(Mark Waters, 2004)
Mean Girls does something extremely difficult with seeming ease. It manages to be witty, subversive and self-aware without ever compromising on how well it works as a teen comedy. This is largely down to a terrific script by Tina Fey, but Waters' fleet direction and a brilliant cast do more than their share too.
Inspired by a non-fiction book on female social groups in High School and the damaging effects they can have, Fey's story follows the arrival of Cady Harron (Lindsay Lohan) to a pretty identikit movie High School in Illinois. She is quickly taken under the wing of a pair of outcasts, extravagantly camp Damian and sharp-tongued goth Janice (Lizzy Caplan) who sardonically run through the cliques dominating the school, centred around "the Plastics", a trio of glamorous, popular, bitchy girls led by Regina George (Rachel McAdams). After Regina befriends Cady, she hurts her by stealing a boy she likes. Cady's mission then is to infiltrate the Plastics and destroy them from the inside. But, in classic undercover cop movie fashion, while acting the part of a Plastic, Cady starts to actually become one, and it's hard to know where she ends and the Plastic begins.
The plotting is deft in the main storyline, and the characters register powerfully - McAdams make Regina a terrifyingly real little power-monger, while Lohan nicely plays Cady's corruption by the superficiality of the girls lives. But most of the gags - just as in Fey's great TV show, 30 Rock - are in the margins. Sight gags, throwaway lines, little character details: they mount up to give Mean Girls a density most high school comedies cannot approach.
This combination of genuine hilariousness and the truthful skewering of teen archetypes have made Mean Girls a modern classic. It's a shame that Waters has never done anything anywhere near as good, but also a tribute to the quality of Fey's script (she's also brilliant as Cady's geeky, concerned Maths teacher).
Showing posts with label Amanda Seyfreid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amanda Seyfreid. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 July 2015
Friday, 10 April 2015
WHILE WE'RE YOUNG
(Noah Baumbach, 2015)
This film has almost too many ideas. Baumbach wants to say things about ageing, culture, being hip and what that means, creativity, our attitude to art and who owns it, parenthood, friendship and marriage. And he does, but with so much going on, sometimes the film feels contradictory and even confused.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing; it means that While We're Young is never boring, and there are interesting things going on in most scenes. Not just thematically, either - Baumbach has always excelled at mixing comedy with drama, and while this is more comic than most of his work, it still contains a series of effective dramatic and emotional beats. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a New York couple in their early 40s who meet another couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) in their 20s, and this new friendship re-energises them. The younger couple seem everything they are not - generous, spontaneous, excited. They have democratic taste - when Driver plays Stiller "Eye of the Tiger", Stiller says, "I remember when this song was just considered 'bad.'", deliberately use retro technology (vinyl, VHS), refuse to look up facts that they can't remember on their smartphones, and shop in second-hand shops, while simultaneously exploiting technology in a casual way.
Knowing them sends the older couple - Stiller particularly - on a journey to try to recapture something they feel they may have lost, until they begin to see Driver's budding documentarian in a different light.
Baumbach is perhaps a little too forgiving of his male protagonists. Stiller's character here is basically an arsehole, and yet the film seems wholeheartedly in his corner in the eventual battle with Driver (who multiple characters claim is selfish and insufferable). And yet on occasion it seems self-aware enough to acknowledge that perhaps both these men are less than sympathetic. It is a thematically conflicted film, a by-product of its having a surfeit of themes. That doesn't matter so much when there is such richness of ancillary pleasures. There are a few great gags and comic scenes here, a few wicked barbs aimed at culture and bourgeois society and a clutch of fine performances. As is so often the case, Naomi Watts is the best thing in the film, and her reaction to finding herself in a hip-hop dance class is beautifully played. But Stiller, Driver and Seyfried are all good too, and though this may be minor Baumbach, that still makes it an essential film.
This film has almost too many ideas. Baumbach wants to say things about ageing, culture, being hip and what that means, creativity, our attitude to art and who owns it, parenthood, friendship and marriage. And he does, but with so much going on, sometimes the film feels contradictory and even confused.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing; it means that While We're Young is never boring, and there are interesting things going on in most scenes. Not just thematically, either - Baumbach has always excelled at mixing comedy with drama, and while this is more comic than most of his work, it still contains a series of effective dramatic and emotional beats. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a New York couple in their early 40s who meet another couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) in their 20s, and this new friendship re-energises them. The younger couple seem everything they are not - generous, spontaneous, excited. They have democratic taste - when Driver plays Stiller "Eye of the Tiger", Stiller says, "I remember when this song was just considered 'bad.'", deliberately use retro technology (vinyl, VHS), refuse to look up facts that they can't remember on their smartphones, and shop in second-hand shops, while simultaneously exploiting technology in a casual way.
Knowing them sends the older couple - Stiller particularly - on a journey to try to recapture something they feel they may have lost, until they begin to see Driver's budding documentarian in a different light.
