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Movie review by Greg Carlson

A routine coming-of-age tale enveloped in the haze of 1994 memories and plenty of marijuana smoke, “The Wackness” mostly lives up to its unfortunate title. Writer/director Jonathan Levine clings to the bare bones basics of moviemaking in both plot and style, and the results will try the patience of audience members curious enough to take a chance. Levine is blessed by the presence of Sir Ben Kingsley (who has made some eyebrow-raising choices of late), a veteran performer who knows exactly what to do with a role that seems underwritten one moment and overwritten the next. The director is not quite as lucky with former Nickelodeon kid Josh Peck, whose droopy-lidded wannabe remains too much of a poseur to earn any sympathy from viewers over the age of 25.

Peck’s Luke Shapiro, shown during the anxious gap between high school graduation and the start of college, turns out to be a pretty dreary guy. Dealing large quantities of pot out of a frozen ice pushcart in what has to be one of the unlikeliest covers for a kid who lives on the Upper East Side, Luke sulks in a depressed funk. When he is not trying to tune out his bickering parents, he trades weed for therapy with Dr. Jeff Squires (Kingsley), a shrink whose own family life teeters on the brink of dissolution. Once Luke confesses that he has an amorous interest in Squires’ stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), the psychiatrist is less than enthused about the possible match.

Luke simultaneously develops separate relationships with father and stepdaughter, and occasionally Levine comes close to finding something interesting to say in the intersections of the triangle. Mostly, however, the movie is content to alternate between scenes of Luke’s blossoming romance and zany digressions detailing the increasingly erratic and desperate behavior of the self-medicating Squires as he becomes a dubious father figure to his young patient. In these moments, which Levine chooses to play mostly for comedy, Kingsley manages to find some strands of pathos.

Boasting a rich soundtrack that brims with nicely chosen cuts by Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Craig Mack, KRS-One, the Wu-Tang Clan, Biz Markie, and the Notorious B.I.G. – to name a few – “The Wackness” only superficially explores the relationship of white kids to African American popular culture. Luke, a devoted hip-hop fan, makes mixtapes of his favorite tunes, and the almost constant presence of period-specific material serves as the movie’s strongest reminder of the mid-1990s setting. Luke’s appropriation of slang and colloquial speech proves more grating than endearing, and the script could have done without its umpteen uses of “mad” as a modifier (i.e. phrases like “I got mad love for you shorty. That’s on the real.”).

In hindsight, it was a smooth decision for Levine to wrap his story in the NYC of fourteen years ago. Besides the bizarre image of Kingsley making out with Mary-Kate Olsen, the period setting has received the lion’s share of critical notice. Some of the references have a tendency to deflate a moment by calling gimmicky attention to themselves (like Squires asking Luke if he is upset about Kurt Cobain). Other allusions, particularly in some of the female fashions, hit just the right note. For viewers of a certain vintage, “The Wackness” will conjure memories both painful and pleasurable.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 8/18/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Pineapple Express” will win plenty of stoner fans looking for an easy good time, but considering some of the creative team’s recent work, the formulaic movie stumbles too often to be recommended. Writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, under the producing tutelage of Judd Apatow, delivered last summer’s surprise comedy hit “Superbad” after dusting off a screenplay the duo penned when they were teens. “Pineapple Express,” despite a story assist from Apatow, practically reeks of the same vintage, and the movie works as a virtual companion piece to the earlier film. Indie auteur David Gordon Green seems like an inspired choice for the driver’s seat, but with the exception of a golden-hued interlude involving a game of leapfrog, little of his signature directorial style makes it to the screen.

Rogen takes a meatier onscreen role this time out, playing protagonist Dale Denton, a perpetually baked process server whose career choice facilitates getting high on the clock and frequent visits to the high-school attended by his girlfriend. Pot dealer Saul Silver (James Franco), a lonely, pajama-clad waster desperate for human intimacy with his best customer, likes Dale so much he breaks out the rare strain of the title, hoping that the potent offering will lead to that special bond now familiar to Apatow fans under the portmanteau “bromance.”

