Adventureland

Well, color me confused. This film got 88% on the tomatometer for rotten tomatoes. I'm stumped. We went thinking it was going to be a comedy. It's called Adventureland, isn't it? It is like a teen comedy- except it isn't. The people are either slackers, losers, or post-college graduates who still live at home and seemingly never got a real summer job and had to settle for working at a theme park while getting stoned and drunk. The lead characters are boring and unlikeable. They have no chemistry, have no purpose in life and in general, are annoying as hell. We didn't see them smile or really laugh. And neither did the audience. There is a reason why a film with high ratings gets no audience- and our showing had 5 people in it. That is because word of mouth spreads and people won't go despite the so called good reviews. I wish someone had told us- we could have saved 15.50. I hope to save you the time and money also.

Charlie Bartlett

Suspension of all belief is an important mental prep job before entering the theater to see this. It's all a fantastical (yes I mean that) story about a likeable chronic sociopath of a teen who, after being tossed from yet another prep school - this time for fake ID making-enters public school when he returns home to live. He finds his way to popularity by conning his shrinks out of presciptions which he recycles as a pseudo-counselor while perched on a toilet in the boy's bathroom. He falls for the principal's daughter. He reforms the school bully. He calms an entire student body who looks to him for....oh screw it. Now- it is a good movie, an easy to watch movie, a weirdly upbeat movie with a real ending. Nevertheless, it requires a good deal of seeing past the holes. Any kid dealing psych drugs from an attache case in the bathroom of a high school would be put in juvenile detention in about 5 seconds. Okay- as just a movie- it's good. As a movie that is based in any reality at all- it would be pretty bad. So approach it that way. It'll be easier. Alex really liked it. He'd have given it 3.5. I just can't.

Juno

This is a movie about a pregnant 16 year old named Juno. She decides to have her baby when she hears (outside the abortion clinic) that the baby has fingernails. Never mind that it has a heartbeat and circulatory system, it's the fingernails that endear the new life to her. The adults in her life are about as reasonable as adults could be. She does have the baby, with seemingly minimal emotional pain, as well as having really few problems at school. This is about as far from reality as you can get. But Juno is a tough kid, and she has a smart way of looking at things. She has sex with the "father" out of a weird curiosity. That a girl this smart would get pregnant is kind of curious to me. But she seems to just float through it. It will probably win a bunch of awards, it isn't too cheesy, and Juno makes some of the adults look childish. She probably does grow up a fair amount, but it isn't easy to leave your baby in the arms of someone else. And the movie seems to lightly tred on that sort of pain. Oh well, I guess I saw this subject as much deeper than it was presented. I wouldn't bring an impressionable child because it made it all look too easy. It isn't easy. Sometimes the dialogue feels very contrived. Juno has an answer for everything. She never looks back. Jennifer Garner is very sweet in this. So, weigh the pros and cons. It is, after all, a movie. And it is very much a pro-adoption movie even though I don't know if the director meant for it to be.

Lars and the Real Girl

David Arquette's ringer, Ryan Gosling, plays Lars- a guy whose mother died during his delivery, whose father was distant and whose older, now guilt ridden brother, left home and left Lars to the cold old man. Now that dad has died, Lars lives in the garage next to his brother and his brother's charming wife, played by Emily Mortimer. Lars is shy around women but not so shy that he can't order a mail order doll- not a nasty blow up doll, but an expensive, choose your own options, real doll- with correct anatomy. It's creepy but everyone in his life and town realizes that if Lars won't give it up, they may as well accept it. It's an odd premise, and an oddly sweet movie about people who love and accept somthing as real because someone they love accepts something as real. As Lars begins to feel again, a little jealousy over an office mate creeps into his delusion, and he begins to become human again. It starts with arguing with his doll and ends with his freedom. It's a little weird, a little sweet and, well, different.

The Darjeeling Limited

Before I start, let me state the obvious here: Natalie Portman needs to eat something and Jason Schwartzman can't act. In the short that preceeds the film, Portman poses completely naked and she is positively skeletal- not thin, but skeletal. Each rib is well defined. It is a horrifying look for a beautiful young woman. Schwartzman, like his cousin Sofia Coppola, is so flat in another way and untalented in everything he does that he is the poster child for Hollywood entitlement. Maybe he could be seen as having anorexia of acting? He was awful in his first film and will be awful til the last. Guess all the acting talent in that family went to Nick Cage. Now down to the story- I think this movie is the best one that Wes Anderson has done. If you don't like Anderson's films, you won't like this one. But it has the predictable quirky characters doing quirky things and yet, it doesn't have the strange feeling of "the characters are odd because they have to be" of the Royal Tannenbaums or the lameness of The Life Aquatic. A lot of faces will look familiar, and that is part of the fun. Finding Anderson's friends from previous films in the background is like a cinematic where's waldo. India is such a different country from ours- some of the most meaningful religious rituals, yet some of the most polluted areas in the world. As if the soul is more important than the quality of life. It is so homogeneous in population that gringos stand out like poppies in a rice field. Because of their homogeneity, the culture is rich, but also ripe for the lampooning. Was Anderson making fun of the depth of their rituals or the stupidity of the people who use those rituals in a superficial way and then think they are more spiritual? I don't know. But I do love the color of marigolds, and the movie is full of it. It is more quirky than funny, and more superficial than deep, and more light than dark. We saw it in a packed theater where some people (older) were compelled to talk back to the screen and laughed out loud. Another mystery to ponder.