Oh man, the great movies just keep a-comin'. Like I said in my last post, '07 really has been an embarrassment of riches for film fans. In terms of comedies alone, it's been a standout year. Even if you limit yourself to Judd Apatow comedies, there've been two great ones in Knocked Up and Superbad. Well ... add a third to the list -- Walk Hard might just be better (and funnier) than both of 'em. And, 2007 is now notable for another reas0n - it's the year that Tim Burton got hsi groove back, with a total return to form in the form of Sweeney Todd - which may be one of the goth director's all-time best, reestablishing Burton and co as the reigning cinematic masters of the macabre. Anyways, on with the reviews ...
WALK HARD Review:
- So, as I write this, Walk Hard is in the process of bombing at the box office, which is truly a shame. I think that the marketing was probably a little off on this one, maybe not 100% conveying the tone and humor of the movie. And also, well, it was just a packed weekend at the movies, with I Am Legend still going strong and Nicholas Cage hamming it up in National Treasure 2. It really is too bad that more people aren't seeing this one, but I suspect that Walk Hard is pretty much guaranteed to find eventual popularity on DVD for a long time to come - it's friggin' hilarious, and maybe the funniest movie of 2007. I was laughing my ass off for a good portion of the film, and our car-ride home saw my friends and I repeating the movie's best lines over and over -- it's the kind of comedy that just makes a comedy-lover giddy like that.
Basically, Walk Hard is a parody of the whole genre of rock n' roll biopics, though it owes a particular debt to Walk the Line and also a bit of Ray. Certainly, a lot of Walk Hard mirrors the story of Johnny Cash, following Dewey Cox from his tragic childhood (he accidentally kills his brother by chopping him in half with a machete ...) to his rise to rock n' roll stardom, through the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and the present day. Along the way, he meets such luminaries as Buddy Holly, Elvis, The Beatles, and more, breaks up with his bandmates, marries, marries again, fathers dozens of children, and experiements with every drug known to man leading to multiple stints in rehab. Pretty typical - sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.
Where Walk Hard really excels is in how it effortlessly combines random, absurdist humor with spot-on satire of movies like Walk the Line. Some of the jokes are just flat-out crazy (like how, in the beginning, after Dewey accidentally cuts his brother in half, the top half, still alive, looks big-eyed at Dewey and exclaims "you've halved me!"). But it's in the songs where the movie shifts into more subtle parody, getting away from over-the-top humor in favor of sly lyrics that are often brilliant takes on people like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. The Dylan parody, a jumble of random non-sequiturs that are supposed to add up to deep message-music, is particularly memorable. John C. Reilly, as Dewey, really needs to be commended for his work here. He sings all of the music to perfection, yet nails the crazier humor as well. And he has just the right dose of seriousness to give a sense of character and depth to the movie as well.
The rest of the cast is a veritable who's who of comedy. Jenna Fischer is really great and surprisingly scandalous as the June Carter-esque singer who steals Dewey's heart, and who steals him away from his first wife, playesd by SNL's Kristin Wiig. Tim Meadows gets some of th movie's funniest moments as a member of Dewey's band, who Dewey constantly finds doing some new drug. "You don't want any part of this!" urges Meadows, to hilarious effect. Seeing Meadows drug of choice evolve from reefer ("reefer?!?!") to LSD to Viagra is pretty amusing. There are a TON of great cameos here as well ... Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman as The Beatles are simply hilarious - Paul Rudd's John Lennon impersonation in particualr is side-splitting. Jack White (yep, Jack Black and Jack White ... in the same movie!) does an awesome Elvis, and Frankie Muniz even shows up as Buddy Holly! Classic. Ed Helms, Jonah Hill, Harold Ramis, the guy who plays Daryl on The Office, Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, and a bunch of others do some great cameos as well. And look out for Eddie Vedder as himself (he gives a hilarious speech in tribute to Dewey), The Temptations, Jewel, and a few other real-life musicians to boot.
WALK HARD just works on so many levels. The songs are uniformly hilarious and clever - I was reminded of the songs in A MIGHTY WIND in that they are legitimately catchy, well done songs but also undeniably funny and brilliantly satirical. Likewise, the general humor works both for its random craziness and the way it cleverly parodies the history of rock n' roll as well as the movies like Walk the Line that have tried to document it. John C. Reilly and the rest of the cast are great throughout. As always though, for me any comedy can ultimately only really be judged by how funny it is, and Walk Hard may be the out-and-out funniest I've seen this year. Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan did a great job here, and the jokes really hit most of the time. There are a few lulls, especially towards the end of the movie, but the final few scenes were so hilarious that any slow or flat scenes preceding them were quickly forgotten. Like I said, it's too bad this one is getting overlooked at the box office. I'd say run, don't walk to see it. Or at the least, walk hard.
My Grade: A -
SWEENEY TODD Review:
- Sweeney Todd - a movie that Tim Burton was born to make. When he's on his game, Burton is one of the great voices in film - no one lese can match his innate sense of the fantastical and the horrific, the grotesque and the romantic. With Sweeney Todd, Burton has a story with which he can indulge all of his favorite things, and the result is a movie that oozes love with each and every moment of blood and gore. What we get is one of the year's best (and this, as I've said, in a year absolutely flooded with great films) - a film that's visually stunning, told to near-perfection, and filled with a superb cast that fits the tale of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street like a bloody glove.
