is grand storytelling. The canvas is broad (taking the crew of the Surprise from the northeast of South America all the way to the Galapagos Islands), its characters are heroic in their resolves yet complicated by their conflicting desires and tactics, and there is no fiercer lady than the sea herself. Incidentally, if the word “her” or “she” ever comes up, it is in exclusive reference to the ship, because there is no female character in this film. On a pit stop in the Indies, Cap’n Jack has some flirty glances with a passing native beauty, but she has no lines and there are no Geena Davises or Kate Winslets also sailing the ocean blue — which, I imagine, contributes to the tension that mounts in a crew that is dedicated to their fair captain but grows ever more impatient with a long journey they do not always understand.

The key relationship in the film is between the captain and his best friend, ship’s doctor Stephen Maturin. Maturin is played by Paul Bettany, who played another Russell Crowe best-buddy (with a twist) in A Beautiful Mind. The prickly Crowe must have enjoyed the collaboration or Bettany probably wouldn’t have resurfaced in one of his films. Bettany is unrecognizable from the earlier film (brown-haired and festooned with fashionable 1805 sideburns). Bettany is Spock to Crowe’s Kirk. They are, together, the intellect and the intuition, the logic and the action. They respect each other immeasurably even when relentlessly opposed. Jack is obviously the more daring of the two, but lest we think Stephen is any less strong, we witness him surgically removing a bullet from his own rib after being accidentally shot by a crewman. This scene, where Jack can barely watch the proceedings, is a telling testament to the bond between these two disparate men. We get to know other crew members only barely, and I think this is how it must be for a captain of a ship. There are only fleeting moments here and there that permit intimacy or acquaintance. As a leader, one makes the most of them.

This is a gorgeous, rousing film, and its depiction of life and war at sea is not soon to be bettered.

In The Human Stain, Anthony Hopkins is stately college dean Coleman Silk. Silk professes the classics — that is, until one day when he notes the semester-long absence of two students. Setting an example before his class, he asks, “Are they spooks?” Having never seen them before, he could not have known that those students are black. A scandal ensues, and Silk’s fitness to teach is questioned to the point of a forced resignation. Silk plans immediate legal action but is interrupted by the death of his wife on that same day. He blames the school.

Months later, he arrives at the secluded lake home of acquaintance Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), a writer who Silk thinks will want to author his story. Zuckerman has demons of his own, but Silk’s outsized enthusiasm and demand for attention draw him slowly out of his shell. Soon, they are the best of friends, and Silk finally has a confidante with whom to share his most recent surprise: his affair with a cleaning lady half his age.

Enter Nicole Kidman as Faunia Farely. Unschooled, unmannered, and poor, Faunia is a fallen debutante whose childhood abuse sent her running away from her privileged upbringing straight to the wrong side of the tracks. In fact, during one particularly tense scene with her psycho ex-husband Lester (Ed Harris) threatening violence against her, she calmly asks Silk, “Is this too ‘trailer park’ for you?” Not for Silk. But Faunia is too “trailer park” for Silk’s colleagues, who send anonymous, snippy notes as he tries to gain legal footing against his college. Even Zuckerman cautions him about what he’s getting into, after an embarrassing scene in a fancy restaurant when Faunia can’t handle being introduced to Silk’s more sophisticated life. Silk, now estranged from the whole rest of his life, can only reconcile the vast differences between him and Faunia when all of the cards are on the table. She has baggage, yes, but he has a secret that has been haunting him for 50 years: He’s black.

Telling you that Silk is black is not a Crying Game-like spoiler. We know this early on in a series of flashbacks, as we see a young Silk (Wentworth Miller) come of age amid racism, classism, and the self-loathing that goes with being so light-skinned as to be passed off as white in a society (1948, y’all!) that favors it. Silk, as we come to learn, has worked hard to forget his modest upbringing in favor of escaping to a life of refinement and opportunity. Faunia, conversely, has abandoned a life of abusive affluence for a baser, poorer life where she can control and select those who abuse her.

The Human Stain, despite its Oscar pedigree and fantastic cast, is a mess, unfortunately. Better film actors can scarcely be found than Hopkins and Kidman, and sadly, both are miscast here. They’re great, mind you, but Hopkins (who also attempted black with a stage Othello that received, ahem, mixed reviews) is entirely too British for the role. Even though his character is explained to have spent time at Oxford, at no point do we see any trace of his distinctly American roots. Similarly, casting one of the world’s most recognizably beautiful women as a trailer-trash cleaning lady is a challenge that Kidman’s brave, unglamourously drawn performance only partly contests. She and Hopkins hit all of the right notes, but neither can escape what they are — which I guess is the point of the movie anyway, so bravo?

Sad too is the misuse/underuse of frequent best-supporting-actor nominees Ed Harris and Gary Sinise. Harris fares best, allowed to provide some complexity and nuance to the otherwise typical redneck husband type. Sinise, however, is given little more to do than listen to Hopkins meditate on aging and Viagra. His character’s own renaissance is neglected entirely to make way for the Big Affair that is ruining/reinventing/renewing his friend. I would like to have seen this as a useful parallel. As it is, Sinise plays the role of thankless narrator.

