What sounds like an outlandish request to the pastor is welcome news to the ears of Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), funeral home proprietor in a Depression-era Southern town, whose business is dying because people aren’t dying. Frank and his young assistant, Buddy (Lucas Black), are shocked at the size of Felix’s ball of hermit cash, and Frank is willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill the old coot’s requests and get his hands on that money. But despite the commission he’ll earn from this first sale, Buddy has misgivings and questions about this crazy codger.

That’s because Felix has spent the past 40 years living alone in a cabin in the woods with only his mule for company. While fiercely protective of his privacy, he’s still managed to build a reputation throughout the region as a mean old man who, according to rumor and legend, once killed somebody. Felix says he wants his “living funeral” to be open to anyone who has a story to tell about him. He ups the attendance ante by offering his valuable land in a raffle among the funeral-goers. But there are two people who seem to know Felix’s past a little too well, and are hesitant to reveal it. One is Reverend Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs), recipient of a rare and generous gift of Felix’s expert carpentry skills. The other is Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), a widowed piano teacher who once “had relations” with Felix and still obviously holds some affection for him.

The strongest feature of Get Low is the casting of the lead roles. Duvall, who’s portrayed such a wide range of memorable characters across the decades, adds another to the list. He has some good lines and moments, both funny and serious, and absolutely nails Felix’s emotional climax. Likewise, Sissy Spacek may seem a bit dowdy in her character’s wardrobe, but her charm and talent still radiate, and her scenes with Duvall are a dream for all who appreciate fine acting. (Trivia: Duvall and Spacek both won Oscars for playing country singers.) Bill Murray is in his more subdued indie-film mode here, but he’s always likable to watch and has such great timing and dry delivery. And let me take a moment to recognize the great work here by Lucas Black; from his outstanding performance as the kid in Sling Blade, he has matured into a fine young man, and I hope he (and his smooth Southern twang) continue to grace movie screens well into the future.

BUT…

Despite this great cast and a few compelling moments here and there, this movie is strangely less than the sum of its parts. The film feels like it was created from a negotiated production package deal rather than a script. It all must have looked great on paper–a first feature from an Oscar-winning short-film director, a lead character that’s pure Oscar bait for an aging Hollywood legend, significant supporting roles for two other Oscar-level performers and other recognizable actors, a rural period setting, some emotional triggers to appease the aging target audience, and apparently some budgetary considerations to allow the movie to be made under the shingle of Sony’s art-house division.

For instance, the period sets are not much more than Felix’s cabin in the woods and a few vintage-dressed storefronts in town; the camera stays fairly tight to minimize the need for set dressing and costumed extras except for a few crucial scenes. Also, apart from the six aforementioned actors, there are only two or three other speaking roles of any size, and these characters are poorly used. One, a thuggish town bully who picks a fight with Felix, is just a weak subplot that leads nowhere and has no payoff. Several subplots and character elements seem to be introduced and then dropped, such as a burglary midway through the film. These distractions make the film feel disjointed, as though it had to be recut in the editing room and the leftovers from a few excised plot threads remain. Director Aaron Schneider also takes the editor’s credit, so I blame him.

Ultimately, Get Low boils down to the central mysteries of why Felix became a misanthropic hermit and how much or little Mattie knows about his past. This may be interesting for fans of Duvall and Spacek (and they share a really nice scene in Felix’s cabin, beautifully photographed in naturalistic dim lamplight), but they become the only interesting people here. Bill Murray is fine to watch, but we don’t learn much about his character, nor about Lucas Black’s Buddy, even though it’s pointedly established early in the film that Buddy is a young family man struggling to support a wife and baby during the Depression. We don’t even get a clear sense of the locale–presumably Tennessee or thereabouts, as Illinois is mentioned as being to the north (the movie was filmed in Georgia, however).

It’s a movie that feels strangely incomplete. Even the poster design reflects this; Duvall and Murray are “low” in the picture, and the upper half of the poster is almost empty, as though the space was reserved for something that wasn’t ready in time for the press run. Just like a hermit’s life, Get Low may draw a curious stare, but in the end one wonders why so much potential ultimately went to waste.

