Time Keeps on Slippin': BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC

For all the ways Bill and Ted, they of the Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, are like so many comedy film duos, there’s something singular about them, too. These SoCal teenage friends act like stoners but never toke, surfers but live inland, bros but never get nasty.  For all their dim-bulb energy, they’re surprisingly shrewd when they need to be. For all their slacker energy, they nonetheless can commit themselves to a big goal and see it through to the end. (Maybe that’s what being told you’re destined to save the world will get you.) Sure, they’re dopey, but they’re lovably dopey. After all, it’s not just any pair of best buddies who could’ve traveled through time for a history project or visited heaven and hell while joshing with death and take it in such stride. Their two blissfully silly movies from the late-80s and early-90s were carried along entirely on their goofball sci-fi charms, shaggy low-stakes treatment of space-time fatalism, and, above all else, that unrepeatable fortuitous chemistry from writing two amiably idiosyncratic characters and finding the exact right pair of actors to bring them to life. So even though Bill & Ted Face the Music is easily the least of the now trilogy of comedies starring those guys, it’s still capable of capturing some of their low-key cleverness and aw-shucks capitulation to whatever fate has in store for them. Destiny, after all, is always easier with a best pal along for support. Everyone involved is having a good time.

And so it is that when Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter step back into the roles for the third time, after three decades away, it feels like a pleasant reunion. Sure, they’re older, but you understand they’re basically the same people. Turns out they had some minor success with their rock band Wyld Stallyns, but have stalled out, now playing family weddings and open mic nights. It’s not clear how they have enough to support themselves, let alone their wives and kids. But they still love each other’s company and have each other’s back. Good thing, too, since yet another futuristic visitor (this time Kristen Schaal, playing the daughter of George Carlin’s character from the original) shows up and asks for their help saving the universe by playing one killer song. Only problem: they haven’t written it yet. This leads them hither and yon through some wispily sketched time travel ideas where they encounter various versions of their future selves while attempting to hop to a time in which they’ve already written the song. Director Dean Parisot and returning screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon have a good enough time goofing around with the idea. And the actors are still so winning as the leads that it’s hard to dislike the movie. Yet its best idea is giving the guys grown daughters (Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine), who are pitch-perfect young-woman versions of the eponymous duo. They have the same charming chemistry and earnestly dewey dopiness. I almost wish the balance of the film was flipped, giving them more screen time and making their subplot — a jaunt through time to collect the Greatest Musicians, like Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, and Mozart, for their dads’ band — the main attraction. How rare to do a Next Generation of a beloved cult comedy team and have it work so well, even if the film around it is a bit thin.

Who's THE BOSS

The latest Melissa McCarthy comedy, The Boss, is the sort of disaster you wouldn’t wish on even the worst movie star. That it happened to one as refreshing and funny as McCarthy is bad. That she did it to herself – co-writing with her husband Ben Falcone, who also directs, as he did her underrated Tammy – is even worse. The movie is a mess of squandered potential, with no sense of rhythm or timing, fatally hobbled by a completely unfocused plot, cursed with a scattershot tone and a complete inability to figure out what story it’s telling. It’s baffling how something so endlessly idiotic and catastrophically unfunny could happen to a talented comedian making her own role. She plays Michelle Darnell, a mean, short-tempered, delusional, narcissistic tycoon sent to jail for insider trading, then forced to work her way back up from nothing. This could be an interesting set-up, but the movie completely misunderstands McCarthy’s sweet and salty appeal, asking her to be both a relentlessly cruel insult machine whirling through every scene and yet still benefit from heaping globs of sentimentality asking us to care about this monster.

You’d think our current political moment would be great timing for a satire about a raging egomaniacal wealthy person metaphorically kicked in the teeth and forced to try to be a good person. In its broad strokes The Boss is exactly that. But it never actually figures out how to make Darnell into a character that makes any sort of sense, or how to make the story cohere around any sort of point. Is she the butt of the joke or the hero of the story? Is she the target of merciless class critique or a benevolent dummy who has had some hard times and needs our rooting interest through her every pratfall? She’s both an out-of-touch nincompoop in a fish-out-of-water comedy – crashing on the sofa of her former assistant (Kristen Bell) and completely misunderstanding the lifestyle of the 99% – and a selfish madwomen tearing through every scene creating more destruction – physically, emotionally, financially – than any other character can believably tolerate. No one knows what to do with her, on screen or behind the scenes.

Take, for instance, Darnell’s wardrobe. She’s always wearing turtlenecks with collars sitting snug just below her ears. That seems like a joke, maybe even a running joke. But nothing ever becomes of this costume choice. It just sits there, drawing a little bit of attention without turning into something entertaining. That’s the movie in a microcosm, which stumbles and flails for purpose. The story seems to skip a beat with every scene transition. Maybe it was hacked together from a pile of half-finished scenes in the editing process. One minute Darnell is ruining her assistant’s life, the next they’re starting a new business together. Sometimes we see a Girl Scout-ish troop, where Darnell cruelly terrorizes nice, clueless moms (Kristen Schaal and Annie Mumolo). Then Kathy Bates shows up for a moment on a farm. Then there’s a weird rivalry with a business competitor (Peter Dinklage) that turns into a last-minute heist. There is also, in a desperate search for more narrative, an underutilized rom-com subplot, a Gayle King cameo, strained misunderstandings, and a sword fight on the top of a skyscraper.

