Joe and Anthony Russo’s “Avengers: Infinity War” – The needs of the many.

The problem at the heart of Avengers: Infinity War is a particular moment with Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff), two of the Guardians of the Galaxy. These two comic-relief characters get…cubed. Disassembled, initially like action figures, and then into a pile of bloodless cold cuts. Marvel’s biggest, baddest baddie, Thanos (Josh Brolin), the mastermind behind the Chitauri invasion in the first Avengers film, has gotten his hands on a brand new Infinity Stone (one of six that he needs to slaughter half the life in the universe). When these two heroes rush in to attack him, he…kills them, with a mere flick of his gauntleted wrist. That’s a spoiler, right? It seems like it ought to be. It’s two major characters, one of which we care about (sorry, Mantis), suddenly ceasing to be. No fuss, no ceremony – for them, just like flicking off a lightswitch. And that’s war. War isn’t concerned with narrative tidiness, box office figures, a character’s popularity or franchise plans, or films that are already in production. It isn’t concerned with speeches or badass moments or whether a particular death is convenient or well-timed. But in this war, these two people are alive again before the scene is over, for reasons that aren’t at all clear or necessary. And this needless reversal hangs over the rest of the film. The problem with Infinity War isn’t that the stakes aren’t high, well-conceived, or involving characters whose fates we prize. The problem with Infinity War is that it’s unclear how much the ending – or any of these deaths – actually matter.

But the Russo Brothers (along with their screenwriting partners Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) definitely still know how to tell a sprawling ensemble superhero story. The team behind the last two Captain America films are back, and they manage to connect and weave a stunning number of narrative threads. I can only assume a maniacal yarn-board was involved with all the different tasks and intersecting paths that each group needed to follow over the course of the film. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and the Asgardian refugees who fled Ragnarok, the Guardians of the Galaxy soaring through space on no specific trajectory, the newly fractured Avengers back on Earth – with factions led by Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) – and all the new additions, including Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Vision (Paul Bettany), his girlfriend Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), and Sir Not Appearing in this Film ([multiple]). On the other side are Thanos and his minions, the most memorable of which are Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Ebony Maw, with the terrifying telekinesis powers, and Carrie Coon, whose chilling character voice and looming mo-cap performance as Proxima Midnight nearly redeems some otherwise shaky CGI. Thanos himself is a compelling enough villain, owing more to Brolin’s performance than the complexity or interest of his plan. The space-demon’s motivation is almost laughably simple – the universe has finite resources, life has infinite needs, and Thanos is the self-appointed game warden. In order for the universe to thrive, he must remove half of all living things.

This film’s action is unrelenting, and generally well-staged. One particularly epic battle takes place in Marvel’s newest elaborate sandbox, the nation of Wakanda, which is not just the Kingdom of T’Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) but it has the distinction of being the most high-tech and defensible place this side of the Avengers compound to resist Thanos’ onslaught. The ensuing battle feels like high-tech Lord of the Rings, and it all takes place in daylight, with a clear sense of where it’s all happening, and how the tides of the battle are advancing with the addition of each hero. We know where everyone is, what they’re trying to accomplish, and what’s at stake if they fail. Given that this is two literal armies clashing, it doesn’t feel like quite the same sort of team superhero battle as the one above New York, but it does feel like a natural progression. At the same time, Thanos and his “children” are powerful enough that no individual Avenger (Hulk included) seems to be able to take them down solo – so this film is positively riddled with the sorts of superpowered team-ups that made both The Avengers and Captain America: Civil War such a visual feast. This didn’t feel like fan-service – it felt like a fight for survival. And when Thanos has the power to rip a damn moon out of the sky, tear it to pieces with tidal forces, and send a trillion tons of boulders raining down onto a planet where multiple heroes stand against him, it is a fight for survival. Even as the stakes get more and more bizarre (there’s a significant chunk of time where multiple heroes are trying to restrain Thanos’ hand from closing) it still led to some of the best clashes and visuals in the MCU.

Beyond the large-scale battles, the film does indulge in a bit of mistaken-identity superhero-on-superhero dueling, but this is kinda to be expected. It’s all the same snappy one-liners and quips we’ve seen before, as the various grand-egoed members of the MCU get to know each other for the first time. But with the exception of one extremely annoying moment involving Drax and a bag of space-nuts, the film eases up significantly on the bathos of the previous films, which – compared to an equally high-stakes, but ultimately much sillier, film like Thor: Ragnarok, is a welcome improvement. When Asgard, full of a bunch of nameless and faceless people we don’t care about, is threatened with destruction, it’s okay if we spend 40 minutes joking around with orgyist Jeff Goldblum and violent drunk Tessa Thompson in the garbage heap at the end of the universe. But if you laugh in the face of a dude who not only wants to slaughter trillions of sentient beings, but is gathering the magical means to make it happen, you kinda deserve your fate. At one point, Thor has a genuinely tense monologue in which he reflects on his long-term survival (we even get an exact age for him!). Hemsworth nails the moment, and it’s nice to see that this demigod has dropped the bombast and embraced the tragedy. He gets how important this is, and he’s acting accordingly.

