UNDERDOG - piss-poor live action kids flick

Despite featuring several very good actors (notably Peter Dinklage as the evil villain), Frederik du Chau's (RACING STRIPES) live action kids flick, UNDERDOG is a tedious watch. The concept, nicked from a 1960s network TV showm is that UNDERDOG is a genetically modified Superdog. The execution is lo-fi, lo-imagination, lo-laughs. The biggest problem is that the movie doesn't know whether it wants to be a scabrous spoof or not. Kids deserve better.

UNDERDOG was released in 2007 and 2008 and is available on DVD.

Kevin Smith retrospective - JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK (2001) - Affleck, you the *bomb* in Phantoms yo!

Jay: This isn't fair. We came to Hollywood, I fell in love. Fuckin', we got shot at, we stole a monkey, and I got punched in the motherfucking nuts by a guy named Cock-Knocker.
Banky: You know what? I feel for you boys, I really do, but Miramax - you know, Miramax Films - paid me a shitload of money for Bluntman and Chronic. So it occurs to me that people badmouthing you on some website, is NONE OF MY FUCKING CONCERN!
Silent Bob: Oh, but I think it is... We had a deal with you, on the comics remember, for likeness rights, and as we're not only the artistic basis, but also obviously the character basis, for your intellectual property, Bluntman and Chronic. When said property was optioned by Miramax Films, you were legally obliged to secure our permission to transfer the concept to another medium. As you failed to do that, Banky, you are in breach of the original contract, ergo you find yourself in a very actionable position.
Jay: Yeah.

After the religious satire cum road movie that was DOGMA, Kevin Smith kicked back with his highest-budget movie to date, JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. Although they are very different in tone and aspiration, the two movies actually share the same structure. After all, what is JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK if not a Hollywood satire cum road movie?

The plot of the movie is, once again, very simple. Jay and Silent Bob realise that Miramax is making a comic book movie based on characters based on Jay and Silent Bob. So they head to Hollywood to get their cut of the proverbial phat cash. Along the way they engage in a bunch of shenanigans that allow Kevin Smith to have a giant love-in with all his favourite actors. As such, any hope of actually satirising Hollywood is neutered. It's hard to land a sucker-punch when you're fisting the head of the studio.

For all that, JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is arguably more entertaining than DOGMA insofar as it panders to the fans' desire to be part of the "in-joke" and namecheck the cameos and movie references. Some of the skits are genuinely hillarious - not least the early scenes with Jason Lee in Brodie mode and later scenes with Jason Biggs. And, as far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much of Jason Mewes' inspired pot-head stylings. But, unlike MALLRATS, which is also a flawed but occasionally extremely funny movie, I haven't revisited JAY AND SILENT BOB in a long while. It's the classic problem with parodies - no matter how well done, they age horribly.

Or maybe I'm just playing into Smith's post-modern move with my rancid stylings?!*.

JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK was released in 2001 and 2002. It is available on DVD replete with extras.

*Banky: That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously. Stopping the flick isn't gonna stop that.

Kevin Smith retrospective - DOGMA (1999)

After CHASING AMY came Kevin Smith's most intellectually ambitious movie yet, DOGMA. The budget was back up to 10 mil and with it we got the same problem as with MALLRATS - poor quality professional actors unused to handling Kevin Smith's particular brand of dialogue. The bigger and more fundamental problem was that DOGMA was simply too ambitious a project - trying to satirise organised religion, specifically the Catholic Church and its apocryphal beliefs.

The plot is actually pretty simple. God speaks to an abortion clinic clerk and lapsed Catholic called Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) in the guise of Metatron - the voice of god (Alan Rickman). This sarcastic British angel tells Bethany to go to a church in New Jersey and stop two pissed off fallen angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) from bringing about Armageddon. Bethany will be helped by two prophets aka Jay and Silent Bob and will meet a muse (Salma Hayek), a disciple (Chris Rock), and various evil guys (Jason Lee et al).

The result is basically a road movie upon which Kevin Smith hangs various skits that expound upon his beef with organised religion. There are no great insights here - the usual teen angst stuff most Catholics go through - and for every clever gag that raises a laugh there are nine others that don't. (It's telling that the funniest line in the movie wasn't written by Smith but was ad-libbed by Chris Rock). There's just too much going on and too little feeling of a strong hand organising all the material. In addition, Smith isn't helped by a weak and uncharismatic centreal performance from his leading lady, or indeed minor players such as Hayek. Then again, it's hard to feel any sympathy for a man who casts Alanis Morisette as god.

