Tag Archives: nebraska

Maybe next time, McCarthy. I believe in you. Tammy (2014)

5 July 2014

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Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Melissa McCarthy’s latest comedic opus Tammy is like a crass redneck cousin to Barbra Streisand’s/Seth Rogen’s similarly themed The Guilt Trip. That may seem like a slam. It’s not. I enjoyed both movies, flawed though they are, particularly given that exceptional performers can sell the thinnest of scripts.

Where McCarthy stumbles a bit more, however, is that she helped write the slight script for her starrer. Ouch.

What other movies are in Tammy‘s DNA? If Nebraska and McCarthy’s own Identity Thief had a cinematic baby, it wouldn’t be that far afield from Tammy, which depicts a shaggy dog heroine (McCarthy, natch) on the lam with her bewigged and besotted (as in drunk) granny (Susan Sarandon!). Heck, throw in a touch of Sarandon’s own twenty-five-year-old summer blockbuster Thelma and Louise for good measure.

Tammy’s life is a mess. She nearly totals her jalopy when she hits a deer on the way to her crappy fast food job. (In one of the movie’s more touching moments, Tammy lays down on the highway, gets face-to-snout with the deer, and talks the little fellow back into sprightly, white-tailed-scampering-across-a-field life. I liked that part. A lot.)

Tammy gets fired from said crappy job for being late (because of the deer miracle), throws ketchup packets at her now-erstwhile boss (McCarthy’s real-life husband and the film’s director Ben Falcone), comes home early to discover her hubby (a suitably golf-caddy skeezy Nat Faxon) serving a romantic dinner to her neighbor (Toni Collette, wasted here), and runs home (two doors down) to her mother (Allison Janney, dependably ringing gold from nothing).

Sarandon’s character, who lives in Tammy’s mom’s spare bedroom, already has a suitcase packed and can’t wait to provide the ancient Cadillac and limited funds ($6700) necessary for her and her granddaughter to skedaddle from small-town life and go see the spectacle that is Niagara Falls.

Just like The Guilt Trip (where Streisand’s character wanted nothing more than to see the Grand Canyon), all manner of comic disruptions keep Sarandon’s and McCarthy’s characters from their destination. Like Rogen and Streisand, Sarandon and McCarthy also end up in a barbecue restaurant where Sarandon meets cute with a potential beau (Gary Cole, playing it rather subtle for once). Unlike The Guilt Trip, Tammy heads in a decidedly cruder direction, involving Cole and Sarandon and the backseat of that decrepit Cadillac. Ewww.

(The fact that I’m giving point/counterpoint between two failed comedies released within 18 months of each other is indicative of two things: 1) my relative lack of taste and 2) the fact that Hollywood really has no new ideas. It could be worse. I could be reviewing Transformers.)

Tammy is entertaining. I laughed heartily at McCarthy’s antics (just as I did during The Heat or Bridesmaids). I also found myself moved by her ability to telegraph so pointedly the hurt of someone who lives on the margins, either by choice or happenstance. McCarthy can inhabit a character like no other. Problem is it’s the same character, and, while I like and can relate to this person she plays (and her penchant for wearing Crocs), I’d like to meet someone else … soon.

Sarandon is a hoot, particularly in her early scenes, also offering us a caustic comic portrait of someone who refuses to be consigned to the periphery. Her performance is derailed mostly by the script,which turns her into a Golden Girls sexpot for no discernible reason at the midway point.

Kathy Bates sparkles as Sarandon’s pet food store magnate/lesbian cousin (yeah, it’s that kind of movie) who lives in one of those beachfront homes that only exist in Hollywoodland. She gives Tammy and her grandma a warm meal, a roof over the heads, and one fabulous July 4th wingding. Despite the improbability of Bates’ surroundings, she grounds the movie just as it seems likely to run right off the rails, as Bates beautifully walks that fine line between satire and heartache that has been her specialty since Misery.

Mark Duplass (Zero Dark Thirty) is also a source of warmth as Tammy’s suitor Bobby, cursed as he is to babysit his philandering father (Cole). The quiet scenes between McCarthy and Duplass are when the film is at its finest (not unlike those charming moments between Kristen Wiig and Chris O’Dowd in the aforementioned Bridesmaids). All the cartoonish chaos stops for a moment, and two believably broken souls connect as kindred spirits.

That is the movie I hoped to see tonight. Maybe next time, McCarthy. I believe in you.

[NOTE: I’ve been suffering from a wicked cold this entire holiday weekend, and this movie was viewed as a late-afternoon matinee while I was all hopped up on DayQuil. Take all preceding advice with a huge grain of salt.]

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book 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.

