Movie Review: The Catcher Was A Spy (2018)

A World War Two drama and adventure, The Catcher Was A Spy captures wartime cloak-and-dagger antics in Europe, but the plot substance is mediocre at best.

During the war former professional baseball catcher Moe Berg (Paul Rudd) is working with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), as the Allies try to gauge Germany's progress in developing an atomic bomb. In flashback, Berg's history is sketched in. As a ball player Moe enjoyed a long career but was a misfit in the locker room. Highly educated, well-traveled and fluent in numerous languages, he maintains a relationship with Estella (Sienna Miller) and may also be a bisexual.

Once the war starts he lands an OSS position working with commander Bill Donovan (Jeff Daniels). He is assigned to the team tasked with investigating and possibly assassinating German scientist Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong), who is suspected of leading the German atomic bomb development efforts. Moe joins the army's Robert Furman (Guy Pearce) and Dutch scientist Samuel Goudsmit (Paul Giamatti) as they connect first with Italian Professor Amaldi (Giancarlo Giannini) then Swiss Professor Scherrer (Tom Wilkinson) to try and determine Heisenberg's role and intentions.

Based on true events, The Catcher Was A Spy is reasonably intriguing as an almost old-fashioned military spy yarn, but never reaches any emotional or cerebral heights. Director Ben Lewin succeeds on the vintage look and feel elements, bathing the action in warm yellows and browns and finding dark but glistening and handsome European settings for the shadow games. An interlude on the front lines of the Italian campaign offers suitably thrilling combat action.

But the content and characters are less interesting. Berg is presented as smart and capable but also an impenetrable enigma, and in the hands of Paul Rudd he remains an aloof and distant central character. Robert Rodat's screenplay, adapting the book by Nicholas Dawidoff, is confined to superficial notes, unable to round Berg into a properly defined person or break through to his motivations. Meanwhile, Nobel Prize winner Heisenberg's real-world career and achievements are fairly well known, compromising the tension in the core mission of Berg's spy career.

The cast is rich in talent, but the many famous names are given relatively little to do. Sienna Miller is stuck in the thankless neglected woman role, while Jeff Daniels and Guy Pearce stay close to stereotypical military men. No fewer than four scientists are brought to life by Mark Strong, Paul Giamatti, Giancarlo Giannini and Tom Wilkinson, and Strong's interpretation of Heisenberg emerges as the physicist most deserving of more screen time. Connie Neilsen appears in one scene as a haranguing dinner party guest, perhaps for the sole purpose of adding another female role.

Lewin tidies up the drama in an efficient 98 minutes, a case of decent panache hustling in search of essence.



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Movie Review: The Is 40 (2012)

A slice-of-life raunchy comedy, The Is 40 is a cluttered but often hilarious adventure through the chaos and confusion of life's middle phase.

Married couple Pete and Debbie (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) are both celebrating their 40th birthdays in the same week. While he is laid back and inattentive, she is having trouble accepting the reality of middle age. They are dealing with the stress of raising two girls, 13 year old Sadie and 8 year old Charlotte (Maude and Iris Apatow), plus the potential financial collapse of Pete's independent music label business and thousands of dollars in missing revenue from Debbie's small boutique.

Pete's father Larry (Albert Brooks) is a financial drain, while Debbie's dad Oliver (John Lithgow) is cold and distant. But most of all the couple now mostly antagonize each other. The sexual spark is gone, he resents her secret smoking habit, she despises his inability to control his cupcake intake, and they can rarely have a moment alone together. With their arguments getting louder and more frequent and impacting the happiness of their daughters, the marriage approaches a breaking point.

With co-producer, director and writer Judd Apatow zooming into his forties, married to Mann and raising the two daughters featured in the movie, This Is 40 is a family affair. The heartfelt albeit amplified exploration of the stresses and strains of kids, parents, finances and careers experienced by the sandwich generation creates fertile ground for pointed adult humour. In search of the big laughs (often found) the film does focus more on rub points and irritations, although Apatow does provide Pete and Debbie with one idyllic sequence at a holiday resort where they rediscover each other free of all externalities.