The script is also full of some solid thematic and narrative parallels – characters demanding (and refusing) similar sacrifices of each other, and changing their minds or having their choices suddenly reversed due to external factors. There’s not a lot I can say here without spoiling key moments, but suffice to say, the script plays a bit like a novel, wherein all of these heroes are dealing with the fundamental question of what it means to be a hero, and what it means to sacrifice one’s own life, or the life of a loved one, in the face of destruction this thorough and total. In short, they grapple with the needs of the many, even as the sole champions who stand a chance of protecting them. All of the good guys seem to err on the side of not trading lives, and the film seems content to let them wallow in this position even when it’s the most dangerous option available. And that’s where a lot of the film’s tension comes from. There are several moments where it seems as if Thanos’ plan could be derailed if only these heroes would act a bit less like…heroes. A few of them seem to get it. Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is evoking his best Doctor Who as he assures the audience that this is all part of the endgame. And you should trust that dude. He’s essentially a Time Lord at this point.

This is no secret war. There’s no S.H.I.E.L.D. hunkering down behind the scenes to wipe memories and clean up artifacts. Everyone’s fate is laid bare in the face of a hyperrationalist butcher who’s just waiting for the chance to snap his fingers and lay waste to the universe at random. The film has the good sense to treat this threat as genuinely terrifying. And yet, I can’t help but notice the offscreen ways in which it undermined its own tension. Remember the Nova Corps on Xandar, who – after a rough-and-tumble space battle with Ronan the Accuser – ended up in possession of the Power Stone at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy? Sorry, in a single throwaway line, the Maw tells us that Thanos “decimated” Xandar (apparently one-in-ten was enough for him there – *pedantic twirl*), presumably because no one was around to prevent the stone’s theft with an epic dance battle this time. And Thor? Saving a bunch of his own people from Ragnarok? Not for long. Just as Ripley spends all of Aliens saving Newt, only to have her die before the opening credits of the next film, Thor: Ragnarok will probably remain a better film if you just pretend this one doesn’t exist. But with all of these off-screen reversals of previous films in mind (despite Marvel’s likely-futile efforts to keep Phase 4 of the MCU a secret until next year), it’s hard not to think that this ending could be undone with a single line of dialogue, or flick of the magic wrist.

But who knows. Dour cliffhangers are hard to pull off, but my reaction to them has generally been positive. In the case of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (to which I suspect this film may invite comparison), I said the film has sufficient thematic depth to stand on its own even if the Abramsverse retreats from it in some future installment (and Abrams at least had the good sense to leave the Planet Vulcan spaghettified). Ditto Empire Strikes Back, obviously. Hell, I even enjoyed the second Pirates of the Caribbean film despite its explicitly-stated intention to reverse the on-screen death of Captain Jack Sparrow, which had occurred not five minutes earlier. I won’t pretend my reaction to this sort of ending is rational or consistent, but I will say that this one bummed me out (and literally haunted my dreams) in a way that felt like a deliberate choice. And if the Russo Bros and their corporate overlords allow some or all of the consequences of this film to hold steady, I expect I’ll have greater respect for what they’ve accomplished here. But I really can’t evaluate this film on that basis. For what it is, even renouncing all outside knowledge, Avengers: Infinity War is ambitious, narratively complex, and generally delivers on its promises.

But it is a true sequel, insofar as it has little time to add emotional depth to any of its characters. Like a late Harry Potter film, it trusts its audience to care just enough about its characters going in, since it has precious little time to hand out moments of humanity: Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle) hanging up on a holographic General Ross (William Hurt), who’s giving him feckless grief over the now thoroughly-irrelevant Sokovia Accords. Wanda and Vision trying their best at a May/December, MagicLady/Cyborg romance, including a Scottish hideaway together, which is sweeter than it has any right to be. Bruce Banner reuniting with Natasha (Scarlett Johansson), and the two scarcely sharing a word past “Hi, Nat”, but a look that suggests there’s more to say if they ever get the time. And Bruce himself finally finding time to deal with the consequences of his two-year Hulkatus between Ultron and Ragnarok, which works surprisingly well. Everyone fights – even the ones who don’t get much else to do. There’s a lot here, and while I feel a bit troubled and indignant in advance about the ending, I’m not sure how fair that really is. Over in DC-land (where Wonder Woman is the only thing they haven’t f’d up since Christopher Nolan stopped directing), Justice League strove – mostly unsuccessfully – for this kind of depth, and that film failed because it made almost none of the competent preparation necessary to earn those moments. If nothing else, the MCU has earned this. And for now, I think I can give them the benefit of the doubt. Then again, I regretted my 8/10 Ultron review within a couple months, so we’ll see what happens.

FilmWonk rating: 7 out of 10

Nicholas Stoller’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (presented by 10 Years Ago: Films in Retrospective)

This review originally appeared as a guest post on 10 Years Ago: Films in Retrospective, a film site in which editor Marcus Gorman and various contributors revisit a movie on the week of its tenth anniversary. This retro review will be a bit more free-form, recappy, and profanity-laden than usual.

