WHAT A STITCH

Opening this weekend:

Lisa Frankenstein--Our teenage heroine's misfortunes start with her name: Lisa Swallows. She's survived the murder of her mother by a masked maniac, and the remarriage of her father into a new family, complete with a tirelessly perky stepsister, and her transfer to a new school. The understandably morbid-minded, socially awkward, vaguely Goth Lisa spends her spare time in an abandoned cemetery, tending the grave of a long-departed young fellow on whose romantic-looking memorial statue she has a bit of a crush.

The young man is jolted back to something like life by a lighting bolt, but he's still a moldered corpse until Lisa starts supplying him with new body parts, obtained from irksome people who end up dead around her. This process involves needle and thread, and a terribly strange tanning bed. With each new addition, The Creature becomes a bit, well, hunkier. 

Released just in time for Valentine's Day--and for the February Island of Misfit Movies dump--this off-the-wall teen horror comedy-romance, directed by Zelda Williams from a script by Diablo Cody, is every bit as broad and silly as it sounds, but in a good way. Cody has attempted horror before, with the misfired Jennifer's Body in 2009. This one works better, even though it's uneven and sloppy at times, and the story makes less sense than that of the earlier film. This may even be part of the reason it works better; the wispy, nonsensical plot makes no claim that it's anything but a pretext for Cody's ornately loopy dialogue, and for some good-natured gross-outs.

And, more importantly, it's a pretext for the acting. Cole Sprouse manages to be both bestial and Byronic as the revived Creature, and he may have the best aggrieved monster moans since Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. Carla Gugino hams it up as the self-adoring wicked stepmother, and Liza Soberano, as the stepsister Taffy, is a charming surprise; in a characteristic touch of Cody generosity, she's allowed be genuinely instead of insincerely sweet.

But what really makes Lisa Frankenstein worthwhile is Kathryn Newton. Her performance is a comedic tour de force, at least as good as her riotous turn in 2020's Freaky, layered and mannered and truly funny, with the puckish slyness of the young Susan Sarandon. Newton could be the next big scream queen, not because she does a lot of screaming, but because she's a scream.

Also, this movie is a period piece, circa 1989. It's remarkable how refreshing it is to see a teen flick without a cell phone in sight.

MOM CYCLONE

Opening today:

Tully--The latest from screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, the team that brought us 2007's Juno, is another brightly-written comedy about pregnancy and motherhood. But the mother in question isn't a teen this time, she's a full-fledged adult. This may, indeed, be what's bugging her.

When we first meet Marlo (Charlize Theron), a suburban mother of two, she's massively on the verge of becoming a mother of three. Her husband (Ron Livingston) is an OK guy, but travels a lot for work, and spends a lot of time playing video games when he is home. Her sweet-natured but socially odd little son (he's euphemistically described as "quirky") creates difficulties at the private school he can only attend through the good graces of Marlo's irksomely rich and successful brother (Mark Duplass).

This same brother offers Marlo the gift of a "night nanny" for the new baby so that she can get some sleep. Marlo's repulsed by the idea at first, but soon after the baby is born, utterly overwhelmed and exhausted by her workload, she capitulates. The nanny, a lissome young hipster called Tully (Mackenzie Davis) swoops in like Marlo's own private Mary Poppins, not only minding the baby but cleaning the house overnight, making cupcakes and seeing to other domestic duties. Perhaps more importantly, she gets Marlo back in touch with her own identity.

The first quarter or so of this movie impressively dramatizes the daunting challenges of navigating motherhood, especially with multiple kids, especially if you aren't rich. It gets to you like a lot of movie depictions of harried parenting don't--it's almost frightening at times. This is partly due to Cody's snarky but emotionally plugged-in, glibness-free dialogue, and partly to Reitman's deft montages.

But it's also due in large part to Theron, who has a mature openness here, and a wild, harrowing beauty that makes even her own conventionally glamorous earlier roles seem tame. There's poignancy to Marlo, even a hint of the tragic, at the same time that she's a deeply sympathetic comic figure. As the breezy yet direct Tully, Davis is a fine foil for Theron; the two actresses slip into a startlingly relaxed and intimate rhythm from their first scene together.

