“To a canary, a cat is a monster. We are just used to being the cat.” Jurassic World

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Regarding this weekend’s big summer blockbuster release Jurassic World, my animal advocate mom posted this on my Facebook wall earlier today: “But are they mean to dinosaurs? Are the dinosaurs the villains? Is it a glorified hunting movie? Inquiring minds want to know these things? Would Sarah Palin approve and reignite girls to wear clean sportsy clothes and hiking boots? Posing with bears and rabbits and deer and giraffes pretending they killed them? Because if so, my friend… ha!”

I can pretty safely say that it’s not a glorified hunting movie, and I don’t think the Sarah Palin-types would like it, as most of their stand-ins in the film get eaten pretty quickly by roaring, teeth-gnashing dinos. However, the film is a typically schizophrenic Steven Spielberg production (he executive produced this installment but directed the original Jurassic Park way back in 1993). Is the film making a satiric point about how horrible humans are to the environment, how we reap what we sow, and how we deserve any and all climate change payback which results from our rampant over-development of land, air, and sea? Or is Jurassic World just more yuppie disaster porn designed to sell Happy Meal toys, glistening Jeeps, and Patagonia safari gear? I’m still scratching my head. I just don’t know.

When you look at Spielberg’s filmography, as both director and producer, from Jaws to Close Encounters, E.T. to Gremlins, Poltergeist to, yes, Jurassic Park, he returns time and again to themes of man’s infinite ineptitude and limitless arrogance in the face of a planet, nay universe, full of mystery, wonder, and violent counterbalance. For Spielberg, karma is a four-color funny – build a beach home, destroy a burial ground, feed a cooing creature after midnight, genetically modify a reptile for an overpriced amusement park? You’re gonna get sliced, diced, and eviscerated, all to the strains of a symphonic John Williams score.

And you know what? That is ok by me!

The problem with Spielberg’s films is he wants to have his sardonic cake and eat it too. Spielberg’s movies are expensive and they make a lot of money; whether directed by Spielberg or under the auspices of Amblin Entertainment or DreamWorks, these big budget boogers are sold to every demographic quadrant an army of polished marketers can dream up, so ultimately the flicks dare not go too far. We don’t want to alienate any viewer, slurping over their Mr. Pibb and Kit Kat bites (yeah, that’s what I had today), and, consequently, any unique and incisive POV gets diluted in a gauzy haze of product placement, no matter how postmodern and ironic said placement may be.

No, Spielberg did not direct Jurassic World. Those honors (?) go to Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed), but Spielbergian DNA is all over this sucker. Sorry, Colin. I can only imagine this must have been like being hired for a dream design job at Apple, only to find they really just want you to arrange, into artful displays, the new Apple Watches when they arrive in stores.

Jurassic World does its job efficiently and effectively. It entertains, and it will make a mint … but it has no real raison d’etre. (Yeah, I got all fancy. It doesn’t need to exist.) It basically lifts the very plot from the first film, but this time we get Bryce Dallas Howard (how is this mugging, one-note actor still making movies? oh, right, Ron Howard’s kid) instead of Richard Attenborough and Chris Pratt instead of Sam Neill. Jeff Goldblum is now Irrfan Khan, and Wayne Knight is now Vincent D’Onfrio. B.D. Wong? Still B.D. Wong – that man must be an automaton as he hasn’t aged one freaking bit.

Seriously, these actors may be playing different characters (obvi) twenty-some years later (natch) but their narrative functions are still the same.

Portraying a grizzled velociraptor trainer (and apologist), Pratt is the best thing in the film by far. Wearing a steady exasperation that seems to suggest he wishes he had a better script with which to work, Pratt does a fine job channeling Neill’s gravitas: just because you can make a dinosaur does mean you should make a dinosaur. Pratt is a delight, one of the few actors in the film who seems to believe where he is and what is doing and who has a genuine affection for the misunderstood creatures in this world (dino or otherwise).

Howard fares less favorably as the Isla Nubar theme park’s chief executive who in sexist Hollywood shorthand is an out-of-touch, controlling, insecure ninny with a severe bob, impractical shoes, and an ever present iPhone. Ugh. It doesn’t help that her emotions range from sweaty to panicked to rigid to … sweaty.