This time in 2008, I was studying abroad in Moscow. It was easy to see American movies dubbed in Russian, but there were only a handful of options for viewing them in their original language, and the only one I’m sure was totally kosher was a tiny theater attached to an international business hotel that I didn’t learn about until my last month there. So I saw two films, twice each: Iron Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. These films were each enjoyable in their own right (and I’ll be covering the other one for 10YA in a couple of weeks), but they also hold a special place in my heart for being the most high-quality taste of home that I enjoyed while I was across the pond. An American superhero film (that would end up launching a cinematic universe), and a sudden expansion of my interest in the comedic chops of Jason Segel, whom I’d only seen previously in a recurring role as an overbearing boyfriend in the short-lived Judd Apatow series Undeclared (which also introduced the likes of Jay Baruchel and Seth Rogen). Given the subject matter of this film, I considered the possibility that Segel may just be uniquely suited for this particular character (which would later be confirmed by my obsessive viewing of How I Met Your Mother). Segel plays the occasionally self-loathing man-child who wears his heart on his sleeve (and occasionally, bears his entire soul – and naked body – for the camera). The opening montage is almost a Children of Men-level class in speedy plausible exposition. As Cake’s “Love You Madly” plays, Peter Bretter (Segel) flexes his pecs in the mirror, literally congratulates himself, then proceeds to eat a gargantuan mixing bowl of Froot Loops while watching Billy Bush on the E! channel explain that his girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) is an actress on a popular SVU-type show (Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime), for which Peter composes the musical score. A bevvy of personalized calendars and mugs and other crap showcase the insufferability of their long-term couplehood, as the E! channel charges on. The next story is about Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), a Bonoesque do-gooder lothario with a content-free, feel-good environmental anthem called “Do Something” which plays as Peter frantically cleans up his apartment and showers (for a second time?) before Sarah gets home. I’ll go ahead and say in advance: All of the original songs in this film are outstanding, and they’re one of the major reasons why I was so pleased to see the Snow character return in Get Him to the Greek. Sarah leads off with, “Peter, as you know, I love you…very much.” He immediately realizes what’s up, and drops his towel in panic. Now it’s time for the naked breakup scene, and Bell and Segel absolutely nail it – this is the perfect mix of awkwardness and familiarity that comes of a long-term couple quarreling. Sarah has already decided that the breakup is a done deal, but she still cares about his feelings. Peter is still acting like this is a snap decision that he can maybe, possibly, desperately talk her out of. Peter leans in for a close hug (again, she is the only one wearing clothes). Sarah gets a pained expression on her face during the naked embrace, as if she’s briefly, painfully enjoying it one last time before revealing…that there’s someone else. She’s been cheating on him. And she tearfully departs.

The next scene finds Peter with his brother Brian (Bill Hader), showcasing his pain and trying desperately to find a stranger to have sex with. He puts some very awkward moves on – holy lord, is that June Diane Raphael? – and then we flash forward to the pair of them in post-coital bliss. He flashes back to happy times with Sarah (more on this later), and cries. We see several more of these dubious hookups (including one with Carla Gallo, also from Undeclared, who offers to let him gag her). And next we’re in the studio, where Peter is scoring Crime Scene, and proceeds to freak out and bust several gashes into the projection screen with a music stand. As a friend of several former movie theater employees, I happen to know this is several thousand dollars’ worth of vandalism. The producer assures him he’s not getting paid for the day. Later, Brian checks in with Peter, who is burning Sarah-memorabilia, and starts with “Look, Liz and I, we think the world of Sarah…”, before kindly suggesting that Sarah “always acted, you know, like a little bitch”. Peter nearly cries before pushing back hard in defense of his ex, insulting Brian’s wife, and Hader’s ensuing monologue (“I have no qualms with stickin’ you!”) is thoroughly quotable. With the exception of the music-stand freakout, is all pretty classic post-breakup stuff. For people hung up on their exes, their friends and family serve a singular role – to try and help them move on, even as they’re stupidly trying to live in the past… And also not push too hard, because these idiots might get back together like idiots, and it’ll be awkward if you said too many horrible things about their prior relationship before that happens. Having been on both sides of this exchange during my 20s, I can relate. Anyway, Brian suggests that Peter take a vacation, and Peter decides to go to Hawaii (to an Oahu resort that Sarah told him about).

And now comes the character that drew me to writing this as a 10YA review: Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis). At the time, praised Kunis’ performance in my year-end awards, describing her as follows:

“I’m surprised to be putting Mila Kunis on a best actress list, being that I only knew her previously as that hot, dumb girl from That ’70s Show. Jason Segel’s script casts Rachel as his version of the perfect rebound girl. The wrong spin on this character could have turned Rachel into the random front-desk hottie (a role that anyone could’ve believed Kunis in), but her performance completely elevates this character.”

Ouch. As I’ve previously noted, my standards for female characters have grown up a bit in the past decade, and I realize now that calling someone “the perfect rebound girl”, even as a conceptual description, is – at minimum – damning with faint praise. Will this character, and Kunis’ performance, hold up? Or was I just praising a character who was designed to be an object of shallow and situational appeal? After rewatching the film, I have an answer: Rachel is still a good character, and this is still a good performance. There is a lot of depth to Rachel that we plumb over the course of the film, but what really elevates her is the character’s level of self-awareness, and the script’s level of self-awareness about who and what she is. Rachel works in customer service, so much of her politeness and cheer toward Peter is simply what’s expected of her as a condition of her employment – and the same behavior that we see her repeatedly exhibit toward other random guests. But she lets her humanity slip through immediately during their first interaction, as Sarah approaches the desk, and Peter confesses to her that Sarah is his ex-girlfriend, and they just broke up three weeks ago. And all of a sudden, what was purely a transactional interaction becomes a real human moment between the two of them. Rachel responds by not only covering for him, but also doing the utterly insane thing of comping him the $6,000-per-night Kapua Suite for 4 nights. She does him this kindness because – even having just met him – she thinks it’s pretty fucked up that Sarah is already at the resort with some other guy. That guy, of course, is Aldous Snow, one of the best parts of this film. More on him later.

