MovieBabe Blog

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

What if I told you about a major motion picture that said God is a myth? That its main character, living in a world in which people are incapable of lying, soothes his dying mother by saying she’s about to leave this life for a better place, where she’ll have a mansion and see all of her friends and be happier than she’s ever been?

Mum isn’t the only comforted dupe of the falsehood in the story: When her caretakers hear of this wonderful afterlife, word spreads fast, and soon the accidental prophet is telling the masses about heaven and hell—though there are no such terms for them yet—and exactly how you need to behave to avoid eternal damnation. To complete the fib, he preaches about “the man in the sky,” who he says is responsible for good things! Such as saving someone from drowning. But he’s also to blame for bad things, such as cancer.

And the even more subversive cherry? The people who believe him are largely portrayed as idiots.

One would imagine that such a film would generate howls of blasphemy from conservatives and Christians, à la The Golden Compass andThe Da Vinci Code before their openings. But the movie described above isThe Invention of Lying, released wide on Oct. 2 and seemingly on no one’s radar except Ricky Gervais fans',

Granted, actor, co-writer, and -director Gervais’ film is fundamentally a big-studio romantic comedy—but Golden Compass was merely a big-studio kids’ flick, and it had groups from the Catholic League to the American Family Association drumming up a boycott. On his blog, Gervais acknowledges that Lying has a bit of an edge: He calls it a “sweet Hollywood family rom-com; it just happens to be the first ever completely atheistic movie with no concessions.”

So why no protest? Critic James Berardinelli, who runs the Web site Reelviews.net, accuses the film’s distributor, Warner Bros., of intentionally hiding the religion subplot, writing in his review: “In an effort to limit controversy, the distributor, Warner Bros., has decided to obscure the film’s unsubtle commentary about religious matters. You won’t find anything about it in the trailers; you have to see the movie to be exposed to it.” (Warner Bros. refused to comment.)

Beliefnet blogger Michele McGinty agrees, accusing the studio of “smug condescension” and trying to trick her into “paying to see a movie that insults me as a gullible sap.” (Unlike Berardinelli, McGinty has not seen the film, instead reacting to a review in the New York Post.)

Former church-group leader Phil Petree of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., said in an e-mail interview that Christians likely took a “Don’t feed the monkey!” approach. “The more we respond,” he mused, “the more publicity [the film] will get, and the more people will see that message.…In the end, by ignoring them, movies like The God Who Wasn’t There go largely [unnoticed] by the media and audiences in general and become dismal failures.”

“Dismal” may be a tad strong to describe The Invention of Lying’s initial two-week box office, but it’s not too far off the mark. Even with Hollywood A-listers such as Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Rob Lowe, and Jonah Hill, the film ranked fifth in its opening weekend, bringing in a paltry $7.4 million and dropping approximately 53 percent in its second week. (Its budget was $18.5 million.) Though that’s a slight improvement over Gervais’ first leading-man comedy, last year’s Ghost Town, you still gotta wonder if some pre-release Internet fisticuffs would have given it a Passion of the Christ–like boost.

Another Beliefnet contributor, Nell Minow (the “Movie Mom”), believes that the film didn’t raise a ruckus because there’s not much for Christians to be upset about. “I don’t think the movie is anti-religion, even though Gervais is an atheist,” Minow says. “It’s not like Dogma or The Last Temptation of Christ, which attack the church head-on. Gervais’ character sort of makes up the idea of religion, and it is his fake religion that is the subject of the film, not an actual denomination. It’s more like Life of Brian.”

Plus, Minow adds, “I have not seen any bloggers objecting to the portrayal of Judaism in A Serious Man, though it is arguably as offensive as The Invention of Lying is to Christians. The Jewish characters are all grotesque—glib, fatuous, irreverent, remote. Is it because [writers-directors Ethan and Joel Coen] are Jewish that this is permissible?”

It’s likely as well that The Invention of Lying’s skewering of religion is permissible because Gervais is not exactly a household name this side of the pond yet. Or could it be we’re just gaining a sense of humor about spiritual questioning? Doubtful. On his blog, Gervais encourages those who do find the film funny to “enjoy it while you can. They won’t show it in Heaven.”

[Originally published in the Washington City Paper.]