Countdown: Nebraska

24 February 2014

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From my wonderful publisher Open Books…

Almost there folks! Just 4 days remain until the official launch of ReelRoyReviews, a book of film, music, and theatre reviews, by Roy Sexton!

Please note that, in addition to online ordering, the book currently is being carried by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan and by Memory Lane Gift Shop in Columbia City, Indiana. Memory Lane also has copies of Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series.

Here’s what Roy thinks about Nebraska: “Payne absolutely nails the small-town American vibe of suspicious desperation, envious gossip, and corrosive pride, and he does it without once condescending to his subject matter or judging the characters in play.”

Learn more about REEL ROY REVIEWS, VOL 1: KEEPIN’ IT REAL by Roy Sexton at http://www.open-bks.com/library/moderns/reel-roy-reviews/about-book.html. Book can also be ordered at Amazon here.

“He believes everything that people tell him…” Nebraska

26 January 2014

10 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I daresay Alexander Payne’s Nebraska may be my favorite film of 2013, and it is in my top 100 of all time. Payne (Election, Sideways, About Schmidt) presents as believable a treatise on family in middle America as I’ve ever seen, but, in his nuanced approach, he never loses the cinematic essence of his narrative.

The film stars Oscar nominee Bruce Dern as a Montana curmudgeon who gets one of those “you’ve won a million dollars if you just buy some magazines” come-ons in the mail. In his deep desire for something special to happen in his life, he believes it. The film opens as Woody Grant (Dern) makes yet another breakout from the home he shares with his exasperated wife (Dern’s brilliant fellow nominee June Squibb) and attempts to walk the 900 or so miles between Billings, Montana and Lincoln, Nebraska – where the letter-generating marketing company is headquartered – to claim his prize.

Enter Dern’s youngest son David, played by a refreshing Will Forte (Saturday Night Live, MacGruber), who beautifully balances frustration and familial love when he agrees to take his dad on the obviously fruitless quest to Lincoln. The dynamic between Dern and Forte is magic with both performers (assisted by director Payne) bringing out the best in each other, depicting a convincing parent/child dynamic with all the warmth, wit, frustration, and heart that entails.

(As an aside, I just heard, for the first time, Harry Chapin’s heartbreaking song “Mr. Tanner” courtesy of darling Laura Benanti’s equally delightful At 54 Below live album. I kept thinking about this song while watching the movie – similar joke, slightly different punchline, but equally affecting. Watch Benanti’s performance here.)

The road trip has its complications, generated in part by Woody’s alcoholism and possible dementia. Woody and David end up making a memorable stop in the father’s hometown of Hawthorne after Woody takes a fall and bangs up his noggin. Despite his son’s advice to the contrary, Woody tells a group of former drinking buddies about his newfound “winnings,” and that spark sets off a slow-burning comic powder keg of jealousy, greed, pride, resentment, and miscommunication among Woody’s family and friends.

Payne absolutely nails the small-town American vibe of suspicious desperation, envious gossip, and corrosive pride, and he does it without once condescending to his subject matter or judging the characters in play. The cast is perfection, from the aforementioned Dern, Forte, and Squibb to Bob Odenkirk as oldest son Ross and Stacy Keach as country-fried thug/bully Ed Pegram. I think any of us who grew up in small towns know that last guy – Keach perfectly personifies the overbearing charmer who has his greasy thumb on every citizen’s every move.

If Dern and Squibb, Payne and the movie don’t walk off with armloads of Oscars, I will be heartbroken. And Forte was robbed by not being nominated – he is the glue holding the film together.

Payne has populated the rest of the town and Woody’s extended family with a spectacular assortment of unknown performers (at least unknown to this viewer). Every one of them seems like they just walked out of the general store in AnyTown, USA and onto this movie set. The brothers, cousins, sisters-in-law in the film especially have it down: that stultifyingly overcast atmosphere created by family members who haven’t seen each other in years, with their probing questions, insulting assumptions, and tedious conversations about cars and mileage while watching Sunday afternoon football on TV. (Particularly observe Forte whose expressions in those scenes are priceless, fully leveraging his improv comedy training without breaking character once.)

Payne is not making fun of this place or its inhabitants, but he is putting this microcosm on display, warts and all, in a near-allegorical illustration of how life catches up with everyone, how we all get older, and how disappointment is a toxin that saps the soul. And somehow he gets that all done with a light touch, warm-hearted humor, and one darn poignant moment after another. When Forte and Dern arrive at the marketing joint in Lincoln, Forte tells the bemused woman who works there, “He [Woody] believes everything that people tell him.” She replies, “Oh, that’s too bad.”

And if you aren’t chuckling knowingly at Forte’s karaoke dinner with his loving/combative/crazy/adorable parents or weeping some sweet, salty tears at the film’s final moments, then you are made of granite!

Go see this movie. Now.