Garden State: It’s in it

May 31, 2010 By 1 Comment

Culminating the recent stretch of graduation/high school/transition period movies reviewed with the best film of the ‘Your whole life is ahead of you, but what do you do?’ genre I’ve seen.


Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)

Garden State was the first movie I ever loved.  It was the first film I remember seeing that challenged my notions of what films could do, the first that really made me forget I was watching a movie and think I was seeing someone’s life unfold in front of me.  For those reasons, it will always retain a special place in my collection, not to mention a spot very high on my movie ranking.

Zach Braff drew solid reviews for writing, directing, and starring in this understated picture.  He plays Andrew Largeman, an emotionally blank, little-known actor who, at the age of 25, hasn’t been home in nine years.  That changes when he receives a phone call from his father Gideon (Ian Holm) telling him his mother drowned in a bathtub.  Though it’s clear from the start that something’s not quite right between those two, Andrew returns home.  Yet, possibly because his mother’s disability that contributed to her death was partially Andrew’s fault, the funeral doesn’t provoke much sadness in him.

Strongly sedated by a host of drugs his father made him take from the age of nine, Andrew’s life upon returning home has no meaning for him.  He acts so catatonic that the only roles he’s recently been offered are of mentally challenged people.  When he meets up with former friends who haven’t seen him in so long, he doesn’t seem to care that they don’t notice how boring the interactions are to him.

His friends, by outward appearances, aren’t being productive with their lives either.  Mark (an impressive Peter Sarsgaard) still lives at home at 26 and supplements his grave-digging income with duplicitous but rather shrewd methods.  Another made a ton of money off a clever invention, with the result being that he’s never been so bored.  Andrew’s friends also appear more interested in pitching movie ideas to Andrew than learning about what’s happened in his life for the last decade (shown most clearly with a hilarious interaction between Andrew and a friendly cop).  “I like being unimpressive,” Mark drawls, “I sleep better.”  But, as Andrew slowly perceives, they still enjoy life and care about people around them, two things he’s has forgotten how to do.

The one person who draws this out of him is Sam (Natalie Portman), a free spirit he meets in a doctor’s office waiting room.  She doesn’t have much depth to her, but this movie gets away with that; the focus remains with Andrew, and that’s fine.  Their courtship is sweet and innocent; you can see Sam’s love in the way she says “Shut up” to Andrew at one point in her house or wipes away his first tear in ages in a quietly moving scene in a bathtub.  For a while I was disappointed at the ease with which Sam and Andrew were drawn together, but it no longer bothers me.  It’s one of those things you have to accept; if you can’t, you won’t like the movie.  It works for me because a) Braff and Portman have such chemistry, and b) the movie uses the relationship to develop its storyline and complicate Andrew’s character—it’s not just the end of the line.

As Andrew begins to open up to Sam and his friends and see the value of his life, the movie is filled with delightful scenes, such as when Sam and Andrew go for a late-night swim with some friends.  Andrew can’t swim (“there’s a few normal childhood activities I missed out on,” he says), prompting one of his friends to declare that he looks “like a wet beaver.”  As the others cavort in the pool, Sam joins Andrew in the shallow end, upon which they discuss what it means to realize for the first time that your childhood house is no longer your home and that you cannot recapture that feeling until you create your own family.

This is a particularly delicate subject for Andrew, whose family life was destroyed by an incident in his youth.  Angry at his mother’s constant depression and his family dynamics, he pushed her against a dishwasher when he was nine.  Because the door had become unlatched, she felt backwards on the open door and hit her head on the counter, paralyzing her from the waist down.  In response, he was medicated, then at sixteen sent away to a boarding school, after which he did not return home.

Is the reason for the icy relationship between Andrew and his father the former’s action or the latter’s inability to forgive?  Did the latter try to ignore the problem by having Andrew medicated and sent away, or did Andrew refuse to let his father into his world and tell him what was wrong with him?  To the movie’s credit, it doesn’t present simple answers to these questions.  Even after Andrew finally sits down and opens up the wounds with his father, it lets us draw our own conclusions.

Ultimately, what Andrew determines is that he’d rather be able to feel whatever emotions he has without them being suppressed—he’d rather live life to make memories and accept the negative moments when they come.  Though he might not be able to get his father to realize it, he’s aware that his family was never very happy, but their greater mistake was shutting him away.  “You and I are gonna be OK,” he tells his father in the scene that’s more the climax for me than the actual one.  “We may not be as happy as you always dreamed we would be, but for the first time let’s just allow ourselves to be whatever it is that we are…and that’ll be better.”

