Monthly Archives: June 2019

RIORI Redux: Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch” Revisited

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The Players…

Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung, with Oscar Issac, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm and Scott Glenn.

The Story…

Wrongly institutionalized after an accidental killing, a young girl known only as “Baby Doll” is slated for lobotomy. She’s nuts. She creates her own reality. She had nothing doing will denying her lecherous, drunken foster uncle getting cut out of the will. Nothing.

Baby Doll isn’t taking this lying down (so to speak), and naturally and aims to escape her prison as well as take a bunch of her fellow young female inmates along for the ride. But a ride it is, especially when Baby and her buddies have to dance their way out and in of her mental phantasms.

Wait, what?

Intro…

So here we are.

This was supposed to be the 100th Installment here at Good Ol’ RIORI. Truth be told, what with me manipulating the structure of the so-called “volumes” here, we passed that landmark, like, fifty Installments ago. Weren’t you keeping track? I barely was. The snowdrift of mediocre movies I scrambled through has left my head a tad hazy. Too much underrated exposure to Aaron Eckhart and/or Scarlett Johansson I guess.

Instead, I’m opting to review and overhaul the first 17 Installments—the so-called Volume 1 of RIORI—for your viewing pleasure and mine own edification. The first volume consisted of posts on FaceBook. Basically extended screeds until I got wise and created a WordPress account to little fanfare. At first. I just cut-and-pasted my crap onto WP pages and figured that’s that, and went on to clamber up higher cliffs.

However, it always chafed me that the first “volume” here was a such a raw and naive attempt. The posts were too short, sophomoric and responding to the NOW culture that social media cultivates. In short, I was dumb and in a hurry. Why? Like all avid, would-be blogging Hemingways I had a message to spout and an ego to feed. And let’s face facts, FaceBook posts and blog posts are the same thing: ego massage. We all think our innermost opinions are an essential, Wikipedia-esque vitality the ‘Net needs. Hence the proliferation of funny cat videos on YouTube. I enjoy them too. Give in to the guilt.

At time of this pressing, a few months back on the Cooking Channel, food geek and scientist Alton Brown wisely decided to escort himself away from the role of game show host to get back into the kitchen. Being a cook, his Good Eats series was de riguer viewing through the aughts. The show was a treat, even if you weren’t some aspiring foodie (read: culinary snob in training). Brown’s witty discection about cooking worked on a Mr Wizard cum Kids In The Hall level that was entertaining as well as educational. Good TV overall, as well as scarce. Bam!

The aforementioned few months back involved Brown in “reloading” episodes of his original show. Correcting mistakes, tweaking formulas, adding new recipes and cleaning out his decade old erlenmyers stained with glace. That’s what I’m gonna do here: flesh out the bare bones that made this blog such a limping success. I think it’ll serve both as a revue of those heady days back in 2013 and an intro to all my new FaceBook followers to the glorious pile of cowpies I’ve had to scoop up over the last 6 years. Remember social media: fluff the ego.

So now, a hundred-plus Installments under my belt, and have since learned that deeper delving into a mediocre movie oft requires more than two paragraphs and a slump home, I’m gonna upgrade those lowly first 17 Installments. Polish them, groom them, apply mascara and hopefully expound upon my grand experiment. This time employing spellcheck and be naked of hubris.

Well, just mostly naked.

Here we go and here we try…

The Rant (2013)…

Horror master Stephen King once wrote in his Bare Bones memoir that one of his biggest and earliest fears was losing your mind. Going insane. Having the cheese fall off one’s cracker. He did admit that the fear was viewed through naive eyes. One does not lose their minds in one fail swoop, like on an episode of the Twilight Zone or something. King addressed the process of going mad brilliantly in his classic, The Shining. As it became with Jack Torrence, psychosis happens across a continuum, develops like a malign dream, is a sickness. Insanity is not like breaking a limb, sudden and immediate. It’s deliberate and slow. To quote Riff-Raff, “Madness takes it toll.”

Apparently no one told writer/director Zack Snyder this.

It seems after Snyder’s sudden and runaway success with his 300 he earned carte blanche to indulge his cinematic id. Shoot a movie that popped from his fevered imagination fully-formed like Zeus’ siblings from Cronos’ cloven skull. One with even more spectacle than the crimson Battle of Thermopylae could deliver. A phantasmagoria of dragons, ninjas, robots, fighter planes and of course, girls with guns. The hallucinations of a diseased mind hyped up on truck stop speed and espresso.

