"Rocky Balboa" proves you can go home again, "The Good Shepherd" proves spying is not really the 007 way, "Dreamgirls" proves the musical still has a lot of life in it, and "The History Boys" proves college entrance exams can be fun.
Sylvester Stallone produced, wrote, directed and acts in the entertaining "Rocky Balboa," the sixth installment of the popular series about the pug from South Philly who has a lot of heart and an ability to withstand withering blows from boxing opponents.
Rocky's wife, Adrian, has died, and his twentysomething son wants to be left alone. The kid's a financial worker with a serious chip on his shoulder: He's tired of living in his famous dad's shadow. Rocky owns a successful restaurant named for his wife. He enjoys reliving his past as he tells stories to his customers. South Philly seems more squalid than ever, so you do wonder why Rocky still lives there. Paulie is still a grouch.
Since the Rocky movies are about more than boxing, it's interesting to see where Stallone takes the film. It's really about family and a desire, on Rocky's part, to get past Adrian's death. How will he do that? By re-entering the ring, of course. A television sports show is staging computer-enhanced fights between past and present boxers. Would Rocky beat the current heavyweight champ? In the computer bout he does. What about in actuality?
An "exhibition" fight is set up between Balboa and the champ, named Mason Dixon. You have to accept that this would happen. Who wins? Come on, I'm not telling you. For die-hard Rocky fans, there are inside references to the past five features, one of which is a terrific abstract painting on the back wall of Rocky's restaurant. And one of the characters, a woman Rocky helps out and with whom he develops a friendship, was a teenager in a previous Rocky film. The movie is slow to get started, but Stallone's innate sense of story and his character's belief in himself carry it through to a spirited end. Rocky still delivers amusing malaprops, but you know the guy never gets the credit for being smarter than everybody thinks he is. And tougher.
You know the expression about history being a dull subject and listening to a history lecture is sometimes like watching paint dry? Well, Robert De Niro directs "The Good Shepherd" as if an entire college history department building needs painting. De Niro also acts in the film as a creepy man who seems to have started what would become the CIA. Not Buffalo's William Donovan, but someone named Bill Sullivan. Close enough, I guess. Frankly, if you're going to tell the story of the birth of America's spy center, why not use Donovan's name? The story begins in 1939 and ends in 1961.
The movie has a great cast that seems to have been instructed to underact to the point of ennui. Matt Damon is lifeless as a silver-spoon Yale type whose father committed suicide, a fact that affects him forever. Damon is a good actor, but he looks the same whether it's 1961 and we're at the Bay Of Pigs or it's 1940 and he's knocking up the well-heeled daughter of another silver-spoon type. She's Angelina Jolie, another good screen star wasted, but the only person in the film who gets to yell. Everything else is acted in a hush-hush tone. The movie has a lot of dark rooms and whispered asides.
The cast tries hard, but the story by Eric Roth is so fragmented and lacking in linear relief that you finally give up and hope the film is not going to be as long as it seems. Believe me, it is. The iceberg that sank the Titanic moved faster than this film.
Billy Crudup and William Hurt are in it, too, but blink and you'll miss Keir Dullea. Blink twice and you'll miss Timothy Hutton. After nearly three hours, including a lot of repetitive material about Russian spies that resembles nothing less than those dolls within dolls within dolls sold in Moscow, you just want to go home.
The Cold War might as well be a footnote to what goes on, although winning it seems to be almost everyone's goal. But when does hardheaded obedience turn into obsequiousness? You ask yourself: What did I learn? The answer? Not much. Oh, maybe that it's not good to take your work home with you. This isn't history, it's divorce court.
The thing to remember about "Dreamgirls," the rousing musical created by Buffalo's Michael Bennett, is that although it's loosely based on Motown's black girl group singers (especially Diana Ross and the Supremes), it's not a movie about Motown and its music. It's a Broadway show, with typical show tunes, not popular hits created by Berry Gordy Jr. or Holland, Dozier and Holland.
In this wildly entertaining film, Jennifer Hudson is terrific as the chubby girl who gets shunted aside in favor of the more glamorous, whiter-looking lady (played by Beyonce Knowles). Hudson's electrifying rendition of "I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" stops the show.
Knowles is less comfortable in front of the camera than you have every right to expect. The real star of the movie, however, is Eddie Murphy as a James Brown-style singer. Murphy never breaks character. Jamie Foxx is good as the slick Gordy-type who discovers singers and creates legends. "Dreamgirls" is worth your while, but it's less about soul than it is about going solo.
"The History Boys" is the engaging film version of the London West End smash and Broadway Tony Award-winning play with the original stage cast (who did both productions) around for the sprightly cinematic ride on a beloved professor's motor scooter.
The rotund Richard Griffiths is superb as a colorful, married teacher (with roaming hands) at a British boys school in Yorkshire 1983 who uses movies and music to round out the lads' personalities. The thrust of "The History Boys" is that all of the eight teenagers must ace their A-level entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge, which would help enhance their school's reputation. A tutor (nicely played by Stephen Campbell Moore) who specializes in whipping students into intellectual shape is brought in to help seal the deal. I especially liked Frances de la Tour as a plain-speaking female teacher at the school.
Well-directed by Nicholas Hytner and smartly written by Alan Bennett (from his play), the movie never passes judgment on the quirkiness of its characters -- each one gets a moment to shine. The headmaster (a delightful Clive Merrison) is a hoot as he dreams of scholarly glory. The tale turns on sexual dreams and the teenage quest for identity. The lad who's gay, Jewish and from a nowhere town finds answers in unexpected places. The robust lad who's sleeping with a hot female school secretary thinks his future is golden, but reality always has a way of intruding. The Academy should start giving out an Oscar for ensemble acting. This movie would win the first one ever.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 27 2006 |