LUCIDMEDIA

Originality is such a rare commodity in horror filmmaking nowadays that you’ll take it anyway you can get it. Now I didn’t know at first, but the new film The Uninvited is actually a remake of a Korean film called A Tale of Two Sisters. In fact, when I found out, it surprised me because most Asian horror remakes usually have a telltale element as the producers try their hardest to preserve some shred of its heritage; like how The Grudge remake was set in Japan. There’s the obligatory stuff like creepy kids and uncomfortable, family relationships, but otherwise this film has more in common with an Agatha Christie mystery than something from the foreign section of the video store.

The story centres around young Anna (Emily Browning) who’s a newly released mental patient going home for the first time since she tried to kill herself out of grief for her lost mother. She reunites with her distant father (David Strathairn) and her prickly sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel), but not so much with her father’s new girlfriend Rachael (Elizabeth Banks). Now wait a minute, did I just write “Elizabeth Banks” between those parentheses. Why yes I did. Though she maybe best known for her comedic and romantic parts, Banks really gets into the evil Stepmother bit and plays Rachael with a subtle hint of “No wire hangers” like relish.

Part murder mystery and part ghost story, The Uninvited is all about fun, cheap scares pure and simple. It’s campy goodness without any hesitation or reservation, but plenty of bad dialogue, scenery-chewing acting and cheap thrills. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, which I believe is the point that a lot of people are missing in looking at this film. It can be dopey, loopy and camp, but I believe that’s the point. Over-the-top acting? That’s par for the course, as is pointed musical cues designed to make you jump along with the visuals. And there are actually a few jumps, a few descent, although not thoroughly convincing, scares. But then again, it may have been the company; a theatre full of easily jumpy teenage girls at the late show.

But the visuals are strong, and the directors seem to have a really good sense on how to arrange a scene and build tension. And given the film’s actually surprising ending, The Guard Brothers also show themselves fairly adept at the fine art of the red herring. Some of that though might have to do with an underestimation of the film. Reading it as a dippy shallow horror made for a quick buck rather than something that might have some kind of art to it. But that’s my bad, or maybe it was my mood. Sometimes you’re just in the mood for something uncomplicated, and if The Uninvited is anything, it’s uncomplicated. It’s the movie equivalent of a trashy beach novel.

Surprised? I know I was. The fact of the matter is that I may look back on The Uninvited sometime in the future and be shocked and appalled that I had even once handed down even back-handed praise to this work. But the fact of the matter is that after suffering though My Bloody Valentine, The Unborn and the third Underworld while having only more remakes, Friday the 13th and Last House on the Left to look forward to, The Uninvited is refreshing. As stupid as it can be, at least it does so with conviction and follow-through, which at least shows that the filmmakers know themselves and the audiences. Sometimes perfection can be found in the moment, and for the moment The Uninvited is a blast. What tomorrow brings… Who knows?

When I read other reviews of Inkheart, I wasn’t given much hope; which goes to show you that sometimes the only judgment you have to trust is your own. Is Inkheart perfect? No, absolutely not. It’s got a hook, it has a talented cast of actors, and it has a popular series of novels as its inspiration to draw from. Where things go wrong though is that the director lacks the scope and ambition to bring the film to a truly stirring existence. He’s unable to marry style with substance and because the former is lacking, the latter ends up suffering. Still, I think there’s enough in the finished product to recommend.

Inkheart is the name of the book within a movie based on a book. Mortimer (Brendan Fraser) is a restorer or rare books, and he’s searching for one of the rarest books of all. You see, through an accident several years earlier, Mortimer discovered an ability to bring things to life from books just by reading it aloud. This rare talent makes him a “Silver Tongue” and it cost Mortimer his wife when in exchange for bringing three characters from Inkheart to life, while she took their place in the book. Mortimer and his daughter Meg (Eliza Bennett) have been on the run for years from the dangerous villain Capricorn (Andy Serkis), while look for a way to bring the missing member of their family back.

