Did any HE regulars even see Tammy this weekend? It was so universally dismissed by discerning types as well as regular CinemaScore Joes that I would be surprised…what do I know? The word “dead” doesn’t mean financial ruin. It means that the movie doesn’t matter. No importance to anyone, not in the conversation, evaporated, etc. Melissa McCarthy has to move beyond the coarse schtick or she’ll be in trouble two or three films down the road. Tammy cost $20 million to make and will earn just shy of $33 million by this evening. But only $21 million by the strict Friday-to-Sunday standard. Compare this to the $34 and $39 million earned by Identity Thief The Heat on their respective opening weekends.
Theodore Melfi‘s St. Vincent de Van Nuys (Weinstein Co., 10.24), which shot last summer in various New York-area locations, is about a rootless young guy with just-divorced parents befriending a “misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic war veteran” played by Bill Murray. Costars include Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, Naomi Watts. This looks like the same trailer they showed at Harvey’s annual preview event in Cannes in mid-May.
Uh-oh…another Melissa McCarthy movie! I’d better say the right things or, more to the point, not say any bad things or Judd Apatow and the armed Sunni p.c. police squad will kick the shit out of me, especially on Twitter. I need to get my attitude adjusted and crank up the denial or I’ll be in big trouble. Okay…go! McCarthy’s schtick of playing a coarse, angry, under-educated, junk-food-inhaling, lower-middle-class instinct animal is…hilarious! And it’s totally common when thin, nice-looking guys (in this instance an ex-hubby and a possible new boyfriend) are depicted as being (or having been) sexually interested in her. One reason for this curious state of affairs is an understanding that morbid obesity isn’t a life-shortening affliction but…kinda cute! And a drop-dead hilarious comic device. When McCarthy tries to leap over a fast-food counter during a robbery but can’t manage it…gasping for breath! Did I mention that morbid obesity has become a kind of metaphor for serenity and self-acceptance?
Wait…should I run this by Apatow first before publishing? Maybe I haven’t expressed my views in the right way? Aaahh, too late now.
Tammy (Warner Bros., 7.2) is a husband-and-wife enterprise — directed by McCarthy’s husband, Ben Falcone, and co-written by Falcone and McCarthy. Creative collaborations between married or otherwise intimately entwined couples often don’t work because they’re not blunt with each other. If an idea is shit or not quite good enough, you have to be able to effing say that instead of “yeah, honey, that’s a really good bit except…well, it’s not that I don’t respect your idea or you for that matter but I just think if we massaged it a little bit more and doubled down on the love we might have something a little bit better.” Do you think Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond talked that way to each other?
Early last evening Harvey Weinstein & Co. hosted a Majestic Hotel preview of the Weinstein Co.’s 2014 and ’15 slate. St. Vincent costar Naomi Watts and Woman in Gold star Ryan Reynolds said a few words before the product reel was shown. The films included Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes (which looks really good), Suite Francaise, The Giver, Macbeth, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (which screens twice on Saturday), Begin Again and the afore-mentioned St. Vincent (a relationship comedy with Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts and Chris O’Dowd, formerly titled St. Vincent de Van Nuys). Also previewed were The Imitation Game, a cuddly CG bear comedy called Paddington and a forthcoming Antoine Fuqua-directs-Jake Gyllenhaal boxing movie called Southpaw.
I was struck by the absence of any florid Shakespearean verse in the footage for the Michael Fassbender-and-Marion Cotillard Macbeth (due in ’15) so I asked Harvey if the film contains any of that. “It’s cut down,” Harvey said. “[The film is] very conducive to mainstream audiences.” So this new Macbeth doesn’t resemble the 1971 Polanski version? “No, no…it’s somewhere in the middle but it’s very understandable,” Harvey replied. So instead of Fassbender saying “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” he’ll just say “tomorrow”? Here’s the mp3 of our brief discussion.
For the most part the Rotten Tomato and Metacritic scribes despise Nick Cassevetes‘ The Other Woman, having given the 20th Century Fox release a 24% and 38% rating, respectively. The only guy who shares my view, which is that Woman is no classic but on the other hand isn’t too bad, is Boston Herald critic James Verniere. Regardless of all this, Box-Office Mojo is predicting a half-decent $15 million weekend, so the Other Woman trailer that I disliked for making a reasonably engaging, not-too-bad comedy seem a lot dumber than it is, is apparently doing its job.
