Up

Grade: A

PIXAR’S bestest everer.

Anyone who doesn’t absolutely adore this picture has a heart of stone covered in ice buried six feet under.

If Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and Tea Baggers were all made to watch this film together, we would have world peace, an end to global warming, universal health care, and an end to world hunger in no time.

We might even see Levi Johnston and Sarah Palin embrace one another.

Okay, maybe I overstep. But it really is that poignant and magical.

The stage is set with an opening montage that is one of the most moving portrayals of dreams unfulfilled in the name of life and love one is ever likely to see. Fellow childhood adventurers become husband and wife and, somewhere along the line, their lofty plans of travel and exploration never quite come to pass. Time simply runs out.

As an elderly man who believes he left a promise broken to the one he loved, the voice of Ed Asner provides the crusty but tender center of everything that follows. We would expect nothing else. Thanks to PIXAR’s miraculous animation, facial expressions are beyond extraordinary – grief, grumpiness, chagrin, world weariness, invigoration, joy and tenderness are as real as real can be. Like the thousands of muti-colored balloons that lift a man’s life and home into a world of adventure, the film captures a rainbow of emotions, and our hearts. Not since “Mary Poppins” opened her umbrella has whimsy taken such unabashed flight.

As the plump scout who needs to help the elderly in order to advance to his next troop level, Jordan Nagai is every bit a boy – overly enthusiastic and exuberant, clumsy, whiny, wide-eyed and filled with wonder, he is the product of a broken home and an abundant love of chocolate. How many of us were that chubby kid who couldn’t climb the rope in gym class? (I know my hand is raised.) “The wilderness isn’t quite what I expected,” he announces, “it’s wild.” This is one unintentionally funny kid.

And then there’s Christopher Plummer, Asner’s boyhood hero gone bad. Get these two guys on a stage together while there’s still time.

Moments of pure comic genius mix seamlessly with genuinely thrilling sequences that will have you nail biting and cheering. In the end, Asner comes to realize it was the normal, everyday and mundane moments in life that mattered the most all along. The true adventure is simply being with the one you love.

I cried with relish, and so will you – cross my heart.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/

Up in the Air

Grade: A

Uncompromising.

There’s nothing more professionally agonizing than laying someone off from work. That said, I’ve discovered I’m quite good at it. Hidden talent, so to speak. I get through it by convincing myself they’d rather hear the news from someone who gives a shit than from someone who doesn’t. I also find a klonopin an hour before and many glasses of wine after also help. The hardest part is acknowledging – no matter how stressful, sad, or upsetting it may be, no matter how many sleepless nights it may take in preparation – it’s not about you. Not even a little.

George Clooney spends his life on airplanes. His life goal is to join the elite 10 million mile frequent flier club. His check-ins at airports and hotels is masterful. His methodology toward getting through security is a thing of beauty. He fires people for a living. From the sky he looks down on America, from Kansas City to Detroit, New York to San Francisco, Omaha to Miami, St. Louis to Las Vegas. The landscapes are all different, but the heartache he executes is universal. We are one America in a devastating economy. Disciplined, systematic, businesslike, almost ritualistic, he is neither unsympathetic nor heartless. Merely disconnected. Just the way he likes it.

Clooney is ideally cast as the charmer with a cynical veneer that ever so slowly begins to crumble. There are no sweeping revelatory moments, few grand gestures and none that result in a romantic Hollywood pay-off, simply a man who comes to realize his isolationist philosophy has resulted in a life empty and alone. Subtly heartbreaking, a Clooney smirk is suddenly transformed into quite the devastating thing.

Stylized, crisp, caustic and unapologetically cool, writer/director Jason Reitman unflinchingly delivers the non-feel-good film of the year. Often bitingly and brutally funny, with dialogue Mamet would kill for, not since “American Beauty” has a film captured the longing of a life and a culture so perilously off track.