Behold the opus that is Sucker Punch.

The title alone says something. An unfair blow to the gut. That’s more or less what this film delivers. It meets the standard of poor reputation, sad box office draw, critical lambasting and naturally going way, way over budget. So begins the inaugural installment of RIORI. Hooray!…

…*tumbleweeds roll across webpage*

Plot make any sense yet? There’s a plot? Is one even necessary? If the above sequence of events seem disparate from a single film, you’d be wrong. It’s more or less how Sucker Punch plays out. All at once. That rigmarole is a single film, one and the same.

WTF? Uh-huh. Yeah.

Sucker Punch has got to be one of the most demented sci-fi/fantasy/action hybrids I have ever seen (as if I’ve seen many sci-fi/fantasy/action hybrids at all).

The story is inscrutable, the acting both entrancing and repellant, the sets off-the-wall amazing and depressing and the F/X so beyond over the top you cease to have a suspension of disbelief. You have to go with it because otherwise, if you think about what’s going on too much, your brain would pop and spurt out of your ears like so much hot cerebral tapioca.

In short, Sucker Punch is awesome.

Sometimes you just wanna be entertained. Sometimes you need a big old guilty pleasure to make the day ease by a little smoother. Sometimes you feel like having your senses and sanity assailed, whipped with a cat o’ nine tails made of cobras wielded by a nude, immolated dominatrix that can juggle chainsaws, do origami with her toes and has a PhD in metaphysics whose name is Sheila. This is the movie for you.

Say what you want about Snyder’s infamous cinematic flair for visually going over the edge, he’s damned good at what he does. Punch has got something for everyone, except much consistency, substance or sense. The movie’s nothing short of utter nonsense, relying almost totally on the applesauce that usually complements a film’s key components like plot, acting, three-act structure, catering, etc. Epic special effects and big stupid surround sound eruptions. Martial arts and trench warfare. Robots and rockets. And of course, girls with guns in skimpy/tight outfits. Not to mention also that this film was dropped at the beginning of spring, before God, when most filmmakers are just putting out dandruff made last year. What balls it takes to make a film that is completely devoid of all the niceties and pretensions of polite, professional cinema. It’s oddly refreshing and to a lesser degree…quite mature.

I know. Calling out Sucker Punch’s execution as mature seems like a lot of hogwash considering Snyder’s debut was the 2004 remake of Dawn Of The Dead. Almost all of the Living Dead movies (save the original) are nothing more that puerile exercises in adolescent salivations for gore and mayhem. But to just toss everything out the window, simultaneously hurling sh*t at a wall just to see what’ll stick is a stance of defiance that only the most courageous, confident and maverick filmmakers command.

There is a ridiculous amount of heavy-handed symbolism, granted, as if even the most water-headed filmgoer can hitch a ride and take it all the way to the end of the line. Such handholding can come across as insulting at best and sturdily mawkish at worst. Such sophomoric storytelling is usually accompanied with a three season deal for a reality show on some Fox network, usually resulting in a book deal with Snooki (oops). Such rampant juvenilia usually hawks a big gob at any sane movie watcher. And yet, it does take guts (maybe not much brains) and a self-assuredness that only comes with a measure of wisdom. It also takes being stubbornly attached to your vision, no matter how myopic it may seem. In sum, Snyder is f*cking crazy. Bold, but f*cking crazy all the same.

Enough pontificating. What made the movie so “awesome?” Well, beyond the visual and sonic treats there’s…uh…nothing else really. The plot is wafer thin, moving along like sludge, only in place to be used as a medium to bounce from a scene of action, titillation, more action or another sequence that hopefully results in a lot of sh*t going kerblooey.

And the acting? Who cares? Only Jena Malone and Scott Glenn have any real acting chops. You might remember Malone portraying Jake Gyllenhaal’s girlfriend in Donnie Darko. She’ll be in the forthcoming Hunger Games sequel too, and possesses both earnestness and sass that works pretty well with her character Rocket here in Punch. Glenn’s been all over the place, known for playing grizzled characters, like Jack Crawford in The Silence Of The Lamba and Capt. Mancuso in The Hunt For Red October (guy seems to like working with Hollywood adaptations of novels). I enjoyed Glenn’s goofy cameos in the film quite a bit; an anchoring factor in a film that is always threatening to come off the tracks. Other than those two, the rest of the cast is only there to look pretty (they succeed. Duh).

