5/3/16: Twain of Consequences

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Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, based on a book, Becky Thatcher, Beth Grant, childhood friends, cinema, co-directors, co-editors, co-writers, Cooper Huckabee, Creed Bratton, Daniel Edward Mora, dark comedies, Eric Christian Olsen, film reviews, films, Hannibal Buress, heist films, Huck Finn, Injun Joe, Johnny Pemberton, Kyle Gallner, Lee Garlington, literary figures, Mark Twain, Matthew Gray Gubler, Melissa Benoist, Movies, Noah Rosenthal, Stephen Lang, Tom Sawyer, writer-director-actor-editor

If you’ve ever gotten really wrapped up in a good book or story, you’ve probably wondered what happened to the surviving characters after the last page has been turned.  Do they continue to live on, experiencing life and having adventures that you’ll never be privy to? Are the unwritten/unseen adventures as good as what made it to the page? Could they possibly be better? Or is this the proverbial case of the unseen tree in the woods: if we’re not reading, do they cease to exist?

Working from this basic question, filmmaking siblings Aaron and Adam Nee offer up Band of Robbers (2016), a droll, indie-crime caper that wonders, aloud, what would happen if Mark Twain’s classic rapscallions Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were a couple of young roustabouts in our modern era. Lest they get lonely, the Nees have also brought along old friends like Becky Thatcher, Muff Potter, Aunt Polly, Sid Sawyer and, of course, that old ne’er-do-well, Injun Joe. When all’s said and done, however, do these timeless characters survive their modern makeovers or is this one of those “better in theory” type of deals?

Tom Sawyer (co-writer/director/editor Adam Nee) and Huck Finn (Kyle Gallner) are childhood best friends who are pretty much attached at the hip until life sends them down two very separate paths. Tom ends up joining the police force, where he navigates around both the disapproving eye of his stern aunt, Lt. Polly (Lee Garlington), and the over-sized shadow of his over-achieving half-brother, Det. Sid Sawyer (Eric Christian Olsen), all while keeping the most ridiculously sunny disposition this side of Mary Poppins. For his part, Huck has chosen a life of crime and spent a stretch of time in prison. As he nears his release date, Huck has no family, no friends, no real relationships and a huge question mark over his future.

The old friends reconnect when Tom picks Huck up from prison and whisks him straight away to a thoroughly pathetic “welcome home” party that doubles as a meeting for Tom’s latest brilliant idea. To whit: he wants Huck to join his “Band of Robbers,” which includes perpetually bleary Ben Rogers (Hannibal Buress), eager-to-please Joe Harper (Matthew Gray Gubler) and squeaky-clean Tommy Barnes (Johnny Pemberton), who just happens to be married to Tom’s old girlfriend, Amy (Maria Blasucci).

Tom’s plan is a complex, convoluted and fairly nonsensical one that involves ripping off a pawn shop in order to steal a hidden fortune in gold that has, according to Tom’s source, “Muff” Potter (Cooper Huckabee), been left there by none other than the nefarious killer, Injun Joe (Stephen Lang). The plan is a harebrained one, sure, but it still ends up going to shit in some pretty spectacular ways, mostly centered around Tom suddenly acquiring a wet-behind-the-ears, rookie partner, Becky Thatcher (Melissa Benoist). When the dust clears, Tom, Huck and their bumbling “band” must avoid not only the long arm of the local podunk police force but also the murderous attention of Injun Joe and his partners. Throw in some love lost and found, old wounds healed, old friendships reconciled and destinies fulfilled and you might have something that would make ol’ Samuel Clemens crack a grin.

If it were possible for films to skate by on nothing but a fresh concept and good intentions, Band of Robbers would be a massive success from start to finish. Indeed, the vast majority of good will that the Nees amass here is usually centered around the clever ways in which they manage to insert Twain’s various creations into the fabric of what turns out to be a fairly hum-drum caper film. Devotees of the original source material will be able to play a pretty fun little game of “Spot the Reference/Character,” which adds a little replay value to the proceedings, along with creating a fairly immersive world for Tom, Huck and their cohorts to play in.

The performances are generally enthusiastic, which gives the film a nicely propulsive quality, although some actors/characters fare better than others. At the top of this particular pyramid sits Kyle Gallner’s nicely understated take on Huck Finn and Stephen Lang’s all-in performance as one of the literary world’s greatest villains. Completely unrecognizable (I actually had no idea it was him until the end credits), Lang seems to be having more fun than the entire case combined and it’s pretty easy to give yourself over to the film whenever he holds the reins (which is, admittedly, not often enough). For his part, Gallner gives us a fairly standard “troubled dude with good intentions” but the performance is nuanced and Gallner is charismatic enough to make it work.

