Timothy Oliphant in "The Crazies"
courtesy of Overture Pictures
“A Dumb Crazy Movie”

There is a criteria I have established for horror movies. To make any impact it has to be either really scary or really believable. The new film on DVD “The Crazies” does not meet either of those criteria. The film is fairly dumb and not scary enough by a long shot. The only thing that makes it fairly watchable is the acting. Timothy Olyphant and Rhada Mitchell head the cast and they are convincing in their roles.

The movie takes place in a farm community in Iowa. David Dutten (Olyphant) is the sheriff and his wife Judy (Mitchell) is the town doctor. Everything seems fairly calm in the town until one day at a high school baseball game the town drunk walks on to the field carrying a gun. He has a vacant stare and when the sheriff tries to get him to put down the gun he acts as if he is going to shoot. The sheriff beats him to the draw.

Later other members of the community start acting strangely. Then the Army shows up and herds everyone on to buses and then to an improvised campsite. There they are divided into groups of contaminated and non-contaminated. Judy is put in the contaminated group.

The rest of the film concerns David trying to get Judy back and then to a safe place. There is also an effort made to try to figure out what is going on. The answer when it comes is pretty shaky.

Problem number one is the contaminated townspeople do not act crazy enough. They look pretty weird but they never act like pure zombies or other creatures. They kind of lumber along killing people with pitchforks, gasoline and guns. 

Problem number two is David and Judy’s abilities to stay alive. They have more lives than fifty cats and use them up during the course of the film. It isn’t always skill and daring that keep them alive. It is more like pure movie luck.

Problem number three is the government being the bad guys. There is no one who seems to be saying we can’t kill the whole town. Plus the soldiers appear to be going about their jobs of destruction with relish.

As mentioned Olyphant and Mitchell make a good hero and heroine but the characters they are playing are basically cartoons. They have unlimited endurance. Judy is pregnant but she can fight off monsters, walk a hundred miles, and still not even bust a sweat. David isn’t pregnant but it still strains credibility that he can endure stabbings, pistol whippings, and other attacks and still have energy left over.

If the movie is going to be titled “The Crazies” then the monsters should really be wildly insane. That isn’t the case here. The film could easily have been titled “The Mildly Confused.”

“Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” had Hollywood hoping it would be a new film franchise for the “Harry Potter” fans. The story is based on a book by Rick Riordan and it probably made a better book than it does a movie. The new trio of junior league adventurers featured in this story just isn’t in the same league as Harry Potter.

The film focuses on Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), a high school student who has dyslexia. He lives with his mother Sally (Catherine Keener) and stepfather Gabe (Joe Patagliano). He is not a happy kid. His best friend is Grover (Brandon Jackson) and they are almost inseparable. 

One day Percy and his class are on a tour of a museum when he is attacked by a gargoyle looking creature. Within a short period Percy learns his father is Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and Grover is a satyr. He also learns his favorite teacher (Pierce Brosnan) is a centaur.

Percy is whisked away to a camp for children of the gods. He enters training and then is charged with finding the person or persons who stole Zeus’ (Sean Bean) lightning bolt, He, Grover, and a girl named Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) team up for this task. Annabeth is the daughter of Athena (Melina Kanakaredes).

The rest of the film deals with the trio’s adventures and is a big yawn, but at least it isn’t as silly as this first portion. Seeing Pierce Brosnan tromping around as a half man half horse creature is just laughable. And poor Grover, he has to run around on donkey legs. 

Harry Potter took a little time to grow on me but he, Hermione and Ron were never this boring. Percy, Grover and Annabeth are just characters stuck in a fanciful story that never piques the audience’s attention. When you add in the Olympian gods and goddesses it becomes even less interesting because these characters are also lacking in any traits which would draw you to them.

The acting is uniformly bad but poor Catherine Keener fares the worst. This is a woman who can make any character she plays interesting, at least that has always been the case in the past. As Sally she has met her Waterloo. She just can’t find anything to do but stand around looking trapped.

Then there is Uma Thurman. She plays Medusa and has to have a collection of snakes for hair. She too seems awkward in her role and hopefully didn’t sign up for a sequel. McKidd gets to play Poseidon as a giant god and then when he waters himself down is in human size. Either way he is totally forgettable in the role.

The film just doesn’t have any spark to it. Based on the popularity of Riordan’s books there should be a good initial turnout for the film, but word of mouth should shut Percy down for further adventures.

Also out on DVD is “Hot Tub Time Machine.” This is the kind of movie you watch knowing that though you dislike it intensely there are others who will lap up every crude situation and explicit sexual sequence. In that way it is like “Hangover,” a raucous, stupid film that won over audiences and some critics alike. Though it matches “Hangover” crudity for crudity it is unlikely “Hot Tub Time Machine” will have that sort of broad appeal.

Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson) and Lou (Rob Corddry) are best friends but business and relationships have kept them apart lately. Then one night Lou almost asphyxiates himself in his garage and the other two rush to his bedside at the hospital. While there they decide to take a road trip to a ski resort they had been to many years ago.

Arriving at the resort, with Adam’s nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) along for the ride, they find it to be rundown and decrepit. The only thing that looks fairly decent is the hot tub. They all get in for a warm soak and suddenly they are back in 1986. The three guys look like their younger selves while Jacob looks the same, since he hasn’t even been born yet.

The guys return to the swinging eighties gives them a chance to live the good life, if they want to and some of them definitely do. But seeing forty-something men trying to party like there’s no tomorrow is not a pleasant sight. It comes off as more ridiculous than rational.

Cusack plays Adam like he is starring in a remake of “Say Anything.” Robinson is the most low key of the three. Corddry goes all out to see just how many people he and his character can offend. Duke just plays the observer of it all.

The plot and the jokes are mostly amateurish with poor Crispin Glover stuck in the role of a guy waiting to have his arm whacked off. Chevy Chase mumbles and bumbles his way through it all as some kind of time travel guru. Lizzy Caplan, Lyndsy Fonseca and Collette Wolfe are all forgettable in the supporting female roles.

This is a film aimed at the imaginary world of teen age boys. There are no adults on view here. The main storyline is stupid and the ending is lame. Some will find it funny but others will be repulsed. If anyone is open to it, it will be the “Hangover” bunch. It is sad to think John Cusack has spent many years building a career to end up in something as offensive as this film.

Then we have “The White Ribbon” which was a Golden Globe winner and an Academy Award nominee. The film takes place in pre-World War I Germany in a rural village. There a series of events take place involving the children of the village. In some cases the children appear to be victims and in other cases they might turn out to be the cause.

This is a film that keeps viewers off balance from beginning to end, and after. It is a disturbing film and a thought provoking one. It has a mysterious air about it all which is made more ominous when you think about the influence the children might have in twenty or more years in Germany.

This is a movie to be watched intently. It is not light entertainment. Still it is worth your viewing time. Don’t miss it!
 

 

 

 

 

©2010 Jackie K. Cooper

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