What makes this resonate so strongly is not just the convincing message, but also the truth that we understand that Andrew has changed because of what he’s experienced back home.  Braff strikes an excellent tone, capturing the approach that many people that age today bring to their lives.  As the film progresses, the spot-on scenes occur with more and more frqeuency, the actors (Braff, Portman, Sarsgaard) developing more and more depth.  Alert viewers will notice the several clever touches Braff the director adds to show what’s going on in Andrew’s mind—the opening scene, the writing on his chest, the faucets in the bathroom, etc.

I would have appreciated it if the hurt between Andrew and his father (a potentially fascinating character) was emphasized more, perhaps at the expense of some of the brief tangents the movie takes (or in addition to them; it’s not a long film).  A bit too much time is spent trying to make us laugh rather than think.  And the movie really should have ended about a minute before it actually did.  In your mind, envision the movie ending at the 1:34:29 mark and see whether you think the themes hit home stronger.

These flaws swim around in my head every now and then until I re-watch Garden State, upon which point I forget all of them and deem it better than I last remembered.  The genuine heart and intelligence that pervade the entire movie are what stay with me, and not only does everything feel appropriately connected together, it feels connected to my life.  That is what can make a movie overcome anything.

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Finding Forrester: Losing reality

May 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Rating: 2 stars (out of 4)


Finding Forrester is above all a shameless attempt to cash in on phony Hollywood sentimentality.  A distant cousin and knock-off of the infinitely superior Good Will Hunting, it runs on a weak script that provides little more than contrived situations and uninspiring characters.  Gus Van Sant, director of Hunting, can’t come close to saving it.

Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown), growing up in New York, is both a basketball star and talented writer.  He tries to keep his intellect hidden, confining his thoughts to notebooks.  William Forrester (Sean Connery) wrote one great novel and then became a reclusive hermit.  He spends part of his endless free time spying on the boys playing basketball near his apartment.  One day, Jamal takes a dare and sneaks into Forrester’s apartment, accidentally leaving behind his backpack in his haste to escape.  Before long, the two become friends, with Forrester helping Jamal with his writing.

This template has been done before, and Forrester adds nothing to the genre.  The Boo Radley persona of Connery’s character feels contrived to me, especially since we never really learn anything about him.  His relationship with Jamal is, naturally, the film’s center, but neither of the characters ever achieves a depth beyond that which you could have learned from a biographical sketch.  The film strives to equalize the two, rather than making Jamal dominate, but they’re both bland.  We’re supposed to believe that Forrester accepts his first friend in decades because he likes his writing, but that doesn’t come through—to me, he just seems bored.

Jamal, on the basis of his strong test scores, transfers to a white-bred prep school in Manhattan, where he feuds on the basketball court with an obnoxious student, flirts with a more appealing one, Claire, (Anna Paquin) and faces derision and slander from a teacher, Robert Crawford (F. Murray Abraham).  Not one of these storylines comes to a satisfying conclusion or enhances Jamal’s character in any way.  The punishment for Jamal’s sparring on the basketball court comes in the form of a free-throw shooting contest that just feels fake.  His relationship with Claire is straight out of screenwriting school and goes nowhere.  And giving Jamal an artificial villain, while drawing the battle lines in such black-and-white strokes, further erodes the film’s credibility.

Many critics compared the ending, where Forrester emerges from his seclusion to defend Jamal, to that of Scent of a Woman; I never made the connection in my mind, but regardless of whether you see a similarity, Pacino’s flick handled the situation much more smoothly.  Sure, the principal in Scent was a bit of a clown, but at least you could have made the argument that Chris O’Donnell’s decision, which Pacino was defending, was in fact the wrong one, which made things more interesting; furthermore, Pacino’s conclusive speech proved what his weekend with Chris had meant to him.  And the prep school moment in Scent was almost an after-effect: the true rising action in the film concerned Pacino’s relationship with Chris.  Jamal’s battle with Crawford, on the other hand, distracts from his relationship with Forrester and becomes the film’s centerpiece, but it neither illuminates his character nor complicates the film in any meaningful or provocative way.