Truthfully, it’s pretty standard fantasy fair. So it really shouldn’t have come as any surprise that the characters new to this entire books-coming-to-life thing should be so cool with it. But that was a bit odd for me. “Hey, I have the ability to make stuff out of books come to life. Want to see King Arthur’s Excalibur? Shall I conjure the tornado from the Wizard of Oz?” “Yeah. Sure, go for it. Maybe you can conjure up Lady Godiva too.” It’s one of those suspension of disbelief things because it’s okay for us in the audience to buy this stuff easily enough, but the characters’ refusal to see the obvious gives us permission to do so.

Also, I think Inkheart suffers the fate of many fantasy books turned movies by trying to cram too much into the story without giving it proper time to grow and breathe. So many characters and so many predicaments are thrown at us in such a short space and time that you don’t really get any time to get to know any of them. The final battle with Capricorn also feels horribly contrite and barely exciting. It’s probably the most static final battle I’ve ever seen, with the reveal of the dreaded monster called Shadow looking less Balrock and more Barney. However there was something about resolving the situation with writing that appealed to my pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword writer’s sensibility.

And besides, the various characters I found very appealing. Helen Mirren as Great Aunt Elinor is a treat, with her over-protective book nerdiness; she’s kind of the Henry Jones Sr. of Inkheart, if you will. Serkis is delicious as Capricorn, relishing the Lex Luthor style attitude and shorn dome. You can truly tell that Serkis enjoys playing the bad guy and he wears that ice smile like a silk suit. Jim Broadbent has a few good blows as Inkheart – the movie book’s – author, but Fraser looks bored as he finds himself facing off against magic and mayhem again for what feels like the millionth time. The film’s saving grace is probably that he doesn’t have to fight a mummy.

But in the end, I found that the energy and spirit of the film itself overcame the technical and occasional thespian failings that grind it down. It’s got a good message about the power of the written word, which, although understandably marginalized given the medium, is a good thought to leave with the Playstation generation. It’s also a reminder that there’s more to life than Harry Potter or, heaven forbid, Twilight. I wish though that the producers had managed to recruit a Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro type director that really good have married the content with the presentation. This film had such great possibilities and it seems that only through luck that it avoided being a void.

I thought that there’d be no movie more insulting to women this winter than Bride Wars. So it’s a true tribute to Hollywood that there were able to release two of these movies within a month of each other. But I do applaud the studio for smart counter-programming by putting on a female friendly alternative to the Super Bowl, even if the film in question is horridly redundant, predictable and tacky. It’s like Fargo if it were done by the same people that make every ridiculous Sandra Bullock romantic comedy ever to come off the Tinseltown assembly line. This is to say that it’s just about one of the most contrived products to come out in the still early calendar year.

The formula follows simply. A trussed up executive from Miami is given the stewardship of a factory in Minnesota to modernize it for the production of a new protein energy bar. Young Lucy Hill (played by Renée Zellweger) is a corporate climber with designs on the CEO’s chair, so she’s a good soldier and is preparing to make the factor work through the purchase of new equipment and the downsizing of old staff. But what’s supposed to be an in and out assignment, becomes something deeper and much more heartfelt as Lucy connects with the town folk, which includes good looking widower and union rep Ted (Harry Connick Jr.) Lessons about the value of good, old fashioned American hard work and small town, Mid-Western values follow.

Also, it’s as syrupy sweet as the sticky stuff that’s the foundation of all Slush Puppy flavours, just not as colourful. The plot plays on the notion that typically smart people act stupidly to suit the circumstances. Like when Lucy first arrives in Minnesota during a blistering snowstorm, she leaves the airport dressed only in a miniskirt and pullover. Like what? She’s never watched the weather channel before? The idea that it might be cold and snowy in the northern US in the winter, never occurred to her? She’s also a typical girlie girl that’s never lit a fire in a fireplace that wasn’t attached to an electric switch; she uses a lot of them big words that you get from fancy college learning; and is, of course, desperate to get out of Minnesota. At first.

