The Fall Guy (2024)

"That Happily-Ever-After Stuff? Unsubscribed!"

or

"What's the Message of My Films?" "Nihilism is a Valid World-view?"

 

Watching Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt's prickly banter when they were presenting at the Oscars this past year made one actually think that their upcoming movie The Fall Guy might be somewhat entertaining. Bear in mind that I'm one of those crusty souls with no heart and no sense of humor (and no taste, apparently) who is not a fan of director David Leitch. Or of producer David Leitch. I stopped watching the "John Wick" series after the first one, which I did not enjoy and I suffered through it wondering if it was, in fact, meant to be a comedy. I mean...c'mon...the stunts were only believable if you weren't considering what would logically be the collateral damage outside the frame. And Wick goes off because someone kills his dog. Really? That would be funny...if it wasn't so damned dumb. I mean, they made fun of it in Deadpool. You know, the good Deadpool...the first one...the one David Leitch didn't direct. I figure you have to have a screw loose to really get off on these films. That they're successful and have spawned their own series of films only further makes me hang my head and despair about the future of the medium.

In this, a loosely-based spin-off of "The Fall Guy" TV show from the 1980's, Gosling plays Colt Seavers (played on TV by Lee Majors*). At the beginning of the film, he's a successful stunt-man, doubling for star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a big box-office draw, and he is having a heating-up relationship with camera op Jody Moreno (Blunt) until he's called to repeat a stunt—a wire-drop inside a high-rise edifice—that goes wrong and he's put in the hospital with a busted back. He emerges 18 months later parking cars at an L.A. Mexican restaurant and swearing off his stunt-man career. 

 

Besides, his phone isn't ringing, the one sure sign that nobody wants you in L.A..

Until, one day, the producer of those Tom Ryder movies, Gail Meyer, (Hannah Waddingham) calls to implore him that his services are once again needed—apparently Ryder has disappeared, whereabouts unknown (something Colt could care less about), but the signing bonus is the movie is being directed by first-time director Jody Moreno—former camera op, former flame. Colt gets on a plane to Australia where the film is shooting.

Told by Meyer that old flame Jody requested him specifically, Colt is sucker-punched when he finds out a) Jody didn't ask for him and b) she's surprised to see at all and c) she's pissed at how they broke up by not breaking up—Colt didn't return phone calls, didn't reach out, didn't do any of those things that men don't like to do, especially when they're fragile, physically and mentally. She proves her affection for him by having him repeatedly set on fire** and trip-wired to be slammed into a rock. Over and over again. Colt's way of responding to all of this is with his laconic "thumbs up" after surviving each take. Jody hates that. But, she still makes him do all that stunt work with a broken back. ("Get...on...a...plane, Colt!")

Um...you can see the crew in the sunglasses..."Props!"

So, immediately I began to question why Colt doesn't just leave as he was obviously there under false pretenses, and, if not the first thing, the second thing I would do after finding that out would be to verify if I was getting paid. Because, obviously, somebody in the front office is lying to him and if they're lying to him about that, there are probably all sorts of things they can't be trusted on. But, by this time, I had given up on the movie being any good and just hoping that it would eke out some entertainment.

It is, on occasion, because Gosling and Blunt are pro's and they can squeeze out entertainment no matter how necrotic the script is.

But, that's not how movies work these days. Entertaining as that may be, what the movie audience apparently wants, and the movie is determined to give them, is wall-to-wall practical action sequences. Things go boom, guys do gymnastic falls and fights, big puffs of smoke and dirt go up in the air for no real apparent reason, sparks fly. A lot. There are spectacular falls where Gosling pops up into the frame as if he did the stunt. Standard Operating Procedure. The movie is a professed love-letter to stunting people and, sure, I'm all for that. I'd rather see practical effects than CGI animation any day. Employ the hell out of 'stunt-people. But, pay them a living wage and make sure they have insurance, first. I mean, stunting is NOT a lost art. The only difference is it's being done in front of green-screens now.