At the start of the film, we meet Louisiana preacher Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) through a documentary film lens. Having been groomed for the pulpit since he was in knee socks–he comes from a long line of Bible-thumping exorcists–Cotton is a charismatic charmer with an easygoing smile and a flair for the theatrical. But he’s also deeply cynical. In one breath, he explains to the film crew, which includes interviewer Iris (Iris Bahr) that you can’t believe in the God of the Christian Bible and not also believe in demons. In the very next breath, he admits that he thinks demons are fiction. It doesn’t take a syllogism genius to figure out that one out.

Cotton has agreed to have the film crew chronicle one of his phony exorcisms, which he performs to make money to support his wife and deaf son, before he gives up the holy roller lifestyle for good. He’s summoned to the farm of Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum), a widower who lives with his teenage son (Caleb Landry Jones) and daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell). The 16-year-old girl has been having blackouts after which she appears in a bloodied nightgown near the disemboweled bodies of daddy’s cattle. Cotton performs his mock exorcism, replete with trick wires and a hidden Ipod of “demonic” sounds. But instead of being healed by the power of suggestion, little Nell just gets weirder.

Don’t be fooled, though. The Last Exorcism is not the terror ride that the trailers try to sell you, even if it is filmed in the pseudo documentary style that has become a supernatural thriller convention. (See also last year’s Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield from the year before, and the granddaddy of motion sickness, The Blair Witch Project.) Instead, director Daniel Stamm’s film from a script by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland is a slow-paced meditation on religious extremism and the loss of faith. The metaphor is furthered by the inclusion of post-Katrina Louisiana–a haunted and haunting place–as its backdrop. The ramshackle farmhouse in which much of the filming takes place still shows the stains from floodwaters. If there is any place where faith has been challenged, shaken, and retrenched, it’s the outskirts of New Orleans.

That story would have been as interesting as any white-knuckle scary movie if the devil had been in the details. But German-born Stamm gets many of those wrong. At one point, the camera pans the Sweetzer home to reveal paintings of Jesus, both Catholic and Protestant versions of the crucifix, and a statue of the Virgin Mary. It may be true that this part of the country is home to a wider variety of religions than others but an evangelical Christian would never have statues of the Virgin Mary in his home. Of course, the idol is meant to stand in for poor, defiled, little Nell but its inappropriateness makes it seem all the more ham-fisted.

Also, why does Nell, who has been home-schooled and cut off from all things secular, have a framed painting of Vivien Leigh in all her Scarlet O’Hara frippery on her bedroom wall? It may seem like nitpicking, but that picture gets almost as much screen time as anything truly scary does.

Yes, even with all that I just said about social commentary, I was still looking to be, you know, scared. After all, The Exorcist’s message about the dangers of the sexual liberation of Linda Blair’s not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman doesn’t prevent that film from giving me a week’s worth of nightmares every time I see it. The most terrifying aspect of this film is what Ms. Bell can do with her body. At one point, she literally bends over backwards to walk toward a barn door. I’ve heard that no special effects were used to simulate her “possessed” behavior. If that’s true, that girl has one hell of a yoga practice going.

Ultimately, The Last Exorcism is too schizophrenic a film to offer much in the way of genuine thrills. Is it about backwoods farm folk hurting their children? Is it about a disturbed attention-seeking little girl? Is it a confirmation of a huckster preacher’s loss of faith? Or is Satan really afoot? As the thoughtful front half of the film gives way to a second half that includes both the traditional horror movie soundtrack of strings and snare drums and one really ridiculous CG-aided twist (the only CG anywhere in the film), it’s clear that the filmmakers have no idea. And neither will you.

I hope not, because this movie is just awful. Beginning with a cameo appearance by none other than Richard Dreyfuss–in his Jaws clothing and singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home”–we’re quickly introduced to our hero, Jake (Steven R. McQueen), the good-looking teenage boy inexplicably shunned by nearly every other good-looking teenager of either gender, saddled with babysitting his bratty kid brother and sister while their mother (Elisabeth Shue) protects the lake as the local sheriff by threatening unruly spring break partygoers with her stun gun. Jake catches the attention of Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell), a coked-up pornographer who wants a local to show him around. It doesn’t take much depth of thought to realize Jake’s going to make some bad decisions, the two kids will end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Mama-with-a-badge will come to the rescue.

