Category Archives: Comedy

Life of Crime

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John Hawkes & Jennifer Anniston, Life of Crime

John Hawkes & Jennifer Anniston, Life of Crime

Netflixed this 2014 comedy (trailer), which slipped into and out of theaters this fall faster than a rumor. It’s based on Elmore Leonard’s novel, The Switch. Directed by Daniel Schechter, it features Jennifer Aniston (Mickey), Mos Def (Ordell), John Hawkes (Louis), and a strong supporting cast. (Several characters, including the two male leads were revisited in Quentin Tarantino’s considerably more violent Jackie Brown, based on another Elmore Leonard novel, Rum Punch.)

Much more The Ransom of Red Chief than Fargo, Life of Crime is about a kidnapping gone wrong. Louis and Ordell snatch trophy-wife Mickey only to find out her husband (Tim Robbins) is on the verge of divorcing her anyway. If they carry out their threats to kill her, they’ll save him millions in settlement costs.

Much of the humor comes from the bumbling characters who muddy the kidnappers’ scheme. They’ve sought the help of a Nazi-loving nut case (Mark Boone Junior) who has a spare room where they can stash Mickey, and she is pursued by a hapless and creepily smitten tennis club dad (Will Forte). The only sharp knife in the drawer is the husband’s new girlfriend (Isla Fisher), who’s just too smart for her own good. Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a 65 percent rating, with critics mostly objecting to low energy, lack of real menace, and perhaps the false expectation of Jackie Brown/Tarantino-style violence. Instead, the film is an “amiable diversion” with “ambling charm.”

(Trivia note: The title may have been changed from Leonard’s original because Aniston starred in a totally different comedy titled The Switch in 2010, and in an eruption of self-referential promotion, the DVD for Life of Crime included previews for both The Switch and Jackie Brown.)

Le Chef

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Le Chef, Michael Youn, Jean Reno

Jean Reno & Michael Youn in Le Chef

OK, so the critics didn’t much like this frothy French comedy (trailer) directed by Daniel Cohen, but the French can serve up a blundering wunderkind better than anyone else. Aspiring chef Jacky (Michaël Youn) is called in to save the day for the three-star wonder Alexandre Lagarde (Jean Reno), who may be on the verge of losing a coveted rating star and his restaurant in the bargain. There’s never a moment’s doubt how any of the plot lines of Le Chef will resolve, but it’s the whole meal that makes this movie fun.

It was released last summer in the United States around the same time as the American comedy Chef, which created some box office confusion. Sweet and light as a perfect dessert soufflé, this French offering is a good antidote to, say, the Nightly News. Curmudgeonly Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it a mere 48% rating, but audiences liked it more (59%). Said Moira MacDonald in the Seattle Times: Le Chef may not be a masterpiece, but it’s nonetheless a treat. Some days, that’s just right.

The Understudy

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JD Taylor, Adam Green, The Understudy, Theresa Rebeck, Adam Immerwahr, McCarter Theatre

JD Taylor & Adam Green in The Understudy (photo: McCarter Theatre)

An exciting opening night at McCarter Theatre on Friday, with the audience anticipating Theresa Rebeck’s knowing backstage comedy, The Understudy, and area fans awaiting the directorial debut of up-and-coming Adam Immerwahr, McCarter’s Associate Artistic Director. Adam’s fine work has been on stage at Trenton’s Passage Theatre, but this was the Big Time, on the big McCarter main stage. He pulled it off beautifully, in a production whose complexity, pre-show gossip said, required three tech rehearsals.

The conceit of the play is that a new Franz Kafka play has been discovered and is being produced on Broadway with two Hollywood action stars in lead roles (shades of the first season of Slings and Arrows, the hilarious Canadian series). The play opens with a literal bang, when unemployed but high-minded actor Harry (Adam Green) rushes on stage for a rehearsal, as he’s been cast as the understudy to the lesser of the Hollywood lights. Harry’s opening monologue—interspersed with bits from the Kafka play—shows all his disdain (“OK, I’m bitter”) for the star, his acting ability, and the film vehicle he just appeared in, for which he was paid more than $2 million. Harry fixates on this impossibly large sum with a shimmering mix of envy and pop-culture loathing.