Baumbach is perhaps a little too forgiving of his male protagonists. Stiller's character here is basically an arsehole, and yet the film seems wholeheartedly in his corner in the eventual battle with Driver (who multiple characters claim is selfish and insufferable). And yet on occasion it seems self-aware enough to acknowledge that perhaps both these men are less than sympathetic. It is a thematically conflicted film, a by-product of its having a surfeit of themes. That doesn't matter so much when there is such richness of ancillary pleasures. There are a few great gags and comic scenes here, a few wicked barbs aimed at culture and bourgeois society and a clutch of fine performances. As is so often the case, Naomi Watts is the best thing in the film, and her reaction to finding herself in a hip-hop dance class is beautifully played. But Stiller, Driver and Seyfried are all good too, and though this may be minor Baumbach, that still makes it an essential film.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
IN TIME
(Andrew Niccol, 2011)
It may be an obvious, somewhat leaden metaphor for the inequalities of the capitalist economies currently dominating the Western World, but the high concept which is the basis for In Time is also a deft recurrent narrative mechanism. Niccol's film is set in a near future where people have been engineered to cease ageing at 25, at which point an internal clock starts. Time can be bought and sold, earned and stolen, and running out of time means the end of your life. The rich live in Time Zones of marble, steel and glass, requiring months and even years for access, while the poor live and die day by day in run-down, industrial ghettos.
The idea that all of the characters might be minutes from running out and need to find more time works like a little adrenaline jolt to the story, giving it a boost whenever the pace slackens.
But Niccol keeps it quite pacy, turning it into a slightly Hitchcockian man-on-the-run thriller, sketching in the details of his sci-fi World as the plot flies past. That world is a little reminiscent of the world from his superior Gattaca; utilising real, contemporary locations skilfully to suggest this near future. The lovely, pin sharp photography of Roger Deakins helps immeasurably with that process, and is especially impressive at capturing the art deco Noir world of the ghetto after dark, abandoned warehouses and desolate neighbourhoods awash in the yellow glow of streetlights.
Niccol finds a couple of strong set pieces in his material; a fine car chase and a fight for time - akin to an arm wrestle - between Justin Timberlake's hero and Alex Pettyfer's "Minutemen", a gangster who makes his living stealing time from others, and the story does roll along speedily throughout. But the love story between the principals is perhaps the chief component of the third act, and neither of them has much of a character to work with. Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried are empty, pretty wind-up toys here, given motivations but no depth, their actions driven purely by the story, and this is a near-fatal flaw.
There is much good here; from Cillian Murphy's haunted, layered performance as a Time-Keeper after the lovers, to the little ironies and details of Niccol's world - the way everybody runs in the ghetto, the use of the phrase "clean your clock" - to Craig Armstrong's atmospheric, pulsing score; but the void where its two protagonists should be prevents it from ever becoming really excellent.
It remains a well-paced, visually dazzling fun sci-fi thriller, most admirable for its attempt to make the current Ecomomic climate a subject for escapist entertainment.
It may be an obvious, somewhat leaden metaphor for the inequalities of the capitalist economies currently dominating the Western World, but the high concept which is the basis for In Time is also a deft recurrent narrative mechanism. Niccol's film is set in a near future where people have been engineered to cease ageing at 25, at which point an internal clock starts. Time can be bought and sold, earned and stolen, and running out of time means the end of your life. The rich live in Time Zones of marble, steel and glass, requiring months and even years for access, while the poor live and die day by day in run-down, industrial ghettos.
The idea that all of the characters might be minutes from running out and need to find more time works like a little adrenaline jolt to the story, giving it a boost whenever the pace slackens.
But Niccol keeps it quite pacy, turning it into a slightly Hitchcockian man-on-the-run thriller, sketching in the details of his sci-fi World as the plot flies past. That world is a little reminiscent of the world from his superior Gattaca; utilising real, contemporary locations skilfully to suggest this near future. The lovely, pin sharp photography of Roger Deakins helps immeasurably with that process, and is especially impressive at capturing the art deco Noir world of the ghetto after dark, abandoned warehouses and desolate neighbourhoods awash in the yellow glow of streetlights.
Niccol finds a couple of strong set pieces in his material; a fine car chase and a fight for time - akin to an arm wrestle - between Justin Timberlake's hero and Alex Pettyfer's "Minutemen", a gangster who makes his living stealing time from others, and the story does roll along speedily throughout. But the love story between the principals is perhaps the chief component of the third act, and neither of them has much of a character to work with. Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried are empty, pretty wind-up toys here, given motivations but no depth, their actions driven purely by the story, and this is a near-fatal flaw.
There is much good here; from Cillian Murphy's haunted, layered performance as a Time-Keeper after the lovers, to the little ironies and details of Niccol's world - the way everybody runs in the ghetto, the use of the phrase "clean your clock" - to Craig Armstrong's atmospheric, pulsing score; but the void where its two protagonists should be prevents it from ever becoming really excellent.
It remains a well-paced, visually dazzling fun sci-fi thriller, most admirable for its attempt to make the current Ecomomic climate a subject for escapist entertainment.
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