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September 21, 2009

Script Review: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max & Nils Parker

[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]

Where do I even begin?

I’ve never liked Tucker Max. I’m not calling him a pale, friendless virgin, and I’m sure his fans (who might be pale, friendless virgins) will dogpile on me for even suggesting this, but his stories always struck me as bullshit. I didn’t think this at first, mostly because I didn’t care, but I have a friend who liked Tucker Max’s material more than any sane person should, so I checked out a couple of his stories. I recall reading his “Absinthe Donuts” story shortly after its debut. My immediate thought: “This sounds like the kind of bullshit a guy would make up to impress much stupider friends.” My second thought: “Let me use my knowledge of the Chicago news media to debunk this story.” Because, you know, when somebody crashes a stolen car into a donut shop and flees the scene, it’ll make the news. It might be on page 17 of Section E, or even worse, a tiny blurb in the police blotter, but it’ll be there, and since allegedly the story had taken place “a few weeks ago” and had just been posted to his site, it’s not like it’d be impossible to find any information about it.

Except it was. Because it didn’t happen. So there’s that. When you go to a site where a guy emphasizes repeatedly, almost to the point of suspicion, how true his stories are, yet you find one that both rings cartoonishly false and isn’t corroborated by, um, reality, and you don’t even find it funny? Why waste your time with that shit? The only thing that makes Tucker Max’s bullshit stories even remotely funny is the slim possibility there’s some truth to them. But when the “outrageous” things Max says and does strain credulity, and they’re barely funny even when they seem true, well… Let’s just say I read the stories, got annoyed enough to Google him in an attempt to find out what the fuss was all about, and then forgot about him again…

…until last year, when this blog post helped me discover three terrifying truths: (1) that Tucker Max’s stories had been converted into a book, (2) that this book was a bestseller, and (3) that Tucker Max had co-written a screenplay adaptation that was actually getting made. I won’t rant about how shocked I am that anybody would dare to make this movie. Based on that blogger’s review, the script was as horrible and unfunny as Max’s site, but he somehow has enough fans to become a legitimate bestseller, so turning it into a schlocky movie starring a bunch of WB castoffs makes good financial sense.

Well, now the movie’s finally coming out, and this week I’ve decided to examine the script myself. Unlike the rest of these script reviews, I was not at any point paid to read this. I glommed on to a copy of the script out of morbid curiosity, and unfortunately, “morbid curiosity” is the closest I come to having interest in any of the movies coming out this week. “Paid to slog through it” doesn’t qualify as interest, unfortunately.

I was sure I wouldn’t find it funny, and that would color my judgment, but I had no idea it would be a complete fucking disaster of a screenplay. The writing, in the broadest sense of the word (i.e., spelling, grammar, and diction) is good, as expected. In fact, it’s one of the rare scripts I’ve read that spells “palate” correctly (usually it’s “palette” or “pallet,” which always makes me laugh), so Max and writing partner Nils Parker get some bonus points for that. However, a few bonus points do not make up for the flaming turd surrounding all those properly used words and commas.

The story goes like this: Tucker drags his buddies Jeff and Aaron to an out-of-town strip club, alleging it’s a bachelor party celebration for engaged Jeff. In reality, Tucker wanted to fuck a midget stripper (no, really, and believe me — the only joke here is “A midget! Isn’t that hilarious?!” which would be a lot funnier if R. Kelly hadn’t already done the same thing in Trapped in the Closet*) and dragged his friends along for the ride. Eventually Jeff gets pissed off and leaves, refusing to invite Tucker to his wedding. Meanwhile, Aaron hooks up with a stripper and does a farfetched 180 from over-the-top misogynist nerd to sensitive caretaker. This leaves Tucker alone, and at his lowest point, he shits all over a hotel room, hotel hallway, hotel elevator, and public restroom. In the gripping final moments, Tucker crashes Jeff’s wedding, gives a speech in which he allegedly apologizes for his bad behavior and wins back the hearts and mind of his best friend and her new wife. In an “ironic” twist, Tucker explains that most of his apology speech was bullshit, then sets his sights on fucking a blind chick, an “amusing” “callback” to a “joke” earlier in the script where he fucks a deaf girl and someone quips that, when combined with a mute girl he had fucked prior to the start of the story, he was “two-thirds of the way to a Helen Keller.”