The Boss just doesn’t know what it wants to be. Characters change on the whims of the inconsistent tone, sometimes mean-spirited and nasty – like an over-the-top brawl involving 10-year-olds – and sometimes too sweet – like a tearful apology that’s supposed to be the emotional climax but plays totally false. It doesn’t help a borderline incoherent plot shoved into agonizingly conventional formula that the behaviors of people involved are completely unbelievable, even giving them the benefit of the heightened comedic doubt. There are several moments where McCarthy spits meaningless insults at characters we’ve hardly met, then finishes the scene by, say, falling down a flight of stairs or shoving cookies down someone’s pants. It’s just inexplicable, a disorganized, slapdash, inconsistent effort, stylistically bland to the point of madness, containing only totally unreadable substance. What an unfortunate mess, disappointing and tedious misery passing for humor. It’s not unusual for a custom-made star vehicle to crash and burn, but it’s pretty rare for one to run out of gas before it even hits the road. It hurts to see such likable people involved in a misfire this bad.

The Old Men and the Trees: A WALK IN THE WOODS

If you thought the only thing holding Wild’s hiking-as-journey-of-self-discovery metaphor back was a total lack of broad sitcom shenanigans, have I got a movie for you. Ken Kwapis, veteran director of TV (The Office) and ensemble comedy (He’s Just Not That Into You) has adapted A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson’s book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, into treacly sentiment and exhausted lightness. It starts with a tired old writer (Robert Redford) deciding he’d like to go for a long hike. His wife (Emma Thompson) pleads with him to not go alone, and so, after exhausting all options, he ends up reunited with an old friend (Nick Nolte) who wants to come along. The rest of the movie involves the guys meandering their way from Georgia up to New England, seeing beautiful sights and getting involved in the mildest of comedy antics along their episodic way.

Bryson’s an often amusing humorist on the page, but none of his personality survives a transplant into the blandest feel-good big screen tripe. It’s supposed to be life affirming watching the guys bond and overcome obstacles. In practice, the screenplay by Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman is strained silliness mixed with even more strained seriousness. It makes for a pushy blend that doesn’t even try too hard to be manipulative. The characters have little of interest to say, and appear to have no investment in their own actions. We have a few limp scenes in which Redford looks bored at an interview and a funeral and we’re supposed to interpret that as a sign he wants to do something fun and exciting before he gets even older. Later, Nolte comes stumbling into the picture, red-faced and wheezing, obviously out of shape and unprepared for a long hike. We’re supposed to be ready to admire his tenacity and persistence. The easy setup gives way to thin development. You know pretty much where it’s headed at every step.

Kwapis and crew trust that a somnambulant outdoorsy Redford and a blustering stumbling Nolte will hold the audience’s interest. The whole thing coasts on goodwill generated by memories of better performances in more interesting projects. The leads are responsible for some magnetic and riveting screen presences over the last half-century plus. And when their eyes are sparkling and their voices roll out like smooth water over rough rocks, it’s easy to remember why they became big deals. They work well here together, but the material they’re given is dire. Slack and inert, the sad slop has them fall down, eat pancakes, flirt, lose clothing, splash in water and mud, and scamper up and down leafy hills. Then they’ll pause, staring slack jawed at some gorgeous vista before moving on, platitudes piled up on lovely landscapes before another bout of vaguely humorous scenarios. It’s never all that funny, but at least its rarely punishingly mean.

At it’s best, we see the two old men moving silently through fields and trees in insipid wide shots that could easily be repurposed in ads for life insurance, retirement accounts, or erectile dysfunction. But soon they are back mixing it up with a parade of cameos, rolling their eyes at a camping expert (Nick Offerman), young people (fit bros, squeaky boy scouts, and the like), a flirty hotel proprietor (Mary Steenburgen), and an annoying know-it-all woman (Kristen Schaal). The musty perspective in which these guys feel self-righteously validated in scoffing at all women and children is strange, but convincingly old-white-guy. As they bond by getting snowed on, angering hicks, and confronting a bear (seeing Nolte standing up trapped in his tent hollering at a wild animal is a real standout moment) the Hallmark glitter is chokingly dusted as the music swells and the trees sway in the breeze. And then it’s over.

Leftovers: CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2

A major asset of 2009’s zippy pleasure Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was its sense of surprise. It was an unexpected treat in the form of a zany hilarious contraption of imagination and heart. The bouncily, colorfully animated story of Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) and his food-generating invention (the FLDSMDFR) that goes very right, then very wrong, is a mile-a-minute joke machine running on slapstick, puns, and running gags of every kind imaginable. The premise was wacky – weather that rains food onto a goofy small town – and the breakneck pacing and deep down heartfelt characterization only helped elevate it into a glorious cartoony experience. Now, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is not and maybe never could’ve been the total surprise delight of the original. But there’s almost enough diverting silliness here all the same. It is in many ways more conventional and subdued. To say it has half the laughs sounds like an insult until you remember the overwhelming number and variety of jokes that were packed into its predecessor.

