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.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Mexploitation throwback “Casa de mi padre” may not be as satisfying as its surreal pedigree promises, but the Spanish language comedy featuring Will Ferrell as the dim bulb son of a rancher played by the late, great Pedro Armendariz Jr. (to whom the film is dedicated) is recommended viewing for anyone interested in vintage look, z-grade telenovela tributes. As Armando Alvarez, Ferrell delivers his dialogue straight, and press notes made hay with news of the actor’s one-month dialect crash course. Ferrell’s unshakable commitment to character has long been one of his assets, and he carves out a very recognizable persona as an eager-to-please second son yearning to be loved like his older brother.

“Casa de mi padre” echoes the low-fi techniques lovingly reproduced by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth, and Rob Zombie in 2007’s “Grindhouse,” including rough splices and print damage. Director Matt Piedmont applies the low-budget, poor production value aesthetic with a wide brush, from ongoing gags involving the liberal placement of mannequins as background “extras” to mismatched continuity within scenes that cut between location photography and studio sets. The silliness extends to the regular appearance of a spirit guide big cat fabricated by the Jim Henson Creature Shop, a handful of musical interludes and an after-the-credits endorsement from a game Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty.

The plot of the movie lifts several of the most recognizable elements of Elia Kazan’s adaptation of “East of Eden,” as well as some of the equally triangular melodramatic whiffs of King Vidor’s “Duel in the Sun.” The filmmakers are certainly affectionate toward their retro inspirations, lavishing the same kind of reverence and attention to period detail “Pootie Tang,” Undercover Brother,” and “Black Dynamite” paid to Blaxploitation.  As the beloved first-born Alvarez scion, Diego Luna demonstrates his inner Tony Montana, engaging fellow “Y tu mama tambien” compadre Gael Garcia Bernal in a contest of flamboyant displays of swaggering machismo.

The movie’s firearm and squib count grossly outpaces the ribaldry, and “Casa de mi padre” skips much of the genre’s sleaze. Predictably, however, the opportunities for women within this world are defined by sexuality. Padre Alvarez employs a battery of scantily clad housemaids, but like any number of the film’s visuals, no payoff or reason is offered to explain their attire. Ferrell and co-star Genesis Rodriguez, who plays Armando’s irresistible, soon-to-be sister-in-law, engage in a ridiculous sex scene that fetishizes the male and female derriere to the brink of lunacy.

Current news items covering the brutality of the illegal drug trade in Mexico are a far cry from the bizarre comic treatment of the same themes in “Casa.” Even so, the movie’s lukewarm social commentary, embedded primarily in the officious, racist DEA agent played by Nick Offerman, reminds viewers that stereotypes can be a two-way street (an explanation of the supply and demand economics of cocaine hilariously sees American buyers as “shit-eating crazy monster babies”). The critique is a throwaway, and the agenda of “Casa de mi padre” is more appropriately concerned with Armando squinting into the sunset with “the eyes of a small chicken” while he tries in vain to roll a cigarette.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

WARNING: The following review reveals plot information. Read only if you have seen “The Cabin in the Woods.”

While major metropolitan critics were asked in preview screenings to avoid any significant revelations contained within the entertaining metafiction titled “The Cabin in the Woods,” any meaningful discussion of the movie would be worthless without the ability to address what amounts to the entire operational conceit of the horror-comedy. In other words, read no more if you plan to see the film. Cooked up by co-screenwriters Joss Whedon (who also produced) and Drew Goddard (who also directed), “The Cabin in the Woods” was shot in 2009 and caught up in MGM’s Chapter 11 problems. Time on the shelf has done little to diminish the movie’s catchy exuberance.

Five coeds pack swimsuits and climb into an RV in anticipation of a weekend frolic at the location of the title, unwittingly cruising into an elaborate trap marking them as human sacrifices. Their every move is monitored and manipulated by the eyes of a massive underground operation led by a pair of eggheads (deadpanning Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) in white, short-sleeved shirts. En route to the remote destination, a stop at a cobwebbed gas station involves an ominous exchange between the travelers and the creepy, tobacco-chewing attendant Mordecai (Tim De Zarn), but needless to say, the kids ignore the harbinger as if they had never seen a horror movie.

