Tom Salinsky

A few movies I caught up with recently.

THE TIME TRAVELLER’S WIFE
w. Jeremy Leven, Bruce Joel Rubin, Audrey Niffenegger (novel); d. Robert Schwentke
Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston

This soapy romantic drama I understand renders the novel fairly faithfully (I haven’t read it) but without any dash or sparkle. It’s certainly a problem determining the best order of events in which to tell your story when your two main characters experience events in totally different orders, but this movie never finds a solid mode to work in. The science-fiction details of the hero’s slipping through time never feels credible and fatally neither does the romance, with Bana and McAdams blandly competent rather than fizzing with chemistry. In the one serious deviation from the novel, the ending is muted for obvious reasons (what’s disquieting in print would be horrifying in technicolour) but at the same time it’s fuzzed and lacks clarity and punch. With no loyalty to the novel, I didn’t hate it or feel betrayed by it, but if I could go back in time two hours, I’d pick another movie to watch instead.

BRIDESMAIDS
w. Annie Mumulo, Kirsten Wiig; d. Paul Feig
Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd

First of all, it’s absurd that a comedy with three female lead characters should be so remarkable for that fact alone. There is no reason at all why there should not be a glut of such movies. There’s no shortage of female talent, and there’s certainly an audience for movies built around this kind of cast. That said, despite many pleasures, Bridesmaids is not an unqualified success. Co-writer Kristen Wiig is fine, and Rose Byrne is very good – miles away from her dour, but equally successfully, turn as luckless attorney Ellen Parsons in the TV series Damages. Chris O’Dowd is hilariously mis-cast but charming and winning as the for-no-good-reason-Irish traffic cop and Melissa McCarthy is a real find as a sort of Zach Galafianakis with breasts. With Jon Hamm, Matt Lucas and Ellie Kemper off of The Office rounding out the supporting cast – what’s not to like?

Well, there are two problems. One is that several of the comedy set pieces seem to have been stuck in at random. One of the funniest and most sustained sequences comes bizarrely at a moment where the plot is demanding that the stakes are at their highest, yet as the sequence develops, it increasingly looks as if the protagonists are concerned only with amusing each other. Another problem is that while it has the smarts to reject many of the standard-issue tropes of the Romantic Comedy Genre (Wiig archly tells O’Dowd not to try and “fix” her, which recalls screenwriting guru Blake Snyder’s device The Six Things That Need Fixing) but has nothing with any emotional power to put in their place. Possibly connected with this is that several characters, notably Kemper’s, seem to be setups for payoffs which never arrive. Finally, and almost fatally, the central character’s actions are seemingly designed to create the greatest possible suffering and inconvenience for herself and her so-called friends. She’s a horrible friend and a demented individual with whom I found it almost to empathise.

I was never bored and I was frequently amused, but for me it was a missed opportunity.

HORRIBLE BOSSES
w. Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein; d. Seth Gordon
Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx

The most completely successful of these three movies, Horrible Bosses is blessed with a brilliant central idea which allows it to coast when its comic invention runs dry, which it does from time-to-time. Among the trio of caricature employers, Kevin Spacey is given most of the screentime and most of the best lines. Farrell in particular is rather unfairly sidelined and upstaged by the set dressing in his own character’s house. Sudekis and Bateman amble along good-naturedly, allowing the relatively unknown Charlie Day many of the film’s showiest moments, and when the script isn’t quite sure where the laughs should be coming from, the director just has all three of the leads talk simultaneously, upping the chances that one of them will be saying something funny.

But the plot is properly, if perfunctorily, put together and every so often there’s something a bit special – a wonderful cameo from Ioan Gruffudd, Jamie Foxx in a very funny performance, and Bunk from off of The Wire.