Wanderlust

Airing between 1993 and 1995 on MTV, The State was an odd mix of weird characters and skits that helped put an impressive list of comedians in the limelight, including David Wain who's become a film director -- among other things -- in the years since. The State crew sticks together though, working together in films like Wet, Hot American Summer, Role Models, and most recently 2012's Wanderlust.

Having bought a micro-loft in New York City, married couple George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) are forced to improvise on the fly when George's financial company is shut down and Linda's documentary is turned down by HBO. With no money to speak of, the couple heads south to Atlanta to live with George's brother (Ken Marino), who has also offered him a job at his successful port-a-potty company.  Road tripping south, they stop at Elysium, a bed and breakfast spot they soon learn is a hippie commune. Weirded out at first by the commune's general freeness with just about everything, George and Linda then start to see that maybe this out of the way place is what they needed. It gets them away from the hustle and bustle of the big city, reconnecting with what brought them together..........or maybe not.

Anyone who's watched the above-listed movies along with a film like The Ten, comedy groups like Stella and TV shows like Reno 911 knows that the type of humor the extended State group favors is........odd? Off the wall? Eclectic? Random? Yep, one and all. The best example is 'American Summer' for me, ridiculously stupid and random humor that rises above because it embraces the stupidity. I find the humor hit or miss for the most part though in their other ventures. When a bit works, it can be a home run. When a bit fails, it does so epically. Directing this 2012 comedy that struggled in theaters (making just over $17 million), Wain has that typically odd humor with a solid cast. It starts off strong, producing a fair share of laughs, but it struggles to keep up the energy throughout its 98-minute run time.

What is never in question is the strong casting. Rudd is one of the funniest actors currently working in film and television, and he doesn't disappoint. It's not quite a straight man part to the hijinks -- he's given his chances for looniness -- but it's a relatively subdued part. Aniston too is solid if unspectacular, but the duo has some good chemistry together. As George's well-to-do a-hole brother, Marino is a scene-stealer. He has perfected that jackass part dripping with smarminess, Michaela Watkins playing his spaced-out wife. Also look for Keegan Michael Key as an HBO executive, Todd Barry as George's jokey co-worker, and an uncredited/unlisted Ray Liotta playing himself in a scene-stealing appearance in the final scene wrap-up.

It's at Elysium though that the more memorable parts come out, many of them coming from State cast members. Justin Theroux plays Seth, the philosophical Renaissance man running the place with his new-age thinking while Alan Alda plays Carvin, the man who founded Elysium in 1971 and never left. Oh, and acid has torn apart any sort of memory/coherence he has. Just some of the zany folks at the zany commune include Eva (Malin Akerman) who wants to sleep with George, Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio), the nudist winemaker trying to write a novel, Karen (Kathryn Hahn), the hotheaded pacifist, Kathy (Kerri Kenney), the necessarily ultra-odd hippie, and Almond (Lauren Ambrose) and Rodney (Jordan Peele), the white woman dating a BLACK MAN!!!!!

With a whole lot of talent on-screen, much of the humor looks it came from improv. A "truth circle" is a good mix of laughs and drama with a great pay-off courtesy of peyote. The reveal of George playing a didgeridoo with the hippies is similarly a solid pay-off. The hippies rub their fingers together rather than clap because it's "less aggressive." Little things like that go a long way, underplayed to perfection. Unfortunately, much of the humor doesn't lean that way. It's obvious, even a little self-indulgent like Wain and Stella-mates Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black playing a news team with some painfully obvious sexual innuendos. It's so obvious it takes away the humor.

So while there are laughs, it only takes the movie until around the hour mark. From there on in, the laughs are left by the wayside, and things get more predictable. The supposedly pure Seth has his eyes set on Linda?!? I didn't see that coming!!!! Worst than that, some of the humor becomes uncomfortable to watch, like Rudd's improvising dirty talk in front of a mirror is painful. It gets worse later when he tries that with Akerman's Eve. I became increasingly frustrated with this movie as it went along to the point I actively disliked it at times. It's never good when the final wrap-up scene is the movie's highlight, the outtakes over the credits producing the biggest laughs. Capable cast, some funny moments but mostly a disappointment.

Wanderlust (2012): **/****

Stolen

I can give credit when it's due. The overall quality might not be there, but Nicolas Cage churns out the flicks like one crazy dude. Since 2010, Cage has starred in nine movies, and according to his IMDB page, he's got six others in pre/post production and development. There's been some duds in the group, but there's some decent ones too. Take 2012's Stolen, nothing flashy but entertaining throughout.

