1/1/15 (Part Three): Down the Mountain, Off the Cliff

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avalanches, bad decisions, bad fathers, Best of 2014, Brady Corbet, cinema, Clara Wettergren, dark comedies, dramas, dysfunctional family, family vacations, Fanni Metelius, favorite films, film reviews, films, Force Majeure, foreign films, Fredrik Wenzel, French Alps, friends, Johannes Kuhnke, Karin Myrenberg, Kristofer Hivju, Lisa Loven Kongsli, marriage, masculinity, Movies, nature, Ruben Östlund, ski vacation, Swedish films, troubled marriages, Vincent Wettergren, writer-director

During the second day of a five-day ski vacation in the French Alps, a family of four happens to get lunch at their resort’s crowded, slope-side cafe. As they sit down to enjoy their meal, a nearby controlled explosion backfires and sends what seems to be an entire mountain-worth of snow surging towards the outdoor cafe: as the avalanche gets closer, crowds of panicked people flee in every direction, chaos incarnate. As Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) struggles to protect and comfort her children, Harry (Vincent Wettergren) and Vera (Clara Wettergren), she calls out for her husband, Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), to no avail: turns out the family’s patriarch ran like hell as soon as the avalanche started, stopping only long enough to grab his phone and sunglasses. After the dust clears (literally), we see that the cascading mass of snow has stopped well short of the cafe: crisis averted, no one injured, everybody as you were. As Tomas sheepishly retakes his seat, however, the shocked stares from his disbelieving wife and kids are much louder than the mountain-side detonations: the next three days are going to feel like years…and not particularly good ones, at that.

This lapse of parental/spousal support forms the crux of writer-director Ruben Östlund’s brittle, frigidly humorous Force Majeure (2014), a thorny examination of the changing nature of gender roles, the passive-aggressive ways in which spouses needle at each other and the subtle ways in which self-preservation is as much a learned skill as an inherent instinct. While precious little about Östlund’s film is laugh-out-loud funny, there’s an ironic tilt to the film’s cap that belies the seemingly black-and-white nature of its subject: by their very natures, human are absurd animals and any attempt to bring order to the absurdity just makes it that much more absurd.

From the jump, Östlund drops subtle hints about the true nature of Tomas and Ebba’s relationship: she dotes on the children but seems decidedly less focused on her husband, he’s on a much-needed vacation from work but still spends an inordinate amount of time checking his phone. There seems to be a disconnect between the two long before Tomas’ act of cowardice tosses everything wholesale over the falls, leaving us to believe that this wasn’t the only straw, just the one that snapped the camel in two.

In certain ways, Force Majeure echoes Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) in that much of the external conflict between Tomas and Ebba stems from a fundamental difference in their versions of events at the cafe: Tomas firmly believes that he did not, in fact, run away, even though the video evidence is right on the phone that he managed to grab. As Tomas continues to push his version of events, his nit-picking and wheedling has the effect of making Ebba seem like an idiot, which only serves to push the two further apart.

Östlund expands the tableau out a little with the inclusion of Fanni (Fanni Metelius) and Mats (Kristofer Hivju), old friends of Tomas and Ebba’s who also find themselves at the same resort. As the couple attempts to rope their friends into supporting their individual versions of events, age difference starts to play a part: Mats and Tomas are older than Fanni and Ebba, which explains why Ebba jumped into action and Tomas didn’t. If Fanni and Mats had been on the slopes that day, Fanni posits, they would have reacted the exact same way. Cue Mat’s wounded masculine ego as he steadfastly disputes his wife’s assumption about his possible heroic tendencies. In no time at all, the two couples are at each other’s throats, with the women seeking to support each other while the men seek to reaffirm their stricken masculinity on the mountain-side in any way possible. Meanwhile, neither Harry nor Vera can even look their parents in the eye: as far as they’re concerned, everybody fucked up and assigning blame is sort of moot…from the mouths of babes, eh?

Concise, intimate and dedicated to the difficult relationship issues that others might gloss over, Östlund’s Force Majeure is quite the piece of art, aloof and emotionless as it might be. While it would have been the easiest thing possible to vilify Tomas, Östlund isn’t interested in any facile, easy answers: rather, he uses the film’s conclusion as a way to flip the script, indicting Ebba’s judgment in the same way that Tomas’ was impugned earlier. There are no easy answers in crisis situations, he seems to be saying, and any hard-and-fast rules are largely without merit: men and women will do what they will do, regardless of how “right” or “wrong” it is.

