Legion (2017)

Between weekly looks at Batman: The Animated Series and the occasional voyage into the realm of Marvel’s Netflix offerings, I may have to get around to rebranding myself – with all this television floating about, can I really call myself “The Cinema King” anymore? Then again, when television is as cinematic as Legion – eight episodes, closer to a miniseries or just a serialized long film – do those distinctions really matter?

Legion stars Dan Stevens as David Haller, a troubled young man who’s either the most powerful mutant in the world or a psychologically troubled lifer at Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital. David’s world is rocked when he meets Sydney Barrett (Rachel Keller), a new patient at Clockworks with a pathological aversion to being touched. When things go awry at Clockworks, David starts seeing things that might not be there; his best friend Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) appears when she shouldn’t, while David is dogged by painful childhood memories, competing agencies who fear his capabilities, and a morbidly obese demon with yellow eyes.

Legion is the sort of show that’s difficult to summarize because it changes tracks so quickly that the boundaries of a spoiler are almost imperceptible. For example, and without spoiling too much, one character dies partway through the first episode but continues to appear regardless, even remarking on the peculiarity of life after death. Legion is riddled with this sort of thing, head-scratchers that turn the screen into an irresistible magnet. Each episode contains at least two moments where everything you thought you knew about the show changes, prompting questions like, “Wait, why is he the coffee machine?” and “Was he always the deep-sea diver?” (Yes, actual questions I asked during the show.)

Legion is among the most visually stylized shows in recent memory, and it exploits that to its full advantage. The temptation now is to watch television with a phone in hand or while doing some menial task, but Legion is a different beast altogether. Long sequences play out with no dialogue, scored by some of the most inventive music on TV, courtesy of composer Jeff Russo – including an impromptu dance number set to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” and one very memorable sequence from Episode 7, staged like a silent film, replete with dialogue cards, set to an electronic version of Ravel’s “Boléro.” The music plays into the wild unpredictability of the show, and – along with the nightmares – it’ll stick with you after the show ends.

For as brief as the show is, it’s got an impressively sized cast who get a striking amount of material. Stevens is fascinating as the unreliable protagonist, who’s never quite in control of himself or his rapidly evolving environment. Keller is sweet and mysterious, and she has a genuine chemistry with Stevens. Bill Irwin and Amber Midthunder are ones to watch as Cary & Kerry (about whom I really can’t say anything else), while Jemaine Clement is his quirky compelling self as an icy beat poet with a slipping grasp of the English language.

Far and away, though, it’s Aubrey Plaza who hogties the show, absconds with it, and then brings it back around to show you all the madcap things she’s done with it – and thank God for this, because after the one-two punch of Dirty Grandpa and Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates, I had just about given up on the actress who was perennially my second favorite character on Parks & Recreation (though, to be fair, she was the closest thing to a bright spot in those dismal, dismal movies). It’s become the stuff of television legend now to remark upon the fact that the role of Lenny Busker was originally written for a man, though Plaza insisted the role not be altered once she was cast, and yet it is impossible to imagine a man making this part work because Plaza’s offbeat gender-bent presence adds still one more dimension of existential uncertainty to the show. As Lenny, Plaza is Janet Snakehole by way of Inception, a wolf in Beetlejuice’s clothing with a penchant for delivering, baldly straight-faced, immortal lines like, “Unhand the reptile, space captain!” And if we could talk plainly about the show, I’d tell you so many more delightful things about Plaza’s performance, but the real delight of her act is that you’re never quite sure what to expect from her, and as David’s grasp on reality begins to falter (which is to say, within the first few minutes of the pilot), you can’t be certain what – if anything – is real.

Legion is gripping in a way that most television shows struggle to manage; Westworld aside, I can’t remember a show debuting this strongly. (Even Game of Thrones took a few episodes to really get going.) And for those who feel a slight creep of superhero overload, a numbing disappointment that maybe-just-maybe we’ve seen everything the genre has to offer, Legion rejects that premise out of hand and then proceeds to destabilize your faith in the very language in which you proposed that premise. Better still, though, Legion never leaves its audience in the dust (at least, not for very long) and instead patiently unfolds the answers to the mysteries it postulates in a way that never feels compulsory. Aside from a post-credits sequence, this first season of Legion manages to address very nearly all its central questions and wrap things up in a way that feels both satisfying and enticing; put another way, I didn’t need the slightly gimmicky cliffhanger after the credits to guarantee my attendance for a second season.

