One-Liners

THE ROVER (B-minus) - What the ... ? I was hoping for more from the sophomore effort by Australian writer/director David Michod, after his steller debut "Animal Kingdom" a few years ago.

Guy Pearce plays Eric, a scowling sociopath 10 years after "the collapse," which looks like "Mad Max" Lite. His car is stolen by three men escaping a shootout, leaving one of their gang's brother for dead. They leave a perfectly operable vehicle behind, and you'd think Eric would be cool with the trade, but he's not. He not only follows them but turns zealously obsessive about tracking them down. Must be something about that car, right? Maybe something's in it?

Michod has a way with sparse dialogue, spare scenery (just like this movie's period-piece cousin, "The Proposition," I was swatting at the on-screen flies throughout); however, his story is just too slim here. Halfway through I was tired of Eric's mumbling and his dead-eyed glare. I just wanted to skip ahead to the end to find out Eric's true mission. (It is a quite moving ending.) Thankfully, former teen idol Robert Pattinson shows up as the wounded brother, Rey, a monobrowed, monosyllabic moron who teams up with Eric to help him find those three rascals. Rey injects dry humor and an expressive character to the dry desert.

Here's an interesting experiment: My movie companion didn't care for Pattinson's performance; I did. I didn't know who the actor was until the credits rolled; she is an avid People reader, and even without seeing the "Twilight" films knew to look for him. Was her experience spoiled by her preconceived notions going into the movie? Was I helped by being clueless to the star wattage? Was it an expectations game? I was reminded later that I had a similar negative reaction to Pattinson when I knew it was him drowning throughout "Cosmopolis." Any lessons to be learned?

Oh, right, a review. I like the way A.O. Scott of the New York Times put it:

There is both too much story and not enough. The contours of this desolate future are lightly sketched rather than fully explained, which is always a good choice. But that minimalism serves as an excuse for an irritating lack of narrative clarity, so that much of what happens seems arbitrary rather than haunting. And at the same time, the relationship between Eric and Rey, as it develops into something almost tender, feels as familiar and simplistic as the nihilism that surrounds them.

ADULT WORLD (B-minus) - I loved it, I hated it. Another odd little experiment, this little could-be gem stars the adorable Emma Roberts as Amy, an aspiring writer running out of wunderkind status as she approaches 22, hoping her salvation will be as muse to her idol, the miserable middle-aged poet Rat Billings (a delectable John Cusack).

Rife with possibilities, this concoction from actor-turned-director Scott Coffey and TV writer Andy Cochran suffers from a fatal cast of the cutes. (Even its Sylvia Plath references are cloying and quaint.) Not sure whether it wants to be a dark indie comedy or a feel-good Disney romp, it fails at both. You can guess every plot "twist" three scenes in advance. Tired of the haranguing from her cardboard-cutout parents in the suburbs, Amy impulsively moves out and crashes in the seedy city. (You can tell where she's going, because the sign on the front of the bus reads, lazily, "Downtown.") Amy's got a hunky co-worker at the porn store she slums at for rent money, and their agonizingly slow courtship is both predictable and devoid of zing. Amy rooms with a transvestite with a heart of gold, if you can believe that.

But still ... there's something appealing about this, not the least of which are Roberts and Cusack, and their secret-weapon co-star, Armando Riesco as Rubia the transvestite. Riesco is a revelation, snapping off that clipped urban-street-girl patois. (Spotting Rat with a paper sack, he exclaims, "You brown-bag it? You a thug!"  He also gets a big laugh with the untimely line "Omigod, Jonathan Franzen!") Cusack isn't your average curmudgeon; he looks like he's having a lot of fun batting Amy about, and he doesn't overdo the Yoda-like pearls of wisdom from the tortured artist. Roberts gives it her all, and she mostly succeeds. 

And yet, Coffey and Cochran (whoever they are) undermine things at every turn. They want this to so much be like an '80s youth classic that they load the soundtrack with the generic pop of a band called Handsome Furs that must have bought its synthesizer from a John Hughes family garage sale before its first Human League karaoke contest. They hammer the viewer repeatedly with winking references to these young twentysomethings crossing over to the "adult world." And the plot twist toward the end is both underwhelming and ridiculous.

So, I didn't feel robbed of that 93 minutes of my life. (I did zone out a few times, like to clear the dinner dishes without hitting pause.) There's something charming and familiar about the whole effort, and something oddly comforting about its corny structure. If you can filter out the crap, it's not half bad.

BONUS TRACK
Robert Pattinson grooves to this one in "The Rover" -- Keri Hilson's "Pretty Girl Rock":