“Pineapple Express” starts with plenty of promise, and director Green smoothly embraces the principal pair and their lived-in milieu. The agenda of the filmmakers takes a dark and dreary turn, however, as Dale witnesses a murder that brings a large measure of mayhem down on his previously idyllic haze. Yes, the ridiculous bursts of over-the-top bloodshed and physical violence are intended as a parody of self-consciously hip capers of the Tarantino variety, but the predictability factor only cranks up the level of tedium. “Pineapple Express” needed to capitalize on the chemistry of the lead actors instead of stage protracted shoot-outs and fisticuffs involving Asian drug gangsters (stereotypes?) and loquacious, sensitive hit-men.

Undoubtedly, all of these arguments are void if one views the movie under the influence of mood-enhancing substances, and it is a relief that Franco’s Saul is so wonderfully, lovably pathetic. Franco steals every scene, which is no mean feat when pitted against the criminally hilarious showboater Danny McBride, whose unfailingly polite double-crosser ad-libs some very funny material. Like “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express” hits its stride when exploring the fragile insecurities of its heroes. After what seems like an eternity of ghoulish ear trauma and abdominal gunshot wounds, the movie arrives at a rather sweet diner conversation in which the fellows share their hopes and dreams.

Dale’s vaguely inappropriate relationship with the teenage Angie (Amber Heard) is played for laughs – not that we need reminding that this guy refuses to grow up. The whole girlfriend subplot, which periodically hints at a more interesting movie than the one you are watching, crashes and burns following a terrific nightmare dinner-with-the-parents riff featuring Ed Begly Jr. and Nora Dunn (who both just show up, blow the doors off their big scene, and then essentially disappear). Inexplicably, the script stashes Angie in a hotel room where she suffers the fate – inelegantly described as “bros before hoes” – pre-ordained by ultimate buddy movies: there is no time for girls when close pals have (un)important things to do.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 8/11/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” clearly intends to wink at its audience and have a rip-roaring old time, but the writing is so painful and so laborious, smart moviegoers will feel like the joke is on them. A textbook lesson in hackneyed and forced, the latest entry in the most popular franchise ever to so thoroughly rip off the “Indiana Jones” series has little appeal beyond a handful of sumptuous fantasy locales courtesy of Canada and China. For a film with a massive 140+ million dollar budget, the computer-generated effects are sloppy and uneven, despite the fact that a few of them manage to make one forget their digital origin.

Director Rob Cohen takes the reigns from Stephen Sommers (who stayed on as a producer and reportedly as an uncredited script polisher), and he fails to muster his predecessor’s lighter touch with the material. While Sommers mostly managed to construct scenes with narrative clarity, Cohen’s approach is ragged. A few sequences, especially one involving a trio of oddly protective Yetis, manage to deliver on their outrageous promises, but most of the big action scenes eschew suspense in favor of questionably staged battles in which one never really gets a sense of what is going on or where it is supposedly happening. The whole thing is another example of over-edited, junk food cinema.

Alternating between a decrepit family drama that places adventurer Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) at odds with his adult son Alex (Luke Ford) and a drawn-out chase involving an ancient Chinese despot (Jet Li) who seeks immortality and world domination after being resurrected, “Dragon Emperor” will pick up a few curiosity seekers eager to check out the movie’s martial arts angle. Very little choreographed hand-to-hand combat is included in the film, though, since the balance of time must be given over to shots of Ray Harryhausen-esque armies of undead soldiers charging into battle.

From the first scenes, “Dragon Emperor” feels slapdash and hammy. Rachel Weisz, who was a breath of fresh air in the stale tombs of the first two “Mummy” movies, has been replaced by Maria Bello. Bello is a sensational actor who has given riveting performances in films like “A History of Violence” and “The Cooler,” but she is miscast and adrift as Evelyn O’Connell. John Hannah returns as Evelyn’s loopy brother Jonathan, but suffers the indignities of playing close-up scenes with a phony looking, airsick yak named Geraldine. Jonathan’s pants literally catch on fire in one scene, and he cries out “Spank my ass!” in what might be the movie’s most idiotic line.