Grafting the puppetmaster premise of “The Truman Show” and the less-known “Special Service” episode of the 1980s “Twilight Zone” to the self-referential, filmic Droste effects generated by Wes Craven’s “Scream” (“Cabin” includes a variation on the “rule” proscribing splitting up when in danger) and Sam Raimi’s Ash saga, especially “Evil Dead II,” “The Cabin in the Woods” favors humor over fright, even though the filmmakers jolt the audience with several shocks before an outrageous late-arriving turn where all hell breaks loose. Along the way, the filmmakers identify their own predilections for all manner of cinematic scare tactics, thoughtfully distinguishing between the plain old zombie and the “zombie redneck torture family.”

The vast number of allusions to horror conventions would take multiple viewings to tally, and Whedon and Goddard gleefully pile up references to H.P Lovecraft, EC Comics, lakeside psycho killer series, John Landis and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Japanese ghost stories, and the “anything goes” spirit of Nobuhiko Ohbayashi’s “Hausu.” The film would have been even better had the elevators containing our collective worst nightmares included cameo appearances by additional iconic inspirations such as the key Universal Studios monsters portrayed by Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, and Boris Karloff, as well as more recent slashers like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.

Sigourney Weaver, whose Ellen Ripley is one of the quintessential “final girls” identified by Carol Clover – despite the lack of any preoccupation with the character’s virginity in “Alien” – pads the “voices of authority” category on her resume, adding “The Cabin in the Woods” to a list that includes “Avatar,” “WALL-E,” and “Paul.” The surprise of seeing Weaver is compromised by her duller narrative function as the denouement “explainer” who nearly blurts “If not for you meddling kids…” Kristen Connolly’s Dana, whose unisex name is another homage to one tradition of final girl protagonists, may be prevented from fulfilling all the criteria associated with the concept of the last survivor standing, but she may earn a spot next to some of the genre’s most tenacious veterans.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The latest if not the last entry in the teensploitation franchise known for its ribald antics and carnal humiliations, “American Reunion” is the fourth theatrically released movie in the series and the eighth overall. Missing the tenth anniversary by a couple years, the script clumsily but self-mockingly explains away the unlikelihood of a thirteenth class reunion with some expository dialogue as protagonist Jim (Jason Biggs) meets up with his core group of friends to relive the memories of 1999 and presumably generate a few new ones. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, of “Harold & Kumar” fame, assume screenplay and directorial duties, but never quite capture the – dare we say, nuances – of Paul and Chris Weitz’s filmmaking and Adam Herz’s writing.

For admirers of the original film willing to overlook almost everything in the terrible sequels, “American Reunion” tries with no small amount of desperation to capitalize on the seemingly incongruous blend of familial warmth and penis jokes popularized though not originated in Judd Apatow’s movies. Both Apatow and the “American Pie” films owe a debt to John Hughes, not to mention “American Graffiti,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” and “Dazed and Confused.” The original film’s male-centered quest to dispense with virginity aligns “American Pie” with a long list of sex-as-rite-of-passage tales, including “Porky’s,” “The Last American Virgin,” and the lesser known “Hot Moves.”

Every principal member of the original cast returns, although Natasha Lyonne’s Jessica appears in a fleeting cameo. Only the most devoted fans would remember that of Jim’s best friends, Chris Klein’s Oz did not attend “American Wedding,” and neither did Lyonne, Mena Suvari, Tara Reid, or Shannon Elizabeth. Several minor characters, including John/MILF Guy #2 (John Cho) and Chuck “The Sherminator” Sherman (Chris Owen) are also on hand. We learn that Jim’s mother has died, but her passing seems to have been written essentially to facilitate a boozy encounter between Noah (Eugene Levy) and Stifler’s mom (Jennifer Coolidge).