In a day and age when the very notions of masculinity and femininity are being redefined on a near constant basis, Force Majeure examines the issue from a multifaceted approach: age, gender and societal expectations all play a role in what transpires…remove any one factor, Östlund seems to be saying, and the whole complicated mess comes tumbling straight to the ground. Nowhere is this point made more evident than the scene where Mats and Tomas hit the slopes together, only to suffer another wound to their egos at the hands of a seemingly flirtatious female skier: as the situation escalates from amusing to awkward to rather horrible, it’s as if Östlund is giving us a short survey on the various ways in which men and women (poorly) interact. Despite being established as the “better” version of Tomas, Mats ends up being just as ridiculous and over-reactive as his friend when the chips are down.

One of the most interesting discussions in the film involves the old-fashioned patriarchal notion of the father/husband as “protector” of the family. If one were to apply modern conceptions of gender neutrality on the issue, Tomas would be no more responsible for solely “protecting” his family than Ebba would be solely responsible for nurturing them. Under this ideal, Tomas may not have acted heroically but he was acting instinctively, as a human animal. Tomas’ actions only prove explicitly cowardly if one examines his actions under the guise of traditional patriarchy/masculinity: as an “old-school” father/husband, Tomas is a roaring failure, putting his own concerns and safety above those of the family he’s sworn to protect. In a way, Östlund gets to work both sides of the argument with equal aplomb, right down to the finale, which re-frames the “protector” role in a way that makes Ebba the deficient one, not Tomas. It’s dirty pool, in a way, but really opens the film up to examination and interpretation from a number of angles.

So…Force Majeure is one of the cleverest, most cutting and insightful films of the year…is it actually a good film, though? In reality, Östlund’s film isn’t just good: it actually borders on the “quite extraordinary” end of things. For one thing, Force Majeure may have the single best cinematography of the year, with the possible exception of Wes Anderson’s exceptional Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel fashions some truly jaw-dropping shots: with brilliant azure skies, pristine white snow and brightly colored accents like the vibrant red location markers, Force Majeure is absolute and complete eye candy. There are a couple of nighttime mountain shots that are nothing short of stunning (the one with the toy airplane is pretty enough to hang in a museum) and the mountain setting has a grandeur and immensity to it that the whole experience becomes rather humbling: when compared to the beautifully rugged natural worlds, Tomas, Ebba, their kids (and us) are really just about as small and insignificant as it gets.

While Kuhnke is solid as the increasingly childish Tomas (his temper tantrum/breakdown is really something to behold), Kongsli’s turn as Ebba is the real meat of the matter: her slow-burn evolution from slightly put-upon to completely shattered would be heartbreaking if Östlund hadn’t muddied the water enough to offer some shades of doubt. There are moments during Force Majeure where Kuhnke and Kongsli deliver mountains worth of character development without uttering so much as a word: in particular, Östlund uses the family’s nightly ablutions to subtly portray the disintegration of the family unit, from happy unit to miserable individuals. It’s a wonderfully cinematic effect and one of the many little details that make Östlund’s film so constantly fascinating.

Despite how much I liked and respected Force Majeure, there were still a couple of issues that didn’t sit quite right with me. From a technical standpoint, I wasn’t big on the occasional switches to a 1st-person POV: these tended to take me out of the story and I couldn’t really see any notable reason for the affectation. It was actually one of the few points in the film that felt like style for style’s sake, which might be why it stuck out so much. I also felt that the film could, on occasion, get a little heavy-handed: by the final reel, there’s so much hand-wringing and distraught emotions that the formerly chilly film runs the risk of getting a little too over-heated. Finally, while I appreciated the ironic intent behind the final “twist,” it also had the effect of sending the movie off without any real sort of conclusion. Not a critical blow, mind you, since Östlund’s intent is pretty clear. For my money, however, the finale felt more like a non-committal shrug than the decisive statement that the film seemed to be building up to. It worked, ultimately, but could have hit quite a bit harder, as far as I’m concerned.

