Movie Review: Hot Tub Time Machine (dir. Steve Pink; 2010)(A SFF Film Odyssey)
The first time I saw Hot Tub Time Machine (dir. Steve Pink; 2010), I wasn’t sure how to take it. So much of the film made me uncomfortable because the characters seemed, for the most part, painfully unlikable. That fact became clearer as I began comparing HTTM to other films of its type, leaving me to wonder: why would I root for anyone in this movie when I’d rather each of them got hit by a bus instead of the one-armed Phil (Crispin Glover)? Here lies a film that I’m sure even a teenage version of myself would find impossible to stomach — bereft of redeemable characters, excessive for shock value, and overall a perfect storm of the worst raunchy comedy tropes. It’s a film best avoided so you can spare your brain the scrubbing. HTTM is another take on the raunchy teen comedy, albeit one which uses time travel so its adult characters can relive the glory days of their teen years. The story follows Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson), and Lou (Rob Corddry), former high school friends who reconnect after Lou attempts suicide because he can’t let go of the past. Together with Adam’s nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), Adam and Nick try to raise Lou’s spirits by taking him on a trip to the fictional Kodiak Valley, where the three them used to party in their youth. The problem: like their lives, Kodiak Valley is quickly falling apart. But surprise…their hot tub moonlights as a time machine, and soon all four of them are whisked away to the 1980s, reliving their glory days all over again. Only this time, they’re going to do things a little differently. OK, a lot differently. Like most raunchy teen comedies, HTTM is about a few things: partying, sex, drugs/alcohol, and friendship. It also happens to be about a group of almost ne’er-do-wells striving to fix their past mistakes in what is best described as hypermasculine wish-fulfillment. One of my favorite examples of this subgenre is American Pie (dirs. Paul and Chris Weitz; 1999), which on its surface is just another “teens trying to get laid” story, but upon closer inspection becomes a comedic critique of the subgenre’s tropes and an amusing tale of young men on the cusp of actual adulthood — mediated, of course, through a narrative primarily focused on sex. It’s far from a perfect film, in part because it relies, at times, on too many of the cheap sexist gags that continue to plague raunchy teen comedies, but it is a film that, at its core, is about something beyond the simplistic “fucks and friends” stories that lazier raunchy teen comedies present. HTTM’s narrative, however, is exhausting primarily because it is so unlike American Pie in its vulgarity. Where American Pie attempts at a correction of its high school dickery by making most of its characters realize the absurdity of an anti-virginity pledge, HTTM flips everything in the other direction by trying to convince us that the only real answer to the world’s problems is for the sex-crazed, drug-addled, lazy troublemaker to have unprotected sex with his friend’s sister. It doesn’t temper its vulgarity to support its narrative of friendship, either; it relishes in the excess of its validated crude “hero.” Lou repeatedly cries out “semen” and other vulgarities as he knowingly impregnates Adam’s sister, all so we can watch Adam cringe, as we rightfully should, at what is happening. It is a film awash in its own bodily fluids, unsure how to paddle out of the kiddy pool. Every crude act, mistake, and horror is validated in this film as appropriate male behavior. Worse, where American Pie shows its characters actually working toward a future, almost all of the characters in HTTM are essentially thieves who either literally steal from the hard work of others, as in the case of Lou (a girlfriend who “gets him”) and Nick (a music career), or who steal time to make up for past mistakes, as in the case of Adam (who uses his future knowledge to screw over the Google creators by making Lougle). Because ultimately, all of the protagonists are losers with no perception of the future, no plan, no hope, no dream. Their dreams have died with their youth. In this stark atmosphere — which can only lead us to Idiocracy (dir. Mike Judge; 2006), not the conclusion the film actually gives us — we’re also smacked over the head by the fact that the younger generation is resigned to a similar fate, as Jacob’s future is practically forfeited from the moment we meet him. The young, like the old, have no dreams at all — as Adam says to Jacob while castigating him for spending all his time playing Second Life: “You’re twenty years old. You’ve never made an important choice in your life.” This would be brilliant if it were an intentional satire of what we might call the new Lost Generation of men — if the comedy was at their expense, not as a reinforcement of their values. But HTTM is none of these things. It is a male power fantasy whereby