As a love interest with a crackling cynicism all her own, Vera Farminga is completely appealing, thoroughly non-plussed, and happily non-committal. While the romance initially feels rushed and underdeveloped, the mushy middle of an otherwise completely baked cake, a sudden turn toward steely hardness catches one off guard and pierces Clooney’s thawing heart. And ours. Anna Kendrick plays the upstart up-and-comer with a plan to contain costs by firing people remotely, initially coldly pragmatic about the insult she plans to add to individual injury until she begins firing people herself – a traumatic scene in which she fires a company man via webcam becomes truly haunting when she finally and reluctantly crosses his name off a very long list of names to follow.

Small acts of tenderness play out in quietly dignified ways, desperation never quite percolates out from underneath the surface. Sentimentality be damned, the film bravely remains true to a man who lives thousands of feet above the earth, never really connected to himself or anyone around him. The tragedy is that he knows it and, while he helps others find redemption, he never quite finds it for himself.

“What’s the point?” a brother-in-law-to-be asks a stubbornly shut down Clooney. “There is no point,” he is told, “I guess life is just better when you have a co-pilot.”

A lesson too late learned.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/

it's Complicated

Grade: B+

If not for the many, many, many talents of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin, this would have been a pat and predictable albeit marginally inviting romantic comedy about a 10-year divorcee who has an affair with her ex and the man who stands patiently on the sidelines.

But this has the many, many, many talents of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin and, not unlike the road less traveled, it has made all the difference.

Always Meryl Streep and yet never Meryl Streep, this year she deserves two Oscar noms (and at least one Oscar) for both the delectable “Julie & Julia” and her performance here. It’s been a bumpy few years from my vantage point – ice-chomping her way through the dreadful remake of “Manchurian Candidate,” Jewing it off the deep end in “Prime” and “singing” her way through “Mama Mia,” but this year her nuance and heart are back in full form, and she’s positively glowing. It is a Martha Stewart life this woman lives post-divorce – the stunning chateau of a home she bought right after her marriage ends, the massive vegetable garden, cut flowers in every room, gorgeously well-centered children (and adorably well-centered son-in-law to be) giddily supportive movie star best friends and a blossoming (yet exceedingly cozy) business. It would all be too much fairy tale good fortune to be tolerated, yet Meryl makes us swallow hook, line and sinker – its Meryl Streep after all, living the life we all want for her and the one we imagine she lives anyway. Self-assured yet vulnerable, radiant yet body-conscious, joyful and yet longing, we all want to be a guest at her next dinner party. A moment of lighthearted rapture melds into “what the fuck am I doing” mortification, and it is Streep at her very best.

As the ex going through yet another mid-life crisis, Alec Baldwin is charismatic and sincere, pot-bellied and seductive, affectionate, comfortable, sad and hopeful, and he and Streep have natural chemistry together. As the man in waiting, Steve Martin goes for subtlety (why is it that broad comics like Martin and Robin Williams often give far better dramatic performances than comedic ones?) a man healing his own broken heart while gracefully seeking the love of another. Our allegiances tend to shift depending on who Streep is with at the time, a testament to the strength of some truly lovely performances.

Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson and Alexandra Wentworth provide a nice sisterhood, and Caitlin Fitzgerald, Zoe Kazan, and Hunter Parrish (the final lead in “Spring Awakening,” who will always have a soft spot in my heart for being in the show’s last performance, one of the most special nights of my life) all appropriately attractive, carefree, clueless and supportive of their divorced parents, and all providing surprising honesty and pathos at the idea of a potential reconciliation. As the family outsider yet one of the family, John Krasinski almost got me to forgive some dreadful theater etiquette (yet another performance of “Spring Awakening,” where he and his gf wouldn’t stop talking and left before the curtain call - blasphemous. I finally asked them to “shut up” sometime during Act II) as the fiancé who sees all and says nothing – he steals more than one scene he’s in.