It just doesn't look all that impressive when it's shown being filmed. Leitch doesn't exactly pull off the stunt that the story-stunts are more dangerous than the in-the-movie stunts (and they're still trying to make us believe the guy who cracked his spine a year and a half ago can do these things).

Two things did strike my mind while I was watching the thing scroll in one cortex and out the other: Movies save SO...MUCH...MONEY making a movie about making movies! You don't have to have sets, just people milling around with cameras and eating craft services, and walkie-talkies and cell-phones. You don't have to hide anything, or make believe it's real, and you can even shoot the dressing-trailers. It's so cost-effective as to be ridiculous.

The Fall Guy doesn't have a plot, so much as a thin thread to string between stunt sequences, like some of the really bad Roger Moore James Bond movies or the Mission: Impossible series...or like the Wick films. That seems so ass-backwards a way of making movies—well, of making movies that mean anything, anyway. For someone who sees movies as an art form, and its own unique form of communication, it's really a drag to see a movie like this.

 

The best you can say is: "Well, people were employed..."

Humor example: Blunt and Gosling are talking back and forth about story-approach, 

when she suddenly asks "What about split-screen?"

And before you can say "Oh, they're not..." (which I did),

they go split-screen. 

Laugh? (I didn't)

 

I never watched the TV version of "The Fall Guy"; this is as far as I ever got....

 

* Does Lee have a cameo? Yes, along with Heather Thomas in the post-credit scene (if you haven't walked out by then!)

**  Because she's an "old flame" "carrying a torch"? ...am I looking for sub-text that isn't there? Yeah, pretty sure I am!

 

 

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Cosmic Comedy

or

"It's Going To Be So Hard To Explain This To You!"

 

For the longest time, the IMDb description for it was "a woman tries to do her taxes." Not something to create a surge at the box office (although I found I couldn't get a seat in a theater for it this weekend).

 

Oh, Everything Everywhere All at Once is about that. But, it's a lot of other things, too.

 

The best way I can describe it is as a negative. Imagine the pitch to Michelle Yeoh: "So, Michelle (I can call you Michelle?)...what kinds of movies HAVEN'T you done? And do you want to do them all in one movie?"

 

That makes it a little bit easier to categorize it than by the seemingly infinite series of hyphenated genres I was coming up with by the end of the thing. Or, by the seemingly infinite number of references and "inside" jokes that permeate through it.

 

No, EEAAO* is it's own thing. Let's create a new genre: Dizzying.

Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) is having a crisis.  Well, okay, several crises in various stages of resolution. It's a mid-life crisis—she's a Chinese immigrant, caught between languages and cultures and married to a man, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan and yes, he was Short Round), who is cheerily ineffectual, whom her father (James Hong) warned her not to marry. She has a daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu) who's adolescent and gay—not culturally...cultural. She helps run the family laundromat and they are late on their taxes and there are questionable deductions that are being spotted by the sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued Mrs. Deirdre Beaubeirdra** (Jamie Lee Curtis), who wants all the documentation by the end of the day. The laundromat had a water leak and it's stained one of the ceiling tiles, and her father—the one who disowned her?—has just moved over to the U.S. from China and is living with them, and Evelyn is planning a birthday celebration for him. Plus, she doesn't know...or hasn't noticed...that Waymond has just filed divorce papers.

 

Life happens, am I right?

And whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But, instead of having a nervous breakdown, Evelyn has an intervention of sorts. At the headquarters of the IRS, a suddenly very focused Waymond tells her to put on some ear-buds that look like blue-tooth, and gives her a list of instructions to do if things go awry. And while listening to her auditor drone on and on about documentation and receipts, Evelyn suddenly has her attention pulled away...that blue-tooth thingy beeps and, soon, following those written instructions, her attention isn't alone.