And so the zany sitcom premise of the film is set: Peter is vacationing at the resort where his ex-girlfriend is shacked up with the guy she was cheating on him with. And the film really piles it on in the next scene, as Matthew the Waiter (Jonah Hill) sets Peter up at a table at the hotel restaurant…right next to Sarah and Aldous. An awkward and hostile chat ensues, and Sarah icily tells him that she hopes he has a really good time, and he should stay. And lo, Peter hits the bar and gets hammered. He meets his new vacation-friends: Dwayne the Bartender (Da’Vone McDonald) and Darald, a recent ex-virgin newlywed (Jack McBrayer). Rachel shows up and mocks him a bit for crying in his room, and sweetly tells him that Sarah’s show sucks. Smash-cut to Peter in his room, playing a drunken (and prescient) rendition of The Muppet Show theme. A double breakfast-cocktail later, Peter hits the beach for a surfing lesson with Kunu (né Chuck) (Paul Rudd). Chuck gives him a series of fairly useless pointers that he go against his instincts and do nothing. As a veteran of several years of snowboarding and exactly one surfing lesson, I can relate to this nonsense. If you’re considering surfing, just know that your arms and shoulders will be noodles before you’re done, and it’s 80% paddling and 20% falling off your board. But Chuck is at least good for a few quotable knowledge-bombs. “If life gives you lemons, just say ‘fuck the lemons!’ and bail.” Sure, Paul.

Peter has a Skype call with Brian and his wife Liz. Let me just pause here and note: Movies in 2008 still treated video chats as some sort of wild, magical future tech, and accordingly, cinematic depictions of these were always A) faked, and B) 100% clear, hi-res, and latency-free. In the ensuing decade, Skype (or Facetime or Hangouts, if you will) are essentially just as crappy as they were then, and I’m officially annoyed by this fakery. This is some good improv, but oof – the tech did not age well. But Liz encourages Peter to ask out Rachel. Peter hits the hotel luau and compliments Rachel’s dress, but chickens out before going any further. Then Matthew the Waiter pulls a move that would absolutely, 100% get a resort employee fired in real life: he calls out Aldous Snow and asks him to come up on-stage and sing them a song. Snow obliges (after briefly whinging that “this is like work for me…”, which – it is). Then he performs a downright invasive sex ballad called “Inside You“. Quick aside here. For the past decade, including during the most recent viewing, I understood the first two lines of this song to be,

“Oh, these ancient skies,
Avec these wandering eyes…”

Avec is French for “with”, and it seemed in keeping with Aldous Snow to randomly drop in a word of French just to sound très chic. But it turns out I was wrong. The actual lyric is something even more insipid:

“Old as Ancient Skies,
I’ve had these wandering eyes”

Old. As Ancient Skies. Aldous Snow is a sex poet.

Peter wanders off to cry on the beach, and makes another vacation-friend, Kemo (Taylor Wily), a tower of a man (the actor was a sumo wrestler for three years) who informs him that the whole resort knows about the Sarah Marshall situation (since he won’t shut up about it). Kemo offers him a hug, then invites him to help the kitchen staff slaughter a pig for the night’s luau. Peter goes through with it while weeping profusely. This is one of many rapid-fire escalations of violence in the film (a weirdly common trope in 2000s comedy), and while this sort of beat is hit-or-miss for me, they all pretty much land here. Butchering an animal apparently stoked Peter’s courage, and he charges off to ask out Rachel. And she’s into it! She invites him to a nighttime beach party, he starts some awkward back-and-forth over whether or not it’s a date, and she tells him it’s all good – you either want to go or you don’t, now just change your shirt and come on. There’s an awkward beat as he realizes his shirt (which is somehow not covered in pig blood) sucks, but on the other hand, Rachel telling him to change his shirt is a total girlfriend move! But…then they’re on the beach together, so whatever.

They chat (alone) about what brought her to Oahu from the mainland – the answer is a surfer dude who ended up cheating on her. Now she’s in a hospitality career rut that she doesn’t feel any urgent need to resolve. They discuss his career – and she immediately cottons onto the fact that he hates his job as the composer for Crime Scene. This is teetering on the edge of Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory, but honestly, they both sell this level of untoward familiarity with their performances. She can tell he hates it because…he’s making it obvious that he hates it. Peter then pitches the film’s finale, a Dracula puppet musical that will ultimately serve as Segel’s (and director Nicholas Stoller’s) audition for The Muppets. This was apparently a real-life passion project of Segel’s that predated this film by a decade, and all I can say is, I’m so happy that this made it into the film. In the same way that 2008’s Role Models ends with an epic LARPing battle between cosplaying elves and wizards, comedy is best when it it incorporates the kind of weird, fun real-world stuff that comedians and theatre people [read: nerds] are into. I know a lot of people in this community in Seattle, and while they’re hardly monolithic with their interests, I can assure you there are few among them who wouldn’t be excited by the words “Dracula puppet musical”. No people like show people.

“Why Dracula?”, Rachel asks.
“Because he’s a man like anyone else,” says Peter, “He just wants to be loved. And every time he gets close to a human woman, he ends up smothering and killing her, which is a feeling…I am familiar with.”

