D.C. MOVIE GUYS

A Lot Like Love
Directed by Nigel Cole
Running in circles at theatres nationwide beginning 4/22/2005
1.5 *
About two-thirds of the way into the new Ashton Kutcher-Amanda Peet romantic vehicle A Lot Like Love, Kutcher’s Oliver tries to cheer up his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Emily (Peet) on the anniversary of her mother’s death. He tells the following story:

A little boy is digging a hole in his backyard when the nasty old lady from next door glances over the fence and asks him what he’s doing.
“Digging a hole,” the boy replies.
“What for?” the neighbor asks.
“To bury my pet goldfish,” the boy answers not looking up from his work
“That’s a pretty big hole for a goldfish. Why are you digging such a big hole for a goldfish?” the woman quizzes.
“Because it is inside your stupid cat.”

Congratulations, you have just saved two hours and nine dollars because except for a quick joke about the hearing wife of a deaf guy blowing a car horn to get his attention (a joke they then have the temerity to explain to us under the assumption that audience members are as stupid as film producers and screenwriters), that joke is the only thing worthwhile in A Lot Like Love.
In fact, if they had put that joke in the beginning, you might be reading a more positive review. It is not that it is impossible to make a charming love story comedy about a pair that would be perfect together except their timing is never quite right. If Nora Ephron can do it in writing When Harry Met Sally, how hard can it be? Peet and Kutcher are easy on the eyes (although they go a bit overboard having Peet in bizarre makeup at their first meeting) and are certainly good enough actors for light comedy.
The couple “meet cute” as the saying goes. A pair dropped off at the airport, he is taken with her despite grungy boyfriend and grungier personal style. Coincidentally, they are both flying to NYC. He eyeballs she and the she decides on a mutual initiation in the mile-high club. They meet again in New York and while he is busy expounding on his life plan, it begins to occur to even the most generous viewer that this movie is going to turn into an incessant series of getting together and pulled apart filled with numerous coincidences, mistaken jumps to conclusion, and the various other assorted tricks from the idiot’s guide to screenwriting found under the chapter heading “idiot plot.” I am just exaggerating that there is a book called “The Idiot’s Guide to Screenwriting;” why bother. But back to the movie at hand: If these two crazy kids could just see that their perfect for each other and get together, wouldn’t that be just lovely. Or is might be if you were given any reason to care. Actor-turned-first-time screenwriter Colin Patrick Lynch would seem to have a lot to atone for, but someone should have explained to him that the point of any incipient career shift should have been to come up with better scripts than the ones you had been reading.
It is quickly getting to the point where I have had it with Amanda Peet. A blind man can see that she is a beautiful young lady. She is obviously a solid actress with good range. And she has been the best thing in far too many inferior movies (I still resent Whipped). The Whole Nine Yards was not bad (and certainly better for her presence as the dental hygienist who wants to be an assassin), but then they went another Yard—one of movie history’s all-time stinkers. If the writing in Something’s Got to Give (an insanely overrated movie) had been as good as Peet’s acting, you would have as good a movie as most people think it is. But at what point does Amanda Peet start taking responsibility for all these crappy movies that she lends her obvious talents to?
So lacking in subtlety, flow, freshness, and humor, one is left to appreciate that the camera is in focus, the actors speak in actual words and sentences, and the boom mike stays out of the shots. And, oh yes, there is one very funny joke—you’re welcome.
–Bill Henry

The Amityville Horror
Directed by Andrew Douglas
Haunting movie houses nationwide beginning 4/15/2005
0 *
In attempting to review the newly remade version of The Amityville Horror, words fail me. The movie exists on an unfathomable plane where the confluence of a dubious source, a possibly unsalvageable genre, and a collection of repulsive human beings calling themselves filmmakers has resulted in the most excruciating 89 minutes I have endured in quite some time.
It is not because I thought the first movie which came out in 1979 starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder was so terrific. Based on a supposedly true story of a Long Island haunted house, the best-selling book that preceded it into theatres had itself ridden the crest of a paperback book market that featured the likes of The Exorcist, The Reincarnation of Audrey Rose, The Omen’s novelization, and the first few books of some guy named Stephen King (he peaked fairly quickly never to be heard from again). The movie became a sizeable hit at the time the slasher genre was just beginning to come into its own. Many people also remember its signature moment of the ominous voice (presumably of the house) telling people to “Get out!”
But despite its profits and impact, what I recollect about the original movie was what a junky little exercise it was. But even that memory cannot prepare viewers for the true horror that is the remake of The Amityville Horror. Though they paid for the right to remake The Amityville Horror, the movie they remade was The Shining. And the person most wronged in the updating is George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds stepping in for James Brolin).
Current research would indicate that it is most likely that George Lutz made up the whole Amityville Horror and even so, he is the wronged party here. In Anson’s book and the first movie, George is a young guy with a brand new, ready-made family who gets in over his head with a bargain house in a pricey neighborhood that turns out to be not much of a bargain. He turns inward, constantly feels cold, does little around the house, becomes a nasty pill to live with, and is bedeviled by horrible visions. But that is not enough for director Andrew Douglas and producer Michael Bay (yes, the hack behind the Bad Boys, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor—the most aggressively bad director in Hollywood has turned his inestimable talents to producing). They turn George into a buffed maniac chasing his family through the house with an ax (it would appear they need some discipline). Someone should let the folks know that Stanley Kubrick has already covered the need for inferior versions of The Shining.
Would that ripping off King Kubrick was the least of the movie’s sins, but once we have endured an hour of creepy kid shots (the latest in a lengthening line from the current horror crop), spooky cuts, hyper sped up edits, and the rest of the current fright flick clichés, the house tells us to get out. It is for our own good, but there is still another half-hour to endure. The movie now begins the transition from mindless tedium to truly excruciating. Jack Bauer should use this movie the next time he needs to torture information out of a suspect. In real life though, the Geneva Convention would preclude such treatment.
A friend recently asked me about the report of this movie’s opening (though still unseen by both of us). I informed him that it was from the same gang of idiots that had remade The Texas Chainsaw Massacre two years ago. He counter-questioned about why somebody was remaking all the overrated scary movies from the ‘70s that the Fangoria crowd would try to convince us count as quality pictures (good news for Phantasm fans though). The easy answer is that all of these movies will be made for little to nothing, vault into the marketplace with an advertising budget larger than the negative cost (and rarely is a phrase so doubly accurate), dominate the box office for a weekend or two, and scurry off to other revenue-generating venues. The more difficult reason is that in an increasingly risk-averse Hollywood, green lighting remakes eliminates both second-guessing and alleviates the dearth of ideas.
There is one way in which The Amityville Horror represents a bit of movie history. With the absorption of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer into the Sony empire, this may be the last MGM release. If Leo really cared about “art for artists,” he would have done the honorable thing and stuck a gun in his mouth before affixing his mangy mane to this mess.
–Bill Henry