What can I say? DOGMA is just a complete failure as a film, as far as I'm concerned. It was all the more disappointing because it was the first Kevin Smith film that I watched on the big screen - the brilliantly bizarre Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford. Still, I'd rather see a movie fail through vaulting ambition than through sterile cliche.

Bethany: Then - I don't mean to sound ungrateful - but what are you doing hanging around?
Jay: We're here to pick up chicks.
Bethany: Excuse me?
Jay: We figure an abortion clinic is a good place to meet loose women. Why else would they be there unless they like to fuck?

DOGMA played Cannes and Toronto 1999 and opened in 1999 and 2000. It is available on DVD.

Kevin Smith retrospective - CHASING AMY (1997) - Your mother is a tracer!

After the high profile flop of the 6 million dollar budgeted MALLRATS, Kevin Smith's next feature was a dialled back 250k drama called CHASING AMY. The limited budget may have caused producer Scott Mosier a head-ache but it enabled writer-director Kevin Smith to create a movie as funny as CLERKS but darker, more emotionally real, and more affecting. To this day, I think CHASING AMY is Smith's best film and also his most unique. It's his most profound and adult movie - the most bittersweet - the furthest away from the comic-book stylings of JAY AND SILENT BOB - and yet the movie most firmly embedded in the comic-book community. Once again, we're back to the paradoxes.

The movie could share the title of Simon Callow's autobiography, "Love is where it falls" - the story of a passionate friendship between a gay man and a straight woman. CHASING AMY is about a straight man called Holden (Ben Affleck) who has an affair with a lesbian woman called Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) invoking the jealousy of his apparently straight best friend Banky (Jason Lee.) The first half the film depicts Holden's attempt to persuade Alyssa to try a straight relationship. The second half depicts his attempts to reconcile himself with his best friend's feelings for him and his feelings of sexual inadequacy and latent prurience when confronted with Alyssa's sexual past. The movie shows real insight and bravery in dealing with slippery sexual (and indeed racial) politics. It has its moments of real emotional intensity - the declaration of love by Holden to Alyssa is beautifully written - but it also manages to avoid any mawkish sentimentality, especially in its brilliantly ambiguous ending. At the same time, the movie is as brutally, honestly funny as anything Kevin Smith has ever written - and best of all, the comedy is grounded in real life rather than relying on ludicrous and implausible situations.

For me CHASING AMY is the perfect Kevin Smith movie. It's laugh-out-loud funny, but we're laughing at real situations. It's emotionally involving without being hokey. It's speaks honestly about sex and love. And if Ben Affleck struggles at times with Kevin Smith's dialogue and the weight of the emotion he has to portray, this is more than compensated for by the strong central performances from Joey Lauren Adams and Jason Lee and from Dwight Ewell's scene-stealing supporting role as the camp, militant comic book creator, Hooper:

Hooper: Always some white boy gotta invoke the holy trilogy. Bust this: Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!

Banky Edwards: What's a Nubian?

Hooper: Shut the fuck up! Now... Vader, he's a spiritual brother, y'know, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he's gonna run the fuckin' universe; gets a whole clan of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader's hood, the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that?

Banky Edwards: Intergalactic civil war?

Hooper: Gentrification! They gon' drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote, unquote, safe for white folks. And Jedi's the most insulting installment! Because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin' to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!

Banky Edwards: Well, isn't that true?

CHASING AMY played Sundance 1997 and was released over the next few years. It won a Special Recognition prize from the National Board of Review, and Jason Lee and Kevin Smith won Independent Spirit Awards for their acting and writing respectively. It's available on DVD.

Kevin Smith retrospective - MALLRATS (1995) - I love the smell of commerce in the morning!

After the dream-come-true distribution deal for CLERKS, Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier were given a bigger (remember the base level) budget and professional actors for their full colour follow-up MALLRATS. The basic concept was the same - a day in the life of two best friends talking about sex, bumping into old high school friends, and getting up to shenanigans. Both have gone to the local mall to try and win back their respective girlfriends who are tired of their slacker antics. 

There are two problems with MALLRATS. First, it's just not as tightly scripted as CLERKS - both in terms of the individual scenes of dialogue and in terms of the way in which the scenes stitch together to form the film. Without the constant on-the-button black humour the ludicrous events in MALLRATS seem, well, just ludicrous. There are no earthy insights to pin them down to reality or to make us care. The two lead characters - Brandi and T.S. are earnest but dull and there isn't a rich deck of minor characters to distract us from that. Finally there are no deep emotional insights - no sense of catharsis - as at the end of CLERKS. CLERKS was crude but also clever. MALLRATS is just a low-rent teen sex-comedy.