Ultimately, however, any quibbles are just that: minor irritations that do nothing to sully the overall positive impression of the film. Force Majeure is the kind of knotty, intelligent and quietly subversive independent film that we could use a whole lot more of: when the external explosions match the internal detonations, Force Majeure is just about as perfect an examination of a troubled marriage as one could find. In the end, deciding Tomas’ ultimate level of culpability will depend on lots of factors, not the least of which is the individual ideas and “baggage” that individual viewers bring to the proceedings. Determining Ruben Östlund’s abilities as a formidable filmmaker, however, is a much easier task: one simply needs to open their eyes and the proof is right there on the screen, for everyone to see.

12/6/14 (Part One): Love You Two Times

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Being John Malkovich, Best of 2014, black comedies, cinema, couples' therapy, dopplegangers, doubles, Elisabeth Moss, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, ideal self, independent films, indie films, infidelity, marital issues, Mark Duplass, marriage, Movies, romances, small cast, surreal, Ted Danson, The One I Love, troubled marriages

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A husband and wife go see a marriage counselor after repeated attempts to put the spark back into their rocky relationship fail miserably. The therapist invites the couple to spend the weekend, on their own, at his isolated estate: away from the hustle and bustle of the outside world, he theorizes that the pair will be able to reconnect and rediscover what first drew them to each other. Once there, however, the husband and wife continue to bicker and pick at each other, right up until the point where they discover their doppelgängers living in the guest-house: their doubles appear to exemplify each person’s “better” qualities but also seem unable to leave the guest-house. As the wife begins to fall in love with her husband’s “double,” her real husband must do everything he can to try to woo her back from “himself.” As the rules of space and time appear to be collapsing on themselves, the couple must make one last, desperate stand to preserve their marriage and, by extension, themselves: failure to do so may very well change the world…forever. Same old, same old, right?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Every once in a while, a film comes along that is so genuinely “out there,” so free of ties to conventional thought that it can’t help but stick out from the pack. Spike Jonze’s oddball Being John Malkovich (1999) is one such film, Jason Banker’s Toad Road (2012) is another. We could easily add Ben Wheatley’s amazing head-scratcher A Field in England (2013) to the list, saving a spot near the top for Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013). Whatever you do, however, don’t forget to set a place at the table for Charlie McDowell’s feature-debut, The One I Love (2014), a genius film that manages to take the romantic-comedy, turn it inside out, spray-paint the carcass metallic gold, attach some rockets and send the whole damn thing straight into apace. It’s an incredibly simple film, utilizing only three actors and two locations, yet feels a million times more complex, stuffed to bursting with the kind of casual metaphysical nonsense that would be persona non grata in anything more “mainstream.” It is, without a doubt, one of my very favorite films of the year and, as far as I’m concerned, a cult classic in the making.

It’s hard to explain why the film works so well but I’ll give it the old college try. For one thing, you have an absolutely unbeatable cast: indie-film darling Mark Duplass has always been a lot of fun to watch (cold-start any given episode of The League for proof) but he’s never been better than he is here, effectively playing two very different characters, often at the exact same time. It’s a great performance because of how subtle it is: it’s not quite as simple as “alternative” Ethan being laid-back while “real” Ethan is uptight: Duplass works with his body language, facial expressions, posture and everything else at his disposal to really set these up as different individuals. There’s none of that hoary-old “which witch is which?” shit because both Marks are distinctly different individuals, even they seem to be opposite sides of the same coin.

Fans of Moss’ performances in Mad Men and Top of the Lake will already know what a gifted actor she is, able to easily portray the sad lot of the outsider without ever coming across as pitiable or in need of “saving.” Her performance here, like Duplass’, is a masterpiece of modulation: the differences between the two Sophies are even more subtle than between the Ethans, yet Moss still manages to make them distinctly different characters. Indeed, it’s Moss complete mastery of her characters that allows the final image to pack such a wallop. If it wasn’t completely obvious before, let’s go ahead and get it out-of-the-way right now: Elisabeth Moss is a force to be reckoned with and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if The One I Love was the beginning of her ascent into the stardom that she so richly deserves. It would be a career-making performance if Moss wasn’t already doing just fine: it’s just more proof that we need much, much more of her onscreen.

As a filmmaker, McDowell is an absolutely formidable presence. While the script (the feature-length debut for short writer Justin Lader) is rock-solid and pokes some suitably large holes in moldy rom-com clichés, it’s the director’s subtle touches that really make the film stand out. For one thing, I love how the ominous, foreboding score was almost always at odds with the action on-screen: from the get-go, the film makes us feel uneasy and edgy, which sits at decided odds with the Portlandia-esque opening banter between Duplass and Moss. We never have any idea which direction the film is going to take which ends up paying massive dividends in the second half when things really get hairy. It’s a smart, economical way to build mood and managed to put a big, dumb smile on my face from the jump.