We also get sturdy performances from Gubler (quickly becoming a modern-day, genre film go-to-guy), Garlington, Olsen and Huckabee, all of whom run the gamut from suitably grounded to outrageously over-the-top. At the very least, however, each one brings enough individuality to the portrayals to make the characters seem (at least superficially) like fairly well-rounded creations. We’re not talking the typical Andersonian “cast of dozens,” mind you, but the aforementioned actors do a fine job of keeping us in Band of Robbers peculiar little world.

Less successful, unfortunately, are Hannibal Buress’ odd, spacey performance as Ben (was he actually stoned during the shoot, on cough medicine or a combination of both?), Adam Nee’s thoroughly grating, obnoxious take on Tom Sawyer and poor Melissa Benoist’s completely wasted take on Becky Thatcher. Buress’ performance isn’t as much of an issue due to his relative lack of screen-time but Nee is in roughly 90% of the film and he’s all but impossible to ignore. When working in tandem with Gallner and the others, Nee’s spastic performance feels, at the very least, tethered to something. Whenever he’s allowed to dominate the proceedings, however, he Hoovers up scenery like some sort of human-shaped black hole, giving everything a hectic, rushed and unnecessarily madcap feel that seems at odds with the rest of the film’s tone.

Perhaps no one gets the shorter end of the stick than Benoist, however, whose Becky Thatcher is such a non-entity that she might as well wear a big sign that says “Plot Device” around her neck. Where the original Becky was a more than suitable firebrand foil for Tom Sawyer, this version is just a moon-eyed, bumbling green-horn, a character who exists only to complicate the already complicated caper and serve as a standard-issue love interest. Hell, Becky’s “big” moment comes when she reveals that she asked to be Tom’s partner because she “sensed that he was headed for big things.” It would probably be easier to forgive the waste of a character if Benoist (so good in Whiplash (2014)) didn’t throw her all into the thankless character, giving her a giddy, effervescent quality that absolutely deserved a better outlet. Maybe next time, Melissa.

More than anything, however, Band of Robbers suffers from being simultaneously too familiar (despite that great central concept) and too disjointed and manic. When the film works, it works just fine. When it doesn’t, however, it actually becomes something of a mess. Take the pawn shop heist, for example, which should be one of the film’s primo setpieces. Instead, the scene devolves into a seriously unfunny mix of silly situational comedy, exaggerated performances and sub-Ritchian, overlapping dialogue. It was tiresome practically from the point it began, grinding the entire film to a halt at just the exact point when it should have been reaching take-off speed.

This sense of missed opportunities is repeated ad infinitum, right down to the ridiculously lackadaisical way in which the film dispatches its one legitimate threat (suffice to say that low stakes are but another constant issue here): it’s the notion that cutting off loose ends is much easier and less time consuming than tying them into neat bows. It’s a bit of a shame, too, since the film generally looks and sounds top-notch: at times, cinematographer Noah Rosenthal’s camera-work even approximates the arty loveliness of the Nees’ obvious influence, Wes Anderson, although it’s never more than a surface touch, at best.

Ultimately, despite its good intentions and handful of genuinely smart stylistic quirks, Band of Robbers never really makes good on the inherent interest of its premise. Rather than being something fairly original and new, this is just another zig-zagging crime caper about odd-couple friends who must set aside their differences in order to pull off one last, big haul. If that sounds familiar…well, it certainly is. There are plenty of films worse than Band of Robbers and an equal amount that are much, much better: problem is, no one ever stood out by standing in the middle of a crowd. I think ol’ Tom Sawyer would agree with that, too.

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7/5/15 (Part One): Home is Where the Haunt Is

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Barbara Niven, cinema, dead children, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, ghosts, grown children, haunted houses, horror-comedies, Housebound, Jack Plotnick, Jeffrey Combs, John Waters, Kat Dennings, Lucas Lee Graham, Mackenzie Phillips, Mark Bruner, Matthew Gray Gubler, McKenna Grace, Mel Rodriguez, Michl Britsch, Movies, multiple writers, Muse Watson, Odd Thomas, paranormal investigators, racists, Ray Santiago, Ray Wise, Richard Bates Jr., Ronnie Gene Blevins, Sally Kirkland, scatological humor, seances, seeing ghosts, Sibyl Gregory, silly films, Soska Sisters, Suburban Gothic, suburban homes, suburban life, suburbia, The Frighteners, Under the Bed, writer-director-producer