The second big problem with MALLRATS is that the acting is almost universally terrible. Admittedly, the acting sucked in CLERKS but that just made it seem more charming. On the other hand, you don't shell out money to see professional actors - Shannen Doherty, Claire Forlani, Jeremy London - three out of the four lead actors - uttering lines with all the feeling of my coffee table. 

For all that, I still watch MALLRATS, though less often than CLERKS. I watch it mainly for Jason Lee's performance as Brodie, the smart-talking Randal Graves-esque side-kick to the hero, T.S. and for the occasional flashes of brilliance that were so evident for the full run-time of CLERKS. And let's face it, even a bad Kevin Smith movie is still funnier and more original than most generic teen comedies out there.

T.S. Quint: How is it that I go from the verge of hot Floridian sex with Brandi to man of steel coital debates with you in the food court? 

Brodie: Cookie stand isn't part of the food court. 

T.S. Quint: Of course it is. 

Brodie: The food court is downstairs. The cookie stand is upstairs. It not like we're talking quantum physics here. 

T.S. Quint: The cookie stands counts as an eatery, eateries are part of the food court. 

Brodie: Bullshit. Eateries that operate within the designated square downstairs count as food court. Anything outside, of said designated sqaure, counts as an autonomous unit for mid-mall snacking.  

MALLRATS went on release in 1995 and 1996 and is available on DVD but without the fanfare, whistles and bells of the CLERKS ten year anniversary re-release.

A GUY THING - disposable rom-com

Disposable, bland, rom-com, that tries so hard for every character to be nice and earnest that no-one's interesting. Jason Lee is ironed out into a decent guy called Paul who just happens to sleep with his fiancee's cousin on his stag night. Except that he didn't really, because that's how nice he is: they just passed out. The lovely fiancee, Karen (Selma Blair), is always a hair's breath away from finding out the messy truth, but fate always lets Paul off the hook. All of which leads to a stagey denouement in which Paul has to summon the balls to tell Karen that he's really in love with kooky Becky (Julia Stiles, who really cannot play kooky). It's all very, very unfortunate.

A GUY THING was released in 2003 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

There's just no escaping the fact that ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS are cute!

What can I say? This is a pretty formulaic kids morality tale. Cute little chipmunks land in the house of a failed song-writer called Dave. He provides them with a hit song and a father figure. They provide him with the motivation to take responsibility for his life and get the cute girl next door. Along the way an evil record producer tries to intervene, taking the Chipmunks away from Dave on a world tour in which, horror of horrors!, they lipsynch. It's all pretty shameless stuff - especially the bit where a big Hollywood studio has the temerity to mock the record industry. And Jason Lee is hopelessly upstaged and out-acted by his furry friends, of whom Justin Long is the only well-known voice-artist. Still, for all that, you can't deny that when those wonderfully CGI-rendered chipmunks start singing, they're cute as hell!

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS was released for Christmas 2007 and is available on DVD.

UNDERTOW - There are some things we just don't need to see

Josh Lucas mud-wrestling a squealing pig, his pale ass-cheeks wobbling over the top of his muddy britches. No, sir. We also do not need to see inferior remakes of cinematic classics, no matter what the pedigree of the director. No matter how impressive David Gordon Green's first two films were, there is no excuse for this blatant rip-off of The Night of the Hunter. In this version, Dermot Mulroney plays John Munn, the father of two kids, living in the backwoods of Georgia in savage conditions. One day his younger brother Deel Munn, played by Josh Lucas, shows up. He's after some old Mexican coins that Mulroney inherited from his father. This being one of Green's trademark "Southern Gothic" flicks, the fight for the coins soon turns violent. So the two kids abscond, chased by their sinister, murdering Uncle. Now, despite my deep scepticism as to the point of remaking (broadly speaking) The Night of the Hunter, there is a lot to like about UNDERTOW. Apart from Josh Lucas, the cast is outstanding. In particular, Jamie Bell and Devon Alan are captivating as the two young Munn boys. The evocation of mood - from photography to Philip Glass' score - is also first class. However, whenever Josh Lucas appeared on screen I was totally taken out of the movie thanks to his hammy over-acting. He plays menacing by opening his eyes *really* wide and getting all shouty in the manner of Al Pacino's more hammy performances. And when he starts on his sinister rampage he just reminded me of Jason Lee in My Name is Earl. And that's about as menacing as the English pace attack. (i.e. not very.) To sum up, there are worse looking films out on DVD this week, but I doubt if any are more frustratingly mis-cast.

UNDERTOW screened at London 2004 and went on limited release in the UK last autumn. It was released on DVD yesterday.