Under discussion:

The Jane Austen Book Club  (2007)

By Tricia Olszewski

Hello. I'd like to trade in my testicles, please.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a movie in possession of a title such as The Jane Austen Book Club will be in want of a male audience. Based on a novel of the same name, the Robin Swicord-written and -directed film is exactly what you'd expect it to be: It's breezy one moment, somber the next, and, of course, full of women, sentimentality, and reaction shots of dogs. And when each showing lets out, it's likely there won't be a long line at the men's room.

The somewhat interesting idea of Karen Joy Fowler's novel is that real people can find in Austen parallels to and guidance for their own lives. But it's a gimmick that was set up to fail. Go too deep with the theory, and you risk alienating viewers who aren't Janeites. Skimp on it, and there's little else to differentiate the story from countless other romantic comedies. Swicord, a first-time feature director, decided on the latter, offering characters and plot turns whose resemblances to Austen are often too superficial to be recognizable.

Five women and one man comprise the titular Sacramento book club, and each is a shameless type. Bernadette (Kathy Baker) is the organizer of the group and its eldest member, a currently single, freewheeling sort who's been married as often as Austen published. (That'd be six times.) Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) has just been dumped by her husband (Jimmy Smits) of two decades. Sylvia's daughter, Allegra (Maggie Grace), is a lesbian and extreme-sport enthusiast who immediately clashes with Prudie (Emily Blunt), a young, snooty high-school-French teacher with a severe black bob and an unhappy marriage. And Jocelyn (Maria Bello), the arguable focus of the story, is Sylvia's best friend, a never-married dog breeder who impulsively invites the handsome, chick-flick-ready Grigg (Hugh Dancy) to join the club when he hits on her at a conference.

Grigg agrees, with a caveat: He'll give Austen a chance if she'll try science fiction. The chemistry between them as they argue the merits of each of their preferred styles of literature is obvious, and when Jocelyn asks Grigg how he feels about older women, it seems clear where this is going. But Jocelyn doesn't want Grigg for herself. Instead, she means to set up him with Sylvia, and in this case the unforeseen plot turn is irritating: Jocelyn never lets either of them know about her intentions, leaving both the characters and the audience baffled when she switches from being sly to getting angry at Grigg for not asking Sylvia out. "You need to dance with Sylvia tonight!" she admonishes him before they all meet for a library benefit. But wouldn't you know it, as soon as Grigg shows the slightest interest in her friend, Jocelyn turns pouty. And yet later yells at Grigg for not sufficiently appreciating what a great person Sylvia is. It's a back-and-forth even Elizabeth Bennett would find exhausting.

Swicord's script is woefully underdeveloped, with the passage of time marked with montages of the members reading each book and only cursory subplots for most of the characters. Prudie's may be as hole-y as the others – you can't imagine how the buttoned-down, romantic teacher ended up with a distant, jockish husband – but because of Blunt, this story is the most compelling: Quite the opposite of Blunt's outspoken, nearly boorish character in her breakout movie, The Devil Wears Prada, her Prudie is quiet and mannered, peppering her speech French phrases that make her seem arrogant. But she speaks slowly and avoids eye contact, often running her hands down her bob as if to squeeze out a clear thought from a brain noisy with thoughts of her miserable home life. One of the movie's most realistic and raw moments involves a fight between Prudie and her husband when she thinks he was flirting with another woman at a party, a blonde "with those ridiculous plastic boobs," she cries. "Is that what you go for?" Unfortunately, any credibility in that story line is wiped out with the suggestion that a caveman need only spend an afternoon reading Austen aloud to undergo a Mr. Darcy transformation.

Blunt may be the standout in this terrific ensemble, but it's because no one else is given material worthy of their talents -- Brenneman cries a lot, Baker tosses off bon mots, and the typically intense Bello is reduced to romantic-comedy giddiness and embarrassing dialogue such as, "Reading Jane Austen is a freakin' minefield!" Dancy gets a pass: Not only is his character supposed to be little more than charming window dressing, the unthreateningly handsome actor is a much better fit as Grigg than in serious leading roles such as in last year's Beyond the Gates. The cast is ultimately wasted on a film that, at best, might have been a Cliffs Notes version of Austen, but more closely resembles a bargain-bin romance.

Under discussion:

The Hunting Party  (2007)

The Hunting Party

If Kent Brockman came to life...