Martial arts fans hoping to see Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh in action will be let down. Foolishly, the moviemakers opt to use chunks of Li’s screen time transforming him into a variety of monsters, even though he is much more interesting in human form. Yeoh manages to bring her usual dignified air to dialogue so silly it would seem more at home in a fourth grade drama production. As Yeoh’s daughter and Ford’s love interest, Isabella Leong is a welcome addition to the cast. Unlike the majority of the other performers around her, she convincingly appears to interact with the fabulous fakery, and any person who can establish rapport with a benevolent group of Abominable Snowmen deserves some kind of recognition.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 8/4/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

At least until “Pineapple Express” comes out in a few days, Adam McKay’s “Step Brothers” should fill a certain segment of the viewing public’s appetite for ridiculous slapstick and the kind of humor arrested in adolescence. A person’s enjoyment of the movie will depend entirely on the Will Ferrell tolerability index, which for this reviewer is generally pretty high – despite several duds on the funnyman’s resume. In “Step Brothers,” Ferrell plays a jobless slacker pushing forty who still lives with his mother.

The foolish concept – that Ferrell’s mom marries a man who happens to live with his own adult son and they all agree to share a home – demands a level of suspended disbelief upon which director McKay has staked most of his filmmaking career. Perhaps best summed up by the image of roving gangs of television newsmen engaging in a bloodthirsty melee in “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” McKay’s bizarre flights of fancy arrive from left field and defy all logic and credulity. “Step Brothers,” with its misbehaving men-children building bunk beds in order to have more floor space for “activities,” follows along in that tradition.

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly had solid chemistry in “Talladega Nights,” and they bring much of the same kind of straight-faced lunacy to their warring sibling act in “Step Brothers.” The rest of the cast is also game, and Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins are in top form as the newlywed parents who hope their overgrown boys will soon leave the nest. Adam Scott, as Ferrell’s sickeningly successful brother, can play an a-hole to glorious perfection. Kathryn Hahn, as Scott’s trapped wife, also delivers a brilliant comic performance.

Like McKay and Ferrell’s previous collaborations, all manner of gag is thrown at the wall in the hope that many will stick. From Pablo Cruise t-shirts to Chewbacca masks to “Miami Vice,” pop culture references act as a kind of glue binding together the nonsensical sequences that so often result in physical violence and destructive mayhem. Despite not being blood relations, the characters played by Ferrell and Reilly discover so many mutual passions one begins to believe they might have been separated at birth. Hilariously, they both sleepwalk, and the movie does not hold anything back as the clumsy somnambulists lay waste to the family kitchen.

“Step Brothers” earns its R-rating with liberal use of profanity and the outrageous image of Ferrell applying his scrotum to Reilly’s prized drum kit. The violence is cartoonish, excessive, and often very funny (the sight of Ferrell and Reilly smacking each other with golf clubs and baseball bats has the same kind of gleeful anarchy found in the oeuvre of Larry, Moe, and Curly). In a universe where movies about men who refuse to grow up dominate the major studios’ comedy slate, some filmgoers will dismiss “Step Brothers” as another obnoxious entry in a chain that dates back at least as far as “Dumb & Dumber.” It would be pointless to convince them to attend, even if “Step Brothers” makes a few sly comments about the dependence of adult children on their parents and the ways in which families get along with measures of love and hate.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 7/28/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Picking up where “Batman Begins” left off in 2005, “The Dark Knight” propels the Caped Crusader to a level of fan expectation not seen since Tim Burton’s first crack at the franchise back in 1989. With interest in the movie fueled in large measure by actor Heath Ledger’s death at the age of 28 (which has created a kind of James Dean effect), director Christopher Nolan’s second visit to Gotham City tops “Batman Begins” in nearly every department. The movie is more lavish and epic than its predecessor, and Batman’s colorful arch-nemesis the Joker easily trumps the villainous second stringers selected for “Batman Begins.”

