Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)

Miramax Films presents a Beeban Kidron film, starring Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. Written by Andrew Davies, Richard Curtis, Adam Brooks and Helen Fielding. 108m. R for language and some sexual content.

1 star

I didn’t use to hate Bridget Jones.

She wasn’t exactly my type: a bundle of neuroses, a little too plump for her height, smoker. But I tolerated her - when she embarrassed herself in public or made a bad choice in who she slept with.

But in her second feature film - which is more apropos to a remake - I’ve tired of her.

Now she is my enemy.

Jones (Renee Zellweger) is like that friend who you love dearly, but you’d just wish they’d take your good advice once in a while. After countless promises to reform, one day you decide to cut your losses and go home.

I’m happy to say: Today is that day.

After successfully courting the near-perfect Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) in the first feature, “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” Jones is engaged in a charming new life that is running completely incident-free. But after she meets Mark’s beautifully leggy intern, Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett), she allows her mind to be poisoned by her single and desperately lonely friends.

This starts an unendingly wretched series of events that encompasses a potential re-engagement with slimy beau Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), a pregnancy scare, a run-in with Thais, a silly catfight and the all-too-predictable marriage proposal.
Zellweger, who looks uncomfortably fat in this second appropriation of a Helen Fielding novel, delivers a quite wooden performance. Ditto to Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, but perhaps for different reasons. Firth’s Darcy is still too emotionally frigid to be truly likable while Grant acts decidedly bored of being an archetype, often reverting to his tried-and-trueisms that sometime descend into bad parody.

While the Darcys of both the “Bridget Jones” saga and the original source material, “Pride and Prejudice,” are known for their initial inability to appropriately express their feelings, nobody expects Darcy to remain such a cold fish after spending a couple of nights in the Elizabeth Bennet/Bridget Jones bed.

But it’s as much Darcy’s inattentive nature as it is Jones’ unsubstantiated paranoia that drives the fledgling journalist to accept an offer to team up with her old flame, Cleaver, in Thailand. And this begins a series of wrongheaded decisions that poisons the enjoyment of this film.

Despite my attempts to forgive Jones for her completely inaccurate assessment of the attraction between Darcy and intern, she compounds her mistake by taking up lodgings with the decidedly sex-hungry Clever. The Darcy-Jones relationship already seems to be on tenuous ground because of a lot of trust issues, so I can’t imagine the perception of sleeping with Clever helping things.

Finally, after I’ve truly blamed Jones for the destruction of the relationship, she’s hauled into a Thai prison on suspicion of drug trafficking (think “Midnight Express” or “Brokedown Palace”). That’s where the film obstinately makes its viewer watch a 20-minute tangent before it gives us the ending we could have predicted before we sat in our seats. I know it’s getting harder to be original these days, but couldn’t the four writers involved think of any better way for Darcy to demonstrate his love than to spring his girlfriend out of a notoriously stringent prison system?

It’s perhaps in recognition of this wrongheadedness that audiences are given a highly choreographed fight sequence between Darcy and Clever as a humorous respite afterwards. This is supposed to be a comedy, despite all the uncomfortable relationship peril that has transpired.

With the inevitable marriage of Darcy and Jones at the end of “The Edge of Reason,” I can only suppose the producers will continue to throw Bridget Jones movies at the populace until the masses revolt.

I just hope I’m allowed to lead the charge next time.

The Polar Express

The Polar Express (2004)

Warner Bros. presents a Robert Zemeckis film, starring Tom Hanks. Written by Zemeckis and William Broyles Jr., from a book by Chris Van Allsburg. 100m. G.

2 stars

Call me the Scrooge of performance-capture technology. But if this represents the future of filmmaking, I want no part of it.

The innovation is the centerpiece of the big-budget adaptation of “The Polar Express,” and allows accomplished actor Tom Hanks to simultaneously play five roles. Hanks was outfitted with hundreds of sensors and told to act out the individual parts while computers collected movement data for future rendering.

And while this is all well and good for video games, which try to work toward realism with unreality, the practice here makes for a film that continually reminds its audience of its artifice. One of its biggest detractions are the impossibility of using performance-capture technology on the human eye, making most characters seem uncomfortably eerie and soulless.

Another important aspect lost is the now-bloated story, which tells of a young boy (voice of Daryl Sabara) who is doubting the existence of Kris Kringle until he’s invited aboard The Polar Express. This magical train transports him to the North Pole, where he encounters “Mr. C” himself and receives the first present of the Christmas season. If you’ve read the 29-page book yourself or to your child, you know the gift is a bell, which rings only for those who keep the spirit of Christmas alive in their hearts.

It’s a wonderful short story that no doubt deserved some big screen treatment. But, like most films from director Robert Zemeckis, the technology overshadows the story.

Zemeckis has been at the helm of projects like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” the first full-length to fully incorporate animated characters with live action (“Mary Poppins” only had short, but similar, vignettes). He also inserted Hanks into historical footage in “Forrest Gump.” In fact, most of his movies raise the bar on traditional means of telling a story.

In “The Polar Express,” he’s meddled with our senses, striving for authenticity in reality so much that it makes it glaringly obvious when our “suspension of disbelief” is trifled with. The standard production of a film comes with obvious limitations.

I’ve yet to see a traditional camera pass through the eye of a keyhole and back out with any conviction. I saw that - and a transparent look through a opaque page from a book - in “The Polar Express,” but was only reminded of the artificiality of both actions. Instead of astounding me, it jarred me out of the film and reminded me that what I was watching was created by a conglomeration of computers.

