THE MUPPETS

Written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller

Directed by James Bobin

Starring Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper and Kermit the Frog

Kermit the Frog: Maybe you don't need the whole world to love you. 

Maybe you just need one person.

The first Muppet movie in over 10 years, simply called THE MUPPETS, was tailor made for people just like me – fans of the show that long for simpler times, when frogs both ran theatres and away from pigs. With the threat of losing their long abandoned Muppet Theatre, the whole gang – joined by Amy Adams, brand new Muppet, Walter, and co-writer (and new personal hero) Jason Segel  – band together to put on one more show to prove to the world, and themselves, that they still have what it takes. At the risk of giving it all away, I can assure you, The Muppets definitely still have it.

In today’s fast paced world of crude humour and low attention spans, The Muppets run the risk of being perceived as no longer relevant. Segel, and co-writer, Nicholas Stoller (director of Segel collaboration, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL), weave this danger into their plot. The setting is the present and, as we Muppet fans know, there has been very little Muppet presence in the media for some time now. Fans have not forgotten but they have long since moved on. Segel plays Gary, a character that mirrors his real life devotion to The Muppets. Together with his brother, Walter (a Muppet voiced by Peter Linz), they use their deep rooted appreciation for The Muppets to convince them to come out of retirement. It remains unknown as to whether contemporary audiences will still care but the sense of nostalgia that permeates every moment of this film draws fans in and gets the whole audience rooting for the comeback they so truly deserve.

In that sense, it is brilliantly written, modernized without feeling inauthentic. If you were a fan of The Muppets, you will be inundated with warm memories and fuzzy feelings throughout this film. From a strictly critical perspective, there are a few musical moments (written by Bret McKenzie, one half of the Flight of the Conchords duo) that drag, a few plot holes that could have saved their theatre without having to actually put on a show and a few cameos (from Sarah Silverman to Neil Patrick Harris to Jack Black) that were clearly longer to begin with, but when you’re caught up in this much fun, these kinds of things hardly matter. When it comes down to it, I laughed; I cried; and I wanted to watch it again as soon as it ended. THE MUPPETS is without question the family movie of the year!

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Black Sheep presents The 2011 Fall Film Preview

This past weekend, I stepped out of the house in shorts and a T-shirt and immediately walked right back in, when I realized how cold it actually was outside. It felt different; it felt like fall. While some people hate the fall, I love it! It’s all sweaters and soup and a welcome farewell to the mind numbing fare of the summer movie season. And with those changing autumn leaves comes the long awaited return of the prestige picture.

Speaking of anticipation, fans of the family drama, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, from writer/director, Kenneth Lonergan, will finally get to see his sophomore project, MARGARET this fall, some eight years after it was originally shot. Anna Paquin plays a 17-year-old girl (she was 21 at the time of filming) who witnesses an accident and begins believing she may have caused it somehow. She proceeds to slowly destroy everything in her life. In 2009, Fox Searchlight deemed the project, which also stars Matt Damon, unreleasable, but somehow, both parties have now found the path to understanding. A small mystery remains as to who had final cut.

What lies ahead isn’t entirely bleak though. Justin Timberlake continues his transition from pop star to leading man with the sci-fi thriller, IN TIME. Andrew Niccol, the writer of THE TRUMAN SHOW and the writer/director of GATTACA, returns with his first film since 2006. At this indeterminate time in our future, people are genetically designed to die at the age of 25. (I for one am glad to live in a world where I have so far had nine years past that.) People who reach this golden age are given one year to either find more time, be that legitimately or otherwise. Timberlake’s character comes into a century’s worth of time and not surprisingly, that makes him a guy a lot of people want to find. The wide-eyed Amanda Seyfried and Olivia Wilde are along for the trip.

The title, TINKER, TAILER, SOLDIER, SPY, rolls off the tongue with ease and might and, from the looks of the incredibly taut trailer, the film itself might unspool with a similar readiness. Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director behind the 2008 international cult hit, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, marks his first English-language film with an adaptation of the John Le Carre bestselling spy novel of the same name. Gary Oldman stars as George Smiley, a character who has not been tackled since the late Alec Guiness played him in 1982. Smiley must put his retirement plans on hold in order to ascertain the identity of a mole within the deep folds on the British intelligence agency, MI6. And when that mole just might be Tom Hardy or Colin Firth, in his first post-Oscar role, you know Oldman has his work cut out for him.

