Seen: Thursday, March 27, 2008
Even when Steve Martin in bad he is good. But in My Blue Heaven's cleanly symmetrical framing of suburbia being crashed by a very bad New York Italian-American accent (Steve Martin), he is just plain great. Rick Moranis (also infallible in my book) plays alongside Martin as his putzy FBI guard dog, while he continues to trudge through the mundaneness of a world without street attitude. Martin procures a price sticker gun at the grocery store, his only manageable act of defiance; a mound of steaks under a buck pile up at the end of the cashier's conveyor belt for a bit of silent slapstick, while Joan Cusack stomps around in her classic mad and appalled way. You can certainly ask for more in a comedy, but this is pretty happy middle ground.Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! (2004)
Seen: Friday, March 28, 2008
Yes, it's a teen movie. Yes, it's melodramatic and fluffy at times. But ooh-wee, it is much fun, which cannot only be credited to Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!'s great script, but to its headlining costar Topher Grace. We don't see enough of him, that's for sure. Back in February I caught In Good Company (2004), a story that delightfully plops into the corporate rivalry of a fifty-something veteran ad man (played beautifully by Dennis Quaid, in an understated comic role) and his smooth-skinned, fresh from college boss (Topher Grace), who's young enough to be the elder's son. This, and his role as the uptight, slightly effeminate supermarket manager in Win A Date, shows Grace at his best: sympathetic and self-deprecating. One scene says it all, as his thin, pale bodice attempts chopping wood next to the tanned hunk of Alpha-male muscle, Josh Duhamel--no shirts required. Its been too long now to remember more detail, but the great thing about Win A Date is that it also doesn't take itself too seriously, bouncing along with a knowingness of its tweeny categorization.