Genuinely funny, tender with only a sprinkling of sentimentality, and only occasionally predictable to a fault - the missed date, dinner waiting on the beautifully set table. The joint invariably getting discovered and everyone getting stoned, annoying if not for the fact that Streep and Martin are so damn hysterical. And is there anything that makes an audience go “awwww” more than the boy getting turned down for a date with the VIP pair of tickets cradled in his hands? Yet the film also has much to gently convey about feelings that are never extinguished, all the things that might have been, and the possibilities that exist just around the corner.

More movie info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230414/

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Grade: A-

Let’s get it out of the way – I’m one of them. I devoured all four of the books like cotton candy. I’m a Jacob more than an Edward – he’s way better for her and far less brooding. I see someone reading one of those smallish, thick black bound books on a subway and I really want to ask which one they’re on – I can feel the camaraderie.

I’m a 16 year old girl, so sue me.

Not since Lord Olivier’s windswept hair overlooked the cliffs in “Wuthering Heights” has romance been so alive and well in the cinema. Unlike other recent, more awkwardly translated book-to-film series (the “Harry Potter” movies comes to mind) the “Twilight” saga seems ideally suited for film. The tale is straightforward and linear yet epic and sweeping, the romance youthfully packed with guttural sensuality and intensity, every single character is sexier than the other, and every other scene practically begs for Hollywood enhancement. Part II of the saga does not disappoint – with a sumptuous score, lush cinematography, gorgeous cast and thrilling visuals fans of the novels will be enraptured, moved and even haunted by this very faithful and downright poetic retelling.

Non-fans will probably roll their eyes in how juvenile and melodramatic it all seems.

Whatevs.

Oh, right – for those of you not in the know (and who probably won’t see the film anyways) the plot involves a just turned 18 year old girl passionately in love with a cutie-patutie vampire. 2008’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” Robert Pattinson (if People Magazine says it, it has to be true) broods and broods and broods, looking as though he might cry at any moment but never shedding a blood tear. He decides early on it’s not safe to have him around, so disappears on his love, sending her into a spiral of nightmares, grief and despair (the passage of time is yet one of many, many subtle cinematic splendors the film has to offer). When she realizes only self-endangerment will make him appear to her (stunningly designed visions that fade into vapor) she’s on a risk-taking roll. Her best friend, the equally hunky Taylor Lautner (the audience literally gasped when his shirt first came off) is not amused by her antics, and can’t quite accept the gal of his dreams prefers a bloodsucker over him – although he has his own howling secret hiding in the closet (yet another thrilling series of special effects artwork). Following?

The story unfolds as a drama rather than action flick, and is far more achingly tender than one might expect (Billy Burke is especially successful in all too few scenes as a clueless but devoted dad). Anguish abounds, as does friendship, loyalty and protectiveness and – if the acting itself is mostly one note and occasionally a tad stilted (sorry, Taylor) – there is a soulfulness in the eyes that carries the day. If the penultimate climax feels more than a bit harried and rushed, the audience’s reaction to the film’s final moment is well worth moving things along at a fast clip.

For those of you wondering, Edward indeed gleams a bit better in the sunlight this time around as well.

If the names Bella, Edward and Jacob mean nothing to you, mayhap this is not the film for you. But, as someone who works at a pro-choice organization, I think my feminist credentials are pretty safe – I loves me some timeless teenage romance.

More movie info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259571/

Grade: A-

A sophisticated innocent must choose between the glamorous and the mundane in this abundantly rich character study of social expectations and mores in 1961 suburban London. One’s cup runneth over with how stereotypical every single character potentially could be, but how deeply complex and rewarding they actually are.

Great writing meets great performances.

Carey Mulligan is rather glorious as a 16 year old on the cusp of adulthood who follows the letter of the law as set down by an over-eager father – get perfect grades, cello as hobby, get into Oxford – while a rebellious and precocious streak percolates just beneath her surface. It’s no great plot surprise when she finds an older, more worldly man and his entourage undeniably alluring, but there is a pulsating pleasure far beyond her years, a joy in her corruption that is as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Parents are deceived with a twinkling eye, led down a garden path they so dearly want to be led down, a bit of charm and grace in lives far too static and stable.