self-disenfranchised 40-somethings can drink, fuck, and steal their way back to success. That makes its comedy all the more irksome and all the more less palatable than something more honest with its narrative. American Pie, for example, is a mostly successful comedy about young men learning what it is to be men (and sometimes (often) failing, learning the wrong lessons, or becoming mockeries of themselves); HTTM is a comedy about the men who never learned the right lessons and never will. One of these stories is funny. I’ll let you guess which one. About the only thing I can praise the film for is its soundtrack, which contains such classics as Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” and Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It.” That’s what I’ll choose to dwell on for the next few hours. —————————- This post was selected by voters on my Patreon page. To get your own
Movie Review Rant: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010; dir Jon Turtletaub) — A SFF Film Odyssey Review
Though not the first live-action remake of a Disney cartoon, 2010’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is part of what might be called Disney’s 1st Phase of Live Action Remakes, sitting right between the last of the Pirates of the Caribbean (At World’s End; 2007) trilogy films and the much more interesting Maleficent (2014). If this is a phase of live action remakes, then it is a loose one, with an unclear path — a test bed, if you will, since the previous remakes have mostly taken the form of almost faithful adaptations of existing stories (101 Dalmations in 1996 and Alice in Wonderland in 2010, for example) or adaptations of existing characters or rides: The Country Bears (2002), Pirates of the Caribbean (2003, 2006, and 2007), and The Haunted Mansion (2003). The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, along with Alice in Wonderland, appear to be “cusp” films, resting on the precipice of a second phase of live action remakes. Now, Disney has or plans to release a torrent of remakes or adaptations in what seems to be its second phase: Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass (2016; the sequel to Burton’s previous adaptation), Pete’s Dragon (2016), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). So how does The Sorcerer’s Apprentice measure up in this new “renaissance” of live action remakes or adaptations? Unfortunately, about as well as you’d expect: on par with The Haunted Mansion, a less-than-stellar film which probably shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Unlike Maleficent, which was flawed but thematically compelling, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a muddled mess of an adaptation. Tonally inconsistent and obsessive in its need for grandiosity, this film is the mark of a studio that has yet to develop a clear path, which makes The Sorcerer’s Apprentice forgettable and mediocre at best. Let’s begin, shall we? The Plot(s)(s)(s)(s) The Sorcerer’s Apprentice isn’t exactly a torturous film; a better description might be painfully mediocre. The film opens by committing what I consider to be one of the Sins of Filmmaking: opening with a narrated prologue that turns out to be more interesting than the actual main narrative. Right from the start, we’re told that Merlin had three apprentices — Horvath, Balthazar, and Veronica — who vowed to maintain order against a sect of sorcerers known as Morganans — the followers of Morgana le Fey (Alice Krige), who decided, as evil people are wont to do, to destroy the entire world, presumably so she could remake it in her own image or something like that. The apprentices seem to have Morgana and her followers under control; that is until Horvath (Alfred Molina) decides to betray Merlin, allowing Morgana to murder the famous sorcerer and steal his power. In the final moments, Veronica (Monica Bellucci) casts a binding spell, merging her soul with Morgana’s and forcing Balthazar (Nicholas Cage) to entomb both within a nesting egg as part of a kind of stasis spell. With Merlin’s final breath, he tells Balthazar to find the Last Merlinian using his magic Merlinian-detecting dragon ring. Thus ends the first part of the narrated prologue. I kid you not. The first 5 minutes of this movie are spent telling us a story that would barely fit into a movie of its own. And there’s more. There are entire minutes of Balthazar wandering around the world for centuries in search of the Last Merlinian, all with someone (I assume Molina) narrating it for us. This is followed by our first introduction to our supposed main character, Dave (played initially by young Jake Cherry and later by Jay Baruchel), who lives in modern day Manhattan, has a crush on a girl, and can apparently wander off in the middle of a field trip with nobody immediately noticing — especially if he wanders off in search of his “do you like me, yes or no” note. Go figure. That paper magically flies into a mysterious shop, in which Balthazar lies in wait, ready to