I’m also rather enamored with the way McDowell (and Lader) combine so many disparate genres/themes/ideas into one big stew, tossing in elements of romantic comedies, troubled marriage dramas, intelligent sci-fi and double/doppelgänger films. It’s even possible to read the film as a horror movie, albeit an extremely tricky one: we never do get the full story of what’s going on but the bits and pieces we’re fed seem to point to some pretty sinister, mysterious things happening just off in the film’s margins. Ted Danson’s therapist is a fantastically shadowy character: the bit where he uses a piano to measure how “in tune” Ethan and Sophie are is nicely realized. If I have one real complaint with the film, it’s that Danson’s performance amounts to a glorified cameo: he deserved more screen time, plain and simple.

A lot of films get called “thought-provoking,” but The One I Love is one of the very few that earns the designation. The film not only makes some incredibly astute observations about marriage (there’s a painfully honest scene where Sophie discusses “real” Ethan’s infidelity with “fake” Ethan that’s almost too real to watch) but also manages to make the sci-fi/doppelgänger angle completely organic. The film makes absolutely no attempt to explain anything but, as far as I’m concerned, that’s one of its prime strengths: the remarkable amount of audience hand-holding. The One I Love is a film that doesn’t pander, relying on the antiquated idea that the audience won’t be too stupid to follow along. Suffice to say that I felt thoroughly satisfied with the resolution, even if nothing was wrapped up with a shiny bow.

If it hasn’t been made plainly clear before, I absolutely adored The One I Love. As a post-modern take on the romantic-comedy, it’s pretty much in a class all its own: there’s just enough ties to the old-school to make it recognizable, yet so much ferocious innovation as to let it easily stand out.  The acting was impeccable (if anything, I wanted more of everyone, not less) and looked like a million bucks. I had more fun watching this film than I have in quite a while. The One I Love is Charlie McDowell’s debut feature and, if you’re smart, you’ll keep an eye on him: I have a feeling he’s got a long, amazing career ahead of him.

1/18/14: The Great, The Lame and the Drooling

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Academy Awards, alcoholism, Alex Shinohara, artists, bad films, bad movies, Best Feature Documentary nominee, Chevy Chase, cinema, Cutie and the Boxer, documentaries, documentary, drama, films, high school angst, Hillary Duff, indie comedies, lazy films, Lizzy Caplan, marriage, Movies, Noriko Shinohara, Oscar nominee, Peter Dinklage, romance, Sean Astin, Snakes on a Plane, Stay Cool, The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, Ushio Shinohara, waste of time, Westerns, Winona Ryder, Zachary Heinzerling

This past (long) weekend began with two terrible films and one great one: not the most auspicious start to the proceedings but better than three terrible ones, I suppose. Here, then, is what happens when you put an Oscar contender in between two Z-grade films: the results are not pretty.

Let me begin by clarifying something: I have absolutely nothing against bad movies. Some bad movies are more ludicrously entertaining than any well-made film could ever hope to be, spewing out more ideas (terrible or otherwise) in a few moments than most films do in two hours. Some, like Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado, even manage to worm their way into the cultural zeitgeist, although I’m not personally a fan of either film. There’s a reason that “so bad they’re good” films are almost as popular as actual “good” films: they take the entertainment aspect of filmmaking and knock it out of the park, offering the kind of fan service that makes it easy to forget that every other aspect of the movie has wandered into the desert to die.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is a wretched film, an absolutely miserable waste of what I can only imagine was a lengthy 24-hour shoot. Its sins are many and run deep but some are more lethal than others. For one thing, the film displays the kind of casting choices that can best be described as “suspect”: Lizzy Caplan, most famous for her great comedic turn in Party Down, is a humorless prostitute-turned-gunfighter; Jason Priestly is the hard-as-nails titular gunslinger, Ransom Pride; Dwight Yoakam and his dead animal-pelt toupee appear as an alcoholic preacher/bad hairpiece duo that also serve as Ransom’s father; Kris Kristofferson looks half dead as some sort of Old West head honcho but his voice is still all gravel and asskicking; Peter Dinklage appears as a former circus performer who dresses like a member of one of those “urban vampire role-playing” games and travels in a circus tent with conjoined, opium-smoking twins. This, friends and neighbors, is what I like to call one messed-up goulash.