Ted meanwhile is a manly man. He likes shooting at stuff, listens to country music, and drives an American pick-up as he sticks up for the working man. He doesn’t care much for this city girl that’s a shill for corporate America. At first. But slowly the two grow on each other, and a love connection is made through an errant bullet to the butt in a near-unfortunate hunting accident. It’s basically all part of the tourist package. The film portrays Minnesota as a sportsman’s paradise with nothing else to offer the women folk but weekly, group scrapbooking and baking. Has anyone in this town ever heard of the internet? Or the library?

And praise be the Coen Brothers for beginning that perpetuation of the Fargo accent, because that’s the way everyone in small town Minnesota talks. Except Ted of course, because then he’d look too goofy and he could never get a girl like Lucy no matter how pretty he is. So we’ll leave the obvious goofiness to Blanche Gunderson played by Siobhan Fallon, who’s perhaps best known for playing Edgar’s wife in the first Men in Black. There’s a whole lot of “Don’t cha knows” and “You betchas” which might have been cute in 1996, but have become universal signs of the dolt in the post-Sarah Palin era. If nothing else, it’s indicative of how very unimaginative the film is, like it was put together with the romantic comedy edition of Mad Libs.

But the unfortunate truth is that despite its numerous flaws, New in Town is relatively harmless and not altogether unfunny. It’s got heart at least, and doesn’t feel to be a genuinely soulless, Hollywood film. But that doesn’t make it any less a horrible cliché at times; almost as horrible as J.K. Simmons’ ugly ass beard. But if you can look past all that, and the beard, than you’ll able to subsist long enough through New in Town to be only vaguely disappointed. As far as romantic comedies go, this is definitely no joke.

Liam Nesson as former intelligence agent Bryan Mills in Taken is about as bad ass as Jason Bourne and Batman combined. He makes Jack Bauer look like a kindergarten teacher and a kindergarten teacher like a sock puppet. As far as revenge pictures go, Taken is a high energy, no holds barred roller coaster through the Parisian underworld. Shot with highly kinetic action and frantic pacing by Pierre Morel, who directed the excellent parkour-inspired District 13, Taken pushes the right buttons to do a little better than the average revenge-fuelled, action picture thanks to a decently played out story and a seriously Mad-as-Heck leading man.

But it all begins with Bryan’s daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and her desire to spend two weeks of summer vacation in Paris with her friend Amanda. Being a former super-spy, Bryan’s hesitant, but his daughter’s happiness is his paramount concern so he gives her the okay. But no sooner does Kim arrive in Paris that she’s taken by kidnappers while on the phone with Bryan. After hearing his daughter scream as she’s taken away, Bryan tells the kidnapper, “If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

And the chase is on. Bryan has 96 hours to recover Kim before she’s gone forever, the probable victim of an Albanian smuggling ring that takes young, female tourists and forces them into a life of heroin-fuelled prostitution. Filled with over-the-top action, Taken’s like a SVU episode of the Bourne series with corrupt cops and sex traffickers. And at the centre of it all is Neeson putting on a pretty scary façade as a father prepared to do anything to secure his daughter’s safety. The violence is relentless, but it’s actually kind of bloodless. It is attention grabbing though; it’s an edge-of-your seat, action thriller where the only question is how bad Bryan’s going to tear up the kidnappers.

It’s simple, sure. Coincidence abounds in this film that sees Kim get into trouble in about 90 seconds after getting off the airplane in Paris, just like her father predicted. And Bryan seems unusually adept at tracking down a group of unknown gangster across a foreign city. But hey, who cares? We didn’t come here to ask questions, we came to be entertained. And Taken certainly does deliver value added entertainment with revenge fantasies and thrilling kills. We know who the good guy is and we know who the bad guys are and what they deserve. It’s so wonderfully cut and dry; the kind of filmmaking simplicity that can only come from the French. For what Taken is, it’s perfection.