Likewise, in comparisons with Good Will Hunting, Forrester makes all the wrong decisions.  The mentor and protégée in this movie are far less interesting than their Hunting counterparts, and Matt Damon (who, interestingly, has a cameo in this movie) did not have to battle any villains.  His job, with Robin Williams’s help, is to transform his life; Jamal’s task, apparently, is to prove his worth to snotty and curmudgeonly English professors.

Finding Forrester isn’t an awful movie.  But Mike Rich’s script too often produces lines that no one would say in real life, the actors don’t do enough to bring their characters to life, and almost every key moment feels forced.  We’re supposed to believe, for example, that a group of tough black street teenagers would be terrified of an old recluse living in an apartment?  Or that Forrester stopped writing because he didn’t like critics were inferring from the first book, even though it was widely praised?

Such questions are bothersome, but ultimately, the film fails because it tries to be a character study and falls short.  Jamal is far too balanced at the beginning to change much, leaving that burden to Forrester, but he’s shaded too thinly for us to care anyway.

I’m sure plenty of people like this movie.  I just didn’t buy most of Jamal’s interactions with Forrester, or the role of the arrogant professor at school, or most of the script.  Does that make Finding Forrester a bad movie?  You can decide that on your own.

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Fast Times at Ridgemont High: Well, that settles that

May 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)


There’s not a teen movie made after Fast Times at Ridgemont High that doesn’t owe its existence to it, and there hasn’t been one since that’s any better.  Fast Times captures the spirit of high school in ways that most movies about teenagers don’t even bother to try, which is just as well, since it’s probably already been done as well as possible.  Beyond that, Fast Times is far more substantive than it looks on the surface and gets better and better upon repeated viewings.

Writer Cameron Crowe went undercover in a high school for days to garner information for his book upon which the movie was based, and his depictions are scarily accurate.  The movie chronicles the lives of a few students at Ridgemont High, each with different hopes and fears but all cut from the same mold of insecurity and restlessness that strikes most teenagers.  Mark Ratner (Brian Backer) is a shy teddy bear, so naturally, as these things go, his close friend is the outrageous and pride-less Damone (Robert Romanus), who takes it upon himself to help Mark find a girl.  Brad (Judge Reinhold) is in love with his car, less so with his girlfriend or the fast food jobs among which he rotates all year long.  Stacey, Brad’s sister, (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Linda (Phoebe Cates) are preoccupied with their relationship issues, some fantasy, some so obvious that, sure enough, only they can’t see them.

Then there’s Jeff Spicoli, played in a career-breaking way by Sean Penn, a bleached-blond California surfer who “has been stoned since the third grade.”  It’s impossible to count the number of subsequent movie characters that have been based on Spicoli, but he is the real deal for a number of reasons: the writing and acting are fresh and funny, and he has a foil—history teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston).  Spicoli battles the buttoned-up Mr. Hand for the right to cut class, eat pizza, and even attend the end of year dance.  What makes Mr. Hand so memorable is that, on one hand, he reminds everyone of a teacher he’s had, and on another, he’s quirky enough to be unique.  You may have had poor grades read out loud if you were unlucky, but your class schedule probably hasn’t been ripped up in front of you.

One could not make a “teen movie” without a constant eye towards sex, but most of them nowadays treat it like a fun little game played by everyone and anyone with no real consequences.  And sure, Cates offers up the most frequently rewound topless scene among teenage males in cinematic history here, but note how both times Stacey has sex, she is clearly shown as uncomfortable and regrets it afterwards.  The second time leads to multiple disastrous consequences for her and Damone.

Furthermore, how many teen movies even bother to give their kids jobs?  In Fast Times, they are an integral part of students’ days, mainly because they scour their workplace for datable members of the opposite sex.  Aside from Brad’s misadventures, Stacey and Linda work as waitresses, Mark at a movie theater, and Damone as a concert ticket scalper, all in the same very-80s mall, making their interactions a maze of converging lines.

Above all, though, this movie is riotous.  Damone is responsible for the most quotable lines, usually in the course of his relationship advice to Mark.  If you don’t find his five-stage plan for winning over a girl (concluding words of wisdom: “When it comes to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.”) brilliant, then I can’t help you.  And that’s without mentioning Penn’s Spicoli, at whom you can laugh even though he’s not trying to be funny.  Seeing him coming to class shirt unbuttoned with a bagel stuck in his pants, or smiling coyly at Mr. Hand’s look of shock at his attendance one day, is priceless.