D’Onofrio is a kick in an underwritten role as a nebulous InGen contractor who wants to use these “assets” (that’s how mean people refer to animals in this cardboard world) for military purposes. Boo hiss. Blessedly, he has the chops to fill in the mile-wide gaps the script allows. He exudes the oily opportunism of those post-millennial types who see our natural resources simply as walking/breathing/pooping dollar signs. He may as well have had Monsanto painted on his backside.

At one point, Wong’s character (you may recall he is the ethically-dubious geneticist who figured out how to fabricate dinos from whole cloth in the first place) intones what passes for a philosophical thesis in the film: “To a canary, a cat is a monster. We are just used to being the cat.” Yup, amen to that.

There is a perverse joy in seeing blank-faced, cornfed tourists hoisted by their own petards, tossed like beach balls from one pteranodon to another above Jurassic World‘s Starbucks/Margaritaville/Pandora encrusted main street. I also loved the jab at Sea World with a dino sea creature (mosaurus?) that grudgingly entertains a nautical football-arena-size stadium of onlookers but gets the last laugh when he/she gobbles a few vacationers down.

Ultimately, by the final act, when the Frankenstein’s monster dino “Indominus Rex” (cooked up by Howard and Wong to sell more t-shirts and key chains) has shredded the park top to bottom and is now fighting a pack of velociraptors and a t-rex for no real explainable reason, I was in a Mr. Pibb/Kit Kat coma. I just didn’t care.

And the adult in me kept thinking … Who is going to put these dinos back in their paddocks? Is the Hilton corporation going to rebuild their opulent hotel on Isla Nubar for future product placement? Who is going to clean up this mess, and will Starbucks return to sell more mocha-choca-lattes? And why didn’t the dinos just finish off all the humans? That’s a movie I’d pay $10 more bucks to see.

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Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital) In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“She’s so little and sparkly … I want her as a key chain!” Bette Midler’s Divine Intervention Tour at The Palace of Auburn Hills

Key chain Bette

Key chain Bette

She’s so little and sparkly … I want her as a key chain!” So commented my very witty pal and fellow Leadership A2Y (Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti) classmate Naomi Fink on one of the many photos I feverishly posted on Facebook while watching the Divine Miss M (Midler, that is) perform at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

Keep in mind, we were under strict instructions not to take photos, so what you see here is ill-gotten gain. I’m not sure how or why artists in this day and age even try to prevent images from being captured and shared.

Folks like Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga even encourage the practice, likely realizing that it provides fabulous, cheap, immediate marketing … but I digress.

Roy and Heidi

Roy and Heidi

I was accompanied at the show by another wonderful A2Y colleague Heidi Fisher, who prepared for her impending audience with Queen Bette by listening to two days worth of her classic tunes on Pandora. Now that’s dedication.

Needless to say, we loved the moving, funny, ribald, political, sparkling spectacle that is Bette Midler’s Divine Intervention tour.

Both of us were likely in a sentimental mood, having just driven from Ann Arbor where we had spent our final day together as a leadership class.

The balance of the day, after receiving our certificates of merit, was occupied by a last blast scavenger hunt (cleverly designed by another classmate Peg Windsor and program director Barb Davenport): we met with as many different Ann Arbor business people and creative types as we could cram before we waved goodbye (or perhaps just “see you later”) to our beloved classmates and program.

So we were pretty spent before we even got in the door for Bette.

Leadership A2YA2Y class

We turned that frown upside down

We turned that frown upside down

Fortunately, we fit right in – as Midler joked in her opening monologue: “So glad to see my fans can still drive at night.” Indeed, it was that most blessedly rare of large-venue concert experiences where a respectful audience sat the whole time.

Ok by me. And, not unexpectedly for the spirit of the crowd and our state-of-mind, we made some new friends in our row. A schoolteacher from Grand Rapids and her East Lansing mom. And a man who seemed really sour about being there, until Heidi took a selfie with him. See, Bette, social media does make the world go ’round.

Oh, right, the concert? It was an old-school hoot, dressed up with the latest in projection technology and a dash of Midler’s own trademark pyrotechnic raunch.

