Movie Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019)

Genre: Comedy Drama  

Director: Richard Linklater  

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Kristen Wiig, Laurence Fishburne, Judy Greer  

Running Time: 109 minutes  

Synopsis: In Seattle, Bernadette Fox (Cate Blanchett) lives in a fixer-upper mansion with her husband Elgie (Billy Crudup), a Microsoft executive, and their teenaged daughter Bee. Bernadette was once a rising star in the world of architecture, but stopped working after a series of set-backs. She now avoids socializing, relying on an India-based digital assistant for most tasks, and particularly dislikes her intrusive neighbour Audrey (Kristen Wiig). When Bee proposes a family trip to Antarctica, Bernadette's stress levels spike.

What Works Well: The first two thirds offer a razor-sharp comic-dramatic portrait of a strong-willed woman in emotional trouble. With Cate Blanchett in fine form, director and co-writer Richard Linklater adapts Maria Semple's book with an emphasis on Bernadette gliding through life using a caustic attitude to avoid confronting depression. Laughs combine with revelations, all anchored by a warm mother-daughter relationship offering an escape route from the doldrums.

What Does Not Work As Well: The final act is a bland let-down, descending into a schmalzy combination of glacier scenery and simple solutions suddenly available in the remotest corner of the planet. Some characters, including a therapist (Judy Greer) and an FBI agent, enter with a flourish but are then summarily abandoned. 

Conclusion: Bernadette sparkles when restless in Seattle, but slips when surrounded by ice.



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Movie Review: Friends With Kids (2011)

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Director: Jennifer Westfeldt

Starring: Jennifer Westfeldt, Adam Scott, Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Chris O'Dowd, Maya Rudolph, Megan Fox, and Edward Burns

Running Time: 100 minutes

Synopsis: Best friends Julie and Jason (Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott) are both single and in their thirties. After witnessing passion seeping out of the marriages of friends who have kids, Julie and Jason decide to have a baby together but with no romantic commitments between them. All goes well until jealousies flare up when Jason hooks up with dancer Mary Jane (Megan Fox) and Julie attracts the attention of ideal husband material Kurt (Edward Burns).

What Works Well: Writer, director, and star Jennifer Westfeldt has some sharp observations about kids disrupting the harmony of couples, and finds a few funny moments as Julie and Jason transition from observers of parenthood to creators of a brave new model. The supporting cast (Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig are one couple, Chris O'Dowd and Maya Rudolph another) is strong and adds a diversity of outcomes. The running time is crisp enough, while the Manhattan and Brooklyn locations add appeal.

What Does Not Work As Well: All the adults are in their thirties, and yet communicate with the obsessed vulgarity of young teenagers discovering the hilarity of sex and body parts. Westfeldt loses courage in the third act, defaulting to the most trite genre conventions, and the final scene is a poorly written embarrassment, betraying creative bankruptcy.

Conclusion: A romantic comedy with an initial burst of bold ideas succumbs to conformity. 



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Movie Review: Downsizing (2017)

A science fiction comedy drama, Downsizing tries to be many things but succeeds at nothing.

In the near future, Norwegian scientists perfect the technique to miniaturize human beings. Several years later, and mostly in the name of consuming less of everything, a thriving people-shrinking industry has developed, with the small people living in lavish custom-built homes within idyllic communities. Occupational therapist Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) goes through with the procedure, but his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) backs out at the last second.

In his new surroundings Paul gets to know his neighbour, a bootlegger and party animal named Dušan (Christoph Waltz), and his mysterious friend Jooris (Udo Kier). Paul also meets Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese activist who was miniaturized against her will. She introduces Paul to her world of doing good deeds for other disadvantaged small people. Paul, Dušan, Jooris and Ngoc are eventually summoned to Norway, where a new crisis is brewing.

Director Alexander Payne moves from small and quirky films like Sideways and Nebraska and into a big-budget bloated production, and the result is a catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions. The special effects are clever, and the juxtaposition of small and large people is seamless. But otherwise Downsizing is a 135 minute fiasco, a film without a purpose, devoid of both comedy and drama, bouncing from one idea to the next, unable to create any narrative thrust or even remote interest in any of its characters.

The film starts off with a focus on "the grass is greener" theme, with Paul gradually captivated by the concept of starting afresh in a new world and at a new size. But once he is downsized Paul becomes a passive observer, and Downsizing stalls and stops. Dušan and Jooris are irksome and ultimately irrelevant, and after burning many minutes being introduced, they also fade away into bland sidekick territory. Ngoc briefly moves to centre stage, and it appears the film may decide to be about the fight for social justice in the newly created small world through the eyes of a wronged activist.

But no. She is also marginalized, and in a stupefyingly bad final chapter, all four are summoned to Norway -- to do what, exactly? Here another new story is suddenly hatched having something to do with the end of the world, and by this point nothing really matters. Payne completely loses control of his movie, which not so much crashes and burns as shrinks away to a mess of nothingness.

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Movie Review: Adventureland (2009)

A teenage romance with a mix of comedy and drama, Adventureland seeks the wistfulness of a troubled young romance. The film enjoys a few good moments but is unable to escape the limitations of quite boring central characters.

In Pittsburgh of 1987, acknowledged virgin James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) is dumped by his latest short-term girlfriend. He nevertheless graduates from high school with grand plans to spend the summer in Europe and then attend journalism school at Columbia University. But when his dad's demotion stresses the family finances, James finds himself short of money and has to accept a summer job at the Adventureland local amusement park, considered pretty much the most degrading job a local teenager can find.

