Tag: Sarah Silverman

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Ralph Breaks The Internet

The internet. It’s everywhere. You’re soaking in it, right now. It’s been blamed for a lot of things, but the relevant accusation right now is the decline of the theatrical movie business. But seeing as Ralph Breaks The Internet just helped make last Thanksgiving weekend the most profitable in Hollywood history, maybe the death of the film business has been exaggerated. Again.

Turns out, what was needed in the internet age is more movies about the internet. Legacy media behemoth Disney was poised to deliver with the second stage to a new franchise launch, Ralph Breaks The Internet.

The very first bad decision here was not calling the film “Ralph Wrecks The Internet” instead of adopting fully the Kardashian’s PR firm’s framing with “breaks”. If 2012’s Wreck It Ralph proved anything, it’s that Ralph (John C. Reilly) wrecks stuff. Here, it’s initially not the internet, but his friendship with Princess Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) after the video game villain (whose resemblance to Donkey Kong is a source for sight gags) restored the Princess to her rightful place as ruler of the Sugar Rush game in Litwak’s Family Fun Center and Arcade. Now they hang out nursing frosty brews in Root Beer Tapper, until their paradise is interrupted by the arrival of a wifi router. When the Sugar Rush game’s steering wheel breaks, Venellope and Ralph must travel through the world wide web to eBay to find a replacement before the arcade owner throws her home on the scrap heap.

Ralph Breaks The Internet is the second major film this year to attempt the difficult task of visualizing the internet. What the Internet looks like in real life is a bunch of people staring at screens, thousands of miles of wires, and vast, sterile server farms. You’re not “visiting” a website. You’re just looking at it. To capture the “traveling without moving” vibe of the internet, both Ready Player One and Ralph Breaks The Internet basically go with the avatar model described by Neil Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash. Spielberg, by way of Earnest Cline, goes with the Stephenson vision of a wildly creative, surreal world populated by a menagerie of weird creatures dredged up from the psyches of millions of users. Directors Phil Johnston and Rich Moore see cyberspace as a vast mall populated by uniformly cute, Funko Pop-headed avatars. If you want a visual metaphor for how the internet has gone from a free-form platform for communication and connectedness to a vector for authoritarian, surveillance capitalism mind control, there it is.

If you want to be even more nerd-outraged, the Ralph-net is not even neutral. They actually go out of their way to make that point. It pissed me off.

Once you look past the subtext, Ralph’s attempt to be www.Who Framed Roger Rabbit is reasonably successful. Reilly’s voice work is aces, and Silverman makes Vanellope into a cool girl with a little rasp in her throat. They spend a lot of time in the Disney web properties (complete with a Stormtrooper chase, with the soldiers of the Empire demonstrating their trademark lack of attention to detail). The funniest part is another bit of cross branding, where Vanellope teaches the collected Disney Princesses about the wonders of comfortable clothes, while they show her how to find herself through a musical number. It’s charming and self-aware, but not enough to really elevate Ralph Breaks The Internet beyond a routine (but profitable) kid-pleasing pot boiler.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Battle Of The Sexes

To this day, the most-watched tennis match in American history is not a Wimbledon final, or a U.S. Open match. In 1973, Bobby Riggs, former Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion and self described male chauvinist, and Billie Jean King, a feminist icon who was in the midst of a historic roll on the women’s tennis circuit, played a match in the Houston Astrodome in front of a live audience of more than 30,000 and an estimated international TV audience in excess of 90 million. It was both a coming out party for women’s tennis and a major cultural event at a time when the nationwide push for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was in full swing.

Emma Stone and Steve Carell in Battle of the Sexes

The best thing about Battle of the Sexes, the sprawling story of the grudge match seen ‘round the world, is the casting. Emma Stone plays King, disappearing into the role in a way she has never done in any of her previous films, and Steve Carell plays Riggs, a 55-year-old, washed up tennis pro turned huckster. Riggs’ gambling problem is so out of control that even when he wins a Rolls Royce Silver Spirit from sneering rich guy Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman) it still gets him kicked out of his huge house, owned by his rich wife Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue).

The supporting cast are all aces as well, led by Sarah Silverman as Gladys Heldman, Kings’ agent and partner in the new and struggling Women’s Tennis Association. Alan Cumming vamps freely as Ted Tinling, a fashion designer who put color on the court for the first time, and Fred Armisen has a small but scarily committed role as Riggs’ Dr. Feelgood, Rheo Blair.