The Three Stooges Go to Bosnia could have been an alternate title for The Hunting Party, an odd political thriller/comedy hybrid mined by writer-director Richard Shepard from a 2000 Esquire article. Naturally, the short piece about a handful of journalists and their attempt to find a war criminal required some tarting to be movie-ready, and Shepard isn't bashful about his embellishments; the end credits, in a rather fun touch, do a quick revisit of the film and point out who and what was real. But "fun" may not be what most people are looking for in a story about an ethnic cleanser and one man's need for revenge.

It all starts out earnestly enough. Network cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) is in Sarajevo with a just-out-of-J-school reporter, Ben (Jesse Eisenberg), for an easy assignment when he's tracked down by his former partner, Simon (Richard Gere). Simon has become a journalistic cliché – scruffy, drunk, crazed – since an on-air meltdown left him unemployable some 10 years back. But he's got a scoop, and he wants Duck to help him report the story he's sure will get him back in the game: Even though the United Nations have been looking for him for years, Simon knows where to find the Fox (Ljubomir Kerekes), the person responsible for the rape, torture, and slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslims. So the three travel to the country's mountains, where they're immediately threatened and shot at – and as Duck and Benjamin shit their pants, Simon admits that he doesn't really want to interview the Fox, he wants to capture him. OK, not really: It's all about a girl, and Simon wants to kill the guy who took her away from him. And, by the way, he never actually got any tips on his location.

Bumbling and weaponless aren't good things to be in this situation, and the movie does offer some tense, gasp-inducing moments due to the sheer lunacy of these characters' choices. Its light side can be enjoyable as well, particularly the teasing, best-bud chemistry between Gere (doing a more rumpled version on his manic role in The Hoax) and Howard (who's charming as always, if excessively laid-back). With the Fox's real-life counterpart, Radovan Karadzic, still at large, The Hunting Party isn't only trying to compelling, it's begging to be talked about. But chances are you'll be less inclined to discuss world affairs than how in the world a pregnant woman's bloodied corpse could be shown in the same film that brings out a midget in a pink track suit for laughs.

It's so cool how tortured we are

Justin Theroux's Dedication is aching to be an edgy Garden State. The actor's directorial debut, written by first-timer David Bromberg, premiered at Sundance and reeks of the festival's hipster-courting preciousness, telling a love story that's freighted with the angst of its protagonist and the messiness of life in general. Reality bites, and all that.

But instead of insight, Dedication offers a world in which artists don't comb their hair and a headache in one scene means a brain tumor in the next. And although you're not necessarily supposed to like the film's central character, his trials might have been worth caring about if he hadn't walked right out of a Staind song. Henry (Billy Crudup) is an obsessive-compulsive, self-loathing children's-book author who tells kids there's no Santa Claus. He's in his early 30s, but still talks about how his father screwed him up. His friendship with a much-older illustrator, Rudy (Tom Wilkinson), helps fill that void, though even Rudy refers to his partner as "a miserable shit." When Rudy dies suddenly, Henry mourns by going into full-asshole mode. Wait, he's not an asshole: He's complicated.

Or that's what we're supposed to glean when Lucy (Mandy Moore) is forced into his life. Henry's publisher (Bob Balaban, a dim highlight) hires the struggling Lucy to replace Rudy, but first she's gotta convince the writer that she's worthy – a battle that nearly makes her give up the promise of a $200,000 bonus upon completion of a Christmas project. They meet in a diner, where Henry proceeds to make up a wretched backstory about their waitress – down to the number of eggs left in her ovaries, because he's just that thorough and clever – and concludes it with, "You're much more pathetic than she is." They meet in his apartment, and Henry suggests they exchange brief bios. His includes an unending list of quirks and the quite serious declaration, "Life is pain." Hers includes a syllable or two before he basically tells her to shut the **** up.

Worse than Henry's grating character, however, is Dedication's bait-and-switch: Its invasive, too-cool soundtrack is dominated by the indie rock band Deerhoof. Its characters spout psychobabble like, "We communicate through damage." And Theroux adds flashes, static, and jitters to his camerawork to reflect Henry's jagged psyche. But at its unpleasant heart, Dedication is nothing more than a by-the-numbers romantic comedy that is sure to alienate anyone who does dig its depressive vibe. That's right, the pair fall in love, and the only thing more difficult to believe than their attraction is the story's abrupt switch to Hollywood conventions – particularly the Big Gesture, which in this case is arguably more ludicrous than you might expect from even a typical Moore movie.

