MovieBabe Blog

Under discussion:

Eragon  (2006)

By Tricia Olszewski 

Regardless of your feelings about the fantasy genre, there’s one thing everyone can agree on: Elves should not be 5-foot-6. But in Eragon, key elf Arya (Sienna Guillory) stands tall next to her fellow characters; she even has human ears. (Whoops!) This sloppiness is indicative of director Stefen Fangmeier and scripter Peter Buchman’s butchering of Christopher Paolini’s popular novel of the same name. The book, which the now-23-year-old Paolini began writing at 15, is full of magic and lore, yet it hardly gets the intensive Harry Potter treatment. Instead, its 544 pages are crushed into a 104-minute film, with characters dropped and plots manipulated. And at the center of it all is a talking dragon, Saphira, voiced by Rachel Weisz. (Perhaps another universal opinion: Fierce, fire-breathing dragons should not drop one-liners, especially Buchman’s.)

When she shuts up and races across the sky, Saphira is the biggest wow factor in the film, but she doesn’t have a lot of competition: Her rider, Eragon (a Tiger Beat–ready Edward Speleers), is the boy of disinterest here, a 17-year-old farmhand who’s hunting when an ovular blue thing appears on the ground through a portal, I suppose, since it’s smoking. Eragon gapes at it then brings it to his shack, where he gapes at it some more. Soon it hatches into a cute widdle feathered dragon, and—blah blah—Eragon discovers with the help of Brom, a grizzled former dragon rider (Jeremy Irons), that he’s been chosen to resurrect this...mode of transportation, which became extinct when Brom’s own flying beast was intentionally killed. The plot also involves an occupation, the aforementioned guess-who’s-she’s-destined-for elf who’d been carrying the egg, and a black-magic dude (Robert Carlyle) who’s trying to get Saphira back to her rightful owner, the evil King Galbatorix (John Malkovich, using his haughty purr to make his few minutes of screen time seem Oscar-worthy compared to the rest of the cast).

The movie is as beautiful—it was filmed mostly in the green mountains of Hungary—as the story is predictable, and it also gets points for Saphira’s CG and an intense battle scene. But this skeletal rendering of Paolini’s vivid book is ultimately the equivalent of Fantasy for Dummies. The filmmakers should have taken advice from the script: As Brom first says to Eragon, “Mind your corn.”

Under discussion:

The Holiday  (2006)

By Tricia Olszewski 

Right at the gate, The Holiday has two things working against it: It’s seasonally themed. And it’s a romantic comedy. You can’t stitch together a more dangerous combination, even with writer-director Nancy Meyers (see: Something’s Gotta Give) in charge—or perhaps that should be “especially with” (don’t see: What Women Want). Meyers is known for nailing the realities of romance, and she sometimes does. But, dammit, she just can’t resist that sprinkling of fairy dust, and The Holiday gets a generous dose.

The focus is on two hardworking women who, trying to recover from bad relationships, agree to swap homes for solo vacations. Amanda (Cameron Diaz) is a movie-trailer editor who sleeps with her BlackBerry instead of her straying boyfriend (Edward Burns). Iris (Kate Winslet) is a newspaper reporter who’s getting mixed messages from an ex (Rufus Sewell) and is devastated when she finds out he’s getting married. The very next day, Iris is off to Amanda’s giant Los Angeles home while Amanda heads to Iris’ cozy English cottage for intendedly men-free adventures. Right.

Superstars have often elevated Meyers’ scripts, their charisma and comedic skill seducing you into loving their characters despite some oh-please lines such as “I finally know what I want...and what I want is you.” Jude Law gets to deliver that one in The Holiday, whose big names can’t help the waaay contrived story, because most of those names shouldn’t be there in the first place: Winslet, for instance, should never giddily bed-dance and play air guitar to Jet. Law is better as a cad than as someone who admits to weeping during touching commercials. And Jack Black may want to stretch, but as an “incredibly decent man” who ultimately sees himself as a loser? Let’s hope we never see that again.

The only one who belongs here is Diaz, who, despite performing one goofy dance (it must be in her contract), finally gets to integrate her fizziness into a character who’s a full-grown woman. Meyers does serve up some nice scenes, the best of which involve Iris’ friendship with the revered elderly scriptwriter next door (Eli Wallach). And there are vulnerable, true-to-life moments that you won’t see in typical romantic comedies. But as one gag suggests—Amanda hears the Trailer Guy narrating movie-of-her-life commercials in her head—The Holiday is little more than your usual predictable Hollywood throwaway.

Under discussion:

Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny  (2006)

By Tricia Olszewski 

Jack Black. Musicals. Acquired tastes, both—and also the defining components of Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny. But has any Andrew Lloyd Webber character ever, say, deactivated security lasers with his penis?

Unless your aversion to Black is homicide-inducing, his manic shtick is kept palatable in this fictional telling of “acoustic-metal” duo Tenacious D’s humble beginnings. Co-written by Black, D partner Kyle Gass, and director Liam Lynch, Pick of Destiny imagines JB (Black, with the terrific Troy Gentile playing him as a tubby, pointy-eyebrowed kid) as the sheltered son of a religious father (a perfectly cast Meat Loaf) who believes rock to be the devil’s music. So JB runs off to California and becomes the naive protégé of KG (Gass), a boardwalk busker and clear loser who nonetheless dazzles JB with his mediocre fingerpicking and makes the youngster believe he’s a star. A few *** push-ups (yeah, you read that right) and concert simulations later, the lie is exposed—but then so are their ass cheeks, an unveiling that most amusingly proves they were fated to rawk together. Their jam sessions blow, and a series of Rolling Stone covers reveal why: The key to musical success is actually a pick.

The swift-moving Pick of Destiny is pure silliness (which is, fine though the line may be, different than stupidity). Black and Gass are mostly childlike and bumbling in their characters’ wide-eyed quest for rock godness—and even give their movie a friendship-first message highlighted by the ballad “Dude (I Totally Miss You).” Cameos include Tim Robbins (the Oscar winner plays a one-legged dirtbag), Dave Grohl (the Foo Fighter, more appropriately, is a musically sick Satan with a killer drum set), and, uh, Sasquatch. But it’s the random bursts of song that make the whole thing sing: From wee JB’s debut performance for his family (a histrionic hard-strummer laden with expletives) to the duo’s battle with Beelzebub (“***!/The demon code prevents me/From declining a rock-off challenge!”), The Pick of Destiny’s compositions are as goofy and well-timed as Black’s expressions. Call it Antichrist Superstar.