Let’s start with the biggest mitigating factor: the characters. Tucker, the alpha-male in a trio of lunkheads, is an asshole. Tucker Max being an asshole is the lynchpin of nearly all his stories, so this came as no surprise. He also wisely created a character called Aaron, who exists solely to provide evidence that Tucker is a cooler-than-thou gynophile instead of an unfunny misogynist. In addition to being cartoonishly hateful, Aaron becomes the butt of many “nerd” jokes (about video games, Star Trek, fast food, and his inability to score). And then there’s Jeff, the “regular guy” who’s getting married and only puts up with Tucker’s antics because, I guess, they’ve been friends for a long time (it’s never actually said why he’s willing to put up with Tucker’s crap until the third act, when it’s too late to matter).

Based on the movie’s website and its trailer, the filmmakers are sort of getting off on the idea of how “edgy” and “different” this is from other comedies. From a story standpoint, though, it’s really not. It has the same archetypal trio found in nearly every phallocentric sex comedy, who I generally argue represent Freud’s superego, ego, and id: you have the “regular guy” (superego), the “nerd who can’t get laid” (ego), and the “sociopath” (id). The only thing “different” about this script is that it attempts in vain to turn the Vince Vaughn/Christian Slater sociopath role into a compelling lead character. Notice I don’t say “protagonist,” because Tucker is not the protagonist of this story; although he’s marginalized for most of the script, Jeff still remains the protagonist, while Tucker is his antagonist. Tucker is the one constantly hurling obstacles in Jeff’s path. As in most sex comedies, regular guy Jeff is always the one willing to trust the sociopath’s judgment and wonder why it keeps getting him in trouble. Regular guy Jeff is the one who finally “dumps” his friend, then takes him back at the end because hey, man, bros before hos. The script follows all these usual beats, only focusing on Tucker instead of Jeff.

Tucker is unlikable by design, and he’s the antagonist, but these don’t have to be problems. Plenty of movies successfully focus on unlikable villains, but the difference is, (a) the filmmakers acknowledge the character’s flaws, or (b) they give us enough insight into why the character is so unlikable that we can empathize with him. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell attempts to persuade audiences that the unlikable main character is a lovable goof. The script often references the “mischievous twinkle” in Tucker’s eyes, the women he insults and degrades often attempt to rebuff his rapier wit, but they ultimately realize he’s both a comic genius (despite the script’s lack of laughs) and a sex god (despite the fact that, in the entire script, Tucker manages to score with a deaf girl and a midget stripper but not any of the dozens of extremely attractive women he disarms with gems like “That’s funny, normally the designated cock-blocker is the fat one.”). Neither Max nor Parker seem overly concerned with admitting Tucker has flaws or in developing an audience outside their undersexed super-nerd niche. We’re simply expected to like Tucker because he’s the main character, and because he’s an irrepressible rapscallion.

You might have noticed from the plot summary that, well, there’s not much of one. The script shambles from one limp gag to another, on a steady narrative course that (midget strippers and shit rivers excepted) we’ve all seen before. Despite the by-the-numbers storyline, Max and Parker still do a poor job of building momentum. It feels more like a “series of scenes that ends with 30 seconds of cheap moralizing” than an actual story, and that’s not its only similarity to Family Guy: the script too often relies on fantasy cutaways that don’t really add anything to the story or characters. In theory, they add humor, but even if you find this shit funny, you’ll probably agree that jokes alone won’t make this a good script.

The only good thing to come out of my reading of this script is this: I finally figured out why Tucker Max has some popularity. It took me awhile to figure it out, but one scene in the script really drove the point home:

Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy here? A guy named Tucker — fucking Tucker — ripping on a guy for having a name like Chance, Reed, or Logan. Tucker, for fuck’s sake. Then, ridiculing him for falling into all the stereotypes of your typical meathead, which Tucker so elegantly rises above by… What? Going to law school? Which shows that he’s a genius and therefore above all the fratty/douchey/meathead bullshit? Even though he acts exactly like a fratty, douchey meathead?

And that’s when it hit me: all this time, I assumed Tucker was trying to appeal to that frat-boy date-rapist demographic, but now I know the truth: he’s trying to appeal to lonely super-nerds who wish they can live the Tucker Max lifestyle. Why else would most of the jokes in this script revolve around video games, Star Trek, and McGriddles? Why would Tucker’s only sexual conquests occur with the type of lonely woman even a super-nerd could get into bed, simply by sidling up next to them and showing them a little attention? It all started to fall into place for me, but not really in a good way.