As it is with many flashback movies (the literary Possession comes to mind), the scenes from the past are more interesting than those of the present. The attention to detail, for one, distinguishes them from those where contemporary emotional politics are taken for granted (incorrectly) as more interesting than history. The portrait of Silk’s 1948 black family is so finely drawn (played with definitive dignity by Harry Lennix and Anna Deavere Smith as his upright parents) and Miller’s steely performance as the young Silk so hotly understated that the contemporary scenes of the repressed Hopkins cannot help but pale by comparison.

There are two movies here, and despite the great skill of The Human Stain‘s leads, theirs is not the better of the two.

Ridley Scott’s Alien is the tale of seven castaways, not unlike Gilligan’s Island if the island had been capable of eating the crew. (I can’t resist. There’s a salty captain, one sexy female, one not-so-sexy female, and a professor. There are, alas, no Howells.)

Alien‘s crewmembers are miners. And the opening of the film shows them reawakening from suspended animation after a long, interstellar mining gig. But wait they’re nowhere near Earth. Why did the ship reawaken them so early, 10 months away from home? Seems that the ship’s guiding force, called “Mother,” has detected a sentient signal of some kind. Is it a distress call? An SOS? No — it’s a warning. But by the time they figure this out, they’ve stumbled onto a nest of alien eggs and foolishly prodded them — warranting the most curious of the bunch, Kane (John Hurt), to get his face adhered to by a tentacled parasite. Some logistical bickering takes place between the Cap’n and First Mate (leading-man-era Tom Skerritt and Sigourney Weaver, respectively) over quarantine regulations, as there seems to be a silly bylaw that prohibits bringing hideous, tentacled parasites onboard a ship even if it’s attached to the face of one of your crew. But this would be a shorter tale if danger were kept at bay, and before long Kane recovers and then joins what is to become one of filmdom’s grossest meals. Terror ensues, and amid battling aliens and their own fears, the crew learns that there is a governmental, bureaucratic menace pervading their predicament. Was this encounter with the alien an accident? Or does the government have some military designs on this ultimate killing machine?

The trick to reviewing the director’s cut of this 1979 sci-fi classic is, I suspect, intimate knowledge of the first version and true insight into the differences in the re-release. Ridley Scott has made it pressingly difficult to accomplish the latter, so subtle and slim are his changes. Very little is added, and most of what is cut (which shortens the proceedings by two minutes) is in the editing — split-seconds at a time. The intended effect is a quickening of the suspense. The result is a sharp mix of cuts and flashes among laborious, patient pans across space, the ship, and the terror-struck faces of the crew. Added: footage of the argument between Ripley (Weaver) and her captain, and Ripley’s horrifying third-act encounter with her missing crewmates, entombed in a bizarre feeding cocoon (which features my favorite recurring monster-film line: the weakly uttered “kill me” that bespeaks the suffering at the hands of some unimaginable, ungodly foe).

Unlike more populist director’s cuts, Alien looks more like itself than, say, the director’s cuts of the Star Wars trilogy (which mixed startling, contrasting 1970s special effects with shiny new ones) or E.T. (with the f/x retooling that Steven Spielberg would have done if he could have). There are times when it would have been beneficial to have tweaked some effects here — particularly an end-of-film ship explosion that looks more like an early-’80s video game and a few moments with the aliens that betray their mechanical workings. But that would be cheating, wouldn’t it? In life, we do not get do-overs and neither should Sir Ridley Scott.

Alien remains as scary today as I imagine it must have been to its 1979 audience. Scott wisely makes his spacecraft and its occupants as recognizable and human as possible, unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey and the original Star Trek TV series, which, for some reason, imagined their characters in stark sterility. The futuristic milieu of Alien seems as inhabitable as an oil tanker or a submarine or a bunker. The horror of the environment is real to its audience. Thus, when the aliens arrive — their H.R. Giger-designed environs and bodies such an alarming mix of biological and mechanical, so ambiguous in their construction — we become afraid. Very afraid.

This resurrected Alien offers nothing new and is probably only a money-making ploy as opposed to anything artistic its producers may have had in mind. But that’s fine, as it isn’t all that often a remastered classic makes its way back into movie theaters or that we get to look back in time and see why someone like Sigourney Weaver became a star. For a Weaver-taught lesson in hardcore action and cinematic machisma, rent the James Cameron sequel, Aliens. Take or leave the ensuing third and fourth in the franchise, but let’s all pay a visit to next year’s curious answer to Freddie vs. Jason, the equally clumsily monikered Alien vs. Predator. I hear it’s about Governor Schwarzenegger’s administrative policies on immigration. Like I said, be very afraid. — Bo List

