Shadows and Fog

Shadows and Fog (Woody Allen, 1991) When Woody Allen makes a film in the style of Ingmar Bergman (Interiors), it's done in deadly earnest. But, when he takes on German Expressionism, entering the angular world of Lang, Murnau, with a para-nod towards Kafka, it's a comedy. Not quite sure why; maybe he has an affinity towards one stylization and the other he just finds phony, but the different approaches are like, well, day and night. Allen explored that theme—taking the same story and interpreting it as either comedy or tragedy—in Melinda and Melinda, a bit of a mis-fire—but one suspects that the Nordic tradition he buys completely, and completely dismisses the German (God knows why).

Here, the visual is pure dread, but the subject matter is a mixed bag of precision and vagueness, comedy and darkness. Allen plays Kleinman, a passive-aggressive bookkeeper, who is recruited in the middle of the night by a vigilante mob (including David Ogden Stiers and James Rebhorn) to roam the streets looking for a serial strangler.  Being a professional coward, and only dealing well with facts and figures in black-and-white, Kleinman is ill-suited for the activity and begs off, inviting suspicion from the group. When there is speculation that maybe he won't do his duty as a citizen because he might be the strangler, Kleinman caves.

On his dark journey through the city streets (the largest set ever built in New York's Kaufman-Astoria Studios, making this Allen's most expensive film), he runs across an all-star cavalcade of slothful potential victims: a philosophy student (John Cusack) with a weakness for prostitutes (among them Lily Tomlin and Jodie Foster, madamed by Kathy Bates), a circus love-triangle tangentially related (with John Malkovich, Mia Farrow and Madonna) and the town coroner (Donald Pleasence), who has a purely scientific interest in the killer.*

Kleinman soon realizes that life simply doesn't add up, that a little slippage occurs, especially when it comes to illusion and reality (in the form of a very handy and practical magician named Armstead, played by Kenneth Mars). The film struggles with the dichotomy throughout, as highly contrasted as the black and white photography, never truly meshing, and finally ends, as many of Allen's weaker films—and one of Allen's strongest ones (Hannah and Her Sisters)—do, with a Deus ex Machina** that buttons everything up inexplicably, leaving no questions but a lot of raised eyebrows.

Which is fine for the purposes of the film, but it's hardly what you'd find in an example of German Expressionism, where the punishment fits the crime...and where things really are in black and white.

* Yes, the film is top-heavy with fine actors (and Madonna), but if you look in the darkened nooks and crannies of the film you'll also find Fred Gwynne, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Josef Sommer, Wallace Shawn, Kate Nelligan, Kurtwood Smith and Philip Bosco. Was this film cast or filmed at a SAG convention?

** Here's a question:  It's a Woody Allen film; Can there be a Deus Ex Machina if there's no Deus?

The Blind Side

"98% Protective Instincts

The true story of All-American Michael Oher is the very stuff of feel-good uplifting movies. Impoverished son of a crack-addict mother and disappearing father gets a break by being so damned good at sports that a religious prep school is willing to look past his abysmal GPA (0.6 in the movie, 0.4 in real life). While attending, the homeless kid is given a place to flop for the night by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohey, and, basically, stays on, becomes family, and with their tutorship and support, gets his grades up enough to join sports, and the opportunities fall from the sky like linebackers.

The ads and the poster make it look icky, like Oher is the stray dog who just needs love from the do-gooder white folk, or worse, one of those "reverse Oreo" movies where the compelling stories of minority struggles are overshadowed by the white stars playing earnest observers.*

Fortunately, the movie is written and directed by John Lee Hancock, who made one of the best sports movies a few years back—The Rookie—and managed to salvage a bit of the abandoned Alamo project. As screenwriter of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and A Perfect World (both for Clint Eastwood), he's shown himself to be a writer who embraced quirk, then moved on to write compelling characters rather than walking exploited stereotypes. You like his unsentimental people and root for them no matter their hurdles.

