FILM REVIEW OF ''THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS" (2018)

The fiftysomething son of Muppets creator Jim Henson, Brian Henson may have thought everybody would laugh hysterically at the sight of his father’s “Sesame Street” Muppets wallowing in puppet sex, killing other puppets, and spewing R-rated “Scarface” obscenities.  Indeed, the production company behind “Sesame Street” sued STX Films for an early poster displaying the tagline: “No Sesame, All Street.” Mind you, none of the actual “Sesame Street” Muppet characters are ridiculed in Henson’s farce.  Nevertheless, The Sesame Workshop argued such advertising “deliberately confuses consumers into mistakenly believing that Sesame is associated with, has allowed, or has even endorsed or produced the movie and tarnishes Sesame’s brand.”  Judge Vernon Broderick threw the case out.  Although they lost the lawsuit, The Sesame Workshop must be elated that Henson’ abominable police procedural comedy “The Happytime Murders” (* OUT OF ****) bombed during its first week in release.  Forging a make-believe world where “meat sacks” and “felties” bump into each other, this lame laffer earned only a quarter of its $40-million budget. Puppets refer to humans as “meat sacks,” while humans call puppets “felties.” Comparisons between “The Happytime Murders” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), where cartoon characters co-existed with humans are inevitable.  Despite its top-notch CGI of Muppets ‘behaving badly’ and its celebrity cast, featuring Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, and Elizabeth Banks, this predictable, half-baked hokum should have been called “The Crappytime Murders.”  Basically, neither Henson nor scenarists Todd Berger and Dee Austin Robertson have conjured up enough sidesplitting jokes to weather its lowest-common-denominator 91 minutes.  Moreover, the jokes are neither shamelessly nor hilariously memorable.  If you’ve seen the trailer where puppets perform “Basic Instinct” sex and the guy squirts ‘silly-string’ semen, you’ve seen the most provocative scene.  Another scene with a Dominatrix Dalmatian whipping a semi-nude, tied-down fireman while yelping, “I'm gonna piss on you like a fire hydrant” is more idiotic than erotic. 

 

This whodunit takes place in the seedy underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles.  Mankind has marginalized puppets as second-class citizens, and the filmmakers cannot resist exposing the racism with which humans belittle puppets. The action concerns the puppets who starred in “The Happytime Gang,” a popular 1990’s kiddie show. Humans embraced this groundbreaking sit-com about puppets, and puppets attracted greater sympathy from humans.  Decades afterward, the lucrative syndication rights for the show are up for grabs.  Now, a serial slayer is stalking and knocking-off the seven puppet cast members one-by-one.  Lieutenant Banning of the LAPD (Leslie David Baker of “Elizabethtown”) assigns former police detective Phil Phillips (long-time Muppeteer vet Bill Barretta) to serve as a consultant for his former partner, Detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy of “Identity Thief”), to solve these homicides.  Traces of bad blood linger between Phil and Connie.  For the record, Phil is a sky-blue Muppet with black hair who resembles former “Late Late Show” talk host Tom Synder, and he doesn’t mind kicking the crap out of anybody.  Phil was a rising star in the LAPD, until a pistol-packing puppet took Connie hostage in a stand-off.  Phil fired at the perpetrator, but his bullet ricocheted and killed an innocent bystander.  Connie caught a slug in the liver when she disarmed her truculent captor.  Desperately, Phil rushed her to the nearest medical facility, and it turned out to be a puppet hospital.  Although the puppet doctor refused to operate on a human, Phil waved the muzzle of his service revolver under his nose.  Since acquiring a felt liver, Connie contends with many of the afflictions puppets suffer on a daily basis. Puppets crave sugar as if it were cocaine, and Connie has dozens of Maple Syrup bottles chilling in her fridge.  

