Movie review by Greg Carlson

While Steven Soderbergh continues to postpone his self-proclaimed “retirement” to the surprise of absolutely nobody who goes to the movies, “Magic Mike” marks another curious title in the director’s eclectic filmography. Also known as the male stripper movie loosely inspired by star Channing Tatum’s own experiences, “Magic Mike” echoes any number of thematic concerns Soderbergh expressed in “The Girlfriend Experience” in 2009. Tatum’s ambitious, entrepreneurial Mike is at one point denied a loan at the bank despite the thick stacks of bills he flashes from his briefcase, but Soderbergh is less concerned with making a statement about current economic hardship than he is with sketching the oft-told version of the American Dream in which a little talent and a lot of ambition results in a happy ending.

The throwback Warner Bros. logo opening the film indicates Soderbergh’s desired vintage, hedonist vibe, in which the all-male revue at Tampa’s Xquisite keeps the party going long after the spotlights cool. As club owner Dallas, Matthew McConaughey douses his employees with the same amount of snake oil he splashes on his female clientele. The actor puts his drawl into overdrive, and Dallas is the closest McConaughey has come to reprising the sleazy cadences that defined his breakout performance as Mike Wooderson in “Dazed and Confused” almost twenty years ago.

Alongside articles on the success of “Magic Mike” with gay men, any number of web-based reports suggests that females in the audiences far outnumber males. In spite of the allure of decadence, debauchery, and hard bodies on display, the film sticks with the MPAA rating system’s conventional expectation prohibiting significant male full-frontal nudity in R designated releases. It might be a stretch to claim that “Magic Mike” is wholesome, but one of the movie’s underlying themes is the familiar conceit that eroticized dancing for money is something done as a means to an end and not an end in itself (see “Flashdance” for a classic example).

As a filmmaker, Soderbergh has demonstrated a level of competency and consistency aligning him more with studio workhorses of Hollywood’s golden age than with the stylistically identifiable auteur directors who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the legendary Michael Curtiz, Soderbergh can deliver the goods in multiple genres and with varying budgets – and he often does so at the rate of more than one movie per year. Strong with performers, plot, and pace, Soderbergh is also well-known for his hands-on technical expertise, photographing his own work under the pseudonym Peter Andrews and often editing as Mary Ann Bernard.

Even dramas about dancing are required to deliver the choreographed goods, and Soderbergh stages the routines with confidence and zeal. The various numbers, built around familiar fantasies, include what may be the summum bonum of male erotic dancing: the stripper/cop confusion trope, recently featured and parodied to perfection in the “Pier Pressure” episode of “Arrested Development.” Tatum’s moves may not exactly rival Gene Kelly’s footwork, but the actor’s athleticism, charisma, and sense of humor all combine to provide him with his strongest vehicle to date.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Pixar has passed the Bechdel Test before, perhaps most notably in “The Incredibles,” a movie that still contends with problematic gender norms and stereotyping, but “Brave” is the first of the studio’s features to place a female protagonist – and a mother-daughter relationship – at the very heart of the story. And while Pixar will likely never meet the track record of Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli (posting eight of nine films with a lead female character), hopefully “Brave” will mark the beginning of a period in which women in American animation are better represented on camera and behind it. The “creative differences” that initiated the ouster of original “Brave” story creator and director Brenda Chapman, who worked on the project for six years, serve as a telling reminder that the film industry still has a very long way to go.

Some hardliners have already criticized Merida’s station as a princess, but given the character’s refusal to acquiesce to arranged marriage, and the 10^th century setting in a fairytale Scotland teeming with magic, “Brave” deserves the dispensation that separates its heroine from the ranks of boy-crazy royals or royals-to-be in so many Disney movies. One imagines that many girls, and plenty of boys, will be captivated by the archery contest in which Merida applies a technicality in the clan rulebook to announce, “…I’ll be shooting for my own hand.” Featured prominently in the film’s trailers, this sequence pays homage to the parallel scene in “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” and is staged with the same kind of lovely detail and charm that accompanied the moment in the classic 1938 swashbuckler.