Divine Intervention stage

Divine Intervention stage

The show opened with a quick animation, highlighting a cause famously near and dear to Midler’s heart: the environment and how deeply we have effed things up.

Good for her. I don’t think I can stand to hear one more local yokel/short-sighted fool who makes their living destroying the planet say, “Why don’t you people mind your own business? What I do in my town/state/whatever is my business.”

It is our business because we share this resource; we eat your crops the world over; we breathe the same air; we drink the same water. Consequently, I was thrilled to see Midler lead with such a powerful and sobering message.

Care ... please

Care … please

In her inimitable style, she then launched right into a cheeky medley of “Divine Intervention” and “I Look Good” amidst the detritus of a disposable society – giant size Coke cans, burning tires, and other debris – all with that impish smile and twinkle in her eye. Yes!

Polluters, agribusiness, and big manufacturing weren’t Midler’s only targets through the evening, though.

With a wry touch, she took shots at Vladimir Putin, the Kardashians, Fox News, Dick Cheney, and even Caitlyn Jenner – and her wizened audience ate it all up with glee.

She reserved her sharpest barbs for social media in a tart skit about how we can’t live in the moment without documenting every moment, as she was wheeled too and fro reclining on a hot pink sofa shaped like a pair of lips. Touche, Ms. M.

Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus

She hit all the expected musical high points with a verve that belied her long history in the entertainment industry: “Beast of Burden,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Do You Wanna Dance.” You can tell Midler lives to be in front of an audience and her energy positively crackles. She also incorporated numbers from her latest album It’s the Girls, a salute to decades of so-called “girl groups” in pop music, the best of all being her poignant take on TLC’s cautionary “Waterfalls.”

She offered a fetching and frisky “I Put a Spell on You,” bewigged as her saucy witch character from Disney’s Hocus Pocus, and, in the show’s strongest segment “Bird in the Hand,” channeled her idol Sophie Tucker for a machine gunned sequence of the kind of filthy jokes twelve-year-old boys find hysterical. Since she was dressed for the number as if Mae West had made an X-rated appeared on Sesame Street, it was utterly delightful.

Yes, the high-schmaltz trinity of “The Rose,” “From a Distance,” and “Wind Beneath My Wings” rounded out the evening.

Bird in the Hand

Bird in the Hand

I had a grandmother who was just too enamored of those tunes, in part due to some meddling family members who thought it fun to use the lyrics in rather passive aggressive fashion, so hearing any one or all of them always puts me on edge. (Not Midler’s fault obviously and apropos of nothing for this overview.)

I offer that context, though, to note that hearing Midler sing these signature tunes live redeemed them for this fan. In light of her passion for this planet and for all of us on it and in keeping with her parting wish for us to “be kind,” these ballads now make all the sense in the world to me.

I will add that the jarring juxtaposition of these saccharine hits against her “Last of the Red Hot Mamas” burlesque persona has always greatly amused me, and, in that sense, they are a sweet aperitif on her storied career.

DetroitIn closing, she gave Detroit a glowing review, donning an “I [Heart] Detroit” t-shirt for the encore. She, the mistress of reclamation who joked earlier “I never get rid of anything … they say I put the whore in hoarding,” crowed about the reinvention of the Motor City and of its spirit of reusing and celebrating all that has come before.

Be KindShe had visited Shinola (the celebrated watchmaker here) and took a tour of all the development along Woodward Avenue. She was breathlessly effusive, urging us to “keep it up” and to keep taking care of this city and each other. Will do, Ms. M. Will do.

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UrinetownOn another note …

The Penny Seats summer season is about to launch, with not just one but two shows at Ann Arbor’s West Park. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [Abridged] runs July 9-25 and Urinetown the Musical (that’s the one I’m in!) runs July 30 to August 15. Tickets are available at http://www.pennyseats.org, and we’ve gotten some great coverage already…

  • BroadwayWorldhere
  • Encore Michiganhere
  • Talk of the Townhere
  • Legal News – here

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“Do you want me to say I’m from the Midwest? Where’s the buffet? How do I find the Blue Man Group?” Spy (2015)

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Melissa McCarthy is a comic alchemist, spinning comedy gold from the insidious politics of gender, age, and physical stereotypes. When she defies expectations, simultaneously embracing and undermining our collective desire to pigeonhole and judge (see Bridesmaids, The Heat), she provides a master class in laughter as medicine. With her sparkle and her heartache and her anarchy, she seems to say, “I dare you to limit me, and I’m going to make you laugh so d*mn hard that you won’t realize I just re-wired your pea brains for tolerance, acceptance, and kindness.”

