Miserable Retail Slave

starring Thomas Jane, Samuel L. Jackson, LL Cool J, Saffron Burrows

The Final Word: Carter Blake (Samuel L. jackson): "No, what you've done is taken God's oldest killing machine and given it will and desire. What you've done is knocked us all the way to the bottom of the goddamn food chain. It's not a great leap forward in my book."

My Rating of Deep Blue Sea: I reached in the hat to pull out a rabbit and found a TURD instead.

-RFP

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by RFP

It's not a big screen re-imaging of "Leave It to Beaver", but, since every other film released to the cinemas these days is a recycled bit of nostalgia, you're forgiven if you thought this.

Depending on how close to the gutter your mind skews, you may even think "The Beaver" is the latest hardcore porn that you should probably download from bittorrent.

What "The Beaver" actually is is crazy old Mel Gibson playing crazy old Walter Black who wears a beaver puppet on his hand.

Perhaps it's unfair to slap a label such as "crazy" onto a cinematic legend such as Gibson. Maybe all of the questionable behavior and unflattering publicity has stemmed from plain, old fashioned bad luck. Maybe Mel is just a victim of circumstance. Regardless, it's hard to watch "The Beaver" without your mind drawing parallels between the character's tenuous hold on sanity and Gibson's real-life struggles.

The story follows William Black (Mel Gibson), a broken shade of a man who suffers from a deep, unending depression and possibly numerous personality disorders. 

After a few botched suicide attempts, an old beaver puppet that Black had rescued from a trash can begins speaking to him in a thick Australian accent. He begins interacting with people exclusively through the puppet, telling everyone to address the beaver by name.

The Beaver's fun, outsized personality quickly replaces Black's depression and he finds that everyone seems to prefer the puppet's personality to his own. Now you know why Dave Coulier used Mr. Woodchuck in so many episodes of Full House.

Black experiences a renewed sense of creativity, resulting in explosive sales for his toy company. His family also embraces Black's new personality, with the exception of his jaded son, Porter (Anton Yelchin), who spends his time writing papers for money at school and trying to impress the brainy cheerleader (Jennifer Lawrence, who played young Mystique) who has hired him to write her valedictorian speech for graduation.

Since the Beaver has made his depression disappear overnight and everything seems to be coming up Milhouse in his life, Black decides that the puppet is not going away any time soon.

The extended period of a grown man using a beaver puppet to communicate slowly begins to wear on everyone and everything that has been gained by the Beaver starts to slip away from Black. 

The climax features the Beaver becoming a cult phenomenon, an appearance on the Today show, a Fight Club-esque battle, and a somewhat shocking, but somewhat predictable conclusion.

 The ridiculous premise of the film may be a turn off for some, but for others (like me) it's an interesting, off beat project featuring an actor who normally wouldn't tackle such subjects. I think a friendship with director Jodie Foster (who also plays William Black's wife) helped bring Gibson into the fold. 

For me, the movie works due to Gibson's great performance. He puts everything he has into this character, a role that alternates from goofy to intense at a moment's notice. The intensity and emotional range that the role requires reminds me of his performance in "Ransom".  The "B" plot in the movie concerning Anton Yelchin trying to woo Jennifer Lawrence really doesn't add anything to the main plot of the film. Yelchin, as always, does a great job investing himself in his character, while the upcoming star of The Hunger Games, Lawrence, is merely adequate.

I give "The Beaver" 3 out of 5 pink slips.

-RFP

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Fright Night (1985)

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by Jason

Ok, so I’ll admit it, I was pretty excited to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It had the Franco, that should be illegal to be that hot girl from Slumdog Millionaire wearing a SCARF, and some cool looking CGI apes wasting stuff and generally wreaking havoc in New York. Oh yeah, and Brian Cox, one of my favorite older dude actors, as the shady monkey house manager guy. What was not to love, what could go wrong?

Well, throughout most of the movie, the answer is, not a whole lot. You got the dude who used his face for Gollum in the LOTR movies CGI-ing (is that a term? Well it is NOW!) up his face to play Caesar, the main ape that becomes a sort of pet/bff to Franco during the first half hour of the movie, because Franco is working on a cure for Alzheimers because his dad (played by another cool older dude actor, John Lithgow – I forgive you for 3rd Rock from the Sun, man its ok. Remember Footloose? How bout A Distant Thunder? Dude had talent) has it to the MAX. Like, he’s pretty much lost his mind. So you feel for the guy, and you sort of understand when he sees that it showed some success with one of the apes, who literally ends up going ape shit (always wanted to use that term and have it actually apply, mission accomplished!), but NOT because of the drug Franco makes – because she thought someone (possibly a dingo) was going after her baby, to try and eat it or kill it or what have you.