This Is 40 sprawls out to 133 minutes, and Apatow is almost right in thinking all his ideas are good ideas, but many of them are also irrelevant sideshows. The rampant improvised dialogue often hits the mark, and is therefore allowed to run, prolonging many scenes. Melissa McCarthy shows up for an extended sequence as a rival mother at Sadie's high school. It's a hilarious foul-mouthed turn, but almost unrelated to the rest of the film. Megan Fox also gets plenty of screen time as the suspiciously wealthy enchantress salesperson at Debbie's boutique in a sideplot about employee theft that steers towards a cul-de-sac.

Albert Brooks and John Lithgow are heavyweight support players, and so both get their share of screentime, earned or not. Jason Segel also pops up in a small role as a physical trainer. But obvious mid-age flab emerges in the repetitive arguments between Pete and Debbie, the two verbally sparring in every other scene of the film's second half, often circling the same ground with new versions of the same insults as Sadie joins them in tedious three-way screaming matches.

Paul Rudd is dependable, but Leslie Mann is brilliant. In a sparkling comedic performance riding the sharp edge between exasperation and self-deprecation, Mann sets the film's tone and grabs hold of a woman's disproportionate responsibility in setting a household's pulse. With Pete often hiding in the bathroom or avoiding his responsibilities altogether, Debbie, almost despite herself, embraces the challenge of making 40 work, a mission both seemingly impossible and fraught with zingers.

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Movie Review: Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (2004)

A satire of television newsrooms in a male-dominated era, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy features more comic misses than hits and falls victim to the culture it attempts to skewer.

It's the 1970s in San Diego, and Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is the leading news anchorman in town. Unintelligent but possessing self-proclaimed excellent hair and therefore full of himself, he leads an entourage consisting of sportscaster "Champ" (David Koechner), field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and imbecilic weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell).

Their reign of toxic masculinity using the workplace as hunting grounds for women is threatened when station manager Ed (Fred Willard) hires ambitious news reporter Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) in the name of improving diversity. Ron and his buddies immediately make gauche moves to seduce and belittle Veronica intending to stop her career before it starts, but she proves a tough opponent.

Featuring plenty of improvisation and no shortage of vulgarity, Anchorman showers the screen with coarse humour. With a cast also including Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Seth Rogen in minor roles, the talent surplus is not matched by sharp wit. The comedy is often at the throw-the-dog-off-the-bridge slapstick level, compounded by plenty of outright yelling and wailing.

The ultra male shenanigans step well over the stupid border, and while a few moments of humour survive and a couple of lines land, the film remains mired in a clueless celebration of body parts and imbecility.

The counterbalance is provided by Christina Applegate's steady role as Veronica Corningstone, and she emerges as the best thing in the movie, working hard for future generations to truncate the man in Anchorman. The film is not smart enough and too invested in Burgundy to properly leverage Corningstone's strengths, but expanding her perspective would have dramatically enhanced the otherwise flimsy narrative.

The more positive notes include a delightful non-sequitur gang rumble scene and Steve Carell's deadpan interventions. Director Adam McKay does create a wonderfully ridiculous visual feast awash in loud 1970s clothes, absurd hair and the decade's sickly colours (brown and orange everywhere), although a lack of ambition prevents a meaningful extension of the aesthetic to the outdoors.

A mostly tedious exercise in attempted hilarity, Anchorman is too smug and self-satisfied with guys believing the legend in the mirror.

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Movie Review: I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)

A standard romantic comedy, I Could Never Be Your Woman has plenty of incomplete ideas and is predictably unable to cobble together a decent package.

In Los Angeles, Rosie (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a television producer in her early forties, battling against her age and having conversations with Mother Nature (Tracey Ullman) about the natural order of things. Rosie is divorced from the still amiable Nathan (Jon Lovitz), and raising her precocious daughter Izzie (Saoirse Ronan), who is just entering puberty.

Rosie's tween-oriented female empowerment show You Go Girl is struggling in the ratings, but new young-ish actor Adam (Paul Rudd) has plenty of charisma and gives the show a big boost. Rosie and Adam are attracted to each other and start a relationship, but she is gravely concerned about the age difference between them. Rosie's snarky assistant Jeannie (Sarah Alexander) has her own eyes on Adam, while Izzie is experiencing her first crush on a boy at school.