When she hews too closely to self-deprecation over self-actualization (see Identity Thief, Tammy – the latter of which is better than we all remember it to be), she runs the risk of self-satire, becoming co-opted by the Hollywood marketing machine and reinforcing the gender- and body-shaming that Tinseltown has foisted on generations.

I am happy to report that Spy, her latest collaboration with director (and, I suspect, fellow free-spirit) Paul Feig, is firmly a home run in the former category, not the latter.

Never devolving into Austin Powers-hackery, Spy gently lampoons the James Bond genre and its misogynistic tropes with a depth and breadth that keeps the enterprise from being an overlong Saturday Night Live sketch. Working from Feig’s script, Feig and McCarthy have created the strongest showcase yet for McCarthy’s seemingly effortless, wildly diverse, rich character work.

McCarthy’s Susan Cooper is a sharp, eagle-eyed, kind-hearted desk operative in the CIA whose unrequited affection for Jude Law’s field agent Bradley Fine has derailed the unrelenting moxie she once showed in her basic training days. When Fine is seemingly murdered on a mission – a mission guided from afar by Cooper – she sees no choice but to take his place and track down his assassin Rayna Boyanov (an epically bewigged, riotously toxic Rose Byrne, channeling Sarah Brightman’s wide-eyed, new age Baroque bullsh*t, that is if she’d been raised by Donald Pleasance’s Blofeld).

With the exception of this Legally Blonde-esque narrative impetus (woman in love leaves her comfort zone to ultimately triumph over self-imposed, patriarchal limitations), Spy is a tart feminist meringue. McCarthy (not to mention her crackerjack sidekick Nancy, smartly underplayed by Miranda Hart) makes the absolute most of every moment, mixing supreme self-confidence with bat-sh*t anxiety to offer us an accomplished master-spy finding her voice and her power, nevertheless wondering how the hell she ever got into this mess in the first place. It is the most charming, heartfelt, and hysterical performance she’s yet given.

In addition to Law, Hart, and Byrne (all of whom are spot-on delightful), the ensemble cast also includes a frisky Jason Statham (like McCarthy, playing both to and against type) as a bumbling alpha male agent who is utterly convinced McCarthy’s Cooper has no business being on this (or any mission) and who, in his every effort to help, makes things ten times worse. (Typical male.) Allison Janney (always so darn present) is the CIA chief who wrings every bit of funny right out of her character’s exhaustion heading a male-dominated ship of fools. Hammy Bobby Cannavale has a small but pivotal role as a nuclear arms buyers, and Morena Baccarin is a hoot in a cameo role as a glamazon agent whose mean girl tendencies are masked by a hair flip and a smile.

What the partnership of Feig and McCarthy (from Bridesmaids to The Heat to Spy) does so well is run headlong into the very ugliness of men’s mistreatment of women, women’s mistreatment of women, and people’s mistreatment of people. The best comedy in these films comes from the quiet slight, the reaction shot, the response said through gritted teeth.

While scoping out the kind of sleek, sleezy high-end Eurotrash casino so prevalent in these kinds of films, Statham sniffs at McCarthy that she couldn’t possibly function as a successful agent because of her look, her gender, her demeanor. She just doesn’t fit in. She responds, with the kind of wounded/wounding line delivery only she has mastered, “What?! Do you want me to say I’m from the Midwest? Where’s the buffet? How do I find the Blue Man Group?”

And this exchange occurs well after her character has demonstrated a competence – no, excellence – that defies anything evidenced by any of her male colleagues. The commentary is hilarious and sad, exhilarating and maddening for, in one line, McCarthy’s Susan Cooper highlights how far we’ve yet to come, but in so doing reclaims power for herself by also pointing out just how stupid and blind we all can be. Go, Melissa, go.

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Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital) In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.