After being under-whelmed by Underworld, and downright bored by Underworld Evolution, I was prepared to treat Rise of the Lycans with only a passing interest. Low and behold though, this rather dullard looking franchise took a left turn into actual engagement. Amazingly, it only took three films for the Underworld folks to find even half the potential for their horror/action/S&M fetish combo platter, but it says something more that even at its best, the Underworld films deliver marginal thrills. While the execution has substantially greater levels of gusto, the core problem with the series remains the same: it borrows too heavily from its genre forbearers to be taken seriously.

This Underworld takes a detour to the distant past and reintroduces us to minor faces of the franchise’s past. (So no tight-leather clad Kate Beckinsale in this one boys. Sorry.) In a medieval castle, the vampire lord Viktor (Bill Nighy) has bred half-breed Lycans that can transform back to a human form, the first being his favourite “pet” blacksmith Lucian (Michael Sheen). What Viktor doesn’t know though is that Lucian’s loyalties is not out of a slave’s gratitude for some modicum of freedom, but because Lucian is in love with Viktor’s daughter Sonja (Rhona Mitra), and she with him. But Viktor’s anger and pettiness over the affair spurs Lucian to revolution; leading his werewolf brothers in a rebellion against their vampire masters.

So yes, it’s 90 minutes of film taken from about five lines of dialogue in the script of the original. Firstly, Rise of the Lycans suffers from “prequelitis,” where any chance of a compelling story coming out of the antics on screen is foiled by the fact that we already know where it’s all going. If the appeal of doing a prequel has any merit, it’s that you get a chance to flesh out the details more and really develop characters and relationships that might have suffered in the originating chapter for whatever reasons. One marked area of improvement is the romance angle. Sheen and Mitra make a much more believable couple than Beckinsale and her werewolf beau Scott Speedman ever did. Granted, that accomplishment didn’t require much of a push to make the win.

But if there’s a real benefit to this movie, it’s that the central characters are played by two distinguished and talented British thespians. The right actor can take B-movie drivel and remind you that a film can be more than a two-bit, RPG rip-off with delusions of X-Men. Unfortunately though, this is not the case with Rise of the Lycans. There’s something about Nighy, right down to the way he’s lighted, that screams Disney villain; from his skeletal face bones to his scenery chewing delivery. Sheen comes off better and certainly seems commanding enough to be believed as the George Washington of the werewolves. However, this doesn’t stop the movie from being too terribly shallow, and there was definitely room for improvement in terms of how some of the relationships played out.

And still, everything is shot in that horrid, blue gel that makes everything look so fake and staged. There are times the entire production seems more like an elaborate LARP scenario than a movie, just because of the pedigree of the actors sometimes makes you do a double take as to how they were compelled to be involved in this in the first place. Working in favour of this Underworld though is that it seems to truly embrace its core idea, and it seems that the movie’s got its act together more here than in the previous films. But core improvements don’t erase the fact that this entire series feels like it was ripped off, and it’s as uninspired now as it was when the first film was released way back when. Perhaps the makers of Underworld can take a cue from other horror franchises: just remake already.

As much as the title “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” is a phonetic delight, it’s a better one than – what I assume was the original title – “Fat Ass Die Hard in a Mall.” That is the essential nucleus of Blart, which is about a group of sophisticated, high tech thieves that try to rob a mall on “Black Friday” and find themselves thwarted by an overzealous rent-a-cop. But where as Hans Gruber’s master plan had within it some degree of plausibility – not to mention planning – the robbers of Mall Cop manage to marry ambition with short-sightedness. Logically speaking, I have no idea how they planned on getting away with it, and counting fallacies in a movie like this is usually a bad sign for zero distraction.

But I may take it easier on Blart than most. Sure its only rarely funny, its concept is tired and it stars a man whose biggest comedic contribution has been to have his own sitcom in the waning, on life-support, final days of the art form, but at its heart is an idea that’s sadly given me hours of enjoyment. I used to work retail, and on the odd occasion the topic of conversation amongst a few of us drones was about what we could do in the event of a hostile takeover of the store. With questions like where would you hide, and what could you use as a weapon, there were infinitesimal possibilities. In this respect, Mall Cop reached my inner mallrat and renewed some fond memories.

