Alison Lohman

Ellen Page’s ‘Smart People’ Only as Scholarly as Zealous Senior in High School

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:05:37 -0700

CHICAGO – I’m flummoxed. I know “Smart People” was supposed to be comedic drama with a splash of romance. Instead, I have been misled. It’s not a comedy. It’s not a tragedy. It’s not even a tragicomedy.

“Smart People” is a blandly scripted “poor me” with an attempt at a plot and some glitzy Hollywood names thrown in for good box-office measure.

Ellen Page in “Smart People”.
Photo credit: IMDb

While I know this was no “Juno,” I couldn’t help cursing first-time writer Mark Poirier for not taking a much-needed page – or a full-fledged course of mentoring – from Oscar-winning “Juno” inker Diablo Cody.

“Smart People” is also a product of another newbie: first-time director Noam Murro.

Since her “Juno” stardom in 2007 – and actually her big-screen break out even before that in 2005’s “Hard Candy” – 21-year-old Ellen Page has righteously warranted her way on Hollywood’s “A” list.

My draw to “Smart People” was Page and Page alone. While she’s always a professional who crafts the best she can from the material she’s handed, an actor ultimately is a slave to his or her script. “Smart People” offensively held Page back whereas “Juno” unleashed her.

RELATED IMAGE GALLERY
View our full “Smart people” image gallery

RELATED READING
Interview with “Juno” writer Diablo Cody, star Ellen Page (Jan. 14, 2008)

“Juno” film review (Jan. 24, 2008)

More film reviews from critic Adam Fendelman

I continued my mental cursing at Poirier when Page was forced to deliver lines that artificially made her sound smart. Instead, they just made it clear he’s trying way too hard and just not getting it. While I still enjoyed her performance because of the accolade woven deeply into her skin, she’s better than this.

Since “Juno,” Page has been being picky in the roles she has signed onto and has even dropped out of some. In Feb. 2008, Page pulled out of Sam Raimi’s upcoming horror-thriller “Drag Me to Hell” due to unhappiness with the script. Page was eventually replaced by Alison Lohman.

Poirier did, though, do one thing right: Thomas Haden Church.

In his supporting role, Church (from “Sideways” fame) is hand’s down the film’s savior and is generally a delicious feast through all his screen time. He’s the laissez-faire relief to help you cut through all the downbeat depression. Even he, though, is sometimes scripted predictably.

You just know he’s pegged to be that slipshod, toking doofus whose ass you’re going to glimpse through silly pajamas while in slumber.

Thomas Haden Church and Ellen Page in “Smart People”.
Photo credit: IMDb

In his starring role, Dennis Quaid’s character is worn down, decrepit and dismal. While he’s clearly scripted that way, the problem is he unremarkably consumes most of the film but doesn’t make you remember it. He just gets by. He doesn’t sell it.

As a physician, Sarah Jessica Parker does very little for me despite some heartfelt attempts to convince you – and herself all the while – that she’s really feeling this story.

I just can’t eject her typecast “Sex and the City” persona out of my head. I kept expecting her to launch into expositions about sex, handbags or shoes.

Even more, I can’t buy Quaid and Parker sitting in a love tree. Age difference completely aside, you’re not sold on their romantic palpitations for each other. Their chemistry ultimately proves to be more of a repellent than a magnet.

Dennis Quaid in “Smart People”.
Photo credit: IMDb

Speaking of chemistry, Church and Page? Whaaaat? No. For all that’s holy, don’t ever do that again.

In asking a few random moviegoers following the film what they deemed to be the film’s funniest moment, several people pointed to when Quaid mounted a fence and clumsily fell down the other site in an attempt to retrieve his impounded car.

If that’s its funniest moment, there’s little doubt the film falls flat on its face in the comedy department. Even if it’s not, there’s zero question that “Smart People” is lacking here.

All in all, if you were to keep just Page and Church, cast replacements for Quaid and Parker and – well – jot an entirely new story, then we might have some people saying something actually smart.

“Smart People” opened on April 11, 2008.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com

‘Beowulf’ in IMAX 3D Affords Break For Big Actors to Improve Even Themselves

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:14:59 -0700

CHICAGO – It’s all the rave today to exhume an epic from long, long ago and bring it back on the monster screen bigger, better and with more grandeur than ever fathomable before.

Angelina Jolie in “Beowulf”.
Image credit: Paramount Pictures
Today’s “Beowulf” represents that decade-long quest for “Stardust” scribe Neil Gaiman. While navigating the feat of serving this lordly tale justice, he also had to undo a deeply rooted childhood stigma of indifference in the eyes of director Robert Zemeckis.

While the story of “Beowulf” is the oldest epic poem in the English language, Zemeckis from his early days was unaroused by it.

“Frankly, nothing about the original poem appealed to me,” Zemeckis said about the original story. “I remember being assigned to read it in junior high school and not being able to understand it because it was in Old English.