Now, Phil ekes out a living as a private investigator. One day, switch-hitting, nympho puppet Sandra White (Dorien Davies) slinks into his office.  She hires Phil to thwart blackmailers demanding $350-thousand from her.  The first place Phil heads is a smut shop.  He is trying to trace the cut-out letters in the blackmail note to a porno magazine.  Meantime, a masked gunman enters the store, kills the owner and his two employees, who were staging a porno about an octopus milking a slutty dairy cow with his tentacles.  The gunman blows their felt heads off with a shotgun.  BLAM!  BLAM!  During this blazing mayhem, Phil occupied himself in the smut owner’s office, scrutinizing a list of suspects who might have clipped letters from the porno magazine for Sandra’s blackmail message.  Nevertheless, the LAPD treat Phil as ‘a person of interest’ despite his story that he heard nothing in the owner’s office.  Now, Phil is on the lam, and Connie is struggling to protect him, while they ferret out clues to the identities of the killers.

Comparably, “The Happytime Murders” isn’t nearly as rude, crude, and offensive as Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles” (1989), Trey Parker’s “Team America: World Police” (2004), and Seth MacFarlane’s two “Ted” comedies with Mark Walhberg.  Mind you, the prospect of a “Happytime Murders” sequel is probably as infinitesimal as “Ted 3.”  Sadly, Henson and his writers provide a far from adequate history about the origins of this strange new world where puppets talk.  Principally, when did the Muppets become sentient?  Sure, these questions may not bother you, but some explanation should have been offered.  We watch puppets play cards, orchestrate drive-by shootings, and generally act like criminals.  Puppet die violently in this murder-riddled melodrama. Bullets blow the stuffing out of these puppets when dogs aren’t mistaking them for chew toys. The puppet work is probably some of the best.  Publicity material for “The Happytime Murders” reveals that Henson and company fashioned about 125 Muppet-like puppets for it.  Indeed, the interaction between the actors and the puppets looks appropriately goofy.  While she is cast as the top-billed detective, Melissa McCarthy plays second banana to Phil. Maya Rudolph steals every scene as Phil’s radiant secretary ‘Bubbles’ who can pick locks. Neither trailblazing nor sharp-edged enough as a satire, “The Happytime Murders” scrapes the bottom of the barrel with little to show for it.

FILM REVIEW OF ''GONE GIRL" (2014)

Watching David Fincher’s deliriously tantalizing whodunit “Gone Girl,” (**** OUT OF ****) a melodrama about a troubled married couple wrestling with compatibility issues, reminded me of the film classic “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946) co-starring Lana Turner and John Garfield.  Turner and Garfield played illicit lovers who arranged the murder of Lana’s elderly husband so Garfield and she could indulge their lust.  Eventually, each had second thoughts, and murder reared its ugly head.   In “Gone Girl,” Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike experience somewhat similar woes.  They are cast as a husband and wife who have lost their jobs and find their marriage unraveling with ugly ramifications. They embark on a nerve-racking odyssey through Hell with more outlandish things happening to them than you can possibly imagine—unless you’ve read the novel.  “Gone Girl” constitutes another Hollywood adaptation of a runaway bestseller.  Happily, for a change, director David Fincher hired bestselling author Gilliam Flynn to adapt her own work.  Yes, I’ve perused Flynn’s masterpiece, and she has exercised good taste and judgment in modifying her compulsive page-turner for the screen.  Basically, this Twentieth Century Fox film release is about as faithful as any movie can be to its source material.  Minor changes occur, and some characters have been eliminated.   Nevertheless, nothing substantial has been altered.   In other words, if you loved the novel, you won’t hate what Fincher and Flynn have done with it.   As much as I enjoyed “Gone Girl,” I’ll concede the novel is slightly better than the film.   Principally, Flynn cannot translate to the screen the depths of Amy’s subversive thoughts.   Meantime, Fincher has done an admirable job of orchestrating the ‘he said; she said’ shenanigans of husband and wife.  Mind you, “Gone Girl” qualifies as more than just a spine-tingling exercise in suspense and tension where the authorities believe the husband is the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance.   This movie succeeds on multiple levels as Fincher and Flynn skewer gender politics, scandal-mongering television news personalities, marriage dynamics, and essentially society in general.

