THE LOBSTER (C) - The Greek director of the offbeat gems "Dogtooth" and "Alps" returns with his first feature in four years and his first one in English, and it's a disappointing slog.
Here's the handy plot summary from IMDb: "In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods."
An impressive mostly U.K. cast seems to have missed something in the translation from Greek in a script by director Yorgos Lanthimos and his regular collaborator Efthymis Filippou. Colin Farrell plays David, a paunchy shlub who hopes to seek his mate, although he has his animal picked out in case he strikes out: a lobster (mainly because he has experience as a swimmer and lobsters live long, fertile lives). He arrives with his brother, who is now a dog -- most people, we are told, are not creative with their choices, which is why there are so many dogs and cats around.
The key to finding a mate is to have something ordinary in common with a member of the opposite sex. One man (Ben Whishaw) gives himself violent nosebleeds in order to get paired up with a young woman who is prone to nosebleeds. New couples are put through some paces -- some are given children to help cut down on the bickering and the tedium -- while those left behind with the clock ticking grow either desperate or resigned to their inevitable transition to a new species.
Among the quirky cast of characters is Robert (John C. Reilly), who has a lisp, and has little hope of finding a woman with a similar speech impediment. He is mocked for choosing to be an animal that talks, a parrot. TV veteran Olivia Colman has a blast as the all-powerful hotel manager. Rachel Weisz is fine as a short-sighted woman, which would make her a match for Farrell's bespectacled David. Lea Seydoux smolders as the leader of an outlaw group of single people who survive out in the woods.
The first half is charming as it sets up its offbeat premise. In this bizarro world the characters speak in monotone and deliver delightfully deadpan lines. But that droning rhythm soon wears thin, and the second half -- which takes place mainly in the forest -- turns convoluted, and any broad message that Lanthimos is trying to make about the hell of either marriage or singlehood gets buried in plot twists.
His previous films -- "Alps" (about a group of people whose jobs are to impersonate the recently deceased in order to help clients grieve) and "Dogtooth" (about parents raising their kids like wolves) -- both had challenging premises and dreadfully dry humor, but they clocked in at 93 minutes. Here, Lanthimos has enough story for half that running time, yet he drags it out to two hours -- and that final half hour is an endurance test.
The cast is game, and they are to be applauded for taking a chance on an emerging alternative voice in cinema. Unfortunately, the material just doesn't hold up.
DREAM ON (C-minus) - John Fugelsang cut his teeth back in the day as a fluff host on VH-1 and "America's Funniest Home Videos." These days he styles himself as a political satirist, a modern Will Rogers, if you will. He's not.
His game has always ranked as tepid, and his earnest, nice-guy shtick can't carry this documentary about the elusiveness of the American dream. Fugelsang hits the road in the eastern half of the U.S. as he retraces the trail blazed by Alexis de Tocqueville nearly two centuries ago as he researched his landmark study "Democracy in America." It's a lame gimmick, and nothing our host digs up is as remotely interesting as that Frenchman's take on our way of life.
Fugelsang's futility is especially dispiriting when compared to two recent films we've seen: "Detroit: Wild City," a Frenchman's rumination of that once thriving city, and the ultimate assessment of the "American Dream" -- the recent polemic from Noam Chomsky release earlier this year, "Requiem for the American Dream." This limp documentary pays lip service to weighty topics, and it treads ground that's been beaten raw long ago.
And Fugelsang's obsequious personality wears thin almost immediately. The film sprinkles in snippets of his toothless standup act -- suitable for your mom's friends -- at some vanilla comedy club, looking almost like a parody of an early "Seinfeld" episode. Fugelsang is fatally retro, from his preppy look to a demeanor that recalls the family-friendly version of Bob Saget, his popular predecessor on "AFHV." Except less edgy. And those outfits date him even more.
The folks he interviews on the road are mostly forgettable, and the production values are cheap and uninspired. Fugelsang can be occasionally funny on the morning radio show with Stephanie Miller. But this movie is a bad idea poorly executed.
BONUS TRACK
Our title track, from Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet:
No comments:
Post a Comment