Nolan co-scripted “The Dark Knight” with his brother Jonathan, and the movie deftly juggles mega-budget action set pieces with the sort of introspective psychological examination (or at least the appearance of it) favored by the moviemaker in “Memento” and “Insomnia.” The film’s themes traffic in the currency of duality and dialectics: Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), on his way to becoming Two-Face, plays Gotham’s “White Knight” to Batman’s dark one. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) beats himself up wondering whether he is part of the solution or part of the problem. Ghastly trickster Joker ponders aloud the conundrum of how much he and Batman need each other.

Even if Ledger had lived to see the movie’s premiere, his performance would have drawn some of the best notices of his career. Ledger steals every scene in which he appears, and is easily the scariest screen incarnation of the Joker to date, eliminating all traces of Jack Nicholson’s courtliness and Cesar Romero’s cackling merriment. Ledger focuses his energy on the character’s sadism and murderousness, recalling the almost satanic pleasure of the evil clown’s 1940 debut story in Batman #1 and Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s popular 1988 one-shot “The Killing Joke.” Ledger taps the Joker’s tendency toward chaos and anarchy, positioning him as a threatening terrorist whose motiveless “mayhem for the sake of mayhem” creed keeps the Batman busy.

The movie includes a few fleeting moments of comic relief unrelated to the frightening gallows humor provided by Ledger’s magnetic Joker, but Nolan envisions Batman’s world as a grim, oppressive prison dominated by perpetual existential crises. For many fans, this would be an improvement over the camp impulses that form the other pole of Batman’s place in popular culture. The clever marketing campaign, built around the Joker’s query “Why so serious?,” causes one to wonder whether Nolan ever asked himself the same thing. By the time the credits roll, the body count is high, and does not necessarily include the obvious candidates.

So much ground is covered during the course of “The Dark Knight” that Nolan purposefully leaves several things frustratingly unexplained. The most glaring example takes place when Batman leaps out of a window to rescue old flame Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), abandoning the Joker to a roomful of wealthy donors at a ritzy fundraiser. The filmmaker chooses simply to cut away to the future, as if he cannot be bothered to clarify the fate of Gotham’s jet set. Another oversight ignores the details of a dual kidnapping, opting for a lazy, after-the-fact account instead of the visual and narrative clarity that is needed in the set-up. Nolan might have heeded the adage to do fewer things but do them better, as there was enough material in “The Dark Knight” for at least two movies.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 7/21/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Director Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” manages the trick of pleasing existing fans of Mike Mignola’s big red demon and winning new converts to the franchise. “Hellboy II” might be better than del Toro’s first outing with the character, although both movies share the same strengths (inspired creature design, a sense of humor, and the director’s affection for the material) and weaknesses (convoluted mythologies, haphazard plotting, and not enough development of the very colorful characters). In a season saturated with super-hero movies, “Hellboy II” falls somewhere in the middle; it’s neither as good as “Iron Man” nor as awful as “Hancock.”

With the exception of the young male demographic for which the movie was principally made, viewers of “Hellboy II” will lose patience with the scattershot storyline, which involves assembling pieces of an enchanted crown in order to control an army of hulking clockwork soldiers. As Hellboy stories go, this one isn’t as engaging as some of the more folkloric tales explored in the comics, but it does boast several thrilling sequences, including a visit to the wonderfully grotesque Troll Market, a battle between Hellboy and a tree-like forest god, and a showdown set in and around giant rotating gears. The whole movie is notably less indebted to H.P. Lovecraft than the first “Hellboy,” which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Hellboy’s previous movie companions see their roles expanded for the better. Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) is given both a love interest and a more pivotal place as confidante to Hellboy and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair). One memorably entertaining sequence sees a heartsick Hellboy and Abe slurping beer and singing along to Barry Manilow. Even though a major change in Hellboy’s relationship with Liz is disclosed up front, the thread is virtually ignored until the latter portion of the film. The revelation moves disappointingly toward standard issue soap opera territory, and suggests a variety of possibilities for the inevitable “Hellboy III.”