Based on this script, I have no doubt that I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell will suck as hard as Tucker Max’s stories, but I will say one thing in its favor: the trailer, while it does not contain any actual laughs, shows that the actors are at least trying to breathe life into horrible characters and unfunny dialogue. They might be mired in a sea of stupid jokes, barely managing to stay afloat on the leaky ship of bad agent advice, but at least they’re trying.

*For you Tucker Max fans whining, “B-b-but Tucker posted a story about fucking a midget stripper on his website years ago!” Yeah, I know. I looked it up, and according to his story, the incident took place in July of 2006. R. Kelly released chapters 6-12 of Trapped in the Closet — the ones featuring Big Man, the well-endowed midget stripper — in November of 2005. So fuck off, you retards. [Back]

Posted by Stan at 10:53 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | Reviews

September 7, 2009

Script Review: Sorority Row by Josh Stolberg & Peter Goldfinger

[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]

First, a mini-rant about remakes:

Remakes have been around forever, and plenty of classics (The Maltese Falcon, Ben-Hur, His Girl Friday) were actually vastly improved remakes of films forgotten even in their own time. I never object to remakes if they improve on the original. The problem I have with the recent glut of remakes is that, instead of striving to best their source material, it usually turns out significantly worse (Alfie, The Amityville Horror, Assault on Precinct 13 — and that’s just the A’s!). It’s not that the movies can’t be improved on; it’s that the filmmakers seem content with the notion that, hey, the original made money, and so will this one. They don’t have to make it good as long as they slap a familiar title on it.

More studios should embrace the idea of taking a mediocre (or outright bad) movie that didn’t make a huge amount of money. Many movies have a few great ideas buried in a mountain of trash; I’d need at least three hands to count the number of Mystery Science Theater 3000 movies where I’ve said, “Man, with a budget and a better script, this could be a great movie.” I know I should be ashamed of this, but I’ve always felt like I could make Soultaker into the great movie it should have been. Of course, certain examples suggest that throwing more money at a decent idea won’t make it better (1998’s Godzilla, 1976’s King Kong, 2005’s The Island), but in the hands of competent filmmakers, it couldn’t hurt (see also: 2005’s King Kong). At any rate, Ocean’s Eleven took a bland, poorly received Rat Pack vehicle and turned it into one of the better remakes — and better heist movies — of the past decade. Compare that to The Italian Job remake: the original is actually pretty great, and while the remake isn’t offensively bad, it doesn’t do much to better its source. So why bother? Oh right, there’s profit to be had.

The good news is, The House on Sorority Row is a flaming turd. Many horror/slasher fans don’t want to accept this fact, and as a result Mark Rosman’s 1983 original has been inexplicably catapulted alongside Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, and A Nightmare on Elm Street as one of the classic slasher movies of the genre’s golden age. Despite this, we cannot ignore the fact that it sucks Jupiter-sized balls. It’s not the world’s worst movie, but it’s bad for the reasons many low-budget horror films turn out poorly: amateurish production, comically inept acting, sloppy writing, weird pacing… Many low-budget semi-amateur filmmakers have the instincts and/or knowledge to make effective films despite mitigating factors (John Carpenter is a notable example, able to work wonders with virtually no money and stable of non-actors), but Mark Rosman was not one of them.

However, the barebones idea behind the movie (slasher attacks sorority house) is pretty solid and, surprisingly, has not been done to death. Unlike, say The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Halloween, this is a prime candidate for a remake: the original has some good ideas but, overall, it’s crap. Would screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger surpass the quality of the original or embrace the crappiness to make one of the world’s worst movies? The answer may surprise you…

…because the script is pretty great. It’s not nearly as derivative as the trailers — which give the impression of a cross between I Know What You Did Last Summer and MTV’s Undressed — suggest. Trust me; I’ve seen probably 800,000 slasher movies, most of them against my will. The writers do a great job of both embracing and defying genre conventions. Hell, I barely want to give a plot summary except that I know the trailer has already given away all the good early surprises. So, here it goes:

A group of sorority sisters play a prank on Garret, the sleazy brother of one of the girls. Garret cheated on his girlfriend, another sister named Megan (to be played by Audrina Partridge, in one of the world’s most misguided stunt-casting coups), so the girls give him some fake roofies to help him woo her back She feigns unconsciousness/foaming mouth/bleeding, and the other girls stage a panic, causing Garret to freak her out. They pile into an SUV, pretend to take a “wrong turn” to a dark lake filled with old, boarded-up mineshafts, where Megan pretends to die. While the girls debate what to do about the body, Garret panics and actually kills Megan. Faced with a big decision, they all decide to actually hide the body. The only two holdouts are Cassidy — the protagonist — and Ellie, a shy/sensitive type. Jessica, the semi-evil queen-bee, convinces Ellie they have no choice, but Cassidy is not as malleable. She refuses to keep their secret until Jessica suggests framing Cassidy for the crime. All the girls go along with this plan, so Cassidy is forced to keep her mouth shut.

A year later, the sorority holds an elaborate party after the graduation party. Cassidy reluctantly attends for her mother’s sake (she’s a legacy), but the reality is, Cassidy moved out of the house and had little to do with the sorority over the past year, other than attending “secret meetings.” At a ceremony before the party, Ellie screams and passes out when she sees Megan. Turns out this is actually Maggie, Megan’s younger sister who’s a dead ringer for her dead sister. She’ll be in college next year and wants to pay homage to her missing sister by rushing the sorority. Jessica tells her not to come later for the party. Just as they calm Ellie down, she receives a text message, supposedly from Megan. Now all the girls are a little scared, but Chugs (so named for her hilarious addiction problems) assures them it’s just her brother, Garret, who’s developed a weird sense of humor since “the incident.”

Chugs goes to her shrink to score some opiates, but she finds him dead. Before she even has time to panic, Chugs is killed with an irony-laced broken wine bottle. As the party kicks into gear, so does the body count. None of the girls miss Chugs at first, but when others begin disappearing, they get suspicious. Then they find Cassidy’s bloody coat — which Jessica wrapped Megan’s body in to frame Cassidy — in the basement, and some begin to suspect they didn’t actually kill her and she’s back for revenge. Terrified, Cassidy contemplates telling her boyfriend, Andy, but she doesn’t want to ruin the relationship. Boyfriends and sisters keep dying, so finally the remaining girls visit the mineshaft where they buried Megan…

I’m sure it’ll end up being telegraphed in the actual movie, but I didn’t find the reveal of the killer to be predictable at all, yet the reasons for the killer’s actions are well-defined and believable, in a sociopathic sort of way. You’ll note that there are multiple suspects, and the writers do a great job of making their behavior seem simultaneously normal and suspicious. In fact, the writers do the same with all the characters — they’re a little thin, but they each have distinctive personalities that drive them. None of their actions seem plot-driven or artificial in any way, which is actually a pleasant surprise in a mainstream script like this.

The story itself, starting in the second act, just chugs along, ramping up the suspense and body count until its satisfying conclusion. It’s not complex, but the writers do an efficient job of delivering kills and confusion. In fact, I only had two real problems with the screenplay. First, it violates one of my pet peeves, constantly referring to shotgun shells as “slugs” and “bullets,” having the shotgun-toting character claim she’ll “turn the wall into Swiss cheese” (even though, with one close-range shot, it already would be Swiss cheese)… It reached a point where I thought the shotgun was a sloppy, last-minute addition and had been a handgun in earlier drafts. It was probably just bad writing, though.

The second problem isn’t so much a problem as a minor annoyance: the script is written, specifically, as a PG-13 slasher movie. I don’t know why, but reading all the parentheticals and very specific disclaimers about girls taking off their shirts (revealing bras!) or kills occurring offscreen (we can tell it’s violent by the gross sounds and/or blood spatters!) just sort of bugged me. I still enjoyed the script quite a bit, and I’m not usually the kind of guy who will balk at a movie because they dared to make it PG-13 instead of R, but… I dunno, something about writing it that way unsettled me. It’s kind of a moot point, though, since the movie they’re releasing has an R rating.

I really, really enjoyed this script, much more than I ever thought I would. With movies like this, half the battle is getting a decent script. As long as the acting isn’t laughably bad and the directing isn’t distractingly ham-fisted, it should turn out to be one of the better horror movies of 2009. This gets a rare Stan Has Issues™ seal of approval.