It comes in handy in The Blind Side. Once Oher (Quinton Aaron) sleeps over one night, that's it, he's a part of the Tuohey family, no if's, and's and but's, and the matriarch, Leigh Anne (played by Sandra Bullock like a Kathy Lee Gifford with sass and a laser-eyes—she's what y'all call a "spit-fire"), walks the talk of her Christian upbringing in providing a practical resource for his needs. No argument is broached, no catty remark is left unchallenged, and schmaltz avoided at all costs. Bullock's Leigh Anne Tuohey is a Mama Tiger, the like not seen since Susan Sarandon's "Michaela Odone" in Lorenzo's Oil, to the point where all Hancock has to do is keep her in frame when she walks up to her kid's coach from the background and one begins to feel genuine fear. A revelation of the extent of Oher's poverty elicits a polite "Excuse me," a walk down the hall to her room, shutting the door and an erect sitting posture to indicate that no amount of bad news is going to get to her or deter her. Bullock isn't afraid to make her character cold or a bitch. She just is, take it or leave it.

But it's Oher's story, his character has more screen-time than Bullock, though far less dialogue, and Hancock found a god-send in Aron, who has a face the camera loves. Since he has to carry a hefty amount of the drama silent, it serves him well, and is a nice fit with Bullock's all-talk, but reserved expression, counter-point.

At passing glance, it looks awful, but in its straight-forward, unpretentious and un-preachy style, The Blind Side wins over any cynicism.

* I'm sure you can name one—Mississippi Burning, Glory, Amistad, Come See the Paradise, Snow Falling on Cedars ... the list goes on, ad nauseum.

Midnight in Paris

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Gertrude Stein Punched Me in the Mouth"
or
"L'époque est toujours plus belle de l'autre côté du pont Einstein-Rosen"

I first came to Chicago in the twenties, and that was to see a fight. Ernest Hemingway was with me and we both stayed at Jack Dempsey's training camp. Hemingway had just finished two short stories about prize fighting, and while Gertrude Stein and I both thought they were decent, we agreed they still needed much work. I kidded Hemingway about his forthcoming novel and we laughed a lot and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and he broke my nose.

 "A Twenties Memory" by Woody Allen

Copyright © 1966-1971 by Woody Allen

I've been waiting for Woody Allen to make this film since before he asked to Play It Again, Sam (or even What's Up, Tiger Lily?). 

Based on a routine from his stand-up days,* which he later expanded for a piece in "The New Yorker" (see above), Midnight in Paris follows Gil (Owen Wilson) a self-absorbed, neurotically anxious writer of Hollywood fluff ("Wonderful, but forgettable...sounds like something I wrote"), who is obsessed with death,** as he travels to Paris from Pasadena with fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams, but it could just as well have been Elizabeth Banks) and her conservative family. Gil is working on a novel, long in the gestation, and is distracted by the vapid shallowness that he is about to marry into. Paris is shops, restaurants, museums and snootiness, and to escape the jejeune de vivre, he takes a late-night walk through the streets of Paris and is approached by a vintage taxi.

Entering the cab for Gil is a magical moment for him, on the same plane-breaking as when Tom Baxter (or is it Gil Shepherd) walks off the screen in The Purple Rose of Cairo. He is instantly transported to 1920's Paris and becomes lost in "The Lost Generation" (without the benefit of having survived World War I), meeting Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Zelda (Alison Pill) and Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston), all the heroes of his favorite literary era and time, the 1920's. He's enchanted...and as his novel is about that period of time...inspired. He goes back to Inez, gob-smacked, unable to explain where he's been all night, but "alibi's" his adventures as a dream (as they are, certainly in the aspirational sense). He tries to bring Inez to the party, but the magic doesn't work—she's as unthrilled with Gil's stories as he is with her wine-tasting adventures with acquaintance Paul (Michael Sheen).

She leaves. And the taxi arrives, bearing Gil and Hemingway to the apartment of Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) and Alice B. Toklas (Thérèse Bourou-Rubinsztein), who are playing judgemental hosts to Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo) and his enchanting mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Gil gives his novel to Stein and Hemingway to critique, but he is drawn to Adriana, making her way through the 20's as best she can.

So, the two planes of existence for Gil are set up: his modern-day drudgery on the cusp of a marriage of inconvenience; and his fantasy past, where his dreams are reality and reality can make dreams. You know where this is going.