Burton relies on a mostly familiar set of hands to carry his adaptation of the dark musical, and the principles to a great job. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton always mesh well when they collaborate, and this is one of the duo's best pairings yet. After taking on the pale visages of Edward Scissorhands and Ichabod Crane, Depp is a natural to play the grim n' ghostly Sweeney Todd - a barber with a blood lust, who gives his victims a clean shave before using his razor to slit their throats. Depp's Todd is cold and unfeeling - scarred after being banished from his home in London after crossing the path of a judge who had eyes on his wife (the great Alan Rickman). Now returned to London ("There's a whole in the world like a great black pit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it, and its morals aren't worth what a pin can spit, and it goes by the name of London."), Sweeney Todd sets up shop, with the intent on luring the conniving Judge Turpin into his barber's chair, so that Todd can have his bloody revenge.
Our other main lead is the goth-tacular Mrs. Lovett, played by Helena Bonham Carter. The always-great Mrs. Burton is wonderful as always, and like Depp, she was seemingly born to play these types of offbeat roles - a true queen of goth and gore, reuniting her and Depp after their similarly-spooky pairing in Corpse Bride was a stroke of casting genius, all accusations of family-favoritism aside. Now, the question on the minds of many was: sure, Depp and Bonham Carter can act goth and depraved in their sleep, but can they sing? Well, I think both do a fine job with the songs. Really, the singing here, mostly, isn't about performing vocal gymnastics or hitting complicated notes. It's more just about telling a story through song - more opera than broadway musical in that respect - and both Depp and Bonham Carter do a great job in that regard. Depp in particular makes his lyrics pop when combined with his brooding and dramatic line delivery. Bonham Carter does occasionally sound a little flat, but in some ways that's a part of her character. And man, I love her character of Mrs. Lovett, maker of the worst meat pies in London, who finds her business booming when she uses Todd's victims as the secret ingredient in her pies. Like I said, a goth girl to the core.
There are some other really great turns here as well. Sascha Baron Cohen, Ali G and Borat himself, totally steals every scene he's in, as a not-what-he seems rival barber with an over-the-top Italian accent. I absolutely loved the scene that introduces us to Cohen's Adolfo Pirelli, playing the part of carnival ringmaster as he boasts of his barbering skills at an outdoor London market. In this scene we get a hilarious sing-off / shave-off between Depp and Cohen, and we also meet another standout cast member, young Ed Sanders as Toby, a much-abused apprentice to Pirelli, who eventually is taken in by Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Toby is such a great character, and I agree with Harry Knowles over on Ain't It Cool, that this is one of the best performances by a kid we've seen in a logn while in a film. It's Toby who has some of the film's best and funniest scenes, some of it's best musical moments, and who makes the film's ending as great and powerful as it is.
Alan Rickman is awesome here as Judge Turpin. With a "hero" as evil as Sweeney Todd, you'd better have one hell of a villain to make us root for the Demon Barber. And Rickman fits the bill to a "T." With the same dark and droll delivery we've come to know and love from the Harry Potter movies, Rickman here is one vile, perverted, despicable bastard. The song he and Depp share, "Pretty Women," sung while Turpin sits in Todd's barber chair, unknowingly moments away from a razor blade to the jugular, is a deliciously dark tune that is gallows humor personified. Also a lot of fun is Timothy Spall as a skeezy henchman to Rickman. Having just seen him play a similar role in ENCHANTED, there can be no doubt that Spall is simply THE guy when you need an evil henchman for your movie. As Sam Elliot is to cowboys, Timothy Spall is to evil henchman - and that is a huge compliment.
Overall, Burton is totally on his game here. The film is a visual feast, but never goes into ultra-choreographed broadway musical territory. Instead, the movie is surprisingly insular and claustrophobic, immersing you in the dank streets of Victorian London, with only the faint glow of gaslamps to provide light in the darkened night sky (although, when the film does briefly venture into the light, courtesy of Mrs. Lovett's fantasies of domestic bliss with Sweeney Todd, it's a hilarious sequence of contrasting dark and light visuals). The art direction, costuming, etc., are all brilliant - on par with other Burton-directed films like Edward Scissorhands and Big Fish.
Not having been familair with the story of Sweeney Todd, I loved how dark this tale dared to go, how its twists and turns spiraled into a grim epic that only got blacker and more tragic as it went. I loved the delight the film, and Todd, seemed to take with each act of bloody barbering, each seemingly more grizzly than the last. I don't think a more gloriously gory musical has ever or will ever exist. I loved the opening, with a young boy's love for London giving way to Sweeney Todd's venom-filled view of a city - and a human race - that he considers beneath all contempt. And I don't know if another movie this year came together in such perfect fashion with such a pleasingly grim and sadistically satisfying ending, a true turn of the screw if ever there was one.
My Grade: A
- Alright, back later with more. What a year for movies!
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