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Cinema
Releases - February 9, 2001
The Adventures of Rocky
and Bullwinkle
***
Certificate U. 88 minutes. Directed by Des
McAnuff. Written by Kenneth Lonergan from characters created by Jay Ward.
Starring Piper Perabo, Robert De Niro, Rene Russo, Jason Alexander; with
the voices of June Foray, Keith Scott.
Dude, Where's My
Car?
***
Certificate 15. 82 minutes. Directed by Danny
Leiner. Written by Philip Stark. Starring Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott,
Jennifer Garner, Marla Sokoloff, Kristy Swanson.
Remember the
Titans
***
Certificate PG. 113 minutes. Directed by Boaz
Yakin. Written by Gregory Allen Howard. Starring Denzel Washington, Will
Patton, Wood Harris, Ryan Hurst, Donald Adeosun Faison.
In these dark, dreary years after the great "Pulp
Fiction" (1994), referential humour has become one helluva cliché.
Here is something to restore delight. "The Adventures of Rocky &
Bullwinkle" is a kids' movie with intelligence and life, and although
kids may not get a lot of the jokes, they should respond to its obviously
anarchic spirit, colourful look and general energy.
Based on a popular American TV show from the 1960s,
the film places animated figures in live action settings to follow a cartoon
moose and squirrel fighting a human criminal mastermind. The plot involves
Rocky and Bullwinkle being yanked out of 'the land of reruns' and placed
into the real world to fight their nemesis, a cackling, barnacled ex-cartoon
named Fearless Leader (Robert De Niro), who is hatching a diabolical plan
to hypnotise the world with RBTV -- Really Bad Television!
There is social satire here, as well as cultural
reference and showbiz in-joking, all done with a lightness of touch; but
what's really charming about the picture is its lack of boundaries... The
voice-over makes random switches in tone from narration to commentary; the
narrator talks to the audience, the characters and himself; the characters
mock their own bad jokes. The figures onscreen even play with special effects
devices, as in a chase scene where the characters' movements are being tracked
by an Indiana Jones-style map, and the villains cheat by jumping out of reality
and onto the map.
Rocky and Bullwinkle are loveably goofy heroes,
the human villains are so deliberately cheesy I found myself compelled to
laugh, and to avoid things from going so off the rails that we give up caring,
there's a nicely grounded and sincere performance by Piper Perabo, the beauty
from "Coyote Ugly", as an FBI agent helping our cartoon friends out. This
is a surprisingly refreshing piece of work.
.
An altogether different kind of comedy is
"Dude, Where's My Car?". The title pretty much says it all
-- it's a goofy pic about two couch potatoes looking for their automobile
after waking upside down covered in pizza with no memory of the drunken night
before. These are not intelligent guys; they wander round gormless most of
the time, they let tasks like taking the garbage out end up in slapstick
catastrophe, and, as the already famous tattoo scene from the movie's trailer
suggests, the key words in their vocabulary are "dude" and
"sweet".
In searching for the car, Jesse (Ashton Kutcher)
and Chester (Seann William Scott) run across sexy aliens offering to give
them oral pleasure in return for a machine they don't know anything about
that's supposed to be able to destroy the galaxy, transvestite strippers,
a cult of nerds in elastic uniforms, a stoned dog and infuriating fast food
vendors. These elements could of course make a bizarre comedy of genuine
class, like Martin Scorsese's "After Hours", but "Dude, Where's My Car?"
is satisfied being dumb and obvious. Its retarded heroes and the cheesy movie
surrounding them even reminded me of "A Night at the Roxbury", but this flick
isn't annoying like that one because it's sunnier, happier, has an easier
layout, and, right from the amazingly cheesy opening credits, is forthright
about its lack of craftsmanship. It's not too smart, but if you're in an
undiscerning mood, it is dopey fun.
.
I was also pleasantly surprised by "Remember
the Titans", set in 1971 -- the year Virginia high schools abolished
segregation of black and white institutions -- and telling the story of the
state's first integrated high school football team.
From the ads I expected that there'd be perfunctory
bickering between the different races, before the game brought them together
and paved the way for an ending of phoney sentimental speechmaking about
brotherhood… and there are hints of that trajectory, but wisely the
film makes the team's coach, played strongly by Denzel Washington, the dominant
force over the drama, making it less about huge divisions drifting away magically
than about an authority figure pushing these boys so hard they have no choice
but to work together over prejudices they don't have much conviction in anyway.
This was 1971, after all, not the 1950s, and the tides had already done a
lot of turning.
There are a couple of artificially executed
manifestations and expressions of racism towards the beginning of the movie,
and a sappy later scene in a hospital where a white kid who has just been
in a car crash starts talking about love for his black brothers when he should
be talking about his busted legs. But generally this is a skilful film, subtle
as can be expected from a major studio, with involving, detailed
characterisations, and the best kind of tear-jerking moments -- those that
earn the right to be there.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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