As any nerd will tell you, there is a multiverse of possibilities created every time we make a decision in our lives, and Evelyn has been visited by the Waymond of the Alpha Universe to implore her help in a desperate crisis. The Alpha-Evelyn of that Universe is dead, having developed a technology that allows jumping between universes and employing the skills of other similar entities in alternate realities. In other words, Evelyn can download the skills and experiences of those other Universe-Evelyn's in order to defeat the purposes of an entity called Jobu Tupacki.

Why isn't the Alpha-Evelyn doing this? She's dead because she jumped Universes so much her brain fried. Why is this Evelyn being tasked with it? Because of all the Evelyn's in all the Universes, she is the biggest failure, and so her potential is much bigger and she's in less danger of having her brain crisped. So, with the help of Alpha-central and the control room that is feeding her instructions and coordinates—all while they are being attacked by this Jobu Topacki, by the way—she is able to tap into this seemingly infinite number of Evelyns and their skills and experiences.

And they are legion—there's the Evelyn who is a master of martial arts (and a separate one who has learned the mastery of "pinky-fu"), the Evelyn who's an expert at sign-twirling, the master chef, the singer, the actress, the dominatrix, all the Evelyns that have ever been, in all walks of life and forms and sexual orientations, all available to be used, perused and abused, depending on what's available and whether she can perform the actions necessary to receive them. All in the service of circumventing the all-powerful Jobu Topacki.

And the film-makers, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (call them "Daniels") have a seemingly endless supply of ideas and references to call upon, be it "The Twilight Zone" and Brainstorm and The Matrix and The Wizard of Oz, the malleability of Charlie Kaufman, and the anything-goes zen of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the movies of Stanley Kubrick and Wong Kar Wei, Disney/Pixar cartoons, horror movies, teen angst meltdowns, Amy Tan, martial arts, pop-culture, even Japanese porn, in a story that boils down to a domestic drama where the stakes are literally life and death. All done as a comedy; I haven't giggled so much in a movie in years.

Nor have I been as thrilled with the inventiveness of cinema at the hands of film-makers who never let go of the fact that they can do absolutely anything to tell a story. In a way, they have spoiled the multiverse pool for everybody else using the concept for the rest of time. It may even become its own genre after this.

The cast, of course, is perfect. Michelle Yeoh has always been a deft performer, only held back by the reticence of her characters who express themselves more in action. Here, she has a chance to do everything, titularly, and she is amazing, conspiring with film-makers who have  built a love-letter to a performer who has always been superb, but rarely allowed to stretch things to show just how superb she can be (Jackie Chan was the original choice to star and the film-makers sagely changed tacks to create a film of more depth). Quan is a revelation, utilizing his child-star enthusiasm with a more mature presentation, but still keeping that playfulness and total commitment. Stephanie Hsu is a genuine find and traverses seamless transitions from drama to comedy and back with the mastery of an old pro. Speaking of whom, James Hong is here—it is always a pleasure to see him—and, having done literally everything in his 78 year career, this is a welcome opportunity to see a master, still in his prime at 93. Then there's Jamie Lee Curtis, giving a comedic performance (that at times allows her to show her inner "Jason") that is sometimes horrific, sometimes buffoonish, always funny, and always recognizably human. She's a treasure. They all are.

It's a tough movie to sum up, or even let go of, to put "30" to it and not have it careening through your head, assaulting your synapses and simultaneously tickling and tugging your heart, but I think the best to do so is in this distillation of its after-glow penned by Jake Coyle of The Chicago Sun-Times: "And though Everything Everywhere All at Once (a movie that very much lives up to its title) can verge on overload, it’s this liberating sense of limitless possibility that the movie leaves you filled with, both in its freewheeling anything-goes playfulness and in its surprisingly tender portrait of existential despair."

 

*Now, that I think about it—they didn't make a joke about "Old McDonald's Farm" in it. Maybe they did. I may have to see it a fifth time before I catch it.

 

** And I just realized while typing that that it's a reference to the song, "The Name Game"--this movie is DEEEP.