Legion is rated TV-MA for “language, sexuality, and violence.” Created by Noah Hawley. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Bill Irwin, Jeremie Harris, Amber Midthunder, Katie Aselton, Mackenzie Gray, with Jean Smart and Jemaine Clement.

Monday at the Movies - June 19, 2017

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, it’s another classic case of “57 Channels And Nothin’ On.”

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) – Back in April, I had a soul-crushing experience with Dirty Grandpa, an utterly unbearable nightmare of a movie, and so I’m not quite sure why I stayed in my seat when Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates appeared on my television screen. Actually, I know why – Dirty Grandpa has been like a bad stomach flu that I just can’t shake, and I wanted to remind myself that Zac Efron and Aubrey Plaza weren’t to blame. But the bad news is that Mike and Dave, starring Adam DeVine and Efron as the titular brothers, is almost exactly the same film as Dirty Grandpa, with essentially the same grisly randy plot, though it is significantly less viscerally offensive and has quantitatively more chuckles and even the occasional laugh. The good news is that, in those moments of levity, it’s Efron and Plaza to blame, because they’re much improved from Dirty Grandpa, if only by dint of working from a script that doesn’t aim to offend every single decent sensibility. This is not, however, to say that Mike and Dave is squeaky clean, with at least two staggeringly racist jokes and a few more revolting bouts of physical comedy, to say nothing of the jokes that fall flat on a purely technical level. Then there’s DeVine, who seems to be trying much too hard and has never met a joke he couldn’t mug his way through, while Anna Kendrick really looks to be slumming it in scenes where she’s alternately depressed or doped up. But every once in a while, Efron and especially Plaza land a solid snicker or two, and while the film is overall a louse, the dingy light from Dirty Grandpa won’t reach it for a million years – that’s how far from polite civilization Dirty Grandpa resides – and Mike and Dave does pass a “five laughs” test, though it’s not memorable enough for me to repeat most of them.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Dirty Grandpa (2016)

Oh, the things I do for you people. As I looked for a movie to review this weekend, I found this gem “on demand,” which is a cruel joke for implying that anyone might ask for, let alone demand, the execrable piece of work. At the risk of sounding like someone’s grandfather, I should have known better. Everyone in this movie should have known better. But perhaps I should have actually acted like someone’s grandfather and just gone to bed early because Dirty Grandpa is utterly unbearable.

Robert De Niro stars as the eponymous grandpa, who cons his rising lawyer grandson (Zac Efron) into driving him to Florida for spring break, to grieve the loss of his wife in the arms of as many college girls as he can (including Zoey Deutch, doing her best Isla Fisher, and Aubrey Plaza, trying her hardest – and occasionally succeeding – to sell an R-rated April Ludgate).

You know I’m reticent to offer any kind of spoilers, but if I tell you any more of the plot you’ll see the film’s dénouement coming down the street in a cab. If I mention that Zac Efron’s character is a highstrung lawyer with an impending marriage to a real harpy of a bride, it won’t take Robert McKee to predict that he’ll find a more freespirited girl before the credits roll. If I acknowledge the drug dealer (Jason Mantzoukas, who I can honestly say has never made me laugh in anything) who has an overly chummy relationship with the police, you’ll probably assume that’s important in the third act. If I tee up any of the film’s ostensible jokes, however, you’ll probably come up with a funnier punchline than screenwriter John Phillips manages. If nothing else, you’d likely never come up with two versions of the same Terminator joke within five minutes, which Phillips accomplishes with all the grace of a first draft.

One thing about Dirty Grandpa is undeniable – Robert De Niro, an Academy Award winner and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, agreed to make this film and speak this dialogue, which is a free association mélange of smut, homophobia, and casual racism. The film’s vomitous vulgarity is married to a male gaze so leery that even Mr. Magoo can make it out. About an hour in, the film tries to moralize about the ills of homophobia while inquiring whether it’s acceptable for De Niro to use the N-word, but rather than feel at all self-aware, the film comes off as essentially mean-spirited in addition to its crude search for the absolute bottom of the barrel.

