MSNBC freelancer Patrick Enright hasn’t caught Ben Stiller‘s latest film, Night at the Museum (which screens today at 3 pm, which in itself is usually a bad sign — films shown to the press during daylight hours are usually simple-ass family fodder) but he’s come up with an interesting theory that explains Stiller’s lamentable decline.

Three or four years ago, he recalls, Stiller’s comedies began to be less and less funny, with more than a few being flat-out difficult to sit through (Duplex, Envy, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, et. al.). And Enright’s theory is that Ben’s kids did it.
Don’t dismiss this to quickly as some cruel journalistic riff. Kids always make artist-parents more open to doing this or that job for the money, as cash fortifies the nest. I’m a parent and know whereof I speak — it’s a very natural, probably inescapable impulse. Why do you think Heath Ledger is playing the Joker in Chris Nolan‘s next Batman film?
“Some wags might be tempted to attribute your career implosion to bad management or drugs or Scientology,” Enright comments, “but the real culprit is much, much more sinister. Something else happened in 2002, the year your movies went south so drastically: Little Ella Olivia, your first child, was born. Coincidence? I think not. And you didn’t stop there; No. 2, Quinlan Dempsey, came along in ’05.
“Yes, I blame the children — it’s a well-substantiated, scientifically tested theory that having kids drains the talents of great comedians, leaving them hollow and laugh-deficient, capable of and interested in only fart jokes and the occasional animated movie.
“The once-hilarious Eddie Murphy went through exactly the same decline, starring in his first major bomb, Harlem Nights, the year his first kid appeared on the scene. Whether it’s caused by a hormonal shift that kills any sense of The Funny or springs from a desire to create movies that please the young spawn, the trend is career-fatal.”
I would go farther and say that for many artists, feeling happy and settled and soothed isn’t precisely “bad” for their creative output, but it doesn’t seem to exactly help either. This may sound deranged or masochistic to some (and I’m not saying it applies to each and every actor, comedian, writer and gallery artist) but some artists feel they need to be on the edge in order to keep themselves sharp and focused — to pick up on those shortwave transmissions that tell them what’s next and where to go.
Sidenote: Enright’s piece wrongly states that Stephen Sommers is the director of Night at the Museum (i.e., the passage in question calls the film “Steven Sommers’ attempt to bring his crazy Mummy antics to a setting that wouldn’t require travel to far-off locations.” Enright also obviously misspells Sommers’ first name, which is “Stephen.” It’s easy to fix this, guys…shake a leg.

“Night At The Museum is a disappointing foray into the family-entertainment genre for its star Ben Stiller,” writes Screen Daily‘s Ed Lawrenson — a bad omen given this trade rag’s well-known tendency to run softball and/or turn-the-other-cheek reviews if at all possible. The rule of thumb is that if your film gets panned by Screen Daily, you’re probably going to get totally creamed by the tougher critics.
“Unlike the magical artifacts it revolves around, Museum is a holiday feature — based on a children’s picture book about a security guard in a museum where the inanimate exhibits come to life after-hours — that shows only occasional signs of vitality, despite a cast of well-known comic talent and some inventive CG work.
“An underwhelming if competently crafted family film, Night feels more suited for the DVD market, particularly among parents who read their children Milan Trenc‘s source book. [It] has some messy fun with its premise, but Shawn Levy‘s workman-like direction lacks flair. Overall the film lacks the visual imagination of, say, Joe Dante‘s Small Soldiers or the novelty value of Jumanji — two other family films where CG brings to life inanimate objects — ensuring that the effects quickly grow repetitive.
“Stiller is uncharacteristically awkward as Daley. With the exception of his vocal performance in Madagascar, Night At The Museum is his first kids’ film. His comic style, which tends to be deadpan and low-key, isn’t well suited to the genre, and he struggles to convince in the many slapstick scenes. Robin Williams brings some much needed exuberance as Teddy Roosevelt, and makes one wish that a more physically expressive actor had been cast in the lead.
“The supporting cast has an impressive roster of comic performers, including Brits Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais (who brings smarmy David Brent-like incompetence to his role as the museum director), but the thin, largely unfunny script wastes their talents. Veteran actors Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney play the scheming guards, the former exhibiting a commanding lightness of touch, the latter embarrassingly hamming things up.”

“If you haven’t seen Paul Verhoeven‘s Black Book (Sony Classics, 3.9.07), get your butt into a screening. If you can imagine Verhoeven’s over-the-top style and his obsession with female nudity, blood and other bodily fluids grafted onto a somewhat traditional World War II film about the Dutch underground fighting the Nazis….well, you may not believe what you’re seeing.

“It is both utterly ridiculous and fabulously entertaining, but at 145 minutes it moves like lightning, It looks in some ways like a 1940s MGM flick (think The Cross of Lorraine) but with a 2006 sensibility. I was chuckling all the way through at how florid it was, but have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it.” — Manhattan-based hit-shot journalist Lewis Beale in an e-mail sent this morning.
http://www.blackbook-lefilm.com/home.htm

“A lot of reviewers nowadays, they fall into that vice: they want stories, they want explanations, they want exposition and they want political postures. Why does cinema have to be a medium for making political statements as opposed to presenting facts, presenting elements and then you making your own conclusions — even if they are elusive? There’s nothing more beautiful than elusiveness in cinema.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù — Children of Men helmer Alfonso Cuaron to Movie City Indie‘s Ray Pride in a 12.19 piece appearing on Stu VanAirsdale‘s The Reeler.