Incidentally: I’m told by a Fox source that nobody made the trailer I was beefing about, which came out last December. Departed Fox marketing chiefs Oren Aviv and Tony Sella were gone when it was released (Sella apparently never even saw the film) and current marketing boss Marc Weinstock hadn’t really arrived and settled in. So the trailer kind of…I don’t know, manifested on its own volition? Something like that.
Melissa McCarthy is a brilliant major-league comedian, but for me the metaphor of morbid obesity gets in the way of her comic delivery. I’ve been laughing at chubby or overweight types my whole life, but how do you laugh at a person who will obviously be coping with a shortened lifespan due to unhealthy eating habits? Slow caloric suicide isn’t funny. Much of McCarthy’s humor is all about making fun of herself for being in awful shape (unable to leap a counter in Tammy, huffing and puffing in Identity Thief) but if a person like me says “she’s so out of shape she’s not funny” it’s a hate crime and I get labelled as a bigot. I’m not being cruel like Rex Reed was when he called her a “hippo”. I’m just saying I can laugh at Oliver Hardy or John Candy but not McCarthy. I’ve always been on the fence about Fatty Arbuckle.
7:57 pm: WHAT? I spoke too soon! 12 Years A Slave takes the Best Motion Picure, Drama award? Yes! This wasn’t in the cards, or certainly didn’t seem to be. You can plainly see that director Steve McQueen is dumbfounded — “I wasn’t expecting this!,” he just said. An amazing finale….totally unexpected. And totally justified. Wow! Obviously a very close vote with Alfonso Cuaron having won Best Director.
7:51 pm: Jessica Chastain presents the Best Actor, Drama Golden Globe to Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyer’s Club. Good speech that he tried out last week in Palm Springs. 12 Years A Slave is most likely a total shut-out. We need to hear from Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, who declared last September that Slave was a total lockdown for Best Picture. McConaughey: “This film has always been about livin’…it was never about dyin’.”
7:46 pm: The great Cate Blanchett wins Best Actress, Drama for Blue Jasmine. Not too much of a surprise. Great speech! Admittedly augmented by “several vodkas.”
7:44 pm: “And now, like a supermodel’s vagina, let’s all give a warm welcome to Leonardo DiCaprio!” — Tina Fey.
7:39 pm: Here comes the Best Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical ward, presented by a pregnant Drew Barrymore (who looks as big as a house). American Hustle wins, of course. “Which movie will take the big award of the night?” the announcer asks. I think we have that figured out, right? Nothing to do with slavery! An FX-driven space suspense movie (“Sandra Bullock lost in a haunted house but the house is space” — Alexander Payne) is cooler!
7:27 pm: Jennifer Lawrence presenting the Best Actor, Comedy/Musical, and the Golden Globe goes to Leonardo DiCaprio!!! “I never would have guessed I would have won for Best Actor in a Comedy,” etc. In a general career sense, he means, but also because Leo regards Wolf, however hilarious it is throughout, as a deadly serious portrait of a malignant culture. Leo gives an elegant, eloquent acceptance speech. Being waved off by the orchestra. Yay, Leo!!!!
7:21 pm: Brooklyn Nine-Nine wins for Best TV Series, Comedy/Musical. “Winning this award is way better — way better! — than saving a human life!” the top guy says. What an asshole! The runners-up were The Big Bang Theory, Girls, Modern Family and Parks & Recreation.
7:17 pm: Gravity‘s Alfonso Cuaron takes the Best Director Golden Globe. Good technical job, Alfonso! Every “aaah!” from Sandra Bullock rocked my soul. So Gravity is going to win for Best Motion Picture, Drama? Nice one, HFPA! Well, we knew 12 Years A Slave was in trouble with this group. Cuaron’s “herpes”/”earpiece” joke was pretty funny.
6:57 pm: During her Woody Allen tribute acceptance speech, Diane Keaton contemplates death, or rather Woody’s famous remark about it: “I don’t want to live eternally through my work — I want to live eternally by not dying.” (Or words to that effect.) She mentions that while Francois Truffaut‘s films will be savored for a long time to come, “that’s not much help to Francois Truffaut.” (Whose grave, by the way, I visited back in ’87 — it lies in the Cimitiere du Montmartre.) Why did the sound cut out on Keaton’s speech? Two or three seconds were blipped out. Did she say something profane?