From the clumsy title to Rosie's corny conversations with Mother Nature, the incessant inside-Hollywood satirical jabs, the flimsy basis for the central relationship and the overall shallow characters, most parts of I Could Never Be Your Woman demonstrate a smidgen of promise but then don't work so well. The film cannot shake the sense that writer and director Amy Heckerling, returning after a seven year hiatus, is trying too hard to assemble a hip movie out of inherently defective parts.

Despite offering a few good laughs, the movie too often busies itself taking cheap shots at the shallow youth-obsessed Los Angeles culture fueling the plastic surgery industry. The Mother Nature interludes are interruptive and mostly twee in tone rather than witty or profound. As a result insufficient time is invested in Rosie and Adam, and they remain stock characters with no meaningful arcs. While Pfeiffer at 49 is radiant playing a character nearly 10 years younger and Rudd adds plenty of amusing free-spirited energy, both deserved a better script.

Jeannie as the perfunctory antagonist suffers most, her character existing for the sole purpose of antagonizing the central romance. It is left to young Saoirse Ronan, in her film debut, to try and rescue proceedings, and she nearly pulls it off. Heckerling saves her best lines for Izzie's character, and while the precocious kid can be a tired cliche, Ronan adds sufficient budding maturity and a droll world weariness to make it work, in the process stealing every scene she's in.

I Could Never Be Your Woman was eventually released straight to DVD in most markets. It's not bad enough to have deserved such a fate, but it's still a film that misses too many of the simple targets it aims for.

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Movie Review: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

A coming-of-age drama, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower introduces serious issues to the typical high school milieu, but skirts almost all of the more challenging conversations.

In Pittsburgh, introverted and quiet Charlie (Logan Lerman) is starting his first high school year after a tough summer in which he coped with depression. After initially finding it difficult to make friends, Charlie connects with two senior students, the gay extrovert Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his step-sister Sam (Emma Watson). Patrick is in a secretive relationship with Brad (Johnny Simmons), while Sam is overcoming her promiscuous reputation, and working hard to get into college.

Charlie finds support from his English teacher Mr. Anderson (Paul Rudd), and also meets Patrick and Sam's friends Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman) and Alice (Erin Wilhelmi). But he develops a deep crush on Sam, who is unfortunately already dating Craig (Reece Thompson). Eventually Charlie starts an unconvincing relationship with Mary Elizabeth, but his heart is really elsewhere.

Directed and written by Stephen Chbosky as an adaptation of his own novel, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower aims for a wistful and low-key vibe, and often succeeds. With just a few humorous moments, this is a more-sombre-than-usual look at the trials and tribulations of high school life, although the characters' overall tone of optimism ensures the film does not descend into pathos.

Chbosky is clearly intent on portraying high school teens grappling with real problems, and weaves themes of loneliness, fitting in, loss of friends, depression, and abuse into the narrative. But the film never gathers the courage to tackle the issues head-on. A friend's suicide, an adult's abuse, a stint at a mental institute, a father's rage against his gay son, and a girl driven into frequent meaningless sex: all the key incidents happen off-screen, the topics are mentioned in about one sentence, checked-off, and summarily left behind.

What remains is much more standard fare coming-of-age material. Charlie has a hopeless crush on the impossibly perky but seemingly unavailable Sam from the minute he sees her; Patrick is extraordinarily friendly and helpful, and Mr. Anderson is just about perfect as the hip young teacher who spots and nurtures Charlie's love of reading and writing. The travails of friendships will go up and down in predictable cycles and end at just the perfect intersection of melancholy and effervescent.

The cast members are all dedicated to their roles and help nourish the film's emotions. Logan Lerman delivers a Michael Cera-type performance, but registers the least because Charlie is mostly a, well, wallflower. Ezra Miller gets to inject most of the energy, while Emma Watson is radiant but Sam is written to be a mythically flawless love interest.

The Perks Of Being Wallflower is not content to sit at the edge of the room, but neither is it willing to dance to the edgier tunes.

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Movie Review: Clueless (1995)

A high school comedy and romance, Clueless is a sparkling story about affluent teenaged girls navigating the hazardous complexities of friendship, love, schoolwork and trips to the mall.

