A Few Movies we've been Watching

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Firstly, we watched Despicable Me again.  (We were given a gift of a Blu-Ray TV by one of our daughters, and we've been sending out for Blu-Ray versions of movies from Netflix.  At the moment, I have to say, most of the movies released on Blu-Ray are in almost startlingly enhanced resolution.  They can't do as much with movies restored from film, like Sound of Music, though even those look better, from a moderate distance.)

This is a great movie, and I hope it survives to enchant folks for many years.  The animation is awesome, just like that of The Incredibles, as is the characterization.  Sometimes cartoons are mere pale echoes of common stereotypes, but these two movies have pushed the envelope; they are not so much stereotypes but cartoons of achetypes.  Or at least archetypes of personalities commonly found in the last several decades: neurotic, confused, bewildered, but stubborn.  Going back to the characters of Despicable Me, notice how true the three children are to life.  The two oldest have that suspicious glare that one finds so much in any suburban family.  They're not ground down by orphanage living, as they should have been, but still, realism isn't that important in a cartoon.  We can recognize the types, even if they're out of place.  The oldest girl remains suspicious the longest, but recognizes the nature of their caregiver the soonest.  She is the most bitter about their abandonment.  The youngest has the sunniest, most forgiving nature, as the youngest in most families tends to have.  The middle girl --Edith, I think is her name-- is the most cartoon-like, but is still a recognizable character, and I can't even begin to describe her.  I knew a number of kids who stubbornly clung to some article of clothing which they used to declare their distinctiveness.  A bold stroke for a loud personality, to hide a more subtle human being underneath the cartoon exterior.  The villains are, of course, a study, all three of them.  And the minions provide a lovely (very German, I thought) bubbly counterpoint to the rest of the personalities.

Quite by accident, we picked up the new Muppet movie: The Muppets 2011, starring Jason Segal and Amy Adams.  This was just the second movie I have seen with Amy Adams --the first one was Julie & Julia, a confusing combination of brilliant and disappointing-- and I was immediately captivated.  Simply put, this very successful production can be described as Pee Wee Herman meets The Blues Brothers, though the genius of the Muppets, and Jason Segal's sly humor elevates it above the typical entries in the "Let's restore the old theater" genre (of which one entry is Xanadu, starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly, of all people).  Incidentally, Blues Brothers 2000 was an awesome movie.

It was amusing to read that in certain quarters, the story of The Muppets is being viewed as a possible instance of liberal propaganda!  (Big bad Texas Oil Man attempts to steal the Muppets' theater.)  A decade ago, such a plot line would have been immediately accepted as formulaic in the extreme.  But, or course, Big Businessmen have been chafing under this stigma for years, and finally feel that they can protest at being labeled the villains in every movie.  What's happening?  Big Business wants to come out of the closet?  Well, they aspire to Personhood, so the next step is to have raping and pillaging accepted as legitimate pursuits by the common people, and then they can look at the possibility of marrying.  If gays can marry, why not Big Businesses?  Oops ... they already do, don't they!!

Oddly enough, we noticed a discounted copy of Juno, a movie I've wanted to see for a long time.  I absolutely loved it!  I was initially put off by the oddball folk-type music with the goofy lyrics, which were probably intended to give us an inkling of the complex mental state that Juno is in at various points in the movie.  God knows that the mental state of an intelligent, passionate teenager who gets pregnant must be sufficiently complex for the audience to need some guidance.

The interesting thing is that it is possible to make a movie without absolutely nailing Juno's mental state, and quite honestly, it might not be desirable to nail it.  A large number of movies in the last decade or two have kept a healthy vagueness about the mental states of the protagonists; American Beauty, and Napoleon Dynamite come to mind.  (Another example is the Indie movie The Last Word, directed by Geoffrey Haley.)  The important thing is to alert the audience to the turmoil taking place, and at least narrow it down to some degree.  To leave it completely in the air is a cheat, to my mind.  It was equally interesting that the mental state of Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) can only be studied through Juno's eyes, which are essentially oblivious to what's going on in Mark's head.  To the credit of the Mark Loring character, he quickly bounces back from Juno's rejection, and we're never quite sure whether he entertained any hopes of continuing a relationship with her.  Some men will find the idea laughable, while others will immediately assume that he had designs on her; they could all be right, but to settle the matter would have detracted from the real drama, which was about Juno.

My wife was incredulous about the implausibly snappy dialogue.  Do teenagers of today (or at least the nineties -- it seemed very much as though the story was set in the nineties, not that it matters ) talk like that?  I have to confess that I know at least a few teenagers that did.  It certainly is different to have dialogue that wild presented in a movie; it's almost axiomatic that a movie audience must never be made to feel inferior or outclassed.  In the present case, however much Juno reveals that she is the razor-sharp cynic, we're comforted by the fact that she's the one who got knocked up, and we would never find ourselves in her situation, ha ha.  She can talk the talk, but she has to waddle the walk.

One of my favorite characters was Leah, Juno's Job's-Comforter of a friend.  She gave the movie just that perfect touch.  It might have been Diablo Cody's snazzy writing, or it might have been Olivia Thirlby's beautifully understated acting, but it worked perfectly.  It almost hurts to have to wait a decade to (possibly) see what mischief Juno and Bleek would get up to as adults!  Ellen Page and her "parents" were fantastic, and I fully appreciated the way they were represented as completely accepting of Juno's pregnancy.  [Disclaimer: one of the most troublesome things about the liberal 'platform' as it exists now to me is the axiom that we endorse choice, sometimes taken to mean that we embrace free sex for adolescents.  No matter what solution is adopted when there is a teenage pregnancy, most parties are losers.  Making abortion freely available is not a solution, it is the least horrible alternative in some cases, but making it less freely available is even more horrible.  Perhaps some day, if we become a more ideal society, the pain that accompanies unwanted pregnancy will be a lot less.]

Finally (at least for this post), we watched Men in Black.  I had stayed away from it assuming that it would be just another smash-em-up thriller.  Actually, it was very funny, thanks in no small part to the wonderful comedic acting of Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, and, not least, Rip Torn.  A fabulous cameo appearance from Tony Shalhoub was hilarious; I nominate him for Comedy Heaven immediately.  Linda Fiorentino is a wonderful new comedic actress, and I'm going to stay tuned for her work with great interest.

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