082: The Avengers

This is the culmination of four years of brilliant moviemaking by Marvel Studios. This studio has had the vision of making this particular movie and having all their other properties work in favor of it. References to The Avengers were placed left and right in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger (something not everybody was cool with). These are all fine movies in their own right (yes, I liked The Incredible Hulk), but seeing them work together to create The Avengers lifts them to an even higher plain. And if the very last scene is to be believed, Marvel is anything but done with The Avengers.

Joss Whedon has taken the reins for this particular installment. And you can clearly see why. He is somebody who can juggle a lot of characters and have them all feel like they are the star of the show. He did this with Firefly (and Serenity) and Toy Story, in which you feel his influence in the witty banter between all the toys. In The Avengers all the superheroes feel equal. Of course Captain America, Iron Man and Thor are running the show, but even minor characters like Hawkeye and Black Widow are given pivotal scenes. This is really clever writing by Zak Penn and Whedon. Penn was also responsible for X2, one of the best comic movies ever. That should tell you enough, right?

Another thing Penn and Whedon got exactly right was the dynamic between the heroes. These are not heroes who are bound by some unifying force, like The X-Men and the oppression of mutants. These guys don’t like each other much and that has always been one of the elements that made the Avengers comic so attractive. They are never on the same page, but when push comes to shove they stand their ground and get the job done. I loved how Whedon used this dynamic. You are never quite sure who is going to end up in the team and who is going to bail. The roster in the comics tended to fluctuate constantly as well. It is as if they have a rolodex with all the heroes in it and they get everybody who is available at that time. I can’t wait for what they are planning to do with that. Let there be petty squabbles, I say.

In spite of the running time of 142 minutes the time sure flew by. I was not exactly sure if would be able to keep myself awake for so long, but that turned out to not be a problem at all. Whedon managed to keep the pace going and keep the boring exposition to a minimum. There was a surprising lack of backtracking for uninitiated audiences. There were some hints at what transpired before, but nothing that would bore the hell out of the audiences who know exactly what is going on. That is not to say you are lost when you have not seen all of the movies that came before (are there people like that out there?). The story is kept open enough for everybody to get into it while not dumbing it down for establishes audiences. Again, an impressive feat on the part of the writers.

The cast we all know. Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. New is Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk, who takes over the role from Edward Norton, who decided not to come back. It is a great cast. They all know their characters to the tee and feel the freedom to let them be a bit more loose than before. There is a lot of witty banter going around and even some comedy that is genuinely funny. Tony Stark poking Bruce Banner to make the latter change into his Hulk form is hilarious. There are lots of little moments like that to make these heroes be more human (even though one of them is a god).

Around them there are a lot of faces we have seen before. Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the main villain in The Avengers, Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, Cobie Smulders and Agent Hill, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts and Stellan Skarsgård reprising his role from Thor as Dr. Selvig. Back in a much larger capacity is Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, the force at the center of The Avengers. He is the one who must try to keep this unruly bunch in order. Without him there would not even be a team like the Avengers. It is fun to see him run around with his eye-patch and hear him bark orders to everyone.

And then there are the action sequences and there are lots of them. Iron Man and Thor duking it out in a forest with Captain America intervening was certainly one of my favorites. The end battle in New York is absolutely spectacular. Michael Bay should take a look at this sequence and decide he should quit. Everything Bay does wrong in his Transformers action sequences Whedon does right. We are almost always aware of where everybody is in this battle. Who is battling alongside whom? Who is going where? Who needs help elsewhere? It is all clear to us viewers. This is extremely hard to pull off and Whedon did it. The only problem is the lack of human casualties. Not that I want to see a lot of bodies or senseless violence (and I understand why Paramount wanted a PG-13 rating), but when you blow up a city like New York in the way they did here, you know the streets are going to be strewn with bodies and gore. But then again, comic books never really show you any of that stuff either. Hmmmm…

To expand on that last comment there were some things that didn’t work too well. One of them was the sound. Maybe this was a problem at my theater, but I thought the sound mix was totally out of whack. Sounds that I thought should be loud were very subdued, while other sounds that were less important came up in the forefront. My theater usually has no problems with this technical aspect, but you’ll never know. The other thing that bothered me was the facelessness of the enemies. These were supposed to be fearsome aliens that were coming to destroy the Earth or something. Nothing much was done to elaborate on their motives, other than Loki wanting revenge on his brother. It wasn’t until after the credits that it all made sense to me. What we see then puts it all into perspective. I will not expand on that here, that would be a major spoiler. The problem is that not everybody is going to stay for that scene (about 75% of the audience left immediately) and maybe feel the way I did before I had that information.

