Napoleon Dynamite has a new movie dropping this Friday.
School
for Scoundrels,
also starring Billy Bob
Thorton. Of course, Napoleon (whose real name is Jon Heder) is probably pissed
that people still identify him with the role of Napoleon, so much so that it’s
off-putting to see him in any other part. (I imagine starting your column with,
“Napoleon Dynamite…” isn’t helping matters. Tough Napoleon, same thing happened
to Linda Blair (
Exorcist
) and Keanu
Reeves (
Bill and Ted/Point Break
).
The good news is the protagonist of
School for Scoundrels
is somewhat Napoleon-esque (only less cool.) He’s a
loser, a NYC meter maid who gets pushed around and can’t even talk to the
one-dimensional girl character he likes. So he goes to a secret class and Dr. P
(Thorton, looking a bit stretched- physically, and recycled actorish-ly) uses
unorthodox techniques to teach him to be a suave, tough, successful man.
Unleash the inner lion, so to speak.
Once Heder gets his game together he’s suddenly competing with
Dr. P for the same girl, even though Heder saw her first. Along the way a few
guys get shot with paintballs, there’s some gay jokes, some straight jokes, Ben
Stiller as (you guessed it) a neurotic failure-type, and a bunch more
rudimentary humour until, in the end, the film condemns the whole manly
doctrine it spent its entirety building up.
All in all it’s a good movie to see after smoking a joint with
a buddy you haven’t seen in a while. One-hundred silent minutes later you’ll be
able to talk about how it was a mash-up of
Anger Management, Fight Club
and
Bad Santa
with a bit of
Rushmore
in there while you enjoy a drink at the Amsterdam. There are few solid laughs
in
…Scoundrels
though, (Sarah
Silverman is never bad, even when she’s reduced to a bunch of one-liners) and
besides, this might be as good as it gets for new flicks this week.
Because, next up is just what you wanted, another animated
movie with talking animals. That just never gets old, does it? (And then you
turn 8.)
Open Season
is about a talking
bear and a talking deer with one antler. The bear doesn’t eat the deer because
he was raised by a nice ranger lady and, as a product of nurture rather than
nature, therefore is also nice. Together the friends face off against a crazy
hunter who plays air-guitar on his rifle, and don’t you worry, there’s just
enough bodily function humour in there to keep things childish. This has been a
crappy year for cartoons, the exception being
Monster House.
Filling out the week is
The Guardian
, a Coast Guard movie that plays on the standard
hero’s journey theme with some old/young, mentor/student drama tossed in. Kevin
Costner plays the grizzled elite rescue swimmer with the difficult past who
uses, you guessed it, unconventional teaching methods to school the brash,
talented, newcomer — Asthon Kutcher — also with a tragic past. In
the end both young and old learn something about themselves and you can almost
hear the
Top Gun
theme song play
in the background.
Superb action sequences of people jumping out of choppers into
20-foot waves and the fact that there truly aren’t really that many Coast Guard
movies out there make up for the token, disposable romance and in the end we
have a decent, if predictable, date flick, especially if you grew up on a
desert island and haven’t seen all the ideas/themes/clichés in 100 other
movies.
By the way, B-Grade Horrorfest is coming up, we need more movie
submissions. Email the address under that dapper picture above for more info…
AT VILLAGE 8 Sept. 29-Oct. 5: School for Scoundrels; Open
Season; The Guardian; Jackass 2; Black Dahlia; Everyone’s Hero; Fearless;
Ryboys; The Last Kiss.
