Stand-Up Guys

There are so many movies with actors "of a certain age" being disrespectful that it's almost its own sub-genre.  Here's one from 2013, and this was written at the time of the film's release...

"We're Still Here!"
or 
"...End of Story" 

Oh, man, it's painful, the first few minutes of Stand Up Guys, the new gangster-with-gags film directed by Fisher Stevens. Valentine (Al Pacino) is being released from prison after 28 years, for his part in a robbery that turned deadly. On the outside, waiting for him, is Doc (Christopher Walken), who was also part of that robbery but managed to stay out of the gray-bar hotel for reasons unknown and is now "retired," spending his free time being a diner habitué and painting landscapes.

Doc takes Val home to his apartment, which the ex-con compares unfavorably to the accouterments he has recently vacated. At this point in the movie, Val announces that he wants "to party," at which point I resisted an urge to get up and get popcorn. It wasn't going to be pretty, whichever way it was played, comedy, bathos, or weirdness. The obligatory visit to a whorehouse is somewhat lightened by Lucy Punch (a Brit actress playing a longish Island accent) as the daughter of the madam these guys used to know in their and her prime.

Things don't go well (nyuk, nyuk) so Doc and Val rob a drug store (very easily)—Val gets little blue pills and proceeds to take too many of them, and Doc has some expensive prescriptions he needs to supplement—complications arise, so to speak, which requires a trip to the hospital, where Julianna Margulies provides an "E.R." flashback and informs the two about her father, their former getaway driver, who's stuck in a nursing home.

Alan Arkin plays that character, and it's at that point that the movie picks up with a couple quick chase sequences and a needed pivot point for the Pacino-Walken dynamic. The movie gets better with Arkin's presence, even though one can't say it improves. But Arkin's added energy manages to lift the movie over the speed-bumps that the script-cliché's drop in the path. Where Pacino is manic and Walken is passive, Arkin manages to bridge the gap (and their vocal pauses) with a complacent nervousness that bounces off both actors entertainingly.

It's unfortunate watching, really. To see these gold-standard actors (all Academy Award winners, not that that really matters) reduced to mining what they can out of a vein of tin is disheartening, no matter what smiles they can produce out of it. Something could have been done, recent examples of the story-form being In Bruges and Going in Style.* But just the casting of these young-now-aging turks can't make this one any more than it is, a faded half-hearted comedy about aging gangsters that might have been enough to re-team Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau back in the day.

This is a minor, minor, minor film with major talent in it that eventually makes the most of the material, but can't elevate it into something worthwhile or even makes a statement. And, frankly, I'm getting too old for movies like this.

* Martin Brest's 1979 comedy-drama about over-the-hill retired thieves trying to supplement their meager Social Security—Pacino surely knew about it, as it starred his mentor, Lee Strasberg.

Dinner for Schmucks

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

"It is Such a Pleasure to Laugh at the Misfortunes of Others"

Comedy is such a subjective thing. I don't know how many times I've quoted Mel Brooks' line that "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; Comedy is when you fall down a man-hole and die." And, as we are all individuals, one person's Bringing Up Baby* is another's Dumb and Dumber.** I know lots of fine folks who loved Date Night (Steve Carell's previous live-action movie), but I wasn't among them.

My tastes in comedy are not sophisticated; a good spit-take or prat-fall will make me howl with laughter. I like Jerry Lewis, as his movies will be guaranteed to contain at least one instance where I laugh 'til tears come out of my eyes. And I like good word-play, as my love for all things Marxian and Woody will attest. What I don't laugh at is regurgitation—recycled humor that is expected to be laughed at because, hey, it was funny the last time.  Thus, the charm of Mike Myers frequently eludes me.

Now, Dinner for Schmucks—the latest film by the "Focker" and "Austin Powers" franchiser Jay Roach—he also directed the very fine HBO film Recount—is based on the French film Le Diner des Cons, so there is a French charm to it spoken with a flat American accent. An up-and-coming executive Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) is welcomed into the higher echelon of the investment firm that employs him (run by Bruce Greenwood) by being invited to an executive dinner in which the firm's hoi-polloi bring along "idiots"—persons of a certain unique, and frequently inept, "talent" for the ridiculing entertainment of the host ("No mimes. It's a cliche").  Whoever has the best idiot is guaranteed a certain prestige position in the company, complete with corner-window office.

The idea horrifies his gallery contractor girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) and only reinforces her instinct to refuse Tim's frequent marriage proposals.  He's just about to sacrifice his career and opt out of the dinner when Fate steps in front of his Porsche in the nerdly form of Barry Speck (Steve Carrell), an IRS drone whose hobby is to make bucolic fantasy dioramas using stuffed mouse road-kill, which he calls his "Mouse-terpieces." ***

Tim's destiny seems set, but the acquisition of the bone-head Speck turns his life upside-down in a series of "Incredible Mess" scenarios that seem to nullify everything he might gain from winning the dinner game.  The film is a self-defeating trap that could have used a more harried leading man than Rudd (or more dead-pan, in which case, hey, Ron Livingston's in the cast!) that might have had more of a comedic pay-off, or at least have produced more dramatic risk out of the situations. As it is, everything feels a little safe, nowhere near creating the sort of comedic frisson this film so desperately needs.

For a movie specializing in cruel humor, it lobs only soft-balls, whether it's at the clutch of crazies at the dinner, a nastily predatory ex-girlfriend of Tim's (Lucy Punch), or the what-comes-around come-uppance of the stuffy execs. Everything should be more manic, more crazy, and have a few more bite-marks that actually draw blood.****

Points, though, for filling the cast with an array of good comedic talent including Kristen Schaal and Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords" (series and group, respectively), Zach Galifianakis, the afore-mentioned Livingston, and Larry Willmore. The improvisational power of the cast is formidable, and (like Date Night) it feels a little too improvised at times as there are so many scenes that are barely gelled. However, a business lunch that is the definition of "awkward" is a highlight, as is a conversation between Speck and Clement's self-absorbed satyr-like artiste ("There are only two things that matter in life: wonderful, visceral sexy sex...and Death"), that benefits from the two comedians' off-kilter rhythms to big pay-offs. Such moments are few and far between.

* ...which I love.

** ...at which I didn't crack a smile.

*** The most charming part of the film is the title sequence, set to The Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill," of Speck putting the finishing touches on an out-sized version of his hobby.

 **** 2023 Update: Well, with that choice of words, maybe if they combined Dinner With Schmucks with The Menu. That would be...interesting? Maybe even "tasteless?"

"I hate tasteless!"