And they all have bigger fish to fry, literally and figuratively, because here come the piranhas! Set free from a subterranean “lake beneath the lake” by an earthquake, these are big, nasty-looking piranhas, “over two million years old” according to Christopher Lloyd, rehashing his old shtick in a cameo as the town’s resident fishy kook. After about 40 minutes of requisite fake-outs, teases, and tits in 3D, it’s time for the carnage to begin in earnest. Elisabeth Shue does her best Roy Scheider impression, but, of course, nobody listens. The ugly chick floating on the innertube is bitten on the ass, and all hell breaks loose. They even work in a predictable semi-homage to Piranha 2 director James Cameron when the panicking swimmers overwhelm a floating stage full of amps and lighting rigs, which then topples over like the Titanic, forcing people to fall to their watery deaths.

And make no mistake, this is some of the grisliest, graphic nastiness I’ve seen in quite some time. The production truly went overboard on the fake blood and flesh, and the audience howled in laughter and shock at scenes of people torn apart or bisected; one especially gross moment depicting the fate of a certain part of Jerry O’Connell’s anatomy had several audience members fleeing the theater.

Yes, I laughed a few times, but not for the right reasons; I laughed at this movie, but not with it. The filmmakers expect you to accept this as a winking parody, but it’s not funny enough to be a true parody or even a comedy. They even put Ving Rhames in this thing, appearing for two scenes as a deputy sheriff, just so he can spout a few obscenities as a sort of comic relief and fight off piranhas with a shotgun and a power saw before his pointless and poorly photographed demise. There are a couple of moments deliberately made for laughs, such as Jerry O’Connell’s last line and the final moment of the movie, but after the preceding display of screenwriting and filmmaking ineptitude and exceedingly gory mayhem, it’s a bit like asking Mary Todd Lincoln what she thought of the play, despite the other unpleasantness. After sitting through this movie, I just wanted to go home and take a shower.

As the resurgent trend in 3D movies continues, films like this remind us of 3D’s previous heydays in the 1950s and the early 1980s; back then, although a few major-studio projects dabbled in the format, 3D was usually relegated to a gimmick of the B-movie. As the days of the drive-in and the double feature have sadly passed into near-extinction, today virtually every film in the local multiplex is considered and distributed as an A-picture. High-profile films like Avatar and the Disney/Pixar movies have pioneered the current 3D trend. Piranha 3D serves as a reminder of the technique’s low-budget, lowbrow roots.

Because, for all the fanciful multicolored worlds that Pixar and James Cameron and Tim Burton have presented to us in 3D, we haven’t really seen much (yet) in the way of 3D porn, and we get a titillating glimpse of it here. Yes, we see several mammary landscapes, often protruding toward the camera in three-dimensional glory, as well as an underwater 3D dance with two naked girls…and, of course, the bare breasts of a freshly dismembered corpse. Female objectification much? Ugh. And a note to filmmakers: Murky underwater scenes stay murky, even in 3D. Numerous scenes in this movie are too dark, or the 3D just looks cheap and tacky.

Sitting through this movie reminded me of those days when you’re sick at home and end up flipping through the TV channels. Even though there’s nothing else on, you still feel guilty about watching Jerry Springer. In fact, Piranha 3D may have buckets of gore and 3D and a few semi-famous faces, but in terms of quality it’s no better than any cheesy movie on cable. Save your 3D dollars for something more worthwhile, and stay home to watch Mega Piranha or Fire from Below on Syfy. Who needs Christopher Lloyd and Elisabeth Shue when you can get Kevin Sorbo and Maeghan Albach at home, anyway?