As usual, though, the actress isn't nearly as bad as the scripts she chooses. Her Lucy may be mussed and kohl-eyed to a cliche, but the performance itself is relatively even and refreshingly adult. Crudup's is naturally more attention-grabbing, full of tics and mood changes that in a lesser actor's hands might seem gimmicky. But a skillful portrayal doesn't count for much when your character is too ridiculous to even hate.

By Tricia Olszewski

Cheese: The new Brussels sprouts



At one point in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, a struggling Chicago actor named James is giving a career-day talk at an elementary school when he starts rambling. "Get this," he tells the stone-faced kids about his latest job. "It was supposed to be a funny show, but I made people cry. Isn't that silly?"

Curb Your Enthusiam's Jeff Garlin plays James – and also wrote and directed – and although he won't make you cry here, he'll probably make you yawn. Garlin's pet project with the unwieldy title feels terribly familiar, with its chatter about minutiae and throwback, accordion-heavy soundtrack making it seem like a Curb episode directed by Woody Allen. But instead of neuroses that are black-tinged and deep-seated, most of Cheese's navel-gazing is genial to the point of being childlike. "Where'd the term 'dealership' come from?" James asks a receptionist when the reality show he hosts plays a joke on a mechanic. "What about tent sales? What is it about tents that make people want to buy cars?" With each scene change, you can picture Garlin cut-and-pasting riffs he's written over the years to form some semblance of a story. Occasionally they're amusing; mostly, though, it's like hanging out with someone who tediously must express every thought that comes to mind. Or a toddler who just learned how to ask questions.

Then again, perhaps that's fitting considering that the 39-year-old James still lives with mother. The two other things that are important to know about James is that he's fat and looking for love. (If watching the plus-size actor in every scene isn't enough to remind you about his weight, someone mentions it at what feels like five-minute intervals.) He seems to find love but not a solution to his dieting problems when he meets Beth (Sarah Silverman), a "hot girl" who gives James her practice sundae when she's watching her sister's ice-cream shop – and soon, uh, asks him to go underwear-shopping with her. (He's as incredulous as we are.)

Silverman is initially a bright spot in this exceedingly loose film, but her character is impossible to like. The same can be said of the majority of the well-connected Garlin's guest stars: Second City alumni such as Bonnie Hunt, Amy Sedaris, and Dan Castellanata show up, though their main direction was apparently to act weird so Garlin can scrunch his eyebrows together at them.

James does little but meander from rejection to rejection throughout the film. He's dumped personally, he's dumped professionally. None of these turns are given much explanation, despite the fact that, clocking in at a meager 80 minutes, the script had plenty of room for some. Every time someone tells James what a loser he is, though, he never raises more than an affable fuss over it, which makes the character's problems feel all the more contrived. Hearing about a remake of Marty for the Tiger Beat generation, in fact, seems to upset James more than the idea that his life is tanking. This sub-sub-plot at least leads to Cheese's funniest scene – which involves a secondslong upstaging by teen pop star Aaron Carter. Now that's silly.

Under discussion:

Balls of Fury  (2007)

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters  (2007)

By Tricia Olszewski

It’s a little hard at first to believe Billy Mitchell, the subject of the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It’s not because the Florida restaurateur and hot-sauce shill, now in his early 40s, was once crowned “Gamer of the Century” after setting records on a number of classic video-arcade games—most notably Donkey Kong, on which he recorded a seemingly unbreakable high score of 874,300 in 1982. Nor is it because he’s still proud of those achievements and was happy to talk about the good ol’ days with Seth Gordon, the film’s director.

Rather, what’s difficult to believe is that the character of Billy Mitchell you see onscreen actually exists. Now that reality shows and mockumentaries have hardened us to the truthiness that’s out there, your natural reaction to Mitchell may be that the dude’s been coached. The hair: long but tidy and businessman-slick, accompanied by a trimmed full beard. The clothes: skinny black pants, dark shirts, and patriotic ties for a monochrome look that says “I love the ’80s.” And, finally, the attitude, which involves not only referring to himself in the third person but announcing things like, “No matter what I say, it draws controversy. Sort of like the abortion issue.” Come on.