Cher: Isn't my house classic? The columns date all the way back to 1972.

At a Beverly Hills high school, almost-16-year-old Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and her best friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) are fashionable and high- up on the popularity charts, but not that academically inclined. Cher lives in a mansion with her father Mel (Dan Hedaya), a successful litigation lawyer, while her mother died young from liposuction surgery complications. Cher has picked up her father's sharp argumentative skills, and manages to talk her teachers into increasing her grades.

Mel: Which reminds me, where's your report card?
Cher: It's not ready yet.
Mel: What do you mean, "it's not ready yet?"
Cher: Well, some teachers are trying to low-ball me, Daddy. And I know how you say, "Never accept a first offer", so I figure these grades are just a jumping off point to start negotiations.

Cher regularly spars with her ex-stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd), and takes it upon herself to create projects out of other people. First she arranges for teachers Mr. Hall (Wallace Shawn) and Ms. Geist (Twink Caplan) to fall in love with each other. Then when dorky new student Tai (Brittany Murphy) arrives at the school, Cher gets to work transforming Tai's looks and attitude and finding her a boyfriend. But things get complicated when Tai starts to gain in popularity and Cher herself falls for cool kid Christian (Justin Walker).

Tai: Do you think she's pretty?
Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.
Tai: What's a monet?
Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.

Directed and written by Amy Heckerling as a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, Clueless is a joyous and positive celebration of the teenaged high school world as seen through the eyes of privileged girls turning into young women. Here fashion and cliques are king, actual school work is irrelevant, every look to or from a boy is to be analyzed, and trends come and go in a day.

Mel (to Christian): Anything happens to my daughter, I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt anybody would miss you.

At the middle of it all is Cher, and Clueless succeeds brilliantly thanks to the immensely likeable central character. Cher's heart is as big as her father's mansion, and she combines her privilege with an irresistible genuine desire to improve the lives of others, her instincts to do good a pointy antidote to privileged rich snootiness. Alicia Silverstone is exceptionally well suited for the role and brings an an alluring goofiness to Cher, whether delivering exquisitely underprepared homework presentations or navigating her mammoth wardrobe, defining the best of what being young, wealthy and clueless can be all about.

Josh: Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Cher: No. Why, does it sound like I do?

Clocking in at a breezy 97 minutes, Clueless is bathed in bright Southern California colours blazing with vivid pink and yellow fashions. The film is consistently funny, and often hilarious, Heckerling adopting a sharp self-aware attitude spiced with epic one-liners carrying lasting cultural impact.

Mel: What the hell is that?
Cher: A dress.
Mel: Says who?
Cher: Calvin Klein.

And despite the prevailing sense of fun, Clueless still finds time to explore themes of jealousy, sexual identity, the importance (or not) of losing virginity from a young woman's perspective, distracted parenting, finding love in the unlikeliest of places, and the agony of passing the driving test.

Dionne: Hello? There was a Stop sign.
Cher: I totally paused.

While Cher herself is on a journey to discover exactly how Clueless she is, the film is as sleek and sharp as a Rodeo Drive boutique.

As if!

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Movie Review: How Do You Know (2010)

An insipid romance, How Do You Know is a torturous two hours of nothingness.

At 31 years old Lisa Jorgenson (Reese Witherspoon) is cut from the US national baseball team. She starts dating two men: professional baseball star Matty Reynolds (Owen Wilson) and businessman George Madison (Paul Rudd). Matty is rich, handsome and superficial, but starts to genuinely care about Lisa. George is head of a large corporation, but he is facing a serious fraud investigation related to falsifying tax records. George's pregnant personal assistant Annie (Kathryn Hahn) is loyal, but his domineering father Charles (Jack Nicholson) appears to be behind all that is bad in George's life.

Lisa moves into Matty's swanky apartment, but he misbehaves just enough to push here away and into the waiting arms of George. Meanwhile, Charles is trying to find a way to stay out of trouble with regulators by pushing George deeper into the hole.

Written, directed and co-produced by James L. Brooks, How Do You Know may be the moment a once great filmmaker finally hit the wall with a dull thud. From the uninspired title to the stultifying pacing and abject lack of content, How Do You Know is devoid of laughs, drama or genuine emotion of any kind. The film rolls over and dies early, with neither Brooks nor the cast able to generate even the faintest of pulses.

