Movie Review: Casino Jack (2010)

Based on the true story of uber lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Casino Jack is an eye-popping look at the money that greases the gears in Washington DC. Both those who give and those who receive are exposed in the startling tale of money, influence and blatant vote-buying.

It's the 1990s, and Abramoff (Kevin Spacey) buys and sells influence in Congress. By raising cash conceivably for election and re-election campaigns, Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon (Barry Pepper) can push for any cause willing to pay the right price. With close ties to influential Republican Tom DeLay (Spencer Garrett) and the Bush family, Abramoff can pick up the phone and swing votes in the desired direction.

Despite the protestations of his wife Pam (Kelly Preston), Abramoff is always blurring the line between personal self-interest and clients' pet projects. Not satisfied with arguing for slave labour practices in the Mariana Islands and cashing large cheques from several Indian tribes to protect their casino interests, he embarks on an ill-advised adventure of his own to invest in an ailing Miami-based cruise ship casino business with the unsavoury Adam Kidan (Jon Lovitz). Soon personal threats are escalating into a gangland-style hit. Meanwhile, Scanlon's persistent womanizing turns his fiancée Emily (Rachelle Lefevre) against him. Eventually Abramoff faces the frigid shoulder of a Washington DC abandoning him and his toxic dealings.

Casino Jack paints an ugly picture of a political system with a veneer of respectability rotting at the core. Abramoff the individual is almost irrelevant. A lot more depressing is a structure that allows the Abramoffs of the world to thrive by channeling money to the right jacket pockets and requesting key votes in return.

Kevin Spacey dominates Casino Jack with a performance filled with slick bravado. Oozing an attitude of superiority and unbridled greed, Spacey gives Abramoff an insatiable urge to chase after ever increasing dollars to fund self-aggrandizing projects. Restaurants and schools become pet businesses, Abramoff eager to see his name in print as a respectable businessman, perhaps to cover the sordid truth about his distasteful real lobbying career.

Jon Lovitz delivers his usual slippery persona as the way-over-the-edge-of-corruption and equally way-past-caring Adam Kidan, adding the certainty of a bad ending and comedy in equal parts to Abramoff's adventure.The rest of the supporting cast is distinctly low key.

George Hickenlooper directs with enough panache to elevate Casino Jack above a cable television production, but sometimes it's a struggle.  It's not easy to create a compelling cinematic experience out of men in suits seeking the next stuffed envelope, but Hickenlooper leans heavily on Spacey to humanize Abramoff and drag the movie through the bumpy parts. Although Abramoff the man is beyond ever being likable, the Norman Snider script keeps him engaging in the way a large trapped insect can be highly watchable just before it gets squished.

Casino Jack is what happens when a lobbyist firmly shakes hands with corruption. His grim destiny is surely just the prelude for the doomed collapse of the system that spawned him.

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Movie Review: The Wedding Singer (1998)

A romantic comedy that finds the often elusive magical balance between love and laughs, The Wedding Singer is a lot of fun. Adam Sandler has rarely been better, and Drew Barrymore consolidated her comeback and relaunched her career with the approachable girl-next-door persona.

It's 1985, and in a smallish New Jersey town Robbie Hart (Sandler) is the go-to wedding singer, invited with his band to perform cheesy favourites and keep the merriment on an even keel as the nuptial celebrations get going. While performing at a wedding, Robbie meets sweet waitress Julia Sullivan (Barrymore), and they become friends. Kind hearted and sensitive, Robbie is devastated when he is stood-up at his own wedding. His bride-to-be Linda (Angela Featherstone), a rock chick who never grew up, decides that he is too boring and leaves him standing at the altar.

Julia is engaged to be married to the very wealthy Glenn Gulia (Matthew Glave). As a broken-hearted Robbie helps her with the wedding preparations, he realizes that her future name of Julia Gulia is just one problem. Robbie uncovers Glenn as a first class egotistical sleazoid who does not hesitate to cheat on his fiancée, and with no plans to stop his womanizing after marriage. In the meantime Robbie and Julia and beginning to fall in love, which is further complicated by the sudden re-emergence of Linda looking to win Robbie's heart back.

Tim Herlihy's screenplay is razor sharp and witty. Full of references to the more cringe-worthy cultural artifacts of the 1980s, The Wedding Singer is a love letter to the decade of Culture Club, Madonna-inspired fashion, Van Halen in their prime, a snarling Billy Idol, and Kajagoogoo. The soundtrack is brimming with favourites from the era, a perfectly awkward backdrop to the sweetly irresistible corn of obvious romance. Frequent Sandler director Frank Coraci sets an uptempo pace and otherwise keeps a light touch at the controls, yielding to the inherent power of a budding romance between two appealing leads.

