JENNA-RATIONAL TALENT

Check out my review of Klara and the Sun, with radiant Jenna Ortega...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

PLATTITUDE

In theaters today:

Dear Evan Hansen--Evan himself wrote the letter from which comes the title. Intended as a morale-boosting exercise for the alienated, socially anxious high school kid (Ben Platt), the missive is found on the person of Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), a seriously disturbed classmate who has taken his own life. Connor's devastated parents (Amy Adams and Danny Pino) jump to the conclusion that he wrote it to Evan, and that the two were close friends.

Evan plays along with the mistake, initially because he feels sorry for Connor's Mom, and also because it gives him proximity to Connor's sister Zoey (Kaitlyn Dever), on whom he has long had a crush. He continues the charade because the affluent, welcoming Murphys offer him a family dynamic he doesn't get from his always-working single Mom (Julianne Moore). Gradually his supposed friendship with Connor brings him social media celebrity, and things get out of hand.

Directed by Stephen Chbosky, this is an adaptation of the stage musical, which opened on Broadway in 2016. The show was an uneven piece of work, an uneasy combination of farcical plot contrivances and complications mixed with bitterly sad subject matter. The score, by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, was also uneven musically; three or four strong songs plus a lot of forgettable warbling.

Most likely what made Dear Evan Hansen a hit in the theatre, above all, was the (Tony Award winning) performance of Ben Platt in the title role. Platt's voice is a marvel, an impossibly angelic falsetto that transcends the technical; there's an idiosyncratic, self-deprecating diffidence to his phrasing that gives it personality and wit. As powerful as songs like "Waving Through a Window" and "For Forever" are, it's Platt's singing--and acting--that elevates them to the level of breathtaking.

Chbosky uses the banal suburban high school settings ingeniously, and screenwriter Steven Levenson, who wrote the book of the musical, does a creditable job of weeding out many of the filler songs and making Platt the focus. Even so, the movie drags a bit in its second half, and its creepy side can't be completely shaken.

I'm told, though, that the biggest objection to the movie is that Platt, now 28, looks too old to play Evan. I have to say that he didn't strike me that way at all; if I was told that the guy we see in the film, with his limp curls and miserable shirts and slumped shoulders, was a sad sack high school senior, I don't think it would occur to me to doubt it.

In any case, even if Platt were balding and gray at the temples and had crow's feet and a paunch, I wouldn't want to hear anyone else perform this music. Dear Evan Hansen has flaws, but the star isn't one of them; he's what makes the movie worth seeing despite its flaws.

THE CAPES OF WRATH

Opening this week:

  
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—The title sounds like a Supreme Court Case, but it just refers to a spat between the two biggest names in the DC superhero stable. The Man of Steel thinks Gotham’s Dark Knight is a creepy vigilante, while the Caped Crusader thinks that the near-omnipotence of Krypton’s Favorite Son represents an existential threat to all humankind. Can either be called wrong with perfect confidence?

This had possibilities, certainly, and a deft director in Zack Snyder. And the film has its moments. The acting is quite strong—Ben Affleck makes a brooding, intriguing, suavely attractive Bruce Wayne, and his costume gives a perfectly competent performance as Batman. He’s far more credible as a superhero here than he was as Daredevil back in 2003.

Henry Cavill makes a serviceable Superman—like most actors who have played this role, his charm doubles whenever he’s in Clark Kent drag—and Jesse Eisenberg darkens his persona as a manic, nattering Lex Luthor. A young Israeli actress named Gal Gadot is introduced as Wonder Woman; she doesn’t get much to do, but she is unquestionably a wonder.

Parts of the clash between the title icons are amusing, but mostly Batman v Superman is an overwrought, laborious, punishingly heavy slog. The conflict is muddled and lacking in urgency, there isn’t nearly enough humor, and, above all, the movie is too freakin’ long. It’s TOO. FREAKIN’. LONG. By at least twenty minutes, probably more.

Various theories can be advanced as to why so many blockbuster action movies insist on being so outrageously overlong. But I would rather this review, unlike Batman v Superman itself, remain brief. 

City of Gold—This documentary challenges the commonplace that good stories require conflict. It’s a portrait of Pulitzer-Prize-winning L.A. Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, and it has almost none.

For an hour and a half, we watch the pleasant fellow galumph around the Greater L.A. area, going to Mom and Pop ethnic restaurants where adoring owners serve him plates of delicious-looking food. He takes a brief side trip to New York to dine with his idol Calvin Trillin, but otherwise that’s pretty much the whole movie, in terms of content. None of the talking heads have an unkind word to say about him; no appalling personal tragedies are revealed.

Of course, we do learn that Gold is a chronic procrastinator. A newspaper columnist who procrastinates? What a shocker! And his environmentalist brother gently reproves him for his fondness for overfished varieties of sushi. That’s about as much Shakespearean drama as we get.