Now this is another way of saying that what was going on in my head during the show was way more interesting than what was happening on screen. There are a lot of fat jokes at the expense of Blart, played by Kevin James. He’s one of those guys that have aspirations above their station, so Blart turns his meaningless job into something bordering on the fanatical. Of course, this diligence comes in handy when faced with a mall full of acrobatic thieves on skateboards and BMX bikes, who are all clearly over-skilled to be knocking over a mall for credit card numbers. But that’s okay really because Blart is mostly a good natured film that’s kind of harmless.

But if we really want to rip into it, there’s more than enough to chew on. Let’s see, it’s basically an hour and a half ad for the Segway scooter. It perpetuates a myth that no matter how overweight or hypoglycaemic you are, you too can be a super-commando he-man capable of physical deeds normally beyond your ability. Also, the makers of Blart demonstrate that you can take an idea with so many possibilities and exploit it for only the most basic of simplistic story directions you can possibly choose. Double cross? Check. Kid in peril? Check. A budding romance with the slim girl that works one of the mall kiosks? Check. Everybody being curiously ineffectual but the one guy that really should be? Check.

Ridiculously formulaic without even the slightest hint of irony, it’s easy to see why Paul Blart: Mall Cop has somehow impressed so many. Anyone wanting deep, thoughtful and well-timed original comedy is clearly looking for the new Charlie Kaufman, which this clearly is not. James is pretty much a one note comedian, so there’s no help there and I can’t really think of anyone else in the cast, except maybe Bobby Cannavale, that has done any work of significance. It’s not a failure, but it’s not genius either. Whatever Paul Blart is, it’s become extremely popular for some reason that I can’t fully fathom. But if you like middle-of-the-road, take-no-risks, Home Alone-style antics, then I think you’ve found your movie.

There have a couple of surprising incidents of violence that have accompanied the release of Notorious: four people were stabbed at an after-party following the movie’s premiere in New York City, and a shooting at a movie theatre in North Carolina opening weekend. This is surprising for a couple of reasons beyond the obvious. One, I thought all this east coast/west coast stuff was through ages ago; and two, the violence is in stark contradiction to the message of the film. Now I realize that real violence at the movies is all the rage these days, but one would think looking back more than a decade later, the shooting death of two rappers, and the lessons there in, would still be fresh.

Or at the very least it should be when walking out of the movie based on the very subject matter. In Notorious, the bio-pic based upon the life of Christopher Wallace, AKA: the Notorious B.I.G., AKA: Biggie Smalls, a lot of time is spent looking at the then growing dichotomy between rappers of one coast or the other. One important examination is the mentorship Tupac Shakur provided Biggie during his rise to hip-hop success and how that mutual admiration turned sour when Tupac was shot while being robbed on his way to a recording session in New York City. The film plays innocent, which is appropriate because there’s really no evidence to say that Biggie either knew or was involved in the robbery and that it was just a coincidence that Biggie was there that night.

The film, thankfully, makes the important point that the “rap war” was more an invention of the media, then it was truly a battle between rappers to get recording supremacy and the last word… er, I mean, diss. Not that the anger wasn’t real of course, but when it comes to this aspect of Biggie’s story, I found the filmmakers very reflective and very even handed. This makes it so disappointing to see that as they decry the “thug life” philosophy, they also do much to enshrine it as the thing that gave Wallace his shine as an artist. One the one hand, the film doesn’t shy away from Wallace’s alleged philandering with Li’l Kim, whom he “traded up” for Faith Evans later on, only to end up cheating on her too. But then, Biggie’s formative years as a drug dealer are kind of glossed over, as is his subsequent run-ins with the law like the famous March 23rd, 1996 incident outside a Manhattan nightclub.

