So another best-seller gets turned into a movie. Honestly, I called this one years ago when the book Fast Food Nation (which I haven't read) originally came out. I mean the thing reads basically just like a movie anyway. The author was practically begging for it to get adapted. Sometimes I wonder if it was actually a screenplay that the dude couldn't sell so he was like frig it, and just formatted it as a novel. The real question is why did it take so long to get produced?
[I originally put a joke in this section about how studios were nervous to release a movie with "fast" in the title, after the mediocre performance of Speed 2: Cruise Control (de Bont, 1997) and Highlander II: the Quickening (Mulcahy, 1991). I still think that the premise of this joke is solid as hell, but really requires someone funnier than me to make it work.]
My major problem with this movie is I bet they leave out some of what would have been my favorite parts from the book, which changes everything! And I just plain didn't picture some of the characters being as tall or as short as they are in the movie, and I am a VERY visual person so it's just, I don't know. Beyond that, there were some really great parts where Greg Kinnear made these really great jokes all at the expense of fast food.
And what a cast! Particia Arquette, Kris Kristofferson, Avril Lavigne (to name three). It's awesome when people with names you've heard of, but faces you can't quite place come out and take a stand against something. And fast food is perfect for that because outside of the people who actually work for the company, no one is going to disagree with you. It's like when famous dudes are like "Seriously, tobacco kills people!" or when Richard Gere and the Beastie Boys are like "God, will you free Tibet already!" or when anybody is like "Listen, Slavery: it was fucked!" It's so awesome 'cause it's so easy to do.
X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006)
When it was announced that Bryan Singer would not be directing the third X movie, I was nervous. "Oh, no," I said to myself out-loud during dinner at my girlfriend's parents' house. "Now they're probably just going to replace him with some hired-gun monkey who will hedge all his bets, and we will be left with some hollow imitation of Singer's X-men movies. He'll probably even up the action and special effects a little, to try to mask the lack of soul, when what the franchise really needs is a director who will take some risks."
So, you can only imagine my ecstatic surprise when Brett Ratner officially signed on as Singer's replacement. "Yes!" I said, shaking all over in the produce section of Whole Foods. "Of course, Brett Ratner! Taking a risk with an edgy, young director, who's still hungry, someone who still needs to metaphorically eat before he will be metaphorically satiated! That's the kind of ballsy move that I love to see. I mean, we're talking about the cinematic iconoclast who DARED to remake Manhunter (Mann, 1986) in the style of Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991), what a mind-fuck! This is a real dangerous filmmaker, an auteur, a man with a vision!"
I spent weeks wondering what kind of moves he was going to make, how he was going to deconstruct the genre. Perhaps he would reclaim heroic values a la Homer, essentially throwing a bomb into the mores of Christian liberal democracy. Maybe he would focus on the condition of belatedness, that we live in an age in which we can no longer believe in heroes, a context which refuses heroism. Then it hit! The bombshell. He cast Frasier as Beast. "Holy Shit!" I screamed in the middle of Church. "This is it! Take that, Tim Burton. You thought Michael Keaton as Batman would be the casting stunt of the century, and maybe it was. But this is the year 2000, and you've just been punk'd! Boo-yah! Of course! focus on what Beast is like on the inside, not his inconsequential super-human strength, or remarkable agility, or heightened senses. It's almost obvious! We all know Frasier is smart as fuck, and that's all that matters! What a statement in this image-obsessed culture, to force viewers to focus on soul, holy shit. Jesus, why doesn't the guy just walk right into the White House and poop in George Bush's piano!"
Fun With Dick and Jane (Dean Parisot, 2005)
This fast-paced romp is probably the smartest remake of the year, being an update of the comparatively clumsy and sluggish Fun With Dick and Jane (Ted Kotcheff, 1977). The original, released during the affluent (dare I say decadent?) late 70's, couldn't boast the profound poignance and social relevance of the remake. It was doomed to obscurity, despite its impressive cast with George Somebody and Jane Fonda. (I only say that because I had never heard of it before, and I asked a couple of people, and they had never heard of it either.)
In these more cynical, post-Enron, post-Mr. and Mrs. Smith times, American movie-goers are desperate for a comedy about a husband-and-wife team of armed robbers forced into a life of crime by underhanded corporate maneuverings. And what better response to the charge from the religious right that liberal hollywood undermines "family values" than for their criminality to serve as a bonding agent, saving their troubled marriage. (I really hope that's how the plot goes.)
The only reservation I have about this film is that the crime scenes aren't quite zany and hilarious enough. The rubber-faced Jim Carrey attempts to make up for the relatively bland writing with an even more over-the-top performance than one would expect from the guy who made Americans from all walks of life say "Oh really" and "Allrighty then" in very annoying ways. It's as if he is constantly shouting "Clear!" and jolting the jokes with those paddle-guys, something he wouldn't have to do if the writers had simply watched Raising Arizona (Coen, 1987) and ripped off a few choice jokes. Tea Leoni is Tea Leoni.
Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
Do the ends justify the means? May Righteousness ever employ Atrocity for the sake of Justice? How many people (no matter how despicable) can one kill before we may call him a killer? These accursed questions that have dogged Western culture's greatest thinkers for centuries are finally tackled by director Steven Spielberg in his edgy new film, Munich, and the answers he finds are "Maybe. Maybe. I don't know."
The truth is that Spielberg spends so much of the movie trying not to offend Palestinians, that the viewer can't even enjoy a cool team of secret assassins kill bad guys. If he was so afraid of the potentially volatile subject matter, why did he even bother making the movie? He didn't waste this kind of time apologizing for Germans in Schindler's List, did he? (I don't know. I didn't see it.) And that's why the List was not only edgy and daring, but a rollicking good time, awarded with Oscar after Oscar, and why Munich is a self-loathing, crappy piece of cinema, only successful in its accurate reflection of how crappy and stupid the world is. I don't know, maybe it will be good.
King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005)
This movie is probably the most thrilling cinematic experience I will have ever known. The gorilla is gonna be wicked big! Listen to my thoughts: Naomi Watts' performance will likely be a challenging comment on the damsel-in-distress archetype. She will certainly indulge us with the requisite blood-curdling scream (I bet) and coquettish glances, only to defy our expectations by demonstrating her character's (I don't know what her name is) capacity for both sincere compassion and defiant stoicism, playing against the film's quaint 1930s setting to underscore the post-modern era's more mercurial (and problematic) sense of femininity.
In what looks like the year's most inspired bit of casting, Jack Black will play the guy in the hat who tries to exploit King Kong. Black, who up to this point has been making quite a name for himself as Hollywood's mercenary funny man (and the only stomachable element of Jesus' Son (Maclean, 1999), shows us just how captivating he can be without any jokes. And I don't know, but from the preview I would guess that his sobering portrayal of that guy tempers the hubris and megalomania with sympathy and humanity, absent from Kong's previous incarnations (I have never seen the other movies either). All in all, I give it two bananas up!
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