Hulk is here. After years of rumors, speculation, and expectation,

Hulk has smashed onto the scene. Despite the great potential for true art — prestige

director Ang Lee of Sense and Sensibility,

The Ice Storm, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden

Dragon at the helm, A-list stars like Nick Nolte, Oscar-winning

Jennifer Connelly, Next Big Thing Eric Bana, and a determination to tell the story of the mean, green clobberin’ machine as a thoughtful meditation on the beast

within us all, the inner Hulk that exists in everyone and waits to be unlocked —

Hulk will contend with two main questions answerable only by a team of

top-notch computer animators. Question 1: How do Bana’s pants stay on when he turns into the Hulk? Who cares? The film would be terribly indecent if they burst off

like everything else. (“Are you the Incredible Hulk or are you just happy to see me?”) Question 2: How does he look? A disappointing trailer during the Super

Bowl riled many potential fans, who remarked that he looked fakey. His movements were criticized as awkwardly fast, too much like a cartoon. But the animators

later insisted that what the world saw was by no means a finished product. So, months later, what does Hulk look like? Fakey. Awkwardly fast. A cartoon.

Hulk’s appearance is not the most disappointing aspect of this expensive production. It’s the story and dialogue. With Lee in charge, I had extremely

high hopes that this would be the best superhero film ever, with an Academy Awards Best Picture fantasy — so strong was my feeling that Lee’s artistry could

combine with a fascinating character, released to a war-weary public rife with misplaced rage and cultural impotence. Nah. This is an action movie that just tries

too hard.

Bruce Banner (Bana) is a scientist researching the potential of gamma radiation as a regenerative tool. Distant and restrained, Bruce finds it difficult

to connect emotionally with anyone or anything. Seems that there’s some kind of parental-abandonment issue stemming from early childhood, which he

barely remembers beyond his loving adoptive parents. Betty Ross (Connelly) is his research partner and recent ex. (Their offscreen breakup seems magnificently

easy, and I hope the DVD has that as an added scene so I can take notes on avoiding future messy splits.)

They love each other, but Bruce is just too vacant and distant for her. Seems like she has parent issues of her own, including a domineering father

(Sam Elliott), an aloof Army general whose interest in his daughter’s life is more governmental than fatherly. Enter Talbot (Josh Lucas) — head of a diabolical

military research company — whose attraction to Betty is both seedily physical and opportunist: He wants her and Bruce’s research for his own project: developing

self-repairing soldiers who can fight forever. A race of supermen, if you will.

Well, accidents tend to happen when scientific integrity and egomaniacal diabolism mix in the same laboratory. A blown circuit in Bruce’s gamma

radiator causes an accident that floods his compartment with radiation. But instead of dying horribly, he feels somehow better — regenerated even. That is, until

he gets angry. You know the rest: He gets big, green, strong. He smashes things. The Army goes after him. There’s a showdown or two. The usual.

The look of the beast is irrelevant. Once Hulk appears, the film loses interest in Eric Bana and his interesting performance, and it all becomes about

the Big Green Guy. He looks fine 25 percent of the time and usually only when he is still or quiet. But when he’s running or jumping (I think physics

professors would explain the impossibilities better than I) or fighting, he tends to look well, impossible in a way that makes us forget that ultimately this is a story

about a man and what’s inside him. To Lee’s credit, there is much beauty in this film. There are gorgeous desert shots and visual collages of natural and

unnatural elements: nuclear explosions, tree moss, frogs, machinery. But Lee loses track of the hero — Banner — and gets lost in the effect: Hulk. The real story is going

on inside the scientist, and the script sets up for a big emotional breakthrough by establishing Bruce as distant and repressed. But when he finally gets his

catharsis in the film’s climactic confrontation with his father, the camera pans away, seemingly

uninterested in the feelings behind Hulk and more interested in getting

the show on the road. Bana’s good performance is lost on Lee’s impatience and special effects.

As action films go, this isn’t bad. But ultimately, the efforts to treat the subject matter with sincerity and style give way to the need to blow things up —

a theme that the film both emulates and criticizes. Too bad. There seemed to be a message in there somewhere.

The other movie that opened this past weekend is

From Justin to Kelly, which, unlike

Hulk, is not an attempt at a thoughtful meditation on anything.

I had hoped, from the pop-culture juggernaut that is

American Idol, that there might be some slick production values or snazzy music or cute cameos or something

worthy of remark that would make seeing the film worthy of the time and money expended beyond my secret crush on one of its stars. Not so, not so. This movie is crap

from start to finish.

From Justin to Kelly amuses, though. Bad but never boring, it’s poop that doesn’t stink.

Meet Kelly — cute prude from Texas whose girlfriends convince her to join them for Spring Break in Miami Beach. Meet Justin: member of the

Pennsylvania Posse — a group of three losers who have some kind of party business that pays for their school. They’re at the beach to create theme parties à la

margarita nights and whipped-cream bikini contests. Kelly and Justin meet casually in the movie’s first musical number — did I forget to mention that this is a

musical? well, it is — and somehow make a life-changing connection while dancing near each other, a connection invisible to me through the end of the movie.

