29 November 2013

One-Liners - Nay


RENOIR (C+) - This is the near-epitome of style over substance. It plays like a Renoir painting come to life. Which means it can be lovely to look at but as fascinating as a bowl of fruit at times.
The cinematography is stunning, inviting you into its lushness, even on a TV screen. There's just not much meat on the bones of the plot, which gets pulled into too many directions. 

Elderly Auguste Renoir (a convincing Michel Bouquet) has staved off death during the depths of World War I by finding yet another nubile young model to serve as his naked muse. That would be free-spirited Andree (Christa Theret) who is, indeed, beauty personified; you can practically feel that silky soft skin. Wounded war hero Jean Renoir (who would go on to marry Andree and make her a star in his early movies) limps into the picture to create an odd mix of bizarre love triangle and Freudian father-son feuding. "Limp" being the key word. Meantime, the house biddies bicker endlessly about Renoir pere's legendary cycling through of models/mistresses.

None of that really sticks. What's left is a luscious period piece that, like Ms. Theret, is easy on the eyes.

THE TO-DO LIST (C+) - I'm trying to figure out who the audience might be for this film about a newly minted high school graduate -- a nerdy mathlete -- who decides to create a sexual to-do list so that she doesn't enter college an inexperienced virgin. The sex is PG but the language is graphically R, and it all plays like a cartoon.

Aubrey Plaza is fun to watch, as always, and the supporting cast is pretty game, but the whole project is a mess. It's a bizarre multi-generational stew: It's an homage to the early '80s era of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (with a dreadfully unfunny "Caddyshack" reference tossed in), set in 1993, created by a Gen X'er, starring a 28-year-old portraying a 17-year-old, and released in 2013. It's at once an embarrassingly quaint classic teen sex romp and a modern display of post-Apatow vulgarity.

The cheapness of the production is obvious throughout, with frequent continuity gaffes. The script is repetitive. The plot is classic connect-the-dots. The premise is rather ridiculous. The parents are unbelievable (and it's not easy to waste Clark Gregg, like writer/director Maggie Carey does here). The idea is that Plaza's geek doesn't recognize the terms for any of the sex acts she's about to run through (and, conveniently, doesn't have the Internet around), but you'd think a valedictorian could figure out what a "dry hump" is or would just ask around, especially since her sister and two best friends are portrayed as stereotypical movie sluts.

The frank dialogue is kind of fun in the let's-watch-women-talk-cute-n-dirty kind of way, but I actually fast-forwarded a little through this. I felt my life slipping away, and I didn't need to be reminded of my own high school and college years too often spent watching frivolous shlock like this.

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN (2010) (F) - It feels good to give this thinly veiled attack on teachers an actual letter grade. It is disingenuous, manipulative, mawkish, inadequately sourced and downright false at times. No teacher -- even a sharp non-union charter school employee -- would allow this to stand as a first draft.

This is the work of a jerk with an ax to grind. Be warned.

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