If the above-mentioned stars seem odd and out-of-place, at least they come off better than the other “actors” in the film, particularly the shrill creature that plays Maria la Morena, a whore/witch/madam/crime-boss that manages to be simultaneously ridiculous and obnoxious. After her second appearance, I muted every other time she popped up on-screen, preferring to miss whatever paltry exposition she might offer in return for my sanity. This is a film where your allegiances lie with whatever actor/actress is currently the least annoying: I tossed my hat in the circus corner, because at least they had Dinklage in wispy velvets, fake mustache and a bit where opium smoke is blown into a tracheotomy tube: yum! If Dinklage and twins had just been the damn heroes, we might be having a very different conversation but no…we get a scowling Lizzy Caplan and a love interest so bland I can only refer to him as Haircut #2.

But it’s a super-low budget Western, you might say: be gentle! Not a chance, bub: if this was big enough to get released and burn a scarlet L into my forehead, it’s big enough to take a little drubbing. Were there but one thing that actually worked, I’d keep my vitriol to myself. What in the hell are you supposed to do with dialogue like “Mexico…my precious and beautiful Hell” or “I was always a lover, despite the killings,” though? Laugh? Cry? Assume it’s some sort of Dadaist statement on the surreality of it all? How about the fact that one of the throwaway characters is named Luis Chama, apparently after John Saxon’s character in Joe Kidd? Is this relevant? Not that I could find, even though I love Joe Kidd: just a weird little bit of parallelism for no good reason.

The opening credits are a twitchy mess and the ensuing film manages to match the aesthetic perfectly. The whole thing is so jittery and spastic that I wanted to prescribe it Ritalin and a dark room: at some points, cuts were so quick and pointless that I actually thought they were using subliminal imagery. Alas, that would have taken more courage and brains than the entire production appeared to possess. And that look…oy…that look. I could be kind and say that the film looks very”digital” but, really, it  just looks crappy and cheap. Even though I prefer film stock, I’ve seen and enjoyed many films with a decidedly digital aesthetic: The Last Rites of Ransom Pride ain’t one of ’em.

Ultimately, The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is pure masochism: I detested the film almost immediately but forced myself to wade through the endless rivers of crap to see how bad it could get. The movie, however, was always up for the task: anytime I thought it had reached a new nadir, something else would come along to dig it down a foot deeper. I have, however, learned a very valuable lesson: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and you’re probably a crappy Z-Western starring the guy from 90210. Ugh.

Now this is more like it! After suffering through the tornado of terrible that was The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, I really needed something to reset my brain. What better film than one of this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Feature Documentary? And so it was that Cutie and the Boxer saved my sanity.

I happen to really like documentaries, particularly those that cast a camera eye on outsider/fringe individuals. More often than not, these tales of life’s lovable losers (American Movie, Best Worst Movie, Room 237) can be bittersweet: these are usually really nice people with absolutely no sense of self-awareness and zero chance of success. It’s refreshing, then, to come across a film that arrives at roughly the same conclusion but manages to imbue it with more hope and potential than the others. There’s a lot of pain and sadness in Cutie and the Boxer but there’s a prevalent feeling of triumph that, ultimately, rules the day.

The film is an intimate examination of the 40-year marriage of Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, their respective art careers and the lifestyle choices that led them to their present circumstances. The two met when Noriko was only 19 and Ushio was the ripe old age of 41. Ushio is an underground artist, the toast of New York city for a few minutes in the ’60s and ’70s. Noriko functions as an unpaid assistant, of sorts, even though she’s also an artist. One of the film’s great conflicts is the dichotomy between Noriko’s roles as assistant and peer: there’s one heartbreaking moment where Ushio scoffs at his wife’s ability, stating that “those without talent must assist those with talent.” It’s a completely unfair assessment, besides being particularly thoughtless and goes a good way towards establishing some of the painful emotions on display here.