Rachel doesn’t respond, and instead puts on a thousand-yard stare as she realizes her ex is walking toward them on the beach, and a hilarious, foul-mouthed group melee ensues, complete with Peter getting sucker-punched in the face by the cocktail waiter from the breakfast buffet, because everyone on this island knows each other, and they all work at the same resort. Rachel and Peter – who are now absolutely, 100% on a date – end up at a tiki bar, Lazy Joe’s, where the men’s room includes a wall of photos of topless women, Rachel among them. “I hate it so much,” she says bemusedly, “[My ex] made me do it.” Which is…a minor plot hole, I suppose? Whether or not she thinks this is a date, I’m not sure why Rachel would bring Peter to this bar, knowing what awaits him as soon as he heads off to pee. But whatever. Chekhov’s wall tit photo will be important later. At Rachel’s urging (and public volunteering), Peter steps onstage and plays a song from his Dracula puppet musical, and it’s amazing. Back in the car at the resort, a debate ensues as to whether or not this was a date. Peter’s opening statement is to say he had a really good time and lean in for a goodnight kiss. Rachel’s rebuttal is to skillfully dodge, telling him she doesn’t want to complicate things. Rachel wins. Every single one of Peter’s vacation-friends at the bar agree, including Dwayne the Bartender, who flat-out tells Peter that Rachel works in customer service, took him out for charity, and that he probably thinks strippers like him too. All of this works nicely. It’s pretty clear to me as an audience member that Rachel is crossing some personal lines here that go beyond customer service. But at the same time, Peter and his friends are wise to have a bit of humility about the whole situation, because not only is he fresh out of a relationship and in possession of some very poor judgment, but Rachel is a resort employee, and he is hitting on her at work. Play. It. Cool.

The next day, Peter runs into Sarah and she shares some news: Crime Scene has been canceled. She initially repeats the same line of peppy bullshit that she had fed to Aldous: that this is what she wanted, that she’s been waiting for the right moment to break into features, etc. Peter tells her this isn’t The View, and they can have an honest conversation about this if she wants. She confesses that she’s pretty freaked out and afraid of being forgotten if she steps out of the spotlight. Bell really sells this moment – perhaps because the actress went through something similar post-Veronica Mars – but also because it’s once again immediately clear that these two used to be a couple, and are still in each other’s heads and can speak frankly when needed. Buying the intimate history of these two is a huge part of why this movie works so well, and these actors repeatedly pull it off. Bravo. A few more amusing, rapid-fire comedy moments ensue – a crass Skype chat with Brian and Liz, Aldous giving sex lessons to Newlywed Darald with some giant chesspieces (and honestly, Aldous seems like someone who gives unsolicited sex tips to everyone he meets, so Darald has picked a natural tutor).

Peter greets Rachel at the front desk, and she asks him out to Lazy Joe’s. He responds awkwardly (thinking things were still romantically ambiguous between them), but instead invites her out to hike at Laie Point, which…Rachel has heard it’s a pain-in-the-ass, but she leaves the desk to go do immediately? What exactly is her work schedule? Whatever. They wander up to the cliff’s edge overlooking the surf, and have a romantic moment. Rachel asks whether he’s going to finish the Dracula musical now that his TV show is kaput. He says he’s not sure. Then he attempts to relate to her breakup situation, suggesting that she was hurt just like she was, and perhaps that’s why she hasn’t gone back to school. But maybe it’s good that they were hurt like that, he suggests. “Like there’s nothing left to be afraid of?” she asks. Again, these two are being excessively familiar with each other, but it works in that rom-com sort of way, since they’re both crossing each other’s personal lines at about the same pace. Anyway, it’s all leading up to them both jumping off the cliff, as we know they will. She tells him (metaphorically) to jump, and that he’ll be fine. He leans in for a kiss approximately 12 hours after previously being declined, and she…jumps off the cliff into the water. He flips out, botches his own jump, then (after much frantic coaching from below) leapfrogs off the rock. Nice editing note here: While the music is remaining rather tense throughout this, the moment he leaps, we get a quick shot of Rachel cackling in the water. We know he’s made it. The tension is defused and we can chill out for a second or two before they swim up to each other and share an adrenaline-fueled kiss. As I watched this, I thought the actors had done the jump for real, but…nope. Stunt doubles. I should mention, however, one of the other things I’ve done in the past decade is get married, and while on my honeymoon in Hawaii, I did perform two similar jumps (one from an oceanside cliff, one from a waterfall into a freshwater pool), partially inspired by this movie. It’s great fun, although like Peter, I only did each one after watching someone else survive it first.

