Day of Double Disappointment: “Rango” + “The Adjustment Bureau”
“Rango”
Written by John Logan; Directed by Gore Verbinski; Stars: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin and Ned Beatty. Story: A happy go lucky, but somewhat socially inept lizard who lives a life of make believe where he cannot fail is thrust into a real life drama where he must live up to the daydream image he’s created for himself if he is going to save himself and a victimized dusty western town in the process.
“The Adjustment Bureau”
Written and Directed by George Nolfi, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick; Stars: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery and Terrence Stamp. Story: The affair between a politician and a ballerina is affected by mysterious forces keeping the lovers apart. The forces, we learn, are run by what seems to be a higher power keen to keep everyone on Earth on the path which has be previously designed for him or her.
Seen by Adam and Lars, March 5th, 2011
LARS:
It was Saturday, it was sunny and there was a bounce in my step, even though I’d had maybe a couple of drinks more than I strictly needed the night before. It was going to be a day of fun, good movies: an animated movie by Gore Verbinski and a sci-fi movie based on a Philip K. Dick short story. With a BBQ intermission. Oh, yeah, this day was looking just fine. Oh, hope, you’re such a fickle mistress…
“Rango” began wonderfully. Johnny Depp was giving an excellent voice to the eponymous befuddled lizard with an over-active imagination who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a classic horse opera in the old West. The animation is outstanding, the characters sharply drawn and then about 30 minutes into the flick, it all began to fall apart. Kids in the theatre got bored and restless, and parents had to leave with them. Both Adam and I were struggling not to take a quick catnap to free up mental space for the BBQ to follow.
What happened? “Rango” started out with a wonderfully imaginative idea and a great opening, but then descended into every Western cliché imaginable. It lifted to plot almost wholesale from “Chinatown” (which isn’t the worst source to pillage, if you must) and sprinkled it with leftovers from any Western you’ve ever seen. In the hands of a Tarantino, this could have been amazing fun, but here it just got predictable and dull. Which is a real shame, as everything except the script was firing on all cylinders. This movie demonstrated why Pixar is such an amazing company, and why it’s so hard to do what they do. They never begin a movie before the script has been through the wringer and they are magnificent at appealing to kids and adults alike. “Rango” is definitely not a kid’s movie – not unless they’re at least 10 years old.
INTERMISSION – the BBQ from Wildwood BBQ on Park Avenue was excellent. I had the Three Little Piggies platter. My arteries were screaming in protest.
Philip K. Dick has not been treated well by the movies. For every “Blade Runner” and “Minority Report” there’s a “Paycheck” and “A Scanner Darkly”. So it’s a crapshoot every time you try to do one of Dick’s stories which category you’ll end up in. It’s easy to see, why Hollywood can’t stay away from the material. Dick’s stories usually revolve around a big idea or a high concept, as they like to call it in LaLa Land. Nail that and you have yourself an interesting flick. At least that seems to be the fallacy that the writers of “The Adjustment Bureau” bought into.
The film has a super-solid bone: there’s a group of people who control that everything happens in your life as they’ve planned it. There is no such thing as free will, a classic Dick paranoia scenario. Both Matt Damon and Emily Blunt do fine jobs being charming people with interesting lives that we can root for, but it feels like there isn’t much there other than the high concept. Where’s the important story set in this world total pre-destination and no free will? The people working in the adjustment bureau never come across as anything but bureaucrats with nice suits. They aren’t particularly threatening and, hell, they’re up against Jason Bourne. You know they never stood a chance. If Matt Damon wants to hook up with Emily Blunt, then it’ll take more than Roger Sterling from “Mad Men” to stop him.
First time director George Nolfi does an OK job. While he doesn’t distinguish himself with any directorial flourishes to write home about, he also doesn’t get in the way of the story. So let’s put this movie in the middle ground of Dick’s oeuvre on film. Not as bad as some, but not a great one either. It’s worth a watch on DVD, but not a trip to the theatre.
And there you have it; two movies that both Adam and I were looking forward to seeing. Neither worked. Can I just say it again, for the umpteenth time: it’s the script, dummies.
ADAM:
Have you seen those stories on the news about medical researchers who study how certain areas of the brain become more active when people are exposed to certain stimulation? The sight, sound or smell of something interesting to the subject resulted in increased the activity in the brain. What the hell am I talking about?
Well, I was thinking about how my brain probably responds well to a great trailer and must spike in activity with anticipation leading up to seeing the actual film. I’d also like to see a study of how my brain responds when the actual film is a let down. Sure, being underwhelmed by a movie (even one that had a decent trailer) isn’t uncommon, but the experience is somehow more painful, more offensive when a film has so much potential to be very good and mistakes were made, or even worse when everything was done in a cursory way. The audience pays for it, figuratively and literally.
And that was the case with both halves of this double feature. We started early with the animated Johnny Depp starrer “Rango.” This movie looked pretty good at the trailer phase and I was genuinely excited for it by the time we sat down. The first thirty minutes of the movie are fantastic and Depp is as good and funny as he’s ever been. And the animation is as good as I’ve seen in quite a while. But pretty CGI only goes so far, and at minute thirty one, the wheels fall off and what was once a cool fish out of water story set in “old western town, USA,” becomes an intolerably slow plodding story set in Predictable City, population: us. Stealing the criminal storyline almost beat for beat from Chinatown - even dressing the heavy identically to John Houston from the detective classic - meant I knew where this was headed far too early on. But I had no idea I’d be nodding off halfway through the second act and fighting to stay awake as that seemingly endless act carried on…and on…and on. Nods to other classic films, like Felix Unger’s hilarious and annoying exercise to clear his sinuses from The Odd Couple were welcome and a funny cameo by Tim Olyphant as Clint Eastwood’s man with no name spiked my interest, but not nearly enough to save this one from drifting into the pile of what could’ve been.
And unfortunately, with regard to the second half of the double feature, “The Adjustment Bureau,” the “not living up to its potential” box is checked in dark, black ink. Adapted from a Phillip K Dick short story, “Bureau” feels as if it’s exactly that — a depiction of a short story or small idea. But it’s two hours long. So how do you fill that time? By further developing character and story? Adding complication? Not in this case. Here, repetition and fluff is used like spray insulation and the result is a semi-interesting story that could have been so much better. The story tries to be sci-fi and at the same time a love story, but that’s a tall order and the two masters being served here never achieve a pecking order, and because of that the character development suffers. Result: no one we’re really rooting for, or care about. What amazes me is how so many P.K. Dick stories are adapted that are essentially (at the core) the same story. Even more stories that aren’t Dick’s share the same underlying theme (predictive future as a metaphor for our frustration of lack of control) and somehow find their way to the screen without getting it right. “Bureau” fails in the same way as many before it, and most likely many that will come after it.
