Thursday Movie Picks: Starring Real Life Couples

All Eyez on Me

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

Directed by Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath, and Conrad Vernon.

2012. Rated PG, 93 minutes.

Cast:

Ben Stiller

Chris Rock

Jada Pinkett Smith

David Schwimmer

Sacha Baron Cohen

Bryan Cranston

Cedric the Entertainer

Jessica Chastain

Frances McDormand

Martin Short

Andy Richter

Chris Miller

The crew, once again led by Alex (Stiller), is still trying to get back to New York City. This time, sadistic French Animal Control specialist Captain Chantel DuBois (McDormand) is hot on their tail. She desperately wants Alex’s head on her already cluttered wall. In trying to escape, our heroes find themselves joining a circus traveling across Europe. As luck would have it, there is a big promoter coming to their next show. If all goes well, he’ll pick them up and, yes, send them to New York. There’s just one little hitch, well two hitches: the show sucks and Captain DuBois is relentless.

Though our core group works through the main plot, newer characters are given ample time to shine. Bryan Cranston’s grumpy Russian tiger, Vitaly, is particularly fun. He gives us a nice opposing viewpoint to Stiller’s eternally optimistic Alex. In turn, his story and the resulting character arc are the most genuinely heartfelt in the movie. This emotion is perfectly counterbalanced by him having the most preposterous ability. It all combines to make him the most intriguing of the newbies. The others are fun, and we spend lots of time with the budding romance between Alex and Gia (Chastain), another Russian tiger.

The alumni fits comfortably into their roles. More or less, they’re tasked with keeping the laughs going. At this, they do a nice job. However, they might be trumped by another newbie – Captain DuBois. Honestly, Frances McDormand could not play the role any better. This is a movie that understands it’s only as good as its villain. It’s got a good one. Right from the start, her maniacal pursuit hits all the right notes.

There are issues. Most noticeably, things sag a bit in the middle as all the different subplots play out. I know what I said, that everyone getting time to shine is a good thing, because it is, but from time to time it can be too much. This gives Madagascar 3 a bit of a cluttered feel. It has to work pretty hard to pull all the plot strands together. It manages well enough and ends up being a solid ride.

MY SCORE: 7/10

The Women

The Women
2008. Rated PG-13, 114 minutes.
Director: Diane English.
Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen, Carrie Fisher, Cloris Leachman.

Plot: When Mary (Ryan) finds out her husband is cheating on her with perfume sales clerk Crystal (Mendes), her friends and her mom try to guide her through the tough times. Remake of the 1939 film of the same name.

The Good: We have a cast of rom-com all stars giving it their melodramatic best. Each of the ladies makes the most of what their roles have to offer. The pacing and humor are major plusses. It's not fall-off-your-chair funny but it does elicit some laughs. Combine that with a script that pluckily pushes us along from one girl talk scene to the next and you get a fairly quick moving affair (I know, bad pun given the movie's premise). Also a number of recognizable, some even iconic, actresses turn up in bit parts including Cloris Leachman, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen, Carrie Fisher and Debi Mazar.

The Bad: What starts off as a daring artistic choice ends up gimmicky and frustrating. That choice is deciding to not have any males in the movie. In a movie centered around a crumbling marriage, its hard to come off as anything other than man-bashing when it refuses to even show a man. There aren't even any male extras (more on that in a moment). This is illuminated most when you think about Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith). Putting aside the reality that she comes off like a token black, we see she's also the surrogate man. She has what could be a man's name, she's a lesbian so she's obviously into women, a bit of a slacker who parties too much and is generally straight-forward with her views. She is every bit an attempt to give male viewers someone to relate to. And she also helps maintain the ladies only motif by taking our crew to an all-lesbian restaraunt. This scene and the street scenes are filled with beautiful female extras (told you I'd get back to this) and appear solely as an effort to hold guys' attention. The same seems true for the casting of Mendes who's part could've been played by any number of starlets. However, by not having any males at all to project onto we get a strange phenomena. Men in the audience feel attacked and female viewers can only unsatisfyingly beat up a faceless enemy. Well, in the end (spoiler?) there is one male character shown but it feels like a slap in the face. It's like the filmmakers telling us "This is all you get, now be happy with it."

The Ugly: This is a completely different movie if our girls pick somewhere else to get their nails done.

Recommendation: This is pretty much for fans of rom-coms. Once you peel back the complicated layers you'll see its the same old stuff Ryan, Messing and the rest have been doing for years. The difference is that those other movies make men caricatures and have them follow the same developmental arc while this one dispenses with them completely and doesn't even pretend to care to give them a chance to put in their two cents. This is interesting at first, but wears thin about halfway through.

The Opposite View: Bob Bloom, Jounal and Courier (Lafayette, IN)

What the Internet Says: 4.8/10 on imdb.com (5/22/09), 13% on rottentomatoes.com, 27/100 on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 5/10