The stage manager Roxanne (Danielle Skraastad) is a woman Harry was once engaged to but ran out on two weeks before the wedding—the wedding dress “still hangs in my closet. Like a wound.” The third character, the pretty-boy and somewhat dim star, Jake (JD Taylor), valiantly tries to explain Kafka and the deep significance of this new play. The cast is strong, with Green (who played Figaro last year) having a genius comic touch. The humor in Skraastad’s lines is limited to sarcasm, which she wields expertly. Taylor, too, plays his deceptively complex role so that the audience goes from laughing at his selfies and sense of entitlement to appreciating his vulnerabilities. We never see the stoner manning the light, sound, and set cues, who gets every one of them wrong, creating constant onstage turmoil (and requiring those three rehearsals).

The name of the fake Kafka is “The Man Who Disappeared.” It applies to both of the male characters, and is the one fact about Harry that is never out of Roxanne’s main line of sight. Harry describes a casting call experience where an assistant tells him, “No one will see you, you don’t exist.” Very Kafka, and very apt for all of them at one point or another. What the play shows is how they can exist for each other, at least for a few moments. Rebeck’s intimate knowledge of the theatre and its dilemmas is absolutely convincing, but the problem of “being seen” and heard applies to creative artists in general, to people in general, to all of us who’ve had the dream of going to an important meeting and . . . you . . . just . . . can’t . . . get . . . there.

The Trip to Italy

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Steve Coogan, Rob Bryden, Trip to Italy

Rob Bryden & Steve Coogan in The Trip to Italy (photo: sundance-london.com)

If you saw the well-received 2011 movie The Trip in which British comedians Rob Bryden and Steve Coogan (who surprised in his straight role as the journalist in Philomena) play themselves on a restaurant tour in northern England—neither one supposedly knowing a thing about haut cuisine—you know what to expect from The Trip to Italy (trailer). Both movies are edited versions of the pair’s television sitcoms, and both were directed by Michael Winterbottom. In Italy, they are doing the restaurant thing and pilgrimaging to places where the Romantic poets lived, died, and are buried.

Some critics prefer the earlier film, but I liked this one at least as well. For one thing, I knew not to feel like I’m on pause, waiting for the plot to start. There isn’t one. Or not much of one. In The Trip, the food scenes involved visiting posh restaurants with hushed, museum-like surroundings serving unbearably pretentious foams and essences and portions that might satisfy a wee fairy. It was funny, but it was more or less a single joke. Still, with these two, mealtime is never a bore. Coogan and Bryden make terrible scenes at every dinner, usually with their dueling impressions. In The Trip, there was a long hilarious sequence of each man’s “definitive” way to do Michael Caine at different ages. In The Trip to Italy, they take on a large cast, and we get The Godfather.

You have to listen closely because the jokes just keep coming, as the two plunge into various socially awkward situations, yet maintain a plausible fiction of two prickly friends on a simple driving tour. But beneath la dolce vita is a strong current of middle-aged angst and, as the movie progresses, an increasingly strong thrum of death—which culminates in visits to Pompeii and the giant ossuary that is Naples’s Fontanelle Cemetery caves. This juxtaposition sneaks up on you and makes their pursuit of life that much richer and more grounded. These aren’t just two overgrown showoffs on an expense account. Thankfully, Winterbottom has a light touch with all this, and you’ll walk away thinking you’ve seen a comedy. Rightly so.

The scenery alone is worth the price of the movie, and the glimpses of the Italian restaurant kitchens and their chefs at work—fantastico! I guarantee you’ll leave the theater wanting to drive right to the nearest restaurant—“how about Italian?” Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 87%.