Complementing Merida’s considerable skill with a bow and arrow, “Brave” also imbues the character and plot with echoes of Atalanta, the fierce warrior of Greek mythology who, after being abandoned at birth because she was not born male, was initially raised by a she-bear. “Brave” avoids overt pronouncements on the subject of gender disappointment, and King Fergus very clearly adores and encourages his first-born child, but with the inclusion of a competition in which Merida is a prize to be won, the film imitates the tale of Atalanta’s famous footrace. More intriguing yet is the link to the legend of Gelert, one of folklore’s most chilling and heartbreaking tales. The “Brave” variation cancels the unthinkable cruelty of Gelert’s martyrdom, but Merida’s horror at the thought of placing her mother in harm’s way resonates with the kind of guilt unique to the bonds of family.

As “Brave” unfolds, Queen Elinor emerges alongside Merida as a character of substantial dimension, and the depiction of the regal matriarch in her ursine form is a feat of technical brilliance that rivals the stunning singularity of Merida’s flaming orange curls. Initially, Merida’s privileged point-of-view serves to paint her mother as a strict killjoy and barrier to long-term happiness, but once the result of Merida’s foolhardy indiscretion occurs, both mother and daughter begin to alter their previous behavior, working together to prevent a backfired spell from turning into a permanent curse. Not everyone will applaud the movie’s conventional eagerness to neatly restore balance to a traditional portrait of social harmony and equilibrium, but keep in mind that at least the happily-ever-after of “Brave” does not include wedding bells.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

When Ridley Scott disingenuously began claiming that “Prometheus” was not, in fact, a prologue to his much loved and imitated “Alien,” the desired result within the community of fanatics (to whom these things matter a great deal) was a steep increase in curiosity about the nature of his big-budget, large-scale return to science fiction. Whether prequel, reboot, or extension, “Prometheus” certainly exists in the same world as “Alien,” even if several differences and inconsistencies have raised the ire of the most intense geeks. Without tempered expectations, however, “Prometheus” unsurprisingly fails to live up to the promise of its mother – one of the tightest Old Dark House movies ever made, and alongside “Blade Runner,” Scott’s finest achievement as a filmmaker.

“Prometheus” is not the work of a hungry auteur as much as it is a played-safe recapitulation that loots the memorable riches of “Alien.” Of course, the asinine merger of the franchise with the “Predator” series was like putting sardines in a milkshake. Complete with a calm, erudite android, a crazy quilt crew introduced in stasis/hyper-sleep, a visit to a mysterious planet, a derelict spaceship, a chamber filled with ominous containers, sinister corporate overtones, aggressive monsters, flamethrowers, extreme body horror, iconography indebted to H.R. Giger’s biomechanical designs, and narrow shuttle escapes, “Prometheus” shares an awful lot with the 1979 classic. What it does not share is much interest in cultivating an air of discovery, and the metaphysical yearning expressed by central archeologist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) is somehow far less compelling than whatever motivated the keener instincts of Ellen Ripley.

While the plotting of “Prometheus” mimics “Alien,” many of the movie’s central thematic concerns dovetail with those present in “Blade Runner.” An obsession with the very essence of human creation informs both titles, and “Prometheus” quotes “Blade Runner” dialogue about meeting one’s maker more than once. Like Eldon Tyrell’s bottomless, Frankensteinian hubris at the achievement of genetically engineering replicants that are “more human than human,” Peter Weyland sees robot David as a son, inspiring a jealous reaction from Charlize Theron’s Meredith Vickers, who ends a scene with “father” enunciated in a manner that echoes Roy Batty’s famous “fucker/father” epithet to Tyrell. As the “Lawrence of Arabia”-loving David, Michael Fassbender has described drawing on Sean Young’s Rachael, and the actor’s presence is the highlight of the movie.

Beyond Scott’s self-borrowing, “Prometheus” claims an assortment of influences. Original “Alien” screenwriter Dan O’Bannon freely admitted the breadth of his inspirations, and “Prometheus” is no less dependent upon some of the usual suspects. While a complete chronicle may be impossible to tally (see Govindini Murty’s impressive account for “The Atlantic”), John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” Mario Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires” (which in turn was based on Renato Pestriniero’s story “One Night of 21 Hours”), Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and several classic tales and myths that touch on the theme of obtaining something forbidden and paying for it (Prometheus, Faust, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and “Frankenstein”) form the beginning of a long list. Disappointingly, Scott’s film, in spite of the grandeur of its arresting visuals, cannot fully measure up to the allure of all these stimuli, hampered as it is by the frustrating folly of inexplicably illogical actions and mouthfuls of subpar dialogue.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A beautiful, wistful, half-real, half-imagined love affair between a pair of twelve-year-olds, “Moonrise Kingdom” is Wes Anderson’s seventh feature film and one of the finest movies of the year. Distilling nearly every one of the director’s principal thematic and stylistic concerns, “Moonrise Kingdom” matches the bittersweet blend of comedy and melancholy that surges through “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” while adding a commanding new chapter to Anderson’s impressive filmography. Set in 1965 on an Atlantic coast island called New Penzance, where the local church hosts a fully mounted production of Benjamin Britten’s “Noye’s Fludde” and a Khaki Scout troop hones its outdoor survival skills in the rugged terrain, “Moonrise Kingdom” rapidly establishes both its peculiar, singular perspective and a well-supplied outpost in the viewer’s heart.