An accomplished bank robber and thief, Will Montgomery (Cage) has created quite a reputation for himself to the point a New Orleans FBI officer, Tim Harlend (Danny Huston), has become obsessed with catching him. In the aftermath of a successful job, Montgomery is caught but refuses to give up where he hid the $10 million he made away with, also refusing to turn on the rest of his crew. He serves an eight-year sentence, and upon his release tries to reconnect with his daughter, Alison (Sami Gayle), but she is kidnapped by a member of his crew, Vincent (Josh Lucas), who has fallen on hard times and wants his share of the cut. Montgomery maintains he doesn't have the money, but now it's a matter of life and death. Can he find Alison in time before Vincent kills her? If not, can he pull off a job -- with the police and the FBI tailing him -- to steal enough to appease an insane Vincent? The clock is ticking.

Does the basic plot sound familiar? A man forced to rescue his kidnapped daughter from some rather nasty people? Yeah, it sure sounds like Taken to me too. It isn't spot-on of course with more than enough differences to make it interesting. The weird thing is how little a release it was given. IMDB reports it had a budget of around $35 million, but when it was released in September 2012, it was shown in only 141 theaters (major releases typically are shown on thousands of screens) and banked just $180,000. What happened? Were reviews that bad? Did studios have that little faith in it? I can't really find a reason. It's nothing crazy good by any means, but I liked it enough to give it a mild recommendation.

With the cast and crew assembled here, there's definitely potential for a solid action thriller, and to a point, I think 'Stolen' is very entertaining with some third act flaws. Director Simon West has shown he can do a solid action flick with films like The Mechanic, The Expendables 2, Con Air, Tomb Raiders, and this one is certainly in that vein. It barely breaks the 90-minute mark, clocking in at 95 minutes, and from the word 'Go' it never slows down. It's enjoyable because this breakneck speed never stops. Cage robs vault, goes to jail, is freed and then spends an hour-plus racing around New Orleans looking for his daughter. There are plot holes, but the pacing is so ridiculously fast that the problems are never around long enough to really be an issue. Beyond that, this movie isn't meant to rewrite the action thriller. Just sit back and enjoy it.

I don't know the exact year or the movie where Nicolas Cage went wrong, but at some point he went from an actor able to play drama, action, even dark comedy effortlessly to an actor who seems unable to do anything more than a caricature of himself. He has a scene with Lucas early on that goes down that over the top, goofy road, but thankfully it's just one scene. As an action hero, Cage handles himself quite well here. He's a good bad guy (He's a father! He can't be completely bad!) just trying to save his daughter. The over the top moments are kept to a minimum thankfully although there has to be at least six different scenes where Cage is running for all he's worth. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because he's such a ridiculously slow runner, but couple it with his 110 percent effort at running so slowly, it's quite a visual. I got sidetracked, sorry. Moral of the story, but Cage is pretty good here.

I liked the rest of the cast too. Besides the goofy New Orleans jazz daddio hat he keeps wearing, Huston is pretty good as the FBI investigator trying to catch Montgomery while balancing out an odd admiration he has for the master thief. Mark Valley plays Fletcher, Harlend's assistant. Lucas gets to ham it up as Vincent, the thief seeking revenge. Maybe that's where Cage's caricature went, go figure. Montgomery's team includes Malin Akerman as Riley, the getaway driver, and M.C. Gainey as Hoyt, the electronics specialist.

Things do fall apart some in the final showdown between Montgomery and Vincent at an abandoned amusement park. 'Stolen' almost goes down a pretty dark road with its ending before tapping the brakes. Mostly though, it reminds me a lot of so many 1970s action crime thrillers that were packed to the gills with almost non-stop action. Credit to Mark Isham's jazzy, fast-paced score for keeping that action going. Good but not great, just a solid popcorn flick. Sit back and watch Cage race through New Orleans.

Stolen (2012): ** 1/2 /****

Rock of Ages

If there is a time more ripe for the picking in terms of a musical spoof extravaganza, I can't think of a better one than the late 1980s. Glam rock and hair bands ruled the world with their huge power ballads, filling arenas and venues wherever they went with their screaming, adoring fans. Over 20 years later, it's easy to see how cliched, stereotypical and easy to pick on this time was, but treading that fine line down the middle is 2012's Rock of Ages. It's struggling in theaters so if you want to see it, don't wait too long.

