Category: Film Features

Swank, this summer, just got a little swanker with the release of the Brit
ganglander Sexy Beast. Schizophrenically set in the gloomy streets of
London and a posh hillside villa on the sun-soaked coast of Spain, this debut
from Jonathan Glazer is a devilishly naughty ride into the shady other-lives
of a couple of ex-cons who get involved in a one-more-for-old-time’s-sake sure
thing.

The slightly pudgy, sharply dressing, and eminently lovable Gal Dove (Ray
Winstone) is living the life of Riley with his former porn-star wife Deedee
(Amanda Redman) on a Spanish coast magnificently captured by cinematographer
Ian Bird. In luxury’s lap, they and their friends (and eternal guests) Aitch
and Jackie fashion quite a hot and steamy poolside foursome. Their collective
dreamlives among desert lounge-rat exotica include martinis endlessly
trickling, the sun beating them into submissive bliss, and a requisite
fetching, native pool boy, as they gleefully achieve the purest form of
hedonism that exists: escaping the sordid past. Theirs is a Shangri-la with
fresh paella.

When the phone rings with Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) on the other end, paradise
is abruptly lost. The mood is further soured when ‘Malky’ Logan shows up
uninvited with an offer Gal can’t refuse which involves an impregnable bank
and a trip back to the dismal toilet of England. All bloody hell breaks loose
when Logan will not accept no for an answer from his former partner and wildly
vents his fury on anyone within striking range of his tweaked, on the verge of
boiling-over aura.

As a foul-mouthed, terribly dressed, tattoo-sporting, mean-looking, cockney-
accented, kick-ass Ghandi, Kingsley becomes the film. Like his maniacally
focused eyes, his characterization of one obsessed with the nihilism of
obsession is enthralling and creepy and will make you sink into your seat. The
film’s focus on his portrayal of a driven psychopath tiptoeing the borderline
is the beast that overpowers a see-through plot that, in light of the actor s
performance, wanes incidental. The darkness that Kingsley unleashes overpowers
all else.

The heist of a bank in Londontown, planned during a slow point of an orgy, is
what the team of pros rounded up by Logan have set their sights on.
Considering its proximity to a Turkish bath and the general improbability of
the logistics, the robbery is nevertheless filmed so imaginatively that we are
mesmerized and immersed in the scene of the crime. Known for his U.K. Guinness
commercials and videos for Radiohead and Jamiroquai, Glazer unites a gangster
tale, a love story, and a psychological Jekyll and Hyde portrait in a visual
style heavily indebted to the glitz of those fast-paced genres. Peppered with
vignettes that include slow-motion unreality colored in Dali light and
inhabited at times by a furry, disgusting creature that we never quite get to
see close-up, the story is threaded together with scenes of unadulterated
strangeness. These moments seem inspired by the desolate locale, or perhaps
they re mini-tributes to the surreal filmmaker Luis Bu§uel.

More such reveries of the fantastic could have helped the flow of a dreamily
buoyant story that opens with a silly and shocking Python-esque thrill, to say
no more. Energized by a soundtrack that ranges from pulse-pounding techno, to
the trip-hoppy Unkle and South, to the lounge sounds of Dean Martin and Latin
flavorings of Roque Ba§os, the soundtrack pumps the visuals along. Sexy
Beast sounds really good. It looks really good. It feels really good. And
if it s so, so good, then it should be bad.

But it isn t. The pace slows but never lets up entirely. This is largely due
to the lesser of two evils, Mr. Black Magic, Teddy Bass, the big boss icily
played by Ian McShane. He is as striking and collected as any recent
incarnation of Beelzebub. His presence escorts Gal through the final circles
of a personal hell. The anti-climactic resolution to their conflict is edgy
and keeps us hanging. What s spookiest and keeps Gal sleeping with one eye
open is the terror of what might happen: the ghost in the plot. Always, there
s the ghoulie waiting to reappear.