Regardless, they spend the rest of the film navigating a series of misunderstandings generated by Kelly’s jealous friend Alexa — a prissy, hickish bitch who wants

our palm-tree-haired Justin all to herself. This is the plot, peppered with singing and dancing when the proceedings grow otherwise tiresome.

There are subplots: Posse party-maestro Brandon keeps having parties that break beach law, and a sexy lady cop keeps giving him tickets. Posse nerd

has been chatting online with a sexy Internet nerdette, and they keep missing each other in their attempts to meet face to face. Kelly’s friend Kaya has fallen for

a sexy, older (skirted) waiter named Carlos, who shows her the dark underbelly of Miami: salsa dancing. These subplots weave in and out of the basic story,

which would have Justin and Kelly having a nice, innocent summer fling if it weren’t for the machinations of that Alexa.

Justin and Kelly are played craftlessly by well, Justin and Kelly — Guarini and Clarkson, respectively. Neither has any film experience, and it

shows. Guarini does a good deal better, and if I were to place money on it, I would say that he’s the one who may have a film career ahead of him. He’s no Olivier,

but he’s charming and sincere and funny.

Kelly? Well, she’s no Britney Spears. Her emotional range is from A to A and a half, with occasional bursts of fun delivered in an otherwise

joyless monotone. The rest of the cast is peopled with absolute unknowns, which is fine, because they are all likable enough and good singers as well as pleasant

enough actors.

From Justin to Kelly is a kind of

Beach Blanket Bingo for the 21st century, and the innocence of that era translates remarkably well to our not-so-innocent

now. The movie’s just dumb enough that you don’t notice the lack of any curse words at all (except a couple of amusing “hell”s), no sex (only one real kiss that I noticed),

and no violence any greater than a malicious whipped-cream attack. Quite a feat. The script is otherwise a drag, without interesting characters or real conflict. Although

that damn Alexa sure does steam my clams. She’s played by Mississippi girl Katherine Bailess in her film debut, and she’s actually pretty good in a part that demands

more of her emotionally (envy, lust, some other deadly sins, and finally redemption) than the callow protagonists.

The songs are pretty low-rent, with one or two qualifying as something that might make a Top 40 easy-listening radio playlist. The choreography

swings mercilessly from dazzling to flaccid in the blink of an eye, and I guess that’s impressive — that there seems to be nobody paying attention to how this film looks.

Miami is somehow rendered as colorless and deglamorized. Some dance numbers could fit nicely into a Broadway musical, while others are sloppy and casual — as

synchronized as MTV Spring Break footage of people just bopping to music.

Most disappointing is how little chemistry there is between our two stars. There’s only one moment, and it’s early on, where there might be

genuine attraction, and it’s the movie’s best exchange: Justin, escaping hordes of screaming girls, ducks into a ladies’ restroom. Kelly happens to be inside and points to

a small window as an escape route. Justin: “Girl, my hair won’t even fit through there.” Kelly, suggestively: “I’m from Texas. I’ve seen bigger.” Brava!

If I were permitted a mere six words to sum up my thoughts on Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, I would raise a glass of very expensive champagne and toast, “At last! There’s truth in advertising.” I would mean this on several levels: title (the film is dumb, and dumberer, as it were, than the first), advertising slogan (“Before the first movie, there was high school. They missed the bus”), the other ad slogan (“The sequel the original stars were too smart to make”), etc. And yet, I still lamented when I exited the theater, “Well, that’s 90 minutes and $5 I will never see again,” and I thought about all the things I could have done with my time, like reading James Joyce’s Ulysses or watching The Seventh Seal or something that would make me smart or smarterer. Once again, I am my own victim.

The plot is razor-thin and dull as a board. Harry (Derek Richardson) and Lloyd (Eric Christian Olsen), the “beloved” characters from the original 1994 film Dumb and Dumber, meet. And, boy, are they special. In fact, so special are they that they get to ride on their own school bus you know, that short one that only the special kids ride. The corrupt, cartoonish Principal Collins (Eugene Levy) has been bilking the state of education money for years and finally has devised a plot to scam $100,000 by creating a phony Special Needs class. He assigns the lunch lady (Cheri Oteri), with whom he is having a clandestine affair, to teach the new class. Harry and Lloyd are, of course, prime Special Needs material, and they are in turn charged with recruiting other students to fill up the class in order to warrant the $100,000. What ensues is a mindless series of scenes showing our dumb friends in action, loosely related to a subplot involving a young reporter for the high school newspaper, Jessica (Rachel Nichols). She knows something is afoot and is out to get the scoop of the year. Meanwhile, both Harry and Lloyd mistake her journalistic interest in them for romantic advances. Will they jeopardize their friendship for her affections? Yes.

Harry and Lloyd’s selection of fellow Special Needers may be the cleverest move in the whole film. And what they come back with are an injured skateboarder, an Asian exchange student, a punk, a concussed football player, and the school mascot, whom they mistake for a half-man/half-horse when he takes his horse head off. Harry and Lloyd’s classmates aren’t retarded they’re just slackers, avoiding real homework. This is a rather artful dodge, if I do say so, acquitting the filmmakers from actually portraying mentally challenged persons in a film whose protagonists are supposed to be the “special”-est around. That is one level of offensiveness this film manages to avoid.