Above all, most of the teenagers are, simply, nice guys, which is all too rare nowadays.  Brad proves his worth late in the movie by helping his sister out of a delicate situation; Mark refuses to compromise his principles to get a girl; and you can root for Stacey because, despite her predilection for falling for bad boys, you know she’s a softie at heart.  Even Damone comes around by the end and admits his flaws.  To create such vivid, interesting people that are compassionate at heart speaks to Crowe’s talents—and foreshadows Jerry Maguire.

The point of Fast Times is not to conclude with a conventional climax.  It runs through the school year, but it understands that the character’s lives don’t end there.  Some of the relationships may achieve closure, but the underlying tone suggests that they’re just as likely to fluctuate in the future as they did throughout the previous year.  My opinion of the movie’s quality won’t suffer the same fate.

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St. Elmo’s Fire: Please tell me the real world’s not like this

May 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Rating: 1.5 stars (out of 4)


There’s probably no more definitive “Brat Pack” movie than St. Elmo’s Fire, which looks as though it’s tried to find screen time for as many of them as possible.  Yet, in terms of quality, one would be much better off locating The Breakfast Club, About Last Night or, really, just about anything else Blockbuster has to offer, for Fire will provide nothing more than some vague nostalgia trip that one might feel from seeing 20somethings pine after their college days.  Pretty much everyone involved in this atrocity exhibition has been better somewhere else, including director Joel Schumacher (A Time to Kill, The Client), which is both uplifting and discouraging to consider as the film plays.

A true ensemble piece with no main character, Fire chronicles a group of seven friends who have just graduated college at Georgetown and enter the “real world” without a clue of how to handle it.  The back cover does a solid job of explaining each person’s role (indeed, it’s more promising than the movie itself).  Billy (Rob Lowe) is the only father of the group, but he acts as though he’s 100% single.  He’s being pursued (sort of) by the shy Wendy (Mare Willingham), whose college roommate Jules (Demi Moore) discourages the interest but otherwise has her own life to screw up.  Meanwhile, Leslie (Ally Sheedy) tries to maintain a relationship with Alec (Judd Nelson), who makes astounding lies about his level of commitment.  Finally, Kirby (Emilio Estevez) and Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) room together and deal with their own separate issues with love.

Many of their problems are intertwined with the others’, which forms an intriguing promise that unfortunately is wholly botched.  The film does a lot of telling, too little showing, and asks viewers to fill in gaps.  We can’t get involved with the characters because, though we hear what they’re going through, we never experience it.  We don’t see why Kirby likes the older woman he knew from college, Dale, (Andie MacDowell) or why Wendy likes Billy, and so we don’t care what happens with them.  Everything seems to come out of nowhere, such as Kevin’s sudden interest in Alec’s girl Leslie (after the film has done an amateurish job of giving him blatant anti-love dialogue), Billy’s random dinner with Wendy’s family, or his late move to New York that requires a group hug-fest as he boards the train.

Fire, to its downfall, is filled with so many scenes that, by bearing no semblance to reality, are impossible to relate to.  There’s a bizarre casualness to Billy’s DUI accident at the film’s opening, which gets brushed aside because the victim has a crush on him.  For his part, Kirby crashes a party Dale is attending, soaking wet from stalking her in the rain and looking patently absurd, and yet she talks to him normally and takes him back to her apartment, without requiring any kind of explanation, as though that sort of thing happens all the time.  There’s also a horrendous scene at the group’s hangout spot (St. Elmo’s bar, naturally), where Billy’s wife intentionally takes another man there to irritate him, causing him to declare that all baby boys should be neutered (?!), before Billy and the missus reunite with a “passionate” embrace in front of a gathering crowd.  Awful, awful, awful.  Nothing in that sequence made sense for any of the characters; it was all contrived plot points, and those didn’t even feel real.

No conflicts in this movie are dealt with in the manner that they should have been.  Take Kevin’s interest in his best friend’s girl.  Why and when did he start liking her?  We have no idea.  Was he feeling any kind of internal conflict or hesitation about stealing Alec’s possible fiancé?  Beats me.  Are we supposed to believe that he betrayed his friend?  Who knows.  And then afterwards, he and Alec don’t actually discuss the matter, as would happen in a mature and intelligent movie; they just have a couple of predictable, yawn-inducing fights and then kiss and make up for no apparent reason (other than the make sure the gang is back together by the end).

