Sigh. Unnecessary Sequels & Reboots

Hollywood is a business - and a costly business. Movies are expensive to make, distribute, and market. Therefore, when a studio hits a home run, they want to repeat the experience. Sometimes the "repeat" is in the form of a sequel; a continuation of the original story, often with the same actors playing the roles. Other times, studios dust off an old success and try to freshen it up for a new generation. Every now and then, it pays off - the reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise has been both commercially and critically successful and big plans are in the works there - and sometimes it doesn't - by the end of the original Planet of the Apes franchise, things were looking pretty shabby.

And ever since Spielberg launched the modern summer blockbuster with Jaws, studios have looked to summer as the season to make moneymoneymoney.

Put those notions together and you get Jurassic World and (heaven help us) Ted 2. Let's take a brief look at both of these efforts.

Jurassic World is trying to cash in on the success of the Jurassic Park movies, which started 22 (!) years ago. There's a whole new generation of viewers out there and dinosaurs are always popular, so why not make them bigger, toothier, and moremoremore? Because it doesn't work and playing John Williams' soaring theme music over shots of the park, rather than shots of these incredible creatures sort of - well, underscores that point. I like Chris Pratt just fine and Dallas Bryce Howard deserves better than the cardboard cutout, severe-business-woman character she's given to play in this one. (She's paid for The Village by now.) There's still a message in here - but it's watered down and honestly, the movie isn't a big screen requirement. It goes back to the old saying from The Critic - "If a movie is a remake of a classic, rent the classic." It's not that Jurassic World is awful, it's just dull, which is nigh-unforgivable in a movie about giant man-eating lizards. But it does feature a Jimmy Buffett cameo, so there's that. He's not in the recut, fan-made, trailer, but it's still worth a watch.

Ted 2 is a bear of a different color. The original Ted was profane, lewd, and hilarious because it was such an original idea (but is this just Macfarlane speculating on the nature of Stewie and Rupert from Family Guy? Hmmm). This second outing just feels tired - and that's not just my opinion. The audience in the theatre when I saw it was trying to laugh, but it was just too much effort. Some chuckles, but really - no surprising, "hey, did you catch that?" belly laughs are in this one. It's still profane and lewd, but sadly - it's not funny. Well, there is one funny, totally random cameo from Liam Neeson (who was also in Macfarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West), but aside from that - I'm not even comfortable recommending it as a rental.

Both films will make money - in fact, Jurassic World is breaking box office records, but trust me, that's no guarantee of quality.

Advice worth taking!

Heart & Soul

Two new movies have just been released that both deal with how music can save your soul, or at least anchor yourself to who you are. Aside from that, the comic-based blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy and the James Brown biopic Get On Up are very different movies, both of which deserve to be seen.

 For about a year now, audiences have been seeing trailers and advance clips from Guardians which featured a soundtrack that seemed at odds with a movie featuring outer space adventures undertaken by a ragtag group of reluctant heroes. This is due to hero Peter Quill's (Chris Pratt, who is having one heck of a year - he was Emmet in The Lego Movie earlier this year) incessant consumption of a mixtape (remember mixtapes?) given to him by his mother and simply titled "Awesome Mix Vol. 1." (You can access the playlist on Spotify here.) These were all songs his mother, a child of the 1970s, loved and wanted to share with her son. For me, the songs were one of the distinctive parts of this film, which I found to be delightful. Moviegoers are flocking to this one, which makes me glad - Guardians is not a familiar Marvel property (like Spider-Man or The X-Men) and it's good to see that Marvel is willing to take a risk. The director, James Gunn, had never had his hands on a movie this large (his gross-out B horror flick Slither is great fun, though) and he acquits himself admirably here. As with nearly any movie, not everyone is pleased - several critics have found Guardians to be a little too clever and to suffer from some plot holes. Legitimate criticism, I suppose, but then again, we're talking about a flick featuring a sentient space-faring Ent (who is literally a family tree at one point) and a cybernetically-enhanced raccoon (Bradley Cooper's best role in years), so maybe that rhetoric should be toned down a notch.

Look, it's been a while since I've come out of a movie just wanting to turn around and see it again, so maybe I'm a little defensive on this one. Guardians has humor by the truckload, but it also has heart - there are a few scenes that tug at your heartstrings (one comes at the very beginning of the movie, so the tone is set early), but I didn't find those tugs to be cheap ploys. Guardians is a great way to finish out the summer - no, you don't have to think too much and yes, enjoy the ride.