The one interesting element in the plot would have been Lisa dealing with the rejection of being summarily cut from the sport she loved. Witherspoon tries hard in a couple of scenes to convey the trauma of dealing with the emptiness that resides on the other side of the dream, but Brooks soon loses interest and resumes the ping pong between Matty and George. Witherspoon is reduced to hauling her luggage back and forth between the two men, by buses and taxis, in an unbelievable display of bankrupt writing.

Meanwhile the two men stay at the most superficial level, Matty the playboy athlete and George the honest businessman. Neither progress an inch from their starting positions, and two hours into the movie Matty is still being a dork and George is still all innocent puppy admiration. In a desperate attempt to stretch the proceedings to two hours, Brooks introduces several scenes in which the characters agree to not talk, and then proceed to not communicate, thereby setting up more excruciating scenes to cover the same ground.

How Do You Know is sad late career misfire for Brooks as director and Nicholson as a film star, and they both took a long, possibly permanent hiatus after this debacle.

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The Movies Of Paul Rudd

All movies starring Paul Rudd and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Clueless (1995)

The Cider House Rules (1999)

Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (2004)

The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)

I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)

Knocked Up (2007)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

How Do You Know (2010)

Wanderlust (2012)

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

This Is 40 (2012)

The Catcher Was A Spy (2018)

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

Movie Review: Knocked Up (2007)

A crude romantic comedy, Knocked Up does not hold back on the vulgarities but also finds a few good comic moments in the story of an unwanted pregnancy resulting from a drunken one night stand.

Alison (Katherine Heigl) works at the E! television channel, and is unexpectedly promoted to celebrity interviewer. To celebrate she goes out for a night of clubbing fun with her sister Debbie (Leslie Mann), who is married to Pete (Paul Rudd) and the mother of two. Alison ends the night having unprotected sex with slacker Ben (Seth Rogen), who does nothing in life except get high and hang out with his equally useless friends Jason (Jason Segel), Jay (Jay Baruchel), Jonah (Jonah Hill) and Martin (Martin Starr). The morning after, Alison confirms that she has nothing in common with Ben and they part ways.

Eight weeks later Alison discovers that she is pregnant. She reconnects with Ben, and decides to go through with the pregnancy. They try to make it work as a couple, while Debbie and Pete face a crisis of their own. As the due date draws nearer, the stresses of the forced relationship between Alison and Ben come to the fore.

Directed and written by Judd Apatow, Knocked Up is a hit-and-miss romantic comedy, although the romance element is more of a search through the jungle of incompatibility. There are plenty of laughs to be sure, but also many jokes that fall flat and others that are overcooked. The improvisational, irreverent vibe is a welcome shot in the arm for an often tired genre, as is the unapologetic celebration of the brotherhood of offensive slackerhood. But there is only so much humour that can be squeezed out of men who waste their life on dope, juvenile sex jokes and the general pursuit of nothingness, and Knocked Up frequently bumps up against these limits.

Beneath the coarse exterior, Apatow does add thoughtful commentary on relationship dynamics. The women, through Alison and Debbie, are portrayed as more stressed but also more responsible and more caring. The men, represented primarily by Ben and Pete, are either diamonds in the rough, or just rough, seeking escape from the emotional responsibilities of adulthood through actions that avoid accountability. While the men seem to be more fun, it is the women who set the agenda and make the key decisions that strive towards meaningful happiness.

The cast is mostly made up of Apatow regulars, and they are all in, riding the wave of organic humour, soaring and crashing depending on the cleverness of the dialogue. With all the bromances in full flow, it is left to Heigl and Mann to provide any sense of organizational structure, and they deliver steady performances. The cast also includes Harold Ramis and Kristen Wiig in small roles, and a host of celebrity cameos.

Knocked Up works its way to a spectacular climax, the pregnancy reaching full term just as the reality of what it takes to achieve couplehood finally dawns on Ben, labour pain mixed with manic panic and over-the-top laughs.

