Raising the Bar

How long has it been since Matthew McConaughey has been known for anything besides his good looks? Sure, he's had his share of hit films over course of his career, with romantic comedies like Fool's Gold and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, dramas like We Are Marshall, even the psychological thriller Frailty. But McConaughey's resume isn't what has been getting him the most attention of late. Appearing on several "sexiest man" magazine covers, it's easy to forget that once upon a time he was one of the more respected and renowned actors in Hollywood. Often picking film that are more "fun" than critically acclaimed, he's all but secured a second or third tier celebrity status, well below the likes of George Clooney or Javier Bardem, but still above say, Michael Douglass. With the trailers to The Lincoln Lawyer, however, McConaughey seems to be refuting that status. Reminding so many people of his captivating performance in 1996's A Time To Kill, the box office winner looked to be as charming as ever in this adaptation of the novel my Michael Connolly, perhaps finally choosing a role that put his full talents on display. It certainly looked good enough to draw me out to the theater this past Sunday, hoping that the trailers did more than highlight the film's best moments.

A very special episode of Law & Order: Celebrity Victims Unit

McConaughey plays small-time defense attorney Mickey Haller, a smart and charming smooth-talker who, despite a career of defending lowlifes and scumbags and holding a not small amount of disdain for overzealous cops and prosecutors, is actually the hero of this story. Out of the blue, Haller is brought in on a high-profile case: a wealthy Beverly Hills playboy named Louis Roullet (Ryan Phillippe) is being accused of beating and threatening to kill a young woman he had met one evening. Naturally, he claims that he's being set up, and there is certainly enough doubt accredited to the woman's story to make such a statement feasible. As more and more facts become known however, what began as a straightforward case becomes a twisted cat-and-mouse game in which Mickey's not sure who to trust, or what he can do to make things right.

Macy channeling his Boogie Nights persona

The strength of the story lies in its straightforwardness and honesty. Told exclusively from the perspective of Haller, the film's tale is learned by the audience at the same time our hero becomes privy to it. In this way, we're never under the impression that the characters know much more than we do, and this helps draw in the audience to the point where stepping away before conclusions are drawn is nearly impossible. You're invested in nearly every second of the film's run time, and the time spent never feels empty, as every moment bristles with the tension of wondering what new ground-breaking piece of information we'll learn next from the film's assorted cadre of characters.

I just wanted to plug in a photo of Marisa Tomei... for all the obvious reasons

The film's biggest draw is that of its cast. Director Brad Furman did a wonderful job filling in all the roles, even if most of them pale in comparison to McConaughey. The film is told from Haller's singular point of view, and it's fortunate that an actor of McConaughey's charm is in charge here. A perfect blend of charisma, humor and brains, Haller is practically written for McConaughey to melt into. The film suffers slightly for never straying from his side (it's probably the closest I've seen to a one-man show with an ensemble cast), but not so much that it permanently damages the relationship with the audience. I'll see Marisa Tomei in just about anything, so varied are her exceptional performances. She's just as good here, though her role as Haller's District Attorney ex-wife isn't the kind of award bait that her aging exotic dancer in The Wrestler was. Still, she does a great job and some of the film's best scenes are where we see both the good and bad in the relationship between the former flames. Sweet yet strained, it was a fully realistic pseudo-romance, enhanced by the stars' chemistry. That Tomei also played a smart, sophisticated woman as well is almost a bonus. William H. Macy is also good in a small role as Haller's private investigator friend, and solid performances abound from such varied talents as John Leguizamo, Josh Lucas, Frances Fisher, Bryan Cranston, Michaela Conlin, Margarita Levieva and Laurence Mason. Michael Pena as well is simply amazing, and while he is relegated to only two short scenes, his character proves to be so engaging and important that you really care what happens to him despite his brief appearance. The only real disappointment among this crowd is Phillippe, who has never been one of my (or many people's) favorites. The only film I've liked him in was last year's MacGruber, and then only because he was able to drop that uber-serious attitude he usually brings to roles not unlike this one. When all is said and done, he's given far too good a role to know what to do with, and doesn't pull it off convincingly. Still, with McConaughey in charge of just about every scene even this small annoyance barely makes a real fuss.

Get over it Matthew; Cranston has won more awards than you

If there's anything lacking here, it's the result of a rather lackluster ending that tries a little too hard to tie up all the loose threads. Compared to the rest of the film, it lacks the composure to be attractive to the audience and results in a bit of disappointment in comparison. Still, The Lincoln Lawyer is good enough to recommend to anyone looking for a fun movie, even if the subject matter is a bit more mature than Haller's one-liners. An ideal platform for Matthew McConaughey to dispel any thoughts that he can't do more serious fare, The Lincoln Lawyer tops out at #4 on the 2011 Top Films list. A lot of fun and a good old fashioned legal thriller, I think just about anyone can go into this film and more or less enjoy it.

MacGruber: Da Bomb?

Sometimes you want a juicy steak, Fillet Mignon. And sometimes you want a huge cone of cotton candy.

I'm paraphrasing a line my father still uses to this day (I say "paraphrase" because you know fathers; they never say it the same way twice). What he means by this is that quality is subjective to mood. Sometimes want that fancy meal, that diamond necklace, those tickets to Phantom of the Opera. In film terms, it would refer to the surefire Oscar darlings and critically reviewed of previewed films. Inception fits here, as do the upcoming Black Swan and The King's Speech. But sometimes you just want to kick back and relax with junk food, beer, and tickets to a WWE show. Sometimes going the trashy route is exactly what your body needs, what your mind craves. And sometimes, even knowing that you're involved in something tawdry, you can still be surprised by the product involved.

