Review: People Like Us

The writing team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman has conjured up some of the biggest, loudest, and dumbest -- yet most successful -- movies of all time: The Legend of Zorro(2005), The Island (2005), Mission:Impossible III (2006), Transformers (2007), Transformers: Revenge of theFallen (2009), Star Trek (2009), and Cowboys & Aliens (2011). Now apparently it's time for Kurtzman to make his directorial debut. Thankfully, he has chosen to make a much smaller, less noisy movie. But unfortunately, it's no less dumb.

Chris Pine stars as Sam, a jerk of a salesman, seen at the beginning of the movie giving his snappy patter. He learns that his father has died and though he tries to avoid going home for the funeral, his pretty girlfriend Hannah (Olivia Wilde) gets them there.

Sam hated his dad and hasn't much to say to his mom (Michelle Pfeiffer), and he's about to leave when the family lawyer (Philip Baker Hall) gives him a package from his dad. Inside is a wad of cash that he is to deliver to a certain Frankie (Elizabeth Banks) and her son Josh (Michael Hall D'Addario). After snooping around AA meetings, Sam discovers that Frankie is the half-sister he never knew about.

That's all fine, but guess what Sam does? He tries to get to know her without telling her who he is! She just thinks he's flirting with her, which is horribly cruel. Why does he do this? No particular reason, other than 1) he's a jerk, and 2) there wouldn't be a movie.

There are some other puzzling things like a decision that Sam's mom made that set this whole thing in motion, and the fact that young D'Addario has that same moptop haircut that every other Hollywood kid has had for the past ten years or so. (Aren't there barbers in Hollywood?)

But here's the kicker. Despite all the bad material, it turns out that Kurtzman has an amazing touch for actresses. Banks, who is mainly known for her comic chops, gives perhaps her best performance here, wounded but strong, and Pfeiffer gives her finest performance in at least two decades; both are worthy of nominating. (It's also interesting that all three of the female leads get to slap and hit Chris Pine at some point.)

The movie also gets some points by making Sam's dad an old A&R man, working in the music industry and amassing an amazing collection of LPs. Sam spends a great deal of time in the old man's study, and we get references to everyone from Bob Dylan to the Buzzcocks, showing that the filmmakers have actually listened to smart music, but perhaps failed to understand it.

That aside, Kurtzman's movie is slick and choppy and overlong, not too surprising given that he seems to have learned his craft from the likes of Michael Bay and J.J. Abrams. However, I suppose the movie gets credit in the summer season for trying to be a movie for grownups about grownups, but I just wish it had had the courage to be honest rather than using a gimmick about lying.

Review: Dark Shadows

The stage is set and all of the props are in place for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows to be one of his best movies, but it doesn't quite get there. Based on the beloved cult TV soap opera of 1966-1971, Dark Shadows is Burton's deepest foray into tormented romance since Edward Scissorhands. Previously, in that film and in others, he successfully worked with a cartoonish visual humor, and a grand, oversized operatic essence. But whereas he seems comfortable with opera, he seems to balk at the notion of soap, diluting it with a silly sense of humor.

Johnny Depp stars as Barnabas Collins, a prominent citizen of Collinsport, Maine, who had the misfortune of breaking the heart of a witch, Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). She retaliates by turning Barnabas into a vampire, and burying him for 200 years. When he escapes, it's 1972. He returns to his family mansion, which is occupied by a new generation of Collinses, including Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) and young Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz). Additionally, a new governess (Bella Heathcote), who resembles Barnabas's lost love, turns up. Barnabas tries to restore the family's glory, and its fishing business, but Angelique is still alive and bent on possessing Barnabas at any cost.

 This all sounds plenty soapy, but Burton and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith -- the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- spend a great deal of time on "fish-out-of-water" jokes as Barnabas tries to grasp the logic and technology of the 1970s. Additionally dozens of "needle drops" range from cool tunes by T. Rex to cheesy songs by the Carpenters. Frankly, this stuff has been done, a lot, going all the way back to the low-budget The Spirit of '76 (1990). 

Judging by the visuals, including some 1960s-style ultra-red movie blood, and some of the more dramatic, passionate sequences, it appears that Burton might have been ready for melodrama. But he must have flinched and fell back on the jokes just in case audiences weren't ready for that kind of heightened emotional intensity. It would have helped if the jokes were as weirdly funny as in his best comedies (Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Ed Wood), but they're mostly just references and insults. In Burton's greatest works, the visual gags wrap up nicely with the visual drama. Dark Shadows comes close to this, but by relying on the silly, safe humor, he undercuts the force of what could have been a romance for all time.