It doesn't matter, though. This is a "feel-good" Woody Allen picture—the kind people like—where the messages are still telegraphed the way they are in "obvious" Allen movies, the coincidences just a little too convenient, but so full of incident, grace and nuance (and quite a bit of humor) that it goes down well (as Allen groused throughout Stardust Memories, audiences "like his earlier, funnier [movies]"). That Gil is such a sunny presence in the past (and as played by Wilson, he has a guileless charm that doesn't sacrifice intelligence—he's the way you'd imagine Jimmy Stewart would play Woody Allen), even his kvetching is charming and not harsh.  It doesn't matter that you be a history buff and "get" all the references,*** (and we meet Luis Bunuel, Man Ray, Salvadore Dali [Adrien Brody], and on a side-trip, Toulouse Lautrec, Gaugin and Degas).

Of course, Gil is enchanted; he is an era when his heroes are still at the stage he is, becoming themselves, with their best work still ahead of them. His age of magic is their everyday life. The interesting lesson of the film (and what makes it special and wise) is that the knife cuts both ways. The "lesson" is both sour and sweet, but not hope-crushing—a little bit of salt in the creamy fluff.

 

And no, nobody punches Gil in the nose—but you can't help noticing that Wilson's is a little broken.

*  I mentioned before that I was in Europe. It's not the first time that I was in Europe, I was in Europe many years ago with Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway had just written his first novel, and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said that is was a good novel, but not a great one, and that it needed some work, but it could be a fine book. And we laughed over it. Hemingway punched me in the mouth.

That winter Picasso lived on the Rue d'Barque, and he had just painted a picture of a naked dental hygienist in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Gertrude Stein said it was a good picture, but not a great one, and I said it could be a fine picture. We laughed over it and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.

Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald came home from their wild New Years Eve party. It was April. Scott had just written "Great Expectations," and Gertrude Stein and I read it, and we said it was a good book, but there was no need to have written it, 'cause Charles Dickens had already written it. We laughed over it, and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.

That winter we went to Spain to see Manolete fight, and he was... looked to me eighteen, and Gertrude Stein said no, he was nineteen, but that he only looked eighteen, and I said sometimes a boy of eighteen will look nineteen, whereas other times a nineteen year old can easily look eighteen. That's the way it is with a true Spaniard. We laughed over that and Gertrude Stein punched me in the mouth.

** Yes, this is the Woody Allen character.  His films never fall too far from the analyst's couch.

*** I certainly didn't—I had to do some referencing for the line: "That was Djuna Barnes (I was dancing with)?  No wonder she wanted to lead."

The Daze After The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day The Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) Iconic sci-fi pic that managed to be just strange enough to be spiritual without having to explain itself. Edmund H. North's script (adapted from the 1940 Harry Bates story "Farewell to the Master") just assumed that any advanced civilization's technology would seem like magic to us (ala Clarke's Third Law). It's anti-nuke theme was somewhat off-set by it's Christ allegory under-pinnings: a human-appearing being from above comes to Earth with a "message," is killed and resurrected to give mankind a lesson in humility. That the alien--Klaatu (Michael Rennie)--walks among us under the guise of a "Mr. Carpenter" just nails the significance home.

Right from the get-go, The Day The Earth Stood Still announces its intention with a "spooky" theremin-laced score (by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann), quite at odds with its message of peace. Wise shows a global humanity surrounded by its current technology (radio, television, radar) spreading the news of an invader from space, which lands in the Mall area of a tourist-clogged Washington D.C. in Spring. 

Phalanxed by a wall of tanks and military might (with a larger crowd of tourists behind it) the alien presence reveals itself and is shot by a panicky soldier for its trouble. Before you can say "Kent State," the alien is taken to Walter Reed to be treated, observed and questioned, and the formal Klaatu--patient, curious, but with a hint of passive condescension--does his own analysis, escaping from the hospital and blending with the populace as "Mr. Carpenter"--taking a room at a boarding house, becoming involved with a widowed secretary (Patricia Neal)--it IS the '50's, after all--and her son, with the intent of seeing humanity first-hand.

