The first of the feature films made by the wizards at Pixar Animation Studios to feel like considerably less than the sum of its parts, Cars 2 (2011, John Lasseter) offers sleek, surface-level fun but ultimately registers as a disappointingly hollow experience. To be sure, when a group of filmmakers has 9 films that lie within the great-to-masterpiece range to their credit out of the 12 they've yet made--as Pixar has--it's hard to get too upset, especially since there's no sign in Cars 2 that Pixar honcho Lasseter and company intended to coast. They've crafted a reasonably well-made and amusing bit of summer-movie fluff, but the “Pixar touch” seems to have eluded them this time out.
Maybe there was cause for concern before this sequel’s release, considering that the first Cars is another of the studio’s rare less-than-great efforts, but that 2006 offering is still solid, oft-underrated stuff—admirably leisurely, containing a handful of Pixar’s trademark emotionally piercing moments, and properly reverential towards legendary star Paul Newman. Newman’s role of Doc Hudson, a Hudson Hornet who has chosen the quiet life after a career spent amassing numerous awards (conspicuously like Newman himself), tragically ended up being his last.
Cars 2 pays tribute to the star early on, in a heartfelt scene that left this Newman fan misty-eyed (“Champion of the World” indeed). Nothing else in the remainder of the film is nearly as moving, which is surprising since Pixar’s skill at shaping a narrative’s emotional backbone is arguably peerless. It’s not for a lack of ideas on Lasseter’s part. One imagines the director reading reviews of the first Car, noting the vitriol directed towards the enthusiastic-hillbilly tow truck character Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy), and feeling emboldened to mount a defense of his and Larry’s creation in the form of a sequel that argues that Mater’s a swell guy (car?) in spite of his foolishness. Trouble is, while Mater can be cute in small doses, he becomes something of a pill when placed front and center, as he is here. Another promising notion of Lasseter’s that falters in the execution is his aim to explore the thorny truism that any close friendship requires a high tolerance for social embarrassment. When Mater shames best pal and champion racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson, amiable as usual, though this is hardly a showcase for his shaggy charms the way Woody Allen’s current Midnight in Paris is) by disrupting a party thrown in McQueen’s honor, we’re reminded of instances in which friends have taken too much advantage of open-bar privileges, to humiliating effect (we even see Mater pilfer an overabundance of free drinks at one point); heck, maybe we’ve been that friend on occasion. But Lasseter and writer Ben Queen smother this theme’s potential by spelling it out with on-the-nose obviousness, and they never raise the emotional or narrative stakes to the usual Pixar level.
Some Pixar virtues remain intact, thankfully: precisely crafted action sequences that unfold with Rube Goldberg-esque inventiveness; a jaw-dropping attention to visual detail (wait ‘till you see these animators’ take on car-centric versions of Tokyo, Paris, and Monte Carlo); pointed political subtext (in the form of a critique of the lengths anti-environmental reform groups will go to in order to dismantle their opponents’ credibility); and clever gags (I especially liked the riff on the confusion over how to watch a free “sneak preview” on a hotel’s pay-per-view movie channel without accidentally ordering and paying for the whole movie). Cars 2 entertained me from beginning to end, but when the closing credits began to roll, I was startled to realize I didn’t feel anything. Oh, well. The copious tears shed over Pixar’s best work will have to suffice for now. Grade: B-
[Note: I would’ve given the five-minute-or-so-long short preceding Cars 2, Toy Story Hawaiian Vacation, a straight “A.” Oddly, its attempt to humanize a franchise’s comic-relief character (in this case, Ken, Barbie’s metrosexual boyfriend from Toy Story 3) is far more affecting and successful than Cars 2’s effort to humanize Mater in spite of its being a whopping 102 minutes shorter than Cars 2. Plus, every single joke hits its target.]
David Bowie at his most androgynous and theatrical + the uniquely ragged stylistic approach of director D.A. Pennebaker + frequent glimpses of clearly stoned-out-of-their-mind fans = concert-movie bliss. ‘Nuff said about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973, D.A. Pennebaker). Grade: A-
The reasoning behind L.A. repertory theatre the New Beverly’s decision to program a double feature of Ziggy Stardust with the dazzling, truly invigorating pop epic Velvet Goldmine (1998, Todd Haynes) (third viewing, first on the big screen) becomes clear just a few minutes into Haynes’ film, when Johnathan Rhys Meyers takes the stage as bisexual glam rock idol Brian Slade. With his glittery, feathery get-up and garish make-up, Slade is clearly intended as a fictional stand-in for the Ziggy-era Bowie (the Oscar nominated costume design, which makes Lady Gaga’s wardrobe look restrained in comparison, comes courtesy of Sandy Powell).
Haynes, a pioneer of the New Queer Cinema movement and former semiotics major at Brown University, delights in layering his dense, challenging films with all manner of real-world references and cinematic allusions. So not only is there a Bowie figure in his glam rock portrait, there’s also a Lou Reed/Iggy Pop hybrid named Curt Wild, who hooks up with Slade creatively and between the sheets, and who is played by Ewan McGregor (in a performance that rings emotionally true, even if it took McGregor until this year’s Beginners to nail a plausible American accent). Haynes’ boldest film-geek homage is his self-aware adoption of Citizen Kane’s narrative structure, which toggles back and forth between a reporter’s (Christian Bale in place of Joseph Cotton) present-day investigation into a fallen idol’s history (Rhys Meyers’ Slade replacing Orson Welles’ Charles Foster Kane) and flashbacks to the idol’s past prompted by his associates’ memories of him. There’s also some of GoodFellas’ DNA in the film, with the kinetic forward momentum, awesome soundtrack filled wall-to-wall with tunes, and immersion in a peculiar, little-explored milieu recalling Scorsese’s classic. One is bound, too, to think back on earlier films that succeeded in merging high art with high camp, such as Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise and Ken Russell’s Tommy.
But there’s no denying that Haynes (whose other films include Far From Heaven and the visionary Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There) has a voice of his own, and it’s a damn strong one. Goldmine can be taken as an exhilarating, masterfully assembled cinematic collage on its own, and also as a continuation of Haynes’ career-long interest in fame, identity, and queer politics.
If Bale’s Arthur, whose teenage obsession with Slade leads him out of the closet, can be judged as a mostly positive result of Slade’s mainstreaming of queer culture, then Slade’s ex-wife, Mandy (a note-perfect Toni Collette, one among many actresses who have fluorished under Haynes’ direction; check out an Emmy-bound Kate Winslet in Haynes’ made-for-HBO Mildred Pierce for another) is a casualty of it. The beaming, affected-Brit-accented hipster we see proudly boasting about the “openness” of her marriage in the ‘70s-set scenes bears little resemblance to the embittered shell of a woman we see talking to Arthur in the present day. The Mandy character is proof that Haynes isn’t content to stay within his own gay-male subjectivity. He’s after something more even-handed here—a cautionary tale about the human souls that can get lost in mass-market image-making and the drive to commodify a marginalized culture.
“We set out to change the world, but we ended up just changing ourselves,” McGregor’s Wild observes to Arthur in one of the present-day scenes, echoing Haynes’ thesis. But there is great risk in making it sound like Goldmine is of only academic interest. Trippy, audacious, and wildly energetic, it’s a movie that practically courses through your veins as you watch it. Grade: A
[Note: Two Eddie Izzard movies in one day! Hurrah!]
No comments:
Post a Comment