Tammy

Tammy represents quite a lot of missed opportunities. It's a meandering comedy about a woman who would generally be described as "white trash" embarking on a road trip with her alcoholic grandmother. (Using Grandma's car and money.) The film opens with its star, the amiably blunt, unfettered, unashamedly not-all-together Melissa McCarthy, driving her beat-up green sedan down a narrow country road. She reaches in the back for something and careens right into a deer. Tammy gets out and crouches down, lovingly talking to the deer, patting it (dangerously near its impressive antlers) and praying it will get up and scamper off unscathed. When it does, it startles Tammy (laughter from the audience) and she happily watches it indeed walk away, unharmed by the collision. This scene is telling, because McCarthy usually acts like a stick of dynamite, and whenever a comic scene turns chaotic, she explodes. But here, as Tammy, McCarthy uses a little more restraint. She's not quite as profane as she was in The Heat. And she's not as worldly-wise as she was in Bridesmaids. But seeing Melissa McCarthy play a ne'er-do-well is kind of depressing. Perhaps because she's a regular person, so not Hollywood, it's been enjoyably surprising to see her play people who are capable and funny. Here she's funny because she's a putz.

Sadly, Tammy isn't the smashing comedy it could have been. This is almost exclusively the project of Melissa McCarthy and her husband, actor/director Ben Falcone. McCarthy produced the film, and the two of them wrote the screenplay. (Falcone appears here as the manager of a hamburger joint.) But neither of them seems sure of who or what Tammy is supposed to be. Is she the obnoxious perpetual screw-up of the first half of the film? If so, the film seriously errs when suddenly Tammy turns nice and gets cleaned up (thanks to her cousin Lenore, a rich lesbian full of homespun wisdom played by Kathy Bates, whose partner is played by the lovely Sandra Oh). McCarthy has scored a lot of points for being a blowsy wreck with a foul mouth. But I think the reason people fell in love with her as a performer was because she was an endearing oddity in Bridesmaids. She was the only character in that film who was brutally honest. Yet behind her honesty was love, not spite. Tammy is so much a caricature that when we get to the sweet side of her, it feels utterly manufactured. This character is a circus act, a "greatest hits" compilation of McCarthy's somewhat limited--although admittedly very funny at times--schtick.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so irritated with this movie if it weren't for the sheer waste of it. This film has in its cast, among others, Susan Sarandon, Allison Janney, Toni Collette, and Gary Cole. Yet the characters seem poorly thought out, particularly in terms of age. They cast Saradon, who's 67, as Tammy's grandmother (McCarthy is 43), Allison Janney, who's 54, as her mom. That shoddy math bugged me throughout the film because a mother-daughter movie would have worked just as well. Sarandon is too fresh, too strong of an actress, to play the feeble but feisty grandma. It's as if they wanted to go for the short, prunish old grandmother (played by Estelle Getty) from The Golden Girls but cast Bea Arthur to play her instead. Sarandon really doesn't get to do that much of interest here anyway. And despite the fact that she does a lot of immature things (flashing her breasts at a lesbian party, shacking up with a stranger she meets in a bar), it's very difficult to see her as Tammy's mom. They just don't seem remotely related to each other. As for actresses Allison Janney and Toni Collette, I have no idea why they agreed to make this film when they had absolutely nothing funny or interesting to do (especially Collette, who barely speaks). Perhaps it was a favor? Certainly a misuse of their considerable talents.

There's also a tedious love interest, played by Mark Duplass, who's probably the most uninteresting romantic lead I've seen in a long time. The film seems ready and willing to give Tammy a redemptive streak, yet it's not bold enough to give her a hunky Channing Tatum-ish star (or someone with more personality) as a boyfriend. Perhaps they thought a bland character would balance Tammy like mayo on a chili pepper. (I'm not sure that's actually a thing...) Duplass is just too boring, too neutral, too unoffensive. He tells Tammy that he's attracted to her because his life is boring and she's very not boring, and Tammy rightly makes fun of his poor complimenting skills. Why did the filmmakers think this would be good comedy? It's makes for a lot of dreary scenes between them both. Why didn't they just find Tammy some hunky Tab Hunter-esque actor the way John Waters did for Divine in Polyester?