But back to business: This is one dumb movie. And yet there’s nobody to blame but the writer Robert Brenner in his screenwriting debut and director Troy Miller, making his directing debut. Neither one seems to know how to structure a story or tell it stylishly. Just as the plot gets going, there are seemingly endless excuses for our heroes to resort to some distracting “dumberer” business like getting brain-freezes on slushies or making time for hot dogs while in pursuit of the “kidnapped” Jessica.

There’s a lot of wasted potential here. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were originally associated with playing these characters, and I wish they had. This would have been a worthier comic enterprise coming from those two maestros of tackiness and disgust.

This is not to devalue the efforts of the leads, though. Olsen does a truly uncanny impersonation of Jim Carrey all manic tics and twitches. And Richardson manages to suggest a young Jeff Daniels while contributing a doofy sweetness all his own the only thing in Dumberer worthy of a better film. And nobody needs to put a funny outfit on Levy. He’s funny enough as is and, given good material, is a superior comedian. Sadly, this is even worse than Bringing Down the House (gasp!), and Levy isn’t one to transcend.

As sequels go, this one is kind of like Problem Child 3, which didn’t even have John Ritter. Without the choice zaniness of Daniels and Carrey, there’s just no reason to waste the cash or time on a movie that should have been sent straight to video. n

Mississippi Movies

As the official arts agency for the city of Oxford and Lafayette County, Mississippi, the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council’s mission is “to access, celebrate, and promote the arts with all citizens.” This year marks the council’s sixth year sponsoring the Youth Music Theater Workshop and the creation of an arts-intensive Boys and Girls Club. Now comes the first Oxford Film Festival, June 19th-22nd.

According to Elaine Abadie, executive director of the YAC, “[The festival] started very simply and just got bigger and bigger.” The Oxford Film Festival was the combined brainchild of Ron Shapiro, a well-noted local “guru of film,” and Robert Freeland, owner of the Hoka Cafe and As Seen on TV, Oxford’s only independent video store. Both men just “wanted to show more movies” in Oxford and, through these movies, help to further expand viewpoints. Three years ago, there was no place nearby where independent or foreign films were shown. “To see independent films, you had to go to Memphis,” says Abadie.

To change that fact, 40 film enthusiasts and filmmakers of the YAC set into motion events that would highlight the achievements of Mississippians in the film industry. The responses to the nascent festival were a rousing success. “We received over 200 entries for our film festival,” Abadie says. “Only 50 were accepted, plus the 10 films we plan to showcase.”

The council’s efforts led to the creation of the Powerhouse Community Arts and Cultural Center, a facility that will house a 160-seat theater, exhibit space, studio space, classrooms, and the YAC office. The Powerhouse will replace the City of Oxford Community Arts Center and will be completed around August 2003. Because the facility will not be ready in time for the film festival, movies will be screened at the Gertrude C. Ford Center for Community Arts on the University of Mississippi campus.

The festival itself includes appearances by Mississippi-born screenwriters David Hayter, who wrote the screenplays for X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and The Hulk; Anne Rapp, screenwriter for Cookie’s Fortune and Dr. T and the Women; and David Sheffield, who wrote Coming to America, The Nutty Professor, and the upcoming remake of 1974’s Uptown Saturday Night. The festival will feature 60 independent films from Europe, South Asia, and Canada and an assortment of filmmaking panels, including ones for documentaries and experimental film. Among the films are the award-winning documentary Genghis Blues by Roko and Adrian Belic and Charles Burnett’s critically acclaimed The Blues and The Annihilation of Fish. Kids’ films and an animation workshop as well as a variety of thought-provoking “kid-friendly” (and kid-made) short films will provide different levels of entertainment for the whole family.

Tickets are $10 each day or $25 for the three-day event. For more information, check out the YAC Web site, OxfordArts.com. Janitha Robinson

What is this?” I snarled when I first saw the trailer for Disney’s Finding Nemo. It was at a Treasure Planet preview, and somehow the sound had been knocked out to a strange muffle. That, combined with the hazy/misty-looking visuals convinced me that this seemingly unintelligible film had been developed for the prenatal. Yes, Disney — a mega-corp that gets accused by right- and left-wingers alike of trying to rule the world — was conquering the last unspoiled demographic: the unborn. Silly me, the sound was just messed up — as the Treasure Planet viewing would reveal. But even given the sound-handicap, this didn’t seem like a movie that would do well, what with tame, G-rated humor and a teaser that didn’t reveal enough of the film’s gorgeous visuals. And since my predictions are almost always incorrect (anybody read my Oscar picks article?), I was wrong about Finding Nemo too. It’s delightful.