But Mitchell persistently uses that same self-important tone whether he’s talking about the “absolute brutality” of Donkey Kong or going on about what it takes to be a winner in life and, well, it would have taken some serious craftiness on the filmmakers’ part to fashion a person who wasn’t an inherent ass into the Mitchell you meet. The King of Kong also isn’t a nostalgia trip but an update. Mitchell had been sitting pretty on his record for more than two decades when a challenger emerged in 2003. Steve Wiebe, a 35-year-old father of two, had just been laid off from what he expected would be a lifelong job at Boeing (his father had worked there) when he discovered that he was pretty good at Donkey Kong. Desperate for a purpose, he looked into the game’s best score and decided to try to beat it on his home machine. Fate was not on his side: As the film shows, Wiebe was always the frustrated-but-amiable loser, gifted in sports and music but never quite able to become the No. 1 anything. He even lost his job the same day that he and his wife bought their first house.

The nerds went wild over the competition anyway. The nerve center of the gaming world is Twin Galaxies, an organization with “referees” who police the virtual world by recording game statistics and player rankings as well as creating codes of conduct. Its founder, a slightly weird and vaguely bummish man named Walter Day, is tickled by the unexpected rivalry, as are the assortment of eccentric characters—mainly refs and other record-holders—included here, most of whom pretty much admit that they’ve got nothing else going on in their lives. Again, the high degree of geekdom that Gordon presents knocks you off-balance a bit: Is this meant to be merely a let’s-laugh-at-the-freaks project, a real-life Napoleon Dynamite?

Mercifully, the answer is no. The King of Kong genuinely unfolds into a classic and very funny underdog story, yet because of the bizarre subject matter—and bizarre subjects—it never feels clichéd. Better yet, Gordon makes you understand that the competition really isn’t a joke to these guys: Wiebe submits a tape that shows him beating Mitchell’s record (and in which Wiebe’s young son repeatedly and hilariously demands, “Wipe my butt! Stop playing Dooooonkey Koooooong!”), but when his score is disqualified by Twin Galaxies, he twice travels to compete in person at a sanctioned machine. (Yes, there’s a conspiracy, and it’s strangely compelling.) But Mitchell, even after sneering about how setting a world record at home doesn’t mean a thing, well, let’s just say that the talent he shows off best here is running his mouth. The players’ motivations, and therefore their humanity, eventually trump their initial caricatures as it becomes clear that neither of them want to hold the world record just because. As with any other sports film, there’s tension and snarkiness and thrills and even, unfortunately, tears, although this bit of melodrama is kept to a flash. “It’s not even about Donkey Kong anymore,” Wiebe says as the competition is about to boil over. And you believe him.

Balls of Fury has nearly all the elements that make The King of Kong a success—a nerdy pseudo-sport, characters that can politely be described as eccentric, an obsession with the ’80s—yet the music to Donkey Kong will stick in your head longer than this disaster. Born of Reno 911! creators and stars Robert Ben Garant (writer-director) and Thomas Lennon (writer-co-star), Balls of Fury barely even counts as a one-joke movie, considering that the sloppy former table-tennis champion who serves as its main sight gag isn’t very funny.

Cringingly unsuccessful Jack Black wannabe Dan Fogler is Randy Daytona, a one-time Ping-Pong prodigy whose defeat in the 1988 Olympics resulted in his gambling father’s death. Nineteen years later, Randy is still digging Def Leppard and headbands but no longer competes, instead eking an existence out of performing Ping-Pong-related stunts at a dinner theater favored by the elderly. One day, an FBI agent (George Lopez) enlists his help in catching Feng (Christopher Walken), some kind of criminal table-tennis overlord who killed Randy’s father. In order to get close to Feng, Randy needs to be invited to his underground competition, which means receiving training at the hands of a blind Chinese man (James Hong) and his lithe-but-fierce niece (Maggie Q).

If you’re waiting to read about the funny parts, you just did. Garant and Lennon bring a vague sense of Reno 911! silliness to Balls of Fury, but set against the series’ best episodes, it feels like the first draft from a couple of guys who drunkenly slurred “Let’s make a movie!” after stumbling home from karaoke night. How else could they defend what feels like dozens of jokes about prostitutes? And a love interest—poor Maggie Q—who literally hates Randy in one go-nowhere scene and is kissing him in the next? And here’s an easy game: Guess what’s coming when the FBI guys say that a communication device needs to travel with Randy “the old-fashioned way.” Gas, groin kicks, and a random pet panda—ha ha, it’s dead!—are also dragged out for so-called laughs.

Fogler, all hair, chub, and unfunny mugging, is as unpleasant as the attempts at humor are exhausting. Even Walken can’t redeem a minute of this mess, though his contribution might have been a little amusing had the trailers not given it away. Allow me to throw one of Balls of Fury’s lines right back at it, courtesy of Randy’s boss when he gets fired: “Get your stink out of my theater.”