But the details of Biggie’s life are well known, so what matters is how they’re presented by the actors and the filmmakers. Of the former, newcomer Jamal Woolard does an impressive enough job as Biggie, or at the very lest manages to capture his spirit. I don’t think that the script though gives him a lot of room to stretch as an actor, and the beats he has to hit aren’t necessarily challenging for a novice actor, let alone an experienced one. Anthony Mackie, meanwhile, looked as though he was in doing a bad sketch as Tupac, and in his initial scene it caught me confused as to who he was trying to play. It’s not until he’s identified as Tupac that things clicked, which is not a great sign when you’re playing larger than life figures. In contrast though, Derek Luke easily invokes Sean (then) “Puffy” Combs, right down to his swagger, gestures and pomposity.

As a bio-pic, Notorious is serviceable enough. What it doesn’t deliver though is an emotional resonance beyond the fact that Biggie was killed in his prime, at 24 years of age, on the very cusp of achieving the kind of superstardom he’s been chasing for years. But most stories like this have the “we shall overcome” moment. Think Ray or Walk the Line; a point where the person being biographed is so low that they have no where to go but up. Like the drug addictions of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash; they crashed and had to claw their way back to the perch of fame and success. It’s an interesting comparison seeing that Wallace’s struggles involved overcoming being a drug dealer, though his selfish desires for designer clothes and sneakers afforded to him through the selling of pills on the street corner hardly endear him.

But it’s hard to criticize a movie about someone’s life for presenting the facts in how they lived that life. Director George Tillman Jr. does an adequate job of showing us the life of Christopher Wallace, but the film rarely ever makes an emotional connection or provokes us to care about the life and wasted opportunities of the rapper. His death was sad, truly, especially since he was so young, but this won’t exactly translate across the spectrum outside hip-hop fans. It’s a compelling story, but lacks an emotional wallop that forces us to really care about Biggie as a person as opposed to the fallen icon.

If it weren’t for the conceit of Real 3-D, there’d be really nothing to recommend My Bloody Valentine 3-D. Exploitation cinema tends to only really work when done on a minimalist basis, stretching every dollar for maximum effect on screen. And while I’m not saying that this Valentine was a money pit, it definitely has better production values than not just the Canadian-made original, but probably more than half the movies made in the 70s – put together. You know it’s pretty bad when you’re sitting in a horror movie bored, but it can’t possibly get worse until you realize that there are times when the 3-D’s doing nothing for you.

The convoluted story begins with a miner named Harry Warden (Richard John Waters) that kills five of his compatriots caught with him in a cave-in for “breathing his air.” (The original Valentine implied cannibalism, which is much more icky, but oh, well.) Warden survives a comma and wakes up a year later to attack teenagers partying in the mine he nearly died in. A cave-in appears to bury Warden alive and everything seems hunky-dory for the fine folks of this nameless coal-mining town. But ten years later, a gas-mask clad miner with a pick axe thirsty for blood reappears and begins attacking the town’s beloved slackers and hos. But is it Warden, or isn’t it? And what might the sudden return of mine owner’s son Tom Hanniger have to do with it?

Bor-ring. This movie was the novel device of 3-D, yet wastes a great deal of time on the supposed love triangle between Tom, his former BFF and current Sheriff Axel Plamer, and the girl Tom left behind, Sarah. And as if the soap opera crap between these three characters weren’t bad enough, you get pervert truck drivers, cashier skanks, shadowy town elders and young women without an ounce of shame. Seeing these people, especially the smug Sheriff played by Kerr Smith, get mowed down by a wacko with a literal axe to grind, should have been nearly two hours of indulgent delight. Especially in the third dimension. So why do I feel so empty?

Well, it could be the casting. The appeal of Jensen Ackles escapes me; I mean, he’s good looking I guess, but there’s really nothing there that says I’m building a character. And Smith just seemed a little too baby-faced to play someone who’s at least supposed to be 30. And believe you me, whatever that stuff he was growing all over his face was, it really didn’t make him look that much older, but more like a teenage trying to prove his manliness by not shaving for months. And could he have been any less intimidating as Sheriff? I mean, I know it’s supposed to be a small town and all, but frankly Tom Bosley as Murder, She Wrote’s Sheriff had the killer instinct of Vic Mackey when compared to Sheriff Axel.