Ushio and Noriko, you see, are essentially broke, living in a ratty studio apartment in New York City with their grown son, Alex. Since Ushio never made much money with his art, even when he was popular, the aged pair have absolutely no nest egg or safety, a frightening enough prospect when you’re in your thirties but particularly terrifying when you’re in your eighties, I would imagine. Ushio has also struggled with alcoholism his whole  life, a condition which has left him allergic to alcohol in his old age (a blessing in disguise). Unfortunately, Alex has inherited his father’s (and mother’s, for that matter) proclivity for drink and this has tended to ruin his life, as well. Via home movies, we get to see a younger Ushio and Noriko getting falling down drunk with friends while their young son looks on, eventually tucking himself into bed. It’s a particularly stunning scene, as powerful as the one where a young, drunk Ushio has a breakdown, sobbing and slamming his fists repeatedly into a table. There is no shortage of real emotion on display here and, sometimes, it can get to be a bit much.

Luckily, filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling leavens the drama with plenty of humor and some truly neat animated scenes, courtesy of Noriko’s Cutie cartoons. There’s some nice insights into the New York art movement of the time (a picture of Ushio and Andy Warhol hanging out is pretty swell, indeed). The film’s style can seem a bit pretentious, at first, but Heinzerling quickly shows himself to be a deft hand at wringing genuine emotion and pathos from moments that might be too cloying in someone else’s hands.

More than anything, though, Cutie and the Boxer is a truly beautiful love story, a tale of two fractured individuals who found the love and support in each other that they never found in the rest of the world. It’s not a perfect relationship but no marriages (especially those lasting longer than 20 years, much less 40) are. Like everyone, they have their triumphs and upsets, joys and sorrows. There’s a moment where Noriko states that she and Ushio are “like two flowers in one pot: sometimes we don’t get enough nutrients.” These is a perfectly valid, if inherently sad, way to look at their co-dependent artistic careers. There’s an equally powerful moment, however, where Noriko states that, despite everything that’s happened, all of the joys and sorrows, the crippling alcoholism and crushing poverty, she would do the whole thing all over again. That, right there, is the very definition of love. I don’t think that Cutie and the Boxer will win the Oscar (I’m pretty sure that The Act of Killing has that locked down) but I, for one, will never forget the movie.

Is there anything worse than a terrible film? Yes, by gum, there certainly is: a lazy film. Lazy films may not make the same glaring mistakes as terrible films (say what you will about Howard the Duck but laziness is not one of its sins) but that’s because they lack the courage and conviction to do much of anything. For my money, there is nothing worse than sitting through a safe, lazy, middle-of-the-road film: I’d rather watch The Room on endless repeat than view something that not even the filmmakers could be bothered to care about.

Stay Cool, friends and neighbors, is one massively lazy film. We’re not talking a few shortcuts here and there, a little stereotyping to smooth things over: we’re talking practically comatose, a pulse so flat-lined that you’ve already called the morgue. From the cover art (the pic I posted above is actually much better than the official cover art, which really tells you something) to the lazy voice-over narration (cuz, you know, how else are we gonna know what’s going on?) to the actual story (man-child must return to high school to right the wrongs of his adolescence, having comical interactions along the way), there isn’t one thing about Stay Cool that pushes anything further than a shuffleboard puck on a seniors-only cruise.

But what about all of those familiar faces in the cast list, you may well ask? Let’s see if we can check these off the list fairly quickly, shall we? Winona Ryder collects a paycheck as the romantic lead, Chevy Chase is absolutely awful as the principal, Dee Wallace and Michael Gross are completely wasted as the protagonist’s parents, Sean Astin is saddled with the swishiest cliché of a gay character to appear on-screen in some time and Jon Cryer has what amounts to a cameo. And looks bored in the process, might I add.

It’s hard to single out my least favorite aspect of the film but there’s definitely something that’s easy to peg in my top 5: the ridiculous, juvenile attitude of the lead character. We’re actually supposed to believe that this man-child still acts like a petulant teenager (I don’t mean excessive partying, etc…I mean teenage whining and bitching, ladies and gents), lives at home with his parents and still has the same feud with his former high school principal, even though he must be in his late thirties/early forties and the principal is now in his seventies?! Suspension of disbelief is one thing: calling your audience stupid is something else entirely.

Betcha don’t know where the title came from, do ya? Let’s see if we can puzzle this out, shall we? You already know this is about a guy returning to his high school as an adult so…Yeah, that’s right: the clever title comes from the eternally clichéd quote that his high school dream girl wrote in his yearbook cuz, you know…Stay Cool! Genius! And so true, bro…so true!