Come November, it’s time for some very important things to be done. It’s time to put on makeup; it’s time to light the lights. Yes folks, it’s time to get things started with the first Muppets movie in over 20 years. Entitled simply, THE MUPPETS, this caper finds Kermit et al. banding together to save their old theatre from being destroyed by a greedy oil tycoon type. They have enlisted the likes of Amy Adams and Jason Segel to get the job done and there are plenty more cameos crammed into this welcome return to the big screen, from Neil Patrick Harris to Mila Kunis to Zach Galifianakis. Segel offers his aid in more ways than one as well. He essentially spearheaded this entire Muppets renaissance, even going so far as to co-write the screenplay.

One could argue that December is not really the fall still but while looking ahead, I see nothing wrong with looking even a little further past that at the same time. While there are many December releases to get excited about, there is one above them all that I am most drawn to. I’ve never read the THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO but I have seen all three of the Swedish films that were adapted from the Steig Larsson series. Ordinarily, I am not a fan of foreign language films being redone in English for mass market appeal but those films are not usually directed by the man behind THE SOCIAL NETWORK, David Fincher. And from the looks of the trailers, it seems to me that Fincher isn’t the least bit concerned about mass appeal. Rather, he seems intent on keeping it dark and authentic. Just in time for the holidays, no less ...

There are oodles of other movies coming, 100+ between now and the close of the year. A great deal of them will be covered in my upcoming TIFF coverage but here is a rundown of the rest for you: Director Steven Soderbergh kills off several Oscar nominees in CONTAGION; one of the most loved animated films of all time, THE LION KING, returns to theatres for a limited 3D run; Taylor Lautner tries really hard to be a big boy in the thriller, ABDUCTION; Daniel Craig plays creepy house with now wife, Rachel Weisz, in Jim Sheridan's DREAM HOUSE; Anna Faris recycles old boyfriends in WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER?; Hugh Jackman takes on robot boxing in REAL STEAL; the world gets a FOOTLOOSE remake it never wanted; Johnny Depp goes back to the world of Hunter S. Thompson in THE RUM DIARY; Michelle Williams gets her Monroe on in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN; Harold & Kumar return for a third trip in A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS; Clint Eastwood takes on Hoover in J. EDGAR, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and potential love interest, Armie Hammer; Martin Scorsese goes family and 3D with HUGO; oh, and I think there should be another TWILIGHT mess in there somewhere.

Stay tuned for Black Sheep's TIFF preview next weekend and the holiday movie preview will bow near the end of November. In the meantime, bon cinema!

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BAD TEACHER

Written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg

Directed by Jake Kasdan

Starring Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch

and Justin Timberlake

Elizabeth Halsey: I think that movies are the new books.

The movies offer a long line of great educators to draw inspiration from. There’s Edward James Olmos in STAND AND DELIVER; Morgan Freeman in LEAN ON ME; and even Michelle Pfeiffer in DANGEROUS MINDS. And while that last example might seem a bit of a stretch, she is still infinitely more admirable than Cameron Diaz in BAD TEACHER. In fact, Diaz’s first month of class curriculum consists entirely of watching these three films so that she can sleep at her desk after downing a shot of Jack first thing every morning.

Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, a man-eating, money-grubbing cheat who will say and do anything necessary to ensure she is very well taken care of. Just when she thinks she is set to retire from teaching and marry rich, she is promptly dumped and forced to head back to school for another year. Her new goal is to buy herself some new breasts in hopes of landing an even dumber, richer man than her previous fiancé. BAD TEACHER is pretty light on plot; essentially a group of teachers co-exist at school for the duration of a year and hijinks ensue. Fortunately, these teachers are made up of an incredibly amusing cast of funny people, from Justin Timberlake as Elizabeth’s naïve, new love interest with deep family pockets and very little going on upstairs to Jason Segel as Elizabeth’s obviously better-suited mate, whom she must learn to lower her standards for, as he is just gym teacher after all. It is Lucy Punch who gets the “Teacher of the Year” award though as Elizabeth’s goody-goody nemesis with emotional issues from across the hall.