Ah, suburbia: endless rows of identical houses, with identical lawns, with identical Suburbans parked in identical carports, tended to by identical suburbanites as they go about their virtually identical lives. For many people, suburbia is the very picture of success: after all, what really says “You’ve made it” more than your own house, family, steady job and reliable source of transportation? For the outsider, misanthrope and loner, however, the very concept of suburbia can be a kind of hell on earth: the place where all dreams go to become pureed into easily digestible slop. As the Descendents so aptly put it: “I want to be stereotyped…I want to be classified…I want to be a clone…I want a suburban home.”

For filmmakers, the concept of the dark underbelly of suburbia is nothing new: after all, films like The Stepford Wives (1975), The Amityville Horror (1979), Neighbors (1981), Parents (1989), The ‘Burbs (1989),  American Beauty (1999) and Donnie Darko (2001) have been equating cookie-cutter neighborhoods with existential dread for decades now. To this storied tradition we can now add writer-director Richard Bates Jr’s Suburban Gothic (2014): proving that there’s nothing wrong with ambition, Bates Jr takes the aforementioned suburban angst films and throws in elements of “I see ghosts” films, ala The Frighteners (1996) and Odd Thomas (2013), as well as “grown children moving back home” films, such as the instantly classic Housebound (2014) and the less successful Under the Bed (2012). If Suburban Gothic never comes close to reaching the heady heights of Housebound, there’s still enough silly, funny and outrageous material here to give genre fans a grin from ear to ear. Plus, it’s got Ray Wise: any film with Ray Wise is, of course, automatically better than any film without him…that’s just basic math, amigo.

Poor Raymond (Criminal Minds’ Matthew Gray Gubler) is in a bit of a pickle, the same conundrum that might befall many twenty-to-thirty-somethings: he’s over-educated and under-employed. Despite having his MBA, Raymond must swallow the bitterest pill of all and move back in with his over-protective, smothering mother, Eve (Barbara Niven), and obnoxious, disapproving and casually racist father, Donald (Ray Wise, swinging for the rafters), an event which is sure to put a crimp in any attempt he can make to take control of his life.

You see, Raymond is a bit of a mess: bullied as a child about his weight and “gifted” with the ability to see ghosts, he escaped his one horse town as soon as he could, hoping to put as much distance between him and the past as possible. Given to wearing outrageously showy clothes (his bright, purple scarf is a definite highlight), Raymond couldn’t be more out-of-place in his old hometown, especially once he ends up back in the sights of former bully Pope (Ronnie Gene Blevins) and his small crew of miscreants. Everyone in town is glad to see that Raymond failed at life, since it (somehow) validates their own humble existences. Everyone, that is, except for Raymond’s former classmate, Becca (2 Broke Girls’ Kat Dennings), who now tends bar at the local watering hole. To her, Raymond was always the only interesting person in town and she’s mighty glad to have him back, even if she has a snarky way of showing it.

Just in time for his homecoming, however, some truly weird shit has started to happen, seemingly centered around the makeshift childs’ coffin that Donald’s gardeners have just dug up in the yard. Before he knows what’s going on, Raymond is experiencing the same ghostly visions that he used to have, this time involving a sinister little girl. As the occurrences become more pronounced, Raymond and Becca are convinced that a wayward spirit is in need of a peaceful journey into the light, while Donald and Eve are convinced that their son is losing his ever-lovin’ mind. As Raymond and Becca dig deeper into the history of the house, however, they begin to realize that the spirit in question might not be that of a little lost girl: it might just be something a bit more on the “extreme evil” side of things. Will Raymond and Becca be able to set it all to rights or will this humdrum slice of suburban life end up destroying them all?

My anticipation level for Suburban Gothic was pretty high, right out of the gate, for one very important reason: I pretty much adored writer-director Bates Jr’s debut, the outrageous Excision (2012), a slice of high school life that managed to combine Grand Guignol gore with fanciful dream sequences and arrived at a wholly unique, if often repugnant, place that wasn’t so far removed from what the Soska Sisters did with their stunning American Mary (2012). Excision was the kind of debut that puts a filmmaker firmly on my radar, which leads us directly to the sophomore film, Suburban Gothic. If his newest possessed a tenth of the gonzo energy of his first, this seemed like a pretty sure-fire no-brainer.