Under discussion:

The Invasion  (2007)

The Nanny Diaries  (2007)

We'd like this off our resumes, please

The setting is Manhattan's Upper East Side. A fresh college graduate, eager to put some sort of imprint upon the world but clueless about how to properly do so, takes a job – so easily gotten! -- as a nanny. If she squints really hard, this young woman can see the position being sorta-kinda related to anthropology, the field she eventually wants to enter. She's thrilled. Until she finds out that the exhausting, humiliating, and often just plain impossible mother-child-nanny power struggle she's now engaged in is its own circle of hell.

If The Nanny Diaries sounds familiar, it's because you've seen it before – only it was called The Devil Wears Prada, with a fabulous spring collection standing in for the baby that a slave-driving bitch casually bears, then orders an exasperated lackey to kill herself trying to care for it. Oh: And it was also a book, a novelized bit of composite nonfiction by former New York nannies Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. But this is Hollywood, and the book was predominantly dark and biting. So readers should prepare themselves to see the more precious, message-touting, "In a world..." version of Annie's story on the big screen. (Yes, Annie's: The character is also no longer "Nan.")

The shift in tone is surprising only when you consider the film's writers-directors, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. The pair may have 2003's witty, meta Harvey Pekar biopic American Splendor on their resumes, but their offbeat sensibility isn't much in evidence here. The movie is framed as an anthropological study – which would have been more interesting if Mean Girls hadn't taken a similar approach three years ago – of "resourceful" UES mothers who manage to juggle days full of pursuits such as shopping, pampering, and puking. And, of course, monitoring not their children, but their nannies: When Annie (a dowdied Scarlett Johansson) runs into her tiny future liege, Grayer (Nicholas Art), and his mother, Mrs. X (Laura Linney), in a park, the mother and son are together only because Mrs. X had just fired Grayer's latest nanny. Annie wasn't looking to become a sitter – she'd majored in business -- but she'd just blown a big corporate interview, and when Mrs. X mishears her name as her occupation, she begs Annie to work for her. Grayer seems sweet, and Annie needs a job, so she agrees.

Bergman and Pulcini at the very least still rather entertainingly eviscerate the book's main target, well-off women who are mothers in name only. The gorgeously coiffed and wardrobed Linney easily pulls off the icy, deplorable caricature that comprises the bulk of Mrs. X (the authors kept most of the characters anonymous, including Nan/Annie's love interest, "Harvard Hottie"). The woman mistreats her employees while pretending to live for haute couture, bullshit benefits, and general one-upmanship; really, though, she does care that her husband (Paul Giamatti, using his schlubbiness to dirtbag effect) is cheating on her and spends even less time with their bratty son than she does, and Linney is careful to let cracks of this show as well.

But even though the end of the story was changed to emphasize this damnation of absentee parenting, the alteration is really all about making the heroine look good. Annie and her adventures in babysitting are no longer part of a satire, but a feel-good fable about growing up: Annie lies to her working-class mother, whom at one point randomly insists that "no man is going to squash your dream!", about taking the lowly job and struggles with "which kind of New Yorker" she is destined to become. The angle would be more palatable if it weren't mired in sitcom humor (how else to meet the man of your dreams but locked out in a hallway with your pants down?) and treacle ("I wuv you!"). Worse, Johansson just isn't all that likable in such a comic-everywoman role, appearing stiff as she tries to flail and sputter like a more normal 22-year-olds instead of the preternaturally self-possessed one that the actress actually seems to be. One could imagine Anne Hathaway getting it right, but apparently she was busy.

Whatever you say, Mom. Party!

Human beings in general are under the microscope in The Invasion, the fourth film adaptation of Jack Finney's novel, Body Snatchers. Why make a version in 2007 after it's already been done in 1956, 1978, and 1993? Iraq, of course. And Darfur. And even Hurricane Katrina. This generation's Invasion, penned by first-timers Dave Kaiganich and directed by German-born Oliver Hirschbiegel (with some help, reportedly, from The Matrix's Andy and Larry Wachowski), doesn't just hint at the allegory inherent in its story about an alien life form steathily taking over the human race, creating a world without emotion in the process. On one side, there are the converted, who naturally want to convert. On the other are the paranoid, friends and family to the outsiders who, though they can't quite put a finger on how, are pretty sure that Uncle Joe and little Jimmy just ain't right.