The Wedding Singer mercifully abandons Sandler's more juvenile and crude tendencies. Here he is relatively subdued, mostly calm and intelligently funny, a character that is actually likable as an adult. Barrymore is cute, perky and adorable almost to a fault, and the chemistry with Sandler is almost instantaneous. The secondary cast does lack some punch. The supporting characters include Julia's cousin and Madonna wannabe Holly (Christine Taylor), and Robbie's best friend and local limousine-driver-for-hire Sammy (Allen Covert). Jon Lovitz and Steve Buscemi make uncredited cameos, and both shine bright in very brief appearances.

In a genre with few surprises and predetermined endings, The Wedding Singer deserves a toast for getting everything else right.

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Movie Review: A League Of Their Own (1992)

A comedy-drama that taps into baseball's rich vein of nostalgia, A League Of Their Own touches all the right bases and scores a resounding victory. Weaving a fictional story based on the true events surrounding the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the Second World War, director Penny Marshall expertly keeps the focus on the human drama and allows the baseball to simply provide a rich canvass to paint on.

It's 1943, and with star baseball players heading out to war, the idea of a women's league is hatched by baseball's governors and their industrial backers, and a recruiting program is launched. Sisters Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) are competitive amateur players and dairy farmers in Oregon. Dottie, a catcher, is more attractive, more confident and a bit better at everything than the scrappier Kit, a pitcher.

Spotted by a continuously wisecracking scout (Jon Lovitz), the sisters travel to the league tryouts in Chicago. Dottie and Kit are selected to play on the Rockford Peaches, one of four founding teams, along with the unattractive but powerful switch hitter Marla (Megan Cavanagh), the flirtatious "All The Way" Mae (Madonna) and the competitive and opinionated Doris (Rosie O'Donnell). A former beauty queen and several housewives, many with their husbands fighting the war, make up the rest of the team.

The inaugural coach of the Peaches is Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) a former big leaguer, but now a confirmed drunk. Dugan initially takes little interest in coaching the team, allowing Dottie to fill the void and provide leadership as the league struggles to attract attention. But attendance and interest pick up when the league starts marketing the flamboyant yet elegant Dottie as the Queen of Diamonds, and Dugan finally accepts the responsibility of managing the team. The Peaches need to overcome various conflicts during their first season, not least of which is the simmering rivalry between Dottie and Kit.

To borrow a sports metaphor, A League Of Their Own benefits from actors who accept their role on the team, none more so than Madonna thriving in a supporting role and delivering one of her best screen performances. Geena Davis, one year on from her triumph in Thelma and Louise, carries the main role with an intriguing combination of steel and grace, allowing Lori Petty the showier and edgier role of the younger sister who needs to try harder just to get out of her sibling's shadow. Tom Hanks makes an impact in a relatively small role as Jimmy Dugan, but gets to deliver, with perfect exasperation, the classic "Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!" line.

Jon Lovitz as the scout Ernie Capadino gets nothing but an endless stream of sharply sarcastic lines to spout ("Are you coming? See, how it works is, the train moves, not the station."), and the only shame is that his role is too small.

A League Of Their Own captures an idyllic American mid-west during the Second World War era, with the Rockford Peaches covering endless miles of landscape on the team bus between games, and war-time patriotic posters on every wall.

Bookending the movie with scenes of the elderly Dottie travelling to the opening of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League section of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, an event which turned into a player reunion, the screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell strikes the perfect balance between drama and comedy. None of the comic moments are crass, and equally, most of the serious scenes avoid the descent into melodrama.

This is a story of ordinary girls embarking on an amazing, life-changing adventure by simply playing the sport that they love under extraordinary circumstances, and A League Of Their Own creates an extraordinary film out of their experience.

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Movie Review: The Benchwarmers (2006)

The Benchwarmers is a a limp baseball comedy that starts with a foul ball and ends with play abandoned due to lack of talent.

Rob Schneider, David Spade and Jon Herder are three nerdy adults who were bullied as kids and never had the chance to compete in school sports. Through the intervention of billionaire Jon Lovitz, and a plot devoid of any logic or wit, they form a three-man team and compete against a series of little league teams coached by the guys who used to be the school bullies.

It's all supposed to be a morality tale about the evils of bullying, but unfortunately none of the characters in the movie are remotely realistic or well-rounded enough to carry any sympathy. Every person in this movie is a one-dimensional cartoon spouting witless one-liners. The adults never grew up, and we shudder at the thought of what the kids will be like when they do grow up.

The script by Allen Covert and Nick Swardson is mostly a succession of fart, barf and spit jokes. Director Dennis Dugan is clearly within his zone of effortless comfort operating at the level of this repugnant material. He demonstrates not a single reason why he deserves better material to work with, resorting, in a desperate attempt at showmanship, to clever techniques like split-screen shots that would fail film school projects.

The Benchwarmers was co-produced by Adam Sandler, dabbling in the junkyard of ideas not even good enough for his patchy resume.






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