pounce like the predator that he has become. Dave is somehow convinced that he should stick around and let a weird creepy older man put a dragon-shaped thing in his hand. And then all hell breaks loose. Dave accidentally opens a giant nesting egg, which releases Horvath, who has, like others before him, been entombed for quite a while. There’s a wicked cool magic fight (seriously, the magic is pretty cool in this movie), Balthazar and Horvath are trapped in a weird gizmo, and Dave has a total freakout, only to be laughed at because that’s what happens when you try to tell people there are wizards and what not. That’s the end of stories two and three, by the way. There’s more. Yes. More. Finally, we get to grown up post-therapy Dave, who has somehow become a physics nerd cliche. Horvath and Balthazar are finally released from the giant weird urn that sucked them up in the first place, there’s yet another fight over Dave, who was the last person to see the remaining layers of the nesting egg, and finally, we get to the point: Dave is special McSpecial because he’s the Last Merlinian; Balthazar will teach him (because he actually needs Dave to fix the binding spell on Veronica and banish Morgana forever; I know, there’s a lot of shit here), and all of that has to take place while Horvath is having crazy fits of, well, crazy trying to either kill Dave, capture Dave, release Morgana while trying to kill Dave, or generally trying to hurt Dave somehow, but never actually doing it except in really small ways, because no movie villain would be complete without being utterly inept at the one job they were gifted to do: kill the “good” guys. Meanwhile, Dave has a crush on a girl from elementary school, and she’s suddenly back in his life, so he tries to date her and be super suave; oh, no, I’m totally bullshitting, because Dave spends the entire movie
Movie Review: The Maze Runner (2014)
I didn’t really have high hopes for The Maze Runner (2014). Sure, I looked forward to seeing it on the off chance that it would be a lot of fun, but I didn’t expect it to be a particularly “good” movie. And it’s not, but neither is it “bad.” The Maze Runner is just another entry in a long line of YA dystopia adaptations, one which never seems to escape the confines of a cinematic formula. At its most basic, The Maze Runner can be summed up as follows: Thomas wakes up in a mysterious elevator cage without any memory of who or where he is, only to be thrust into the company of a ragtag group of boys who have learned to survive in the Glade, which rests at the center of a massive, murderous maze. But Thomas isn’t as willing to accept the status quo as the rest. Desperate to understand why they are in the Maze and who designed it, Thomas tries to piece together his fragmented memories and find a way out of the Maze. Doing so, however, may threaten the entire community… The premise of the film is fairly standard YA dystopia stuff, although what apparently separates Thomas from the rest of the boys is his curiosity, which sounds less like a magic skill than some kind of behavioral conditioning that the film barely acknowledges. Fans of the books have been raving about this film, as to be expected, which might explain why it has earned nearly $200mil worldwide as of Oct. 5th, 2014. But I’m not convinced that The Maze Runner will have a lasting impact. Clearly, I’m less enthusiastic about this movie than fans of the book. First, the film ends on a massive cliffhanger that is only barely foreshadowed in the handful of clues offered to us throughout the story. Though I generally loathe cliffhangers, I did at least expect this one because I had read the novel. However, what the film doesn’t do is provide a cogent motion from “we know absolutely nothing about what is going on, except some vague speculation” to “oh, now we have the whole story because [spoilers].” The ending is so abrupt that it shatters any semblance of logic the audience had pieced together throughout the rest of the film, leaving a kind of cold, detached sensation that I’m not convinced was intentional — and if it was, not in the way I mean. There are likewise numerous gaps in the film’s logic, such as why the stingers on the Grievers (the monsters of the maze) have the effect they do or what the Maze has to do with what has happened in the real world (I still don’t understand how that part works). Second, the film’s pacing is either stilted or simply “off.” In one important scene, Thomas is attacked by a Runner (folks who map the maze in order to find a way out) who has been stung, but this scene comes out of nowhere without any real buildup, and it ends in a remarkably anticlimactic way. There are likewise moments in the film which arise in such a hackneyed fashion that I could see the “character development time” coding on the figurative wrapping paper. These types of scenes jump back and forth in a way that limits the buildup to the climax; for me, this meant that those final moments lacked the impact that