Meanwhile, his Enforcer, Gort, a lumbering, laser-cyclopsed, soft-metal robot stands guard over the saucer, turning his evil eye on any hint of aggression, without any regard to how much of the GNP was flushed to make those tanks. If Gort could laugh when he turned on his eye-light, he'd probably do it with glee.

There are so many small details that delight: Patricia Neal's uncommonly common working Mom, with a wary eye towards Mr. Carpenter--there's not even the hint of romance there; Sam Jaffe's cameo as Einstein stand-in Dr. Barnhardt, looking at his business-suited stranger visitor from another planet with eyes of dazzled wonder; the whole design of the thing that has so permeated our culture with sleek silver surfaces that fold in and out of each other seamlessly; "Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto!" which, indicative of the race's parsimoniousness, roughly translates to: "Robot, take Klaatu's body back to the space-ship and repair whatever damage has been done to it, bring him back to life, and oh! while you're at it, don't turn me into a smoking pile of ash, thank you very much*"--talk about "Three Little Words!"; Robert Wise's unerring sense of staging and for putting the camera in the exact, most effective place without making you aware that it's the most effective place. Wise is always given short-shrift as a director, implying a yeomanlike sensibility rather than an artistic one, but the Man Who Edited Citizen Kane also conceived beautiful, eerie, creepy shots like this:

Thanks to Glenn Kenny of "Some Came Running," who reminded me **

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a classic film—a time-capsule, of a kind—from a different time and place and space that reminds, yes, with great power comes great responsibility--but there's always someone more powerful, who might take yours away, and make you stop and smell the fall-out.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Everything New (Testament) is Old Again"
or
"Yeah. I'm Thinkin' I'm Back!"

So why remake it? Well, it's a question that Klaatu's United Planets couldn't negotiate--and Gort's Galactic Police Force would probably give you the eye. But the agent of Keanu Reeves saw a poster of the original and dollar signs swam into his head and here, we have it. And Scott Derrickson (who put a different head-spin on The Exorcism of Emily Rose) thought he could turn it into a warning about global warming, and Reeves thought that, though the original Klaatu preached peace, he did so threatening force, which he found "fascist."

Sigh.

That sounds noble in thought (if a tad simplistic). On-screen, it's a different matter entirely.

Because it's a "re-imagining" (rather than "a remake"), there is no "flying saucer," but a cloudy, spacy "orb" (all the better to remind you of the planet, but I kept wondering what kept it in place), and rather than the military, scientists are in the front line (with Princeton astro-biologist Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly, as the point-person). The military is back-up.***

The scenario starts the same: Land-Bang-End up in Hospital. And there things start to change. The original Klaatu had no special powers. Gort was the "muscle" (and here, the robot is 20 feet tall, gun-metal gray in color, and a completely CG construct--it's actually simplified from the original's design--and, as with the first Gort, its unreadability makes it a genuinely creepy sight). Keanu Reeves' Klaatu has a nasty way with bio-feedback that does damage. So much for pacifism. But, this Klaatu isn't Christ-in-a-business-suit. This one goes back a few chapters, back to the Old Testament. Particularly those parts dealing with Noah and Moses. The threat is environmental, rather than nuclear, and to sustain one of "the handful of planets that can support life," Keanu-Klaatu's United Planets are thinking of a little Silent Spring Cleaning of the life-form doing the most damage. Good thing he doesn't carry around a cook-book!

The following section is SPOILER material, so if you want to be surprised how it ends—if you care—don't highlight the next paragraph which, like the Earth, gets blacked out:

That scouring consists of billions of nanite-sized metal locusts (why they have to specifically look like insects, I have no idea, but I'd guess it has something to do with why Klaatu's named "Mr. Carpenter" in the first one). So, this "plague" starts doing its damage, devouring metal of all kinds, sports-arenas and such, and one can only hope that it can distinguish "green" technology, like solar panels and wind-generators, from the other kinds, but I suspect not--that might involve thinking! Keatu, or Klaanu, or whatever you want to call him, decides at the last minute that because humans have the capacity for change, they maybe, just maybe, could save their environment, so he sacrifices himself sabotaging the plague, leaving humans with no electricity, no technology, and presumably the resolve to stop the global warming crisis with, as a much wiser alien once inventoried, "stone knives and bear-skins." Thanks, Kleatu or Kono, or whatever your name is, thanks a lot. Who's gonna pick up these continents of dead nanites corrupting the soil, Mr. "Ecology?" And they thought the first one gave off mixed signals?