With the actors and story a let down, I turn my attention to the movie’s one, true asset: the 3-D. Overall, it’s not that bad. Director Patrick Lussier frequently manages to get creative with some of the shots, from a view of the killer on the other side of a mesh fence to looking down the barrel of a shotgun pointed right out over the audience. A few good blood splatters here and a hurled pick axe there, and you’ve pretty much got the idea for what all the filmmakers were able to do with the medium. It’s substantial mind you, but I think I jumped a total of once, and it seems at times that Lussier forgot he was making a 3-d movie and takes long stretched where there’s really no 3-D effects on screen. Say what you want about last summer’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3-D (and I know you have), but at least it didn’t waste time in finding something new to throw at you.

So the 3-D does actually, in a way, end up as the film’s saving grace, but without whatever extra allusion those magical, plastic, Ray-Bans might afford, this is just a bad movie. In fact, there were times I forgot I was wearing them at all; times that just mostly involved what laughingly passes for dramatic tension in the script. The original got it right, and that’s not just the Canadian in me talking. At least in the original there was real shock value, which doesn’t bode well for another year of horror remakes that think they’re more cleaver than the guys that got there first 30 years ago. Sometimes the box is better than the toy that comes in it.

The slimmest definition of a successful is comedy is whether it makes you laugh, and by this standard, Bride Wars is an unrepentant failure. It’s not the fault of the two main actresses really, because this script, even with Marlene Dietrich and Betty Davis, would have been a resounding disappointment. The battle in Bride Wars is the struggle to make something, anything, funny and the end result is always failure. So you slink down deeper in your seat nearly embarrassed that you’re there, save for the fact that you’re being paid to watch the movie and then write critically about it. And boy, do I have a lot to be critical about, but it’s almost like, “why bother?”

On the surface, Bride Wars can be perceived as a harmless comedy that plays with broad physical comedy and relatively stale film stereotypes that all together make for a typical paint-by-numbers Hollywood movie. You could dig deeper, of course, and talk about how it reflects negatively on women by implying that the prospect of a wedding turns them into Nazi-like control freaks that are pathologically obsessed with a very specific idea of what constitutes perfection. But if you’re looking for subtext in Bride Wars, boy did you come to the wrong place. Basically, this is one of those scripts that have read too many other scripts of the same genre; a typical cut and paste job.

But basically I kept coming back to the idea that real people wouldn’t act this way. Even the basic premise of the film – where in two BFFs face-off for some down-and-dirty rotten scheming to see who can flub up the other’s dream wedding first – seems to be far-fetched. The mere contrivance of the situation, they book two different days in June, only to end up booked on the same day, screams of Saved By the Bell type clichés where it’s okay for something stupid to happen because it’s all in service of the plot. And you know that even the writer’s don’t believe in their own story when they throw in an eighth inning curve ball where one of the brides begins to doubt her commitment. It’s like the start of a whole other movie just 20 minutes before the finish line.

And I would say that the actors are like marionettes, but frankly if there was any puppetry in this movie it could only make the affair more interesting. Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway try their best, and while I have to say they both made authentic best friends, that’s about all I bought from their performances. Hudson I understand. She’s built a career doing this schlock, so the fact that she turned up in this ridiculous piece of fluff is no surprise, but Anne Jacqueline Hathaway, you should be ashamed of yourself. Candice Bergen too for that matter. You mean to tell me that there was nothing better for you to do, because you looked about as interested in having a hand in this thing as I do.