Emma Thompson (who also serves as screenwriter) is back as that other magical nanny. In the first film, she came to the rescue of a Victorian widower with seven unruly children. This time around, she arrives to the English countryside farm of harried Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal with a surprisingly believable English accent). Isabel is temporarily a single mum of three–to responsible Norman (Asa Butterfield), tomboyish Megsie (Lil Woods) and youngest moppet Vincent (Oscar Steer)–while her husband (blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Ewan McGregor) is off fighting the Germans in the war. As if her hands weren’t already full, her spoiled, wealthy niece and nephew, Cyril (Eros Vlahos) and Celia (Rosie Taylor-Ritson) have just recently come to live with them because London is no longer safe thanks to the Blitz.

The big-city cousins are not happy with their new rustic surroundings, what with all the pig, horse and chicken dung flowing in rivers around the property. They slip and slide in it and Celia loses her suitcase of new clothes to it, inciting a war between the country mice and city mice. Isabel hardly has time to negotiate a peace, though, what with her job assisting a batty old general store owner (Maggie Smith), fighting off her shady brother-in-law Phil (Rhys Ifans) who wants to sell the farm, and preparing to harvest a barley crop. That’s where warty, hairy and generally unpleasant-looking Nanny McPhee and her flatulent black crow named Edelweiss come in. Aided by the magic from her gnarly walking stick, she teaches the children lessons in sharing, teamwork, and not judging a book by its poop-smeared cover. With each lesson they learn, she grows more physically attractive to them and to us.

Based on the “Nurse Matilda” children’s book series by Christianna Brand, Nanny McPhee Returns is another of this summer’s disappointing live-action kiddie flicks. Although it is certainly several notches above the abysmal Marmaduke or equally awful Furry Vengeance, it never quite takes off. Perhaps it’s because Thompson’s script colors so closely inside the lines of the 2005 original, despite being set 50 years ahead in time. It’s understandable that Ms. Thompson (who reportedly almost dropped out of her role in the final Harry Potter installments to make this sequel) wants to give younger audiences what they expect–flying, synchronized-swimming pigs among them–but having those expectations met in such predictable fashion grows tedious among the older set. Also tedious: all that scatological humor.

At least director Susanna White delivers on some of the film’s promised magic with CG-assisted special effects, including the previously mentioned porcine acrobats and a fireworks display that gave the film its British release title, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang. It’s surprising that White chose not to produce the film in this summer’s ubiquitous 3D technology. I can’t believe I’m about to say it, but I wonder if that was the smartest decision. As it is, the spectacle in the film is nice but hardly 3D-worthy. Still, with a little more effort and a pair of glasses, it could have sparkled. I suppose, though, spending 108 minutes without those glasses does make it easier to focus on the mystical au pair’s moral lesson plan.

As an actress, Thompson always delivers and her portrayal of Nanny McPhee is stern but not dour, with just enough twinkling mischief to charm. Likewise, British bests Smith, Ifans, and a surprise cameo by Ralph Fiennes (who now perpetually looks like Lord Voldemort to me) are all amusing but not standout. It’s chubby blonde Vlahos who turns in the best performance of the film with his spot-on comic timing and wry British delivery. Not bad, kid.

Nanny McPhee Returns is fine for teaching a moral and a little European history to wee ones but will likely bore their adult chaperones. It wasn’t a bad film; it just wasn’t supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

This time around, it’s television executive Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), who has had it with trying to find true love and decides to take the sperm by the horns. When she tells her best friend, neurotic equities analyst, Wally (Jason Bateman), he is resistant to the idea. You see, they dated several years ago before he and his peculiar habits were banished to the friend zone. Because he’s still in love with her–a fact that everyone can see but him–he’s hurt that not only does she not want to date him, she doesn’t even want his special sauce. She’s decided instead to hit up Craigslist in search of Mr. Right Seed.

Kassie finds him in a tall Feminist Lit-teaching blond named Roland (Patrick Wilson). She throws an insemination party, complete with confetti sperm and fertility goddess statues, to fete the occasion where Roland leaves his donation in an upstairs bathroom. But drunk Wally accidentally spills the original contribution in the sink and secretly replaces it with his own crystals. Let’s see if anyone notices the difference.