Unquestionably the linchpin in Hellboy’s leap from page to screen, Ron Perlman embodies the title character with tough guy panache. Perlman carries the mantle of Hellboy’s distinctive crimson physicality, including filed-down devil horns and the oversized, stony “Right Hand of Doom,” with comfort and ease, and one immediately sees the advantages of employing a real human actor as opposed to the lifelessness of computer-generated performers in movies like “The Incredible Hulk.” Perlman treats Hellboy with respect and plays him straight, a tactic that pays big dividends for the movie as a whole. While Red’s signature traits, including his fondness for candy bars and cigars, remain intact, he thankfully mutters “Oh crap” less often than last time.

Del Toro’s “more is more” attitude works visual miracles, even if the script isn’t A-game stuff. Even though plenty of computer enhancements are used to fuel the action, del Toro clearly seems to prefer the tactility of prosthetics, and the real-world quality consistently shows. The filmmaker will have plenty of opportunities to strut his stuff when he tackles “The Hobbit” for Peter Jackson and company. If that project is even a fraction as successful as “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, it might provide del Toro with an opportunity to take even greater risks when he revisits “Hellboy” sometime in the future.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 7/14/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The best thing about “Hancock” is its tight running time. In recent history, the Fourth of July weekend plus Will Smith’s impervious likability equals substantial box office receipts, but “Hancock” is poor to the point of insulting – a sarcastic metafiction that appears to have been assembled by committee. Word is that the original screenplay went through major rewrites, but regardless of the script’s origins, the garbage that ended up on the screen is a complete misfire. With a steady stream of winks to the audience, “Hancock” wants to send up the superhero genre, but it depends too much on its cruddy CG effects and a rote climactic showdown to make an effective argument for satire.

Smith plays the title character, a reluctant, almost suicidal do-gooder who so loathes his role as a Los Angeles-based, crime-stopping savior that he has taken to drink, profanity, sarcasm, and property damage to overcompensate for his super services. As embodied by Smith, Hancock has all the necessary ingredients for a terrific character. It’s the writing that lets him down scene after scene. After establishing a relationship between the derelict hero and a PR executive whose life Hancock saves, an insensible plot twist is sprung on the audience a little more than halfway through the film. It might be unfair to share the details of this revelation, but the result is so goofy, it belongs in another movie, like “Highlander.”

Charlize Theron factors into the cockamamie surprise, and like Smith she is engaging even when saddled with a wholly wretched character. Theron, as much as Smith, is called upon to do all sorts of things that snap credulity in two, and she does them with a conviction the movie doesn’t deserve. She plays the doting wife of Jason Bateman’s public relations man, and by the time the film gets around to its water-drenched climax, Theron suffers the indignity of writhing in agony in a hospital bed while all hell breaks loose around her. The sight of it is sheer nonsense, and one cannot help but feel a little bit embarrassed for the Academy Award winner.

“Hancock” is a tasteless brew of competing themes, agendas, and cinematic styles. Director Peter Berg stages too much of the action in frustrating, handheld close-up, and the result is a nauseating tour of the lead actors’ nostrils and facial pores. Tobias Schliessler’s gritty cinematography suggests that “Hancock” might have intended to construct a more plausible universe than the ones offered up in recent Marvel and D.C. adaptations. Too bad that the story finds no incentive to follow through on the possibilities, opting instead to lard the pietistic, self-satisfied displays with juvenile gross-outs revolving around Hancock’s ability to literally shove a man’s head up another man’s rectum.

Such touches, along with Hancock’s disdain for wearing a costume that might be perceived as less than straight, flaunts a boorish homophobia that undermines the movie’s position as an enlightened social commentary. Berg spends too much time with his hand on the throttle of squishy exposition and incomprehensible backstory, and neither endears Mr. Hancock to the viewer. The movie’s ending is a shambles, reintroducing the most forgettable hook-handed villain in recent memory. “Hancock” is a sickening waste of the talents involved and should be avoided even if a friend offers to buy you a ticket.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 7/7/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

During the sensational opening section of Pixar’s “WALL-E,” the last functioning Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class robot dutifully fulfills a daily routine of mashing piles of garbage into small cubes and stacking them until they reach monumental heights. Against the backdrop of a dusty, desolate landscape that recalls Tom Petty’s “You Got Lucky” video (among several other post-apocalyptic visions), the soulful WALL-E either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that no human beings are around to appreciate his efforts. WALL-E’s only companion is a scuttling cockroach who tags along while the indefatigable bucket of bolts engages in his Sisyphean task. Wordless and haunting, the purely visual exposition emulates the poetic narratives of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, whose work director Andrew Stanton has claimed the moviemaking team studied intensely.