But director Laura Gabbert, abetted by Bobby Johnston’s fine score, keeps City of Gold gliding along enjoyably. Gabbert’s bird’s-eye dissection of L.A.’s neighborhoods is fascinating and undeniably glamorous, and the movie works as genteel food porn as well. Mere humans may feel a pang of envy at seeing someone so seemingly contented with and well-rewarded by his talents, but Gold comes across so unassumingly that it doesn’t deepen into resentment.

STEEL-GOOD MOVIE

Playing Superman is sometimes seen as a curse for an actor. The career and life of George Reeves were blighted by his association with the role, Kirk Alyn did little else of note, and Brandon Routh, from 2006’s tepid Superman Returns, has hardly become a household name. Even Christopher Reeve, who had many fine credits apart from the tights and cape, is still chiefly remembered as the Krypton Man.

On the other hand, none of these actors had much right to grumble, in my opinion, because…well, because they got to play Superman! They had, at least at that point in their lives, the looks and the physique and the genial charm to play America’s own folk hero, our Hercules/Everyman/Immigrant-Makes-Good hybrid, not to mention the even better role of sly, likably milquetoast Clark Kent.

If you get to do that, anything else you get to do should be regarded as gravy. Besides, if you’re right for Superman there’s a decent chance you won’t be quite right for much else anyway.

That seems to have been the feeling toward the latest victim/favored son—British actor Henry Cavill, of TV’s The Tudors, was reportedly considered and passed over for James Bond, for Edward in the Twilight movies and for a key role in a Harry Potter flick. As Clark Kent/Cal-El in the current Man of Steel, he’s buff of bod and pretty of face, and if he has any personality to speak of, he doesn’t show it.

But the movie has plenty of more vibrant actors to make up for this. Russell Crowe and Ayelet Zurer as Clark’s Kryptonian parents, Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as his Kansan parents, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Richard Schiff as a mild-mannered scientist and Christopher Meloni and Harry Lennix as military men all contribute solid turns, and Amy Adams is beguiling as usual as Lois Lane, though in general I object to Lois Lanes that don’t wear big librarian-ish glasses.

The best performance, however, is by Michael Shannon as the villain, the exiled, enraged megalomaniac General Zod. Though Zod is from Krypton, he seems oddly flinty and Midwestern somehow—he might almost be a shady politician from Smallville. Shannon doesn’t have the weird, campy magnetism that Terence Stamp brought to the role in 1980’s Superman II—he’s a repellent figure. But he’s more dramatically substantive. Without overdoing it, he carries a hint of tragedy in his eyes.

This echoes both the merits and the downside of Man of Steel. Unlike most of Superman Returns, the new movie isn’t dull, but it’s on the heavy-handed side. Directed by Zack Snyder from a script by David S. Goyer, it retells, in its first half, Cal-El’s nativity and his escape from the dying planet Krypton, his arrival on Earth and adoption by the Kents, his discovery of his incomparable powers and his early attempts to help humankind. In its second half, it’s basically a loose remake of Superman II, with Zod and comrades, banished from Krypton just before its destruction, invading Earth with an eye to remodeling it in their home planet’s image.

The ensuing clash between Zod’s forces and Superman is a special effects spectacle, no question, with cities crumbling before the might of cool spaceships that look like robber crabs or scarabs. There are superb, imaginative scenes earlier on, also—like the young Clark unable to look at his teacher or classmates without seeing their skeletons and organs. But I found the movie a bit much—too many percussive explosions and collapsing building, too many pummeling fistfights, a little too much sturm und drang.

What Man of Steel lacked, for me, was a fun, playful side. Part of the delight of the Superman myth has always been its unabashed, primary-color cheeriness, but Man of Steel has a chilly, haunted feel.

There are a couple of episodes—one on a oil rig, one on a school bus, and one involving a waitress being harassed—where the title character simply gets to come to people’s rescue, and they’re among the best moments in the picture. Why can’t we have a whole movie of this sort of thing? They’ve already turned Batman into a Dark Knight—would it be so terrible to leave us one uncomplicated, civic-minded Bright Knight?

CURVE APPEAL

Having thrown a curve himself last month at the Republican National Convention—your own politics will probably determine whether or not you think he threw it for a strike—Clint Eastwood stays in the stands in Trouble with the Curve. But this time, the stands are where the action is. Both the speech and the movie make the same point, however—that Clint isn’t a kid anymore.

Clint plays Gus Lobel, a scout for the Atlanta Braves, veteran of decades of sitting in the stands with a notebook at high school games. Never exactly a ray of sunshine, Gus has been turned by old age into a snarling coot. His anger is understandable—it’s hard to pee in the mornings, and he needs a magnifying glass to read the paper. He can’t use a computer or any of the new statistical methods for evaluating players. But his real problem, professionally speaking, is the macular degeneration that’s placed a blurry horizontal band across the middle of his vision—right through his view of the strike zone.