 

Nick (Ben Affleck of “Argo”) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike of “Die Another Day”) are a sophisticated New York couple who lost their jobs as a result of the recession.  When his mother is diagnosed with cancer, Nick persuades Amy to forsake her elegant brownstone in New York City, and they relocate to his North Carthage, Missouri, hometown.  Amy buys Nick a tavern called ‘The Bar’ with her trust fund to keep him busy, and Nick’s twin sister Margo Dunne (Broadway actress Carrie Coon) helps manage it.  Meantime, Nick and Amy’s marriage steadily erodes as trust issues and power dynamics exert a toll on it.  A life-long city dweller, Amy feels miserably out of place in a small town in the middle of Heartland America with too little to occupy her imagination.  She doesn’t adapt as well to this dire change of scenery as her husband.   As the morning of their fifth anniversary dawns, Nick leaves Amy at home and cruises into town to check up on his sister at the bar.  No sooner has Nick gotten there and swapped shots with Margo than a neighbor calls Nick and informs him that his front door is standing mysteriously wide open.  Rushing home, Nick finds pieces of furniture either smashed or overturned in the living room.  Amy is nowhere in sight.  Nick alerts the authorities.  North Carthage Police Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickins of TV’s “Lost”) and Officer Jim Gilpin (Patrick Fugit of “Almost Famous”) comb the premises and collect clues.  Later, the North Carthage crime scene crew uncovers evidence of a huge blood puddle in the kitchen that had been sloppily mopped up.  Repeatedly, Nick swears his innocence, but things spiral hopelessly out of control.  He learns from the police that Amy was pregnant.  Ultimately, in an act of sheer desperation, Nick hires celebrity lawyer, Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry of “Alex Cross”), to defend him.  Worst, the jealous college girl with whom Nick was having an affair exposes their adultery on prime-time television.  Although the detectives have amassed an abundance of evidence implicating Nick, Boney and Gilpin have no luck finding Amy’s body.

You could watch “Gone Girl” a dozen times and come away with something memorable each time.   Fincher has fashioned a tense thriller just as immaculate and flawless as his best movies, including “Fight Club,” “The Game,” “The Social Network,” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”  Affleck is at the top of his game as the gullible husband with something to conceal, while Pike deserves an Oscar for the many faces that she forges as Nick’s long, lost Amy.  Neal Patrick Harris displays his chameleon ability to play a cross-section of characters.  He emerges as one of Amy’s warped lovers who once stalked her.  Clocking in at virtually two hours and half, “Gone Girl” defies expectations—unless you’re conversant with the novel.  Just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, Fincher and Flynn twist another loop into their Gordian knot of a narrative.   The effect is similar to being spun around about every half-hour and gaping at the experience.    Beware, “Gone Girl” boasts a blood-soaked murder scene that is rather graphic, but this thriller remains extremely literate.   Anybody who abhors HLN ‘victim’s rights’ advocate Nancy Grace is going to appreciate the pompous character of Ellen Abbott who goes after Nick’s scalp after Amy vanishes.   Tyler Perry plays it straight as Nick’s high-profile attorney Tanner Bolt who coaches him throughout the ordeal.   In one scene, Tanner prepares his client for an important television interview.   Each time Nick answers a question with either an inappropriate tone or expression, Tanner bombards him with jelly beans.   Anybody who has ever complained about Ben Affleck’s smug pretty boy persona will love this scene.   As much as I would love to divulge some of the juicier scenes in “Gone Girl,” I cannot without spoiling the outcome.   If you love husband and wife murder movies or murder melodramas altogether, “Gone Girl” shouldn’t disappoint you.