Director, Jake Kasdan, isn’t kidding around with BAD TEACHER. Elizabeth is a pretty bad person altogether; her badness as a teacher, a mere offshoot of her essentially nasty core. Diaz does bad disturbingly well though, making summer school this year suddenly very cool.

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DESPICABLE ME

Written by Ken Daurio

Directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud

Voices by Steve Carrell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand and Kristen Wiig

Gru: Good night, sleep tight.  Don’t let the bed bugs bite … because there are literally thousands of them … and there’s probably something in your closet too.

You’ve gotta love an imagined world where there are evil super villains lurking around stealing things like pyramids and what not right from under the world’s noses.  Arguably, super villains exist in our world but the consequences of their dastardly plots are  little too real for me.  Someone who wants to shrink the moon and hold it ransom though so he can be the biggest, baddest super villain in the world though – now that’s my kinda guy.  Or at least he would be if he weren’t trapped in such a predictable, hollow plot and bogged down by such tired, unfunny dialogue.

Gru is despicable.  As he is the center of his own universe, from his point of view, he is DESPICABLE ME.  Voiced with a pretty sturdy Russian American accent by Steve Carrell, Gru is so evil he pops kids’ balloons after he blows them up for them (gasp!) and freezes the long line of people waiting for their lattes at a local coffee shop so he can go to the front of the line.  I’m shaking in fear here.  What he does next is actually pretty gross when you think about it.  He adopts three little girls so that they can bring a shipment of cookies to his new nemesis, Vector, who is evil with “both direction and magnitude” and voiced delightfully by Jason Segel.  The cookies are really robots though and are designed to steal the shrink ray Gru needs for his moon heist.

In a not at all surprising turn of events, Gru, a man who is supposed to embody evil, finds himself caring for these adorable little girls.  When the girls’ dance recital poses a conflict with his moon heist, you can almost piece together every little lesson still to be learned.  Family films do not have to be complex or present a true face of evil to make their point but they have to try a little harder than this to remain original.  Instead, DESPICABLE ME almost ends up living up to its name and leaves you with little more than a few funny moments and some pretty awesome little minion characters.  Those guys made the movie!  Too bad it wasn’t about them.

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GET HIM TO THE GREEK

Written and Directed by Nicolas Stoller

Starring Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Elizabeth Moss and Sean Combs

In director, Nicolas Stoller’s first film, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, North American audiences were formally introduced to Russell Brand, a British comedic sensation. Brand played rocker, Aldous Snow, the man responsible for stealing the title character from leading man, Jason Segel. You are supposed to hate this guy considering what he did to our quite lovable protagonist but there is just something about him that keeps you from ever getting there. Maybe it’s the seemingly uncontrollable vulgarity that flows from his mouth every time he opens it or maybe it’s just the way he struts around in his sister’s skinny jeans as if he were some sort of hyper-sexualized chicken. Whatever it is, it works.

It works so well that Stoller decided to focus his second directorial effort, GET HIM TO THE GREEK, with Brand’s Aldous as the central character. Aldous is now completely washed up and off the wagon once again. There is still hope though. Young music biz keener, Aaron Green, has decided to restage a famous concert Aldous once put on at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in order to miraculously awaken a dying music industry and save Aldous’s career. Both are a pretty tall order but anything is possible in the crazy world of rock ‘n’ roll and Stoller is banking on you knowing that in order to buy his movie. Aaron must get Aldous to the Greek on time but somehow, things go awry.

As comedic as Brand and Hill are together (complimented perfectly by refreshing turns from Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss and Diddy himself, Sean Combs), GET HIM TO THE GREEK is far too stepped in convention to be truly raucous. The jokes are crass and definitely funny but Stoller tries too hard to come up with the most outlandish rock star obstacles possible to deter them from their destination. When they’re crazy, it’s crazy. When they have lulls though, so do we. With this kind of set up, you should never want the twosome to get where they’re going. In this case, I wanted them to get there a good day earlier than they were supposed to.

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