Using the classic motif of a gathering storm to hint at the tumultuous emotional upheavals experienced by the protagonists, Anderson and co-screenwriter Roman Coppola open up “Moonrise Kingdom” to take advantage of the tempestuous relationship between island dwellers and unpredictable, unstoppable nature. Anderson has always expertly situated his characters within settings that operate as fully formed personalities, and the scale of “Moonrise Kingdom” is simultaneously microcosmic and expansive. Anderson has previously acknowledged the inspirational allure of E.L. Konigsburg’s “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” and like his closer echo depicting Margot and Richie Tenenbaum running away from home to hide out in the public archives, the inciting action of “Moonrise Kingdom” arises from the mutual decision of Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) to flee their circumstances for a new life together.

Once again, Anderson’s fastidious eye for detail envisions frames filled with glorious reminders of the past, some concrete (like the 45 of Francoise Hardy’s “Le temps de l’amour” spinning on a portable record player in a beguiling and awesome dance interlude) and some invented (like the beautifully illustrated covers of Suzy’s library books with titles including “Shelly and the Secret Universe” and “The Francine Odysseys”). Captured on lovely, vibrant Super 16mm film by Robert Yeoman, who has photographed all of Anderson’s features with the exception of “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom” exploits its sumptuous locations with the aid of narrator Bob Balaban, a presence who exists within the universe of the movie but also omnisciently beyond it. Balaban was also enlisted to play the same role in the film’s engrossing website, a trove of supplemental information that will keep Anderson disciples busy for hours.

While longtime Anderson MVP Bill Murray makes simmering frustration look so easy (“I’m going to find a tree to chop down”), the addition of Frances McDormand, Edward Norton, and Bruce Willis brings as much value to “Moonrise Kingdom” as Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston and Danny Glover added to “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Anderson’s abiding respect for his underage protagonists – played by unknowns – evinces a confidence in which newcomers share the screen with Academy Award winners, nominees, and box office heavyweights willing to surrender their status and ego as part of an egalitarian ensemble. It’s also an electric delight to watch Jason Schwartzman, our once-upon-a-time Max Fischer, as the wily fixer Cousin Ben, an Anderson character for the ages.

Of the many joys to be found in “Moonrise Kingdom,” the delirious, frank, and affectionate letters between devoted pen pals Sam and Suzy provide abundant pleasure. “Moonrise Kingdom” features Anderson’s most extensive use of epistolary voicing to date, and the notes are occasionally glimpsed but often read only in excerpt. Combined with the actions of their authors, the cherished salutations serve as a sharp reminder of the precarious tipping point where childhood innocence and idealization gives way to adolescent awareness that the grown-up world can be complicated, frustrating, and filled with disappointment. That intersection, so lovingly captured in Sam and Suzy’s impossibly serious, improbably wise commitment to one another, might not last very long, but it stays with you forever.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Following Tarsem Singh’s “Mirror Mirror” as the second live-action adaptation of the classic fairy tale to be released in 2012, “Snow White and the Huntsman” musters very little novelty in what turns out to be an unnecessary, unlovable slog through the enchanted forest. Dressed up as an epic adventure that envisions the famous heroine as an armor-clad Joan of Arc warrior in the skin of Kristen Stewart, filmmaker Rupert Sanders’ assemblage drops too many characters in the poisonous brew, from the wicked queen Ravenna’s (Charlize Theron) Prince Valiant-coiffed brother to an extraneous Prince Charming who cannot compete with other title character Chris Hemsworth, who steps out as the longest side of a scalene love triangle.