Posted by Stan at 11:02 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | Reviews

September 14, 2009

Script Review: Fame by Allison Burnett

[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]

Before I begin, don’t forget: Jennifer’s Body, “from the mind of” Juno scribe Diablo Cody. Check out the review I wrote back in March of 2008.

Ten main characters. Nine hundred and fifty thousand secondary and tertiary characters. One hundred and four pages. Approximately 175 scenes. Four years. Does anything look a little fishy about these numbers?

Yes, the central problem with the amiable yet massively flawed Fame screenplay is that it’s more overstuffed than a morbidly obese man on a La-Z-Boy, napping after a six-hour “Neverending Pasta Bowl” adventure at the Olive Garden. It tries to take on so much that it gets spread too thin, turning its central characters into one-dimensional stereotypes as it plots a course through four years (about three more than it should have covered) at New York’s performing arts high school.

I haven’t seen the original Fame in years, and I have no desire to revisit it, but I seem to remember it concentrating on a core group of four or maybe six characters. It was also around two and a half hours long. That feels about right. Ten would work if they wanted a four-hour, Altmanesque character study of the intertwined lives of young, struggling artists. What they want is a 90-minute romp. It struck me as ironic that the script opens first with voiceover narration, then with a series of scenes, wherein the hard-nosed teachers explain how difficult the next four years will be for the students. The script has a lot of conflict, but little of it has to do with them struggling to succeed at their art form or struggling within the school. I can recall one scene that even broaches that topic: one girl is rejected from the dance program, and when she passionately argues with the teacher, she’s recommended for the acting program, where she excels. What a tough school!

As someone who spent most of high school in theatres, (music) practice rooms, and speech tournaments, I understand how hard someone has to work to excel, whether you have natural ability or not. You can settle on “pretty good” and blend in with the chorus, or you can work your ass off and stand out. This is a school about a group of standouts culled from various other public schools, so the fact that none of them have any competitive spirit or are even really shown working at their craft strikes me as a big missed opportunity. I’m not saying they have to break out the war paint, but a little friendly competition never hurt anyone. With the exception of a few reluctant romances that start off in heavy, pigtail-pulling conflict, these students all get along. All the obstacles come from forces outside the school — parents, mostly, although there is one delightfully melodramatic rape sequence involving an autistic 10-year-old — and don’t have much bearing on the students’ abilities to succeed at performing.

Here’s a barebones glimpse at the plot. Actually, there isn’t really a plot so much as a series of subplots competing for dominance (end result: nobody wins, especially not the audience), so I’m going to delineate them by character. I’ll also toss in the few character traits they’re given, and their art form.

Joy Moy (acting/singing) — An adorable Asian pixie who gets an agent fairly quickly and falls in love with Kevin, but their love is not meant to be…
Kevin (acting) — Because Kevin’s the token gay guy. He exists almost exclusively for wacky/snarky comic relief, including his climactic performance as a drag-queen Madonna. (I am not making that up.)
Marco (singing) — The writer all but describes him as “John Travolta circa 1978.” Rugged, tough, Brooklyn Eye-talian who spends summers working construction for his dad but his the soul of a tortured warrior-poet.
Malik (acting/poetry) — An actual tortured warrior-poet. He’s a mulatto but is ashamed of his white mother. He still mourns the loss of his younger sister, who was killed by thugz.
Jenny (acting) — Initially portrayed as vapid and self-absorbed, she gets a few third-act sympathy-generators in the form of an autistic brother and an alarming, tonally jarring rape by a graduate of the PAHS.
Alice (dance) — Like most rich, white girls, she’s stiff and snooty until lower-class Latin lover Victor takes her out to a meth rave, where she pulls her hair out of her steely bun (I am not making that up) and lets it down for the first time. The experience loosens her up so much that she ends up with the Joffrey Ballet — by her junior year!!!
Neil (film/acting) — This wacky, Woody Allen-esque nebbish ambushes Martin Scorsese (if Scorsese actually does a cameo in this movie, I’ll be very entertained) after a dental cleaning, begs him to read a short film script, then begs him for financing.
Rosie Martinez (dance/acting) — Una latina muy caliente. She’s too voluptuous to be a graceful dancer, but the fire in her belly inspires the dance teacher to recommend her for the acting program. She stars in Neil’s short film when Jenny refuses.
Denise (music) — Shy and quiet (and black, for the sake of diversity), she comes to play the piano but is encouraged by Victor to sing. She ends up with the role of Sarah Brown in a summer production of Guys and Dolls, to the consternation of her overprotective, religious parents.
Victor (music) — Belligerent yet sensitive, this Latin lover creates soulful music that’s as poppy as it is arty. He spends most of his time antagonizing Alice until she recognizes his earthy, streetwise genius, pops some pills, and starts sleeping with him. It’s portrayed much more romantically than this description.