FILM REVIEW OF "ESCAPE PLAN" (2013)

Action superstars Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger co-star in “1408” director Mikael Hafstrom’s “Escape Plan” (*** OUT OF ****), an audacious but improbable prison break epic that delivers brawny thrills and chills galore.  Unlike the last two “Expendables” outings, Stallone and Schwarzenegger appear here on equal footing in more than rather than a couple of scenes.  Basically, we’ve got “Rocky” and “The Terminator” tangling with Mr. Reese from the provocative, CBS-TV thriller “Person of Interest.”  If you’re expecting another wise-cracking yarn with our heroes spouting clever one-liners, you’re going to be disappointed.  Indeed, little of the dialogue in “Escape Plan” deserves to be immortalized on bumper stickers.  Refreshingly, neither do our stars make any references to their previous Hollywood blockbusters.  Everybody plays it straight-forward in this survival-of-the-fittest saga.  Meanwhile, most of the testosterone-laden action consists of men either beating or shooting the living daylights out of each other in examples of outlandish, over-the-top violence.  Stallone is cast against type as a mature, serious-minded, MacGyver-like hero with a Houdini talent for crashing out of prisons, while Schwarzenegger plays one of the most dangerous men alive behind bars.  Jim Caviezel is cast against type, too, as a villain so dastardly that you will squeal with glee when he gets his comeuppance.  Former British soccer star Vinnie Jones chews the scenery with relish as Caviezel’s second-in-command.  Jones’ evil  prison guard shows no qualms about smashing inmates to a pulp as if they were drums.  

Scenarists Miles Chapman of “Road House 2: Last Call” and Jason Keller of “Machine Gun Preacher” generate plenty of suspense about the mysterious setting of the prison.  After an exciting introductory sequence at a Colorado prison where our hero demonstrates his masterly escape artist credentials, the remainder of “Escape Plan” occurs in an imposing penitentiary designed for the worst of the worst.  Essentially, the convicts occupy cells that resemble glass cages stacked atop each other and framed with steel beams.  “Source Code” production designer Barry Chusid has surpassed himself with this visually intriguing setting.  Well-armed, incorruptible, prison guards decked out from head to foot in black uniforms with sinister Guy Fawkes masks reminiscent of the police in director George Lucas’ dystopian sci-fi chiller “THX-1138” patrol the premises.  An around-the-clock surveillance system denies the inmates any privacy.  Hafstrom and his writers will keep you guessing for about an hour into the action where this impressive pen could be situated.  When Stallone finally figures out its whereabouts, the revelation is comparable to the lair of a James Bond villain.  While “Escape Plan” recycles some of the usual prison movie shenanigans, the imaginative setting sets this movie apart. 

Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone of “First Blood”) has broken out of 14 prisons over the last eight years.  He has formed his one-of-kind company with Lester Clark (Vincent D'Onofrio of “Full Metal Jacket”) along with Abigail (Amy Ryan of “Green Zone”) and computer wizard Hush (Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson of “Get Rich Or Die Tryin’”).  Out of the blue, the Central Intelligence Agency makes Ray an offer that he cannot refuse.  They challenge Ray to break out of their super-max slammer, and they are prepared to pay him twice his usual million dollar fee.  Initially, Ray doesn’t like the set-up.  Abigail and Hush share his dread.  Lester thinks it will be a picnic.  Reluctantly Ray accepts their dare against his better judgment.  Predictably, things go badly from the outset.  Our hero is abducted, drugged, and the homing device embedded in his body that enables Abigail and Hush to track him is removed.  The moment Ray awakens in his exotic prison cell, he wants out of the proposition.  Unfortunately, he learns that he is going nowhere.  It seems treacherous Lester has double-crossed him, and Warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel of “The Thin Red Line”) has orders to keep him permanently on ice.  Ironically, Ray discovers Hobbes has designed his prison security measures based on Ray’s book about the most common structural flaws in prison security!