Having left small-town Oklahoma behind, Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) gets off a bus in Los Angeles on the Sunset Strip and gets a job as a waitress at the famous rock club, The Bourbon Room. She has dreams of hitting it big as a singer, and hits it off immediately with a bar-back at Bourbon, Drew (Diego Boneta), who has similar dreams of becoming a star. The Bourbon Room is in trouble though as a crusading mayor and his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) want to shut down the rock scene for the "sake of the kids." The club looks like it's got one shot at saving itself, and that's the first show of rock god Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and his band Arsenal's farewell tour.

Oh, did I mention this is a musical? No? Okay, well more on that later. From director Adam Shankman comes an odd but interesting, off-beat but funny and in the end, entertaining movie. Considering the source material, 'Rock' thankfully doesn't take itself too seriously, having some fun with the general extravagances of the music industry in the late 1980s. It's all pretty ridiculous with a pretty thin script, but it's fun just the same. With so many (we're talking lots of songs) musical numbers, there just isn't enough time to actually develop much of a story other than 1. Girl falls for boy. 2. Club must save itself. 3. Huge star begins to question himself. 4. Parents' groups try to ruin rock. Nothing particularly new there in other words.

Maybe it was just the commercials (or lack of) I saw, but not all of them painted this as a musical. Thankfully before seeing it, I did figure that out, but it was clear when Hough's Sherrie bursts into song 6 seconds into the movie that....hey, I think this is a musical. Brace yourself, but here's a list of the bands featured here, the cast doing their own covers. And away we go with....Night Ranger, David Lee Roth, Poison, Foreigner, Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Extreme, Warrant, Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, Quarterflash, Whitesnake, REO Speedwagon, Journey, Starship, Guns N' Roses, and Scorpions. Disappointed in that listing? That's just the songs that get the full treatment. There's another handful or so that are sampled at different point. Some songs fit better than others, some are more entertaining than others. Certain songs seem jammed into the sake of the story for the sake of having it there, but I guess that's what happens with a rock opera featuring that many different songs.

I'll get into the cast more in a minute, but Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx is getting his own paragraph here. Nearing his 50th birthday, Cruise has found ways to stay fresh with his film roles, and this is a prime example of that. Lead singer of Arsenal, Stacee is planning to go solo and is everything good and bad about the industry at the times. A diva who guzzles liquor, has countless groupies with him at all times, and has a baboon as a servant named 'Hey Man.' In one great scene with a Rolling Stone reporter (Malin Akerman, surprisingly funny), he goes on this rant about who and what he is, getting more out there with each passing word. A one-on-one with club owner Alec Baldwin is hysterical, neither man sure if the other one understands what's being said, symbolism and metaphors flying, Cruise questioning "Can you house a rising phoenix?" Cruise alone -- committing full force to the exaggerated portrayal -- is worth the price of admission.

The rest of the ensemble is more hit or miss unfortunately. Hough is a stunner to look at, and a very talented singer/dancer, but as an actress she's just not there yet. The same for Boneta as Drew, neither lead character producing much interest for the viewer (for me at least). Baldwin and club partner Lonny (Russell Brand, who I'm typically not a fan of) are a match made in heaven, Baldwin's Dennis Dupress desperate to keep his club open, Lonny a diehard rock fan at his side. Some of the funniest scenes -- including one priceless duet -- comes from them seemingly working on the fly. Zeta-Jones and husband Bryan Cranston are tolerable but nothing more. Paul Giamatti is an appropriately slimy manager for Stacee, and ends up being a suitable villain. The very talented Mary J. Blige is given little to do but belt out some songs as Justice, owner of a high-class strip club.

My objection here has little to do with the fact I'm reviewing a musical (brace for lightning strike) but more the actual music. Your enjoyment/hatred will no doubt come from your background with the music. Do you love big 1980s music? You'll love the movie. Using the songs though as the script though comes across as lazy to me. In certain places, it feels like a square peg into a round slot, getting a song into the story for the sake of it being there. And at a sometimes slow 123 minutes, there's a lot of singing. It gets to be like celebrity karaoke at a certain point. Good songs? Yes, you bet. Too much of a good thing? Yes, you bet. Still, the movie is genuinely funny, and some members of the cast -- Cruise, Baldwin, Brand, Giamatti -- make it worthwhile. Just know what you're getting into.

Rock of Ages <---trailer (2012): ** 1/2 /****