Albert Brooks voices Marlin, an orange clownfish who, in the film’s opening scene, is warming up a new home (a stylish anemone) with his lovely wife, Coral (Elizabeth Perkins), and 400 unhatched offspring. Half are to be named “Marlin Jr.,” the other half “Coral Jr.,” if you ask the unimaginative Marlin. Coral wants to name at least one of them “Nemo.” Then tragedy strikes. A shark attacks their new community, and Marlin is knocked out in the fray. When he awakens, Coral and 399 eggs are gone. Marlin finds one left and calls him “Nemo” as tribute to his wife and promises to never let harm come to him when he’s born.

Later, Nemo is ready for school, and the overprotective Marlin just can’t let go of his only son. Also, Nemo seems to be born with an abnormally small right fin. They make the most of it, but it causes Marlin extra concern. So concerned is he that Marlin follows Nemo to school on his first day and tries to drag Nemo home when he strays from the class toward the open sea. Nemo is embarrassed and, to prove that he isn’t weak and helpless, swims out to touch a nearby expedition boat. Nemo is caught, and the ‘fraidy cat Marlin vows to stop at nothing to find him.

Fortunately, Nemo has been caught for exhibition and is delivered to a dentist’s aquarium in nearby Sydney, Australia. This dentist, like mine, has a problem with pelicans flying in the office window and talking to the fish, so Nemo is not without friends in his new home. They include a blowfish, starfish, shrimp, and a conspiratorial angelfish (Willem Dafoe), who all try and help Nemo get back to his dad. Marlin, meanwhile, meets a forgetful blue tang (Ellen DeGeneres) who, despite her short-term memory loss, pushes Marlin ahead with her fearlessness and blissful ignorance. Dangers ahead: jellyfish, seagulls (with the hilariously limited vocabulary of the singular, greedy mantra: “mine!”), the dentist’s screeching niece, and three ambiguous Aussie sharks (each more realistic than, say, those found in Jaws 3).

This is really a great movie for parents and their children to enjoy almost equally. A woman in the otherwise unrowdy audience could be heard in the film’s last act to shout, “Swim for it, Marlin!” (she had no kids with her).

Brooks is great here, and since we can’t see his sour face, it is easier to enjoy just his neuroses — his emotions are much more palatable telegraphed by the cute clownfish than his own dour mug. DeGeneres is a breezy riot as the chipper Dory, grinning like an idiot most of the way through but delivering a truly heart-wrenching speech toward the end about love and friendship that transcends kiddie-movie anime and shines as art. The rest of the A-list cast is, um, A-list.

And there’s a fantastic message. For parents, it’s a parable about knowing when to let your child do their own thing, when to trust them and when it is time to let them make their own decisions. For children, it’s about when to trust your parents; that independence is good but wisdom is better, and usually Mom and Dad do know what’s best. This “moral” is elegantly slipped into a rousing adventure without seeming preachy or overbearing. Also, there’s the subplot about Nemo’s abnormal fin. When was the last time a cartoon movie dealt sensitively and seriously with a child’s handicap?

I’m one of those people who is perfectly content to let Disney rule the world. They make (usually) great movies, make kids happy, envision the world to be a better place, and provide healthy stock portfolios to the grownups smart enough to have invested in them before, say, The Little Mermaid.

Mr. Eisner? I’m here for duty, sir. Just tell me what to do.

The Italian Job starts out great. Picture it: beautiful Venice. Gondolas, canals, architecture! There’s a plot, and Mark Wahlberg is behind it. There’s gold in them thar palazzi, and our anti-heroes are going to get it. Fortunately, there’s a crack team backing up Mr. Wahlberg: a computer expert (Seth Green), an explosives guy (Mos Def), an inside man (Edward Norton), a getaway driver (Jason Statham), and a veteran safe-cracker pulling off One Last Heist (this is the kind of role that Clint Eastwood is defining — as a lead — in his twilight years but is handled here by Donald Sutherland in a supporting role). The target? Thirty-five million dollars in beautiful gold bricks, locked in a safe on the third story of a lush, Venetian home. Do they sneak in and crack the safe? No — bring the safe to them. These guys are the best. But there’s a hitch: Norton’s in this for himself.

After the getaway (dizzyingly played out in speedboats on the canals, to the chagrin of floating tourists and vendors), they all meet in the nearby snowy mountains, decide what they will each do with their share, and toast their newfound wealth. John Bridger (Sutherland) has regrets, and he’d like to spend more time with his daughter Stella. He’s been in jail for half of her life, and it’s time to make it up to her. Lyle (Green) wants a stereo so loud it will blow the clothes off a girl. Left Ear (Mos Def, and so named “Left Ear” from a childhood toilet explosion that left him half-deaf) wants a house in Spain and a room for his shoes. Handsome Rob (Statham and, yes, handsome) wants a cool car. Charlie Croker (Wahlberg) is advised by fatherly mentor Sutherland to settle down. Paraphrase: “There are two kinds of thieves. One that steals to enrich their life, one that steals to define it. Don’t be the latter. Find a nice woman you want to spend the rest of your life with and never let go.” Steve (Norton) is the latter kind and defines his thievery by cheating out his friends, gunning down Bridger before the rest can escape, plunging their van into icy water, believed dead by Steve.

