Real-life Navy SEALs, Tyler Perry pretending to be profound, but really just taking your money, the President’s daughter in a space prison, the enigma that is Amanda Seyfried persists, and the conundrum of seeing a Jennifer Aniston movie. Welcome to the weekend!
Act of Valor: If nothing else, this film could be a surprise study in realism. From the outside, it appears to be a military-driven action movie, but it also stars active duty Navy SEALS. While it’s another of the “based on true events” tale, this time, the inclusion of real-life SEALS suggests the hyperbole could be at a minimum. Like Haywire, I’m assuming this movie won’t be dialog-driven, but it will certainly be an exercise in directing a film around non-actors, something that can be entertaining in the hands of a skilled director. I’m not very familiar with Mike McCoy, but given his experience as a documentarian, he might just be able to fashion something out of nothing. I’ll check it out.
Good Deeds: My dislike of Tyler Perry films, the obvious title puns therein, and their abjectly regurgitated silliness will keep me miles away from this film, but if you’re interested in some more of Tyler Perry’s twenty-first-century Blaxploitation films masquerading as profound rhetoric, please let me know how it turns out.
Gone: I’m still convinced that Amanda Seyfried can act, but my enthusiasm to watch her is waning. She was funny in Mean Girls, entertaining in Mama Mia, decent in the terribly banal Chloe, and the only good part about Jennifer’s Body, but, after Mama Mia, her movie choices have been rather suspect. See also In Time and Red Riding Hood. This film might be a bit better, but there’s still the conspiracy theory subtext that will force Seyfried to be simultaneously docile, desired, and strong-willed. As Jill, Seyfried hunts for her missing sister who was kidnapped by a serial killer a few years prior. In general, this could be a fun tale of revenge, but we should also assume a handful of predictable plot twists and a band of supporting characters that refuse to believe anything Jill says. We can also probably look out for a close friend or relative to be the serial killer. I guess I’ll never know.
Wanderlust: This is confusing. It is a Paul Rudd film or a Jennifer Aniston vehicle? One promises to be funny. The other, lame. As of late, the respective quality of their films has gone in opposite directions. Even the less-than-awesome Rudd films, like I Love You, Man and Our Idiot Brother, are genuinely entertaining and fun to watch. On the other hand, with the exception of The Break Up (and maybe Along Came Polly), Aniston films are usually pretty bad – He’s Just Not That into You, Love Happens, The Bounty Hunter, Just Go With It. I’m still on the fence about Horrible Bosses, but the few funny moments in that film had very little to do with Aniston. In fact, her role was uber-overdone and kind of annoying. The question here is whether or not Paul Rudd’s timing can distract from Jennifer Aniston’s “Rachel Greening,” the verb best used to describe her anxious, high-pitched tantrums often caused by frustrating male counterparts. If it does, then this film about two displaced New Yorkers trapped in a nudist colony while seeking change could be an interesting journey to recovering one’s sense of purpose and self-esteem. On the other hand, it could be a catalog of penis and crap humor – see preview for two distinct references.
Lockout: Set in an outer space prison, Lockout pits a man wrongly convicted of conspiracy against violent inmates. His task? Rescue the President’s daughter. Perhaps this is an allegory about the diminished power of the Chief of State, given that his last resort is a random criminal and not, say, a few dozen Secret Servicemen, but I’ll digress and play along. The snarky lines within the trailer give us a glimpse of our lead misfit, and perhaps some of the jittery anxiety from Memento will reveal itself in Guy Pearce’s performance here as well. If nothing else, anything set in space promises to provide explosions and at least one body being sucked into the zero-gravity vacuum – if not an exploding head.