Ray finds himself surrounded by a formidable population of inmates that want to kill him.  Initially, one of these brutes is Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger of “The Last Stand”), and they don’t cotton to each other.  When Ray clobbers Emil with his first blow, Emil observes with a smirk, “You hit like a vegetarian!”  When the Muslim brotherhood decides to gang up on Ray, Emil changes his mind and comes to our hero’s rescue.  Eventually, Ray and Emil become friends.  Ray explains that he has been paid to break out.  He suffers a number of set-backs, but he recovers from Hobbes’ savage treatment with Emil’s help.  Ray reveals his formula for success.  He must study the layout of the prison, and this means he must incite a riot so Hobbes can throw him in solitary confinement.  Solitary confinement is the equivalent of Hell where inmates are caged up and subjected to a blazing battery of search lights that turn the cage into an oven.  Ray notices the screws that in the floor plates are steel rather than aluminum.  He suspects the prison may be located in a vast underground cavern.  Next, he scrutinizes the rotation of the guards and their routines while they watch the inmates.  The most important part of Ray’s plan is finding somebody on the inside who will help them since he is cut off from Abigail and Hush.  The most likely candidate is the prison doctor, Dr. Kyrie (Sam Neill of “Jurassic Park”), but he displays considerable reluctance.

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger should have teamed up long before “Escape Plan” because they radiate convincing camaraderie.  Director Mikael Hafstrom never lets the momentum lag, and he minimizes the clichés that crop up in most prison flicks.  For example, the Muslim inmates are rehabilitated as heroes after they join Ray and Emil.  Our heroes suffer considerably at the hands of the sadistic warden and his lieutenant before they triumph.  The worst thing about “Escape Plan” is that its exterior computer-generated imagery appears less than spectacular.  

extravanza

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE GRAND DUEL" (Italian-1972)

Prolific Spaghetti western scenarist Ernesto Gastaldi penned the script for this Lee Van Cleef continental oater "The Grand Duel," directed with considerable competence by Giancarlo Santi. Although he didn't helm any Spaghetti westerns aside from "Grand Duel" on his own, Santi served as Sergio Leone's assistant director on "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1966) and his masterpiece "Once Upon A Time in the West" (1968) as well as Giulio Petroni's assistant director on "Death Rides A Horse"(1967). In short, not only did Santi know how to stage gunfights, but he also knew about the conventions of the Spaghetti western bullet ballet. Originally, Santi was hired to direct "Duck You Sucker," but Rod Steiger's complaints prompted Leone to replace Santi. "The Grand Duel" ranks high up in the lower 25 Spaghetti westerns out of the best 100. Three things make it memorable.  First, this above-average shoot'em up benefits largely from Lee Van Cleef's iconic gimlet-eyed presence. Second, the mystery gradually unraveled --presented in surrealistic flashbacks--generates suspense and tension. Third, Sergio Bardotti & Luis Enriquez Bacalov’s unforgettable orchestral score that signals the tonal changes in the narrative.

Roughly speaking, the motives of the characters in "The Grand Duel" reverse the relationship between the old gunslinger (Henry Fonda) and youthful gunfighter (Terence Hill) in Tonino Valerii's "My Name Is Nobody." Meanwhile, Van Cleef's entrance in "The Grand Duel" imitates his striking introduction in Leone's "For A Few Dollars More." In these Italian horse operas, Van Cleef is presented initially as a commercial passenger. In "The Grand Duel," he rides in a stagecoach, while he rides in a train with his head bowed beneath a black hat in "For A Few Dollars More." In the latter film, Van Cleef concealed his face behind a huge Bible when he asked the conductor about the train making an unscheduled stop. The conductor warns him they aren't going to stop where Van Cleef's frock-coated, black hat clad character wants. Nevertheless, Van Cleef tugs the emergency cord, halting the train, and disembarks to fetch his horse from the freight car.

