Children’s film earns its ‘stripes’ with good message

Racing Stripes (2005)
Warner Brothers presents a Frederik Du Chau film, starring the voices of Frankie Muniz, Mandy Moore and Dustin Hoffman. Written by David Schmidt, Steven P. Wegner, Kirk De Micco and Du Chau. 94m. PG for mild crude humor and some language.

2 stars

We’ve always suspected that animals converse in a verbal language wholly unfamilar to the average human being. What we didn’t know is that pet goat Fanny sounds an awful lot like Whoopi Goldberg.

In “Racing Stripes,” the Walsh family has a whole barnyard of animals equipped with voices of people you’d hardly expect to be standing in a same room together. There’s Dustin Hoffman as a minature horse dubbed Tucker, Jeff Foxworthy as a rooster named Reggie and Snoop Dogg as, well, a dog.

And I suppose that’s the true fun of movies like this is to think, even under such curious circumstances, that Frankie Muniz (the voice of our protagonist) was rubbing shoulders in the sound booth with Joe Pantoliano (who voices Goose, a pelican in too deep with the Mafia). Because like a lot of children’s fare, “Racing Stripes” contains a lot of straightforward plot elements whose conclusion you could have gleaned from a careful study of its 90-second trailer. So that’s no fun.

Instead, an indicator of a well-done children’s movie these days is its respect for the adult audience and the strength and value of its message. This movie bears strong similarities in both categories to the Dreamwork’s animated film, “Shark Tale,” released last October. Both film rely strongly on dropping lines from famous Mob movies as their primary source of adult humor. Similarly, both preach messages of tolerance for differences of lifestyle.

In “Racing Stipes,” the tale is of a zebra raised on a Kentucky farm who believes he’s a racehorse. While little Stripes (Muniz) is tended for by the barnyard animals, there’s no love lost on the other side of the fence.

There the righteous Sir Trenton (voice of Fred Dalton Thompson) tells Stripes in no uncertain terms: “And you, you have your place.” Instead of discouraging the rambunctious three-year-old, it inspires him to challenge Trenton’s offspring, Trenton’s Pride (voice of a Joshua Jackson) to a backwoods horserace. Remember that scene in “Biker Boyz” when cyclists congregate on two sides to make the track’s outline for a high-speed duel? Yeah, this time it’s with horses.

After his first taste of true competition, Stripes is ready for more. And although the Walsh farm just happens to border Churchill Downs (err, Turfway Park), it takes conceited millionaire Clara Dalrymple’s (Wendie Malick) sniveling to aggravate farm owner Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood) enough to enter Stripes in the derby.

While the movie’s humor dips into the crude while employing its comic relief, “Racing Stripes” is recommendable for children of pretty much all ages. The movie makes the most of its setting to toss mild-mannered insults such as “Why don’t you guys go choke on an apple?” The movie can be plodding at times, but hopefully the little ones will absorb its message: It doesn’t matter what’s on the outside, when you have what a good spirit on the inside.

First film this year is bound to be its worst

Elektra (2005)
20th Century Fox presents a Rob Bowman film, starring Jennifer Garner. Written by Raven Metzner, Frank Miller, Zak Penn and Stu Zicherman. 96m. PG-13 for action violence.

0 stars

A giant sucking sound that I heard at my local movie house Sunday night wasn’t just the overtaxed heating system. It was also coming from the screen.

While I admitted in my original review of “Daredevil” that comic books were never a youthful curiosity, the onslaught of comics-turned-film post “Spider-Man” has not escaped me. I’ve seen them all - from “X-Men” to “The Punisher” with “Hellboy” in between - and yet, “Elektra” is easily the worst of them all.

Where do I begin with the list of egregious offenses this movie punishes its audience with? Perhaps with Jennifer Garner, whose “eye candy” status has somehow been parlayed into having her own film. Since she died soon after her introduction as Matt Murdock’s love interest in “Daredevil,” I wondered how this movie would explain that inconsistency.

It seems Elektra was raised from the dead through the ancient practice of kimagure (insert collective “huh?” here), which is the ancient art of placing your hands on a dead woman’s stomach and head and meditating on her being alive. The art form also allows an individual to see into the future. No word on if it can be used for practical tasks, like stopping a Pop Tart from burning in a toaster, however.

Apparently, the gruesome death of her mother and her overbearing father have made Elektra a bit withdrawn, which the film demonstrates by resisting any semblance of forward momentum in its first 35 minutes. We’re “treated” to Elektra scrubbing her floors and staring plaintively at a vast ocean, but I came to see bloodsport in tight-fitting outfits. There is some indication that Ms. Natchios is obsessive compulsive, but the defect isn’t given due attention.

