Julia

Julia (1977) explores the dubious friendship of playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) and her eponymous childhood friend Julia (Vanessa Redgrave). (It's disputed that Julia even existed.) According to Hellman, Julia fought against the Nazis, and even roped Hellman into her cause by having her smuggle money from Paris to Berlin (in a drawn-out but tense sequence on a train). It’s hard to imagine this is the same actress that gave such a groundbreaking performance as the worldly wise call girl Brie in 1971’s Klute. It’s not that Fonda is bad, but she spends most of the time taking orders from other people and acting mildly nervous. The only life in her performance comes when we see her as Hellman the tormented playwright, pounding away at the typewriter to no avail. (In one scene she even chucks it out the window in a fury of writer’s block.) She's also pretty good in the last act, when she's given a little bit more of an active role in her movie. (It's not called Lillian for a reason: this movie is about one person's obsession with another person. But I don't mean to use that word in a suggestive or sensationalistic way. And the film dances around suggesting that Julia and Lillian's friendship was something deeper.) Fonda gives the same tense, uptight performance she would later reuse in 9 to 5, when she was clearly upstaged by the sharp Lily Tomlin and the bubbly Dolly Parton. In Julia there’s no one to upstage her. Everyone is deadly serious because this is a serious movie about a lot of serious themes. The tasteful direction of Fred Zinneman—from a script by Alvin Sargent—is fine, but nothing in Julia really stands out. Fonda narrates, breathing mournful intonations over Zinneman's camera. The scenes, which are well-constructed, aren’t vivid or powerful, and given the subject matter, Julia should have been more affecting. It’s also not particularly strong as a study of a friendship, as it purports to be. We’re never sure why Lillian and Julia are friends: Julia seems to put up with Lillian, whose worship of Julia doesn’t transcend to the level of an equal. And Vanessa Redgrave, who’s a fine actress, doesn’t do much to warrant the Academy Award she got from this. Some of the flashback scenes of the girls wandering the English countryside are attractively done, even haunting, but they don’t linger either. The film is haunting too, but it feels incomplete, dramatically undercooked. With Jason Robards as Dashiell Hammett (Hellman’s long-time beau), Maximilian Schell, Hal Holbrook, Rosemary Murphy, John Glover, and, in her first film, Meryl Streep.

This Is Where I Leave You

Although there are moments when This Is Where I Leave You is charming, funny, interesting, even poignant, it’s generally a mess. In fact the movie is such a mess that it's tempting to think that the makers confused narrative drama with dramatic structure, and therefore found it perfectly natural to let the structure be as loose as everything else in the movie. There are insane things that happen in this movie, and they seem to be happening for the sheer insanity of it. It’s about four adult siblings who come together after the death of their father. The matriarch—played by Jane Fonda—gathers them together in her large New England home for Shiva, the seven-day period in the Jewish faith during which family members officially mourn the passing of a loved one.

The film has an attractive cast: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard, Ben Schwartz, and of course the great Jane Fonda. But in order to have so many big names and big stars, you need a lot of big parts. And that’s probably where This Is Where I Leave You loses its way. It has too many characters, all of whom are required to have multiple scenes of inner-crises spilling out into the open.

For instance, Jason Bateman’s character, Judd, who walks in on his wife and his boss during a vigorous round of love-making in his own bed. (The wife later finds out she’s pregnant, but that it’s Judd’s baby, not the boss’s.) Wendy (Fey) is the bossy big sister who possesses a sometimes charming, sometimes grating, know-it-all quality. She too has problems: namely a husband who’s too busy with work to pay attention to his wife and children. Paul (Stoll) is the responsible eldest sibling. He and his wife Anne (Kathryn Hahn) are having trouble conceiving. And then there’s Philip (Driver), the baby sibling who never grew up. The actors are adept enough to make it work at least half the time, but these are pretty tried-and-true character types torn right out of the pages of a sitcom script.

That’s another problem. This is a sitcom comedy-drama movie, and it represents an increasingly distinct genre of films that typically have mixed results. They do give traditionally comedic actors a chance to cry on screen and look puffy and unattractive. And, like any well-behaved sitcom, the serious moments are always punctuated with something funny. It’s not wrong to do that, but it also seems sort of cheap to stifle every dramatic moment with an easy laugh (frequently derived from Jane Fonda’s enormous breast implants, which trigger intense anxiety in all of her children, especially as she presses their faces against her plastic bosoms while consoling them, as she is wont to do). Then again, these dramatic moments aren’t so important or revealing or original that they can’t be improved with a little comedy.