The next day, Kemo wakes Peter up to tell him he’s being booted from the Kapua Suite for then 14-year-old Dakota Fanning and her entourage (which is kind of a hilarious image), but that they’ve found him another room. And…more sitcom hilarity ensues, as it’s the room right next door to Sarah and Aldous. Sarah goes to the front desk to inquire about a sushi place (Rachel responds purely in customer-service mode), and then the two share a bit of intense dialogue about Rachel keeping Peter company (and also about who’s prettier). This whole interaction is a bit odd, and Sarah completes the scene crying. Rachel clearly “wins” the moment, but she also intensely exhales, realizing what an awkward work-life knot she’s tied herself into. Meanwhile, Peter runs into Aldous on a surfboard, and Aldous reveals that he’s heard one of the Dracula tracks amid the “interminable dross” on Sarah’s iPod, and says it reminds him of “a dark, gothic Neil Diamond”. Peter shudders as he realizes he likes Aldous, despite hating him on so many levels. And Aldous casually reveals that he was sleeping with Sarah for a year while she was with Peter. Peter has a tantrum and splashes Aldous until he paddles away, and then proceeds to catch a wave and crash directly back into him, impaling his leg on some coral. Peter passes out, and the trio wakes up in Sarah’s hotel room, with Aldous sleeping off some anesthesia. And now it’s time for some real talk.

This scene is magnificent, because up until this point, Sarah has been the villain of this romance. She cheated! She dumped him. This breakup is her fault and how dare she! But the fundamental truth that this scene highlights is that while every breakup has a concrete list of relationship crimes that can be pinned on either party (and a yearlong affair is a big one), no relationship ever dissolves in a way that’s completely one party’s fault. It takes two…to stop a tango? Sarah initially tries to spare Peter’s feelings, then finally lets him have it.

“Fine. Cutting the bullshit. It got really hard to keep taking care of you…when you stopped taking care of yourself. I tried to get you out of the house. I tried to get you off your little island you loved so much, the couch. You didn’t wanna see the light of day…”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t end up being who we thought I was gonna be, you know? I think if you had just, maybe tried harder.”

“I TRIED. You have no idea how hard I tried, Peter. I talked to a therapist. I talked to my mother. I read every book possible. I took love seminars. I took sex seminars. None of it worked. None of it made a difference to you. And I couldn’t drown with you anymore.

Don’t you dare sit there and tell me that I didn’t try. I did. You were just too stupid to notice.”

Bell’s performance is merciless in this scene, and what’s clear, as with all asymmetrical breakups, is that Sarah has had plenty of time to reflect on how dysfunctional their relationship was becoming even as she was seeding its dissolution. Meanwhile, Peter is scrambling to figure out where it went wrong after years of apathy and neglect that he clearly didn’t bother reflecting on until this moment. He hid inside his bitterness and jealousy and used it as an excuse not to examine his own behavior. We only saw hints of this at the beginning (the giant bowl of cereal and TV-binging), but as I hear Sarah’s assessment of Peter, and watch her words strike his face like a hammer as he stays silent, I know she’s speaking the truth. These two shouldn’t be together anymore. But they both made this breakup happen.

They could just part as friends and go figure their own shit out, but this wouldn’t be the rom-com classic that it is without some proper self-destruction. So the two couples head out to dinner at the only restaurant at the resort, and naturally run into each other. Peter casually invites Sarah and Aldous to join their table, and before either of their dates can object, Sarah accepts the invitation. Aldous muses in disbelief – “This is actually happening. We’re going to let…this…happen”. The four proceed to have a fourth-wall-breaking argument that seems to be about the movie Pulse (about a murderous cell phone), which Bell actually starred in, and is – as the characters agree – a terrible horror film. Then the party gets hammered (minus Aldous, who is 7 years sober), and Aldous preaches about the merits of casual sex (which he literally describes as “Lose yourself in fuck”), and a very drunk Sarah starts biting him with withering sarcasm. Peter and Rachel are making eyes the whole time (and miming mockery of Aldous’ endless repartée), and end up flirting over a slice of chocolate cake. And then it gets a bit nasty. I won’t recap every line here, but Aldous delivers the killing blow to Matthew the Waiter, who asks whether the rocker has gotten around to listening to the demo tape he not-so-subtlely dropped off earlier in the film (“Oh, no. I was gonna listen to that, but then I just carried on living my life.”) Ouch. Jonah Hill does a decent job with the waiter’s creepy obsession, but Matthew was literally rubbing club soda on Aldous’ crotch a moment earlier, and he should definitely be shitcanned for all of this. Meanwhile, Peter and Rachel head back to his room to have sex, and more R-rated sitcommery ensues as Sarah hears their moans of ecstasy through the wall. She wakes up Aldous for a quick sleepy romp, and proceeds to give a ridiculous, screaming performance of an orgasm. Peter and Rachel quickly yes-and this and start hollering back, and finally the only one who’s sick of this is Aldous, who pushes Sarah off him and chides her for her “ghastly performance”. They throw some more barbs at each other, and a somewhat pained Aldous says he’s leaving her in the morning.

“I hate your music,” says Sarah.
“Yeah, well, I fucked the housekeeper…the other day,” Aldous retorts, and wins. As much as I expect I’d hate Aldous in real life, he is pretty freaking cool.

Peter and Rachel have a nice moment before she leaves for work, and he proceeds to have a delightful day by himself at the resort. He runs into Aldous in the lobby and bids him farewell – and Aldous reveals that he and Sarah broke up, incepting a terrible idea into his head. And off he goes. Cut to Peter and Sarah sitting on her bed, and – I’ll cut to the chase. She says she’s made a terrible mistake and weepily throws herself at him. Clothes start coming off, and the two have some awkward breakup fellatio before he realizes this is all a mistake, and screams in her face that she’s the “goddamned devil”. This scene rang true, and it’s an unsettling parallel to their argument above. As with the breakup, it takes two to tango, and it takes two to have self-destructive breakup sex. On his way out, he screams at a wedding party for their lack of originality, then heads to the front desk to face the music. He tells Rachel that “some stuff happened” with Sarah. Kunis’ face becomes more and more intense as she demands he tell him exactly what he did. He awkwardly explains, and she sends him on his way, thanking him for staying at Turtle Bay (ouch). They have an honest moment.