The performances are where husband and wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris excel, as you can easily see in their last big hit, Little Miss Sunshine. Battle of the Sexes is an accomplished, entertaining work. Where it runs into problems is the reconciling the tone. Stone and Carell are not only playing different characters, but they sometimes appear to be in completely different movies. King’s story is a coming-out drama, where she realizes that her friendly but largely loveless marriage to her husband Larry (Austin Stowell) is doomed to lose out to her love for her hairdresser, Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough). Riggs’ side of the story is a clown show of over-the-top sexism and hype, powered by a barely contained Carell.

What the film lacks in artistic unity, it makes up for with a series of memorable, well-wrought scenes, like Riggs’ meltdown in a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting and an exquisite sequence where Kings’ two lovers accidentally meet in an elevator on the way to the same hotel room. Battle of the Sexes is a well crafted film that feels timely, fun, and occasionally even poignant

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Film Features Film/TV

Popstar: Never Stop Stopping

In 2005, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, collectively known as Lonely Island, were the right guys in the right place at the right time. The second comedy short they produced for Saturday Night Live, a parodic rap video called “Lazy Sunday,” came along just a few months after YouTube’s debut signaled the beginning of the web video era. When people started getting the hang of uploading and sharing videos, “Lazy Sunday” was among the first links passed around, making the Lonely Island guys the template for YouTube celebrity.

The group’s latest venture into cinematic comedy, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, is true to the group’s roots in that it features a passel of new, funny, pop hip-hop songs performed by Samberg as Conner Friel, aka Conner4Real, the former boy band frontman who has gone solo and blown up to Justin Bieber levels of celebrity. But the film also sees Lonely Island acknowledging their influences. Popstar is a mockumentary that applies the Spinal Tap equation to the contemporary music biz.

And I’ll have to say, it’s about time somebody did this. The Biebers and Kanyes and Katy Perrys of the world long ago elevated themselves to the same level of mockable self-importance as arena rockers circa 1983. That was when first-time director Rob Reiner gathered some former sitcom stars, including Michael McKean from Laverne & Shirley and SNL member Harry Shearer, to make a real-seeming documentary about a fake band. This Is Spinal Tap was not hugely successful upon release (partially because people, including Ozzy Osbourne, weren’t clear that it was fake), but it became a cult classic that inspired a generation of comedians. The improvisational style pioneered by Reiner and later perfected by Tap member Christopher Guest in Best In Show, has been hugely influential on modern comedies, including those created by Popstar executive producer Judd Apatow.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping starring Andy Samberg

Handing Lonely Island $20 million and unleashing them onto the pop music landscape is a no-miss proposition. As you would expect from the guys who put Justin Timberlake’s dick in a box, they have the setting and references down cold. Conner starts off as a member of a trio called the Style Boyz who look a lot like the Beastie Boys. But fame goes to their heads, and a dispute over the authorship of a verse leads to Lawrence “Kid Brain” Dunn (Schaffer) leaving the group and retreating into seclusion at a Colorado farm. Owen “Kid Contact” Dunn stays on as Conner’s DJ, whose job is reduced to pressing play on the iPod while Conner preens in front of an arena full of screaming girls.

Following the Tap template, Conner’s new album is not good, despite the fact that he hired more than a hundred producers to make it for him, and what was envisioned as a triumphant world tour is slowly smothered under a blanket of public fiascos. But that’s where the Spinal Tap comparisons cease to be useful, because where Reiner’s film was a strictly vérité affair with only minimal scripting, Popstar‘s screenplay has clearly been honed through several drafts. Spinal Tap plays out like a D.A. Pennebaker documentary, with long, single takes producing laughs by revealing character quirks. Popstar is a more conventional comedy, resorting to over-the-shoulder dialog shots and a throw-it-all-against-the-wall approach to gag delivery.

The supporting cast is a who’s who of comedy in 2016. Sarah Silverman nails the Fran Drescher role of put-upon publicist, while SNL legend Tim Meadows is Conner’s conniving manager. Imogen Poots and Bill Hader both create memorable characters as Conner’s girlfriend and roadie, but there’s not enough time to get to know them amid a flurry of cameos. The movie’s first big laugh comes courtesy of a bit of effortless schtick from none other than Ringo Starr, who leads a cast of musical luminaries including Questlove, Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey, Pink, RZA, and Seal, who steals the show when he is attacked by wolves.

Befitting our current cultural condition, Popstar is brash and direct where Spinal Tap was sly and stealthy. It may not be groundbreaking, but it’s consistently funny, and it proves that in the music biz, the more things change, the more they stay the same.