Kristen Stewart has already been described by any number of critics as miscast, but the young performer is hardly to blame for the lion’s share of the film’s problems. An advertisement director making his feature debut, Sanders fails to translate the vision of his short spots for the likes of the “Halo” videogame franchise into a compelling tale worthy of 127 minutes. His pacing and rhythm are done in by numbing, mechanical crosscutting between Theron – delivering what always feels like monologue, even if other actors are present in the scene – and Snow White on the run from danger. Worst of all, Sanders takes everything as seriously as a funeral, and the film’s near complete lack of humor turns into a serious liability.

Three screenwriters, including Hossein Amini (Academy Award-nominated for “The Wings of the Dove” and hot from the success of “Drive”), struggle to freshen the core elements found in the Grimm story, botching something at practically every turn. Humanizing the evil stepmother by sharing her point of view may have been a valid move, but as soon as Ravenna’s vague gender/revenge business is dispensed in an extraneous flashback, Theron is drained of all complexity. Festooned with scales and feathers in Colleen Atwood get-ups that should make Bob Mackie drool, Theron tiresomely overtakes Stewart as front-runner for delivering the movie’s most disappointing performance.

While “Snow White and the Huntsman” is bereft of much captivating onscreen drama, actor Danny Woodburn’s criticism of the filmmakers for their decision to digitally position the visages of well-known “average size” actors including Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, and Nick Frost on the bodies of little people once again raises a legitimate ethical question in the era of photorealistic computer effects. Woodburn, who appeared in “Mirror Mirror,” commented to “The New York Post” that the practice was “akin to blackface.” His position was supported by Leah Smith of Little People of America, who argued that little people should be cast in roles written for little people.

Woodburn’s frustration points to a longstanding conundrum within the entertainment industry: the overwhelming tendency for dwarfs to be included in stories almost exclusively as novel representations of otherness.  The fantastic Peter Dinklage, whose recent “Rolling Stone” cover interview touched on the pitfalls of maintaining dignity in the selection and acceptance of roles while trying to pay the bills as an actor, nailed it in Tom DeCillo’s “Living in Oblivion.” Dinklage’s exasperated actor Tito sticks it to Steve Buscemi’s indie filmmaker Nick Reve, saying “The only place I’ve seen dwarfs in dreams is in stupid movies like this.” “Snow White and the Huntsman” may not be a stupid movie for quite the same reason, but it’s still far from bright.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

It’s not surprising that the support group Friends of Chernobyl Centers, U.S. has raised awareness by criticizing the cheap horror movie “Chernobyl Diaries,” a tired genre exercise with action so routine one imagines its producers reluctant to see it open anywhere near “The Cabin in the Woods,” a movie that exposes and exploits the kinds of clichés on parade in “Chernobyl.” Ironically, the majority of moviegoers would not likely have heard of Friends of Chernobyl Centers had it not been for the suspect taste and callous insensitivity of the filmmakers, who set the film among the ruins of ghost town Pripyat (played in the movie by locations in Serbia), from which more than 400,000 people fled following the 1986 catastrophe.

In a statement posted on the Friends of Chernobyl Centers website, the “horror is not mutants running around, the real horror is the effect that Chernobyl continues to have on the lives of millions who have been devastated physically, emotionally and economically. People are still dealing with the aftermath on a daily basis 26 years later.” While the motion picture industry commonly tramples on respect and decorum if a buck is to be made, co-writer and producer Oren Peli has claimed that the group Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl has written him a letter of support and admiration. If only the movie were as engaging as the free publicity surrounding it.

Peli, whose “Paranormal Activity” capitalized on the no-budget tradition of “The Blair Witch Project” in conjuring scares from the suggestion of raw footage incorporated into the drama, enlists director Bradley Parker to conform to the “Old Dark House” template in which several people are trapped in an isolated location and picked off until only one remains. The most promising elements of the story involve the ways in which contaminated animals have changed and adapted to their environment (picture a razor-toothed variation on Blinky from “The Simpsons”), but the filmmakers only use this angle for a handful of lazy shock/jump scares and a half-hearted subplot about roving wolves.