Complete agreement with David Carr/”the Bagger” on Nathaniel R.‘s tiny but hilarious little riff on the Best Actress race.
Knowing that Helen Mirren has the Oscar so totally in the bag is a little dispiriting; ditto Forest Whitaker taking the Best Actor trophy for The Last King of Scotland. It would be at least somewhat enjoyable (i,.e., interesting to write about) if there was even a slight sense of a horse race. But c’mon…no one’s going to take it from Mirren. (Right?) It’s a done deal.
And yet a Fox Searchlight rep confided last night that Whitaker’s absolute dominance with the critics groups so far is giving her colleagues a twitch of concern because it sets the stage for a possible Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith or Peter O’Toole surge. Maybe one of these three will take it regardless — the Academy has often ignored critics’ champions.

A reader pointed out yesterday that Peter Yates‘ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, one of the great ’70s crime films (and probably the best Boston crime movie ever made, no disrespect to The Departed), will play Friday, January 5, at the American Cinematheque’s Overlook/Underrated series at the Egyptian.

This feels like fourteenth or fifteenth goad for Paramount Home Video (or whomever owns the rights) to please stand up and fund a decent high-def remastering and release this little masterpiece on DVD, complete with audio commentary (Yates is still around — too many others have passed including star Robert Mitchum and costar Peter Boyle) and some kind of looking-back, respect-must-be-paid documentary.
Turner Classic Movies is allowing viewers to vote for the films they’d most like to see released on DVD. Eddie Coyle is ranked #36, but it needs more supporters. Turner says that they notify distributors of movies with high demand, so fans need to vote to improve its standing. Here’s the link.

“Movie directors love to show off, and one of the ways they strut their stuff is with long, single-take shots — they’re a hallmark of Brian De Palma. Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron and longtime cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki also were drawn to such lengthy shots but for a different reason: They felt they would immerse the audience in the story.
“I think they are pretty staggering, but they are not showy,” says Men star Clive Owen, who was called on to perform scenes 10 minutes and longer, many of them filled with gunfire, explosions and crashes. “They are trying to put you viscerally in the middle of things — to make you feel you are in the situation.” — from L.A. Times entertainment writer John Horn‘s piece (12.19) on Cuaron’s film (Universal, 12.25), its making and its atmospheric themes.

“The real and great questions of conscience and accountability would not loom so ominously — unanswered or evaded at such tremendous cost — without our day-to-day failure to insist on genuine accountability. Of course we’d prefer some easy ways to get there. But no easy ways exist. Not a new Congress. Not Barack Obama. And not John McCain. His courage in North Vietnamese prison makes him a heroic man. His voting record in Congress makes him a damaging public servant. We have gotta stand the fuck up and show the world how powerful are the people in a democracy. That’s how we regain our position of example, rather than pariah, to the world at large. And that is how we can begin to put up our chins and allow pride and unification to raise our own quality of life and security.” — Sean Penn on the state of things, from remarks delivered last night (12.18.06) upon his receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition.

A reported (and undeniably brilliant, if true) career move for Tom Cruise: personally bankrolling The Thetan, a Scientology-inspired drama about a so-named alien leader and immortal spiritual being, blah, blah. Anyone would have trouble believing this Daily Telegraph story about Cruise having cast Victoria Beckham in the said-to-be-forthcoming film, but if it’s real…Battlefield Earth 2! The bizarre element is Cruise allegedly describing Beckham, wife of soccer superstar David Beckham, as a “comic genius.” This implies that The Thetan (which the Telegraph piece says was “rejected by all the major film studios”) will presumably make use of said comic gifts, which in turn suggests the film will be in some way comedic? Good God.

I’ve already pointed to Bill Nighy‘s Davy Jones performance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as unjustly overlooked, and we may as well acknowledge that his acting as Cate Blanchett‘s perplexed husband in Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight, 12.2.7) probably won’t be received with much more than fitting respect. There’s only one way to really appreciate how good Nighy is these days, and that’s coming to Manhattan, plunking down close to $200 bucks (i.e., yourself and a friend) and catching him in David Hare‘s The Vertical Hour at the Music Box. (A tall order but worth it.)
This play “confirms [Nighy’s] exclusive brand of greatness,” John Heilpern wrote not long ago in the N.Y. Observer. “Nighy looks like one of Whistler√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s rakish, languid aristocrats lolling about the place. He√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s awesomely relaxed, an urbane presence, cultivated, ironic in the light English style, and razor-sharp. His innate, mercurial spontaneity makes it hard to imagine him giving the same performance twice. He possesses the stagecraft and dangerous edge of a Michael Gambon with tics. To watch him in The Vertical Hour nonchalantly responding to [Julianne Moore’s] misguided American earnestness is to appreciate the nature of lethally understated disdain.”

“If someone looks like he hasn’t either bathed or been outdoors in weeks, he’s probably a blogger. Yes, even humble bloggers are invited to leave their attics and basements during Shmooze Season.” — Peter Bart in his 12.17 Variety column, titled “You Schmooze or You Lose.”