Kathy Bates was the most likable character in this movie, and even Sandra Oh came off well despite her limited screen time and dialogue. She has a lovely talent for facial expressions, and she acts circles around some of the more talkative characters. Dan Aykroyd shows up briefly as Tammy's father, but it's as if they just wanted to say, "hey, we've got Dan Aykroyd in this movie. You haven't seen him in a while! He's funny!" He does get one funny moment when he threatens to murder Tammy's cheating husband (played by Nat Faxon). Yes, Tammy is full of talented people assigned to undercooked roles, which may be the worst crime a comedy can commit.

There are amusing bits. Perhaps the funniest scene in the movie is the one you see in the trailer, when Tammy holds up a fast food restaurant with a greasy paper bag over her head and another one fastened over her hand so she can pretend she's holding a gun. When the film stops being a road trip movie--because Tammy and Grandma are visiting cousin Lenore at her beautiful country house in Kentucky--it feels like a relief from the banal chaos of their journey. But mostly Tammy is a messy movie about the gloriousness of being a mess. I could vouch for the second part if this movie were more put together. That's one mess that does need fixing.

Enough Said

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener has a knack for creating vivid characters whose worlds feel bigger than the movie we're watching. In Enough Said, which is a finely crafted romantic comedy, the romance isn't the only thing going on in the movie. Holofcener wants us to see the myriad relationships of her characters, as well as the many problems, most of which are not clearly resolved, that exist in them.

As Eva, a masseuse whose daughter is about to go off to college, Julia Louis Dreyfus is wonderful. When I saw she was playing the lead in this movie, I thought: Why isn't she in more movies? I've always adored her performances in shows like Seinfeld, Arrested Development and Veep. She's great in Enough Said. Dreyfus has always been able to make use of the full range of her acting abilities, even in sitcoms, but here she's not obliged to be funny all the time. We get to see the vulnerable side to her.

And as her unexpected love interest, Albert, James Gandolfini has the coolness of a Robert De Niro mixed with his own brand of laid-back comedy. Albert's in the same boat as Eva, unhappily counting the days til his daughter moves to New York to study interior design. Their similar circumstances of course contribute to their romance, but (SPOILER), things are complicated by Eva's realization that her latest client, a poet named Marianne, played by the wonderful Catherine Keener, is Albert's ex-wife. And she hasn't exactly been silent about her negative opinion of him.

The writing in Enough Said is clever but wouldn't have worked with just anyone. It's remarkable how much the actors are able to do with it. Holofcener's is the kind of conversational dialogue that can either sound brilliant or puzzling, depending on how it's said. This cast--which also includes the wonderful Toni Collette (as Eva's best friend), and Ben Falcone--knows how to make the comedy effortlessly funny and natural.

As with all of Holofcener's films, the serious grows out of the funny in an organic way. You feel like you're watching something of real life, which is alternately refreshing and uncomfortable. Enough Said has its moments of "eww...is this really happening" cringe-worthiness. But I say this mostly as a compliment to Nicole Holofcener, who is perhaps the best writer of realistic comedy-dramas we have right now. She's an actor's writer (and director), always giving rich material to her performers.

With Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson, and Tavi Gevinson. 93 minutes. ★★★

The Way, Way Back

The Way Way Back feels like a missed opportunity at times. It tries to be a profound comedy-drama, but its simple story works against those ambitions, for the better. (Simplicity is so underrated that even the simple movie is trying to complicate itself.) This is an enjoyable comedy-drama that's full of interesting characters, but they never develop beyond the predictable. There's pouty teenager Duncan (Liam James), stuck at a New England beach town with his mother (Toni Collette) and her asinine boyfriend (Steve Carell). Then there's Susanna, a chronically annoyed teenager who lives next door with her mom (played by Allison Janney, who's funny but tries too hard to be endearingly obnoxious) and her little brother, whose lazy eye is a point of amusement for his mother.