Actually, the saving grace in this film is the dippy character played by Rose Byrne. She’s a girl from Judd’s past, and their relationship is rekindled in the usual ways you expect from this kind of thing: boy meets girl, boy remembers girl from adolescent years, boy and girl have good memories of each other, boy shows up at girl’s work—a skating rink—where they skate and talk while Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” spills over them from the speakers above. It’s not a particularly original romance, but it’s sort of enchanting to see Jason Bateman and Rose Byrne just hanging out, especially when the rest of the movie feels like a competition to see how many problems can be crammed into two hours of film.

This Is Where I Leave You isn’t really offensive in its quest to be the latest dramedy (or a light-hearted version of August Osage County), but it is disappointing. The director, Shawn Levy, and the screenwriter, Jonathan Tropper (who adapted his own novel), seem to be clutching at fragments of two different genres and then cramming them onto the same canvas. It helps if you’re a fan of Jason Bateman and Tina Fey, although it may not help to see them wasted in middling material. But Bateman carries the film well, and Fey is capable of real pathos. It’s perhaps most depressing to see Jane Fonda turning such tricks in a movie theater. She’s funny, but she hardly gets to do anything that isn’t surface-level, lowest common denominator humor.

Adam Driver has probably the most appealing part, but then that makes sense: he’s the stereotypical fun-loving youngest sibling, the one who’s also a perpetual screw-up. And of course, he’s vested with lots of unintentional bits of wisdom, all of them obliviously aimed at teaching the other siblings that their lives are just as messy as his. But if the film weren’t so careful in its adherence to certain character types, it might be funnier, more inventive. As it is, it’s a predictable, sometimes even boring, family drama that’s bolstered by the appeal of its considerable talent.

The Butler

Surely we all know that the words "inspired by a true story" are themselves a kind of fiction when it comes to the movies. And yet many of us take things in movies as though they were courtroom documents, or "as trustworthy as the world almanac," to quote Bette Davis's character in All About Eve. Movies, of course, are master manipulators. That's one of their basic charms, and I generally don't hold their fudging against them in the slightest. But Hollywood's penchant for revising history does mean that viewers have to be able to separate fact from fiction, and it's rather bewildering that some people continue to accept movies as reliable sources. When it comes to details, they usually aren't. They're product designed to elicit emotions from our hearts and minds and money from our wallets. But in terms of getting the mood of a period and having it register in our minds, movies can be quite powerful and accurate. It is in this way that I think The Butler generally succeeds, especially where it lacks in getting certain details right. (This is to say that the screenwriters of The Butler deliberately altered things for their own dramatic purposes; not that they were bad historians.)

The Butler is hugely entertaining for what it is: a big movie with big emotions that tells a sweeping narrative of the last fifty years of American public life, looking specifically at the Civil Rights movement and a humble butler who serves seven U.S. presidents. His name in the movie is Cecil Gaines (the real man was named Eugene Allen), and he's played by Forest Whitaker. Whitaker plays Cecil with grace and patience. Enough grace and patience that his son sort of rebels, joining with the ranks of Martin Luther King and then later the Black Panthers because he feels that immediate action--not quiet reserve--is needed to facilitate cultural change.

Just a few mythbusters and then I'll move away from my "based on a true story" rant. Eugene Allen had one son, not two, and his son was neither a civil rights activist like the elder son in the movie nor a Vietnam vet like the younger one. Allen also started working at the Whitehouse earlier than the movie claims (but not as a butler, and not as head butler until 1981, five years before his retirement in 1986, which is one of the few correct claims the movie makes.) One of the most calculating changes that the filmmakers make comes in the son, Louis, who happens to be present during virtually every significant moment in the Civil Rights movement, including the Freedom Riders bus ride through Alabama (the one where they're attacked by a seething mob of KKK and non-KKK racist nutjobs) and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Then he even becomes a Black Panther (briefly). It seemed too Forrest Gump-ish to me. (Forrest, you remember, seemed to witness an incredulous number of cultural and historical moments.)

The film very obviously tries to juxtapose Cecil Gaines--who does what is expected of him very well, and considers this a subtle contribution to the march for equality--and his son Louis--who's fed up with being subservient to snooty white racists and wants change. It allows the movie to have some kick to it, even if this kind of plotting feels too convenient. Moreover, the differences between the two men really put Forest Whitaker in the background of his own movie. His is not the face I see as I think about The Butler. I see Louis, I see the cartoonish representations of the U.S. Presidents (from Eisenhower to Reagan, but skipping Ford and Carter), and I see Oprah.  (There is, however, real passion and command inside of Forest Whitaker, and he's able to get some of that out in the second half of the movie.) Given the film's colorful array of characters, it's really an unfair disadvantage.