Blending a classic love story with a less effective environmental message, “WALL-E” is at its best when expressing the title character’s ardent desire to hold hands with another robot willing to reciprocate his unlikely emotion. Stanton’s clever use of a couple of songs from “Hello, Dolly!” gives the tired musical a brand new life, and it is rather easy to speculate that the next generation of moviegoers will not be able to hear “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes a Moment” without filtering them through WALL-E’s consciousness.

Resembling Number 5 from “Short Circuit,” WALL-E is a marvel of character animation. With “vocalizations” provided by legendary sound designer Ben Burtt, who brought the voices of R2-D2, Chewbacca, and many other creatures to life in “Star Wars,” WALL-E finds himself in good cinematic company. As one has come to expect from Pixar, the movie teems with visual quotations, in this case touching on many Hall of Fame science fiction films, from “Metropolis” to “Blade Runner.” Pixar fans will also find multiple references to previous movies from the studio’s formidable oeuvre.

“WALL-E” is composed of three sections, and the first two are vastly superior to the third, which loosens its grip on the robot protagonists long enough to let a mothership of obese interstellar travelers drive home a nearly tedious gag about fat Americans. Jeff Garlin voices the captain of the floating city Axiom, a gorgeously designed spacecraft that looks like something out of John Berkey’s beloved fantasy painting. Garlin is surely a talented performer, but the movie is infinitely more engaging without the unnecessary chatter of explanatory dialogue. This is a minor complaint, however, as “WALL-E” pretty consistently delivers the goods.

The middle section of the movie is the likeliest to appeal to the youngest members of the viewing audience, and some might quibble that a sequence involving a collection of malfunctioning, “rogue” robots panders to kids whose attention spans might be tested by the rest of the film. Fortunately, WALL-E’s relationship to his soul-bot EVE is wonderful enough to silence all but the crustiest of critics (despite the considerable number of times EVE pleadingly pronounces the hero’s name). In one glorious scene, WALL-E and EVE share a zero gravity dance together that echoes the breathtaking outer space ballets choreographed by Kubrick in his masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey.” For this, and many of its other stunning compositions, “WALL-E” is one of the few must-see titles of the summer movie season.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 6/30/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

While it might have sounded marketable on paper – Steve Carell filling the telephonic shoes of Don Adams in a big-budget version of “Get Smart” – the resulting mess is a hodgepodge of mostly unfunny physical comedy supplemented by a smattering of reasonably clever one-liners. Older fans of the original television series that ran from 1965 to 1970 might smile at some of the movie’s half-hearted efforts to revive beloved gags, but younger viewers with no frame of reference will be more likely to unfavorably compare the film to James Bond movies. Strangely, “Get Smart” spends nearly as much time attempting to pull off the breathless action that propels the Bond franchise when it should be a daffy send-up.

Carell is no Don Adams, but given the current roster of deadpan television performers adept at playing nerdy and clueless, he was a good choice for Maxwell Smart. The movie re-imagines Smart as a deskbound “chatter” analyst for CONTROL, even though the man dreams of passing his field agent exam in order to attain some of the glamour that virtually emanates like a cloud from the hyper-masculine Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson). The Chief (Alan Arkin, doing the best he can with an almost shockingly flavorless screenplay) knows that Smart is better utilized in a cubicle, but relents following an attack by KAOS that jeopardizes CONTROL’s entire operation.

Naturally, Smart is quickly paired with the luscious Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), but unlike the relationship of the small screen version, she initially finds Smart anything but attractive and brusquely tells him so. Hathaway’s 99 is a brittle scold and absolutely no fun. The resulting screwball-style bickering between the mismatched leads wears thin almost immediately, even though Carell manages embarrassment and humiliation like a champ. The main problem with this Smart, though, is that he is far too competent and self-aware to earn the kind of huge laughs that Peter Sellers managed as Inspector Clouseau.

