Review of 0.45 (2006) by Fascade F — 06 Jun 2007

Some of the lighter fare I saw recently was a bit disappointing, for instance I can't speak too highly of [i]Happy Feet[/i], which I saw because of its Oscar and BAFTA wins but found competent but uninspiring, at least to anyone outside the target audience of children. The much decried environmental message was kind of a weird left turn two thirds of the way into the movie, but is not so inconsistent with one of the primary themes of virtually every film dealing intimately with animals: the preservation of the wild. It was the top of the heap with [i]Cars[/i], [i]Monster House[/i], and [i]Flushed Away[/i] as competition, but it was no [i]Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit[/i]. Mike Judge's [i]Idiocracy[/i] is watchable and has some laughs, but isn't really sustainable and had me tuning out quite a bit after the first half hour. Luke Wilson is well cast as the straight man for an idiotic world, an everyman whose genius is retaining some small amount of common sense and belief in complexity in a world that has rejected books, and Maya Rudolph is an incredibly talented comedic performer. [i]Idiocracy[/i] could have benefited from a bit more of her and a lot less of Dax. The bit about Gatorade's aggressive marketing and merger policy leading to Gatorade replacing water in agriculture, because it has the electrolytes that plants need, that was hilarious, and encapsulates the film's entire theme, but this film needs something else to stretch that idea out over an hour and a half.

I also caught a couple more dramatic films, one thrown under the bus opening against [i]Spider-Man[/i], and the other skipping the theater altogether. [i].45[/i] is a grungy thriller about a low-life hustler Big Al (Angus MacFadyen) dealing in unregistered guns and stolen goods with his battered girlfriend Kat (Milla Jovovich). Kat inspires such competition over her fishnet clad figure from desperate would-be lovers amongst friends, acquaintances, and strangers of both genders that Big Al's jealous and violent temper is constantly on display, and after a particularly nasty beating, Kat finally finds a way to leave him, manipulating so many of her prospective lovers into a frenzy that she figures somebody has to come through for her and get rid of him. The horrific treatment of Kat, beaten and terrorized by her boyfriend, does go on so long and Mila Jovovich and Angus MacFadyen are so uncomfortably credible playing it out that it's a sickening lurch so early on that I found it maybe too hard to wash the taste out of my mouth and watch the rest of the film. I did enjoy a lot of the groundwork and dialogue, but the main plot and subplots sadly don't build to the climax they think they do, which is probably why it's a direct-to-video movie renting at McDonald's. At least it's good to know Stephen Dorff survived doing [i]Blade[/i] and that shitty knock-off of [i]The Ring[/i] where the mother of a little girl with hemophilia let her kid play in an abandoned factory all day.

The other dramatic film I alluded to, [i]Lucky You[/i], is Drew Barrymore's latest offering, for those of you keeping track, although it may have sat on a shelf for a few years, since it's set in 2003 and deals thematically with the rise of the internet players and amateurs in the world of poker, giving an alternate version of the 2003 World Series. It's a not a terrible film, about a self-destructive gambler trying to make an actual human connection, but succumbing to the temptation to use people and obsess over digging his way out of the shadow of his estranged father. I found it reasonably entertaining, but the primary appeal was the collection of pro poker players who round out all the gambling scenes, notably including Sam Farha who I always enjoy watching, and the unbelievable bets drawn from actual events in Vegas, like the challenge to run five miles, then play 18 holes of golf with no more 78 strokes, all in less than three hours. Not that bad, not that great, and sadly thrown under the bus opening against [i]Spider-Man[/i].

[i]Keeping Mum[/i] had enough prestigious comedic talent and naked, steaming barely legal breasts to garner my attention, and yet honestly this time it was the talent that got my attention, which is not always the case... as noted elsewhere, [i]The Dreamers[/i] is a fascinating film, but what spurred me to finally rent it wasn't Bernardo Bertolucci's direction of Michael Pitt. In [i]Keeping Mum[/i], Rowan Atkinson is an oblivious country priest with a bored, horny wife played by Kristin Scott Thomas, a horny, rebellious teenage daughter played by Tamsin Egerton, and Maggie Smith plays his new housekeeper who keeps killing people who annoy her. I've been impressed with Maggie Smith's impeccable comedic timing, and while I'm not a huge [i]Bean[/i] fan, some of Rowan Atkinson's work has been legendary. I generally enjoy Kristin Scott Thomas, and even Patrick Swayze's heavily made-up, fake-tan plaster-cast of a face, while frightening, suits the philandering golf pro he plays in this film. Owing to that, [i]Keeping Mum[/i] is generally amusing and pleasant, watchable if not memorable enough to recommend.

In short, [i].45[/i], [i]Lucky You[/i], and [i]Keeping Mum[/i] were all at least watchable if less than gripping, but [i]Happy Feet[/i] and [i]Idiocracy[/i] were not worth my time.