That’s a lot to cram into 104 pages — is it any wonder that the average scene length is around 5/8ths of a page? It’s probably less of a wonder that none of the stories are fully developed. The script moves breathlessly from one scene to the next without taking a moment to pause and reflect. Decisions that would weigh on a teenager’s soul are made in the blink of an eye, often without any real motivation. The script never lacks for conflict, yet never contains any real suspense or consequences. There’s no threat of suspension, expulsion, or a forced transfer back to a regular school. Even in the subplot that comes closest to that (Denise’s), the threat of returning to a non-artsy private is made in one scene, then never mentioned again despite her parents’ continued disapproval of her actions, friends, and new lifestyle.

Speaking of no consequences, possibly the weirdest narrative move is that rape. I know I made some jokes about it, but only because of how sloppily (and shamelessly) it’s inserted into a story in which it doesn’t fit. (Feel free to make your own rape jokes involving the words “sloppily,” “inserted,” and “doesn’t fit.”) Jenny gets raped by an older boy she’s had a crush on for some time. Fun, right? So what’s the end result? Jail time for the criminal who perpetrated the act? Triumph as Jenny learns it’s more important to stand up for herself than fit in (so to speak)? Nah… Mini-Travolta beats the guy up in an effort to impress her, and it works, so they hook up and live happily ever after. It’s not so much that this turn of events is unrealistic. It just looks at the situation with oddly rose-colored glasses. I’m not one for moralizing in cinema, but it does seem like a poor choice in a movie aimed at teens to have “Getting raped is cool because it means you’ll end up with the sullen bad-boy who’s secretly a sweetheart you’ve always had your eye on, and you’ll finally be able to connect with your emotionally distant, autism-afflicted brother, and you’ll have no lingering emotional fallout!” as one of your central messages.

The original movie has its fair share of seductions and relationship problems, but it also does a slightly more realistic job of portraying the work and its consequences. I mean, one of the characters considers suicide when she’s cut from the dance program, one of the characters has an abortion in order to continue her career. There’s the threat of a party-down lifestyle and its consequences, shady producers, waiting tables… None of that is reflected in this script.

It has some similar moments. Rosie Martinez gets cut from the dance program, but true to the overall feel of the script, she has no time to contemplate suicide before deciding to switch programs; instead, the dance teacher decides to recommend her for acting in the same scene she cuts her from the dance program. O! the challenge! the pain! the heartache! The misguided rape almost echoes the “formerly cool student now waiting tables like a loser”/”shady producer making Irene Cara strip” stuff from the original. However, instead of showing the older rapist boy struggling after graduation, he initially tells Jenny he has a recurring role on Gossip Girl to impress her; after the rape, we discover he’s working kids’ parties in a panda costume. This doesn’t come close to having the same impact as the original, wherein the dorky guy who gets a scholarship and agent at the beginning is later seen waiting tables like a loser. That was an “It could happen to anyone — even the top graduate” moment; this is a “Don’t worry, bad things only happen to rapists!” moment.

You’ve probably figured out that, by and large, this script is bad. Its few strengths — brisk pacing and a genial tone — are also weaknesses. The brisk pacing is a direct result of cramming too many characters into the story, which then suffers because nobody’s individual story gets the attention it needs to succeed dramatically. The genial tone makes the darker moments seem jarring and out of place, especially when the script snaps back to the sunny side of life within 1/8th of a page.

Probably the best thing I can say about it is a backhanded compliment: it made me appreciate the original film much more than I ever thought possible. (I know it’s widely regarded as a classic and spawned a TV show that had a decent run, but it just never appealed to me, even as a music/drama/speech nerd.) The script is clearly aiming for the American Idol/High School Musical audience. I say this because its emphasis on fun over hard work reminds me of the latter, and the script actually includes a “bad auditions” montage like the former. This is not a bad plan, considering the popularity of each franchise, but they’re forgettable fluff. The kind of forgettable fluff that 13-year-old girls can watch over and over without getting tired, but what happens when they hit, say, 18? Like the comically short-lived careers of most American Idol winners, this version of Fame might succeed in the short-term, but it won’t endure.