“Listen to me, Peter. I was a mess, too- I understand that, okay? But it does not excuse you acting like a complete asshole…You should not be with anybody, right now. Anybody.”
“I know… I know that there is something here. I know I wasn’t wrong about that. And yes, it’s only been four days, but I know you feel it, too.”
[beat]
“I need you to leave. Do not write me, do not call me, do not email me. Peter, I need you to go.”
“I won’t bother you anymore…I’m sorry.”

Peter leaves. But first, he heads over to Lazy Joe’s and steals the topless photo of Rachel, getting his ass kicked by Joe for the trouble. He walks back in to an objecting Rachel, slaps the photo down on the front desk, then goes on his way. Rachel is visibly shocked. Her resolve is steady, but she softens a bit in spite of herself as she watches Peter hug his vacation-friends goodbye across the lobby.

Peter goes home to L.A. and has a brief funk, but then continues working on his Dracula musical. After a weeks-long creative montage, we cut back to Rachel on Oahu, receiving an invitation in the mail. No note – just a flyer. With some encouragement from Dwayne the Bartender, she appears to be considering it. The musical goes off without a hitch (including some hilarious scream-acting by Bill Hader), and of course, Rachel is in the audience. Peter and Rachel reunite afterward, and she reveals that she’s back on the mainland for good, to go back to school. There’s a bit more accidental full frontal dong, a sweet reunion kiss, and that’s the show.

What I said about this film at the time is that it has entered my canon of classic romances alongside Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. What was unclear to be until now was just how much these films had in common. Beyond merely exploring a relationship through the lens of a breakup, peppered throughout both films are flashbacks to the relationship itself as some ironic or contrasting twist occurs in the present day, reframing either moment with the benefit of hindsight. In FSM, these are mere flashes (seconds at a time), each tied to a realization. Peter realizes that Sarah never liked or understood his puppet musical. Sarah realizes Peter didn’t like any of the tacky crap she made him wear. Peter realizes he was always shuffled to the side to accommodate Sarah’s fame (“ANDRE THE GIANT: OUTTA THE SHOT, PLEASE!”). Even as we’re watching the pair of them come to terms with their breakup (which is, at its heart, what this film is about), we’re learning along with the characters exactly why their relationship didn’t work. And when their rebound blows up in their face, the audience feels every bit of it. These two don’t belong together. And even amid a lot of funny and uncomfortable stuff, here’s why. The movie also really nails a rebound romance in a way that feels human. Nobody asks to be somebody else’s rebound, and yet, anyone who dates a new person is running this risk. Some rebounds are just a distraction, some turn into the next big thing, and in either case, both people involved have lives outside of the other person’s relationship baggage. Kunis’ performance here is outstanding, but she’s not enough on her own to make this film work. That comes from just how thoroughly this film takes a madcap sitcom premise and manages to tell a weighty, emotional story of three relationships (exactly what Definitely, Maybe failed to do!) while remaining unrelentingly hilarious. This film is still a delight. And now I’m off to listen to some puppet songs.

FilmWonk rating: 8.5 out of 10

“I Feel Pretty” (dir. Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein) – Body-unswapping.

I Feel Pretty earns a lot of points for good intentions. It is a fundamentally well-meaning and goodhearted film, centered on a lead character, Renee (Amy Schumer) who – through the lens of magical realism – is learning a lesson about self-acceptance and self-esteem that the world could surely use more of. It’s just a shame that it used such a banal, low-stakes filter of capitalism and high fashion to tell that story. Renee works at an haute cosmetics company, Lily LeClaire (whose retired eponymous founder is played by Lauren Hutton). LeClaire’s granddaughter Avery – played by Academy Award winner Michelle Williams (along with her My Week With Marilyn voice) – is taking the reins of the company as it makes a push to expand to the Target and Walmart crowd with some lower-cost makeup. And in comes Renee, who previously worked in a Chinatown basement as part of the company’s ramshackle two-person website team, who decides that her greatest dream is to work as a receptionist at the company’s Fifth Avenue skyscraper. I have a number of credulity problems with this setup, but let’s move on to Renee herself.

Renee is a woman who is deeply insecure about her appearance and body. This is illustrated in classic “show, don’t tell” fashion with an opening montage that starts with an awkward first-time sortie to SoulCycle, climaxes with a pants-ripping, vulva-bruising fall, and finishes with Renee standing in her underwear in front of the mirror (framed as an unblinking stare almost directly at the audience), nary a drop of makeup on her face, looking dejected and disgusted with herself. I’m coming at this film as a follow-on and attempted modernization of innumerable body-swapping and slapstick comedies of the turn of the century (everything from Shallow Hal to The Hot Chick) that frequently used or abused the bodies of women – especially women considered overweight or Hollywood-overweight – as comedy fodder. I’d call it a qualified success in that arena, but even as a straight drama about a woman struggling with her body image and self-esteem, Schumer also performs admirably in this film. As she debates with her friends Vivian (Aidy Bryant) and Jane (Busy Phillips) about the efficacy of profile details in online dating (which they’re somehow doing as a trio) as opposed to merely taking a sufficiently hot profile picture, it feels like the film is posturing, certainly, but it also feels like a genuine expression from Renee’s experience through Schumer’s sincerity. Online dating is a frustrating experience until the moment it isn’t, and it’s something women and others alike bitch to their friends about. Fair enough.