In reality, Suburban Gothic is a good full-step (certainly at least a half-step) down from Bates Jr’s debut, although it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable romp on its own terms. The big difference ends up being tonal: unlike Excision, which buried its blackly comic sensibilities under a lot of very unpleasant material, Suburban Gothic is a much sillier, goofier affair. Nowhere is this made more explicit than the impossibly silly scene where Raymond watches his toenails rise and fall to the tune of the old chestnut “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Shoddy CGI aside, the scene has the feel of something truly slapstick and goofy, perhaps closer to The ‘Burbs than anything in Bates Jr’s debut.

This “silly” elements end up seeping into almost every aspect of the film: John Waters shows up as the blow job-obsessed head of the local historical society, the medium’s daughter is named Zelda (et tu, Poltergeist (1982)?), Raymond and Becca dress up in the most ridiculous ghost costumes ever (think Charles Schultz), anonymous hands grab Raymond from every-which direction and there’s more mugging going on than a thug convention. In one of the film’s most notable bits, Raymond masturbates while checking out his favorite site, “Latina Booty,” as an overhead light slowly fills with “ghostly” semen: at the “appropriate” moment, the light shatters, showering poor Raymond in about fifty gallons of spooky spunk. Disgusting? You bet yer bottom dollar! Terrifying? Not quite.

The aforementioned example, however, is also a good example of Suburban Gothic’s ace-up-the-sleeve, as it were: for all of the film’s silliness and scatological humor (along with the jizz, we get a lovingly filmed vomiting scene and a nice, long shot of a turd in a toilet), there’s also genuine intelligence and love for the genre. The light gag might be an easy-shot gross-out joke but it’s always a subtle, kind of brilliant nod to Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead (1981). There’s also a not-so subtle reference to del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), lots of visual ques for The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist and plenty of cameos by genre royalty (the legendary Jeffrey Combs gets to play a bugshit-crazy doctor (natch), while the Soska Sisters pop up in a crowd scene).

While the actual plot is nothing revolutionary, Suburban Gothic is such a good-natured, eager-to-please popcorn flick that it’s never painful to watch: the CGI is fairly well-integrated (save that rather dreadful toenail bit) and if the color-timing on the cinematography seems constantly off (the film has an odd red cast that’s pretty noticeable), cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham (who also shot the much more striking Excision) serves up plenty of nicely composed, evocative images.

On the acting side, Gubler is pitch-perfect as the sarcastic, quietly suffering schlub who must swallow his distaste for everything in order to save his (decidedly undeserving) childhood home. Gubler has a rare ability to mix wiseacre dialogue delivery with Stoogian physical comedy, an ability which serves him well here: one of the film’s easy highlights is the hilarious scene where Raymond accidentally drops an ice cream cake, over and over, until he finally stamps on the damn thing in an abject display of childish tantrums writ large.

While Dennings takes a little longer to get revved up (her early scenes have a rather distracting “I don’t give a shit” quality that’s off-putting), she fully comes into her own by the film’s final reel and her and Gubler make for a believable enough couple. Although she’s never as consistent as Gubler, Dennings shows enough steel, here, to make me interested in her next move: here’s to hoping she spends a little more time in the horror genre…we could use a few fresh faces!

While Niven is fun as Raymond’s mom, Wise really gets to run roughshod over the proceedings: whether he’s proclaiming that all of his Latin American workmen are “Mexicans,” telling his son to “take a knee” as he rolls up to him in a squeaky office chair or apologizing to his black football players for his lack of “grape pop,” Wise is an absolute blast. If anything, his performance as Donald makes a nice comparison to his role as Satan in Reaper, albeit tempered with more than a little lunk-headedness. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if there’s ever a Mount Rushmore for iconic genre personalities, Wise is guaranteed to be there.

Ultimately, Suburban Gothic is a thoroughly entertaining, amusing and mildly outrageous horror-comedy: fans of this particular style will find no end of delights, I’m willing to wager, although I still found myself slightly disappointed by the time the credits rolled (the less said about the ridiculously sunny coda, the better). Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by standout films like Housebound and The Frighteners, a pair of horror-comedies that are pretty much the first and last word on this particular subject…perhaps I was hoping for something with a little more bite, ala Excision. Whatever the reason, I have no problem whatsoever recommending Suburban Gothic (provided, of course, that potential viewers are prepared for the often rude humor), although it’s not quite the Richard Bates Jr joint that I hoped for.

I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that Bates Jr is going to become a force to reckon with in the next several years. If that doesn’t blow yer toenails back, pardner…well, I don’t know what will.