He added: “It was one of those horrible assignments. I never really thought about it after that [and] never considered that it might make for an interesting story.”

Gaiman and co-writer Roger Avary (“Pulp Fiction”) had to fashion a 180-degree change of heart. They indeed captivated Zemeckis, who returned to his new art form from “The Polar Express” that opened the can of worms on a new age in filmmaking.

It’s not Pixar. It’s not just CGI. It’s “performance capture”.

With a steep price tag in excess of $150 million for “Beowulf,” the unproven concept is competing with itself in an attempt to slather the most palatable sauce you could coddle on the best filet mignon you could ever gorge.

From top to bottom, this image shows the progression
in “Beowulf” with performance capture technology.
Image credits: Paramount Pictures
Despite early talks of the titillating format potentially representing a replacement to using human actors in their actual skin, the nature of its immediate gratification is now being pitched as less about the technology and more about the actors crafting the new mold.

It’s like what online avatars are doing to offline creators: zapping the pimples, ballooning the boobs and bulking the muscles. It’s essentially making big-name actors better than even they can be.

Ray Winstone as Beowulf – who went into battle buck naked with the overpowering demon Grendel – wishes he could be that chiseled.

Angelina Jolie – who was nervous with her own libidinous revelations – could learn a thing or two about her digital self and certainly make Brad Pitt jealous. Jolie as a seductress to the nth degree is big selling point for this film.

Zemeckis said of his Jolie selection: “When she stepped on set and became that character, it was a powerful thing to watch. She was just magnetic. She hypnotized everyone. Nobody can do that kind of sultry character as well as Jolie.”

Ray Winstone as Beowulf in “Beowulf”.
Image credit: Paramount Pictures
“I loved it,” Jolie said about the format. “At first, I thought [it was] going to be so weird [with] these dots on our faces in these wetsuit-type costumes with no props or sets. What it really does is strip everything down to the essentials of performing.

“There is so much freedom to just be everything in the moment – and give it your all – because it’s being covered completely and you can overlap and you can play and you can improvise.

“There’s also an immediate friendship between the actors. When you’re both covered in dots, you become very close and you rely on each other.”

Jolie’s maternal instinct kicks in while playing Grendel’s mother. She said: “If someone hurts your son, you would go to the ends of the Earth to avenge him.”

Jolie, who describes her character as a “sexy lizard” who could assume a quasi-human form, had to personify the beguiling woman reptile without the benefit of costumes, prosthetics, props or makeup. She largely relied on Zemeckis’ direction.

As for the film’s rating, something is seriously amuck here.

Even if you extricated the entirety of Jolie’s full-frontal flesh time, the MPAA is offensively off its rocker in handing this film a “PG-13” rating instead of the “R” rating it absolutely should be.

The graphic violence and the adult jokes alone make it wholly inappropriate for kids around 13 years old.

Grendel in “Beowulf”.
Image credit: Paramount Pictures
Moving on, the real – albeit modified and perhaps even improved – Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Alison Lohman, Crispin Glover and Brendan Gleeson all offered up a performance capture version of themselves, too.

To get today’s most lavish filmmaking realized, digital sensors are affixed to their faces and bodies via a form-fitting Lycra suit. Their live performances are “captured” and input into Sony Pictures Imageworks mega computers.

Action happens in an invisible box called a “volume,” which is segmented into quadrants that can house up to 40 cameras. This is performance capture-speak for a soundstage and is thusly because multiple cameras can capture scenes in a three-dimensional space.

If you transport back to your early school days, we recall that the geometric formula for volume is “x,” “y” and “z”. These equate to width, height and length. In film, a volume is the area where the cameras are all aimed within which face and body data are captured.

Takes (or “beats”) from multiple sessions can be edited, blended, mixed and matched to amputate most of the cartoon-like visuals we’ve seen in the past. Instead, the imagery is tethered to the actual creative expression of the actors and the director.

Angelina Jolie in “Beowulf”.
Image credit: Paramount Pictures
The magic is in its detail. Performance capture loves to flaunt its aptitude with human hair, water, fire, skin, the bumps on skin and the creases enveloping muscle.

The mouth is still an area of contempt for careful critics, though, who’ve grumbled even in “Beowulf” about its sometimes wooden and unnatural ways.

If you remove your IMAX 3D lenses at any point during the entirely 3D picture, you can in fact discern flaws shielded by the technology. Also, the float factor still needs ironing out as humans don’t glide so gracefully.

Nitpicky criticisms aside, you’d be making a regrettable mistake waiting to view “Beowulf” on DVD at home or even on a standard movie screen. The film is the most IMAX-worthy picture released to date and seeing it any other way is like shutting one eye with 20/100 vision in the other.

By Adam Fendelman
Publisher
HollywoodChicago.com