That also applies for the supposed “conflict” Wendy feels about her father wanting her marry someone she doesn’t like.  We never hear any kind of sophisticated thoughts about this, just a couple of pat lines and then the inevitable decision that we couldn’t care less about.  Likewise, though everyone seems very concerned about the behavior of Wendy, Jules, and to some extent Kevin, no one matters to do anything about Billy (witness the aforementioned DUI that bothers his friends less than him losing a job).  His behavior towards Jules in one scene in a car is inappropriate, but we can’t really be expected to buy her pain.  When she’s the selfish head case that she is, hearing her say “You break my heart, Billy.  But then again, you break everyone’s heart” with a sad-puppy face rings utterly hollow.

God, this movie annoyed the snot out of me.  Even the title and tagline don’t make sense!  The group hardly ever hangs out at St. Elmo’s (not even close to as important as the bar in About Last Night), and what’s up with “You can always count on your friends. [Even when one sleeps with your girlfriend two hours after you break up?] Don’t ever let the fire go out.” [??]

The actors, for their part, provide expressions that are universally overcooked and all seem vaguely off-target, further hurting our ability to become invested in their lives.  Since most of them have done better work elsewhere, perhaps the greatest blame lies with Schumacher.  Estevez and Nelson were better in The Breakfast Club, Lowe and Moore in Last Night.  Only the ever-adorable Sheedy gets it all right—her acting, as was the case in Breakfast, still seems achingly genuine, from the heart, and all her own.  (They’ve all looked better too, especially Lowe, saddled with effeminate make-up and an earring, and Moore, hiding her attractiveness behind an awful hairstyle and color that doesn’t work for her.)

By the time of the overwrought conclusions to the storylines (Jules’s attempted suicide, Kirby’s goodbye to his girl), the viewer will likely have lost the energy to be offended.

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Dazed and Confused: Great memories that you may not remember

May 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Rating: 3 stars (out of 4)

When I finished Dazed and Confused the first time, I didn’t really know what I thought of it.  But after some reflection and a second viewing, I understand its goals and can see how skillfully it achieves them.  Dazed follows nobody’s rules.  It’s flawed, unconventional, funny, and completely outrageous.  That’s the best way to describe it: completely outrageous.  It revels in its absurdity and takes great risks, more than a few of which work.  It doesn’t try to mitigate its outrageousness in the hopes of eliciting a bigger audience, but it knows what it’s doing.

Written and directed by Richard Linklater and starring a host of oh-yeah-I know-them actors, Dazed has virtually no structure, which is part of its charm.  It’s the last day of high school, 1976 (the movie was made in 1993).  Students, naturally, have big plans for commemorating the occasion, from terrorizing freshmen to throwing parties away from unsuspecting parents’ eyes to finding one last hook-up, and the film races almost chaotically from event to event, person to person.  There’s very little character development, not that we care, because there are so many characters that we can’t possibly get to know them well.

O’Bannion (Ben Affleck, lol) and his gang of seniors target freshmen to haze, in particular Mitch (Wiley Wiggins).  David (Matthew McConaughey, before he got obnoxious) is on the lookout for freshman girls, even though he’s well past his glory days.  Michelle (Milla Jovovich) and other senior track stars plan out-of-control methods of humiliating the up-and-comers.  Meanwhile, Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London) has no interest in signing the affirmation his football coaches are forcing on him that he will not do drugs, drink alcohol, or engage in risky sexual behavior.  I mean, hell, why play football in high school without those things?

There are other characters, but don’t bother spending too much time trying to figure them all out.  You’ll soon understand the designations, understand how the freshmen spend their days in fear of getting spanked by the seniors and plot ways of getting revenge, understand how the parents are predictably clueless about everything going on, and understand what everyone’s point is: to make the end of the school year as memorable as it can be.  That is, as the tagline says, if they can remember it afterwards.