Had I seen that Dirty Grandpa was directed by Dan Mazer, I might not have watched it at all, for Mazer is a case study in the law of diminishing returns. Mazer had a hand in the hilarious Borat, the chuckle-worthy Brüno, and the unwatchable The Dictator. Now this. Perhaps Mazer would be better suited to a sitcom, because one feels that much of Dirty Grandpa is staged in such a way that Mazer is pointing to the joke and pausing, waiting for a laugh from the audience. The truth is that he’d be better off anticipating the arrival of Godot, because we certainly won’t be providing our own laugh track. Dirty Grandpa is Mazer’s second directorial feature, and we can only hope it’s his last.

At one point, Danny Glover appears for a “surprise” cameo as De Niro’s army buddy Stinky (and some jokes write themselves). “It’s all over for me,” Glover laments, to which I have to say, out of the mouths of degenerate septuagenarians, eh? Or as Efron’s character succinctly notes fairly early on, “I want to throw up.”

Dirty Grandpa is rated R for “crude sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, and for language and drug use.” Directed by Dan Mazer. Written by John Phillips. Starring Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Zoey Deutch, and Aubrey Plaza.

Monsters University (2013)

Aside from Cars 2 (which, if we’re being honest, felt a little like a cash grab), Pixar’s made a name for itself for high quality original material, only dipping a second time into the well when the story merits it.  We go all the way back to (before) 2001’s Monsters, Inc., which gets the prequel treatment with Monsters University.  And like a matriculating monster, Monsters U stumbles at first but finds itself and recovers by film’s end.

Set to fulfill his lifetime dream of becoming a professional scarer, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) heads to top college Monsters University.  There, studious Mike meets James P. Sullivan (John Goodman), son of a top scarer and more party-hearty than study-buddy.  Antagonized by the stern Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren), the two enter into the college’s olympian Scare Games, with their reputations and their standing at the college on the line.

Entering prequel territory for a buddy picture like Monsters, Inc. verges on predictable in the sense that the film has to cover the “adversaries turn amigos” plot beat in order to feel narratively fulfilling.  Monsters U hits those moments without feeling too forced; remember, Mike and Sulley were hardly birds of a feather in Inc.  Monsters U does not, however, spend too much time making Mike and Sulley polar opposites that meet in the middle, casting them more as contrasting types who begrudgingly work together.  (More interesting for the prequel enthusiast:  the way that Monsters U recasts the tension between Mike and in-crowd wannabe Randall [Steve Buscemi], now college roommates divided by fraternity loyalties.)

There are lots of very interesting things going on in the movie, which aren’t explored at much length in order to focus on the intramural Scare Games.  I see the value in concentrating on the Scare Games; the episodic nature of an event-based competition helps us to see how Oozma Kappa (Mike’s fraternity) improves, and it allows the filmmakers to expand the Monsters world by showing various other creatures (plus it boosts the toy line significantly).

But even in spite of the parts where Monsters U feels paint-by-numbers – which, in Pixar’s hands, is still plenty enjoyable if more generic than usual – there are moments of pure genius that remind us why Pixar movies are still the pinnacle of animated film (or, perhaps, even above most live-action storytelling).  I’ll pit the last twenty minutes of Monsters U against any of the other great Pixar moments for genre-bending imagination and exuberant pathos.  It’s almost too good to spoil where the movie goes, but the film quickly shirks that cliché you feel it’s embracing before contorting 180 degrees into a monster-inflected take on the “Play nice” scene from Toy Story. 

It ends with a callback to a bit of Inc. you didn’t expect to see, but the real heart comes when Dean Hardscrabble – in a turn delivered strongly by Mirren – warms up ever so slightly to our heroes.  It’s comparable to Anton Ego’s change of heart in Ratatouille, and as with Peter O’Toole it’s a reminder that the film needs as much of these top thespians as we can get.  Otherwise, the voice cast is what you’d expect from Pixar – pitch-perfect and full of aural treats (like Aubrey Plaza’s laconic sorority president, though Nathan Fillion’s swagger is more distracting because of how larger-than-life his voice tends to be).

In the end, I find myself having written a more positive review than I anticipated, in part because there’s nothing about Monsters University that is entirely irredeemable; even when they’re not pulling out all the stops creatively, the Pixar team is still lightyears (pun intended) ahead of the competition.  But when they do, Monsters University is a real scream.

Monsters University is rated G.  A few monsters have tricks and skills that might scare the wee babies, but overall most kids can handle it.