The cinematography was mounted on a careening roller coaster. Very well, I might add. Nothing stays still for very long here in the world(s) of Punch. It’s a very, almost exhaustively kinetic film. Two hours freaking jet by watching this travesty. The frenzied action scenes are only interrupted by the “B” plot of the girls trying to flee the bordello/asylum/Babydoll’s ailing mind/who the f*ck knows awash in greys and silvers and a lot of dour expressions, an ethereal “reality” invading our crack-addled amusement park. This tries to be congruent and symbolic of the “A” plot, or is it the “C” plot? Christ, I couldn’t keep track. If this is Snyder’s attempt at auteur filmmaking…

Forget it. I should just stop trying. There are no redeemable “serious” filmmaking machinations at work in Sucker Punch. The only constant in the film is that there is a whole winking and nodding aspect of the feature that repeatedly shouts at you, the audience, are in on the whole messy jest. The unfortunate part is that the joke is without a punchline. Snyder gave us nothing to hang onto. Again, was that the point? The whole movie was pointless.

And rising above all this degradation was a solid two hours of entertainment.

At any rate, all this overly elaborate editorializing may fly in the face of what I’ve been rambling on about for the past few minutes. Maybe Punch wasn’t intended to be the masturbatory effort Snyder barfed out, rife with neon symbolism, feminine fantasies, an examination of mental illness and hallucinations of sphinx-like splendor. Maybe all Snyder wanted to do was deliver shock and awe. Visual and sonic bombast. A manga come to life. Scott Glenn in period garb. An excessive blow to the senses. Maybe stuff like that.

Sometimes that’s all you really need to be entertained, I suppose.

Rant Redux (2019)…

When I re-read this pastiche, I was actually kinda surprised my “economy” of words summed up pretty well the essence of Snyder’s fever dream. I guess now that sometimes less is more, especially the face of the f*cking huge undertaking Sucker Punch must’ve been. After watching it again, the word big is an apt term for this mind-bending, very entertaining fiasco. Punch was the classic example of form following function, But the actual function was mired in such popcorn existentialism that I must’ve left the masses blind. Here we are, a bit budget popcorn flick that requires further examination. Wrong flavor for this kind of phantasmagoria.

Classic qualifications for a “cult film.” We’ll see if that prediction bears fruit in 2021. Maybe 2029 to be safe.

But yeah, I found that if you read between the stilted lines there was some very real feminist navel-gazing going on there. Not a bad thing. I found upon repeated views that it made the mess more palatable. It is odd to actually dissect a crazy, fantasy actioner like Punch as if deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls. Okay, maybe not that intense, but to simultaneously ask an audience to go along with this disjointed tale (which may be a manifestation of a diseased mind in abject fear for their sanity. Or not) as well as look for the loose nuts and bolts might be too much of a task for yer average Twizzler gobbler, like me.

The key term for Punch is existential. I swallowed wheelbarrow loads of Sartre and Kierkegaard back in college to recognize the bad faith that resonates in all of us, even in the movies. For the uninformed, the term “bad faith” was coined by none other that Jean-Paul himself; only this very moment matters. What’s past is past and gone. What may be, may be, but unattainable. Only NOW matters, and there is a very thick vein of NOW bleeding throughout Punch. Babydoll’s fate is moments away, but does what went down—no matter how tragic—means nothing now, and what might happen is an unattainable fever dream. If you doubt me, examine the editing (if you can with that salt and fake butter on your lashes).

I feel it is now time to admit that I’ve presently mastered the art of spewing bile and bullsh*t in equal doses. See what a difference six years make? You’re welcome.

At its heart, I think Punch is indeed akin to an existentialist play, one that navel gazes about being and nothingness, what it means to be human and its frailty and the price of true freedom. I know, heady sh*t from a Snyder film, but if you take the longview virtually all of Snyder’s movies question the human condition and what exactly is that anyway? 300, Watchmen, Man Of Steel, even his version of Dawn Of The Dead is about survival as well as maintaining one’s individualism against oppression (okay, Dracula 2000 barely scratched at that, but it did lead to sharper, not necessarily better things). There’s that metaphor careening through Snyder’s output, for good or for ill. It’s only his Punch that such a vision truly gels. And oy, it can be a headache to follow.

Punch is unique in its execution, ignoring the crazy, over-the-top, sumptuously rendered CGI action sequences. No. After watching and considering (and reconsidering) the movie’s flow, Punch tells a non-linear story. But instead of flashing forward and backward again through time (a la Quantum Leap), we go sideways. Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time (sub Babydoll for Billy). The story does trudge along a straight line, but with truly demented road stops along the way. This direction is not as difficult to follow as, say, The Fountain was executed. But once Punch diverges, you have to follow the context. Quickly. Even moreso than Aronofsky’s celestial mindf*ck.