“Chernobyl Diaries” requires a tremendous suspension of one’s disbelief to accept the “extreme tourism” premise that sends a group of leisure travelers into a radioactive ground zero. Despite repeated assurances by their ridiculously incompetent guide that the short exposure time will be perfectly safe – often coupled with the comical clicks of a handheld Geiger counter – one of the movie’s threats materializes from the helplessness of being lost and unable to contact help. Needless to say, although the movie makes sure to do so, cell phones don’t work inside Pripyat.

Andy Webster pointed out in “The New York Times” that good horror films, like “Night of the Living Dead,” can offer viewers rich metaphors through which political and/or social ideas can share the same space as the monsters that terrify us. “Chernobyl Diaries” boasts no such agenda. The young victims are nearly indistinguishable from one another, and other than some tepid sibling rivalry and the gruesomely thwarted promise of a marriage proposal, Parker can’t be bothered to develop and individuate the cast members. Even “final girl” Amanda (Devin Kelley) is presented with few opportunities to apply intelligence, critical thinking, and problem solving skills to stave off impending death. Mostly, she just gets chased.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Less successful than “Borat” and “Bruno,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” trades the ambush mockumentary for the more predictable terrain of fully-scripted narrative. Opening with a dedication to Kim Jong-il, Baron Cohen and director/regular collaborator Larry Charles establish Admiral General Hafez Aladeen, the ruler of the fictional North African Republic of Wadiya, as a composite of narcissistic strongmen like Muammar Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein (rather brilliantly, an early item in “The Hollywood Reporter” stated that “The Dictator” was inspired by Saddam’s novel “Zabibah and the King”). Aladeen’s boorish behavior is matched by his penchant for garish military costumes, and Baron Cohen embraces the considerable challenge of infusing his awful protagonist with glimmers of humanity.

Even though “The Dictator” eliminates the stylistic technique in which unsuspecting victims fall prey to Baron Cohen’s antics, the performer retains the core concept of a fish-out-of-water foreigner whose customs conflict with conventional expectations of polite behavior. Aladeen is, among other unsavory things, a spoiled manchild who uses his wealth and power to buy sexual favors from American celebrities. Ensconced in the sprawl of his opulent quarters, the despot hones his anti-Semitism by gleefully playing a first-person shooter videogame that recreates the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. If you don’t think that idea is funny, you probably won’t like the extended gag sequence with the decapitated head.

Baron Cohen continues to exploit taboo with an impressive level of confidence for an artist grappling with social and political ideas that share the same space with copious gags revolving around ignorant racism, gruesome torture, pedophilia, sexual assault, and masturbation, to name a few. And while the most indelicate and explicit details of these coarse jokes cannot be located in masterful features like Charles Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” and the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup,” spiritual commonalities are shared by the tremendous Osterlich victory speech delivered by Chaplin’s Jewish barber (disguised as Adenoid Hynkel) and Aladeen’s climactic celebration of the joys of autocracy in which the hypocritical attitudes of the contemporary American political landscape are smartly exposed.

Anna Faris, whose tremendous comic timing is rarely put to good use in a movie worthy of her skill, plays Zoey, a progressive activist who works at a food co-op when she is not attending street demonstrations. Inexplicably, Zoey falls for the abusive Aladeen, whose constant put-downs and insults are either a brutal display of wrongheaded misogyny or a series of pointed barbs at an easily stereotyped segment of feminism (critics Andrew O’Hehir and A.O. Scott apparently disagree on the matter). In either case, Baron Cohen and Charles underutilize Faris, who steals all her scenes and lights up the kind of dialogue that would derail a lesser talent.

Aladeen’s Islamism is only implicitly woven into the fabric of “The Dictator,” and while the lack of specificity might initially suggest a willfully apolitical position, closer examination suggests that Baron Cohen merely continues to do what he has done for close to fifteen years: skewer the jingoistic, the greedy and powerful, and the homophobic and racist by assuming the persona of a character who espouses fealty to those kinds of failings. Not everyone will play along – the conundrum of inhabiting an ignoramus is that a certain segment of the audience won’t recognize the irony and the dissimulation.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The eighth collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, “Dark Shadows” ranks much closer in corporatized sheen to “Alice in Wonderland” than the exuberant labor of love “Ed Wood.” With its massive budget and gorgeous production design directly at odds with the legendary thrift and grind of the 1,225 episodes of Dan Curtis’s 1966-1971 daytime soap opera, “Dark Shadows” operates more like a parody or burlesque than a reverent homage. Burton, who has been accused more than once in recent years of straying from the intensity and conviction of his most personal projects to deliver lukewarm adaptations of established properties, is running on Gothic autopilot.

Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas Collins didn’t appear until a year into the original run of “Dark Shadows,” but the popularity of the character defines the series for its devoted cult of fans – most of whom are over the age of forty. Depp’s take on the vampire is regal, foppish, and tuned perfectly to the actor’s gift for comfortable femininity. The actor’s choice to surgically remove any trace of heterosexual libido neuters an acrobatic sex romp between Barnabas and his rival, but it does add a twisted deviance to an eyebrow-raising scene in which Helena Bonham Carter’s boozy psychiatrist fellates the nosferatu partially out of professional curiosity.

The jokes derived from Barnabas’s reactions to a strange new world run the gamut from shameless product placement (an entire set-up and payoff built around the iconic Golden Arches of McDonald’s) to dated gender misidentification one-liners aimed at Alice Cooper, who doesn’t look a day over sixty even though he is playing himself at age twenty-four. Depp’s cool detachment never strays too far from a diligent mock seriousness that sells quips about the quality deficit of “Scooby-Doo” (“This is a stupid play.”) and the magic of television (“Reveal yourself, tiny songstress!”). As ever, Depp is game, but he cannot overcome the movie’s fundamental lack of interest in the moral consequences of Barnabas’s curse; the vampire’s multiple murders are treated as incidental.

Aside from Depp’s comic timing, “Dark Shadows” has little to recommend it. Windy expository voiceover narration that drains away the wonder and sense of discovery, a gallery of sketchy personalities identifiable by single traits, flashback digressions, and a convoluted “eternal love” triangle thread that ignores the attraction Barnabas should feel toward Bella Heathcote’s Victoria Winters conspire to bog down the grating central conflict in which spurned witch Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) simultaneously plots to win the affections of Barnabas and destroy the Collins family business. The climax, a screechy showdown with police officers, firefighters, angry townspeople, flames, blood, a werewolf, a ghost, and an attempted suicide is even messier than it sounds.

Getting to that tornado of an ending should be half the fun, but screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith – the “why didn’t I think of that?” scribe who pocketed a sizable fortune from his bestselling public domain remixes “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” – toggles clumsily between the “Rip Van Winkle” gags of two-century old Barnabas reacting to the modern wonders of 1972 and a pile of half-baked subplots competing for time (the “Dark Shadows” one-sheet poses nine figures, and technically, Heathcote plays two characters). The more-is-more bloat utterly fails to coagulate and viewers will be hard pressed to remember many specifics by the time the credits finish rolling.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Whit Stillman’s feature debut “Metropolitan,” which received an Academy Award nomination for its screenplay, is an object of love and desire for a cultish collection of cinephiles who came of age in the early 1990s. Many of those fans, having waited fourteen years (the date of “The Last Days of Disco”) for new Stillman, may be slightly let down by “Damsels in Distress,” a comedy so willfully detached from dreary reality its attitude, manner, and appearance resemble a nostalgia-burnished relic from the New Frontier. Like Stillman’s previous work, “Damsels” explores the milieu of the “urban haute bourgeoisie,” tagging along behind a trio of coeds and their new recruit as the young women embark on a Sisyphean quest to systematically improve the caliber of decorum and etiquette practiced by their unwashed, uncouth male classmates.

In his essay on “Metropolitan” for the Criterion Collection, Luc Sante wrote that the “dialogue is ostentatiously written; every character wields subordinate clauses and uses words like however and nevertheless. The combination of stilted speeches and deft behavioral acting sometimes seems peculiar, but it is also peculiarly apposite. Like Austen, Stillman wears his irony lightly and deploys it affectionately.” While the stilted speeches and behavioral acting continues to express Stillman’s inimitable voice in “Damsels in Distress,” the relevance, pertinence, aptness, and affection have gone missing along with the Austen-esque light ironic touch. Instead, “Damsels” is Stillman at his broadest.

Critic Andrew O’Hehir praises “Damsels” for being “deliberately and purposefully irrelevant,” but where “Metropolitan” emotionally invested in a protagonist whose anxieties reflected self-doubts recognizable to all, “Damsels” presents a group of privileged young people whose earnestness obscures any alternative agenda Stillman might hope to develop. Stillman, as ever, can be delightfully funny, and Greta Gerwig and the other performers are game. At issue is whether the viewer is meant to laugh with or at these characters, whose shallow observations are as convincing as Gerwig’s goal to launch a widespread dance craze.