they needed to escape the bonds of the cliffhanger. I almost want to blame this on the script, but I think there is a deeper problem here. That problem might be that The Maze Runner is utterly forgettable. The direction, while serviceable, falls short of delivering something that would separate this film from its contemporaries. There is tension here, but it is lackluster, simple. Take this scene, for example: This is the first time we hear the sound of the Maze or witness the doors closing, and it is clear that what we’re supposed to feel is not dissimilar to what Thomas’ face conveys: fear and confusion. But what the scene evoked for me was less tension, fear, or confusion, but rather the activity of producing those feelings. I should feel chilled by that howling wind or the sudden realization that something weird is going on. A shift of sound or a manipulation of perspective shots could do the trick, but what this clip does — and what much of The Maze Runner does — is give me the feeling of a feeling, but rarely the feeling itself. Simulacrum, if you will. This became apparent to me upon rewatching Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla (2014). Though an imperfect film, there’s a clear sense in Godzilla that Edwards understood the scale of a world at the mercy of giant monsters. Thus, we end up with scenes like this: The above clip is the first time we see Godzilla “in full,” though he remains too larger for the film’s frame. The entire scene is built on tension, moving from the almost ant-like motion of humanity and its devices to the slow, deliberate crush of Godzilla’s foot, which severs the massive wall of sound, as if suggesting that everything has simply stopped. And then the roar. That roar. The buildup to it is gorgeous, with the discordant choir building to crescendo. It’s beauty incarnate. To be fair to The Maze Runner, perhaps I should point to a genre-related example: The Hunger Games (2012). In doing so, however, I hope it will become apparent what I mean when I suggest that The Maze Runner manages to be serviceable, but never seems to use the various regions of the filmic space to convey the feelings it intends the audience to receive, just as its characters, as I’ll discuss later, so often lack those same emotions (even Thomas seems less scared than utterly confused in the clip provided above). Take the Cornucopia sequence from The Hunger Games as an example: As in the Godzilla clip, this sequence uses sound
Movie Review Rant: Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
I’ve only recently decided to watch the new iterations of the (in)famous web-crawler. Originally, I had no intention of ever doing so, in part because of a misplaced loyalty to the Raimi renditions (2002, 2004, and 2007). The real kicker, for me, was the fact that these films came hot off the heels of a preceding adaptation, and they were not a continuation of the original story, but a reboot. Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. But then I broke down and watched Amazing Spider-Man (2012; I’ll talk about this movie another time) and liked it well enough that I wanted to see how the character would progress. And so here I am — reviewing Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)(ASM2 from now on). (There will be some spoilers in this review. I have, however, refrained from spoiling major plot elements that you wouldn’t have learned about from the trailers. I will discuss some of these elements in the footnotes, though, as they need to be discussed in the context of my rant.) ASM2 is about a lot of things. Peter Parker’s relationship with Gwen Stacy and his conflict with her now-dead father’s last request (stay away from her). The truth behind Peter’s parents’ deaths — what they were doing when they disappeared, etc. Harry Osborn’s desperation to live. Spider-Man. Angst. Honestly, the more I think about this movie, the less coherent its plot seems. There are so many things going on here that it is actually hard to determine what actually matters for the overarching narrative. Is this about Peter Parker and his parents? The film wants us to think so…for a while. Is it about Peter and Gwen? Ditto. Is it about Harry and his daddy issues? Apparently. Max Dillon (a.k.a. Electro)? Yup. There are at least two new origin stories in this film, most of which draw attention away from the more interesting personal elements — Peter’s parents and Gwen. In fact, if this had been a film about one villain, one parental issue, and one romance, with each tied together into a cohesive whole, this might have been on par with Captain American: the Winter Soldier (2014). Alas, it was not to be. If it’s not clear, I’m going to tear this film a new one. But to make you feel better, I’ll start with some things that I liked about the film. First, though I know there are some problematic gender-related issues with regards to Peter and Gwen’s relationship, I can’t help but admire the dedication to the complexity of their