The film is about Duncan's finding acceptance. He takes to wandering the town and eventually wanders into a water park run by Sam Rockwell and Maya Rudolph. Rockwell's Owen is a man-child who doesn't take anything seriously. But he tries too hard to be funny, and you feel the effort in every line. (He still manages to be likable much of the time.) Rudolph's part feels under-written. She has what amounts to a glorified cameo, and when she gets annoyed with Owen for being so immature, it's never addressed. She just gets over it and that's that.

I found much of The Way Way Back to be charming and refreshing. The film represents for me a conundrum. It's mostly well-acted, and the cast is appealing, as is the story. (That ending was wonderfully understated and really made up for the stupid water-slide-passing moment.) But I kept wondering why on earth Toni Collete was dating Carell's character--who's such an obvious jerk-- in the first place. She provides some shoddy reasoning: "he said it was too late, we were already in this together." It's the kind of dumb movie-writing that is all to easily relied upon when a writer is running out of credible ideas. With AnnaSophia Robb, Amanda Peet, Rob Corddry, Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, Robert Capron, and River Alexander. Directed and written by Fason and Rash. ★★★

In Her Shoes

This is how "chick flicks" ought to be made all the time. In Her Shoes (2005) isn't a perfect film, but it's a satisfying film, anchored by the performances of three wonderful actresses, all with their own instantly recognizable charms: Shirley MacLaine as the grandmother, and Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette as her two grown-up granddaughters, both living in Philadelphia, and both unaware that their grandmother, now stationed at a thriving retirement community in South Florida, is even alive.

The sisters are close geographically, but their relationship is strained: Rose is the successful corporate lawyer, married to her job, voluntarily frigidized by her perceived lack of appeal to men, and Maggie is the terminally down-on-her-luck younger sibling, who uses her good looks to get what she wants. Rose, whether she likes to admit it or not, derives a feeling of superiority--an ego-boost--from Maggie's perpetual ineptitude and from always having to bail her out. But Maggie's unreliability soon morphs into real betrayal, severing the sisters' relationship seemingly for good. Maggie finds out about their out-of-touch grandma, and out of desperation retreats to her geriatric sanctuary.

What is surprising to learn about In Her Shoes is that Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), directed it. Hanson's body of work, if you look through it, is relatively obscure until the 90s when he had success with the ridiculous nanny-gone-nuts melodrama The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). Hanson had a field day with L.A. Confidential, which provides more proof that a commercial director can produce a masterpiece when he's given the right script and the right actors. In Her Shoes isn't a masterpiece, exactly, but as a representative of its much maligned genres (they are really two distinct entities)--the romantic comedy and the chick flick--it's a good example of how sentimental, feel-good entertainment can be turned into something elegant and character-driven.

The screenplay, by Susannah Grant (who also scripted the immensely entertaining Erin Brockovich) is adapted from Jennifer Weiner's novel. Grant's script is self-indulgent, but in that inevitable, pleasing way that makes the movie appealing, even if some of it is a bit too much (like Cameron's reading disability, which is handled with as much finesse as you could expect from such a Lifetime-movie-esque plot device). The script is also very funny, and the humor elevates the darker moments of the movie. Perhaps it's grasping at too much by trying to be an honest look at two complex women and their relationship, while also trying to be a feel-good chick movie, but it pulls both off with a lot more charm and appeal than most movies accomplish with just one of those balls to juggle. And the jokes are well-chosen and well-placed: They don't saturate the movie. They run pop up at unpredictable moments, and are brought to life with delicious zeal from the appealing cast.