And then Renee smacks her head. Really hard, during a second fall at SoulCycle (which is getting a lot of injuries in return for its product placement buck). And suddenly, she is suffering from a traumatic delusion that she has transformed into a gorgeous, unrecognizable version of herself. To be clear, Schumer is still playing Renee at this point – there is no actual body-swap happening here. But the film essentially acts like a body-swapping movie from this point on, with Amy acting like the “hot chick” that she now sees in herself, and the world delivering some impressive (but not, like, The Secret-level) return on her confidence. She gets a new boyfriend, Ethan (Rory Scovel), and of course she gets the new job at Lily LeClaire, because she wanders into the lobby-adjacent conference room where Avery the CEO does all her most important work in full view of the public, and decides that she has to have it. To be fair, she offers a few tangible pointers on what “real women” will think of Lily LeClaire’s new product line, soon to be slumming it at the big box stores – but this is essentially a simplified version of the fictionalized Vogue from The Devil Wears Prada  – literally everyone working at this place is a model, and she’s the fish-out-of-water amongst them. And on that note, let’s cut back to reality for a second.

Lily LeClaire is a ridiculous company. It is possible that between The Devil Wears Prada and certain, other family-owned real-world companies headquartered on Fifth Avenue (and/or Pennsylvania Avenue), I’m simply unprepared to believe that this collection of Manhattan elitists perched amid the stacks of pane glass and oozing, gaudy pastels could be led by anyone other than a high-functioning sociopath. This is high fashion and high finance. These people have investors to answer to, marketing teams and focus groups that don’t bend to personal whims or hunches, and even if they didn’t, these people grew up among New York’s pampered elite, and they aren’t “just like us”. And for a movie to not only breathlessly argue that the opposite is true, but also stake its entire emotional climax on it, was such a severe leap from reality that I almost dismissed the movie for it. There’s one fictional person that ultimately prevented me from doing so, and that was Tony Stark. Because if I can accept a weapons’ manufacturer CEO going on a personal journey that ended with him promising not to build weapons anymore – and in the process, become a superhero – I suppose I can accept a woman going on a journey of self-acceptance that has the minor hiccup of briefly derailing a product launch. They both exist in the same world of magical realism and wish fulfillment (in one instance, Black Widow literally resets Hawkeye by smacking him in the head), and if nothing else, the home-game version of this journey is a bit more doable than the superhero stuff. You can’t be like Iron Man, but you can certainly feel a bit better about yourself. And that’s enough complaining. In the end, the logic centers of my brain quieted to a dull roar, and I felt every note of tension as Renee persisted in her delusional hotness, with the audience faintly dreading the painful moment when the spell must break (or when someone would get Renee some medical attention, because seriously, her condition is literally a sign of dementia or traumatic brain injury okay shut up now Glenn). Because as long as she only likes her own appearance because she believes it’s been magically altered (to a standard of beauty that is equally arbitrary, cruel, and unattainable), then she doesn’t really like herself, does she? The film expends some clever dialogue in order to maximally delay this moment (including one particularly poignant scene with Boyfriend Ethan), but fundamentally, we need to see the other shoe drop. The movie doesn’t work without it.

And we do. I don’t mind spoiling that, because honestly, if we didn’t, then – like Shallow Hal, which ends with Jack Black pretending that he finds a literally inhuman-looking Gwyneth Paltrow in a terribly-rendered fatsuit attractive – I Feel Pretty would be a profoundly cruel and cynical exercise. For the audience, for Renee, and for the woman at SoulCycle to whom she repeatedly compares herself (real-life model Emily Ratajkowski), who has just as much right to feel dejected, unattractive, and unwanted as anyone else. For all of its flaws and oddities, this movie fundamentally understands the point it’s trying to make (even if the trailer made it look like the just the sort of material that it was trying to transcend). It ends with Schumer standing up and making a TED-talk (or Kyle from South Park)-style speech explaining what she learned today. And what she learned is, “You know what? We’re all okay.” She makes nice with her friends, she sells some cheap cosmetics, and we all go home feeling a bit nicer. The execution is a bit ridiculous, but the message is quite alright.

FilmWonk rating: 6 out of 10

FilmWonk Podcast – Episode #130 – “Blockers” (dir. Kay Cannon), “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (dir. Rian Johnson)

Poster for "Blockers"

In this week’s podcast, Glenn and Daniel explore a comedy about preventing teenagers from getting laid. And then, appropriately, they spend 40 minutes of their Saturday night dissecting Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a film which Glenn praised effusively back in December, and which Daniel only got around to seeing this week, and called “a solid 5 out of 10”. The spoiler warning comes right away with this one, and may the Force be with us all for the first and only time that Count Dooku will ever be mentioned on this podcast (56:52).

May contain NSFW language.

Still from "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

FilmWonk rating (Blockers): 6.5 out of 10
FilmWonk rating (Star Wars: The Last Jedi): 8.5/10 (Glenn), 5/10 (Daniel)

Show notes:

Listen above, or download: Blockers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)