The lustful chain of outrageous calamities bedeviling Jim over the years (pastry masturbation, superglue mistaken for lubricant, shaved pubic hair vented directly to wedding cake) forges a new link in neighbor Kara (Ali Cobrin), the girl-next-door that Jim used to babysit. Now eighteen and eager to lose her own virginity, Kara targets our married hero, straining his imagination as well as his fidelity to Michelle (Alyson Hannigan). Naturally, Jim’s understanding father is on hand to awkwardly share advice with his son, and even though we’ve been there so many times before, the nicely timed scenes between Biggs and Levy are among the movie’s high points.

On several occasions, “American Reunion” acknowledges the difficulties of growing up and moving on, from Jim and Michelle’s transition into parenthood to Stifler’s (Seann William Scott) angry realization that high school may have been the best time of his life. At the expense of other more promising stories, “Reunion” spends altogether too much energy on the boorish Stifler, the perpetual fifth wheel who emerged from secondary status to huge popularity, ala Arthur Fonzarelli. Scott’s character is much better in small doses, and even though a surprising turnabout reverses his previous failures, some small pleasure is derived watching “the Stif-meister” labor fruitlessly to reconstruct his former glories.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In the opening scene of Jay and Mark Duplass’ “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” title manchild Jason Segel humorously expounds on his dedication to M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs.” In breathless wonderment, Jeff outlines into his handheld recorder a philosophy dependent on barely-there synchronicities and a universe where even the most farfetched coincidences could be the markers of profound portent. Given the history of the filmmakers, the viewer cannot be sure whether and to what extent Jeff is sympathetic and meant to be taken seriously. Is he an ambitionless pothead whose embrace of a ridiculous Mel Gibson film suggests to sophisticates that he is not deserving of respect? That the monologue is delivered on the toilet initially points to yes, but the rest of the movie appears to argue on behalf of Jeff as a decent, worthy person.

Jeff’s easygoing lifestyle is mirrored by the movie’s uncomplicated plot, in which Jeff and his insensitive brother Pat (Ed Helms) reconnect while conducting an incompetent surveillance job on Pat’s frustrated and possibly adulterous wife Linda (Judy Greer). Meanwhile, Jeff’s mother Sharon (Susan Sarandon) attempts to figure out the identity of the entirely too obvious secret admirer at the office where she works. The character-driven orientation favored by the filmmakers allows the accomplished cast to riff on the subtleties and tics of personality that are needed to fill in the gaps between the slapstick shenanigans that echo so many dozens of TV sitcom scripts.

Tagged as practitioners of the so-called mumblecore aesthetic of do-it-yourself moviemaking and the low stakes, irony-dependent “white people problems” that almost inevitable accompany the plotlines of said films, the Duplass brothers began the transition away from outsider status with “Cyrus” in 2010. “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” is less engaging and accomplished than “Cyrus,” even though both movies share the premise of lead adult characters who still live with their mothers. As usual, the women in the movie carry the burden of responsibility while the males embody lavish quixotic pursuits of delusional fancy – minus the chivalry. Pat’s ill-conceived purchase of a Porsche becomes an operational symbol of his self-centeredness and his inability to listen to Linda.

The Duplass’ jittery photography embraces the unmotivated zoom in what feels like deliberate defiance of technical sophistication, and the distraction, as Andrew Schenker adroitly noted, “gets more tired with each film.” The movie’s episodic structure suggests a series of short films, some better than others. The section in which Jeff gets mugged following a pickup basketball game won’t do much to help the negative perception of mumblecore’s attitudes regarding race, but the sequence unfolds like a Raymond Carver short story and is significantly more interesting than the foolish chapter in which Jeff eavesdrops on Linda at a bistro.

There is little doubt that the climax of “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” resorts to the feel-good banalities that tidily conclude so many mainstream Hollywood comedies, and the movie’s journey is significantly better than its ultimate, huggy destination. The contrivances surrounding the culmination of Jeff’s quest to discern the cosmic purpose of his “Signs”-inspired ideology take place during a traffic jam that is too shapeless to align with either Hal Needham’s “The Cannonball Run” or Jen-Luc Godard’s “Week End.” All the characters conveniently end up in the same place at the same time, and make validating, split-second decisions guaranteed to divide audience goodwill.