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Movie Review: The Cider House Rules (1999)

A feel-good drama about an orphan who strikes out on his own to discover the world, The Cider House Rules is sweet enough but also conspicuously contrived.

Near an isolated New England rail station, the kind Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine) runs the St. Cloud's orphanage, nestled in the snowy mountains. Parents arrive to deliver and drop-off their unwanted babies, while other young couples also know that Dr. Larch performs illegal but safe abortions. Only rarely do some well-off parents arrive to adopt one of the orphans. Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) is an orphan who was twice adopted but twice returned to St. Cloud's, once for being too quiet and the second time after suffering abuse. Dr. Larch raises Homer like a son, and despite lacking any formal education the young man becomes Dr. Larch's second in command, delivering babies and helping to run the orphanage. But Homer always refuses to perform abortions.

With World War Two raging, air force pilot Lt. Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd) and his girlfriend Candy Kendall (Charlize Theron) arrive at St. Cloud's for an abortion. Finally restless and determined to see the world, Homer hitches a ride with the couple out of St. Cloud's, breaking Dr. Larch's heart. At the orchard operated by Wally's parents, Homer joins the apple-picking crew led by the domineering Arthur Rose (Delroy Lindo) and his daughter Rose Rose (Erykah Badu). When Wally rejoins the war, Homer starts an affair with Candy and maintains an uneasy correspondence with Dr. Larch. Despite being new to the outside world, Homer will soon face an unexpected crisis that will force him to define his destiny.

An adaptation of a John Irving novel directed by Lasse Hallström, The Cider House Rules is a contemplative, amiable and pretty film. It also almost mechanically lines up and ticks off elements required to create a wistful coming-of-age tale. A picturesque mountainside orphanage, a kind-hearted curator, sympathetic nurses, amiable and ridiculously cutesy orphans, a surrogate father-son relationship, a stunningly beautiful girl-next-door as the love interest, and finally a perfectly placed moral dilemma for Homer to grapple with, bringing into sharp relief life's messy choices. There is nothing at all wrong with anything that the film does; it's all just too tidy, an adult fairy tale manufactured, designed and executed to tug at the hearts of Academy Award voters.

Homer's journey of discovery is gentle and features a familiar tension between the comforts of home, in this case the orphanage where he is adored, and the mysteries of the greater world. Adventurous pilots like Wally and beautiful lovers like Candy await on the outside, but Wally will learn that there is no escaping difficult decisions. All that Dr. Larch taught him will come in handy when Wally stumbles into a crisis involving Mr. Rose and his daughter. Wally needs to define himself as a man responsible for justifying his own actions, and once he does, the world will look different.

The titular cider house rules are instructions of conduct posted in small print within the cabin housing the apple picking crew, a place occupied by people who cannot read until Homer joins the pickers. The rules are another rather heavy handed example of the film screaming out its intentions to question societal standards, and examine the value of normative expectations when transported to unique contexts.

Michael Caine almost single handedly raises the film towards the top of St. Cloud's mountain. Dr. Larch is a remarkable character, having created his own rules of morality suitable for an orphanage filled with unwanted children, and Caine does the most with it. He turns the good doctor into a man who would enliven any dinner party with his straightforward thoughts about life, death and all the choices in between, although it seems clear that Larch would never leave St. Cloud's, and indeed may have lived his entire life there.

In contrast Tobey Maguire sleepwalks through the film with his singular goofy expression, somewhat suitable for an orphan discovering the world but ultimately most tiresome in his inability to emote. He is overshadowed in the film's second half by the daunting Delroy Lindo as Mr. Rose, delivering a performance that speaks to all that life offers in the way of wisdom gained and dark secrets gathered.

Charlize Theron and Paul Rudd are good but quite obvious, with Rudd's character summarily shipped off to war in another convenient plot device to clear the road for the sexual awakening portion of Homer's journey. Small roles are afforded to Jane Alexander and Kathy Baker as nurses, Kate Nelligan as Wally's mom, and J.K. Simmons as Candy's lobster fisherman dad.

The Cider House Rules may harbour intentions of a complex fizzy drink. Instead, it's an average but still refreshing glass of plain apple juice.

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Movie Review: The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)

An uproarious sex comedy, The 40 Year-Old Virgin hits all its targets by mixing wild humour with the gentle awkwardness of a man struggling to make the jump into full adulthood.