One year later: Stella (Charlize Theron) is a top-knotch safe technician — she cracks them to test them. Charlie shows up with an offer she can’t refuse: They know where Steve is now, and they know how to get the gold back. What they don’t have is the Bridger who can crack Steve’s safe. Will she help them? This time it’s personal.

After Ocean’s Eleven, which I moaned about while reviewing this year’s comparably tepid Confidence, it’s hard to get involved in a heist movie without a certain amount of charisma from the leads. It’s just hard to emotionally buy into Marky Mark and his Funky Bunch of thieves, either for fun or for drama. There’s a score to settle: the murder of Stella’s father and Charlie’s mentor, but neither Wahlberg nor Theron is given any real dramatic meat to chew on, and nobody in this cast besides Sutherland has the gravitas or the charm for us to want them to succeed at, essentially, ruining someone else’s life by taking their fortune. (I’m talking the initial heist here, not the revenge-plunder of Steve.) And, sadly, Sutherland is dead after the first few scenes anyway, leaving precious little screen presence to hold onto. Wahlberg does his furrowed-eyebrow Planet of the Apes kind of hollow leading-man acting here, and Theron looks good, but there is just no chemistry between them. (There’s supposed to be.)

Norton gets to stretch his wings a bit here by playing a first-class A-hole, but the writing makes him seem almost cartoonishly boorish. There is, however, a tasty scene between him and Theron when she dresses up like a cable repair-person to check out his security system. (Steve never met the daughter is why this can happen.) This plays out like the start of several porno movies I’ve read about that feature the greasy lout at home waiting impatiently for the sexy repair lady to show up. This is not lost on Norton’s Steve who tries to get his porno groove on. Theron in cable repair? Only in the movies.

What follows is a series of chases and second-guessing, all sadly revealed in the commercials for the movie. So, enjoy the scenery (Venice, that is; little is made of the lush possibilities once the proceedings move to L.A. and, supposedly, the biggest traffic jam in history) and the fast cars (all played by Mini Coopers!), because there just aren’t any surprises in this Italian Job. n

It’s the ’60s. The early, innocent Kennedy ’60s. No hippies yet, no Vietnam. Well, of course, there was Vietnam; it just didn’t register on the American consciousness yet. Modern color has taken some interesting turns: pinks, aquas, teals abound. Women still wear hats — big hats, crazy hats. America is still run exclusively by stuffy, old white men, and sexism is the code of conduct in the workplace. Good times.

RenÇe Zellweger is Barbara Novak — small-town Maine girl who has formulated a chocolate-based three-step system of independence for the modern female and called it “Down with Love.” By step three, the self-made girl has penetrated the workplace, started a career, and has all the sex she wants without risking falling in love in the process. Simple. If it were 2003, Novak and her pink hardback book would be on Oprah getting told “You go, girl!” until the obvious emotional and biological ramifications of such a philosophy came to pass. As it is not yet the Johnson administration, Novak’s ideas are slow to catch on with the stuffed shirts of her publishing house but quick to catch fire among contemporary women. It’s not long before Novak is a household name and women everywhere are saying “Down with Love!”

Enter Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor), a playboy journalist who specializes in exposÇs and makes the mistake of standing up interviews with Barbara in favor of a series of trysts with a gaggle of flight attendants (separately, not en masse). So incensed is Novak with Block’s playboyishness that she humiliates him on TV by naming him as one of “those” men who “change women as often as they change shirts.” The result: No woman wants to be with Catcher, since Catcher is a player, and no man wants Barbara because she has liberated women. Catcher devises a plan: He will disguise himself as a chaste Southern gentleman, make Barbara fall in love with him, and then expose her for committing her own worst sin: love. All the while, Block’s publisher/best friend Peter McMannus (David Hyde Pierce) is trying desperately to woo Barbara’s editor/best friend Vicki (Sarah Paulson) in a role-reversal of their own — McMannus wants marriage, Vicki wants sex, as any upright “Down with Love Girl” would.

I hope that the Flyer readership is familiar with last year’s stylistic masterpiece, Far from Heaven. That film, a meticulous homage to films of the 1950s (particularly those of melodrama auteur Douglas Sirk), reproduced color palettes, camera angles, music, and a style of acting thought long extinct in order to get to greater truths underneath the artifice. This is the funny version of that same notion, getting to greater laughs by looking through the lens of a defunct point of view — the bouncy, cocktail-y preamble to the sexual revolution that was the early 1960s. Helen Reddy wouldn’t sing “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” for a few more years, but the seeds were planted and sprouting by the end of Kennedy’s presidency.

But forget about politics and sociology when trying to enjoy this film, which is as light and colorful as cotton candy. Which is to say, sugary and weightless but fanciful. Down with Love is a confection — sweet junk food for the mind and heart. Like the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies that inspired it, Down with Love pokes only the gentlest fun at its source materials — the end to the crassly sexist 1950s archetype of the working father and the housewife mother, for one — and sticks to the basics of a good time: mistaken identities, good-hearted deception, and, underneath them all, love.