The film follows an episodic structure with several memorable moments.  The best occurs when one popular student, Slater (Rory Cochrane), plans to throw a party at his house once his parents leave on vacation.  Unfortunately, the man delivering the kegs shows up early, when his parents are still home, forcing Slater to tell him that, hey, sorry, you’ve got the wrong house, buddy.  But that’s too late; “unpack your bags, honey; we’re not going anywhere” his father says (Slater’s reaction to which is perfect), and there is a succession of hilarious scenes of students showing up at the house and running away, appalled, when the father answers the door.

These being resourceful high schoolers, though, someone will find a way to gather enough support for a party elsewhere, one that features climbing up a water tower, hopeless boys trying to impress girls, hopeless boys trying to fight obnoxious bullies, and lots of drinking and drugs.  (Note: If none of these things appeal to you, don’t watch Dazed and Confused.  But that’s unlikely.)

Dazed may not be Fast Times at Ridgemont High—the characters are less distinctive and it doesn’t have the heart of Cameron Crowe’s movie, which did a better job of presenting kids that deep down were good people.  But anyone who’s seen Dazed will be able to quote its lines—“If I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself”—especially those that are delivered with suave coolness by McConaughey: “You should ditch the two geeks you’re with and come with us, but we’ll worry about that later”; and, of course, the classic: “That’s what I like about these high schoolers—I get older, they stay the same age.”

All in all, anyone’s who lived through high school should be able to relate to something.

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The Graduate: Entering the real world with a bang…sort of

May 26, 2010 By 4 Comments

Apologies for the protracted delay from posting that our other contributors have more than made up for.  I will return to the fold with a series of reviews of films and music that have some connection to the theme of graduation, the event that has occupied my time recently.


Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4)

The Graduate was recommended to me as a classic American film for years, having launched the career of Dustin Hoffman and (supposedly) portrayed the plight of an endless number of post-collegiate guys.  Thus, I was quite surprised to learn that it’s not about much more than a kid who has an affair with the mother of the girl his parents want him to date.  That sums up a large part of its appeal…and limitations: it is an unusual and often wonderfully funny story, but inconsistent and not nearly as dramatic as I half-expected when playing it.

After an opening scene to which Garden State paid homage, The Graduate starts with Ben Braddock (Hoffman) sleepwalking his way through his own post-grad, welcome-home party.  Desperately seeking relief from the endless parade of, you know, grown-ups, he hides out in his room, only to be found by Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), a family friend who needs a ride home.  Ben, in his fidgety, klutzy manner, tries to impress upon Mrs. Robinson the foolishness of such an idea, but she insists.

The following scenes at Mrs. Robinson’s house are some of the most famous in movie history, and they bring out the best in The Graduate.  Everything Mrs. Robinson requests sounds so innocent, unless you place it in context of everything else.  Hoffman’s pitch-perfect approach to the material makes Ben immensely likable without being remarkable in any way; he’s sharper than he projects, but he can’t find the right words or actions to counter Mrs. Robinson’s advances.  When Ben discovers that Mr. Robinson is due home shortly, the scene takes on almost a Shakespearean element of humor, and I applaud the movie for not ruining it by having Mr. Robinson catch Ben.

It was about the point where Ben decided to meet Mrs. Robinson at a hotel that I realized the movie was not going to ever strive for the dramatic setting I anticipated.  That isn’t to say it’s superficial, just that its primary purpose is always to make you laugh.  And it does that well…in spurts, particularly at the scenes at the hotel where Ben plans his trysts.  As he stammers his way through his room request, tries to explain why he has no luggage, or calls Mrs. Robinson from across the lobby, you want to feel sorry for the guy, even though he’s about to do something that would make American Pie-era teenagers tremendously jealous.

He wants to talk about deeper meaning, but she stays clammed up—a dynamic that, given their entrenchment in their positions and the minor difficulty we have in believing that he would want a conversation, grows tiresome.  When they finally do consummate their relationship, he’s really in trouble, because his parents are trying to set him up with…Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine.

After those two start going out, it’s obvious that she’ll find out about her mother.  But even before then, their interactions are awkward; I’m not sure I see the meaning of Ben taking her out to a show with girls dancing provocatively, or why they kiss for the first time after she runs out.  Here, Ben’s lack of social skills makes it hard to accept the attraction.  Mrs. Robinson’s could be chalked up to boredom—with her marriage or life in general—but there is no such explanation here, and this time we need one.