With Stillman, archness and pretense are traditionally viewed as assets, but “Damsels” could use the savage and critical intelligence of Stillman regular Chris Eigeman, sadly missing from the cast. Thankfully, Taylor Nichols merits a fleeting cameo appearance as a professor, but “Damsels” eschews the kind of acid-tongued observer who explodes the vacuum created by the moronic fellows identified by such gags as lifelong failure to learn the names of colors. Frankly, “Revenge of the Nerds” more successfully lampooned the depleted inanity of Greek life on college campuses. At his fictional Seven Oaks, Stillman travels some of the same pathways as the Alpha Betas of Adams, jabbing and poking at how frat boys demonstrate enthusiasm for parodies of Olympic contests matched only by their dubious resistance to hygiene.

It would be hazardous to imagine that Stillman wholly detests the well-meaning but naïve and ineffectual young women questing to make the world a better place through tap dance therapy and shifts at the campus suicide prevention center, but much of the movie depends on the artificial barrier erected to prevent glimpses of recognizable, uncalculated expressions of genuine feelings. That aggravating approach to character makes one wonder how much respect the filmmaker has for his audience.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The story of chef Tom (Jason Segel) and academic Violet (Emily Blunt), plays out in “The Five-Year Engagement” with a mixture of novelty and familiarity akin to the plots of countless romantic comedies produced since at least the advent of synchronous sound. Frequent collaborators Segel, who both co-wrote and stars in the movie, and Nicholas Stoller, who co-wrote and directed, play to many of the strengths of the “house style” established by mentor/producer Judd Apatow over the past several years. “The Five-Year Engagement” does not quite conform to the “striver-slacker” construction described by David Denby in his savvy essay published in the July 23, 2007 issue of “The New Yorker,” but it does echo any number of the critic’s ideas concerning the state of the genre.

Denby’s “critic at large” piece, titled “A Fine Romance: The New Comedy of the Sexes” contains within it the observation that the giants of the form, including Capra, La Cava, McCarey, Hawks, Leisen, and Sturges, understood the value and importance of gender equality, and that even though “the man and woman may not enjoy parity of social standing or money… they are equals in spirit, will, and body.” “The Five-Year Engagement” mostly takes this sound advice to heart, bestowing upon its central pair the conflict of Violet’s post-doctoral appointment in Michigan just as Tom’s culinary career looks to blossom in San Francisco.  Should they stay or should they go? Either way, someone is going to be resentful.

Tom insists that Violet take the gig, even if it means – for him – trading the promise of running an upscale, fresh seafood kitchen for the grim reality of a no-challenge sandwich shop. The geographical shift quickly develops into an emasculating disappointment, but Tom and Violet are certain that love can conquer all. As built by Segel and Stoller, Tom is the partner whose point of view is slightly more privileged, but the film’s explorations of the practicalities of adulthood and the necessary sacrifices that we may need to make distinguishes it from so many of the farfetched, middlebrow concoctions that pass for modern comedies.

Stoller occasionally struggles to find tonal equilibrium, and Tom’s descent into the bearded, wintry melancholia that anticipates his most passive aggressive choices is far broader than the pointed pillow talk following his faked orgasm and other tough, “grown-up” discussions. The supporting cast is well-stocked with talented players, and Chris Pratt and Alison Brie, who play Tom’s pal and Violet’s sister, are perfect foils whose haphazard and instantaneous bliss arouses deep jealousy in the protagonists (Pratt’s wedding rendition of “Cucurrucucu paloma” is simultaneously hilarious and heartfelt).

One of the most welcome conceptual planks in Segel and Stoller’s script is the upfront announcement that Tom and Violet are already together, in love, and compatible. And while “The Five-Year Engagement” still depends upon a quantity of genre staples (inappropriate engagement party speech, drunken near-infidelities, and as Amanda Dobbins adroitly puts it, “bangs as a symbol of life change”), the filmmakers’ ambition is more “Annie Hall” than anything starring Katherine Heigl after “Knocked Up.”  Yes, Tom and Violet will go their separate ways in the “second act breakup” before the inevitable final act reconciliation – this is a romantic comedy, after all – but the details of their journey, compared to so much of the competition, are gladly received.