Fast-forward seven years and Kassie’s now the proud mother of a charmingly neurotic little boy named Sebastian (Thomas Robinson). Do you remember that scene in Forrest Gump, where the junior and senior Gumps are watching television with their heads cocked to the side? Multiply that by an hour. Like Wally, Sebastian worries about everything (including global warming and animal rights), mistrusts everyone, is way too honest, and even unconsciously groans while he’s eating. He’s daddy’s gloomy little doppelganger.

The filmmakers behind The Switch seems to think that a little plot and some roughly sketched stock characters will suffice to make this movie both romantic and funny. But directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck present a romance that is a typical paint-by-numbers affair, complete with a nonstarter relationship between Kassie and golden boy Roland. Ultimately, Wally and Kassie fall in love because they have to in order for the film to have a happy ending and Sebastian to have a nice nuclear family. Gordon and Speck, who are competent enough, also serve up heaps of manipulative signifiers–like the kid’s obsession with the models in the photos sold with picture frames–and musical cues to tug at the heartstrings of anyone with daddy issues.

Meanwhile, Allan Loeb’s lazy scripting of a short story by Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides means that jokes are few and far between. What laughs there are along the way are earned by little Robinson and his enormous brown eyes acting like a fussy old man, cynical beyond his years. But this reviewer cannot live on precociousness alone, and time has proven that the “kids say the darndest things” approach to humor is best left to Bill Cosby.

The rest of the cast is left to do what they each do best. Aniston purses her lips like she’s tasted something that’s gone over in the fridge. Bateman is a likeable–but not loveable–version of Larry David. Juliette Lewis (as Kassie’s friend Debbie) shrieks, bounces, and is generally weird. And Jeff Goldblum (as Wally’s boss Leonard) stutters, pauses, and intonates like, well, Jeff Goldblum, actually making him the second best thing about this movie. Something tells me that no acting award nominations will be forthcoming for the cast of The Switch.

The Expendables, a group of American-based mercenaries, are comprised of Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone, who also co-wrote and directed), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), and Toll Road (MMA star Randy Couture). They’re aided on the business side of things by Tool (Mickey Rourke), a former member turned tattoo artist.

After dispatching a gang of pirates off the coast of Somalia in the film’s opening scene, our heroes tentatively accept an assignment to topple General Garza (David Zayas), a South American dictator. It’s a job that’s been passed over by everyone else, and a recon mission by Barney and Lee reveals why: the country is crawling with sinister-looking types, namely James Monroe (Eric Roberts) and his chief enforcer, Dan Paine (Steve Austin). When an American in a tailored suit is hanging out south of the equator, it always spells trouble.

The decision is made to abort, but group leader Ross can’t take his mind off of Sandra (Gisele Itie), a brave anti-Garza local who acted as a contact during their visit. She also happens to be the dictator’s daughter. If you grew up during the action film boom of the ’80s and early ’90s, you can probably guess what’s coming next.

The biggest thrill of The Expendables comes with seeing all the high-kicking, trigger-happy action royalty gathered together for one film. It’s like a 103-minute piece of nostalgia projected right onto the wall of you local theatre. Sadly, it won’t be mentioned in the same breath as Die Hard anytime soon.

While Stallone the director managed to generate on-screen excitement with previous films (Rocky Balboa and Rambo being the most recent), this time around he delivers nothing but a loud mess filled with shaky camerawork, rapid-fire editing, and not a single combat scene worthy of being remembered. It doesn’t help that Stallone–and I’m also pointing my finger at editors Ken Blackwell and Paul Harb–chose to frame the majority of the fights in medium shots and close-ups. While I can understand this being necessary to cover up for the advancing age of certain members of the cast, it completely robs stars like Jet Li of their eye-popping acrobatics. Instead of middleweights dancing around the ring and peppering each other with a variety of shots, we’re reduced to watching heavyweights slog it out in the clinch. That’s not the way to please a fight fan.

Films of the action genre aren’t known for their plausibility, but this one had even me scratching my head. For example, why is there a trench filled with combustible liquid running through the middle of the enemy camp (other than waiting for a heroic type to come along and ignite it)? If you owned an aircraft equipped with massive guns–and the dictator you’d been hired to kill had none–wouldn’t you just blow him away from the safety of the sky? And, finally, just how many explosive charges can a grown man carry on his body? According to this film, I’d say the number hovers around 50.