For its speedy 88-minute duration, the film is chaos controlled and unleashed
in a nouveau-noir style: light on the distractions and heavy on action and eye
candy. What makes it swing, as in any crime worth committing, is its many
unpredictable turns due to inevitable eff-ups. Overlooking the
superficialities of details, details, details, this beast of a movie owes a
little to the Coen Brothers Blood Simple and to Tarantino in its visual
nightmare a hairbreadth away from screaming reality. It really has, as
reported by Sundance News, the coolest ending of the year. This film is
definitely a weird immorality tale that s as sexy as the beast himself. Run to
see it and worship at the evil Kingsley s altar!

If happiness is a warm puppy, then the film Cats & Dogs is downright ecstatic. It s clearly made by dog people, though with a keen appreciation for the feline attitude.

The film, which uses real dogs and cats (in addition to puppets and computer animation and surely a whole lot of patience), is a real kid-pleaser. Dogs soar through the air and cats drive cars. And since animals can t really complain, the filmmakers take advantage of strict stereotypes. Dogs are loyal, whereas cats have their own agenda. That agenda, as set forth in this film, is to control the world. Long ago, cats ruled over humans. That reign was destroyed by those humans dogs, who chased the cats away. Some thousands of years later, it s payback time. At the fore is Mr. Tinkles (voiced by Sean Hayes), a fluffy white cat with a pink, heart-shaped nose and a nasty disposition aggravated by a caretaker who thrills at dressing him in bonnets and bows.

Enter Lou (Tobey Maguire), a beagle puppy with a yen for adventure and the good luck to be adopted by Mrs. Brody (Elizabeth Perkins). Mrs. Brody s husband, Professor Brody (Jeff Goldblum), is busily perfecting a cure for people allergic to dogs, clearing the way for anyone who wants to pick up a pooch without fear of runny noses and puffy eyes. Great news for dogs, though the Brodys son Scott (Alexander Pollock) couldn t care less about Lou and just wishes his father would spend more time with him.

If you re getting the feeling that there s a lesson to be learned here, you d be right. But first, Mr. Tinkles must stop Professor Brody from completing his formula, and the dogs must stop Mr. Tinkles from stopping Professor Brody. And while the dogs get the morals, the cats are the true stars of the show. Ninja cats approach the Brody home and parachute in for attack; a Russian cat spits up an arsenal of hairballs; and Mr. Tinkles gets all the best lines ( Be still, so I can crush you ). Comparatively, the dogs are rather dull: Butch (Alec Baldwin), a canine operative and bitter ex-pet, and Sam (Michael Clarke Duncan), a sheepdog who can t see because of the hair in his eyes. Yawn, stretch.

If it were possible for a movie-savvy viewer to take in a screening of A.I. — the long-awaited sci-fi film developed by Stanley Kubrick then turned over to Steven Spielberg prior to Kubrick?s death — with no knowledge of the film?s lineage, that viewer would likely still discern the touch of both of those very different directors.

The bizarre notion of Spielberg helming a Kubrick project certainly promises a clash of styles, but I never expected that clash to be so naked on the screen. However, the wildly disparate sensibilities of these two cinematic autocrats do indeed meet — clashing, oscillating, merging, and disconnecting — in this odd, affecting, sometimes thrilling, sometimes puzzling sci-fi epic.

The film, written and directed by Spielberg (his first screenplay since Close Encounters of the Third Kind) using a story and visual style honed, with typical obsessiveness, by Kubrick, somehow conveys both Spielberg?s childlike wonder and gee-whiz futurism and Kubrick?s detached formalism and intellectual rigor, Spielberg?s all-American need for warmth and reassurance and a wellspring of darkness and sadness that just as clearly comes from Kubrick. The rub is that at some junctures these conflicting tones seem to be working together, intentionally, while at other moments the film feels fractured, as if the two directors are struggling over ownership. And it?s hard to decide what?s more intriguing or moving — the harmony or the discord.

A.I. is set in an unspecified future when greenhouse gases have melted the polar ice caps and some cities have been submerged. In this world, continued prosperity has been assured through rationing of children, and technology has allowed the creation of remarkably lifelike androids, ?mechas? to the human ?orgas,? that can perform human tasks. At Cybertronics, one android manufacturer, a professor (William Hurt) seeks to take this technology one step further by creating androids with the capacity for love, love being the key to developing human subconsciousness.