The ozone trips that take place in Babydoll’s psyche/dance routines are all bristling with dire individualism. Seeking freedom, seeking self. Yeah, yeah. Lemme crawls out of my colon and face the sunshine. To be blunt, Snyder was exploring the “feminine mystique” from a guy’s POV. With lotsa booms and lotsa bullets. Lemme explain this in plain terms:

Back in the 1960s, writer and nascent feminist Betty Friedan penned the social examination The Feminine Mystique, questioning why the postwar homemaking women were so dissatisfied with their comfortable, modern convenience lives. Friedan called it “the problem that has no name.” Gender roles on the other shoes, usually wingtips: “What do women want?!?” Even modern women could answer that, but they knew that something was missing in their Better Homes And Gardens idyll lives.

Fast forward 50 years, director Snyder thought he had an answer—maybe a theory not unlike Friedan’s, but with more CGI aggression—and wanted to send a message/spin to arrested development, popcorn-munching Middle American movie goers that not only do women want to display themselves as strong, capable, assertive people but also heroes trying to escape social oppression based on centuries of patriarchal mores and control.

I’m back in my rear again, right? Too bad. You read it, you can’t unread it.

Punch is an over-the-top James Cameron movie, steeped in Snyder’s lack of subtlety. I cite Cameron, that old taskmaster, as a signature of his movies he always has a strong female protagonist. Always. Either some innocent who rises to the occasion or a tough-as-nails female who is still female. Think of his take on Ripley in Aliens, and her foil Vasquez. Or Sarah Connor in The Terminator and its sequel; she’s gets to be yin and yang. Of cast-iron bitch Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in The Abyss. Or even funny lady Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies. Snyder had a statement to make in Punch, but was bleary-eyed in his execution. Cameron is like a knife. Snyder is like a stapler: I’ll pin a few things up here and there, you tell me what pages made sense. Snyder leaves it up to you…and maybe himself.

This is all a good thing. Really. I’m not bashing Snyder here (not this time) for his subtle-as-neon execution, script or production. Not at all. Punch was very entertaining, and that’s the ultimate goal of all movies. Shoving a erstwhile, CGI manifesto of a cinematic feminine mystique…well, I figure it would confuse most casual audiences. Not to sound any more high-minded than that I have already, but I studied wads of existentialist philosophy in college so I suppose I was inadvertently pre-programmed to enjoy Punch at the outset, even if I didn’t know that at the time. I mean, duh, females can be action heroes while still maintaining  mystique. I’m a guy. I can’t really get that, but I can respect that. Especiallly with awesome action scenes and rather pithy moments of sexy self-examination. Punch overall is a deconstructionist “girls with guns” melodrama. Snug clothes around a healthy female form is also a spoonful of sugar.

Sorry, I’m a guy. Deal with it, ladies of various strengths.

The Revision…

Rent it or relent it? Sustained: Rent it. I even own a copy of Punch in my hard library, and has fast became a go-to flick when I need an action fix, like with the original Blade or The Matrix. It’s a guilty pleasure and I’m wearing a sh*t-eating grin proudly.

Next Installment…

We continue reconsidering director Zack Snyder’s muse with his take on Watchmen. Think what you may, but do acknowledge he got that project out of Production Hell and into cinematic flesh, warts and all.

For what that’s worth.

 

RIORI Vol 3, Installment 99: Adam Shankman’s “Bedtime Stories” (2008)

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The Players…

Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Courtney Cox, Richard Griffiths, Guy Pearce and Russell Brand, with Jonathan Morgan Helt, Laura Ann Kesling, Teresa Palmer, Lucy Lawless and Jonathan Pryce.

The Story…

Simple hotel handyman Skeeter’s life is turned upside down when kindly escapism intrudes on his boring life.

When his big sis Wendy has to go out of town, she taps Skeeter to babysit her kids for the week. He fast understands he has the “privilege” to get the kids to settle into bed by way of some wild-eyed bedtime stories (with the kids helping, natch). They love it, and Skeet finds this a lot more satisfying than banging water heaters into compliance.

But one night after one too many fantastic stories they began to manifest into reality. All the phantasmagoria that put his niece and nephew to bed are made whole, and now seemingly leading him on some sort of wacky vision quest.