As for the actors, MacLaine has perhaps never been more restrained, and she's so regal, so powerful in that restraint. You want her to be your grandmother, because she's loving but also because she's interesting, tough, sharp, and wise in a quiet, pensive way, like she's always aware of the next five moves in the Chess game. Or maybe the entire game, right from the start. Cameron Diaz, who's a really charming actress when given the right part, thrives in this movie, especially against the dramatic chops of Toni Collette. Both women breathe a stunning array of depth into their characters.

With Ken Howard as the girls' father, Mark Feuerstein, Brooke Smith, Alan Blumenfeld, Francine Beers, Jerry Adler, Candice Azzara, and Norman Lloyd. 130 min. ★★★

Fright Night

The original Fright Night (1985) was a celebration and a send-up of camp. The movie opens to a dimly lit suburban neighborhood around midnight, and the audio of a late-nite horror movie program leads us into the bedroom of our hero, Charlie Brewster, who's too busy making out with his girlfriend to notice what's going on at his new neighbor's house, at first. Fright Night 1985 is something special to me, so I felt ambivalent toward the idea of a remake.

The 2011 remake gives Fright Night a contemporary make-over. It would seem like a refreshing antidote to the banality of Twilight, which is pure drivel as romance or as gothic horror.

We'll start with the good things: Anton Yelchin makes for a convincing Charlie Brewster, the put-upon boy-who-cried-wolf of the movie, who's unwilling to accept his nerdy friend Ed's claim that Charlie's new neighbor, the dashing Jerry Dandrige, is a bloodsucking vampire. As Dandrige, Colin Farrell is wonderfully ominous. He's so enjoyable as the vampire that you have a hard time sympathizing with the would-be victims. Dandrige likes screwing with his prey, playing darkly funny little mind games with them. Unfortunately, the scenes of Dandrige attacking his victims fall flat. There's something unconvincing about the way he tears open their necks (and their deaths seem meaningless the way they do in slasher movies). Only the satisfaction in Jerry's face works for those scenes--his insatiable appetite for blood is momentarily soothed, and he reminds you that the vampire is the ultimate junky.

The Peter Vincent character, played as a doddering old coward by Roddy McDowall in the 1985 version, has been altered for humorous affect to be a Las Vegas hack occultist with a nightly horror show. David Tennant plays him, and he invests some momentary comic relief, but his part never gets knitted into the story with any real panache. He and Charlie don't really mesh as a duo--they aren't given enough time.

Which brings me to the not-so-good stuff. The movie plays all its cards too soon. Characters aren't developed, relationships either, with the right pacing or momentum. We're meant to assume a lot about these relationships that, without experiencing them in the right ways and amounts of time, end up hurting the movie. It's harder to care about the characters let alone be scared for them. The humor in the movie is good because it keeps things light and helps avoid heavy-handedness, but at the same time no one seems very invested in what's happening. And there isn't that affection for the genre that makes a good horror-comedy click and resonate the way it should.

The rest of the cast includes Toni Collete as Charlie's mom (well-played for more comic effect), Imogen Poots as his girlfriend Amy, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Ed. He doesn't even come close to the off-the-wall performance of Stephen Geoffreys in the first film. He's too subdued, too nerdy to be frightening when he inevitably turns into an enemy. And that's the real problem with the remake: it's not all that scary. But it's good for a laugh, and probably worth seeing for Colin Farrell's performance alone.

The scene at the end with all the vampires is another problem. It reminded me of the part in Salem's Lot when they stumble upon Barlow's coffin under the house but are accosted by all his vampire henchmen. It's also mildly reminiscent of that wonderfully giddy moment in Re-Animator when all the corpses shoot up out of their gurneys in unison. Unfortunately, director Craig Gillespie doesn't seem to know how to make that scene pop the way it should. It feels deflated. The only other thing I'll say about the ending is that its kind to the viewer in not subjecting us to twelve phony climaxes the way so many action and horror movies feel obliged to do---the finale is nicely compact.