The company develops a child android that can be programmed (and never deprogrammed) to love its adoptive parents, prompting one Cybertronics designer to ask, ?If a mecha can love a person, what responsibility does that person have to love in return??

Cybertronics creates a prototype of the child mecha, David, played to perfection by Haley Joel Osment — brilliant in one of the finest recent Hollywood films, The Sixth Sense, and the object of manipulation in one of the worst, Pay It Forward. David is given to a company employee (Sam Robards) whose wife, Monica (Frances O?Connor), is distraught over the fate of their real son, Martin, who has been the victim of some unspecified accident or ailment and lies dormant in a coma or some sort of cryogenic preservation.

A.I. divides neatly into three acts, and the first follows the domestic integration of David into the family?s world. Monica is at first wary of David, and the early home scenes are suffused with horror movie creepiness, but she soon opens her heart to him, deciding to activate his ?emotional circuitry? so that he gives her the unconditional love of child for parent.

This section of the film concerns a nuclear family milieu more akin to Spielberg, but the design — cool and modern — is as deliberate and controlled as the direction. Spielberg could almost be channeling Kubrick during this first act.

The story is complicated by the healing of Martin, who treats David like a toy, explaining to him, ?I?m real. You?re not.? Spielberg deftly handles the relationship between the two ?boys,? giving their interaction a realism that Kubrick may not have managed. And there is humor and pathos in David?s attempts to ape human needs and rituals that he is not wired to perform — eating, sleeping.

The second act of the film — and I won?t reveal how this transition occurs — is pure Spielbergian wonder, a journey that is part Pinocchio, part Blade Runner, and part The Wizard of Oz that finds David on the road to ?Rouge City? to visit the omniscient ?Dr. Know.? Accompanying David are a robotic teddy bear and Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a ?lover-model? android who has sort of the look and manner of the Tin Man. This section is full of fascinating futuristic set pieces and has less emotional strain or scientific speculation than the preceding and following sections. There is an unforgettable visit to an android junkyard, where vagrant mechas search for usable parts while humans hunt them down for destruction in a horrific ?Flesh Fair.? As David searches for the ?blue fairy? (from Pinocchio, which Monica had read to him and Martin) that he thinks can make him into a ?real? boy, the trio journey to an underwater Manhattan — ?the submerged city at the end of the world.? The blue fairy is a metaphor here — the will to believe in such things described within the film as both the great human flaw (Kubrick?s analysis?) and the great human gift (Spielberg?s?).

The film?s final section, set far in the future, merges the two auteurs? sensibilities and styles into something rather original, with echoes of Kubrick?s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Spielberg?s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There is much more ambiguity in the film?s finale than is typical of a Spielberg film. The audience is torn both by how it should react to David?s single-minded devotion to mommy and how to choose between the responsibility to think and the impulse to feel. It?s difficult to determine just how in control Spielberg is of the film?s clashing tones at this point. Is this a brave juxtaposition of opposed readings or is the war of competing discourses beyond even Spielberg?s grasp at this point?

Despite or perhaps because of A.I.?s unsure tone, it is the most compelling work Hollywood is likely to offer up this summer — a ?blockbuster? far removed from the equally inept garishness of Pearl Harbor and Moulin Rouge or the bewilderingly adored surface cleverness of Shrek. What happens when Eyes Wide Shut meets E.T.? What does the audience do? And who is the audience?

The Golden Bowl, starring Uma Thurman, is the perfect antidote to the summer blockbuster. Outbursts are kept to a minimum and most of the acting is done from the neck up.

There?s something to be said for escaping the effects, the noise, the color blast of Pearl Harbor and Moulin Rouge. Merchant-Ivory?s latest period piece, The Golden Bowl, is so polite.

The film, based on the Henry James novel, is all about manners. Outbursts are kept to a minimum, whereas the metaphors flow; most of the acting is done from the neck up.

The Golden Bowl is set in turn-of-the-century England, where Americans Adam Verver (Nick Nolte) and his daughter Maggie (Kate Beckinsale) have settled. Adam is filthy rich and cleaning up a bit by buying rare European art to take back to American City and put in a museum, whether Americans want it or not. Three days before Maggie is to be married to the Italian Prince Amerigo (Jeremy Northam), Amerigo meets with his former lover Charlotte (Uma Thurman). Though they still have feelings for each other, they are both poor and cannot marry. Charlotte, it turns out, is Maggie?s best friend from boarding school; Maggie knows nothing of Charlotte?s past with Amerigo.