Starting exactly eight minutes after the end of Cloudy, the sequel finds Flint and all the citizens of Swallow Falls awestruck by a famous inventor and C.E.O of multinational tech corporation Live Corp. helicoptering into their wrecked food-covered town. Chester V (Will Forte), as limber as he is rich, pays to relocate the townspeople while his crews of researchers clean up the island. Eagerly accepting the offer, the characters move on with their new lives. Six months later, though, clean up hasn’t made much progress because the FLDSMDFR somehow survived the first film and has generated an entire island ecosystem of mutant food. Meanwhile, Flint is having trouble getting promoted out of his entry level position at Chester’s company, so he jumps at his boss’s offer to travel back to island and find the rogue invention and shut down the jungle of “Foodimals” before they can reach the mainland and wreak chewy havoc.

Off Flint goes, with his dad (James Caan), meteorologist girlfriend (Anna Faris), and pet monkey (Neil Patrick Harris), as well as a cameraman (Benjamin Bratt), a chicken-loving bully-turned-friend (Andy Samberg), and the town’s policeman (Terry Crews). A sort of pun-heavy riff on Jurassic Park, the plot of Cloudy 2 finds our intrepid protagonists trudging through a jungle of fruits and veggies, running into all manner of monstrous (and cute) food creatures: smiling berries, grumpy pickles, elephantine melons, a gargantuan “taco-dile,” and hamburger spiders with French fry legs and poppy seed eyes. I especially liked a brief glimpse of a snake with a slice of pie for a head and a Twizzlers tail. Unlike its predecessor's joyfully overcooked disaster movie spoof, this is more of a light kiddie adventure with a dusting of smile-worthy winks to keep things lightly comedic. The characters are appealing and the visual design is delicious. It’s the screenplay cooked up by John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein, and Erica Rivinoja (with story credits for Chris Miller and Phil Lord) that could’ve used more time in the oven.

Though even at its most obvious, there are elements that tickled me. The creatures are imaginatively designed and good for fun puns. I enjoyed the not-so-subtle dichotomy of organic goodness versus processed factory food evil that simmers underneath the proceedings. Live Corp is in the tradition of deceptively benign movie corporations that hide evil intentions in cavernous rooms populated by anonymous white lab coats busying themselves with unknown scientific tinkerings. I mean, Chester V’s assistant (Kristen Schaal) is an orangutan with a human brain implanted inside her own. He’s clearly up to no good, even without the most heavy-handed mustache-twirling foreshadowing in the opening scene. (Given the way the rest of the movie plays out, I wonder if that moment was put in specifically to defuse what would’ve otherwise been a little plot twist.)

But compared to the densely hilarious framing and sturdy script of its predecessor, Cloudy 2 feels thinner than it should. (Compared to, say, Turbo or Planes, however, it doesn’t look so bad.) The plotting plays out more or less exactly as you’d expect, with largely easy lessons that don’t really threaten to become anything too emotionally impactful. Pair that with the sparser joke population and the whole thing bakes into a flavorful concoction that could use a bigger does of sugar to get truly tasty. Still, there’s enough imagination in the creatures and silliness in the execution to make the time pass amiably enough. It is, after all, not every day you see a movie with a subplot in which a man teaches a bunch of pickles how to fish. 

Quick Look: DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS

With a fun high concept and, with Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, two of the most consistently funny comedic actors working today, it would be easy to assume Jay Roach’s Dinner for Schmucks (based on The Dinner Game, a 1998 French film) would be at the very least a serviceable comedy. That assumption would be wrong. This is a flat movie with no flow. It proceeds in awkward, ill-fitting chunks of plot. There are funny lines sprinkled here and there, but none achieve any real lift in the movie’s overall atmosphere. This is dismal, unfunny stuff: awkwardly placed broad shtick mingling freely with uncomfortable sentimentality. Rudd is asked by his boss (Bruce Greenwood), as part of a vetting process for a promotion, to find an idiot to bring to the company’s regular secret dinner where the execs make fun of the goofier side of the populace. Naturally, Rudd decides to bring Carell, a dim, amiable amateur taxidermist, after they meet in a traffic incident. The movie never goes too mean in its humor; neither the schmucks nor the ones planning on mocking them come under much withering comedic fire. The movie is watchable and pleasant, in an inoffensive way that would play best on TV late at night while everyone watching is half-asleep or passed out. That way the small smiles it sometimes inspires would feel a smidge more welcome, especially if you woke up in time to see one of the small, slightly funny moments given to someone like Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Schaal or Jemaine Clement. The movie bumbles along for far too long (nearly two hours!), coasting all the way on the talents of its leads while giving them very little chance to excel. There’s a sense of genuine camaraderie and chemistry between the two men that the movie never really gets around to exploiting, instead choosing to focus on funny voices and stupid misunderstandings. It could have been an updated Odd Couple, but is really just another one of those movies with the funniest bits in the commercials.