I think Zemeckis fully understand that bringing this technology to the table isn’t going to be received warmly at first, either by his filmmaking community or the general public.

“It’s got wonderful potential, but you still need the ... warmth of that human performance,” he told The Baltimore Sun. And while Hanks manages a courageous effort - trying out five voices for five similar-but-different characters - it doesn’t hold a candle to his roles in “Philadelphia” or Zemeckis’ own “Cast Away.”

All was not lost in “The Polar Express,” however. Although it contains a few frightening elements, the movie is my choice over “The Incredibles” for small children. It contains singing and physical comedy that’s appreciated by the elementary schooler, and the sights of Santa Claus, presents and a giant Christmas tree will delight anyone who still has the courage to believe.

And lest I be considered the Luddite of the film forum, let me say that I acknowledge how important the innovations of sound and picture were to the propagation of film as art. I’m even willing to give digital video and digital projection an honest shot. And while I’m all for performance-capture technology being part of the overall equation, I’m hoping it won’t get too popular. Because movies will lose their soul, and not just the ones our eyes can reflect.

One fairly ‘incredible,’ another just entertaining

After the Sunset (2004) - 2 stars
New Line Cinema presents a Brett Ratner film, starring Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek. Written by Paul Zbyszewski and Craig Rosenberg. 100m. PG-13 for sexuality, violence and language.

The Incredibles (2004) - 3 stars
Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios presents a Brad Bird film, starring the voices of Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter. Written by Bird. 115m. PG for action violence.

Perhaps the only thing more prevalent than action movies in November is children’s fare. The two act as counter-programming for one another as studios engage in a curious ballet of co-dependency when they try to offset loses.

Amongst its main competition opening Friday, “After the Sunset” is for the adult contingent. It’s a sexy heist film about a jewel thief (Pierce Brosnan) who has retired to a tropical climate after stealing his second priceless diamond.

Brosnan’s Max Burdett is not a far cry from his Thomas Crown character, right down to the siren as a sidekick. That’s fellow heist master/buxom girlfriend Lola (Salma Hayek), who is more than content nowadays to sip fruity drinks while watching the sun set off the back of her beachfront property.

Max’s itch to steal is germinated by FBI agent Stan Lloyd (Woody Harrelson), who has followed Burdett for seven years in hopes he’ll catch the master in mid-slip. Lloyd enlists the help of savvy local detective Sophie (Naomie Harris) and the foursome engage in a cat and mouse game over a third priceless diamond, which has stopped in this slice of paradise during a traveling exhibit.

There are literally hundreds of movies that utilize similar plots and “After the Sunset” drops more than a few references to its closest ally, Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief.” Yet even after seeing the same plot ad nauseum, there still exists the thrill of the chase.

Audiences don’t know how exactly their anti-hero will pull off the big score and many times, we don’t have to wait long to see the machination in motion. There’s some charming interplay between agent and thief, which generates the most consistent laughs. Splice in completely unnecessary close-ups of Hayek’s gorgeous curves to satiate the male gaze and voila! A movie. It’s not a must-see, but it could ultimately find favor in a strong video-renting populace.

The same can’t be said for Pixar’s latest achievement in animation and design, “The Incredibles.” It’s a genuine pleasure just to examine on the big screen, as the three-dimensional animation offered has the power to make both the ordinary and the impossible plausible.

Writer/director Brad Bird has said he had the idea for “The Incredibles” over a decade ago, basing the story on his troubles of balancing a career with family. Although I don’t know if Bird is purveyor of comic books, he could have done himself no better service than appropriating his tale into the superhero realm.

That’s because our heroes have often lead extremely dull existences as their daily routine. Bob Parr (voice of Craig T. Nelson) was once the man behind Mr. Incredible, until a public backlash over collateral damages resulting from his lifesaving efforts forced him into early retirement. Now, in the grips of a suburban mold, Bob is having a difficult time adjusting both his superhero body and his superhero will into a cubicle world that looks inspired from the establishing shot of the insurance company in Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment.”

His wife Helen, the former Elastigirl (voice of Holly Hunter), has accepted suburbia just fine. As you’d naturally expect from the byproduct of two superheroes, their children are emboldened with “incredible” attributes of their own. Daughter, Violent (voice of Sarah Vowell), can disappear and create protective force fields while son, Dash (voice of Spencer Fox) - well, he’s appropriately named.

The wheels of the plot turn when Bob is offered a chance to reprise Mr. Incredible on a tropical island overrun by a self-aware machine. Little does he know that the invitation was extended by Buddy Pine (voice of Jason Lee), a wannabe superhero calling himself Syndrome, who is out for revenge. Mr. Incredible’s trouble is sensed by his wife, and the family disembarks to save their father from an evil genius in a plot that is largely reminiscent of the first two “Spy Kids” adventures.

As with most Pixar films, a supporting cast member ends up more memorable than the main protagonists. Here the kudos go again to Bird, who voices the Edna E Mode character, a hilarious rip-off of famous film costumer Edith Head. Edna is a diminutive lass with a Droopy Dog-type delivery that designs the Incredibles’ outfits. Much like her superfriends, Mode found herself out of work after the superhero backlash; the way in which she begs to be put back to work - making it seem like she’s being put out - is worth the price of admission alone.