But now with that knowledge in my head I can’t wait to see what the Marvel future looks like. With Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 in 2013, Captain America 2 in 2014 and a Nick Fury movie in the works a sequel to The Avengers can’t be far off. Let’s hope it all ties into that little scene at the end. FINGERS CROSSED!

> IMDb

054: We Bought a Zoo

Cameron Crowe is a strange creature. Everybody seems to like him. Everybody has a fondness for him and his work, but when you look back at what movies he has made there is not a lot there to be fond of. I have not seen Say Anything… Singles was a decent comedy with a great soundtrack. Jerry Maguire is very sappy with a good Tom Cruise. I never really understood the hype around Almost Famous. Vanilla Sky was a mess, and Elizabethtown made his downward slope even more steep. Now, six years after that last debacle Crowe releases We Bought a Zoo, a movie that doesn’t make a very good case for Crowe and his career.

Based on real life events, We Bought a Zoo tells the story of Benjamin Mee, a father of two and a widower since six months. He was an adventurer, but he has lost all appetite for a more exciting life. Then he decides to make a change. He starts looking for a new house, but doesn’t seem to able to find something that fits his needs. Then he comes across an old zoo that’s for sale. He takes the plunge and starts to renovate the zoo with the help of his family and the zoo staff. Hilarities ensue while Benjamin also deals with an annoying zoo inspector and a son who has been extremely affected by the loss of his mother.

The fact that this is based on actual events make you think that this could be a gritty tale with some real drama, because in real life things tend to be harder than in the movies. Well, think again, We Bought a Zoo is so sugarcoated that it isn’t funny anymore. This is understandable when you look at who wrote the adaptation with Crowe: Aline Brosh McKenna, who previously gave us gems like I Don’t Know How She Does It and Morning Glory, but of which are terrible movies. She manages to transform this story about a grieving family into a movie that is so full of unfunny jokes and cheap sentiment that is almost a crime. It is beyond me why a person like the real Benjamin Mee would let this happen. He probably signed a deal with Fox that prevented him from intervening. If that was the case, then let that be a lesson to all.

In light of that knowledge it is a miracle that something good came out of We Bought a Zoo at all. It is purely the cast that saves this movie. Matt Damon plays Benjamin Mee in a way that seems to be his new favorite character. Like in Contagion, he is the slightly overweight father who tries to do the best he can, but  who just can’t seem to catch a break. He is given a lot of food by (presumably divorced) women who see something in him, but he doesn’t feel the need to reciprocate the gesture. He is still very much working on processing the loss of the love of his life. Damon is totally relatable as Benjamin Mee, as most men are just like him. I know I am.

This processing of grief is something that has his son in its grasp as well. Dylan Mee (played by Colin Ford) acts out at school and that drives his father crazy. The confrontation between father and son later in the movie is something of a marvel in this otherwise rose-colored flick. The sheer power that Ford and Damon display in this scene is palpable through the screen.

The third member of this family is daughter Rosie Mee, a very wise for her age kid who acts like her father’s conscience. This character is maybe what bothered me the most about We Bought a Zoo. She is written in a way that makes her serve purely as comic relief in a way that would befit a role in a third rate sitcom. She constantly interrupts with incredibly smart remarks that are supposed to break a tension that is not even there. There is no way that this kid was like this in real life and that is again where the moniker “Based on real life events” works against the movie. It makes it hard to relate to We Bought a Zoo, a story that is already hard to believe, because it is so outrageous.

The supporting cast does an adequate job. There is Scarlett Johansson in a role that didn’t require her to doll up and flaunt her good looks. She downplays much of what people want to see of her and it even sounded like she lowered her voice slightly to make her a little bit more masculine. A very wise choice. As Damon’s brother there is the always competent Thomas Haden Church. He provides some much needed honest comic relief. Church and Johansson (together with Damon and Ford) manage to lift this otherwise forgettable romp to a level that made it watchable.

There is always one thing you can count on when watching a Cameron Crow movie: the music. Crowe is a former Rolling Stone journalist and decided from day one in his movie career to champion the music he likes in his movies. We Bought a Zoo is no exception. It is filled to the brim with songs that could make up a soundtrack with ease. On the other hand you have an original soundtrack by Jon Thor Birgisson, AKA Jónsi, that perfectly fits the movie. It is a very cutesy piece of music that hammers the fact home that this is a cute movie and shouldn’t be perceived otherwise. Maybe it would be wise for Crowe to return to his musical career, because, frankly, I likes his documentary on Pearl Jam (Pearl Jam Twenty) very much.

> IMDb