Saturday Night At The Movies

Fissure and sun: 2012 opens wide

By Dennis Hartley

Prime beachfront property! Low, low prices! Going fast!

Day after day, more people come to L.A.
Ssh! Don’t you tell anybody-the whole place is slipping away.
Where can we go-when there’s no San Francisco?
Ssh! Better get ready to tie up the boat in Idaho.
-from Day After Day (It’s Slippin’ Away) by Shango

Depending on who you talk to, the numbers 12/21/12 signify either a) The Day the Earth Gets Hosed, or b) A day in 2012 that will be preceded by December 20th and immediately followed by December 22nd, in the course of which we will all go about our daily business as per usual. According to 2012 director Roland Emmerich, when Winter Solstice, 2012 rolls around, we better get ready to not only tie up the boat in Idaho, but to hang ten in the Himalayas as well. It’s gonna be a doozey (best get your affairs in order).

Taking full advantage of all the ballyhoo surrounding the upcoming terminus of the ancient Mayan calendar, the Master of Disaster has once again assembled a critic-proof, populist spectacle, unencumbered by complex narrative or character development (then again, one doesn’t board a roller coaster for the express purpose of engaging one’s mind).

So…it’s been, gosh, what…at least 12,012 years since his last film (10,000 B.C., which I reviewed here). Let’s see if we can catch up. For one thing, in the Future, loincloths and spears are no longer de rigueur. However, I have some good news, and some bad news. Good News first? It appears that humans are much less likely to suffer getting crushed by mammoths and/or mauled by saber-toothed tigers, since both of those species are now extinct (yay!). The Bad News is, humans are now in imminent danger of becoming extinct themselves, because the sun is bombarding the planet with neutrinos, which is seriously compromising the stability of the Earth’s crust-or some kind of pseudoscientific scenario to that effect (oh, crap). At any rate, any and all pending natural disasters you could envision are now likely to all come at once. And that can’t be good. An international consortium of scientists and world leaders are in the loop, but in compliance with Rules and Regulations Regarding Mandatory Plot Points for End of the World Movies (rev. 2007), it’s kept strictly off the record, on the Q.T., and very hush-hush.

After the obligatory prologue set in a remote corner of the world, where we are given an inkling that a global threat might be brewing and/or a cosmic mystery is afoot (a requisite since Close Encounters of the Third Kind) the scene shifts to the good ol’ USA, where the Concerned Preznit (Danny Glover) receives grim counsel and furrows his brow (just like Concerned Preznits Bill Pullman and Perry King did in Emmerich’s two previous end of the world epics, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow , respectively).

And no such doomsday narrative is quite complete without its rumpled Everyman protagonist, embodied here by John Cusack, divorced father of two who still sorta has a thing for his ex-wife (even though she’s now married to a smarmy yuppie), and who happens to have custody of the kids on the very weekend that the Apocalypse is scheduled for kickoff (see: Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds). And guess where Dad is taking us all camping this weekend, kids? Why, Yellowstone Park, of course…Ground Zero for the caldera of one of the largest known super-volcanoes in the world (I don’t want to spoil anything for you…but I think Yogi and Boo-Boo are fucked).

What ensues is a mash-up of Dante’s Peak, The Poseidon Adventure and When Worlds Collide, peppered with every disaster movie cliché extant. The special effects are quite spectacular, and there is a pulse-pounding, show-stopping (if highly improbable) escape sequence early on (as L.A. experiences the mother of all earthquakes). However, by the time the third, fourth, or fifth pulse-pounding, show-stopping, highly improbable escape sequence rolls around, with no substantive narrative sandwiched in to give you a breather in its two and a half hour running time, it becomes a case of mind-numbing overkill. Maybe a mystery angle involving the Mayan prophecies would have added something?

The cast slogs through as best they can, considering that most are relegated to cardboard caricatures taking a back seat to the CGI wizardry. Cusack has his moments, but you definitely get the sense that this is only a paycheck gig. Woody Harrelson briefly livens up things a bit, as a conspiracy nut talk show host (most likely modeled after Art Bell), but talented players like Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor are wasted.