Well since she sorta ruins the plans of the soulless evil corporation that funds Franco and his fancy new medicine by smashing up a bunch of stuff in their building, they shut down the project – but not before he can steal a bunch of this medicine to help his Dad, and, maybe a little against his will, the mom's baby, who he ends up naming Caesar. Well naturally he bonds with the little dude, and, since he is the offspring of his mom who had such success with the medicine, naturally he isn’t your ordinary ape. Wasn’t that like the theme song for Magilla Gorilla, something about him not being your average ape? Who remembers that cartoon, because it was awesome, huge gorilla in a little purple vest and a tie, whats not to love? Ok since like, MAYBE three people reading this remember that, moving on!

Anyways, so he pretty much becomes the smartest ape of all time ever, and in quick succession. We move through time kinda quickly here, because its necessary – we can’t have a bunch of baby apes wreaking havoc on New York after all, can we? That would make us as humans look like a bunch of pansies. So we have to get Caesar around a bunch of other apes, and the macguffin (a term I learned in film class, my Masters Degree at work right there people!) for that is that naturally Caesar has to create some sort of ruckus out in public that ends him getting picked up by animal control. Dude IS still an animal after all.

I forgot something – during these glimpses into Caesar's different stages of development, we are introduced to that most ridiculously beautiful, insanely out of place veterinarian that you will ever see. I’m talking about Freida Pinto, of Slumdog Millionaire fame, and my god, did she even get more insanely gorgeous in those years between that great movie and this…less than great one.

She doesn’t belong here. Sure, Franco is a handsome dude, he's versatile, he works here. But the casting of the lovely Freida just makes me think someone with a Michael Bay-like mentality was working on the set of this movie, and thought “Ok, DUDES! Who can we get that is just completely OFF THE CHART hot for this movie, we all gotta admit here, we got no ending, sometimes the plot meanders a bit, what can we do to bring in more dudes?! I’m talking someone nuclear hot, but someone that people may not remember?”

And one intern in the back timidly raised his hand and said “um…sir? What about that SMOKIN hot girl from Slumdog, has she gotten any work lately? We might be able to get her cheap?” and that Michael Bay-like guy jumped off of his soapbox, gave a fist pump and said “Promote that man! And get me that super hot Indian girl’s agent on the phone, STAT!” and thus, Frieda Pinto was cast.

Because seriously, sure, shes a fine actress. I’ve seen much worse in fact. I’d like to see more of her, I wouldn’t even mind her in a starring role – not just because she is completely off the chain beautiful, but because, I think shes talented. She just doesn’t belong in this movie, she is too beautiful for it. That’s just my two cents, and I apologize.

At any rate, so what causes Caesar to end up at the monkey house (man I’ve got to use so many clichéd terms about simians already in this review, fantastic) is, well, the medicine stops working on Franco’s dad. It takes a long time (like 10 years movie time I think?) but he starts regressing back to losing his mind, and its happening faster too. Franco starts to get desperate to develop something new, and he does, but it’s almost too late. His Dad tries to drive a car (which reminds me of a Dumb and Dumber quote – “Although slow, and dangerous behind the wheel, old people CAN still serve a purpose!” ) and it doesn’t go well, did I mention it was the neighbor's car? So the neighbor comes out, goes nuts, seemingly attacks him, and Caesar sees this from his cool upstairs room, and busts out of there to defend him. He goes a little overboard, as apes protecting people they love are prone to do, and he ends up in the monkey house, the ape slammer, the chimpanzee clink, up the river for orangutans….ok you get it.

At any rate, so he ends up here, with Brian Cox as the shady headmaster, and SPEAKING of headmasters, none other than Draco Malfoy plays one of the evil caretakers here, treats the apes like crap, sneers at them – pretty much plays the same role he did in Harry Potter, minus the wind. It was weird to see him in this movie too, but not as strange as seeing the lovely Freida. But I digress – things are not well here, Caesar is an outcast because he wears human clothes, he is disliked, beaten up, picked on, the new kid in town. But he starts to figure things out, starts to realize that he needs to run with the pack because he can’t do what he wants to on his own. Some of these scenes were some of my favorite in the movie – showcasing that the CGI apes and their interactions are probably more interesting than what the humans are doing – which I suppose is probably how they want us to feel, since they are starting a new franchise and we’ll be seeing more apes than humans in the inevitable sequel. But these scenes are cool, especially when Caesar realizes that Franco isn’t going to come get him any time soon, and that he is alone in the world, and needs to do something about that. So he starts to manipulate his ape friends, and he does it rather smartly and quickly – he IS the smartest ape there ever has been, after all.