Posted by Stan at 3:17 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | Reviews

September 28, 2009

Script Review: Zombieland by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick

[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]

Jeez, I know I’m going to start sounding like a broken old record playing a crazy old coot’s minor hits, but Zombieland pretty much exemplifies everything that just kinda bugs me about contemporary comedies. I’ll find it hard to write this review without comparing it to Shaun of the Dead, because Zombieland feels like a vastly inferior version of that film (and one could speculate this movie would have never been made if not for Shaun…), but I’ll try to refrain from turning this into a “Zombieland sux cuz its not liek this other movie!!!”-type rant.

However, you should know that Zombieland has one big, distracting similarity: it merges the zombie horror subgenre with the 20-something slacker comedy subgenre. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, instead of using familiar horror tropes to tell a solid, somewhat unique story about a 20-something slacker getting his shit together in order to embrace adulthood (not to mention using the “zombie” motif to great satirical effect), Zombieland…just kinda rests on the not-so-novel conceit of having semi-nerdy 20-something slackers wandering through a world filled with zombies. I’m not saying that in a post-Whedon world, every horror-comedy has to have some sort of satirical edge and metaphoric purpose, but a Kevin Smith “hang out and shoot the geeky shit”-type comedy occasionally interrupted by zombie shootouts doesn’t quite have the same effect as Shaun of the Dead’s “thrust a reluctant slacker into a leadership role, forcing him to realize there are more important things in life than getting pissed and playing Playstation” story. Zombieland shambles aimlessly toward some loose goals, but while it flashes back to the characters’ pre-zombie lives, it never quite accomplishes the job of showing how these experiences are changing them or making them grow.

I will now stop comparing it to another movie and focus on its own merits and flaws. Its bravura opening sequence sets the action-comedy tone, with our main character, Flagstaff, narrating about his compilation of 47 rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse. He doesn’t go through all 47, thank God, but the few he does describe and the montage showing their usefulness is all pretty amusing. Flagstaff hooks up with a fellow non-zombie traveler, Albuquerque (yes, all the living characters are named after the places from which they hail), to make their way from Los Angeles to their respective hometowns. They mostly just hang out, exchanging moderately witty dialogue while the screenplay revels in their ironic detachment.

Eventually, the pair encounters Wichita and Stillwater, two sister con artists (one in her 20s, one only 11) who enjoy screwing people over in this post-Apocalyptic world. They convince Flagstaff and Albuquerque that Stillwater’s been bitten and they need his gun so they can “say goodbye.” They then use the gun to hold up Flagstaff and Albuquerque, then steal their car. Flagstaff and Albuquerque find a replacement: a Hummer loaded with guns. Albuquerque uses On-Star to track their previous vehicle. (One running gag is that it’s always the same On-Star lady, because there’s only one left alive.) They soon catch up with Wichita and Stillwater, who steal the Hummer. They gain some distance, but Stillwater starts to feel guilty, so the pair return for Flagstaff and Albuquerque. For some reason, Flagstaff is smitten with Wichita, whom he refers to as a “marriageable woman” (quoting his mother). They drop the bombshell that Flagstaff has been burned to the ground. After spending the night in an isolated homestead, Wichita finds water and a hose — the group can shower for the first time in ages! Except Albuquerque uses all the water, prompting an angry Wichita and Stillwater to leave in the Hummer. Flagstaff and Albuquerque hunt for another car, then drive back to L.A. in search of Wichita and Stillwater. Albuquerque uses a map of movie star homes to find a nice place to hide out. They end up in the home of Patrick Swayze. It turns out he’s still there — and zombified!

I’ll be nice and not ruin the entire third act, but I will say this: the story pretty much peters out after the Patrick Swayze setpiece. Yes, there’s one dangling plot thread — the fate of Wichita and Stillwater — but everything in between (around 20 pages) feels like low-quality wheel-spinning to pad out the runtime. Granted, much of the script feels like a series of scenes about two guys hanging out with only the vague goal of getting home to keep them tied to any sort of plot. However, after something resembling actual jeopardy and stakes are introduced, the pair kinda wandering around in search of Twinkies and accidentally wandering into zombie attacks doesn’t quite succeed. It screws with the suspense and undermines…pretty much everything, in terms of character and plot.