Fever Pitch
Directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Just making the roster nationwide beginning 4/8/2005
2.5 *
I saw this really great movie called Fever Pitch based on the autobiographical book by Nick Hornby. Ostensibly a romantic comedy, it is really about this guy’s obsession with his favorite professional sports team. Turns out that when he was a kid and going through a particularly tough time, he got taken to a game and fell in love with the whole scene. Now 20+ years later, he is a teacher, but he never misses a match with his favorite team and lives and dies with their ups and downs (mostly downs, he does not exactly root for the New York Yankees). However, the monkey wrench about to be tossed into his life is a new girl he has just met. He likes her (though she is a bit of a stick), but she just does not understand that a man must have priorities in life and she runs her own life in such a haphazard fashion that she actually makes plans without first checking the schedule. What can you do with a woman like that… but he does want to make this work.
Besides being a hilarious, well-told story with lots of laughs and a great performance in the lead role, the movie is also the greatest screen rendering I can recall about what it means to be a true fan of a sports team (or for that matter a person obsessed with something).
Unfortunately, the great movie named Fever Pitch is the original version featuring Colin Firth which was barely released in this country and not the newly-opened remake that replaces the charmingly droll Firth with the barely-talented Jimmy Fallon and changes Hornby’s beloved Arsenal football (first and last note of explanation, soccer here, football everywhere else on the planet) to the Boston Red Sox who made some modest headlines last October for winning their first World Series in 86 years.
The remake is simply a romantic comedy vehicle for Fallon and Drew Barrymore (so much better in 50 First Dates) and a modest mash note to the Red Sox from born and bred New Englanders Peter and Bobby Farrelly. Drew plays a big business high-flyer who meets math teacher Ben (Fallon). Despite her’s (and the movie’s) snobby concerns that a teacher might not be the right choice for this corporate carnivore, the two date and fall in love. But then spring rolls around and Ben’s true, long-time love for the Boston Red Sox reasserts itself. Drew’s Lindsey gamely struggles along attending a bunch of games (usually with her laptop along—what the nearby seated Fenway faithful derisively dismiss as her “homework”). But as the season wears on and the relationship is increasingly impacted by the Bosox hub-bub, the friction between the lovers increases (and not in a good way). Will Ben abandon his true love for the more socially-acceptable relationship?
But what was in its previous incarnation a greatly entertaining and thought-provoking meditation on the nature of sports fan-aticism is here reduced to simple-minded Hollywood junk. The biggest problem is Fallon. He is not the worst actor on the planet, but there are a lot of people who claim to be actors that I have yet to see. His marginally tedious and barely endurable presence on Saturday Night Live for a few minutes at a time could be endured (those in need of further proof should note how much the “Weekend Update” segment has improved by the substitution of Amy Poehler for Fallon), but as the sole focus of a feature film, he is interminable. Once the Red Sox were chosen as the object of affection, the obvious choice to star would have been Matt Damon. The Farrelly Brothers should have no more countenanced making the movie without him than anyone would have considered filming Gone With the Wind without Clark Gable. Damon, Ben Affleck or even Fallon’s former SNLer Seth Meyers would have had the virtue of being actual Red Sox fans as well as better actors than Fallon. All Fallon brings to the field is a waning notoriety of the sort Joe Piscopo once had.
Another problem with the movie is baseball itself. The equivalent of being a football fan in England is being a football fan in the United States (except our football is not dull, drab, and boring with major championships decided with some foot fetishist’s equivalent of batting practice). I might also point out that the real American equivalent to Hornby’s beloved Arsenal is the New York Jets in that our young hero becomes infected in his youth by an improbable championship and then spends decades rooting for a team whose results are mostly mediocre. Prior to last October, anybody old enough to remember the last Red Sox World Series win is too old to remember the last Red Sox World Series win. And baseball is just different than either footballs. Major league baseball is played every day. Your passion cannot burn white hot every day for six months unless you are a total loony (as opposed to the partial kind that describes most sports fans). Speaking as a lifelong New York Mets fan who watched his team blow a 9th inning two-run Opening Day lead, and open to their worst start in 40 years, the day-to-day vagaries of the game will drive you bonkers. A fan’s baseball season is not a sprint but a marathon. And much like the game itself, the fans virtues are patience and reserve and picking your moments.
The virtues of the new Fever Pitch are a gaggle of giggles and the too few moments when the movie rings true (such as the 10-year-old’s first glimpse of a major league field). But as for the rest, Fever Pitch makes about as successful a trans-Atlantic crossing as the Titanic did.
–Bill Henry