Those presidents are something else. Robin Williams plays Eisenhower; James Marsden, JFK; Liev Schreiber, LBJ, John Cusack, Nixon; and Alan Rickman, Reagan. (Jane Fonda also makes a cameo appearance as Nancy Reagan.) They're quite an impressive group of actors, and even if their impressions don't always work, they're fascinatingly gauche and/or dead-on. Marsden is surprisingly good as JFK; Rickman really nails Reagan; and Cusack is creepily off-kilter yet somehow right as Nixon. (There's also the added pleasure of seeing LBJ scream at his subjects while on the toilet, with the bathroom door wide open.)

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the performance of Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines, Cecil's devoted wife. Oprah's performance is wonderful, and makes you wish she did more movies. Gloria is a boozing but still loving wife, and Oprah's performance brings a lot of humor to the movie that it desperately needs. The Butler isn't a downer (although it's infuriating at times to see how awful black people were treated at this time, and may still be treated today in certain circles), but it is more than a bit self-important. Oprah, who often comes off as self-important when she's giving away free cars to every person in her audience, here appears grounded and real in a way that is vital to the success of this movie. She's also a great balance to the measured, polite character of Cecil. Gloria doesn't care about pleasing people. Yet she's not brash or obnoxious, and her support of her husband is quite touching at times.

Viewers are likely to walk away from The Butler with a sugar-coated lie in their heads. Now that we've got a black president, it's all good. Racism against black people in America is over. (The movie doesn't do anything to counter this.) And what's more, The Butler has spent two hours showing us the general failings of U.S. presidents, only to rejoice in a kind of enchanted, unrealistic way at the election of a black one. President Obama's election was a big deal, of course, in a symbolic way, but the reality of being a president is a lot more complicated and unflattering for anyone who's tasked with the job. (And for the record, it's always been this way. Presidents rarely get something done quickly, for better or worse.) The Butler isn't interested in showing us that. I'm content with the movie as it is, but I worry that some of its sloppiness will eventually be used in classrooms as pure fact.

9 to 5

9 to 5 was one of the movies I watched incessantly as a child. What red-blooded American boy wouldn't want to watch a workplace comedy about three secretaries played by Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Fonda? Watching it now, I'm apt to be a bit more critical of it, but it's very hard not to like the three leads, who work well together. If you're even remotely aware of movie history from about 1968 to 1979, you'd be surprised to see Jane Fonda, the Oscar-winning star of Klute and The China Syndrome, and, for a time, the most hated celebrity in America (because of her anti-Vietnam sentiments and her subsequent journeys to Hanoi in the early 70s), so subdued, so easily forgotten amidst her co-stars. Surely no actress was more capable of making a big impression in a movie about women's rights than Jane Fonda.

Fonda gets overshadowed by Lily Tomlin,
who has an amazing air of confidence when it comes to doing funny scenes, and she seems to be completely in touch with her character and her character's frustrations about having to deal with a sleazy boss, Mr. Hart (Dabney Coleman), who passes her up for a promotion in favor of a man with less experience. Fonda is pinched and cold and unappealing until her character loosens up mid-way through, but even then she's already established as sort of the drag of the three. Dolly Parton, in her film debut, has a natural amiability that shines through her performance as Hart's good-natured assistant. Unbeknownst to her, Hart's been spreading rumors about them, and she has accrued the reputation of "office slut."


One problem is that most of 9 to 5's comic suspense is generated by a very contrived, easily avoided, mistake. (This was something that rendered the more recent comedy The Hangover absolutely ineffectual as a believable comedy.) Tomlin's character accidentally puts poison in Mr. Hart's coffee (the box oh-so-closely resembling his favorite artificial sweetener), and when he falls and hits his head, she mistakenly assume he's been poisoned by the loaded beverage, and proceeds to steal a corpse, which believes to be that of Mr. Hart, from the hospital. She ropes the other two girls into her panicky misadventure, and this sets up the progression of the rest of the movie. There are funny moments, and as mentioned before, the three ladies are fun to watch, but all of this seems contrived, on a sitcom level. And there are so many ways 9 to 5 could have avoided such a mistake.

Nevertheless, it's a fun comedy that has found its way into the pop culture memory bank. At any rate, Parton's song, "9 to 5," is remarkably catchy and still fun to listen to, and she even adapted the film into a Broadway shot several years back. Directed by Colin Higgins. With Sterling Hayden, Elisabeth Wilson, Henry Jones, Lawrence Pressman, Marian Mercer, and Peggy Pope.