For the first hour and a half, the new Batman feature, "The Dark Knight," is perfect.
Unfortunately, in Hollywood, longer is thought to be better, so we've got another hour to go. That's not to say that at two-and-a-half hours, the movie is not exceptional. It is, but had it ended after 90 minutes, that would have been fine with me. It still ranks in the pantheon of truly great motion-picture adventures.
What causes the film to falter is that well-worn plot device, the car chase. After such an intelligent, smartly written, sharply directed beginning, one wishes director Christopher Nolan and his co-screenwriter, his brother Jonathan, had trusted their instincts and stayed the course of the angry, gloomy Batman being demoralized about whether his crime-fighting has merely created tougher villains -- like the manic Joker -- and his being conflicted over the love of his life Rachel Dawes dating new district attorney Harvey Dent.
But this is a comic-book action feature, so there has to be some action. I guess Batman soaring over Gotham City (actually Chicago) and the Joker doing his nasty deeds aren't enough. But the elements of the chase get a little too predictable.
Another minor flaw is the convoluted screen set-up that Batman's tech guy Lucius Fox has created. It's a computer-oriented way to solve a later story problem and it's the easy way out. Other than that, truth be told, this Batman sequel is a terrific movie, suitable for teenagers and adults. It is absolutely not for young children. The fierce violence (often knife-oriented) and psychotic behavior of the Joker creates an atmosphere of dread that will overwhelm the little ones.
There is not a lot of joy in this film, but that didn't bother me. As played by Heath Ledger, the Joker is darkly comic and creepily deranged. Ledger's performance is mesmerizing. Christian Bale brings the right baleful tone to this moodier Bruce Wayne/Batman. Aaron Eckhart as Dent, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Dawes, Morgan Freeman as Fox, Michael Caine as Alfred the butler, and Gary Oldman as Police Lt. Gordon are all at the top of their game.
"The Dark Knight" is a sequel that delivers the goods. Director Nolan keeps the energy level high. And thanks to cinematographer Wally Pfister, there's a beautiful visual poetry to "The Dark Knight." You really could watch his images all day. That last hour may falter because Nolan tried to pack too much into the movie, but it doesn't derail the overall excellence of the picture.
Resistance is futile. I'm sure there are ABBA haters out there, and I don't blame you for not wanting to see the movie "Mamma Mia!" -- which contains a pastiche of more than a dozen of the singers' most popular songs. However, there's no denying the foot-tapping fun of the group's very popular music.
On the other hand, the film is less successful. What on earth were producers thinking when they selected a director who's never made a movie, cast three men who can't sing to act in it, and made the decision to use a cinematographer whose main claim to fame is shooting background sets for "Batman Begins"?
In many cases when it comes to the transfer from stage to screen, musicals have material cut from their books, but in the case of "Mamma Mia!" they could have added some material, something along the lines of, oh, I don't know, some actual back story -- perhaps a few more details about the characters.
The screenplay -- by a truly untalented hack, a British television writer named Catherine Johnson -- is as thin as a piece of string. I appreciate the fact that the original stage musical was just an excuse to shoehorn some ABBA songs into a flimsy plot, but what we get is beyond banal.
It's 1999, and we're on one of the lesser islands off the coast of Greece, where tourists don't teem. We know this because Donna (Meryl Streep), the owner of a ramshackle villa, tells us. Of course, this doesn't stop hordes of chorus boys and girls from showing up at opportune moments.
Donna's daughter is getting married, which delights her. But Donna doesn't quite know who the kid's real dad might be. So Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) reads mom's diary from her freewheeling days (she sang in a rock band called Donna and the Dynamos) and discovers that her father could be one of three men. So the kid invites them to her wedding; forget how she figured out where in the world these chaps are.
To Donna's dismay, the trio of potential papas shows up. They are Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard. Also along for the parade of musical numbers in and around the villa, up and down mountains, and in the deep blue sea are Donna's Dynamo girlfriends Christine Baranski and Julie Walters. That, in a nutshell, is the movie.
In the good old days -- the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s -- when movies had stories, the trio of men would have stayed hidden throughout the film and all manner of hilarious episodes would have ensued.
Not these days. Donna spots her exes right away, dousing the comic possibilities of the situation.
"Mamma Mia!" has two very good musical moments. One belongs to Streep when she sings "The Winner Takes All." The other is when hapless cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos luckily captures some guys wearing swimming fins on their feet doing a bit of comic dancing on a dock.
Question: How did Zambarloukos manage to make a Greek island and the surrounding blue sea look cheesy?
The casting is hit and miss. When Streep gets to be Streep -- her sense of surprise, her laughter, her gestures -- she's terrific. And she can sing. Buffalo's Baranski, a musical theater veteran, has fun with the corny material, and Walters also wrings a few laughs from the feeble script. So basically, the gals are good.
Amanda Seyfried can also sing, but she doesn't pop out of the screen. Nothing says "a star is born." Dominic Cooper, as Sky, her betrothed, can definitely act, but he gets little to do. Firth, whose character undergoes a transformation that comes out of nowhere -- blink twice at the end of the movie and you'll miss it -- manages to survive the helter-skelter nature of the goings-on, but his singing is marginal, at best. The tone-deaf Skarsgard is so far out of his element that he might as well be back in his native Sweden. As for Brosnan, he tries to sing two songs and stops the movie dead in its tracks with his dreadful attempt at musicality. I've heard American bisons make more melodic sounds. Of all the middle-aged men on Broadway who can act, sing and dance, why on earth were these three actors chosen? It's not as if they were A-list stars guaranteeing some kind of box office.
Stage director Phyllida Lloyd, making her motion picture debut behind the camera, doesn't know where to place her actors, how to cut within musical numbers, or when to let important lines of dialogue carry the moment -- not that there are that many to begin with.
"Mamma Mia!" may attract its legions of fans who've made the musical a smash hit around the world, but I'm not so sure about that. Word of mouth can be cruel.
I like musicals when they work, but watching "Mamma Mia!" feels like work. At least the breezy songs should keep you awake.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 22 2008 |