Maggie and Amerigo have a son together and are happy, but Maggie cannot restrain the guilt she feels over leaving her father alone. Maggie invites Charlotte to watch over Adam, and soon the pair marry — all the better for Charlotte and Amerigo to start their affair where they left off.

Emotions and heartache are expressed through a modern dance piece, a dream, the legend of long-ago ancestors, and most notably, the golden bowl of the title. Like the pair of couples, the bowl is beautiful and precious, a thing to protect and cherish, but the bowl has a flaw. For much of the movie, the story is told through its symbols as the actors betray nothing more than a tic of an eye or a well-timed turn. Thurman, particularly, goes from smug to paranoid to absolutely desperate to smug again smoothly and expertly.

The Golden Bowl highlights the art of subterfuge. Everything?s a plan or a scheme, and matters are tied up with barely a ripple. The film seems positively wan next to the similarly plotted The House of Mirth, but it makes its point oh-so quietly.

The attack on Pearl Harbor over half a century ago gouged in the undefeatable American psyche a deep psychological wound that still hasn t completely healed. Pearl Harbor, Touchstone s epic historical romance, recreates the vainglorious era when swing was cool, liquor and lovers flowed, and the deadly theaters of war were yet to be entered. This tale is of the United States adolescence.

Just the fact that this titanic film — starring hunky Ben Affleck and the devastating Brit Kate Beckinsale — appears the summer before the event s 60-year anniversary might make it seem like a sunken ship of a flick. What it turns out to be is a hugely ambitious triptych that mingles fiction, romance, and action adventure in an encapsulated period piece.

At its core is a buddy story. Rural Tennesseans Rafe McCawley (Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) are a pair of clowning-around boys who accidentally joyride dad s crop duster a Kitty Hawk distance. Addicted at an early age to the thrill of flight, they grow up and enter the service as young flyers who hope for ace-hood and to become lady-killing war heroes.

When Rafe gets recruited by the Royal Air Force to die fighting the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, the best buddyship is put on hold as is his innocently budding romance with nurse recruit Evelyn Johnson (Beckinsale). As the luck of the draw will have it, best friend Danny and Evelyn both get stationed on the island paradise of Oahu, at Pearl Harbor, where there s little threat of danger and miles of sand and surf.

Crisis arrives in telegram form. News comes that Rafe has been shot down in battle near Dover. Grief, as it will, unites Danny and Rafe s girl Evelyn in something steamier than mere consolation back at the island.

Much too much time is spent setting up this unintentional love triangle when, by dint of the title alone, pyrotechnics are expected. However intensely filmed and edited they are, the initial dog-fighting scenes roar by quickly, and the first hour of the movie lacks the intensity that extended air battles could have added. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, the biggest drama in this drama, finally takes place well into the double love story s telling. Like an unexpected messiah, Rafe suddenly appears just before December 7. As a surprise we all knew was coming, our hero s return from the dead is an anticlimactic cinematic moment that gets squandered.

When the bombs do fall, they hit loud and hard. Director Michael Bay uses the digitally enhanced air raid as a cue to shift from romantic sappiness to what this movie is really about: pure terror. Ships go down trapping crews, bodies acrobatically fly through the air, and beautiful, leggy nurses on the run get mowed down by machine-gun fire. The violence is more realistic and dramatic than it is grotesque — there aren t buckets of guts flung skyward for shock value. Hand-held camera techniques and fluid, shifting points of view — a newsreel reporter s, a dying soldier s — terrifyingly portray the chaos of wholesale slaughter. Even the confusion of the nurses, who plug arteries with their bare hands and are forced to take blood donations in Coke bottles, is vividly and emotively documented. In one memorable scene of horror, Evelyn learns all she ll ever need to know about triage as the paradisiacal outpost is firebombed into a hell on earth.

The story might have ended in the after-the-storm calm, but it continues into the epical third hour. FDR (John Voight) orders a morale-boosting counterattack. The boys, who had enough courage to scramble into the few planes not obliterated on the ground, volunteer for duty and off they go into the wild blue.