Eventually, Elektra is given her first real assignment: Eliminate her seemingly strait-laced next door neighbors. And although she has known no stable employment in her life except to be a trained assassin, she just can’t bring herself to kill cuddly, small-potatoes burglar, Abby (Kirsten Prout) and father/potential love interest Mark (Goran Visnjic).

Her intuition is right, now dazed audiences learn, because Abby is “the chosen one,” a moniker given to any child with superhero tendencies in comic book adaptations. Abby is being targeted by The Hand - an Asian Mafia with no stipulated modus operandi - and being chased by baddies Typhoid (Natassia Malthe), Stone (Bob Sapp), Tattoo (Chris Ackerman) and Kinkou (Edson T. Ribeiro). Although my own bad-movie induced paralysis prevents me from confirming it, I don’t think Kinkou’s finishing move is to lay enemies out across a Xerox and hit “copy.”

The final duel is between the tsai-equipped Elektra and swordsman/martial artist Kirigi (Will Yun Lee), or, as people from my generation like to call it, Raphael versus Leonardo. There’s a lot of big blankets that sort of drift in and out of the final fight sequence, and I kept wondering, What kind of dryer sheets resulted in all of this unnecessary static cling? Couldn’t they rob a little from the special effects budget to take care of this unsightly attraction between protons and electrons?

I don’t feel bad in telling you that Elektra eventually wins, but with eventual costs. There’s some tween-friendly lip-locking between superheroine/assassin and wait, what does Mark do again exactly? And wooden characters continue to trade wooden dialogue, trying to feign emotion while saying nothing at all.

By now, I’ve come to accept that January is the dumping ground for the most toxic films studios can manage. So I’m hoping “Elektra” is not a harbinger of a poor year ahead but merely another film not appropriate for consumption that has been passed off as “entertainment.”

‘Kinsey’-ology

Kinsey (2004)
Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a Bill Condon film, starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. Written by Condon. 118m. R for pervasive sexual content, including some graphic images and descriptions.

4 stars

As Alfred Kinsey did with the gall wasp, can America trace its sexualized culture back to its genesis by merely retracing the steps?

We may find it begins in 1948, when Dr. Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” was published. It told us that we had pedophiles, homosexuals and chronic masturbators in droves. The book’s findings detailed publicly what we previously only discussed in hushed tones and in private journals.

But by the time he was ready with his compendium piece about females, Kinsey was being blocked by a culture paranoid of socialist influence and by a general populace that wasn’t ready to admit that their virginal wives were having extramarital affairs and seeking self-gratification.

It is therefore appropriate that Kinsey’s life was turned into director Bill Condon’s latest examination, because it so nicely follows the “rise and fall” trajectory often employed in biographical fiction. And like Condon’s last film, “Gods & Monsters,” which explored the life of 40s director James Whale, it’s sometimes difficult to tell where the work ends and the life begins.
Raised under the watchful eye of a strict Methodist father (John Lithgow), young Kinsey found himself at the crossroads of conflict during his adolescence. While his father spoke from the pulpit on the evils of such modern inventions as the zipper, Kinsey was drawn by his own sexual impulses.

His curiosity in the uniqueness of other humans yet unrealized, Kinsey (Liam Neeson) took to studying the gall wasp while a professor at Indiana University. He amassed over one million of the tiny creatures, only to discover that no two wasps were the same.

After marrying his graduate student, Clara McMillen (Laura Linney), the eccentric professor realized his lack of sexual prowess was directly linked to his ignorance of the correct techniques. Offering to teach a marriage course to graduate students and married undergrads, Kinsey is surprised to find little credible information about human sexual behavior.
As a scientist - and I believe an obsessive-compulsive type - Kinsey sets out to gather raw data on sexual appetite, which he will synthesize into “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.”

The film’s true genius lies in introducing us to Kinsey’s important backstory through his own instruction to fellow researchers. Under the guise of training them to take detailed “sex histories,” Condon recounts Kinsey’s own defining moments - from childhood flirtations with another male scout to his unconventional marriage.

From its audience, the film has the uncanny ability to generate both nervous laughter and the more traditional chuckles that come from genuine humor. But, like “Gods & Monsters,” it’s a sad, poignant tale as well, evolving in its second hour to a most engaging melodrama.

We are sold on Kinsey - and the importance of his work - through the performance of Neeson who, in speech and physical appearance, makes us believe he is far from conventional. He’s buttressed by a daring performance by Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Kinsey’s junior researcher and sometimes flame Clyde Martin. Sarsgaard, in roles like “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Shattered Glass” and “Garden State,” is a legitimate scene stealer. His turn in “Kinsey” is no different as he oftentimes becomes the impetus for conflict.