The park is run by Bobby (Bill Hader) and his sister Paulette (Kristen Wiig), and James makes friends with lanky and cynical co-worker Joel (Martin Starr). James soon sets eyes on another colleague, the enigmatic Emily (Kristen Stewart), better known as Em, and they start a tentative courtship. But unknown to anyone, Em is carrying on an affair with the park's hunky maintenance technician Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds), a married man who claims to be an almost-famous musician who once shared the stage with Lou Reed. Things do start to get serious between James and Em, although the arrival of sexpot teenager Lisa P (Margarita Levieva) to work at the park complicates matters.

Directed and written by Greg Mottola fresh from his success helming Superbad, Adventureland aims for a touch of romantic nostalgia within the confines of a quite miserable amusement park, where the games are rigged, kids' puke is part of the ambience, and immature classless men stroke their masculinity by chasing large fuzzy toys. In terms of finding a setting for a love story, Adventureland is original and Mottola sprinkles in regular doses of amusement park human yuk to keep his tale grounded.

Less successful are the central characters. Neither James nor Em offer much that is new, and they are teenagers that have been seen many times before, and in better films than this. It does not help that Mottola overplays the teenage angst angle in a fruitless search for some depth. James and Em both come from seemingly well-to-do middle class families, yet in pursuit of the requisite "troubled background" James' inability to afford a trip to Europe and Em's failure to get along with her step-mother are presented as crises of existential proportions. All the parents in the film are presented as disconnected and distant, in another area where the script falls short.

Mottola appears more interested in jamming as many 1980s songs into the film as possible, and the soundtrack is relentless, quickly tiresome (many of the music selections simply are not that good), and quite loud, often drowning out the lines of dialogue.

Jesse Eisenberg puts on his best I'm-a-bit-of-a-doofus-but-I'm-still-cool persona, and it's well suited to the movie. Kristen Stewart is all about a dark exterior hiding something that is always smoldering, whether its passion or anger at the world in general. Ryan Reynolds sleeps walks through his few scenes. The supporting cast is patchy, and includes good performances from Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, a ridiculously over-the-top sultry turn from Margarita Levieva, and a few too many forgettable hangers-on.

Adventureland features long stretches where not much happens other than standard teenage anxiety, plenty of alcohol consumption, and even more pot smoking. When in doubt and in search of a cause, break out the illicit substances.

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The Movies Of Kristen Wiig

All movies starring Kristen Wiig and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Knocked Up (2007)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Ghost Town (2008)

Adventureland (2009)

Date Night (2010)

All Good Things (2010)

Bridesmaids (2011)

Friends With Kids (2011)

Her (2013, voice only)

The Martian (2015)

Downsizing (2017)

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Bridesmaids (2011)

A clever chick flick that borrows heavily from raunchy bromedies then dramatically outdoes them, Bridesmaids is a most enjoyable comedy, unique for investing in character development without losing comic momentum. Kristen Wiig of Saturday Night Live co-wrote and stars, and in the process establishes herself as a potential superstar movie comedienne.

Thirty-something Annie (Wiig) lives in Milwaukee, and is finding out what life at rock bottom looks like. Her small bakery business went bankrupt; she is stuck in a dead-end sales job; her room-mates are insufferable; her car is falling apart; and the one man who pays any attention to her uses her purely for sex. Lilian (Maya Rudolph), Annie's best friend since childhood and now working in Chicago, announces that she is getting married, and of course wants Annie to be the Maid of Honour.

Annie gets to know the other bridesmaids, and quickly finds out that Chicago socialite and control-freak Helen (Rose Byrne) also considers herself Lilian's best friend. Helen's life is as perfect as Annie's is shambolic, and the two are immediate frenemies.

Also among the bridesmaids are the stocky and aggressive Megan (Melissa McCarthy), who will become Lilian's sister-in-law; the blonde Rita (Wendy McLendon-Covey), who is stuck in an unhappy marriage, and the naive Becca (Ellie Kemper).

In preparing for the wedding Annie tries to be a good Maid of Honour, but everything she touches turns into an unmitigated disaster, from gown fittings (diarrhea) to the bachelorette trip to Vegas (kicked off the plane), to the shower (destroyed). Annie also manages to sabotage a frail relationship that was developing with police officer Nathan (Chris O'Dowd), who genuinely cares about her.

With the catastrophes mounting and the wedding looming, the friendship between Lilian and Annie is ruptured, and Helen is installed as the new Maid of Honour. Annie needs to find the incentive to pick up the pieces and reassemble her life.

At just over two hours, Bridesmaids is long for a comedy, but director Paul Feig (a veteran of TV sitcoms) uses the time wisely to nourish the characters and the narrative, and the film takes advantage of the available elbow room to work on a variety of levels. Most importantly, it is extremely funny, with some laughs, such as the sequence in the bridal shop, of the side-splitting, rib-cracking variety. Yes the humour is sometimes (or almost always) vulgar and related to body parts and fluids, and the vulgarity works brilliantly.

But the film is successful because it ventures beyond the laughs to create a triangle of stressed friendship between Annie, Lilian and Helen, and the script by Wiig and Annie Mumolo takes the time to probe how people, and therefore what they value in a friend, change over time. And finally Bridesmaids finds a heart by colouring in a lot of distress in the life of Annie, and becoming a rare example of a comedy that provides eloquent context for hilariously anguished behaviour.

A thoughtfully unapologetic romp, Bridesmaids leaves a trail of delectable destruction in its wake.

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