The Stallone/Dave Callaham script is just as much to blame, with lame attempts at humor and “male bonding” being the biggest bombs in a film filled with pyrotechnics. The closing scene where Lee Christmas recites spontaneous poetry during a knife-throwing contest is awkward and painful beyond belief. The cinematic equivalent of watching someone accidentally pee their pants, it immediately wipes away any tough guy coolness that Statham had accumulated during the film’s runtime. Not that there was much to begin with.

Much has been made of icons Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger all sharing the screen for the first time in their careers. Don’t get your hopes up. With a combined age of 182, the results aren’t pretty to look at; neither is the acting. Willis comes out the best, but he’s a fresh-faced youngster compared to his co-stars.

There’s the hint of an interesting relationship between General Garza and his daughter, but it’s simply not given enough screen time to matter. The same can be said of Christmas and ex-girlfriend Lacy (Charisma Carpenter, still looking good at 40), as their entire failed romance seems to exist to set up a showdown between Statham, Lacy’s abusive new beau, and a number of guys who don’t even rate first names.

The only moment of depth comes courtesy of Mickey Rourke. While painting a guitar meant for a woman who’s already abandoned him, Tool recalls his complete lack of effort at stopping a Bosnian woman from committing suicide. Nearly breaking down at several key moments, Rourke demonstrates that he’s still a respected actor underneath the metal teeth, body ink, and multi-colored hair.

A few more performances like Rourke‘s, plus some decent action sequences, and The Expendables might have been a movie worth remembering. Unfortunately, the weak material leaves the veteran cast throwing punches at empty air and trying to hang on until the end of the round. To paraphrase Wayne and Garth, another couple of icons from the early 1990s: “It’s not worthy! It’s not worthy!”

But friendly Liz is rarely alone no matter where she goes. In her world travels, she meets a whole new cadre of friends who bring with them life lessons. In Rome, Luca Spaghetti (Guiseppe Gandini) teaches her to appreciate pleasure over entertainment, to communicate with her hands Italian-style, and to make love to big heaping bowls of rigatoni, linguine, and, yes, spaghetti. In an Indian ashram, she meets Richard from Texas (Richard Jenkins), who helps her to understand true loss and letting go. And in Bali, she learns to smile from her liver from a shaman named Ketut (Hadi Subyanto) and to love again from a gorgeous, heavy-tongued Brazilian divorcee named Felipe (Javier Bardem).
 
Adapted for the screen by Jennifer Salt and Ryan Murphy (who also directs), Eat Pray Love gets it mostly right.  Murphy infuses healthy doses of Gilbert’s original text (through both dialogue and voiceover narration) with breathtaking panoramas of the story’s three locations. But the colorful flowers and jewel-toned saris at an Indian wedding and the endless blue of Indonesian waterways pale in comparison to the deliciousness of Italy. Murphy’s camera zooms in on plates of asparagus dripping in olive oil, cantaloupe draped in prosciutto, and pasta drenched in marinara. They say you shouldn’t grocery shop on an empty stomach. The same is true of the first half of this film.
 
It must be said, however, that it’s not the noodles, the saris, or the waters you’ll continuously fall in love with in this film. It’s how Ms. Roberts joyously twirls her fork (once, sitting in her dilapidated Roman apartment alone in a silky negligee), wraps herself in emerald-colored silk, and frolics in the deep. Her whooping-crane laugh and mile-wide grin are every bit as infectious now as they were when we first fell in love with her 20 years ago. She’s come a long way, but she is still a pretty woman.
 
To Roberts’s credit, she delivers a subtle, nuanced performance that doesn’t rely solely on her personal charms. A beautiful woman of means, Liz and her problems could seem like irritating non-issues if it weren’t for the actress’s ability to downplay the histrionics. In fact, her simultaneous strength and vulnerability reminded me of Katharine Hepburn’s role in 1955’s Summertime (about an American spinster vacationing in Venice). And I don’t make comparisons to Kate the Great lightly.
 