As the corrupting influence, Peter Sarsgaard is a venomless villain – a crooked cad yet a captivating romantic, as trapped by circumstances of his own making as she is by her sex and class – his desire to be free, albeit pathetic and a tad pathological, is surprisingly multidimensional, sad and wanting.

The supporting cast is equally fine, especially Alfred Molina as a strict dullard of a dad who wants what’s best for his daughter in the confines of her limited possibilities – a scene it which he conveys without quite acknowledging his trust has been betrayed is so sadly tender it aches. Dominic Cooper is a coconspirator with a conscience (if only a touch of one) somewhat smarmy and willing to deceive but without relish. Rosamund Pike is effortless as an arm candy moll who has guiltlessly made her deal with the devil, and Olivia Williams is the grave teacher who cares, wound almost as severely as her hair but who sees the inevitable fall off a cliff with a single minded clarity of purpose.

There is an irresistible ease that permeates the film, the movie’s center deliriously culpable in her own seduction, less by the man of her infatuation than by all the hedonistic possibilities he represents – a life of music, fine dining, designer apparel and French cigarettes. When her principal (the always perfect Emma Thompson) effectively offers her a life of boredom, hard work, and ultimately the ability to teach or find work as a civil servant, we’re ready to run out the school house door faster than she is.

Nick Hornby has written a smart, crisp, understated screenplay that allows actors to plumb subtle depths of character and motivation, Director Lone Scherfig captures both the drab and repressive with the grand and carefree – somehow, she manages to make the torrential rain and dark clouds of London simultaneously sensual, playful, and yet at least somewhat foreboding.

In the end, innocence prolonged is perhaps more blissful than worldly experience. Perhaps, Paris is better experienced later in one’s life than earlier.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1174732/

Capitalism: A Love Story

Grade: C+

By most accounts, I’m pretty left of center – gay marriage, abortion rights, gun control, the environment, health care, education. Heck, I don’t even believe in immigration restrictions, because as a country of immigrants I don’t think we have the right to deny anyone who wants to come here – fling the doors open, I say!

But even I’m starting to find Michael Moore sanctimonious.

His treatise is pretty straightforward – in this country the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and yet no one revolts because of a belief in the fantasy known as “The American Dream.” The film begins with footage from a bank robbery – subtlety is not Moore’s strong suit. More than 2 hours later, we have witnessed tortured home foreclosures, agonizing factory lay-offs, gruesomely underpaid airline pilots (which apparently explains why their planes are crashing) and wrongly imprisoned teenagers (the judge gets bought off to send them to a for-profit juvenile detention center). An outfit called “Condo Vultures,” helps flip foreclosed homes, banking institutions take out “dead peasant” life insurance on their employees for self-profit, and virtually every single individual working at the Treasury Department is a former employee of Goldman Sachs. Congress is complicit, Ronald Reagan was evil, George W. has three 6’s on the back of his head. We get it.

In what is now becoming the slightly tedious and repetitious “Moore Brand,” the oppressed are respectfully documented with moral outrage, the oppressors lampooned and villainized with chagrin and disgust, with more than a touch of Moore self- aggrandizement thrown in for good measure. “For 20 years I tried to warn Detroit this day was coming,” Moore pronounces as General Motors officially declares bankruptcy. Moore’s overabundant voiceovers are starting to sound snide rather than tongue-in-cheek – when he castigates those of us sitting in the movie theater to “hurry up already” because he can’t fight the fight alone anymore, his ego becomes a tad intolerable. Flashbacks to his earlier “Roger and Me,” turn the whole affair into a vanity project.