Huh. Well, losing your mind is better than scrubbing another toilet.

The Rant…

Bedtime Stories was another movie I caught in home release/pre-RIORI days: one DVD of many DVDs scattered across the family room carpet of my then girlfriend’s apartment. Mom never picked anything up. It was kind of like, “don’t pick anything up. You’ll f*ck up the system.” Sure, half the discs were scratched to hell, their cases long since lost, but what remained was ready entertainment/distraction to a harried mom in need of a quick fix to the main vein thanks to the electronic babysitter. But one time, I was the babysitter. Flesh and blood and dreadfully analogue.

I wasn’t ready to be a stepdad. Hell, back then I wasn’t ready to be a dad, period. I was still immersed in the epic drama that was being in tech support for a mobile phone company, freelance writer for the local community press and eternally leveling up my HUnewearl OC on Phantasy Star Online 2.0 for Dreamcast from 1 AM to snore. Usually accompanied by a bottle of Jameson’s. What a dreadful apparition was I.

In hindsight, being a “babysitter” to my girl’s eldest daughter—my erstwhile stepdaughter—taught me how to be a dad. I realized outright that she was not my kid, so I had no legs to stand on assuming a fatherly posture. She tested me, always testing me. Being rude, being snarky, screaming and metaphorically kicking me in the shins everyday. My flesh-and-blood one-year old, she with finding ways to steal cereal under mom’s and my noses and swollen diapers one would have to don a hazmat suit armed with a geiger counter to inspect, she wasn’t as nearly as challenging as it was to get into my step’s good graces.

Serendipity dawned with all those DVDs splayed all over the carpet, my step accustomed to feeling bored and slapping in a disc without a blink. Mom told me that her youngest was bored: go watch a movie with her. I had just gotten off work, still in my togs, reeking of sweat and yeast (I was a baker at the time) and making sure the beater couch that served as my beater bed held fast to the floor by my sodden gravity. I had no attention span.

“Hey!”

“…Yes?”

“Wanna watch a movie?”

No. “Okay.”

She beamed and rifled through the library, found her quarry and held the case against my face. I can still smell the spine.

“This one’s my fave right now. Can we watch it?”

My bleary eyes widened. Bedtime Stories. Adam Sandler. Throw me back into the mill.

Please, no. “Sure thing.” What a guy does to score some goodie points with the girlfriend, moreover her kid. I’d rather vacuum at that point, but all those DVD cases everywhere. Resistance was futile.

She turned on the tube, fed the machine and swung the remote the way a samurai dispatches a disloyal retainer. The kid also found a way to make the lights dim low. There was not a dimmer switch to be found. Kids are crafty that way. And then: movie sign!

After the 90-plus minute slump through Bedtime Stories (and I was sorely in need of one myself) my bleary eyes were cheered. Not so much by the movie (which I could barely watch) but by the sweet, dopey grin the stepkid shined at me. She was so used to the electric babysitter solo, her baby sister demanding all of the time to wretched diapers and endless bottles and screaming her first word which roughly translated into A*SHOLE that anyone, anyone who had a more than one word vocabulary would sit and cradle her. On the other hand, this crafty moppet found her mark in me. Could’ve been worse.

So could’ve been the movie. But first, more about the stepkid. Chill. It’s relevant.

She was my first experience in parenting, and for seven years I raised her as my own until she decided to live with her real dad. I never tried to be her dad. That was impossible, and she knew it. Instead, I was big brother. I’d give advice and listen and just hang with her and make sure she got to school on time, do her homework, eat her veggies, detail my 20 year old Volvo. The basics. I remained on the level with her for seven years, and it was a silent agreement.

And it worked well. In truth is was actually easier to deal with my then one-year old than the seven-year old. As I said, always testing me. All of mom’s old boyfriends dropped out of sight; when was I gonna drop out too? I wasn’t. I didn’t. Between the first year of arguing, defiance and yelling (and that was mostly her not me) I half my own, proved myself, taught her some match and drove her to school and did a bunch of other dad stuff. I eventually won her trust and even now as she fast approaches 20 and into the working world, we still message each other via Facebook or share the occasional phone call (she mostly wants career advice. I tell her don’t open a restaurant. You out there should not either, all you delusional Michael Symons you).

Now rewind back to the mid-aughts. Not only did I explode into an immediate family with a daughter barely two, but a precocious seven-year old who knew how to work mom over like a Mafia capo with a jack handle and need to collect, but busted knees would work in a pinch. Okay, maybe not that bad, but she did have mom wound around her finger.

