OK, look, it's over. Jennifer Aniston no longer has a motion picture career. There can be no more chances. She's done. The people around her have to stop pushing the poor thing into movies that fail miserably time after time.
I'm sure Aniston is a lovely person in real life. She is a very good television sitcom actress, and there's no shame in that. Her father, John Aniston, made a name for himself on a soap opera. Hey, she's even an Aquarian. Born on Feb. 11. I'm an Aquarian, Feb. 9. She has an appeal that people like. However, people are liking it less and less.
She has appeared in a parade of motion pictures that just don't cut it.
Most are awful goofball comedies or dumb romantic comedies. Things like "Marley & Me," "Horrible Bosses," or "The Bounty Hunter," which almost killed Gerard Butler's career.
She's tried drama, "Derailed." Even a rock and roll picture, "Rock Star." Nothing works.
She simply does not have the dynamic necessary to succeed on the big screen. Her choice of material is awful. She needs new training in acting. And she needs new representation.
The problem is that everyone keeps treating her as if she's a film star. She isn't. She can't carry a movie. When she takes a supporting role, she's fine, as with "Office Space" and "The Good Girl."
If you look at Aniston's credits, you see flop after flop, mediocrity after mediocrity. You do see the mega-hit "Bruce Almighty," but that was a success because of Jim Carrey.
Aniston does not have what it takes to be a screen star. Too narrow a face. Too much hair. Too nasally a voice. Whatever the reason, some things just aren't working.
Her new effort is "Wanderlust," and it's an R-rated comedy filled with crudity and nudity. The latter is the real deal -- Full Monty, as they say. The jokes are of the can-you-top-this filth variety. There are no laughs that are character-driven. Heck, there are hardly any laughs at all.
Will it surprise you to learn that the movie is produced by that cinematic sleaze merchant Judd Apatow? Recently, audiences have even been rejecting the garbage he's tossed on the screen. Good for them.
Aniston is Linda, who is married to George (Paul Rudd). They have a cozy Manhattan life that falls apart after George's financial company gets raided by the feds and is shut down.
Linda is a sometime coffee-shop operator, documentary filmmaker and children's book author. In order words, marginally employable and no help at all.
The couple decide to leave New York and head for Georgia, where George's brother is owner of a rent-a-toilet company. Can you sense the unfunny gags?
On their way down, the husband and wife discover a commune in which sex, drugs, and bad guitar-playing are the order of the day. The simple life appeals to George and he wants to live at the commune. The tired movie teeters on from there.
There are so many hippie jokes that while watching this mess, I vowed that after leaving the theater I would find a calendar to make sure it was still 2012. Would it surprise you to learn that there are jokes about drugs? Of course there are, but none of them are fresh.
"Wanderlust" is a stale monument to allowing people who've made some money making a hit movie or two (Apatow) free rein to duplicate what came before by perpetually borrowing from their old work, and then watering it down, delivering weaker and weaker material.
The director is David Wain, who co-wrote the screenplay, if I can call it that, with Ken Marino, who also appears in the film. If you're not familiar with Wain, he made the sporadically amusing "Wet Hot American Summer," which is famous for one thing and one thing only: Bradley Cooper playing a camp counselor being boinked by his boyfriend, played by Michael Ian Black. As I wrote above, Wain again goes to same well, but this time the well has run dry.
Rudd was once a good comic actor but is now starting to disappoint. If he keeps making dreary, vulgar throwaway junk like this, he's going to end up sitting in the same unemployment line as Aniston.
"Act Of Valor" is an action movie with a single selling point -- real-life Navy SEALs appear as Navy SEALs. In fact, although there are a few actual actors credited in the picture, these SEALs are not listed in the credits in order to protect their identity. I'm not sure why they can show their faces, but not give their names, but that's the way it is, and that's the gimmick.
The use of amateurs in extended speaking parts is not a good thing. These guys may be genuine SEALs, but there's a reason filmmakers hire professional actors. In an odd little twist of moviemaking, trained actors bring a truer verisimilitude to the goings-on than someone who actually has a career in the job that's being portrayed.
This means that between the action sequences, there are poorly scripted chunks of mundane dialogue being spoken by people who can't act. It's a tedious slog.
However, where "Act Of Valor" shines is in its action scenes. One set piece, the rescue of a female CIA agent who's being tortured in the Central American jungle, is one of the best action sequences I've ever seen on screen. The editing is superb, the cameras are perfectly positioned, and the tracking of the kidnappers' cars versus the arrival of the American military boats with their hyper-powerful machine-gun fire creates kinetic energy and excitement that thrills the audience.
The film sets up moviegoers for a emotional kick in the teeth that is too obvious from the get-go. But between the letter-writing at the beginning and the tears at the end, there is some solid action.
The core of the picture revolves around terrorists heading from Mexico to blow up a number of American cities, including Las Vegas and Seattle. The SEALs have to prepare for, and carry out, a covert mission to stop them. For the squeamish, the picture's violence is brutal, bloody and extreme. Some of you have avoided the "Saw" movies because you've heard about their torture scenes. "Act Of Valor" features a power drill.
Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh directed from a screenplay by Kurt Johnstad. What success their movie has belongs to how well the elite SEALs perform in the action scenes, as well as to the genius of the film editing team of Siobhan Prior (a woman), Michael Tronick, and Waugh himself.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 28 2012 |