Moore is always at his best when allowing his subjects and their situations to speak for themselves. Victims of our money-grubbing society are often profoundly heartbreaking and the money-grubbers themselves often display just how disgusting they are with little help from Moore. He is at his worst when delving into borscht-belt level shtick – arriving on Wall Street with an armored car demanding banks return federal buyout money, visiting the National Archives to see if the Constitution mentions capitalism (apparently it has the words We, Union, and Welfare instead, a clear indication the founding fathers were socialists) or taping yellow “crime scene” tape around one banking institution after another. In between such antics, Moore inserts stock movie footage so that he can dub Jesus into refusing to heal a man because of a “pre-existing condition” or show a diabolical “watch the watch” hypnotist to represent how our last President used fear mongering to lull us all into complacency.

What was often brilliant in films like “Sicko” and "Fahrenheit 9/11” is now merely tired.

Scenes of workers uniting to demand back pay and neighbors coming together to help a family squat in their own foreclosed home do inspire, but there is nothing especially new here that Moore hasn’t ranted about before to greater effect.

“Capitalism is evil, and you cannot regulate evil – you must end it,” Moore extols. Glad he’s not biased or anything.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232207/

(500) Days of Summer

Grade: B+

I’ve discovered when I find myself sitting in a movie theater with my legs crossed, slumped in my seat, cheek resting on fist, watching the film on a slight slant, it usually means one of two things: either I’m bored out of my mind, or I’m having the pants charmed off of me. I can usually tell the difference by whether or not I’m smiling.

This one had me positively beaming.

500 days in a relationship as told from the perspective of a heartsick romantic. I really like her does she really like me? Friends, she wants to be friends? We like the same band, is there anything more cosmic? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, we just had sex! Casual, what the fuck does that mean? I am so happy, I am in so much pain, I am so confused, I am in love, this is the worst, this is the best thing ever. Told completely out of order, a relationship fades, blooms, ends, sparks and fizzles with such accurate and perceptive heart, humor, insecurity and heartache one can’t help but be utterly charmed and thoroughly touched.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is so adorable it hurts. Yes, he’s cute as all hell with puppy dog eyes and a smile to die for, but the full measure of his adorableness flows from a quirky, easy manner and soulful, affable sincerity – few have portrayed smitten with such unaffected and tender charisma. So dark, brooding and foreboding in an equally fine performance as a sexually abused and sexually compulsive gay man in 2004’s “Mysterious Skin,” Gordon-Levitt displays a bravura jolt of versatility. Even when the film veers into occasional shmultz, just try not to empathize – I dare you. This is an up-and-comer to watch.

Zooey Deschanel is eccentrically likeable if not completely ingratiating as the other romantic half who doesn’t believe in either love or relationships – until she does. Told entirely from his perspective, she has the difficult task of being somewhat one dimensional yet genuinely appealing and marginally sympathetic. It’s hard to like someone commitment phobic and emotionally unavailable, yet we can see why he rolls the dice, lays himself bare and vulnerable, and takes a chance on love despite all the blaring warning signals. Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Gray Gubler are fine sidekicks (although Arend goes off the diving board when playing drunk) Chloe Moretz genuinely funny as the younger sister with a foul mouth and advice well beyond her years.

The film is delightfully fresh and creative – our Romeo’s response to his “first time” with Zooey is “I’m a Pepper” hysterical, a split screen comparing his “expectations” vs. the “reality” at a party is downright torturous – we’ve all so been there it’s impossible not to cringe and commiserate.

People can really be unintentionally cruel. Heartbreak can be mindbendingly painful. And still we keep trying. Back to Day (1).

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1022603/

FAME

Grade: C

As re-envisioned for the CW.

Remember how we all thought the TV series was a little tepid compared with the film? Here we’re talking milquetoast.

Updated around the fringes to include rap music, hand held video cameras and the occasional texting during class, it’s the same basic story as the original film sans any grit or personality. Harmless but bland, if the kids from "High School Musical" had kids with the kids from "90210," they would end up something like the kids from "Fame 2009." The white kids are all really, really white, the black kids sing hip hop but still seem even whiter than the white kids. The teachers are either prototypically hardass or trying to get their students in touch with their feelings, the parents all reduced to ranting on a theme (either pissed because their kid is going to the school and will never get a real job, or pissed because their kid wants to sing rather than play classical piano, or pissed because their kid started dating the boy from the wrong side of the tracks).