Ahem. Homey don’t play that. You can’t bullsh*t and bullsh*ter kid. C’mere, we gotta talk.

And talk we did. This is how understandings are formed and trust is built. What I learned with the stepkid as “parent” I adopted later for my kid kid. So far, no body piercings. Guess my plan of action worked.

Back to the whole movie matter. Bedtime Stories. I never read the stepkid bedtime stories. Not directly. As you now have probably figured out I am the Ken Jennings of cinematic non sequiturs and arcane knowledge about movies the like no Magic: The Gathering player would (or should) have about their fetish. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of truly useless film facts stored to the rafters in my beer-addled cranium. And like those comic book geex who get into a frothing frenzy about who’s stronger: Superman or Thor, I can’t wait for an opportunity to spew forth my bilious film facts to an unwitting audience. Back then I had an unwitting audience of one with enough DVDs to have Reed Hastings on call when they needed to refresh the library with every Disney release since “Steamboat Willie.”

Yeah, so a lot of movies, and the stepkid watched a movie an afternoon between getting home from school and homework time. I usually got off work about the same time, dragged my flour-drenched carcass home and fell upon the couch as if brained. In sum, all I wanted to do was examine the backs of my eyelids. But noooo…

“Nate! What movie you wanna watch?”

Groan. “Your call,” I said to the cushion.

Bedtime Stories, natch.

We watched. She liked. I was bleary. But I did “see” it. Then she asked me the apocryphal question, with arched brow, “Whadja think?”

I lied. I barely registered it. But it was kind of like a cut you didn’t knew you had until you see the blood. Yeah, that happened.

“I liked it,” I fibbed. “Hey, wasn’t Skeeter’s dad British?”

The brow again. “Huh?

And doped on inadequate sleep I told her about Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. And something about Infiniti commercials about the clock. And she asked me about the clock. And I said the clock is what the time says. And the next thing I recall I was barely awake at the wheel taking the stepkid to school.

She once asked me, “Can we watch Brazil?”

“No. Go to school.” Door slam.

Fast forward. The step kid’s “bedtime stories” was me dissecting the movies we watched. After the umpteenth Disney Bataan Death March I took the thing apart for the stepkid. The bitter and the sweet. The weird thing was she liked it. She liked hearing the dope on how her DVD library (and a lot of ancient VHS also. I had a lot of bedtime stories’ plots to cull from) came to be. So much that eventually she asked me mid-movie, paraphrasing, “What’s up with that?” And I would make an effort to give her the skinny.

Granted, these moments were not traditional bedtime stories. Homework was looming, and the sun was still up. But me getting down with my erstwhile daughter about mutual appreciation for movies, good or not, upholding the agreement of “I ain’t dad and you ain’t mine but we be cool” through a shared moment? Sounds like a bedtime story to me.

Two final things before the evisceration: One, I have to repair my daughter’s 3DS within the month, and; two, as a parent or surrogate, take what you can get from the kid on any kind of intimate level. You might learn something. I learned how to parent by proxy over movies. Sort of.

Considering the first time I “watched” Bedtime Stories, and now relating to Skeeter by proxy, I guess it’s still sort of. And me still with crossed fingers whenever my kid wants to go to the multiplex. Frozen 2 drops this Thanksgiving. Shiver…

Skeeter Bronson (Sandler) knows the hospitality biz is demanding. Not just demanding of a luxury hotel are the skills of the management, concierge, maids, chef and crew and even the detective. No, and not just. Skeeter knows the real deal behind keeping a sumptuous hotel running smoothly is the deft hands of the handyman. Skeeter is the Sunny Vista Nottingham’s maintenance man. He’s Sir Fix-A-Lot.

Skeeter was earmarked by his late hotelier dad (Pryce) to manage the Nottingham, but…well, things didn’t pan out. The little motor lodge that family built was bought out by Sunny Vista, its property transformed into a luxury liner of a posh hotel. It’s there that Skeeter whiles away his days unclogging drains and changing light bulbs. Leaves precious free time for a real life. It’s a good thing Skeeter’s big sis Wendy (Cox) offers her put-upon bro a break: whenever he stops by for a visit, Skeeter gets to tuck her kids into bed and let his imagination run riot, spinning the craziest bedtime stories this side of the Brothers Grimm by way of Monty Python.

