Superbad
dir. Greg Mottola
To answer your question, yes, Superbad is very funny.
No, I know why you asked, and it’s okay. You saw the preview, you
saw that the same dudes who produced Knocked Up and
40-Year-Old Virgin wrote and produced it, you saw that it
starred Michael Cera from Arrested Development, and you had
high hopes. But you also had your doubts. Given that the plot is very
similar to the atrocious American Pie series
(Superbad is also about a group of awkward alcohol-obsessed
high-school seniors who are trying as hard as they possibly can to get
laid in the last weeks of the school year), you grew increasingly
conflicted.
You worried that Superbad, as funny as it should be, would fall into American Pie‘s overwrought teen-movie
trap. You worried that the characters would be empty, the jokes would
be stale, and the dialogue would be remarkably unrelatable.
But glory be, none of that is true! Hallelujah! Superbad is
hilarious!
Unlike the American Pie jerks, the writers of
Superbad are smart, funny, and probably a lot more attractive
(but I’m just guessing on that one). And you can tell that the dialogue
was written with sincerity—exaggerated for the sake of comedy,
yes, but the characters came from the minds of men who had similar
experiences in high school (read: they were dorks).
While American Pie had an endless list of flaws (including
stupid dialogue and unlikable characters), Superbad nails the
equation, combining gross, childish humor that makes boys wet their
pants with sweet moments that are also funny, awkward, and
endearing.
Superbad is not superbad… wait for it… it’s
supergood! Ha! Get it? Super GOOD!? HAHAHA! Kill me. MEGAN
SELING
The Boss of It All
dir. Lars von Trier
One thinks of many things when thinking of Lars von
Trier—boundless invention, ’70s pop, the mistreatment of
Björk—but the term “light comedy” isn’t one of them. Which
isn’t to say that the Danish enfant terrible work is devoid of humor,
just that it tends toward bleaker-than-bleak. The Boss of it All, the filmmaker’s return to his native language
after the America-shredding double shot of Dogville and
Manderlay (and the first since the announcement of his
temporary retirement due to depression), stands as an aberration: the
first time the director has gone for funny ha-ha, rather than funny
oh-dear.
The premise is vintage screwball: With his company on the brink of
sale to a ranting Icelandic tyrant (director Friðrik þór Friðriksson),
a meek businessman hires a clueless method actor (Jens Albinus) to pose
as a fictional company head in order to take the heat from the
employees. The chaos that results may or may not be a sly reflection of
the director’s legendarily prickly handling of his actors, but it works
here like gangbusters, particularly in the case of Albinus, whose
arrogant, vacant stare gets funnier with every close-up.
Von Trier being von Trier, the director can’t entirely resist
clunking up the batter, via a computer-controlled camera editing system
that results in a number of weirdly off-center shots, as well as the
occasional interlude where he physically comes out from behind the
curtain and apologizes for the inconsequentiality of his film. Still
and all, this is an honestly charming, witty confection, with nary a
martyred female or uncomfortable money shot to be found. He’s gotta be
up to something. ANDREW WRIGHT
Death at a Funeral
dir. Frank Oz
Imagine, if you will, a 7-year-old child who’s been educated
exclusively by DARE officers and otherwise confined to a tiny closet
with a pit toilet and a TV on which two awful BBC sitcoms are playing
on a continuous loop. Such is the stunted mind (belonging to writer
Dean Craig) that conceived Death at a Funeral, a puerile,
scatological farce in which the most memorable characters include (a) a
man who ingests a pill that looks like Valium but causes him to pull
all kinds of funny faces and crawl on the rooftop naked, and (b) a
dwarf, played by Peter Dinklage, who’s also a cruel, blackmailing
homosexual.
Matthew MacFadyen, the saddest-faced man in all of British cinema,
plays Daniel, a member of the upper classes attempting to bury his
father in a dignified manner. But first, some nyucks. The coffin
delivered to the family’s estate contains the body of another man.
Nyuck. Daniel’s wife is a nagging bitch. Nyuck. And a normally uptight
guy, recently engaged to Daniel’s sister, is reacting to a hit of acid
like a lunatic baboon. Nyuck!