Many aspects don t quite live up to the historical, epic expectations of a film about our bloody initiation into World War Two. Dan Aykroyd and Alec Baldwin are miscast as one-dimensional characters, and the manner in which the Zen-wise Japanese act like emotionally detached robots is entirely superficial. An overtly maudlin score could easily have been supplanted by the incredible big band sounds and jazz that were bubbling forth in the 40s.

The painful reality that Americans faced was material and moral: the loss of most of the Pacific fleet and the instantaneous death of 2,300 young men and women on a quiet Sunday morning. Even though this get-what-you-pay-for thrill ride of a megamovie doesn t delve too deeply into the historical moment it seeks to sumptuously recreate, it does pump the adrenaline, puff up the eyes, and convey what the massive suffering must have been like on that day of infamy. In its purely entertaining conflagration of gorgeous destruction, Pearl Harbor opens a vein that makes war-time love stories a timeless obsession: the loss of innocence and the epiphany of our own vulnerability. And the realization that nothing is ever fair in love and war.

The Iranian film A Time For Drunken Horses follows the plight of a group of Kurdish children, siblings living in settlement camps along the Iran-Iraq border. We meet three of these children through some opening-credit dialogue a girl, Ameneh (Ameneh Ekhtiar-Dini), who seems to be about 10; her brother Ayoub (Ayoub Ahmadi), who seems to be about 12; and brother Madi (Mehdi Ekhtiar-Dini), a severely deformed dwarf with fiercely observant eyes. Madi later tries to tell someone that he s three years old (he holds up fingers; Madi doesn t speak in the film), but his siblings reveal that he is really 15.

The children are in a town near their home village where they are taken to work in a marketplace, wrapping glasses in paper for export. The children attempt to smuggle school textbooks back to camp, but the books are seized by the Iranian border patrol. Smuggling, it turns out, is part of the daily existence for this family. Their mother died giving birth to their youngest sibling and now their father supports them by smuggling goods via donkey across the Iraqi border, where things fetch a better price.

The film s title comes from the smugglers practice of feeding the donkeys alcohol so they ll work in the severe cold.

At the beginning of the film, as the children arrive back at the village from the marketplace, the protagonists father has just been killed by one of the many land mines that cover the Iran-Iraq border, throwing the young Ayoub into the role of family leader and provider. Ayoub is faced with the task of providing for his four siblings and trying to raise money for an operation for Madi. More than that, I will not reveal.

Iran has developed a reputation over the last decade for having one of the most fertile of all national cinemas, so much so that a few films have even filtered down to secondary U.S. markets such as Memphis, though we re still waiting for a big-screen glimpse of the acknowledged Iranian master, Abbas Kiarostami. Directed by first-time filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (who served as an assistant on Kiarostami s The Wind Belongs To Us), A Time For Drunken Horses is brief (80 minutes), documentary spare, and utterly heartbreaking in part because the film is populated with non-professional actors, Kurds who, reportedly, are essentially playing themselves.

The film was made in the Kurdish village where Ghobadi, Iran s first Kurdish director, was born. Ameneh and Madi are played by real-life siblings, which gives their scenes together Ameneh blowing on Madi s face to keep him warn and constantly kissing his cheeks added poignancy. Viewers may have read about the plight of the Kurdish people in news reports, but this film will bring the story home with the kind of immediacy the printed word can t provide.

Compared to the only other modern Iranian films to have played Memphis Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise A Time For Drunken Horses is less cloying and sentimental and consequently even more powerful. The matter-of-fact documentary power of the film, if not necessarily its artistry, is much more shattering than the Italian Neorealist films (such as Vittorio De Sica s The Bicycle Thief) it has understandably been compared with. Rather, A Time For Drunken Horses evokes the likes of Luis Bunuel s Land Without Bread, the satirical social critic s straightforward travelogue of poverty in Northern Spain.

Moving without being manipulative, A Time For Drunken Horses may not be a great work of cinema, but it confirms the simple, communicative power of the medium itself like few other recent films. And it makes pretty much everything else adorning the multiplexes right now seem profanely irrelevant by comparison.