Fate is a fickle mistress for Skeeter. He was robbed of his rightful place as manager of the Bella Vista when Nottingham took over years back. Almost by accident, he gets a challenge from present manager Barry (Griffiths): how to make the hotel more attractive to families? The more Barry goes on—and how snooty concierge Kendall (Pearce) harrumphs—the more the scenario echoes a bedtime story he told Pat and Bobbi (Helt and Kesling, respectively) just last night. Coincidence?

Nope. Across the ensuing week to the final challenge (and across multiple bedtime stories) Skeeter tries to attain the future he was supposed to have as Dad wanted.

Oh, the power of a child’s imagination. As well as Pat and Bobbi’s too…

Okay, here’s the poop. And you prob smelled it a mile away already. Bedtime Stories is an Adam Sandler vehicle. Nuff said.

Let’s be kind for once. It is the ultimate tonic against all the Sandler bashers out there. He is an easy mark, after all. Actually, he’s a punching bag. Sandler has sat upon arrested-development-as-entertainment laurels well back into his SNL salad days. Being juvenile has been—and still is—his stock-in-trade. I’m not made of stone (sandwiches maybe, but never stone), and shudder to think I have hung up movie snobbery years ago. But suffice to say Sandler’s schtick has served him well with a few movies. I have thoroughly enjoyed—and still do—Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy and The Wedding Singer (Sandler’s Citizen Kane, BTW). Those movies stuck because there was a vein of humanity running through those stories. Sure, he was dopey throughout those flicks (esp Waterboy), but there was also sweetness and a little range set aside for Sandler’s characters. Some growth, if you would. A small amount of depth.

It’s amazing what a little bit of depth can do for a living cartoon like Sandler. Such scraps served him well as a comedic actor rather than a one-joke one-off like his inaugural Billy Madison (a movie I’ve punished myself with one too many times trying to get the joke. I never could. Stop looking at me swan). And in the final analysis, almost all of Sandler’s comedy movies—and the characters he plays—are all pretty one-note. It’s always been the sweet and insufferable goof in equal doses. Right, sometimes it works (if you’re still in a frat, even at age 30) but most of the time we get it already. With Stories, as well as the three films of his I actually liked, a little bit of depth can go a long…wait, that’s too much. It can go a medium way.

One would be hard pressed to deny that Sandler’s Skeeter cowed to the House Of Mouse’s standards and practices. Sandler plays nice here with the machine. Stories‘ tone is family friendly, at times fluffy and well-paced. It also looked like Sandler toned down his usual sophomore schtick just enough to settle in with a PG movie with kiddies and wish fulfillment in mind. Sandler is not (for once) a crass, callow man-child. He’s just, well, Uncle Skeeter. Humorous and harmless and light on the goofiness (save the fantasy sequences. Stuff like that has to be a bit goofy. It’s a Disney precept, after all ). He’s earnest here. That must be a first. Sandler carries an entire movie—no less a Disney movie—with nary a dick joke to be uttered. And it actually worked.

No. Really. It was very refreshing to have Sandler’s trademark juvenile snark toned down and actually digestible (we’ve let Brand handle the nonsense this time around). To what end? Read folks, the watchword: sweet, and hopefully not saccharine. Actually, a better word to describe Stories is pleasant, mostly due to Sandler’s wide-eyed Skeeter. I know, I am just as shocked as you are. We got us a low key adolescent Sandler. I can’t stress this fact enough. Sure, the flick is nutty and silly but not in a scatological way. The cryovacked corpse of Uncle Walt would never approve.

(Look: I know I’m being rather sober here. This is a Sandler vehicle I have positive things to say about. I’m concentrating. Please, be seated.)

What I feel I took to so well here was how the plot rolled along with a winking, almost meta kind of pace. A certain kind of clever at play. Stories is unabashed in its Disney-flavored delivery. We are all in on the joke that this fantasy film is just that, cast and audience together. Just go with it. Not every movie is meant to win awards. Hell, most movies that do win awards shouldn’t’ve. The last time, to immediate memory that Academy got it right was awarding Billy Wilder’s The Apartment with Best Picture 1960. And I wasn’t even extant then. Oh, and did you hear the rumor that the AMPAS is toying with the idea of the Oscar category for “Most Popular Film of the Year?” For f*ck’s sake, just look at the ticket sales! First the Oscars lose their host and then lose their marbles. Anything to get the Millennials tuning in. It’s granted those doddering, old blind duffers on the committee never heard of YouTube. Or Hulu. Or Netflix, before God…

But I digress.