I suppose that’s a problem, overall. Sometimes ironically detached characters can work in a story, but this is not one of them. The writers don’t quite do the job of making us empathize with the characters — especially the more unlikable ones, like Albuquerque and Wichita — so when they’re put into dangerous situations but seem aloof and a little bored… It’s not offensively bad, but it’s hard to engage with characters who show, at best, mild disinterest in the zombies attacking them, especially when the movie relies on so many zombie-attack action sequences.

The only real character depth comes in the form of Flagstaff’s semi-frequent bouts of voiceover narration, which nearly always leads to a flashback of some kind. Sometimes this works — Flagstaff’s uncomfortable introduction to the zombie world is the best sequence in the entire script — but more often, it’s an egregious violation of the “show, don’t tell” rule. I don’t mind when writers violate the various alleged tenets of screenwriting, but when they do it repeatedly and it comes across more as laziness than ingenuity, it starts to bother me. In this case, the writers have Flagstaff voiceover the shit out of things because they haven’t found better ways of showing who these characters really are. Albuquerque’s sole moment of character development doesn’t work for just that reason: they’re just explaining a piece of the Albuquerque puzzle designed to elicit cheap sympathy rather than providing a genuine understanding of who he is.

So the plot ambles, leading us to hope it’s a character-focused script, but it’s not quite that, either. What’s left? Humor and action, I guess.

The action sequences are fairly well-written but nothing we haven’t seen before in a million other zombie movies (and on a personal note, I have a huge distaste for the fast-moving zombies populating this script — there’s something a little creepier and more interesting about the guys who kind of stagger around because of rigor mortis and/or muscle atrophy). Plus, there are a lot of them, which distracts from the story and character problems.

One action sequence that fell flat for me also falls into the category of “humor,” so I’ll use it to bridge the gap. It’s the big elephant in the room — the assault at Patrick Swayze’s house. Why Patrick Swayze? Because isn’t it funny how people used to be stars and now aren’t? I’m not kidding: that’s the entire joke. His home is described like Norma Desmond’s — a monument to his glory years, up to and including having “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” (the signature single from Dirty Dancing, for you young’uns) sitting in his CD player, as if he spins it endlessly. It reminds me a lot of why I don’t like Family Guy: it’s nothing but a semi-obscure pop-culture reference in place of actual humor. This is one of the script’s longest action setpieces, and it shows: aside from numerous Patrick Swayze references, nothing happens. They struggle to kill a zombie. So what?

For the most part, the rest of the humor is the same: lots of pop-culture references (and, for some reason, tons of product-placement brand-name references, and not generally for the sake of comedy, as in the classic scene from Wayne’s World) signifying nothing but the writers’ knowledge of pop-culture. I understand the subjectivity of comedy, and I understand there’s an audience for this particular brand of comedy… If you like that kind of shit, you’ll probably like this movie. If you don’t, congratulations! You’re not an idiot. (For those ready to stammer, “B-b-but lots of people like that kind of humor! Seth MacFarlane entered a pact with Satan to get three shows on the air, simultaneously delivering the same half-assed pop-culture references at lightning speed! It’s great stuff!” I respond thusly: lots of people like CSI and reality television. Popularity doesn’t equal quality, and while you’re entitled to your opinion, that doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot. Here’s a quick test: do you call up to vote for Dancing with the Stars? Have you ever driven 5mph under the speed limit, wondered why everyone keeps whipping around you, and deciding they’re the ones in the wrong? Have you ever gone to the grocery store and parked your cart in the middle of a fucking aisle that’s just wide enough for two carts to pass side by side? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions or ever spent more than five minutes championing a Seth MacFarlane television series, you are an idiot. Kill yourself.)

Okay, this is getting a little ranty, even for me. Here’s the bottom line: Zombieland takes a really good idea and does very, very little with it. If you’re an idiot who hasn’t taken my advice and killed yourself, you’re better off watching Shaun of the Dead this weekend.

Note: I wrote this review several weeks before Patrick Swayze’s death, so don’t think I’m emotionally raw or overly sensitive because the man just died. It’s simply that it fails in developing plot and characters, and I just didn’t find it funny.

Posted by Stan at 2:11 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Comments (0)  | Reviews