Andy (Steve Carell) is a lonely 40 year old, living on his own and working in the stockroom of a technology superstore. Andy is into comic books and toy collectibles, and has no social life to speak of. His work colleagues include David (Paul Rudd), still not over a failed relationship, Jay (Romany Malco), a loud and fast-talking ladies man, and Cal (Seth Rogen) who is smarter than he looks and in search of kinkier experiences. When Andy's co-workers find out that he is still a virgin and has almost given up looking for a meaningful relationship, they set about trying to help him.

Andy is hesitant but starts to take the advice of his new friends. Predictably, most of the experiences end in disaster. However, he does slowly gain some confidence to interact with women, and local business owner Trish (Catherine Keener) catches his eye. Bookstore clerk Beth (Elizabeth Banks) is also a potential partner, while Andy's boss and store manager Paula (Jane Lynch) graciously offers her services to help him with his predicament. But Andy gathers up his courage and embarks on a relationship with Trish without revealing to her that he is a virgin, and also gets to know her teenaged daughter Marla (Kat Dennings), herself grappling with upcoming initial sexual experience issues.

Directed by Judd Apatow, who co-wrote with Carell, The 40-Year Old Virgin is a laugh-fest driven both by characters and situations. Andy and his friends are just on the right side of believable as underachieving men searching for new ways to remain irresponsible, keeping the film away from farce. The comic set-pieces also maintain a toehold in the realm of the possible, from Andy receiving a chest waxing to joining Marla at a pregnancy prevention clinic.

The wilder moments are more hit and miss. A highlight is Andy, whose driving skills are limited to a bicycle, getting trapped into a car ride from hell with a very drunk driver in the form of club girl Nicky (Leslie Mann, Mrs. Apatow in a memorable and nonchalantly oblivious turn). Not as funny is a truncated and unnecessary encounter with a transvestite prostitute.

Amidst the mayhem, the film manages to explore the role of sex in a relationship from the male perspective. An annoying hindrance, an absolute necessity, a dangerous distraction, and the ultimate expression of commitment, sex proves to be important in all the ways that Andy feared and craved. Meanwhile, David, Jay and Cal also get their own dose of sexual education, and not in any way that they expected.

Steve Carell is crucial to the film's success, and his performance as Andy nails the essentially likable man drifting into a life of loneliness due more to inertia than any actual hang-up. Catherine Keener emerges as the perfect counterpart, a woman who has had perhaps too much life happen to her too soon, and is happy to go slow with a man who clearly needs to.

The supporting cast is rich in comic talent, with Apatow frequently deploying them in an undercurrent of dangerous mischievousness rather than brazen madcappery.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin is prodded out of his comfort zone and onto the path of responsibility in an adult world. And it's a laugh-out-loud transition, worth the years of waiting in unintended abstinence.

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Movie Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

A raunchy sex comedy with some romance elements, Forgetting Sarah Marshall finds humour in breakups, new beginnings, and revenge sex in the alternate reality of a picture-perfect Hawaiian resort.

Peter (Jason Segel), the creator of music for television shows, is unceremoniously dumped by girlfriend Sarah (Kristen Bell), the glamorous sex-symbol star of a CSI-style series. Unable to get over the breakup, Peter seeks to mend his broken heart at a Hawaiian resort only to find Sarah also vacationing there with new boyfriend Aldous (Russell Brand), a global pop music star.

As Peter and Sarah do their best to avoid each other and regularly fail to do so, Peter meets the resort's receptionist Rachel (Mila Kunis), and they start a tentative relationship. Surrounded by assorted other guests and resort employees stumbling through their own issues, Peter, Sarah, Rachel and Aldous need to untangle their lives, which suddenly become more complicated when Sarah receives unwelcome news.

Co-produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Nicholas Stoller and written by Segel, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a rare example of an adult sex comedy that actually works, and without resorting to toilet humour. The film's success resides with Segel's witty script, which in addition to a continuous stream of raunchy situations creates a large number of memorable and often hilarious characters, even in the smallest roles, and sets them loose to do their thing.