Ben decides one night to bring her to the same hotel where he brought her mother (what is this guy thinking?) and there is a hilarious moment when everyone there recognizes him and addresses him by the name he had previously provided to them.  Given his ineptitude, you know what’s coming, and when the truth comes out, Elaine dumps Ben, and for good measure, the Robinsons leave town—though not before Mrs. Robinson can tell him to stay away from her daughter.  Towards the end, the movie gets not only even more implausible but also a bit muddled.  It’s understandable, for example, that Mr. Robinson would be so furious at Ben, but his wife’s feigned anger rings hollow.  Likewise, the ending feels rushed and inconclusive, with moments like the attempted strangulation and Christ-like posing jolting the tone in scatterbrained directions.

The most enduring image of the movie for me is not the famous line “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” but rather the unforgettable shot of Ben sulking around in the enormous wet suit his parents make him wear for a pool party.  The imagery of an isolated and misunderstood young man, breathing Darth Vader-like from the inside of the suit, staring out dimly through the foggy eye holes as he does someone else’s bidding, is unmistakable.  That’s where the strength of The Graduate lies, but it’s also where it fails to extend itself.  I would have rather it played off this idea more strongly, but the film is still worth watching, if primarily for the cultural context and humor.  And let me just say that if my parents want to set me up with someone who looks like Katherine Ross now that I’m out of college, things will not be nearly this complicated.

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Parks and Recreation – “Freddy Spaghetti” – Essential comedy only

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

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Parks and Rec has been the most consistent and reliable of NBC’s comedies this year. So, did the finale hold up the show’s standard of greatness, or did it crack under the finale pressure? Read my take after the break.

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Community – “Pascal’s Triangle Revisited” – Romantic intrigue is a giant cookie

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

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Spoilerific reviews of the finale of one of my favorite seasons of television in awhile after the jump

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Eva Cassidy – beauty, tragedy, and some incredible covers

May 23, 2010 By 1 Comment

eva_cassidy02I’ll be completely honest: Most of the reasons I write for Earn This or any other publication are selfish reasons: I love being able to express myself and see my writing out there and get comments and feel like an expert.

But there are moments when I feel like at least a small portion of my work provides some service. For example, I feel like I’ve done the world some good by sharing my love of Relient K, a band that is greatly under-appreciated and that more people would love if RK wasn’t pigeonholed as a “Christian” band.

Today is another example of me actually feeling like I’m doing the world some good by sharing my love for maybe the most expressive singer of the past quarter century. I don’t have to do too much writing here because her career is pretty thoroughly chronicled on the sites run by her family and a small group of passionate fans. Plus, her music speaks for itself.

Eva Cassidy was a singer from Maryland who died of melanoma only a few years into her professional recording career, before she made it big. One of her albums caught a bit of posthumous fire across the pond, but in America, she remains largely forgotten.

The Washington Post — who covered her because she mostly performed around the DC area, not far from my hometown — wrote not long after her death in 1996 that “she could sing anything — folk, blues, pop, jazz, R&B, gospel — and make it sound like it was the only music that mattered.” Pretty succinct, if you ask me.

Cassidy was destined to never make it big because of her adherence to a more traditional set of musics. Her most popular and most moving songs were slow and mellow and almost painfully beautiful. She covered dozens of blues songs but also a small sample of pop songs. Many of these recordings are nothing more than grainy recordings of her singing with an acoustic guitar, but her voice just knocks the songs out of the park.

You can read a bit more about her life and growth as an artist — including her overwhelming stage fright early in her career — by googling her name. Her official page run by her parents at www.evacassidy.com is a good starting point for background info.

But, honestly, it’s all about her music. I highly recommend her moving pop song covers. A few favorites:

If you like what you hear, give some of her less ubiquitous tunes a listen, too.

Filed Under: Music

Relient K retrospective: Watch the glint in my eye shine off the spring in my step

May 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

relient-k

This is a a reflection on Relient K’s career so far. It’s broken down in to eight parts.

Relient K (2000) – 2 stars

The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek (2001) – 3 stars

Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right (2003) – 5 stars

Mmhmm (2004) – 4.5 stars

Five Score and Seven Years Ago (2007) – 4 stars

The Bird and the Bee Sides (2008) – 3.5 stars

Forget and Not Slow Down (2009) – 4 stars

Forget and Not Slow Down, re-interpreted – 4.5 stars

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: , ,
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