This is 40 ends with a title card saying that it’s “Based on characters created by Judd Apatow.” While this is true — the film’s about Debbie (Leslie Mann) and Pete (Paul Rudd), who were supporting figures in Apatow’s 2007 hit Knocked Up — it also feels like it might be more accurate for it to declare “Based on Judd Apatow.” It doesn’t just star his wife Mann, it features their daughters Maude and Iris as her children, and it’s not hard to read Rudd’s character as an Apatow proxy who’s struggling through the world of music instead of, these days, riding high in comedy.
It’s shot on the same block on which director/writer/producer lives with his family, and includes what are clearly many of his thoughts and experiences on relationships, parenting and getting older. It’s Apatow’s most personal film yet, even more so than Funny People, and it benefits from the closeness of this material to its creator as much as it suffers for it, though its weakest points are when the film strives for the angle indicated in its tile — This is 40 — and tries too hard to be about the universal (“This is everyone’s story,” the trailer boldly declared).
Its more general observations on aging and marriage aren’t just familiar, they can take on the well-meaning but blithely entitled sensibility of a college sophomore who’s finally lost his or her virginity and now feels qualified to hold forth about sex with the authority of Dr. Ruth. When Debbie forgets which year she’s lied about being born in to avoid dealing with the big four-O and yells at Pete for needing a Viagra for their morning birthday hookup, or when we watch a montage of the pair getting different orifices…
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At long last, the Paranormal Activity/found footage horror hits are getting their own comedy spoof in the form of the Marlon Wayans vehicle A Haunted House — Paranormal Hacktivity, anyone?
Ever since I first saw I’m Gonna Git You Sucka way back in the ice age (junior high), I have desperately wanted the Wayans family to be capable of consistently brilliant comedy. Unfortunately, the first thing they did after nailing it down with Sucka was In Living Color, which launched Jim Carrey’s career, which gave us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but also gave us everything else… Since then, the family has been notable more for consistently producing successful comedies packed with obvious jokes that are more easily forgotten than the flavor of a rice cake. Sigh.
But little brother Marlon is interesting: Consistently funny regardless of the comedic dreck he’s starred in, he’s also made a couple of surprising career decisions — being the best thing about Requiem For A Dream, for instance — that make me want to see what he does even though I know I’ll get burned. His latest, A Haunted House, is a parody of the found footage horror genre. It’s full of a lot of the same schtick as the Scary Movie series, but the cast seems game, and NSFW ghost action is kind of something the world needs.
Official Synopsis:
In an outrageous send up of the Paranormal Activity movies, The Devil Inside and other “found footage” movies, A Haunted House features young couple Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) and Kisha (Essence Atkins) who have just moved in to their dream house. As they settle in, they quickly find they’re not alone. But it’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s Malcolm’s girlfriend who is possessed by a demon.
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Full Story »Harvey Weinstein’s controversial Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden landed record ratings for Nat Geo Sunday night just in time to give President Obama that time-tested Weinstein bump, but the Hollywood heavyweight has something for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, too — a Bradley Cooper-narrated trailer for a Romney “comedy” entitled Hindsight.
“Based on the spectacular success of Seal Team Six, several journalists have asked me what a film on Mitt Romney would look like,” Weinstein wrote in the Huffington Post, introducing the video. “I told them it would definitely be a comedy, so I decided to get the Seal Team Six team back together.”
I’ve got to hand it to Harvey, clever guy: The man really is a PR genius. Who else would even think of promoting such varied agendas as the TV military dramatization Seal Team Six, President Obama’s reelection, and the upcoming holiday-hit hopeful Silver Linings Playbook, which Weinstein’s team insists “plays great in Middle America,” in one tidy viral video?
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Also in Thursday evening’s round-up of news briefs, Bennett Miller’s Channing Tatum-Steve Carrell drama heads to theaters; Stellan Skarsgård joins a comedy/drama; And Wreck-It-Ralph is on track to dominating the weekend’s box office.
Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher Heads to U.S. Theaters
The film starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave and Anthony Michael Hall has been picked up by Columbia Pictures which took U.S. rights. The deal reunites Miller with Columbia, having previously collaborated with the studio on last fall’s release of the Academy Award-nominated picture, Moneyball. The film revolves around John du Pont, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and killed Olympic wrestler David Schultz.