As "The Grand Duel" opens, lawmen fire warning shots at the stagecoach that Sheriff Clayton (Lee Van Cleef) is riding in and refuse to let Big Horse (Jess Han of "Escape from Death Row") enter Gila Bend. They explain that escaped killer Philipp Wermeer (one-time-only actor Peter O'Brien, aka Alberto Dentice) has holed up with a girl in town after breaking out of jail in Jefferson. The authorities have posted a $3-thousand bounty on Vermeer's head. Nevertheless, Clayton disembarks and strolls without any apparent concern past two lawmen and several bounty hunters to quench his thirst in Gila Bend. This introductory scene unfolds at a leisurely pace as it covers points, such as where the bounty hunters are hidden and Clayton's imperturbability in the face of death. Clayton indicates the positions of all the bounty hunters to Vermeer. Later, after our wrongly convicted hero eludes the bounty hunters during a furious horse chase. The villains kill his horse, but he flags down a stagecoach. The entire scene resembles the scene from John Ford's "Stagecoach" when Ringo (John Wayne) who was afoot clambered inside the vehicle.

The omniscient Lee Van Cleef hero dominates the action. The hooked-nosed, veteran Hollywood heavy delivers a stern but seasoned performance as the worldly-wise elder. Van Cleef smokes his signature curved pipe. Actually, when we meet Clayton, he is no longer the sheriff of Jefferson. He protested Philip Vermeer's conviction, and the authorities stripped him of his badge. Earlier, he had taken the Patriarch to court three times. Eventually, as the best man with a gun in the entire state, Clayton ushers in justice above the law. Anyway, one of the Patriarch's sons Eli Saxon (bald headed Marc Mazza of "Moonraker") accused Philipp Vermeer of killing the Patriarch, (Horst Frank in a dual role wearing whiskers), a wealthy, unscrupulous power-broker abhorred by half of the state. Vermeer suspects that the Patriarch had his father shot in the back because he learned about the silver on Vermeer's land. Meanwhile, Eli demands to know the identity of the man who killed his father. Clayton reminds Eli that the Patriarch was gunned down from behind and that Vermeer stood in front of them at the railway depot. Clearly, Vermeer couldn't have killed the Patriarch.
 

The vicious and degenerate "Grand Duel" villains qualify as challenging adversaries. David (Horst Frank of "Johnny Hamlet") rules the Saxon clan, while Eli serves as Saxon City's marshal, and Adam Saxon (Klaus Grunberg of "Fire, Ice, and Dynamite") runs the saloon. Grunberg plays Adam as a depraved homosexual who wears a vanilla-white suit, fedora, and constantly caresses a long scarf looped around his neck. The first time that we see Adam, he guns down an old man that his henchmen have thrown out of the saloon. Later, Adam massacres a wagon train with a machine gun and Brother David orders him to leave no eyewitnesses. David's words: "In a violent country, he who seizes today, controls tomorrow," epitomizes his treachery.

"The Grand Duel" plays out in three settings: first in Gila Bend; second at the isolated Silver Bells stagecoach station, and third in Saxon City where a showdown occurs in the stock pens in traditional western style. The final showdown scene is very atmospheric with Lee Van Cleef and his adversaries opening huge gates to each of the stock pens before they finally settle down to the shootout.  Santi never lets the action malinger. He does a good job with the first large-scale gunfight at the stagecoach station. The bounty vermin not only blow-up the stagecoach, but also shoot each other to increase their shares after Vermeer surrenders. The Saxon City shootout when Vermin pole vaults to safety is neat. The black & white night sequence that he stages during the Patriarch's killing has surrealistic quality. Meantime, hardcore Lee Van Cleef fans won't want to miss "The Grand Duel" for its several shootouts as well as the twists and turns in Gastaldi’s screenplay. Get the letterboxed Wild East DVD; it surpasses the full-frame, public domain DVD or the foreign, semi-letterboxed version.