“Auditions,” “Freshman Year,” “Sophomore Year,” “Junior Year” and “Senior Year” still flash on the screen, but this time around are mostly differentiated by changing haircuts.

The young thespians range from serviceable to interchangeable, only Naturi Naughton distinguishes herself for a beautiful rendition of “Out Here on My Own” and “Fame,” which plays only during the closing credits. The only songs retained from the original film, they are also far and away the best. Inserted songs range from unmemorable rap or House music to a closing graduation number reminiscent of those annually penned and always drippy season finale numbers on “American Idol.” Teachers Bebe Neuwirth, Kelsey Grammer, Charles S. Dutton, Megan Mullaly and Principal Debbie Allen (promotion!) all dutifully raise their hands as present but add nothing, and Mullaly proves she can lip-synch as terribly – even worse in fact – as the newcomers.

The seedier aspects of the 1980 film have all been sharply dulled – instead of a topless Irene Cara crying her way through a videotaping pornographer questioning her professionalism, here a former student questions the professionalism of a female student for refusing to perform a make-out “scene” on video with him. CW. The romances have all been hormone deprived – instead of the heat and passion ignited in a painfully shy and awkward teenager by a tortured, angry nonconformist, here she ‘aint nearly as shy and he’s as happy as a clam and as cute as a button. CW. A student filmmaker gets involved in a scam so obvious there’s no way he could have maintained the C average required to stay in school, a docile wife finally stands up to her overbearing husband once she hears her daughter sing, and the fact that anyone is gay doesn’t even rate a mention much less a plotline. CW.

And yes, Debbie Allen is indeed heard saying, “You want fame? Well fame costs. And right here’s where you start paying – in sweat.”

Excuse me while I go watch “Gossip Girl.”

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016075/

District 9

Grade: A-

Science Fiction, Action Thriller, Political Allegory, this gruesome, dank, violent, bleak, gory, horrifying film is a near masterpiece from Director/Screenwriter Neill Blompkamp.

I have never seen anything like it.

Told in CNN investigation and interview style, a spacecraft hovers frozen and immobile over Johannesburg, South Africa, until humans venture inside to discover the 1.8 million malnourished and bedraggled extraterrestrials trapped inside. Welcoming as we are to all immigrants, refugee camps soon become crime-ridden, war-lord infested slums until the cries of “not in my own backyard” (from the black community in Johannesburg no less) force a mass exodus hundreds of miles away from civilization.

And then the real fun begins.

Sharlto Copley is the antihero of all antiheros – a pumped-up doofus bureaucrat at a Halliburton-style company given the task of alien oversight and transfer. Pompous and driven by general incompetence, self-aggrandizement and ultimately his own desperate self-interest, he would not initially seem out of place in “Guffman” or “Spinal Tap.” Comical if not also so completely absent of a moral compass, his surprise plight manages to be goofily entertaining while never failing to remain grotesquely terrifying.

The “others” in the film, aliens derogatorily called “prawns” for their gill-like countenances and scalish features are brilliantly shot and slowly revealed. You will believe. The action is brisk, the humor is macabre, the tension soars, nails will be bitten. Not for the faint of heart, the movie is jarringly authentic, so much so that one initially might be fooled into suspecting a low budget forced such bravura creativity. But don’t be fooled – the film is both visionary and visually stunning, capturing an oppressive doom usually reserved for film versions of the apocalypse. One must presume the same fatalistic gloom hangs over the refugee camps at Darfur, or anywhere else our inhumanity casts such a massive gray shadow over a corner of the world. Yet the film makes no such sweeping political statements – it doesn’t need to. Cat food is a treasured commodity, as we are seen stuffing our faces at fast food lines mere moments later. Extraterrestrials fight to keep their homes, shacks made with tin, cardboard and bits of manmade and alien rubbish. Locals make great profit through the misery and degradation of the “less-thans.”

