Thu, October 13, 2005

In her promotional appearances for In Her Shoes, Cameron Diaz fiercely rejects the notion that her movie is a "chick flick." Maybe so, but certainly the trailers disagree. If they weren't advertising flat-out girly fare, they were hocking cutesy family comedies or – in the case of North Country – a courtroom drama centered on a decidedly female conflict. This kind of targeted demographic profiling always depresses me a little, because it seems so cynical. But maybe I just noticed it more because I was watching the movie at the start of a weekday afternoon and I was one of maybe six guys total in a nearly full auditorium.

Prime

I had never heard of this movie before, and it opens with Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep so I thought, "Oo! Fun!" Wrong. Streep is Thurman's therapist and Thurman starts dating Streep's son (ten years her junior), but of course Streep doesn't find out about it until the middle of the trailer (needle scratches across record). By then, Thurman has told her all sorts of lurid details about their sex life. This is quite possibly the worst trailer I've ever seen, and I sat through the trailer for The Interpreter quite a few times. The movie looks positively unwatchable: the pitch to the studio must have been, "Helllloooo! Too much information!" And it doesn't seem like the script was developed much from there. What a shame.

Yours, Mine & Ours

It's The Brady Bunch for the modern age. (Or Wife Swap in movie form.) Rene Russo raises her colossal number of children with a free-spirited air, while Dennis Quaid (Why? Things were going so well!) raises his vast brood with military precision. Somehow, they meet and marry, placing a dozen or more kids under one roof. The inevitable clashes ensue, along with what might be forensically termed "hilarity" but we're talking hilarity at a sub-molecular level. Undetectable by the naked eye, for sure. Amber Tamblyn is in it, and spends some of the time showering, but this is a PG family comedy so even that is a tease.

The Family Stone

I'd never heard of this one either, and on its surface it appears as formulaic and disappointing as Prime, but its juicy ensemble might raise it above the level of Meet the Parents, which is basically what it's patterned after. Dermot Mulroney comes from a quirky family; Sarah Jessica Parker is his new love, but she's a bit straight-laced and she's nervous to meet them. They (Diane Keaton, Craig T. "Mr. Incredible" Nelson, Luke Wilson, Rachel McAdams) give her a hard time and generally act quirky. Most of the moments we see in the trailer fall flat, but there are only brief glimpses of Keaton, Wilson, and McAdams, who probably do a great deal more work and make for plenty of fun. Also, there's comeback kid Claire Danes as Parker's sister, who shows up for an unrecognizable 2- to 3-frame flash, besting Allison Janney in The Hours for Most Subliminal Trailer Appearance. It's almost like they want her to be a surprise, but then she's the first name they list when the narrator starts telling you everyone who's in the movie. I'm not forgiving Mulroney for The Wedding Date any time soon, but this movie might have some potential.

Match Point

(Not a trailer on In Her Shoes; I saw this earlier in the day, on Proof.)

I sat through the trailer for this Scarlett Johansson love triangle thriller mildly interested but less than engaged. I like her very much, especially lately, but there's British people and wealth and adultery and it all looked like a good enough movie, but not my cup of tea. It's kind of boilerplate romantic intrigue from what I could tell, and I'm never much a fan of that English Patient model ("Theirs was a forbidden love..."). Then at the very end: "Written and directed by Woody Allen." Pow – a sock right to the gut, which was exactly what they intended. This is completely unlike anything he's ever done before – and not in the same way that everything else he's done is unlike anything he's ever done before. It's shot like a Sydney Pollack movie. From the trailer at least, it's completely unidentifiable as Woody Allen. He already earned a "Try out your next movie" coupon from me with Melinda and Melinda, so I'd have seen it anyway, but I'm very intrigued to see how this goes. (Although I condemn adultery in any form.)

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