Keanu Reeves has the most limited range of any actor who hasn't suffered a stroke, but he does have two specialties at which he excels: endearingly stupid, or robotic. The latter serves him well, as in Speed, the portions of The Matrix when he was portrayed by pixels, and this film. His strange visitor from another planet is a nice piece of craft, slightly more human than Jeff Bridges' Starman, and extremely efficient in his movements--when he turns his head to look you right in the eye, you'd better take him seriously. He's quite effective in the role. Jennifer Connelly delivers the techno-babble expertly (as she did in Hulk), but she really doesn't have much more to do than Patricia Neal did, as the role is basically reduced to "concerned mother." As the child she's concerned about, Jaden Smith at least doesn't fall into the "predictable child" category. He finds different ways of doing things than the "stock-child" role. Kathy Bates is too good for her role of Secretary of Defense, Jon Hamm, of "Mad Men," doesn't really separate himself from the pack, but Robert Knepper does a fine job as a Colonel in charge of trying to stop a tidal wave with a tea-cup. It's always great to see cameo's by James Hong, and John Cleese, who plays Prof. Barnhardt in this version.****

But, ultimately, there wasn't much point in doing this, other than to give people jobs, and give some Hollywood-types more "green" cred. The production was carbon-neutral (wouldn't that have been ironic?), which means they presumably paid carbon credits used to destroy old-growth forests for eucalyptus plantations.

"The Universe wastes nothing," Keatu says at one point.

He's never been to Hollywood.

* I hope there's a "please" in there, somewhere!

** Kenny has a wonderful illustrated tribute to director Robert Mulligan. It's far better than anything I could contribute.

*** There is one amusing bit--when Benson is shanghaied to participate in the landing investigation by the military, it's set-up and photographed exactly as it was done in The Andromeda Strain...directed by original TDTESS director Robert Wise. Coincidence? Nothing's a coincidence in a "re-imagining."

**** I hate playing the "If only..." game—it smacks of frustrated screenwriters—but, as they had an Albert Einstein-clone in the original, it would have been interesting to have a Stephen Hawking in this one—brilliant, but crippled, talking through a voice-box. If Klaatu wanted inspiration from the human race, who better? Then, imagine this scenario: the group leaves, but Klaatu hangs back, turning to look at the wheelchair-bound pysicist. "I could cure you..." Pause. The voice-box rasps: "Save...the...world."

But, they didn't.

North (1994)

Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day.

North (Rob Reiner, 1994)

"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."  Roger Ebert, reviewing North

"...If you read between the lines, [the review] isn't really that bad."  Rob Reiner, New York Friar's Club Roast

Roger Ebert's little hissy fit—resembling a child's tantrum (interestingly)—about North is probably the most famous thing about it. Ebert described it as "the worst movie he'd ever seen"...and that just can't be right. I've been unable to find a review of Ebert's for Myra Breckinridge—he did, however, write Beyond the Valley of the Dolls—and he had seen Super Mario Brothers the previous year. So, I'm not sure why the particular bile-spewing for Reiner's film. 

It's merely a children's film that desperately wants to be funny...and just isn't.

North (Elijah Wood) is having a bad life. A good kid, all-around student, MVP ball-player, and acting prodigy, he's an over-achiever and under-nourished. Still at an age when he's seeking parental approval, he's getting nothing from his self-involved parents (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, who are basically playing their self-involved "Seinfeld" characters but at a higher volume and without waiting for studio audience laughter)—he's a pants inspector and she's a travel agent who spend their little family time complaining about their jobs, thus giving North panic attacks.

"I don't get it." says North. "A child is born. He's given a life. But then, he's appreciated by everyone except the folks who gave him that life. It's just not right." It's getting so bad that his GPA, RBI's, and other worth-indicators are starting to take a hit. Best to go to his "Special Place" where he can spend time alone and think. Reiner shows North walking past traditional tree forts, scenic river spots and covered bridges to reveal that North's "Special Place" is an easy chair in a department store floor-model. That's how messed up North is. And it doesn't get any better when the store Easter Bunny (Bruce Willis) shows up to offer observations and perspectives (and, frankly, unnecessary narration). 