relationship. There’s a sense here that their relationship is real, based on a mutual interest in what one another is feeling or desires (in life or a relationship). This contrast with the Spider-Man elements is needed to humanize the character and remind us that, yes, Peter Parker really is just a young dude. One of the things I loved about ASM2 was its brief focus on Gwen’s career and the decisions she makes (a reminder that Gwen is actually a young professional on her way to bigger things than just “graduating high school” — this film, in a way, is as much about her as it is Spider-Man, or at least feels that way). This is not a movie where the woman is asked to give everything up for the guy; instead, Gwen and Peter both understand that Gwen’s opportunities abroad are one-of-a-kind, and that it would be unfair for him to ask her to stay simply for a high school romance. In the end, it’s Peter who offers a solution that involves neither of them giving anything up at all: he’ll move with her. I don’t know how often we see compromise of this sort in film; regardless, it was an element that gave the film a bit of life. There’s a lot more I could say about Gwen, too. For a film that essentially sidelines the female characters for the male hero (it’s Spider-Man, after all), it does at least give Gwen something to do other than play the damsel in distress. True, she’s rather limited in that she’s got the brains to out-think Spider-Man’s superpowered opponents but not the physical prowess. But she does help Spider-Man by giving him information for his tech and by participating as an active agent in the climactic fight scene. In fact, probably the strongest bit of characterization in the entire movie takes place in that fight scene. This scene condenses the overarching narrative that defines Peter and Gwen’s relationship into two important thematic components. First, Peter’s attempts to stop Gwen from participating — to control her — when he webs her to a car so she won’t follow him on his way to face Electro. Second, Gwen’s assertion of her own agency, and Peter’s relinquishment to the reality that his powers do not give him the right to control her decisions. This is shown when Gwen frees herself and reappears on the scene (I won’t ruin this whole scene; just know that her involvement is important), accusing Peter of being “a caveman,” to which Peter responds: “You can’t be here right now. I’m not messing around.” Gwen’s response puts Peter’s perhaps unintentional patriarchal paternalism in its place: “OK, guess what. Nobody makes my decisions for me. OK? Nobody. This is my choice. K? My choice. This is mine.” The contrast is almost beautiful. If there’s something to be said about the character development here, it’s that Peter is actually pushed into becoming more feminist by the conclusion — a man who listens to his significant other, who takes her choices seriously and respects them. This is, unfortunately, undercut by the concluding moments of the film.[1] Visually, the film is quite beautiful. I particularly liked the look of Electro and the incorporation of sounds (like a giant, walking tesla coil) into his lightning-style powers.[2] His final fight with Spider-Man perfectly captures the flexibility and dexterity of Spider-Man and the raw, emotional fury of Electro. This is obviously
Movie Review: Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)
Last night, I saw Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary about a film which was never made but has nonetheless had a remarkable impact on science fiction film since its development in the 1970s. In all honesty, I had never heard of this ill-fated “adaptation” of Frank Herbert’s classic novel, and so it was with great pleasure that I saw the poster at my local theater and realized I’d have the chance to watch a documentary about something science fictional. Jodorowsky’s Dune (JD from now on) is an insane journey into what may have been the most experimental science fiction epic ever devised. Alejandro Jodorowsky was a noted surrealistic filmmaker in the 60s and 70s, producing such works as El Topo and The Holy Mountain, and so anyone familiar with his work might understand just how ambitious, and, indeed, insane, Jodorowsky could be. The documentary, however, provides enough context about Jodorowsky’s career — namely, through short excerpts from the aforementioned works — to convey the wildly imaginative vision that led to Dune. Throughout the documentary, Jodorowsky passionately lays out the spiritual and ideological agenda that guided the film from start to finish and his view of film as a medium for producing art and capturing the human spirit. From his perspective, Dune was always meant to be a spiritual journey created by spiritual “warriors” (his term), and so the eccentric and seemingly counter-intuitive choices made throughout the initial development has a certain kind of logic to it. The documentary lays these elements out primarily through Jodorowsky himself, whose passion