This is the best America has to offer

By all intents and purposes, MacGruber should have been a crap film. The Saturday Night Live series of skits has been possibly one of the most popular skits in SNL's last decade, if not the entire show's run. Created by SNL scribe Jorma Taccone, the character - a direct parody of the famous Richard Dean Anderson hero MacGuyver - first made his appearance alongside show host Jeremy Piven in January 2007, starring Will Forte in the titular role of the bumbling government agent who would attempt to disable a bomb but be distracted by personal problems, resulting in explosion and (presumably) death, only to be resurrected the next week and placed in a whole new bomb-diffusing scenario. They're ridiculous. They're silly. They're often quite funny. What they are NOT is high caliber comedy. They're of a closer bloodline to Family Guy than The Naked Gun, graduates of the Judd Apatow school of toilet humor, and for thirty-second skits, that's fine. Watch, get a chuckle, see an explosion, and then check the other channels to see if there's anything else on.

How the mighty have fallen...

When news was announced that a movie was actually going to be built from this funny-but-limited sketch, skepticism was of course warranted. After all, how funny could a one-note joke really be over 90 minutes? As it turns out, pretty funny. After terrorists hijack a nuclear missile and threaten to blow up the US Capitol, the military seeks out the best man for the job. MacGruber (still played by SNL's Will Forte)  puts together a team including his former assistant Vicki St. Elmo (Kristin Wiig) and young hotshot Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) in order to find and disarm the weapon, currently in the clutches of MacGruber's nemesis, businessman Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer). What follows is more gross-out humor than explosions, but thankfully it's more than a one-note sideshow.

So THAT'S where the $10 million went!

The key to this film might be it's connections to the original creative team. Taccone makes his cinema directorial debut here, and is a big part of the reason the story remains on track for much of the film. The script was even penned by the show's writers: Forte, Taccone and John Solomon. Even original Macgruber assistant Maya Rudolph has a small role in the film, cementing it's origins. For the first time in a long time, SNL didn't entrust their creation to the treatment of a foreign power. Instead they decided to trust that their own people, who had cared and nurtured their favored character to this point, could oversee this final step. It's giving credit where credit's due and daring your creative team to do better than their best day so far, and in this case it produces a better experience for the audience than the film rightly should be doling out.

Literally holding the audience captive

I would be hard-pressed to say that there's any good acting in MacGruber, instead pointing out that there's more ham than you can get from a whole pig and more posturing than a Calvin Klein ad. Forte plays off dozens of action hero stereotypes as the the film's hero, a self-assured, arrogant wise-ass who breaks down emotionally on a regular basis and can rig anything into some type of weapon or tool to do what needs to be done. He really hams up the role, important since that's the major way he evokes his original character's silliness, a must-have for the film to be any good. Wiig is quite enjoyable as the assistant St. Elmo, an apparent espionage master (despite the fact that she fools nobody in her disguises) and singer who's falling for her former boss. You can debate whether or not she deserves her Emmy nominations, but the timeless quality to her humor makes her one of the few current SNL'ers to keep an eye on in the future. Phillippe and Powers Booth play military men and straight men to Forte's nut job, and both do okay jobs in that regard, grounding the film in some small semblance of reality. Phillippe does have a couple of comedic moments to keep his character from being completely boring, but I stand by all earlier statements calling him overrated and over-hyped. He's simply not a good actor, never has been. Val Kilmer's once-good looks have faded to the wrinkles of husky-boy syndrome, but he's actually pretty good as the comic-book style villain Cunth. His best scene is one where he holds a conversation with his stolen missile, one where even though it appears liberally in the trailer, still can elicit a chuckle. Maya Rudolph, playing former MacGruber assistant and wife Casey Sullivan, is probably the most disappointing in the cast. I say that well knowing that anything since her Golden Globe nominated performance in Away We Go would be, but this is further down than even I thought she would go. The film's budget was only $10 million, so they couldn't have paid her THAT much to reprise her small role. Her role, while somewhat important to the main story, is hardly necessary, and less talented actresses could have been brought in for all the effort put into the part.

You know they're evil because they're wearing black in the desert

The story is hardly a home run shot either, as the movie takes the Parody Express, borrowing from every 80's and 90's action films that have been on the big screen.  it even seems to borrow from other parodies, most notably those of the hilarious Hot Shots films. This was to be expected in the news of it's production, but you still can't help but be disappointed when the film fails to be innovative. As noted before, it relies heavily on gross-out humor ("I like holes") in it's execution, and very little of the film feels at all "smart". While it's by far the best SNL-skit film since the original Wayne's World, it's nowhere near the older film's level of IQ or humor. It does however retain the charm of the original skit, thanks mostly to the performances of it's leads.

He's more of a "three wire" guy

Though MacGruber does run out of steam towards the end, it was great to see the climactic "bomb diffusing" scene play straight out of a SNL skit, and it was very surprising to find that this film was much funnier than it had any business being, considering the source. Though a long way away from their best films,MacGruber may be the beginning of a new series of films from Lorne Michael's skit library. And if those films can come anywhere close to MacGruber, than they'll be funnier than a hundred Coneheads or It's Pat. It's funny. It's silly. It has little in the way of redeemable qualities, and it was a box office flop for a reason. But it's cotton candy.

And that's okay.