But the thing that stayed with me the most is just how awful this movie is in regards to its tired and insulting comedic portrayal of women as man hungry, OCD automatons that are driven solely by the desire to find the perfect guy, in order to have the perfect wedding. And may all of heaven and earth be damned should any sliver of a problematic situation get in their way, because nothing ruins a life faster than not getting the right DJ for the reception. I mean, how can you sleep at night knowing that you biological impediment for eight daily hours of uninterrupted rest caused you to miss the final piece of making your impossible dream wedding a reality. That’s the kind of stuff that makes Jacob Marley walk the Earth forever. And don’t get me started about the video montage… And yes, all that was sarcastic. But seriously, when it comes to Bride Wars, don’t waste your time.

The young and nubile Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) is running along, minding her own business, when she finds a blue glove on the ground and senses the presence of a creepy, little zombie boy behind her. Cut to Casey babysitting a couple of neighbour kids. When she hears a noise upstairs, she checks it out and sees the little boy (Atticus Shaffer) holding a mirror over his newborn sibling, trying to get him to look at his reflection. (That’s bad luck by the way.) The boy then turns to Casey and says, “Jomby wants to be born now.” Cut to Casey and pals in class, when a lecture about the nature in the universe turns into an acid flashback. I look at my watch and realize, damn, this movie is only 20 minutes over.

After the initial something-spooky’s-going-on scenes, things get complicated. It turns out that The Unborn is a meshugaas of The Exorcist, The Grudge and Rosemary’s Baby, which has some interesting ideas, but really just seems more concerned about getting its leading lady into various states of undress. (Don’t get too excited boys, this is PG-13 remember.) Like any typical horror movie, the main characters are bland, bland and bland. Now, usually such a thing is okay in something like a slasher film because there’s some maniac running around, cutting up all the pretty, young people. But since there’s more a mystery than murder to the story, we have to watch the dullards fumble around with ancient mysticism they don’t understand and with cynical quips, try to figure out the hows and whys.

So enter the all knowing supernatural expert, in this case a Rabbi played by Gary Oldman. Wow, you said, Gary Oldman. He’ll surely spice things up and add some depth and character to this freakin’ mess. Well, that is to say, I’m sure he would have had he been given more than 10 minutes of screen time. He isn’t even an exposition device; that dubious honour belongs to Jane Alexander as Casey’s long, lost grandmother who knows the source of the evil that’s plagued not just Casey, but drove her mother to suicide. (Carla Gugino, possibly doing the most thankless work she’s ever done.)

Anyway, Oldman’s Rabbi Sendak doesn’t even believe in dybbuks, a demon of Jewish mysticism that wanders in the “borderland” between the living and the dead and looks for a way in. Apparently its preferred mode of spiritual transportation is twins, hence the ghost inheriting through the poor women of Casey’s family, and dear old grandma, who survived the Holocaust as a singular twin due to Nazi experimentations, knows this. She sends Casey after a one of a kind manuscript, and she shows some surprising skill at sneaking out really old books from the special collections section of the library, before following her grandmother’s final instruction and finding Sendak. 

But for some strange reason, the grandmother leaves the solution to Casey’s problems in the hand of a man that’s pretty sure it’s all in her head. Now Father Karras may have been a doubting Father Thomas after his first in-depth talk with the possessed Regan, but even he’d have to admit something’s up, and goes back to his Bishop saying, Dude, that chick needs an exorcism. The fact that the Super-Rabbi turns out to be a fizzle is one of many plot holes in this unfortunate script by David S. Goyer, who also directs. There’s no mystery, there’s no menace, and the “twist” in the end would be completely stupid if there weren’t some rather icky condemnations in it. 

There are more shots of Casey running in slo-mo than there are shots of genuine horror; it almost seems sometimes that you’re watching a Nike commercial rather than a scary movie. Every detail feels like it’s been done in other, better movies from bugs to creepy little boys to ghosts that always manages to be a little too corporeal when the plot calls for it, even breaking its already flimsy, pre-established rules. From Casey’s disco freak out to the crab-walking old man, there’s just not much in the way of originality. The movie opens with a dream that we actually never see the main character wake up from, which says to everything you need to know about The Unborn: someone was asleep at the wheel.