When “Get Smart” pulls out staple jokes, they bomb hard. The “Would you believe?” routine ends with a lame Chuck Norris punchline that was kind of funny when it bounced around the web a few years ago. “Missed it by that much” pops up a couple of times, and yields zero laughter. As seen in the trailer, Carell’s intense shouting about the best day of his life is pretty good, although the “Cone of Silence” loses its physical Plexiglas charm in a transformation to a run-of-the-mill CG effect. Ditto for the multiple security doors that Smart navigates at CONTROL headquarters.

“Get Smart” is designed as a showcase for Carell’s comic acting, but most of the veterans stuck in supporting roles struggle with wooden dialogue. In addition to Arkin, Terence Stamp’s KAOS leader is a discarded afterthought. A Richard Kiel-esque KAOS henchman gets more screen time and character development. David Koechner is a boorish Larabee, and James Caan is completely miscast as a W-like idiot commander-in-chief. Johnson, like Carell, is willing to do anything for a laugh, but Agent 23 functions almost entirely as a plot device rather than a character. “Get Smart” has not been as poorly reviewed as “The Love Guru” (which opened less successfully on the same day) but it is hardly worth seeing as a replacement.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 6/23/08.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Significantly better than Ang Lee’s tortured and torturous 2003 “Hulk,” the current re-do fixes many of its predecessor’s problems. In the end, though, the computer-generated green giant lacks the heart and soul that only a human being can provide. Sure, one could argue that the central character, when transformed into a raging, destructive behemoth, is not exactly human. Even so, the presence of a pixel-constructed monster has the drawback of never effectively interfacing with the flesh and blood actors who struggle to touch something that isn’t there or make eye contact with empty space. The newest Hulk looks better than the last one, but not by much.

While Lee’s mournful take on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s riff on “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” “Frankenstein,” and “King Kong” labored over the origin story, director Louis Letterier’s “The Incredible Hulk” covers that turf during the opening credits, which pay tribute to the popular 1970s television series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno (who makes yet another cameo as a security guard and provides the Hulk’s vocals). Other inside references for fan geeks pop up here and there, but Letterier mostly sticks to the basics of the summer superhero playbook, which means little introspection and lots of smashing and bashing.

Edward Norton, who reportedly clashed with powerful, suit-wearing types over the final shape of the movie, is serviceable as Dr. Bruce Banner, but Zak Penn’s script leeches any potential thrill from the Freudian fever dream of unleashing fury and losing control (until the final close-up that alludes to future installments). Banner makes it clear that he sees his condition as a disease-like burden, and emphatically exclaims that he doesn’t want to control it, he wants to get rid of it. That sentiment precludes the opportunity to explore some of the more fascinating dimensions of Banner’s unique ability.

The depiction of Banner’s relationship with Dr. Betty Ross, now played by Liv Tyler, is another place where “The Incredible Hulk” tops the Ang Lee version. While Tyler might not be considered as accomplished as Jennifer Connelly, she is thankfully not called upon to spend the majority of her screen time weeping over the traumatic events that unfold whenever her old flame’s heart rate passes a particular threshold. Tyler’s more imaginative Betty initiates some romance despite the dangers that come with Banner’s quickened pulse. Betty and Bruce spend a chunk of time with one another and the simplicity of the movie’s structure as an extended chase is one of its chief pleasures. Betty’s eagerness to be on the run with Bruce propels the movie until it reaches the inevitable climactic battle.

While “The Incredible Hulk” relies on images of goliath versus military machinery in many of its action sequences, the movie deserves points for several of its cleverly used sets and locations. The parkour-style pursuit through the Brazilian favela where Banner has hidden himself from government pursuers has plenty of energy. Additionally, the first sequence in which Banner goes bonkers in full-on Hulk mode is done mostly in shadow; it generates a fair amount of suspense and postpones some of the disappointment that comes with seeing the emerald colossus in broad daylight.

This review was also published in the High Plains Reader the week of 6/16/08.