McGregor and Zellweger both are excellent in the Hudson/Day roles, providing just the right mix of sexy and silly. Both actors are particularly adept at filling roles that require a strong suspension of disbelief from the audience (McGregor in Eye of the Beholder, Moulin Rouge; Zellweger in Nurse Betty, Chicago), and so it is very easy for us to believe what they portray: innocent sex kittens romping about in the ’60s. When the movie gets a bit more serious toward the end, it is a little hard to buy into the script, which has them falling into real love — not just lust — but this is no fault of the actors, who smile and moon like two teenagers. They are beautiful together, and those fans of their previous, respective musical endeavors will be delighted to know that they sing in this one too. Frasier‘s David Hyde Pierce shines as the would-be-gay publisher pal, playing the role that Tony Randall would have had opposite Hudson and Day — and Randall himself appears as a chairman of the board. He has my favorite line: “That pink book is ruining my life!”

Leave the tissues at home, but bring a date — and chocolate. — Bo List

Are you there, God? It’s me, Bo. A few questions, God. Number one: Why, oh, why did I get that $30 parking ticket in Chicago last week? I was only a few minutes late back to the meter. And, Lord? Dear Lord — why have I gained back those 10 pounds I so proudly lost over last semester? I haven’t been eating that poorly and getting that little exercise lately, have I? And why, Lord, am I romantically unsuccessful? Is it because I actively seek out the depraved, unattainable, or otherwise troublesome? And, God, why am I so po’? Is it because I have chosen a career in the arts and, additionally, cannot manage my money well? Dear God, it’s just not fair!

The above is an actual transcript of my nightly prayers. In fact, with the topical exception of the parking ticket, it is repeated night after night, since I always lose and then gain 10 pounds, go on crazy dates (no offense to the notable exceptions in my readership), and waste my money on baubles and fast food (see: weight gain). God’s nightly answer? “Free Will, my son. Free Will.” My favorite smug response to a complaining friend: “Free Will would have you do something about that.” Free Will is a co-star, so to speak, of Bruce Almighty, and the basis of its thin, amusing theology.

Jim Carrey is Bruce Nolan, colorful TV news reporter for a station in Buffalo. He has ambitions of becoming anchor but is relegated to the world of fanciful puff pieces, like Buffalo’s biggest cookie or the anniversary of Niagara Falls’ “Maiden of the Mist” tour boat. Bruce wants to be covering the big news, and a retiring station mainstay means that a job will be open soon. But Bruce loses it to a snide competitor (and better anchor, by the way) on a very bad day, and even though he generally has things pretty good (Jennifer Aniston is his girlfriend, y’all), Free Will makes him screw it all up by going nuts and calling his colleagues at the station a name that begins with “F” and ends with “ers” during his live broadcast from the Falls. D’oh!

Bruce has a bone to pick with God (Morgan Freeman), and at the end of this bad day, after wrecking his car, he yells at the sky, finally giving Him a piece of his mind. What does God do? He pages Bruce. Yep — on a pager and summons him down to a strange office building where he offers Bruce a job: God. Yep, Bruce thinks he can do it better? Fine. God’s taking a vacation.

Bruce begins his reign as the Almighty a little shakily, freaked out at a nearby diner. Conveniently ordering tomato soup, Bruce summons the verve and omnipotence to part it, Red Sea-style. After this singular sign of godliness, Bruce is ready for the world, doing what every red-blooded American boy would probably do first with His abilities: lifting women’s skirts and landing a hot car. Trouble is, Bruce is so self-centered about what he wants in his own life that he neglects his responsibilities as Lord. Example: He pulls the moon closer to make a sexy evening more romantic, never mind the floods he causes in Japan as a result. And he becomes so obsessed with getting that piddling anchor job that he forgets how to be a good boyfriend, ultimately losing his loving girlfriend amid his ambition and Godly distractions. Can he make her keep loving him? There’s only one thing Bruce can’t do: change Free Will.

Bruce Almighty is a very pleasant return to form for Jim Carrey, after a less-than-dynamic stab at being a dramatic leading man. (Save your sympathy, Free Will had him intentionally star in The Majestic.) This movie is very much in the vein of Liar Liar, wherein mild supernatural elements change the life of a shallow, rubber-faced lout and make him a better man. As always, Carrey overdoes to the point of annoyance. Bruce is already weird and hyper before anything strange happens to him at the start of the film. He would do well to practice for later dramatic attempts by playing real humans in his comedies.

Bruce Almighty, though, does take a dramatic turn at the two-thirds point and could have veered toward maudlin excess, except for some actual real acting by Carrey and Freeman done very simply in a short scene where they just talk to each other. This is refreshing after an hour and a half of Carrey’s histrionics and biblical hooliganism. Freeman, always a class act, makes a great God — and I hope that the real God is as understanding, patient, and forgiving of my misuse of Free Will as Freeman.

Amen. — BL