Rather than explain that North's life will get better when his self-actualization kicks in, E.B. just tells him that the way the other kids' parents use North to shame their kids to "do the right thing" that "your parents have a gold-mine" and that "under-appreciation is a common childhood lament" and, generally, you're basically stuck with the parents you have—unlike baseball where you can sign for free agency.

That one sticks. In the easy chair, North comes up with a plan where he might resolve his issues: with his friend Winchell (Matthew McCurley) he announces that he will leave his parents and sue them for divorce.* Attorney Arthur Belt (Jon Lovitz) takes on the case and the hearing results in Judge Buckle (Alan Arkin) telling North he has two months to find better parents or he has to go back to his biologicals. The decision puts his parents into comas.

North then travels the world looking for better parents—and the trial's publicity gets him several offers—from Texas (Dan Aykroyd and Reba McEntire are the parents), Hawaii (Keone Young, Lauren Tom), Alaska (Graham Greene, Kathy Bates), even from the Amish (Alexander Goudonov and Kelly McGillis from 1985's Witness—a good joke if anybody gets it), in a series of un-PC sequences that "a lot of people" complained about.**

Finally, North ends up with the perfect parents—the Nelsons (John Ritter, Faith Ford and little ScarJo in her film debut)—but, still, something's wrong. They're just not "his" parents, so he decides to make his way back to them, a move complicated by a "child uprising" that wants to kill North (!!) for wanting to un-do the cause of kids' rights.

Bruce Willis serves as "sequence interpeter" in each of North's adventures.

The movie has enough content to throw all sorts of parents' groups into tizzies, but, really, it doesn't do anything that hasn't been done in the past: The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy wants to be someplace else but dull old Kansas but learns "there's no place like home); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (a child in poverty conditions—played comically—interacts with a bunch of horrible children who all meet dire fates); Time Bandits (a boy prefers his fantasy world to his parents' hum-drum consumer-hell and has adventures throughout history with authority figures he might prefer to his parents—who are killed in the end). No one is complaining about those—probably because they are movies about kids with embedded life lessons (or else nobody's noticed). 

Reiner and screenwriters Andrew Scheinman and Allan Zweibel (the movie is based on his "North: The Tale of a 9-Year-Old Boy Who Becomes a Free Agent and Travels the World in Search of the Perfect Parents") don't so much embed as employ "Shock and Awe." Zweibel was one of the founding writers of "Saturday Night Live," co-created "It's Garry Shandling's Show" and consults on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and his work on those and with Gilda Radner and Billy Crystal (among others) are nice combinations of the twee and the harsh. It's just no one expects them in a kids' movie (except for the very good ones I've mentioned) with the go-for-the-gut sensibility of "SNL".

Movies, when it comes down to it, are miracles of chance when they "work" and connect with audiences, and North has elements of proven past successes, but is so desperate to evoke laughs, that (in the words of Nigel Tufnel) it "goes to 11."

As a result, the movie is hysterical in all meanings of the term except funny. 

But, not so hysterical that it should evoke the over-reaction that it garnered. "The worst movie ever made?" Please. 

* This isn't the first movie to hang on this premise: 1984's Irreconcilable Differences took the contentious consequences of the Peter Bogdanovich-Polly Platt marriage and turned it into a "comedy" with daughter Drew Barrymore suing for her own separation...from them. In reality, kids have sued their parents over various issues...the most unsettling is over abuse. And this might strike very close to the bone in the Hollywood community, where a small percentage of child-stars have sued the parents over managerial/control issues. 

** "A lot of people." Wonder if they're the ones who kvetch about the world being "too PC"—when it's them telling the joke. Anyway, this is an asterisked aside because *SPOILER ALERT* none of this is reality, it's all a concoction in North's head (like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz but without the tornado-caused blunt force trauma). One could excuse the crass stereotype jokes as being the inexperienced kid North's "un-woke" perceptions as story-justification, but the fact that they're over-the-top and kinda not funny have to go to the film-makers.