Martin, unlike the other more demure researchers (Chris O’Donnell and Timothy Hutton), is at the heart of Kinsey’s self-actualization. He brings the researcher more than a curious fulfillment fantasy; Martin helps Kinsey recognize that there is no “normal” when it comes to sexual behaviors.

Throughout all the various couplings, Condon is careful not to let his film de-evolve into accidental titillation. His approach is much like Kinsey’s attitude toward his research: frank, but ultimately nonjudgmental. Condon is careful not to make Kinsey into a pre-sexual revolution pedagogue by creating a flawed protagonist.

Yet if you’re looking for the man whose procedures have been repeatedly called into question for decades to be vilified, you’ve got the wrong movie. Much like the people he commissioned for studies, Kinsey’s approach was decidedly unorthodox. He did not shy away from the pedophile or homosexual contingent because he believed in their importance to understanding the entire spectrum of male sexual impulse.

Kinsey died before William Masters and Virginia Johnson opened American consciousness about sex even farther, but his work was instrumental in getting America to where it is now. If you’re outraged by the sexual norms propagating our mass media outlets, you may have Kinsey to blame.

But consider the alternative. Without Kinsey, we may still find Sunday sermons denouncing the creation of a zipper as a means to quicker sexual gratification.

Cookie cutter molds this ‘meet’

Meet the Fockers (2004)
Universal Pictures presents a Jay Roach film, starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro. Written by John Hamburg, James Herzfeld and Marc Hyman. 115m. PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and a brief drug reference.

2 stars

I’m assigning the same exact grade to “Meet the Fockers” as I did its 2000 predecessor, “Meet the Parents” because the movies promise the same laughs with the same recycled material, and yet I still find some level of amusement out of the whole charade.

I am an individual who still manages to drum up Hiroshima-sized scenarios of disgrace and embarrassment for himself before meeting parents of a significant other. I watched, with great fervor, the NBC reality series “Meet My Folks.” I certainly should be the ideal guinea pig for this rehash.

I can identify with Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), a nurse-by-day who just wants things to run smoothly when his parents - sex therapist Roz (Barbra Streisand) and former lawyer Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) – meet his future in-laws. Greg’s been warned by his fiancée’s father, Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), that he’ll be studying these Floridian Fockers much as anthropologists study the frozen caveman: to determine if his lineage is firmly rooted.

“If your family’s circle joins in my family’s circle, they form a chain,” Byrnes tells his future son-in-law. “I can’t have a chink in my chain.”

Jack has somehow reattached his icy disposition toward Greg, despite an obvious softening by the conclusion of “Meet the Parents.” This movie seems to have dropped all pretense that there was a transformation in the first film, so it can recycle that tension.

The Focker parents, whose personalities seem jettisoned straight from the 1960s, manage to create the new friction. They just don’t plan get along with former CIA agent Byrnes, who hasn’t relaxed a day since his retirement it seems.

Matters are further complicated by Greg’s withholding of several embarrassing details, which compound jokes for presumably bigger laughs. Roz, his mother, is not just a doctor; she specializes in adult sexuality, which boils down to septuagenarians awkwardly humping on yoga mats. He’s also reserved details about his adolescent coupling with former maid Isabel (Alanna Ubach), which seems especially pertinent seeing the housekeeper has a son without a known father.
It’s up to Jack, and his extensive contact system still firmly positioned within the CIA, to shake the skeletons from Greg’s closet before the chains interlock and chinks are found. Roz and Bernie, meanwhile, have to deny their true natures to satiate Greg and ease hostilities with Jack. This results in the only worthwhile sentiment in the entire 115-minute affair, thanks to a believable performance by Hoffman. The truth of the matter is he won’t suppress his eccentricity for anyone, and can’t see why his son is so desperate to deny his own past.

Perhaps the greatest transgression of all this is that the apparent success of “Fockers” will necessitate another sequel, which really has no new ground left to tread over. In the second piece, airline hassles and bad karma are traded for finicky babies - like Jack’s nephew, Little Jack (Spencer and Brady Pickren) - and badly-timed clogs in toilets. Even with a little Focker planned, this franchise can’t possibly insult its audience intelligence by suggesting, again, the Jack doesn’t entrust Pam into Greg’s care. It just won’t work, just as it didn’t really pay off this time or the last time.

But may I join the chorus of others who have plainly suggested: If you liked the first one, by all means run to your local multiplex. If not, there’s always the comedy version of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” to look forward to in two months.
Yes, folks, the originality store looks like it has truly gone out of business.