In 1956, Communism was the thing to be feared, yet the makers of the first film only briefly mention "what's going on in the world" to prompt viewers who wanted more than a mystery to read between the pods. Here, you *will* get the message. Current news constantly pours out of televisions, radios, newspapers, and, in case you can't read headlines, characters' mouths. The idea: Would we be better off as a society of robots, living without war and crime because we no longer feel? The answer is an altogether too positive one, at least for an otherwise dark and satisfying thriller.

Nicole Kidman stars as Carol Bennell, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist who hears the infamous "My [blank] is no longer my [blank]" line from one of her patients (Veronica Cartwright, who co-starred in the 1978 movie and gives a terrific monologue here). Immediately, Carol begins noticing oddities, too – a kid who gets attacked by a dog yet isn't frightened, the people spread out neatly at a bus stop, the sudden appearance of her ex-husband, who now insists on spending time with their son, Oliver (Jackson Bond). Even though she spends her days personally quelling her clients with drugs – here's another message for you -- she's not so hot on the idea of it occurring outside of her control. With the help of her boyfriend, Ben (Daniel Craig), Carol gets a sample of some goo she found analyzed and discovered that it's a gene-mutating life form that alters its hosts when they sleep. By this time, Washington is full of replicants – well, more than usual.

Despite its political overobviousness, The Invasion is a taut adaptation of Finney's well-worn story. The explanation of where the body snatchers (though the term isn't used) came from and why they're a danger is more comprehensible, both in actual explanation and in feeling. These zombies aren't vacant but have menace in their eyes, and are second-Dawn of the Dead-quick to gather and zone in on creatures that aren't one of them. Whereas previous fighters against the invasion seemed to be merely living among the sleep-deprived, Carol and her small group seem in constant, claustrophobic danger of vultures out for their lives. The fear is still largely psychological, with a layer of tension added when Carol is separated from her son. But there's also an injection of action, albeit nowhere near the overload you might expect from a modern-day, Wachowski-enhanced blockbuster. (Their touch is subtle but recognizable, particularly during a darkly lit and balletically blocked car chase.) The fun ends, though, with a narrative twist that's blown up into, essentially, a giant cop-out that's completely out of character with previous versions. In the end, The Invasion is the opposite of what it should be: all emotion and no guts.

Under discussion:

Hot Rod  (2007)

By Tricia Olszewski 

Hot Rod's Rod Kimble is a moped-driving stuntman, but he may as well be figure-skating while reading a teleprompter and wearing a "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt. Saturday Night Live comic Andy Samberg's amalgam of Napoleon Dynamite and every Will Ferrell character to grace the big screen overestimates his talents, his appeal, his friends – and does much of it while wearing a thick fake mustache and occasionally making noises reminiscent of a barking walrus.

Rod is your go-to loser, a petulant college-age kid who doesn't work, still lives at home, and had a vaguely triangular haircut. He butts heads – quite literally – with his stepdad, Frank (Deadwood's Ian McShane), attempting to win his respect by challenging the old man to fights. These battles are put on hiatus, however, when Rod's mother (Sissy Spacek, embarrassingly filling the Julie Hagerty space-mom role) tells him that Frank has a heart problem and will likely die soon because they can't afford a transplant. So Rod decides he's going to put his stuntman skills to use to raise funds: "I'm going to get you better," he seethes to Frank, "then I'm going to BEAT YOU TO DEATH!"

Hot Rod is the misfit brain child of Samberg's comedy trio the Lonely Island (also comprising director Akiva Schaffer and co-star Jorma Taccone), best known for creating SNL digital shorts such as "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick in a Box." Though some of its basics are derivative, the movie still manages to add new color to the stupidity rainbow. Really, you can't go wrong with the elements thrown together here – Samberg's gangliness, a terrible hair-metal soundtrack, and completely random gags such as a character (Chester Tam) who seems to exist only to thrust-dance in various scenes are reflexive laugh-inducers despite the resistance your brain will inevitably put up.

It's way less consistent than such top Ferrell vehicles as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. But the silly genius of, say, an extended scene of Rod falling down a hill that's made up of obviously separate takes are just enough to compensate for awkward misfires, including many moments with a wasted Isla Fisher, who as Rod's love interest mostly has to look uncomfortably confused.