You can t make everyone happy all the time. It s an old saying, but someone should have reminded the makers of A Knight s Tale.Combining all the elements of summer blockbusters past (a handsome hero, buddies in tow, overwhelming odds, honor, courage, the love of a beautiful woman, and a hit soundtrack — think Armageddon, Con Air, Independence Day), A Knight s Tale, like its main character, has a big desire. In the film s case, it s to win the pocketbooks of all the summer moviegoers. In the case of William (Heath Ledger), son of a thatcher, it s to be a knight. To help his son fulfill his dream, his father apprentices him to a knight. When, years later, an unfortunate turn leaves the knight — just a match away from winning a tourney –ÿdead, William takes his place, wins the tournament, and voila! His stars are changed. Posing as Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein of Gelderland, William becomes a great knight and falls in love with Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossamon), a beautiful maiden. Everything is great, he s winning the tournaments (his main competition in the joust and for Jocelyn, Count Adhemar, is away fighting a war), but there s a hitch. You have to be a noble to participate, and William is decidedly not. And if he s found out, well, it s off to the stocks and some other not-so-pleasant ordeals. Wanting to combine the best of the old and the new, A Knight s Tale is a mishmash of modern culture meets period piece. In a purely gratuitous dance scene, Ledger takes a Travolta turn and struts his stuff Saturday Night Fever-style. While most of the cast wears brown, taupe, and more brown, Jocelyn looks like she could be modeling Versace, with spiky streaks of fire-engine red in her hair and mendhi-like makeup decorating her eyes. She s no shrinking violet. Knowing that women s roles in medieval society are not exactly palatable to most modern females, the two main female characters (Jocelyn and William s blacksmith) challenge (however mildly) their station in life. The mix of old and new is nowhere more pronounced than in one of the oddest acts of product placement ever seen: After making William a new suit of armor, the blacksmith etches a well-known swoosh onto the back (okay, it might not be product placement unless Nike is coming out with some sort of chain mail this summer, but that didn t prevent most of the theater from yelling out, Nike! at the time). Although A Knight s Tale follows most of the summer blockbuster formula to a T, it s lacking one main component: explosions. Instead, the action consists of a bit of sword fighting and a lot of jousting. Perhaps there s a reason why jousting hasn t retained its popularity. It might be an ancestor to modern-day chicken, but after the 100th time — okay, the fourth time — seeing two horses barreling at each other and two guys in full armor ramming each other with long sticks, well, it gets a little boring. The filmmakers say they tried to make all 27 matches different in some way, but they failed. The horses ran, the lances broke, the guys in armor fell backward on their horses … and sometimes fell off. Whoo. While A Knight s Tale is in no way bad — it followed the formula — it s not really good, either. It strives to be everything for everyone and ends up falling short. And as the main character proves, it s possible to change your destiny, but you ve got to be something special. A Knight s Tale isn t.

The Dish is a hopelessly square but entirely inoffensive trifle whose
only major annoyance is its use of the same cloying flashback-framing device
that marred Saving Private Ryan. This true story of the role the small
Australian town of Parkes played in the Apollo moon landing mixes archival
footage with fictional scenes and, in its search for period detail, lays on
the sing-along late- 60s soundtrack a little too thick.

The film s title character is a radio telescope the size of a football field
that has been erected in a sheep pasture outside of Parkes. The dish is manned
by a quaint, quirky three-man crew led by cardigan-and-pipe scientist Cliff
Buxton (Sam Neill). The crew spends its days playing cricket on the dish and
getting lunch delivered by a comely local lass, but all that changes, sort of,
when Parkes is drafted into the Apollo 11 program. It turns out that the city
s dish is the only one in the Southern hemisphere large and powerful enough to
transmit television signals from the moon, and NASA may need them to ensure
that the world gets to see that giant leap for mankind.

The Dish is as much about the town as the mission, focusing on one
small community s role in history. We meet the mayor and his wife, who are
nervous over the impending visits of the Australian prime minister and the
American ambassador. We meet the American NASA has sent to join the Parkes
team (Patrick Warburton, Putty on Seinfeld), whose Clark Kentish, square-
jawed, American professionalism clashes ever so slightly with the laid-back
approach of the Australians.