Though ridiculous, the movie up until this point is pretty much what
you’d expect from a certain brand of British farce. But when Dinklage
stops skulking around the grounds and announces his diabolical
intentions, any benefit of the doubt you’d been hanging onto shrivels
up like a salted slug. Basically, the little guy threatens to exhibit
photographs of the deceased engaged in various homosexual acts. This
threat provokes acts of violence more enthusiastic than would be
strictly necessary to preserve the dignity of the grieving matriarch,
and the fact that they’re directed toward a little person… well,
comedic gay bashing may not be acceptable anymore, but apparently
director Frank Oz thinks you can get pretty close. ANNIE WAGNER
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
dir. Seth Gordon
The hero of The King of Kong is one Steve Wiebe, a Boeing
worker who, after being laid off, became obsessed with playing a
battered Donkey Kong machine parked in his garage. A devoted
husband and father, not to mention an all-around swell guy, Wiebe’s
life up until then had been one of routine disappointment, from not
being able to pitch in the big high-school game to losing his job on
the very same day he and his wife signed papers for their house; he’s
in bad need of a personal victory. And, delusional or not, he believes
conquering the all-time high score on Donkey Kong—left
unmatched, impressively, for two decades—will provide it for
him.
Every hero is only as good as his villain, however, and famed arcade
champion Billy Mitchell, current holder of the worldwide Donkey
Kong high score, proves to be a perfect foil. A self-crafted
enigma, Mitchell lords over a pack of arcade dweebs—a rock star
trailed by joystick groupies. So good has Mitchell been at turning
himself into a legend that the mere rumor of an appearance at an arcade
is enough to send the collective group into a tizzy. And when Wiebe has
the temerity to claim new ownership of the all-time Donkey
Kong high score, the group reaches near supernova status.
Brisk, hilarious, and surprisingly moving, The King of Kong chronicles Wiebe’s attempts to claim the title he rightfully earned.
It’s a surprisingly convoluted journey, taking the likable Wiebe from
his home in Redmond, Washington, all the way to New Hampshire and
Hollywood, Florida. Rolls of quarters are dropped, hours are spent in
hunched tension, and ridiculous machinations are exposed. It’s all very
serious for everyone involved because, as Mitchell sagely tells us, the
view from second place never changes. It may seem silly, but after
watching The King of Kong it’s hard to disagree. BRADLEY
STEINBACHER
Belle Toujours
dir. Manoel de Oliveira
What is this movie really about? What is its core subject, its
ultimate matter? It is not, to begin with, about Paris (though it has
two long shots of the leading landmark of that city, the Eiffel Tower).
Nor is Belle Toujours about the mysteries of sexual desire.
And you are much mistaken if you believe that it is at bottom about
Buñuel’s masterpiece Belle de Jour. Directed by
Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, the story picks up the
concluding pieces of Buñuel’s film and attempts to explain (or
explore) this mystery: Did Henri Husson (Michel Piccoli) tell
Séverine Serizy’s (Catherine Deneuve) husband that she is not a
faithful wife but a hot prostitute?
It wasn’t Buñuel’s primary concern; if Husson did, it was
just as important as if he didn’t. What matters in Belle de
Jour is desire itself: the primal power that contradicts (and
often undoes) the order of society, religion, the family, and the
ideological capitalist/state apparatus. The unleashing of Serizy’s
sexual power destroys her rich and rational husband. That is what you
find at the core of Belle de Jour.
What you find in its follow-up is not desire but the substance of
time. With this film, time begins with the director’s great age, 98; it
also marks the great age of the actor Michel Piccoli, who in his early
80s revives the role that he first played in his early 40s, in
Belle de Jour (1967). There is also the great distance of time
between the two movies—40 years. And there’s the length of
Belle Toujours‘s opening; and the shortness of the film
itself, 70 minutes. Time (be it vast or minute) is everywhere in the
movie: we see what it has done (and does) to the actors, to their city,
their desires, and their director. CHARLES MUDEDE