Only the occasional formulaic moments (the cell phone that never dies and inevitably gets traced sort of thing) and characters (villains straight out of a bad James Bond flick) intrude on an otherwise completely original and awe inspiring work. The film fairly begs for a sequel. Produced by Peter Jackson, who has previously demonstrated a penchant for the trilogy, one can only hope.

Final moments reveal the others take better care of their own than we do, blurry lines and all. Not since Kafka’s Metamorphosis has our species’ unique barbarism toward “differentness” been cast in such bold and blinding light. Deserving of classic status.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/

Taking Woodstock

Grade: C

Like the rolling meadows that embody this now legendary concert happening, there are flashes of serenity and beauty to be found in Director Ang Lee’s latest, but that doesn’t prevent both the field and the film from becoming a muddy, garbage-strewn mess in the end.

Less about the actual event than an unfocused coming of age story, a closeted young man finds his independence and sexual freedom while trying to save his parent’s dilapidated motel from certain foreclosure. When a helicopter lands in his front yard and out pops concert promoter Michael Lang (an adorably twinkling and appropriately mellow Jonathan Groff – the only actor in the film who can say “far out” and make it sound genuine) there is little doubt parental objections will transition into financial glee, angry townspeople with break out nasty signage, and hippie quirkiness will abound in prototypical abundance.

It is more surprisingly hallucinogenic than dropping acid (so I’ve been told) to watch the usually adept Ang Lee so misdirect his actors – rarely has a cast of such exceptional talent been so poorly/oddly utilized. Imelda Staunton (who gave the finest performance of 2004 in the magnificent “Vera Drake”) chews everything in her path as a raving, mouth-foaming Jewish mother with a heart of pure stone and a secret in her own closet, and Henry Goodman (much maligned for his egregious firing by chickenshit producers from Broadway’s “The Producers” and one of the finest actors of his or any generation) is mostly reduced to muttering and shrugging as the beleaguered, stoop-shouldered husband who has put up with such an ungodly terror for 40 years. It is Tevye and Golde transported to upstate New York, and the characterizations are at best stereotypically uncomfortable. Emile Hirsch fares no better as the standardly agonized Vietnam Vet (replete with dirty long hair, foul mouth, flack jacket and flashbacks) who comes home to a world that doesn’t understand him, and poor Liev Schreiber is almost unendurable as a transgendered veteran who provides gun-toting security and transcendental wisdom impossible to decipher. In the lead role of the son treated like such neverending crap by his mother it’s impossible to understand his familial devotion, Demetri Martin does no harm. A lot of extraordinary talent must have signed on the dotted line on Ang Lee’s reputation without actually reading James Schamus’ ineptly plodding screenplay first, this much is clear.

Will the young innocent show up at a press conference stoned out of his mind? Will the angry townspeople refuse his patronage at the local diner? Will his parents eat the pot-laced brownies? Will the hippie performance artists who live in the barn decide to disrobe at the least possibly appropriate opportunity? Filled to overflowing with cliché-ridden plot contrivances, Lee has an awkward inability to capture the essence of the time or generation. Neither the personal story nor its backdrop have a great deal of passion or conviction behind them, which leaves the film to meander much like the throngs trying to find their way through blocked roads and drug-induced hazes to the damn concert. There is an earnest quality of love, peace and harmony flowing, but it feels piped in through tinny loudspeakers rather than enveloping us in its music. We’re sitting in the cheap seats. Only several quiet moments between father and son transcend and elevate the material to something with genuine heart. Lee’s overuse of splitscreens so quintessential in the award-winning documentary “Woodstock,” only remind us we are watching an off-key simulation.

Like, so not groovin to the beat, dude. I mean, it tries to be all trippin and far out, but it so just brought me down, man.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127896/