A brief electrical shutdown creates a technological crisis for the crew, but
there s never any real tension on screen. The Dish is entirely too
sunny to allow much conflict. But its squareness might be what saves it. At a
time when most American comedies are either dumbed-down (though sometimes
hilarious) gross-outs or test-marketed grinds, this Australian film is so
honest, affectionate, and good-hearted it s almost refreshing. Almost. In
short, The Dish is an honorable little film; it s just not that
interesting.

Rock on, Josie. You know we all want to see the good guys win. Thirty-two years after her dangerous curves and crazy sound made her the biggest star to ever emerge from the suburbs of Riverdale, the original red rocker, one Ms. Josie McCoy, finally makes her big-screen debut. And while it s really hard to be too enthusiastic about what must be the most disingenuous creation in all of creation, it s hard not to like Josie and the Pussycats, Universal Pictures latest bit of appropriated pop culture. If I were bucking to get my name on the movie poster I d say it s slyly self-aware, unassuming in its garishness, and, in its own way, very nearly perfect. What I mean by that, of course, is that for a 60s comic strip turned 70s Saturday morning cartoon come to extra perky life on the big screen in 2001 it could be a whole lot worse.

The Pussycats were invented by that wholesome bunch from Archie Comics who gave us Betty and Veronica, Archie, Moose, Jughead, and any number of other nonthreatening teenage stereotypes. As you might imagine, as rockers go Josie and the Pussycats were never terribly rebellious. Over time they steadily evolved into groovy, Scooby Doo-style sleuths, playing their hearts out then knocking the stuffing out of bad guys all the while wearing their cute kitty-cat ears and their leopard-spotted bikini tops. For girls, the Pussycats became positive role models with Barbie-like figures, naturally but for prepubescent boys, the G-rated comic might as well have been porn. A single sight gag in the film referencing the non-feline connotations of the word pussy drives that particular point home with a bullet. This is, however, the raciest moment in a not too racy film that received a PG-13 rating for mild sensuality. And while these new celluloid Pussycats do wear some mighty revealing outfits, they seem like modest Amish frocks compared to the skimpy duds they wore in the funny pages.

Although the look has been updated, the Josie and the Pussycats film is an Archie Comic come to life in every way. You sense the moral coming from the second the first guitar chord sounds. In this case it s an object lesson about marketing and mass media aimed at the eternally status-obsessed teenager. The poor Pussycats, who have been playing on the streets for tips, are chased away by the police when they quite literally bump into evil talent agent Wyatt Frame (played with slimy two-dimensional gusto by Alan Cumming), who s desperate to locate the next big thing. Within a week of their encounter the Pussycats are the next big thing, with the number-one record in the country and legions upon legions of fans. It all seems too good to be true, and it is. You see, the record company is in cahoots with a secret government agency to keep the nation s economy strong by hiding subliminal messages in the Pussycat s music that turns teenagers into mindless consumption machines. Corporate logos for Coke, McDonald s, and Target cover nearly every on-screen surface, and scenes depicting poor, hypnotized mall rats out shopping for more, more, and more have all the tacky texture of a John Waters film. It goes without saying that the Pussycats eventually discover their bosses plans for world domination and make plans to stop them.

Rachael Leigh Cook makes an ideal Josie. She s all sweetness and spunk with no edge to her at all. Bedazzling in her kitty ears and tail, she s every inch a bubblegum fantasy with her sexy sneer and low-slung guitar. Rosario Dawson and Tara Reid are likewise well-cast as the sensitive and brainy Val and the dippy Mel. But make no mistake, this is Parker Posey s show. As Fiona the wicked music producer, Posey lisps comic venom at every turn while slinking about in what appears to be a Valium-induced haze. And she s not really evil at heart, it s just it s just sniff she always wanted to be popular in school, but she never was.

Though there is no way to review any major Hollywood production that warns of the evils of product placement with a straight face, there isn t anything wrong with a film that encourages kids to worry less about consuming products their favorite stars use and to focus more on doing their own thing. Still, you have to realize that the whole thing is a commercial for a soundtrack, action figures, and Josie-style headbands, not to mention Target, Coke, and McDonald s.