The depth of enjoyment within the ranks of the secondary characters is quite remarkable. The list covers Russell Brand as Aldous Snow, Jonah Hill as Matthew the waiter with stardom aspirations, Paul Rudd as Kunu the surf dude with memory issues, Jack McBrayer and Maria Thayer as the newlyweds with wildly diverging sex drives, Bill Hader as Peter's stepbrother and even William Baldwin and Jason Bateman doing their best David Caruso impressions in promo snippets as Sarah's co-stars.

In most other comedies these secondary and tertiary roles would be sketched in and played by nobodies. Here they are recurring and sustained, carrying their own comic momentum and delivered by actors keen to leave an impression. Brand, in particular, delivers a performance so cool and laid back as the superstar who stole Sarah's heart, that it's impossible not to fall under his magnetic spell.

And in the three main roles, Segel, Bell and Kunis shine as the three awkward points of the love triangle. Segel has rarely been better in a restrained performance that emphasizes pathos over doofiness. Bell is perfectly cast as Sarah, an ice cold and self-assured television star who will unexpectedly meet her own vulnerabilities once she hits a crisis point. And in a breakout role, Kunis dazzles with a fresh spray of girl-next-door appeal.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is firmly aimed at adults, and the unrated version does not shy away from nudity (mostly Segel's) and several scenes of couples energetically and loudly coupling for comic effect. The film wastes no time in setting up the premise, surrounding it by anarchy and then vigorously milking it for all its worth over the course of 110 frantic minutes. While most of the jokes do work, the approach here is that the next good gag is only as far as the next minute.

With talent in peak form delivering the laughs, Forgetting Sarah Marshall will be no easy task.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Wanderlust (2012)

A comedy about a stressed married couple trying out life in a quirky commune, Wanderlust has as many sharp moments as dull ones.

George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) are a New York couple about to purchase their first, very tiny and very expensive, apartment. No sooner have they moved in than Paul loses his job. With Linda getting nowhere with her latest career as documentary filmmaker, the couple abandon New York and accept an offer from George's brother Rick (Ken Marino) to relocate to Atlanta. On the long drive south, George and Linda snipe at each other but then stay for one magical night at a ramshackle bed and breakfast called Elysium, where they meet permanent residents living an idyllic, carefree life, including the hunky Seth (Justin Theroux) and slightly senile owner and original founder Carvin (Alan Alda).

Finding life intolerable with the loutish Rick and his seemingly perpetually medicated wife Marisa (Michaela Watkins), George and Linda escape back to Elysium and attempt life as part of the commune, where there are no doors, no boundaries, and everything is supposed to be shared. Seth comes on to Linda, Eva (Malin Åkerman) wants to have sex with George, the perpetually nude Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio) cannot stop talking about his wine and his novel, and Rodney (Jordan Peele) lands George's car in the middle of the lake. And with the relationship between George and Linda stressed to near breaking, developers show up, attempting to evict the commune and turn the land of Elysium into a casino.

Co-produced by Judd Apatow, Wanderlust plays on the post-recession turmoil of stressed families struggling to cope financially, and finds its best moments in contrasting a hectic New York City life with the languid, let-it-all-literally-hang-out pace at Elysium. The laid back lifestyle at the commune looks good after everything that could go wrong does go wrong for George and Linda. Somewhere in the dark corner of the happiness scale is Rick, full of himself for successfully peddling port-a-potties, blissfully unaware that his home life is in tatters while he boasts about his business savvy.

Director David Wain keeps the film compact at under 100 minutes, and does find some sweet funny spots, the lack of doorways at the commune providing an opportunity for humour to walk in, while naked Wayne dangles all over the place, stomping on grapes and talking about his book. Much less funny is George seeking his vulgar side and getting all tongue twisted trying to motivate himself to have sex with Eva. The sub-plot about the casino development is also quite weak.

Jennifer Aniston does not stretch much beyond her usual persona of the girl next door, embarking on her next slightly ditzy adventure, fighting to be a bit of a rebel against her better judgement, and always a natural magnet for men. Paul Rudd is a lightweight, very much a bland second fiddle to Aniston and the cast of misfits at the commune.

Wanderlust is neither wonderful nor woeful, just willingly wacky.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.