and yearning for the promise of Dune almost flows out of the screen like a river of dreams. Insofar as a documentary can present beauty, JD does so by giving room to its primary subject. Part of the documentary’s charm, as such, rests in Jodorowsky’s character: an enigmatic, uncompromising filmmaker who appears to honestly believe in the liberative potential in film as an art form. It’s that uncompromising nature which might explain why Dune was never made, though JD never explicitly says as much. Whatever one might think of his filmography, JD’s character study reveals a visionary whose passion and spirituality guide his artistic process. This isn’t just a film about Dune; it is a film about Jodorowsky and his methods, about the processes of making art as opposed to entertainment. From the often humorous tales about cast selections and negotiations (Salvador Dali being one of the more amusing examples) to Jodorowsky’s amusing style of telling these tales, there is much to love about the framing of JD as a kind of surrealist documentary adventure. Jodorowsky himself acknowledges that he imagined Dune as taking the audience on an LSD trip without them ever actually taking drugs and that this process should alter their perceptions: of film, of the human subject, of reality. JD explores this vision with an unmeasured hand, giving Jodorowsky space to expound upon his visions, desires, and dreams rather than remaining focused on the objective truth one might receive with a history. Unlike, for example, a Star Wars documentary (which I happen to be watching at this moment — Empire of Dreams), JD is a deeply personal exploration. That subjective perspective gave me a deeper connection to the material, as it is only through the personal element, I would argue, that we can understand what Dune was meant to be. In that respect, the remaining elements are all funneled through Jodorowsky’s spiritual agenda, such that all of the production crew and cast choices are identified with the spiritual “warriors” about which the audience is repeatedly reminded. H.R. Giger (Alien), Michel Seydoux (Cyrano de Bergerac), Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Total Recall, etc.), and others each have their moment in the spotlight, each reinforcing Jodorowsky’s narrative, which JD frames by beginning with Jodorowsky and ending with a brief discussion of the influence Dune has had on sf film since — the actual conclusion tells us that Seydoux and Jodorowsky have teamed up to make another film (The Dance of Reality). I do take issue with the conclusions drawn from this influence, though, as it seems specious to assume similarities in future films are always necessarily influenced by a single predecessor. True, Giger and O’Bannon worked together on Alien, but JD tries to support this claim by placing images side-by-side, as if suggesting that two similarly-shaped items are necessarily connected on the same line rather than, perhaps, the product of an individual’s visions (Giger’s, for example). There are also moments where JD tries to argue that other films were influenced by Dune without having any direct connection to its creative talents — at least, no connection that is made apparent to the audience. This seems to undercut Jodorowsky’s claim that Dune was meant to inspire, even if the final moments of the film are, indeed, rather inspiring. Perhaps I expect such claims to be more firmly grounded in objective truth, which JD seems averse to doing precisely because of its primary subject. For me, part of what made this documentary so fascinating was the feeling that I too was being taken on a journey of sorts. I didn’t know about Jodorowsky’s Dune, and so every stage of documentary revealed details which breathed life into a project I had no personal connection to. By the end, I felt the same yearning for Dune that Jodorowsky relived as he explored his memories of the film that was never born. There is something unique about this version of Dune that I now feel deserves to be on the screen, even if it will never be so. The worst case scenario would be the release of the rare production book Jodorowsky and Seydoux used to entice the studios to fund them; this would give all of us access to a vision that has remained hidden, and it just might open new pathways to the imagination in a manner consistent with Jodorowsky’s spiritual agenda. Whether that will ever happen is up to speculation, but it should happen. It must happen. I’d
Movie Review: The Lego Movie (2014)