There are also some terrific performances turned in by the supporting players, most notably Richard Jenkins as a cantankerous dispenser of bumper-sticker wisdom who calls Liz “Groceries” because of her prodigious appetite. Many of his scenes may have been intended as comic relief, but the actor imbues them all with a layer of damaged gruffness. Hadi Subyanto’s toothless playfulness is a welcome scene-stealer, Viola Davis is a delight as Liz’s wry, no-nonsense editor, and Javier Bardem is suitably swarthy and Latin. I wish there had been more for him to do. He is only given one real “moment”, when his professions of love are rebuffed by Liz, but he absolutely shines in it.
 
My only substantial complaint about Eat Pray Love is its 133-minute running time. It is possible to get too much of a good thing. Fortunately, Julia Roberts is not one of those things.

Michael Cera may be in danger of typecasting after numerous parts as the stumbling, romantically-challenged-yet-likable young dweeb, but it’s a role he seems born to play. As Scott Pilgrim, Cera starts in familiar territory as a 22-year-old unemployed Toronto native playing bass with three high school pals in a band named Sex Bob-omb. In fact, he used to date the drummer, Kim (Alison Pill), leaving her with a snarly, begrudging attitude, especially when he starts bringing his current girlfriend–a 17-year-old Catholic high school girl named Knives (Ellen Wong)–to band rehearsals. Everyone gossips and talks trash to try and steer them apart, including Scott’s sister Stacey (Up In The Air Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick) and his gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin). But the young couple seem to bond over their mutual naivete and love for Dance Dance Revolution.

Then at a party, Scott literally meets the girl of his dreams, an aloof, doe-eyed, purple-haired enigma from New York named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). After spending the night with her, Scott is in for real trouble. He now has to juggle Ramona with his current underage girlfriend-turned-groupie and try to keep them separate. He faces even more snarky commentary from his sister, friends, and others. Oh, and Ramona brings some unwelcome baggage into the relationship…in the form of seven “evil exes” whom Scott must defeat in order to be her boyfriend. Defeat as in fight to the death, or, as is more appropriate for this video game/movie mashup, “mortal kombat.”

If the premise conjures memories of the Uma Thurman flick My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World kicks that movie’s ass with just one clever reference thrown into the midst of a script that starts out amusing and grows funnier as it progresses. Towards the end, I was bellowing with laughter at both the dialogue and its delivery by the talented ensemble, anchored by Michael Cera’s skillful performance and comic timing. The casting for the film is terrific, with Mae Whitman–who played Cera’s always-forgotten girlfriend Ann on Arrested Development–as one of the “exes” he has to fight. And casting Jason Schwartzman as the ultimate villain? Genius. His outrage from having to swallow his gum during a fight is priceless.

Augmenting the hilarious script and cast is a nearly constant barrage of graphics that tie the film to both video arcade culture and the story’s origin as a graphic novel. I’ve never owned a home gaming console of any kind, and don’t like the violent fighting and shooting games so popular these days. However, I have been known to throw a few coins into arcade games on occasion–I even remember the first time I played a Pong game back in the early ’70s. Fortunately, the video game references seem to be mostly from the ’80s: for example, Scott tries to use the origin of the name “Pac-Man” as a pick-up line. Defeated foes disintegrate into coins and floating point scores like a Mario Bros. game. Even the Universal Studios logo and fanfare at the beginning of the film looks and sounds pixellated, as though it’s playing on an old 8-bit Atari. Other anachronistic touches include an often-used old streamline phone with a rotary dial in the handset, though I don’t remember them having such an electronic-sounding ring. No matter, this movie is so completely nuts that I just went with it.

The hyperkinetic visuals of this lunatic flick also include plenty of amusing titles and animations, including graphical renditions of sound effects such as “DING! DONG” animated on the screen whenever the doorbell rings. These graphics get a bit predictable by the end, but they’re effective at tethering the film to its comic book roots.