As the story progresses, however, it slowly becomes clear that Marlo's conflict isn't just about the logistics of parenting, it's also about the perceived implications of the role. Marlo, we learn, was once an English Lit major and downtown NYC type, and, as with Jason Bateman's character in Juno, she's shaken by the prospect of permanently trading in the hip boho cred which Tully reminds her of for domesticity. Diablo Cody seems to regard this loss of pose as an adult rite of passage: For Cody, becoming a fully committed parent means giving up your dreams of being cool.

O RICKI, WHAT A PITY

Opening this weekend: 

 
Ricki and the Flash—Meryl Streep has been a favorite of mine since, if memory serves, the second movie I ever reviewed, The Seduction of Joe Tynan back in 1979. If I recall, I referred to her as a “brilliant newcomer”; a nervy line from a seventeen-year-old, but I wasn’t wrong. Much as I loved her work back in those accent du jour days, however, I love her even more now—she's lightened up, and loosened up, and her performances are genuinely fun.

I also love Jonathan Demme, and I’ve missed him. Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s he turned out a bunch of sophisticated yet unpretentious, entirely accessible classics and near-classics, like Something Wild, Married to the Mob, Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, but he hasn’t made anything anywhere near that level in years.

And I have a high regard for Diablo Cody, who crafted the snappy but heartfelt dialogue for Juno back in 2007. For that matter, I love Kevin Kline.

Which is why it pains me to report that the collaboration of all of the above, Ricki and the Flash, despite plenty of good work, is a miss, and not even a near-miss.

Streep plays Ricki, who abandoned her upper-middle-class Indiana family decades earlier to follow her rock star dreams in California. She had one failed album, and now she and The Flash serve as the house cover band at a bar in Tarzana, where they often outnumber their fans. Her lead guitarist (Rick Springfield, who looks agreeably a bit Kris Kristofferson-ish with middle age) is also her main squeeze, though she holds him at arm’s length emotionally.

Her patient, recessive ex (Kline), who long since remarried a supermom (Audra McDonald), has made peace with Ricki, but her three grown kids still resent her, at different levels of bitterness. Ricki gets a call from the ex that their daughter (Mamie Gummer) has been dumped by her husband and is in bad shape. When Ricki gets to Indianapolis, she finds that this was an understatement.

Nothing terribly wrong with any of this, on paper, and there are many sharp, funny passages of dialogue and lively little episodes. Cody has a way of departing from the standard movie-character playbook—Ricki, for instance, is one of those Tea Partiers who turn up at times in fields where you wouldn’t expect them. She makes sour cracks about Obama from the stage, voted twice for George W. Bush, and even has a Gadsden Flag tattooed on her back.

As always with Demme, the settings ring with authenticity and there are terrific touches of atmosphere. But there’s a slackness to the pacing and a sloppiness to the transitions that keep the movie from adding up, somehow, either as drama or as comedy.

Or, I’m afraid, as a jukebox musical, either. Streep is a fine musical talent—she handled the folk numbers in Altman’s Prairie Home Companion and the show tunes in Into the Woods with authority and wit. But the classic rock in Ricki and the Flash just isn’t a good fit for her voice and performing style, and Demme saddles her with several full numbers. I don’t wish to be ungallant, but let’s just say that it’s not terribly surprising that Ricki’s album wasn’t a success.

About the best thing I can say for Ricki and the Flash is that it doesn’t punish us too much. The movie climaxes at a wedding. I knew there were going to be toasts and speeches and awkward encounters, and I tensed up, remembering Demme’s 2008 Rachel Getting Married. But Demme and Cody give us a break—they don’t seem determined to make us miserable. Ricki’s gesture at the wedding is borderline inappropriate yet nonetheless lovely, and it ends the film on a pleasant note. But it’s faint praise when the best feeling a movie gives you is relief at what it didn’t do.