Thursday Movie Picks: Adaptations

Synecdoche, New York

Directed by Charlie Kaufman.
2008. Rated R, 124 minutes.
Cast:
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Samantha Morton
Michelle Williams
Catherine Keener
Tom Noonan
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Hope Davis

Caden (Hoffman) is a theater director who’s life is quite literally falling apart. After winning a prestigious grant he sets out to create the play of all plays using what eventually becomes a life-sized model of New York. Director/writer Charlie Kaufman is also the man who wrote Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and this is similarly odd in execution. We also get treated to another great performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. However, I must admit I’m a big fan of his. I’d probably enjoy him reading the phone book. Michelle Williams also does an excellent job as Caden’s second wife Claire, as does Tom Noonan as Sam, who gets hired to portray Caden in the play. Oh, and kudos to Kaufman for using women in his cast that look like, well, real women.

The problem is the movie is made up of metaphor upon metaphor upon metaphor upon…you get the point. What the directors (both the real one and his fictional counterpart) are trying to do is fairly simple but the method is ridiculously convoluted. Any tangible ideas are buried beneath mounds of symbolism. It’s a classic example of why great writers shouldn't necessarily direct their own screenplays. With no one to rein him in, it seems he took every “deep” idea that he had and threw it up on the screen. To top it all off, he completely failed with all those “real” looking women. The very basic question is why on Earth would seemingly every woman he comes into contact with, except first wife Adele (Keener), be madly in love with or be sexually attracted to this guy? Not only is he coming apart at the seams, both physically and emotionally, everyone can plainly see that he is. He's rather repulsive and doesn't exactly ooze sex appeal. Finally, I’m going to need someone smarter than me to explain the constant fire in Hazel’s (Morton) house.

Fans of the aforementioned Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind should give this a look. The truth is, even though I’m a big fan of both those movies maybe I just didn't get this one. You might, and hail it a great artistic achievement. For the rest of us, not so much. It’s definitely original and quirky, but often frustrating to watch.

American Splendor

Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini.

2003. Rated R, 101 minutes.
Cast:
Paul Giamatti
Harvey Pekar
Hope Davis
Joyce Brabner
Judah Friedlander
9Toby Radloff
James Urbaniak
Madylin Sweeten
Danielle Batone

When most of us think of comic books, we think of costumed heroes with super powers battling outlandish villains. Harvey Pekar, played by both Paul Giamatti and the real Harvey himself, this seemed to extremely limit the types of tales that could be told. He felt the possibilities would be infinite if storylines were more directly drawn from real life. With that in mind, he created “American Splendor,” a comic book series based on his own life. The “ripped from reality” principle is applied to this film. We weave in and out of fictionalized accounts of Harvey’s experiences and his own observations of them. It’s a viewing excursion different than most and superior to the few similarly styled movies I’ve come across. We first meet Harvey shortly before he hatched the idea for his own comic. Things unfold in an almost linear fashion up to and including the filming of this movie. This gives it a wonderfully self-aware quality that comes across as conversational and without the arrogances that seems to be inherent in most such films.

Visually, American Splendor is subtle, yet poignant. Harvey’s cluttered apartment is a perfect representation of the mind he’s able to pull his stories from. Many of the outdoor scenes have a chilly look to them, mirroring his normal disposition. This is interspersed with interviews of Real Harvey, as he’s listed in the credits, his wife Real Joyce (Brabner) and his buddy Real Toby (Radloff). In one brilliant shot we see the actors playing Harvey and Toby (Friedlander) taking a break in the background, completely out of character, while the genuine articles are talking to the camera. If there is one place the visuals falter, it’s in its depiction of Pekar’s final appearance as a guest on “The David Letterman Show.” We saw his first via a clip of the real thing. It’s seamlessly integrated into the film. For the last appearance, that technique is abandoned and we get Giamatti doing the scene. That wouldn’t be bad at all since he is quite good. However, having an actor play Letterman and only showing odd shots of the back of his head is jarring. It feels like a movie that’s been completely open about itself suddenly has something to hide.

Much of the humor is derived from Harvey’s social awkwardness. Despite this and his not-so-sunny demeanor the script, Giamatti’s performance and Real Harvey combine to endow the man with a weird sort of charm. For instance, the first thing he does after meeting Joyce (Davis) face to face for the first time is tell her he’s had a vasectomy. We laugh and wonder what she must be thinking. Still, it’s so typically Harvey that we understand. Essentially, that’s the overwhelming theme of AS. Regardless of all his idiosyncrasies, we wouldn’t have him any other way.

Real Steel

Directed by Shawn Levy.

2011. Rated PG-13, 127 minutes.
Cast:
Hugh Jackman
Dakota Goyo
Evangeline Lilly
Anthony Mackie
Kevin Durand
Hope Davis
James Rebhorn
Karl Yune
Olga Fonda

Charlie (Jackman) is a former prize-fighter who now makes his living in the world of robot boxing. Making a living is overstating things. Generally, he ducks the people he owes money to after whatever robot he’s picked off the scrap heap gets destroyed in a match. Along comes news that an ex-girlfriend, and mother of his child has passed away, leaving behind Max (Goyo), the son he’s abandoned. The kid’s wealthy aunt Debra (Davis) wants custody but needs Charlie to sign over his parental rights. Never one to miss an opportunity, Charlie brokers a deal with Deb’s husband Marvin (Rebhorn) to sell them his rights for a load of cash. One strange caveat to the deal: in order to keep Debra in the dark about the exchange of money, Charlie has to keep Max for a few weeks while his rich soon-to-be guardians are out of the country.

Once Max actually appears we know precisely how it will play out between him and his deadbeat dad. Ditto for Charlie and Bailey (Lilly) and their very PG love affair. The only possible surprise isn’t one if you’ve seen the trailer. It involves Atom, a seemingly inferior fighting robot with a very unique feature. Suffice it to say this part of the story is yet another re-working of Rocky. It comes complete with a physically superior champion and his villainous handlers.

If it isn’t obvious, there is pretty much no effort put into the plot. It’s completely perfunctory, taking no risks, holding no surprises nor posing any challenges. In a brief moment or two of artistic integrity, the filmmakers threaten to throw one wrinkle into things. We get a couple hints that there is more to Atom than meets the eye. Yes, the reference is intended. Anyhoo, they totally drop the ball on that idea to remain in the safety zone, give us more of the cheese borrowed from other cheesy flicks. In short, they want you to like this movie even though you’ve likely seen it quite a few times before.

Predictability be damned, there is only one real question to be answered: is Real Steel fun to watch. The answer is yes, in its own corny way. It moves at a brisk pace despite an unnecessarily bloated runtime of over two hours. It plays cute with the father/son angle and the final act contains lots more of the ‘bot fighting people likely come for. Jackman gives us Wolverine-lite, a less surly than the mutant and sans cigar. It’s a character we know and either somewhat like or somewhat dislike. The same can be said of Max and every other character in the film. By the way, Max is more of an adult than any of the other characters, too. Even my nine year old picked up on that. Max’s maturity aside, all of these people are just bland caricatures. They’re here to fill in the portions between fights not be too much of a distraction from them. The end result is an overwhelmingly OK movie that young boys will love watching with their dads. Boys of my age will wonder how it is possible that this isn’t called Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

MY SCORE: 5/10