An occasional joke or bit falls flat (like a brief and odd inclusion of Seinfeld music in one scene), but director/co-writer Edgar Wright, creator of the already-classic comedy Shaun of the Dead, throws so much over-the-top mania into this movie that a few moments of weakness can be forgiven. Nearly every scene transition is stylized and unusual, from seamless edits between locations in mid-dialogue to multiple split-screen sequences. If nothing else, this movie deserves recognition for its editing when award season comes around. I must also offer kudos for the opening credit sequence, an art that’s largely faded away over the years. It’s refreshing, then, to find one so full-tilt crazy.

Sometimes I feel like an old fogy, such as when I seated myself next to a large group of young people to gauge their reactions to the film. But we all behaved the same once the lights were down, getting into the goofy graphics, giggling at Cera’s clever comedic skills, and finally just laughing out loud (regardless of whether our voices had dropped or not). Maybe I’m not such an old fogy after all. In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, both sides end up winning.

Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Danson (Dwayne Johnson) are the top cops in New York City. They’ve got that 80’s action movie vibe, and nobody seems to care that they rack up millions in property damage to stop simple misdemeanors. That all comes to an end, however, when they inexplicably leap to their deaths while pursuing a gang of thieves (an event that mystifies even the narrator). This leaves a vacancy in the hero department, one that Detective Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) hopes to fill.

Terry drags around the moniker of “The Yankee Clipper,” earned by mistakenly shooting Derek Jeter in the leg and costing the city a World Series win. While he chafes at the scorn displayed by his fellow officers, he spends most of his time pacing like a caged beast, waiting for his chance to once again be released into the wild. His partner, Det. Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell), is more interested in getting some paperwork done. That is, when he’s not being tricked into discharging his weapon in the workplace (fictitiously known as an “office pop”) or listening to the mellow strains of the Little River Band.

As you might have guessed, fate will soon drag these two cops into a whole mess of trouble involving a corrupt British businessman (Steve Coogan), an Australian mercenary (Ray Stevenson), an assortment of international killers, and a surprisingly hot Anne Heche. And like any good cop movie, the mismatched partners will slowly find themselves reaching an understanding. Ain’t formula grand?

Like most Ferrell films, the laughs come from an unusual blend of physical humor and downright bizarre dialogue. These aren’t your average sitcom jokes, folks. In under two hours, the film carefully examines the potential outcome of a vendetta between lions and salmon, discusses the after-effects of homeless people having an orgy in a Prius (referred to as a “soup kitchen”), and looks back at Det. Gamble’s dark days as a pimp named “Gator.”

Ferrell plays the part of Gamble with more control than many of his previous roles, only occasionally letting the inner madman peek out from behind his dull, nice guy exterior. Most of the emotion and cop posturing is left to Wahlberg as Hoitz, a self-described peacock who just wants to fly. He pulls it off with little effort, even introducing a few nimble ballet moves in the process.

The likable supporting cast includes a number of side-splitting turns from familiar faces. Eva Mendes is Gamble’s sexy wife, who he refers to as “the ‘ol ball and chain,” and Steve Coogan is the slimy Brit who bribes by reflex. But the highlight has to be Michael Keaton as Captain Mauch, a cop working a second job at Bed, Bath, and Beyond in order to allow his son to attend NYU and explore his bisexuality. Mauch is also prone to end his sentences with lyrics from TLC songs. While the majority of the rural Texas audience I saw the film with were mystified by who TLC were (sorry, Chilli), this only made the experience twice as amusing.

And let’s not forget about Johnson and Jackson as the larger-than-life Danson and Highsmith. Flashing their ultra-white smiles and plenty of blue steel, they careen through the city wreaking havoc and becoming legends in the process. Jackson looks as though he pulled his Shaft wardrobe out of the closet for this one, while Johnson seems more at home than in his previous kiddie-oriented films. Their exit comes all too soon, and I couldn’t help leaving the theater wishing for a prequel focusing on these two 1980’s buddy cop stereotypes.

If you’ve ever seen a Will Ferrell movie, you’ve got an idea of what to expect. In this case, however, throw in an extra helping of explosions and gunplay, as well as the deadpan charm of Mark Wahlberg. The next time you’re looking for a 2010 cinematic police officer to keep you entertained, pass right by the offices of Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson), Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis), and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan). Down at the end of the hall you’ll find The Other Guys; they may well be the most entertaining cops to come along all year.