I can’t remember when I saw the first footage for The Lego Movie (2014), but I do remember thinking to myself that it would be the geekiest, most reference-laden work of 2014. Indeed, if any film tops this one in its insistence on crossing genres and referencing geek cultures from comics, films, books, and, hell, even Legos, then that would be a feat unto itself. As it stands, The Lego Movie is sort of like that friend who beats everyone at Trivial Pursuit every single time because he spends too much time on the Internet or with his nose buried in Netflix or the library stacks (or her, for that matter). And I mean that in a good way. What makes this such a lovable film is the fact that it shows so much love to the communities from which it borrows, not just in terms of the Lego work, where franchised media properties are well represented, but in terms of the worlds from which those properties originate. This is, in point of fact, a film for geeks, and it is a film I think everyone should see, if only to count off all the jokes based on DC characters or pirates or Star Wars or a number of other geeky things. Expect a drinking game upon the DVD release. The Lego Movie follows Emmet, a regular construction worker in a regular town with a regular job and a deep desire to be like everyone else. Indeed, in this ordinary city, everyone is like everyone else. Everyone sings the same happy song (“Everything is Awesome“), enjoys the same television, and goes through life with the same hopes and dreams: to be part of the team that is the city. But when he stumbles upon a mysterious woman searching the ruins of a building, Emmet discovers the Piece of Resistance and learns that he is the Special, tasked with preventing Lord Business from freezing the entire world just as it is with the Cragle (crazy glue with some of the letters missing). With his world thrown into chaos, Emmet must discover who he really is and how to put the world back to rights. If it’s not already clear, I loved The Lego Movie. For the most part, there aren’t a lot of good geeky movies that reference things that I actually know, and so to sit there in the theater laughing at jokes that were funny on their own to everyone else, but also funny to me on a different level was a treat. Much as Pixar’s films frequently engage their audiences on multiple levels (jokes for kids that work for adults and vice versa), this is a comedy film with multiple levels of engagement. That’s not an easy thing to do, and so I have to give this film major props for keeping me, and my less-geeky friend, utterly entertained from start to finish. The geek-minded, I’m sure, will find so much to love about this film based solely on its referential nature; indeed, this is the kind of film built just for us, and it knows it. There’s an almost charming awareness in the film — surely translated from the geek love of the writers and cast — as if it were subconsciously crashing down the 4th wall to share with us its own in-jokes. All of this referential humor is supported by a stunning cast of voice actors (and equally stunning and hilarious characters or caricatures). Batman (Will Arnett) is the caricature we’ve all known and loved, but with a side of emo-EDM artist and frat-douche; it’s hard not to find him hilarious, even as we recognize the qualities that make him a horrible person. The clueless Emmet (Chris Pratt) gives solid grounding to the film, as he is the closest character to us — not a ninja fighter, not a wizard, just a guy lost in a world of craziness (maybe not as much like us after all). Even his boneheaded ideas — the bunkbed couch — are fodder for hilarity; they also happen to be important to the plot, which gives depth to the comedic elements. It’s too easy to make jokes for the sake of the joke, but to make that joke central to the development of the plot requires some degree of writing skill. Additionally, Morgan Freeman’s turn as Vesuvius, a Gandalf-esque figure, adds a certain gravitas to the cast, if only because it’s Morgan Freeman playing a silly wizard with crazy light eyes, and Elizabeth Banks’ rendition of Wyldstyle, the “love interest” and biggest ass kicker of the film, adds some much needed sass to main cast (the Lego fight scenes are hilarious, by the way). There are even brief appearances from Green Lantern (Jonah Hill), Superman (Channing Tatum — oddly enough, not dancing without a shirt on), Wonder Woman (Colbie Smulders), and more. Throw in Liam Neeson as Bad Cop/Good Cop, a two-faced (literally) caricature of the classic cliche, and Will Farrell as Lord Business, the high-style, crazed villain, and you have an exceptional comedy cast. It’s here that I’d like to talk a little more about one character in specific. A lot of people have talked about the treatment of Wyldstyle throughout this film. Some have suggested that she is unfairly shafted here, that it should have been her that got to be “the Special” or perhaps that she simply fell into the trap so many female characters do: the love interest/object. Much of this is true, in a sense; Wyldstyle is coded as “love interest” from the second Emmet sees her — the camera shows her in slow motion, waving her Lego hair in the wind for an inordinate amount of time — but I must admit that I found this less a reflection of the film’s adherence to the tropes of Hollywood than a deliberate play on the absurdity of the trope itself. I also always viewed her as a major supporting character, as Emmet seemed central from the start.