Get On Up is a different kettle of funk. There is no popular music - repeat, NO popular music - that has not been influenced by the work of James Brown. Musically, he was likely a genius. Personally, the story gets more complicated. Directed by Tate Taylor of The Help (he again teams with Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis from that film) and featuring an electrifying Chadwick Boseman of the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, this film tries to tell the story of an American original in just over two hours. Get On Up jumps back and forth in time and has Brown directly address the audience by breaking the fourth wall - techniques that not all moveigoers will enjoy, but that I thought worked well.

Boseman's performance is astounding as he brings Brown to glorious, messy, selfish, occasionally self-destructive, life. He is greatly aided by an extremely talented cast, including Spencer and Davis, as well as Dan Aykroyd as Brown's long-time manager Ben Bart (Elwood and Rev. James, back together again) and Brandon Smith playing Little Richard in a small role that jumped off the screen - he's one to watch, that's for sure! Like all biopics, Get On Up takes some liberties with the truth to tell a good story, but the harsh edges of Brown's personal life are not glossed over, nor are his triumphs, including his appearance in Vietnam with an integrated band to entertain troops at the height of the war. All in all, a good movie and if it causes horn sections to be added back to music hitting the airwaves, fantastic! If it causes anyone to seek out Brown's music, so much the better.

Chasing Creativity

This weekend, I saw both The LEGO Movie and The Monuments Men. At first, I wasn't sure how I could link the two; after all, one is based on an incredibly popular toy of interlocking bricks and the other details a seemingly-oddball effort to save priceless works of Western art during WW2. But the link is actually an easy one - both films deal with the human drive to create. And honestly, both films do it well.

The LEGO Movie is the one getting most of the press. It seemed like the film would be an hour-and-a-half long commercial for colorful snap-together bricks, but nooooooo! Go see this movie. It's heartwarming, has plenty to keep both the kids and the adults in the audience plugged in and it has some serious things to say about creativity vs. conformity wrapped in those plastic bricks. A vast array of vocal talent (Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrell, and a host of cameos ranging from Jonah Hill to Bill Dee Williams.  Oh, and be on the lookout for Liam Neeson's "Danny Boy") and a solid story. You can create beautiful things by following the rules, but in order to make your efforts truly yours, you have to be willing be a Master Builder with your life. Not a bad lesson to learn. Brought to you by the creative team behind the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, you'll leave with the catchy, meaningless pop tune "Everything Is Awesome" caught in your head on an endless loop, but don't blame me for that.

The Monuments Men is based on Robert Edsel's bestselling book and details an incredibly unlikely true story about how a small group of art historians and architects were put together and charged with recovering artistic masterpieces stolen by the Nazis as WW2 was winding down. Now, war doesn't really become less dangerous as it "winds down," and these unusual soldiers weren't spring chickens. But there were committed to their mission, which they saw as no less than rescuing the soul of what we were fighting for in the first place. Hitler, who by some accounts was a deeply frustrated painter, dreamed of establishing the ultimate museum and had ordered his commanders to strip Europe of its artistic treasures and both private collections and national museums were laid bare. (Mind you, only "proper" art would be displayed - to this day, we don't know how many pieces by "degenerate" artists such as Chagall, Kandinsky, Marc, and Picasso were summarily destroyed for failing to live up to the Nazi aesthetic ideal.) I enjoyed this movie quite a bit - there are several scenes that literally moved me to tears. (I think some critics wanted more Indiana Jones and were miffed that they got something more deliberate and thoughtful - don't let that keep you away. This is an adventure story and the ensemble cast, which includes Matt Damon, Bill Murray and John Goodman, among others) kept me captivated.) Art matters. It has to. And, as absurd as it may sound to try to rescue a sculpture while men are dying, it matters that much. George Clooney, who directed as well as starring in the film, understands that the audience needs a through-line, so he focuses efforts on two particular pieces - a Michelangelo statue of the Madonna and Child (click on the pictures to enlarge) and a medieval altarpiece (a story that began before the war and continues to this day. Click here for details!). It's a moving film about the power of art and the human desire to, if not create beauty, at least to protect it from destruction.

So - whether you want to create your own art with a click-click-click or swing a paintbrush across a canvas - there's something for you in movie theaters this week!