Thanks to the gracious Steven Gaydos for ushering me into today’s Variety brunch (11 am to 12:45 pm) at the Parker Palm Springs. Tasty omelettes, fresh fruit, good coffee, agreeable sunshine. The main honorees were Wolf of Wall Street costar Jonah Hill (introduced by Hill’s Cyrus costar Marisa Tomei) and Saving Mr. Banks director John Lee Hancock (introduced by Colin Farrell). Among the ten upcoming directors honored were Ben Falcone (the upcoming Tammy which stars his wife Melissa McCarthy) and Belle helmer Ama Asante.
Theodore Melfi‘s St. Vincent de Van Nuys, which began shooting in July in various New York-area locations, is about a rootless young guy with just-divorced parents befriending a “misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic war veteran” played by Bill Murray. Costars include Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, Naomi Watts — no idea who plays the kid. Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young is about “an uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.” (Hey, maybe they could hook up with Murray’s hedonistic war veteran and make it a real party?) It costars Ben Stiller, Amanda Seyfried, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver and Charles Grodin. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman, which will most likely debut in Cannes next May, is about an actor known for playing an iconic superhero (Michael Keaton) struggling to prepare a Broadway play while at the same time attempting to recover his family, his career, and himself. (The play in the film is an adaptation of Raymond Carver‘s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”) Keaton’s costars include Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton and Zach Galifianakis.
You’re reading A.O. Scott‘s review of The Heat, and he states early on that the film, directed by Bridesmaid‘s Paul Feig, has broken a sexism barrier by being the first cop-boddy comedy without guys. It “wears its feminism lightly and proudly, though not always comfortably,” he says. And yet it’s “a fairly standard summertime R-rated comedy, which I guess could be described as a kind of progress.” In other words, it’s bad but not altogether bad given the feminist breakthrough this film has achieved…if you want to be generous about it.
“A simpler, and probably more relevant, way to describe this movie would be to say that it’s around two hours of Melissa McCarthy spewing profanity while Sandra Bullock cringes, flutters her arms and sighs in exasperation. If you need another reason to see it, I can’t in good conscience supply one, since the story is sloppy and thin, many of the jokes are strained or tired, and the level of violence is a bit jarring. But the volatile chemistry between Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Bullock is something to behold, and carries The Heat through its lazy conception and slapdash execution.
The Heat “is not a very good movie,” he says in paragraph #8. “Its script is a rehash of the obvious and the pointless, without the knowing self-mockery of 21 Jump Street. And it suffers from the familiar, crippling desire to be naughty without risking offense. So there are jokes at the expense of albinos and people with Boston accents and halfhearted race- and class-based gags.”
I ought to just man up and pay the ticket price and see this, but I honestly don’t know if I can take it. Honestly.
One of my first back-in-the-U.S. screenings will be next Monday’s all-media for Paul Feig‘s The Heat (20th Century Fox, 6.28), the Sandra Bullock-Melissa McCarthy cop-buddy action comedy. It suddenly hit me this morning that I haven’t paid a dime’s worth of attention to this thing, which is obviously broad as a barn. I have to be honest about something. The trailer narration describes McCarthy’s character as “a tough Boston cop,” and she clearly has the mouthy, belligerent attitude of a streetwise detective. But when I think “tough cop” I think of Gene Hackman‘s Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, and that association reminds me of the Act One scene when Popeye and Roy Scheider‘s Cloudy run after Alan Weeks‘ drug dealer for two or three blocks before catching him. Does anyone believe McCarthy could run several hundred yards in a high-speed pursuit of a lithe 20something drug dealer? On top of which she’s only 5’2″…c’mon.
Forget what actually happened in this real-life news story, which broke a day or so ago. The basic premise, you have to admit, is kinda funny if Melissa McCarthy is the marriage counselor and Kevin James is the husband. A sexually ruthless marriage counselor fits McCarthy’s screen persona (i.e., the nutter who’s oblivious to her own appalling behavior) to a T. I don’t know who should play the wife but this is definitely a megaplex flick if you ignore the real-life ramifications.
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