If you enjoyed the director’s previous films, I suppose this one is no better or no worse; you will probably want to see it no matter what the critics say. If you are intrigued by the premise, but not so intrigued about parting with your ten bucks, I’d say wait for the DVD. Or- just hold out until 12/21/12. Who knows? It could be more entertaining than the film.

Previous posts with related themes: Top 10 End of the World Movies

Britannia rules the waves, Pirate Radio waives the rules

Philip Seymour Hoffman rehearses his BTO tribute band.

So if you’re not in the mood to watch the world get blowed up real good, there is another film opening this weekend that is much more down to earth. Okay, it does have its characters weathering some stormy seas, but at least the Earth’s crust remains intact. Pirate Radio is the latest entry in the British invasion of feel-good, “root for the underdogs” comedy-dramas that have been coming at us over the last decade (The Full Monty, Still Crazy, Brassed Off!, Billy Elliot, Kinky Boots, Bend It Like Beckham, etc.).

Released in the U.K. earlier this year under a different title (The Boat That Rocked) and with a substantially longer running time (more on that shortly), the film is based on true-life events surrounding Britain’s thriving offshore rock’n’roll pirate radio scene in the mid-to-late 60s (Radio Caroline and Radio London were probably the most well-known). The hugely popular stations came about as a rebellious counterpoint to the staid, state-controlled BBC based programming that otherwise monopolized the British airwaves (which didn’t begin to loosen up until the emergence of the legendarily innovative DJ John Peel in 1967, who had a knack for championing unknown but soon to be important artists and gradually encouraged BBC-1 to offer up a more eclectic, free-style format).

The film, not so much an illuminating history lesson as it is a “WKRP on the high seas” romp, breezes along in an amiable fashion, buoyed (sorry!) by an engaging cast. We are introduced to a bevy of wacky and colorful (yes, I said “wacky and colorful”) characters through the eyes of young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who has been put out to sea (in a matter of speaking) on the pirate broadcasting ship, “Radio Rocks” by his free-spirited mother, who is at a loss as to how to deal with his recent expulsion from college. She hopes that the boat’s captain/radio station manager, who is Carl’s godfather (played by the ever-delightful Bill Nighy) will be able to straighten him out. It quickly becomes apparent that one would be hard-pressed to locate any traditionally “upstanding” role models for the impressionable lad among the motley crew at hand, being that most onboard activities eventually circle back in one form or another to the pursuit of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Philip Seymour Hoffman has a grand old time hamming it up as the lone American DJ on the staff, who gets into a pissing contest with a “legendary” British air personality (Rhys Ifans) who has been coaxed into joining the station after taking an extended sabbatical from the biz. They are soon united against a common enemy, when an ultra-conservative government minister (Kenneth Branagh, in full Snidely Whiplash mode) decides to make it his mission in life to take the broadcasters down by any means necessary. Also featured in the cast: January Jones (best known as Betsy Draper from AMC’s original series, Mad Men), Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz ) and Ralph Brown (who is forever cemented in my mind as Danny the drug dealer, from the 1987 cult film Withnail and I).

Writer-director Richard Curtis has a knack for penning clever, bawdily amusing repartee (he scripted one of my all-time favorite romantic comedies, The Tall Guy, which I wrote about here) and the cast is game. I would have liked to have seen him work a little more of the historical context into the story; a large chunk of the movie gets lost in fairly standard bedroom farce (there’s a lot of, uh, “jolly rogering” going on, if you know what I’m saying). There are also a few jumps in the timeline that I found slightly confusing; although I suspect this may be attributable to the fact that some 30 minutes or so of footage has been excised from its U.K. cut (which I hope will be available on DVD). The movie sports a great period soundtrack, from the likes of The Who, The Kinks and Cream (although I could swear that I caught a couple tunes that the DJs were spinning which actually had not yet been released as of 1966, which is the year this is supposed to be taking place; again, this could have something to do with the chopped version of the film we are seeing in the U.S.). It’s fluff-but it’s immensely entertaining fluff. Sometimes, that’s all I require from a film. And a bag of freshly popped corn. Mmmm…popcorn…

Previous posts with related themes: Talk to Me

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