A longtime widower, Gus has an emotionally distant relationship with his daughter Mickey (Amy Adams), an overachieving lawyer. An odious young whippersnapper (Matthew Lillard) in the Braves front office wants the GM (Robert Patrick) to get rid of Gus, whose contract is nearly up anyway, so Mickey risks losing a partnership at her firm to join Gus in rural North Carolina, and be his eyes as he scouts a slugging prospect.

While she’s there, Mickey—she’s named for her father’s favorite player—meets a former pitcher (Justin Timberlake) trying to carve out a post-playing niche for himself in baseball after washing out early. Guess what happens between them.

Except for an odd bit of backstory involving a horse, there’s really nothing unpredictable in Trouble with the Curve, either dramatically or visually—the plot’s resolution has, almost, a fairy-tale inevitability. The director is Eastwood’s longtime producer and assistant director Robert Lorenz, making his feature debut, but the style is very much the same as Eastwood’s—straightforward, unadorned narrative, unfolded at a leisurely pace. The dialogue, by Randy Brown, is likewise functional.

The good news is that the picture is still enjoyable and relaxing, thanks to the acting. Eastwood’s Do Not Go Gentle act seems effortless. His timing and his iconic, narrow-eyed expression make his spitting anger funny, and he has a convincing rapport with Adams and Timberlake, and especially with John Goodman, excellent as his boss and defender.

The supporting cast is full of old pros—Ed Lauter, Bob Gunton, Jack Gilpin, George Wyner, Raymond Anthony Thomas and even Chelcie Ross, who’s become a sort of sports-movie good luck charm, having appeared in Major League, Hoosiers and Rudy. These guys reinforce the movie’s point that while getting old is a drag, it doesn’t necessarily make you useless.

I must warn you, from here on I’m going to unload all the baseball metaphors I want. So: unlike the elegant, quietly intriguing Moneyball, released around this time last year, Trouble with the Curve isn’t a grand slam, or even a homer. Eastwood and company play small ball; they methodically get on, get over, get home. And at the end of nine, Clint puts another one in his lengthy win column.

SOCKO BOX OFFICE

“The characterizations were amusing, but they always reminded me of bad carpeting.” Thus did a curmudgeonly friend of mine recently explain why he never liked the Muppets.

It is, to put it mildly, a minority opinion. The Muppets are one of those rare acts that operates squarely in the mainstream of wholesome, family-approved entertainment, yet has just the right edge of pure, irresistible silliness to make them hip—& maybe the faintest hint of kinkiness as well, as in Gonzo’s masochism & his seemingly polygamist interest in chickens. Almost everybody, Your Humble Narrator included, loves the Muppets. Indeed, their low-tech, old-school showbiz tactility is one of the keys to their charm—many of us love them because they remind us of bad carpeting.

For the newest film version, however, the Muppets have been recast as underdogs, has-beens. The premise of The Muppets is that Kermit, Fozzie, Piggy, Animal et al are forgotten relics of the ‘80s. When Kermit, lonely behind the gates of his faded Bel-Air mansion, learns that a rotten one-percenter named Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) wants to tear down the old Muppet Studios to drill for oil, he gets together the old gang to put on a telethon to save them.

This formula Let’s-Put-On-Show plot is really secondary, however, to the story of Walter, a fanatical Muppets fan who is, manifestly, also a Muppet himself (voiced by Peter Linz). This is doubly odd because Walter’s brother Gary (Jason Segel, who also co-scripted, with Nicholas Stoller), is human, as is Gary’s girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), as is everyone else we see in their smalltown home. So when the three of them travel to L.A. & get caught up in the Muppet’s adventures, Walter feels truly at home for the first time.

At one point Walter gushes to the Muppets that they give people the greatest gift, laughter, & the Muppets protest, pointing out at least two greater gifts. But the third-greatest gift is nothing to be sneezed at, & The Muppets delivers a generous dose of it. The screening audience with whom I saw the film received it rapturously; I enjoyed it greatly but I think it’s the third-greatest Muppet movie, after the sublime Muppet Christmas Carol of 1992 & the original 1979 effort, The Muppet Movie.

The script is laced with in-jokes & period references & parodies of dramatic clichés, genuinely witty but aimed more, perhaps, at nostalgic adults than at the kids in the audience, as are the many, many celebrity cameos. Also, the movie seems—and this isn’t a criticism I find myself handing down very often—a little talky.

Don’t get me wrong—the upsides of The Muppets far outweigh these minor reservations. They include: Cooper, who’s pretty droll in the obligatory bad guy part, & who delivers a sensational rap; the new songs, by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords, working in the style, if not quite on the level, of Paul Williams, & the old songs, including “The Rainbow Connection” & Piero Umiliani’s unshakeable “Mahna Mahna.” This movie even found, at last, a redemptive good use for that horribly catchy ‘80s embarrassment “We Built This City.”

Finally, there’s Kermit, pained & sheepishly idealistic as ever. Steve Whitmire still reproduces Jim Henson’s voice characterization flawlessly, & whoever actually operates Kermit gets extraordinarily fine shades of feeling on his face. Many a highly-paid non-amphibian star doesn’t have nearly as expressive a pan.