During all this, there is also the other plot running, pretty much a sidenote (and it shouldn’t have been), about the one guy who got exposed to Francos new medicine, aside from his Dad. Doesn’t go well for the guy, to say the least – you know, the usual, with the coughing up of the blood, the fainting, the dying in your bed, etc. So he’s dead. But not before coughing on the neighbor guy – same dude who got attacked by Caesar when he yelled at John Litgow earlier btw, and man, I gotta tell ya, I really felt bad for that guy. Dude can’t catch a BREAK! First he's attacked by a big ass ape for just trying to protect his car (it WAS a camaro, after all!), and NOW he's coughed on by some fat guy that was prowling around his neighbor's house. He was just being a good Samaritan! And what does he get? Freakin’ DEATH. There’s a lesson in that, kids. But so we have that sidenote, because, gotta have a way to wipe out all the humans so we can have that whole Planet of the Apes scenario mentioned in the title, right?

So things escalate quickly at the chimpanzee clink, and Caesar busts out the really sweet looking huge ape that’s always locked up – I wanna call him Brutus because that’s what his name SHOULD have been, but I forget what it really was. So I’ll call him Brutus. So him and Brutus become buds and rally the troops in a sense, and it all comes to a head when Malfoy goes too far with Caesar and little did HE know that Caesar had already broken out of the slammer to procure more of that fancy medicine that made him smart and released it among all his friends, so hes in trouble. So Malfoy gets a small case of electrocuted horribly, and then Caesar and his buds are free to go. Now THIS part of the movie is sweet, and includes all the scenes you see in the movie – apes attacking humans, pandemonium, spears being thrown at cop cars, monkeys jumping on helicopters, etc. I just realized my first review here is running a bit long (get used to it with me, seriously) so I’ll move on to my rant about the ending, we are almost there anyways.

Ok so all this awesomeness is happening, and if you don’t want to know how it ends, I’ll say SPOILER ALERT right now and just stop reading, realize I’m hilarious, and come back for another review in a few days. If you’ve already seen it or have no plans (and you probably WON’T have any plans to see it after you read this rant) to see it, then read on my friend. Ok so the apes are kickin ass and not taking any names, it all comes to a head on the Golden Gate Bridge, which leads to the cool forest with all those old redwood trees. I’ve never been there but damn if they don’t make that place look pretty. So the apes trick the silly humans who try to barricade the bridge, Brutus bites it by doing the long jump on to a helicopter FLYING IN THE AIR, people die, spears are thrown, cop cars are wrecked, stuff explodes, it's all pretty awesome.

All the while of course we have Franco trying to get to his old buddy to try and reason with him, and since it’s a movie he uses his hottie girlfriend to distract the two cops that happen to be standing around during this monkey apocalypse, and he's off to try and save his pal. Well he makes it through all the carnage of course, and ends up in the woods with Caesar and his buddies. So they talk, and he tells him he should just come back home, to stop all this, and Caesar says “Well, I am home”.

The ape only talks twice in the movie, and both times I’ll admit, it’s pretty sweet. It’s well done, isn’t cheesy, and fits the situation. So heres where I get pissed – then the movie just…ends. Ok, so the apes have proven they can waste some humans, that we are in trouble from these super smart apes, there's a few messages about how we treat animals n stuff, makes ya think. And then….that's it.

I realize this movie is to set up the franchise and all of that, but I just wanted more resolution. The REAL slap in the face comes at the end credits, when the producers were probably like “oh shit bro! We TOTALLY forgot about how that disease thing, created by the medicine, wipes out all of EARTH yo! So uh…lets just do one of those old-timey travelling things, you know, like on Indiana Jones? Except this time, instead of people flying, its DEATH flying dude, people getting DEAD by that disease! Awesome, problem solved!” Uh….no. In the inevitable sequel, if it just starts out where “ok guys, so everyones dead, and here's some apes, runnin' stuff”, I’m gonna be beyond pissed. It was just like the entire movie was all build up and then no real climax. I’m ok with a movie trying something different…it just didn’t work this time. At least not for me. It might for you, I don’t know. 

So, in conclusion, the movie has some cool ideas it kicks around – some environmental ones, ideas about how we may THINK we are the bosses here but that situation can easily be rearranged, etc., it just falls apart at the end. That isn’t to say it’s a BAD movie, it’s not. It’s just a disappointing one, with some oddly casted people, particularly the freaking goddess Freida Pinto, who doesn’t need to be anywhere near this movie. But the action is good, Franco and Cox are solid, Malfoy proves he can be Malfoy in other movies too, and the CGI is top notch, I’d maybe even see groundbreaking, on Caesar and his homies. So I’ll give this movie a 2 ½ out of 4 stars. Or if you aren’t into the star system, that’d be about a 6/10. It has some merits, it just doesn’t make it all the way.

 out of  

~ Jason

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