What’s good to go along with here is the family-style cast. Sure, the warm fuzzies of family permeate Stories like cheesecake permeates Oprah. It’s a given. But it’s never overarching as in similar fare like the dire Eddie Murphy vehicle Imagine That or the witlessness of Spielberg’s dreadful Hook. Overt fantasy takes the backseat in Stories letting the cast stretch out a little, work the beta plot some, do some pretty decent acting and keep the ham to a sandwich with Swiss (minimal) cheese.

Hey. Speaking of the cast, not only was I surprised at finding Sandler endearing (shoot me now), but his support had some glowing moments, too. Here: Mister Memento Pearce seems waaay out of his element here, which is smart. Smartly smarmy. I don’t care for Pearce’s wooden acting talents, but I did like not enjoying him here. Sure, he played the “bad guy” to the hilt, but with a one-man Three Stooges air about him. Big fish, no pond. You wanted to slap the sh*t-eating grin off that stump of a jaw. It’s always fun to have a villain we love to hate. Dustin Hoffman has made a mint on that precept in almost all his movies, and he got “awards” for his trifles. Pearce just sneers and our fists clench. Good work, in any event.

Okay. Now here’s a thing I detest in family friendly movies: endearingly cute kids with doe eyes, speech impediments and treacly smiles. I appreciated—despite how moppet they are—Skeeter’s niece and nephew being as plain as they were. It’s the go with it philosophy Stories entertains. The kids are just…there. It’s refreshing. Sure, they are twin oracles to the Maguffin of Skeeter earning his worth, and they mat be cute, but you don’t feel the need to slap them for their very presence. Save that truck for Kendall. Heh.

Oh BTW, the former Mr Katy Perry co-stars here as…some guy. Kudos. Moving on.

I could say more, but I’m tired. Bearing this fluff anymore scrutiny would waste time. This ain’t a Fellini film. Overall Stories was a decent waste of time. Like the first time I had to watch it, flour glued to my sweaty Crocs. Not a bad film. Not great either. There was a certain butter zone consisting of comedy, fantasy and family that somehow, miraculously (and with a PG Sandler in the wheelhouse) worked. Disposable. A pretty okay flick to check out (with some kids, duh) on a rainy Saturday afternoon. If only to kill 100 minutes or until bedtime, whichever come first.

Postscriptum: I dedicate this installment to my erstwhile stepdaughter Lex who made me watch this movie at age 7 and still mentions it to me via Facebook Messenger at age 19. Guess I did something right.

The Verdict…

Rent it or relent it? Rent it. Sure, fantasy fulfillment movies under the aegis of Disney aren’t for everyone (esp if you are the “butt-chug champ of the world” at your local chapter), but this was a harmless, entertaining pastiche so I’ll forgive it.

Oh, I’m sorry! Damn bus driver drives like an animal!

Stray Observations…

  • “Goofy’s the new handsome.” And so it begins.
  • No TV, but a giant iMac.
  • Despite being a sight gag for the Santa Claus eligible, what was the point of Bugsy? I mean, I still believe in Santa. No, really.
  • “What? The clown died?”
  • Falco! Cool!
  • I think this installment has the most italics ever.
  • “As in gumball weird?”
  • Midgets in a Gremlin. Sigh.
  • Light bulb. Clever. Really.
  • “Where’s the arc?” Oh, Russell you.
  • Is Wendy eating nuts there? Oh yeah, “vacation.”
  • Keri Russell is eternally cute. She’s every girl who told you, “Call me” and you foolishly tried to.
  • “I’m innocent!” Oh, Russell you.
  • Sandler flipped the bird there for a nanosecond. You saw that?
  • Pryce has a very convincing American accent. I’ve found a lot of actors from lands afar have a tricky time expressing the melange that is the American accent. Here’s an example. It’s regarding two leads in the sci-fi series Fringe. Both of them are Aussie speaking American. One could and one could not. Stream an ep and you’ll see what I mean.
  • “I can’t read.” Oh, Russell you.
  • Whatever happened to rollerblades anyway?
  • “This is spooky.”

Next Installment…

In honor of what would’ve been the 100th Installment of RIORI (we actually reached that landmark eons back, considering all three volumes), we’re going to stroll into nostalgia/road repair territory by revisiting the early, raw and often sh*tty first volume of RIORI. So it’s gonna be Zack Snyder’s opus Sucker Punch revisited. As well as the other 16 train wrecks. You’re welcome.

Within a week’s time, we’ll commence with my trepanning.

Look it up.