**/**** starring Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Judy Greer, Christa B. Allen screenplay by Cathy Yuspa & Josh Goldsmith and Niels Mueller directed by Gary Winick
by Walter Chaw Threatening at any moment to
veer off the populist tracks and become something legendarily,
unpleasantly subversive, the middling 13 Going on 30
is really little more than a collection of "I Love the '80s" vignettes
presided over by Jennifer Garner's peculiar, mannish mien. It's also
peculiar that the genre of body-swapping/quick-aging jibber-jabber is
making a resurgence now a couple of decades after the last spate (18
Again, Vice Versa, Big),
and peculiar again that with Mark Waters's Freaky Friday and
Gary Winick's 13 Going on 30, the genre is being
re-imagined through the prism of young women. (Perhaps not so strange
when you consider that the key demographic slavered over by studio
wonks has shifted from the pre-adolescent boys of the mid-'80s to post-Titanic
pre-adolescent girls.) It's clear that this film is meant to satisfy
some sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy for 13-year-old members of the
babysitters' club, but with Eighties references that can only be
amusing to people who've passed the third-decade mark, it manages
mostly to be a wish-fulfillment fantasy for thirtysomething men who
want emotionally immature, sexually malleable women who happen to
resemble television starlets.
**/**** Image
B Sound A- Extras B starring Martin Lawrence, Tom Wilkinson, Marsha Thomason, Vincent Regan
screenplay by Darryl J. Quarles and Peter Gaulke & Gerry Swallow
directed by Gil Junger
by Walter Chaw Jamal Walker
(Martin Lawrence) is a groundskeeper at an all-black amusement park
who, just prior to falling in a stagnant moat, is given a dressing down
for being "selfish" and not community-minded enough. ("Community"
referring to the African-American populace of South Central Los
Angeles.) Sharp-eyed viewers should instantly recognize that Black
Knight will at some point metastasize from a farce to a
public service announcement. (Luckily, we're given a solid first act
and a few moments in the second before it does.) When Jamal goes into
the moat in pursuit of a golden medallion, he surfaces from a fetid
stew in a never-never land where the plain protagonist becomes the
keystone in a kingdom-wide intrigue.
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Chevy Chase
screenplay by Josh Heald and Sean Anders & John Morris
directed by Steve Pink
by Walter Chaw Emboldened, perhaps, by the surprisingly good The Other Guys and the surprisingly great Get Him to the Greek, I went into Steve Pink's Hot Tub Time Machine with the belief that its high-concept idea--not the time travel, but the casting of '80s icon John Cusack in a film that would return him to his decade of greatest power and influence--would be at least enough for it to function as a fairly smart nostalgia piece. Sadly, it's not very smart, nor is it very funny--and the parts of it that work do so in spite of what feels like Cusack's disdain for this period that made him famous. It's pretty standard fare, really, full of obvious jokes about changing the past and the obvious "rebellion" of not honouring the Prime Directive by introducing The Black-Eyed Peas into an eighties music scene that, for everything you could say about Falco or Flock of Seagulls, never produced anything remotely as odious as The Black-Eyed Peas. No, not even Billy Joel. In other words, Pink and his stable of writers can't seem to tell what's ironic from what isn't, meaning the whole project was doomed before it left the starting gate.
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