pete-wiley Reviews

Sex and the City 2 (2010)

Cliché and emptiness: packaged in a box too big for its contents

[3/10 · 31 May 2010]

Even as a fan of the HBO series and the first movie, I couldn't get past the sloppy dialogue, rampant cliché (even for SATC standards), and frustrating predictability of this truly amateurish and asinine film. I don't call the flick asinine because of its characters or content (some level of laughable drama and superficiality is to be expected) but rather because the sheer unimaginativeness of it all: the drab, been-there-before lines, and most of all, the truly embarrassing West Meets Middle East triteness. It was as if a freshman producer had googled "things that can go wrong when 40-something neophytes visit Abu Dhabi" and then churned out a film based on the search results. I won't provide spoilers, but suffice it to say that Murphy's Law of traveling chic New Yorkers in the UAE holds true--but would you really expect anything different? Most frustrating was the film's length: a good hour longer than it ought to be, the film begins in earnest with a wedding scene that accomplishes nothing in terms of dramatic effect, but takes a great deal of time to trudge through. The viewer feels like he has eaten enough appetizers to fill him up that he doesn't even want to see -- let alone eat -- the course that comes next. Indeed, the film's structure feels so unbalanced and ambitious that even the most devout fan of SATC is eager to hear Parker's hideously sentimental (and oddly expositorial) closing line come, just as a sign that the torture is over.

There is one admirable scene between Davis and Nixon on the challenge of motherhood and career balance, and "Mr. Big" delivers a respectable performance. But otherwise, save this afterthought of a movie for a Tuesday night $1 rental over some cheap wine. That's about all it's worth.

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

Quirky Premise, Clunky Execution

[6/10 · 10 November 2009]

Watching Grant Heslov's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" was tantamount to staring at a stick of dynamite - for 93 minutes - that never exploded. All the critical mass of a quirky, eccentric comedy (i.e., an able cast, a political pseudo-relevance) seemed to be undercut by clunky writing, tacky 'Watch people fall down, get run over, and laugh' stunts, and a painfully disjointed plot which can barely be deemed a plot at all. Rather, the movie featured more of a direction: an ill-defined, ill-conceived mission toward which two characters (Clooney's Lyn Cassady and McGregor's Bob Wilton) floated. The problem with the loose plot development, in this case, is that Clooney's chemistry with McGregor feels forced and their connection in the film equally contrived. The film was peppered with flashback (to which Bridges and Spacey owe the majority of their on-screen time) which jettisoned any chance the viewer had with feeling an investment toward the central story or its characters. In fact, the film stumbles from character to character so often that the viewer is caught juggling them under the central story arc -- and we never really care about most of them in the first place.

"The Men Who Stare at Goats" allows for some laughs and some admirable situational ironies. But don't expect the brilliance and subtlety of "The Big Lebowski" or "American Beauty."