Sheryl Crow Contributes Original Song to Brooke Shields & Darly Hannah’s The Hot Flashes
The song is titled Leaning in a New Direction and will be the closing track to the film. The comedy, written by Brad Hennig and directed by Oscar-nominated Susan Seidelman centers on five middle-aged Texas women who decide to start an unlikely basketball team and go to comic extremes to prove themselves on the court. The film will make its world premiere at the American Film Market in Santa Monica on November 3rd.
Stellan Skarsgård Joins Hector and the Search for Happiness
Skarsgård joins Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), Rosamund Pike (Jack Reacher) and Oscar-winner Christopher Plummer (Beginners) in the comedy/drama by Peter Chelsom. The film revolves around Hector (Pegg), an eccentric yet irresistible London psychiatrist in crisis: he’s going nowhere and his patients are just not getting any happier! Until one day, armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, Hector breaks out of his sheltered vacuum of a life into a global quest to find out if happiness exists. More importantly, if it exists for Hector.…
A long time ago in a culture far removed from this one — 1987 to be exact — cinematic satirist Mel Brooks took on box-office game changer George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise and didn’t end up in the Hollywood equivalent of a Sarlacc Pit. Substituting the Schwartz for the Force, Yogurt for Yoda and Pizza The Hutt for Jabba, Brooks gave us Spaceballs and made us laugh harder (intentionally) than Jar Jar Binks ever did. To celebrate the movie’s 25th anniversary, Sony has released a commemorative Blu-Ray edition that mostly does justice to this comedy gem.
The Film: Spaceballs (1987)
Why It’s An Inessential Essential: Although Life Stinks (1991) was Mel Brooks’ last sturdy feature, the often gut-bustingly funny Spaceballs was his last really inspired comedy. Like many of Brooks’ earlier films, Spaceballs spoofs generic and genre cliches. In this case, the director aimed his blaster at science fiction and fantasy films, Star Wars in particular.
Viewed 25 years after its theatrical release, Spaceballs suffers from lopsided structure and occasional laziness, but the movie repeatedly breaks down the fourth wall with such zeal and absurd charm that it’s impossible to resist. (It’s worth noting that the movie was released during the heyday of the Bruce Willis/Cybill Shepherd ABC comedy series Moonlighting, which was heralded for doing the same.)
A large part of the movie’s giddy appeal is its game cast, led by SCTV Jedi the late John Candy and Rick Moranis. Candy plays the Wookiee-like Barf and Moranis is particularly hilarious as the clutzy, over-compensating Darth Vader spoof, Dark Helmet — a puny man topped by enormous circumcised headgear.
As ringmaster of this circus, Brooks (who also appears in the movie as both President Skroob and Yogurt) is at a point in his career where he’s starting to toss things against the…
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Also in Tuesday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, a new actor joins the next Hunger Games. A surreal comedy by electronic musician Quentin Dupieux is headed to screens. Reese Witherspoon boards a new romantic comedy. And a man is arrested in Ohio for bringing in weapons into a screening of TDKR.
Tribeca 2013 Unveils Festival Dates
The 12th annual Tribeca Film Festival will take place April 17 – 28 in New York City. The festival also announced a new Transmedia program spotlighting new trends in digital media, using innovative, interactive, web-based or multi-platform approach to story creation. The festival will present a new award for this new section. Submissions are open September 17th with an Early Deadline set for October 19th for features, shorts and transmedia projects. November 30th is the Official Deadline for all features, shorts and transmedia, while December 28th is the Late Deadline available only for feature-length films. For more information, visit Tribeca’s website.
Meta Golding Joins The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Golding will play Enobaria, a former career tribute from District 2 in the series. Her character is a particularly brutal victor in The Hunger Games. Lionsgate will release Catching Fire, directed by Francis Lawrence, on November 22nd.
Drafthouse Films Nabs Wrong for N. America
The film by electronic musician Quentin Dupieux is a surreal comedy, which made its world premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, about a man’s frantic search for his kidnapped dog and the strange characters he encounters along the way. A limited theatrical and VOD release is set for 2013.
Around the ‘net…
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Great Gatsby Film Delayed To 2013
The 3-D adaptation by Baz Luhrmann will be released next summer, Warner Bros said. The film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, had…
