Just Friends

Rated: PG-13
Directed by: Roger Kumble
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Amy Smart, Chris Klein, Anna Faris

In Just Friends, we witness the tale of Chris Brander (Ryan Reynolds), a complete dork. He’s fat, clumsy and an overt embarrassment to himself. In fact the only good thing he has going is his best friend Jamie Palomino (Amy Smart), the most popular girl in school. When she finds out in a publicly humiliating scene that he’s in love with her, Chris leaves town to make something of himself.

Flash forward to L.A. where we find Chris the physical opposite of his high school days, now a slick music producer and all-together ladies’ man. He’s hired to secure a contract with Samantha James (Anna Faris), a manic depressive bubblegum pop princess with overhauled hormones and delusions of grandeur. Long story short, Chris returns home to Jersey for the first time in a decade with the annoying diva in tow. Soon after, he runs into Jamie and all his repressed affection returns with a vengeance. From here the movie becomes a pseudo laugh riot with equal heart and innuendo as Chris strives to charm his former best friend.

The flick works in that it’s genuinely funny, with most of the laughs existing at the characters’ continual embarrassment. Reynolds and Smart’s chemistry is genuine. He’s hilarious and she is charming in her role, albeit slightly underdeveloped.

Roger Kumble (The Sweetest Thing, Cruel Intentions) directs accordingly, relying heavily on sophomoric gags. The “guy trying to get the girl who doesn’t want him” story is tired, but the script has a surprising honesty. And when the movie’s irreverent immaturity shines through (which is often), it strikes gold.

Just Friends strives hard to be a comedy akin to Reynolds’s utterly hysterical Van Wilder, but fails. It’s not as funny as you’d think from the ads, and the ending is abrupt and feels forced. Still, it’s a good date flick with more than a few moments of hilarity, and definitely worth checking out.

My Rating: B-

The Ice Harvest

Rated: R
Directed by: Harold Ramis
Starring: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielson, Oliver Platt, Randy Quaid
Showing at Jasper 8 Cinemas

I usually appreciate a movie that takes conventions we know and love and juxtaposes them with characters and situations that counteract what society defines as appropriate. For instance, a movie set on Christmas Eve with a bunch of foul-mouthed, sleazy criminals pulling off a heist amidst mobsters and strippers with a fair amount of morbidity and bloodshed. I sort of just summed up The Ice Harvest, and contrary to what I thought walking into the theater, I hated the flick.

Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) is a lawyer for the mob in Wichita, Kansas. He and his smut peddling pal Vic Cavanaugh (Billy Bob Thornton) are in the midst of embezzling 2 million dollars from local mob boss Bill Guerrard (Randy Quaid) on Christmas Eve. Of course whatever can go wrong does and what we’re left with is a muddled mess of a film.

First off, the writing is atrocious. The script (based on Scott Phillips’s novel) sports some of the most unskillfully written dialogue I’ve ever heard. It tries too hard to be stylish and gritty in the vein of Quentin Tarantino or even Kevin Williamson, but comes across as a prepubescent, incoherent jumble of words written by a child who has no idea how people really talk. The characters are two-dimensional and unsympathetic, and have no real arc to them.

Cusack’s performance is sub-par as he attempts to channel a dark protagonist. Thornton, who is consistently impressive to me, is underused and left flailing, doing the best he can with the material. Connie Nielson is unintentionally stoic as Renata, Charlie’s love interest. She seethed emotional complexity in Gladiator, but can’t quite hold her own here as a half-hearted femme fatale.

Harold Ramis (who directed Caddyshack, Vacation, Groundhog Day, and Analyze This, but is better known as Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters) directs inarticulately, often seeming unsure what to do with the camera.

This movie desperately wants to be a modern film noir, but tries too hard with it’s ill-motivated vulgarity, seedy characters and random nudity and in the end flops. It ineffectively favors gloom over substance. Don’t waste your time.

My Rating: D

Walk the Line

Rated: PG-13
Directed by: James Mangold
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Patrick

The Oscar race has officially begun with Walk the Line, the anticipated biopic of the Man in Black, Johnny Cash. Cash’s story is one of pain, struggle, honesty, love, and centrally a series of accents and moments that inspired some of the greatest music ever written. It’s similar to other biographies in showing the downward spiral of an artist caught up in drugs, fame, women and touring the road. But this movie has heart. There’s a profound sense of hope in the story, and the delivery is so unflinchingly honest and real, it’s impossible not to connect on a deeply emotional level.

It’s based on the books “The Man in Black” and “Cash: An Autobiography,” both by Cash. James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted and Identity) co-wrote the script and directs with a visceral, poignant flare, infusing the picture with an almost documentary-like quality. There are often moments of sheer energy, as the camera moves about Cash with such a hyperkinetic excitement it’s as if his presence is enough to shake the Earth. But Mangold knows when to have the camera shut up and let the actors tell the story.

And the acting is flawless. Joaquin Phoenix gives a career defining performance, managing to wholly embody Johnny Cash. He walks, talks and sings like him - it’s haunting. The real surprise for me was Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, Cash’s wife of 35 years. She’s nothing less than show stopping. I always figured her as just the romantic comedy sweetheart in Legally Blonde, Sweet Home Alabama and the like. But here she completely redefines herself as an actress and proves she’s a force to be reckoned with.

Their chemistry is electric – the bond between Cash and June is so untouchable it’s hard not to swoon. In this one movie you’ve got your leading contenders for Best Actor and Actress. Even at 136 minutes I was left wanting more. The characters are so intriguing and the emotion is so real it’s hard to let go. Bottom line - you owe it to yourself to run and see this movie.

My Rating: A+