Music and Medicine

The Muppets

I’m sure by now you’ve already seen The Muppets, read about it to death, or simply don’t care. But you came here to read my hard-hitting critical review, and that’s exactly what you’re going to get. We’ll, sort of.

To start with, Jason Segel while a good choice as a writer, falls just short of the right performance. He’s a little too enthusiastic and it winds up being a little fake. As I’ll talk about in a little more detail, I wanted less humans, more Muppets. The original songs were what you could expect, although they seemed too front-loaded and contained to the human characters. 

In some conversations I had about the movie with others, someone brought up the point that the movie is less of a Muppet movie, and more of a movie remembering the Muppets. The difference being their previous movies were “Hey look, it’s the Muppets in a crazy and comical situation” and this movie was “Hey, you like the Muppets? Let’s laugh about remembering the Muppets.” To some extent I agree with this point. A lot of the movie was this weird meta-Muppet (human)  plot. In my opinion those were the weakest parts of the movie. The one exception was the whole sequence with Jack Black. His appearance both as Animal’s sponsor and as the guest host was perfect, and the funniest I’ve seen Jack Black in years.

The parts that focused on the Muppets themselves were fantastic. Those characters are timeless, and that’s what this movie was trying to prove. The whole point of the meta-Muppets was to open the characters to a new audience. And for that I think it worked. I took my “little” for Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and we had a great time. Granted some of the jokes were above his head, he really enjoyed the experience and a lot of the music. We spent the car ride home taking turns singing different parts of Mah Na Mah Na.

Overall, the movie was consistently good. I felt it didn’t really have a down section, but I didn’t feel extra ecstatic. I was just happy the entire way through, which is exactly what I wanted. Anything coming out from the legacy of Jim Henson is a higher level of television/movies. With that, I’ll leave you with a somewhat related clip from Sesame Street. Where Cookie Monster teaches Kermit a very important lesson about friendship.

Movie #4

The Descendants

The basic story of The Descendants goes like this: Matt King’s (George Clooney) wife was recently in a boating accident that has left her in a coma. This comes at a time when Matt is working as the sole trustee to sell the last part of his family’s virgin Hawaii estate. The vast majority of his many cousins are eager to get the money. To make matters worse, Matt finds out that his wife had been having an affair and had been planning on asking for a divorce soon.

Now forget about the plot. One thing that makes The Descendants a great movie is that these characters and their problems are not extraordinary. Sure selling off estate land is different from what most people have to go through, but the real conflict has more to do with dealing with his family and leaving behind a good life for his own children. At the same time, he’s also reconciling the fact that his wife had been having an affair. A task made even more difficult because she’s in a coma.

The writing contributes a fair amount of work towards the normalcy, but what really pulls its weight is the acting. George Clooney as always is in top form in the role of Matt King. His facial expressions alone are worth the movie. There’s one scene that’s shown in the preview where he’s running around a corner, that when put into context is both hilarious, and sad without saying a single word. Shailene Woodley also puts in a fantastic performance as the teenage daughter Alex. And the interaction between the two is perfect. They create a dynamic that encompasses the situation they’re both in. Both characters know they’re not emotionally capable of handling it all, and they rely on each other to move forward.

This fits nicely with the Hawaiian backdrop of the film. The family is an archipelago that is just trying to get it’s shit together. The movie captures some amazing views of the island and it’s land. Lush greens and bright blues contrast with the un-relaxing nature of the situation the characters are in.

One final note is that I’ve rarely seen quite as good of a cut to credits as in The Descendants. It’s just pure and simple. You know it’s coming soon, and then suddenly it’s there, unobtrusively in the final scene. A great way to end the movie.

Overall, The Descendants is probably the best film I’ve seen so far this year. Everything about the film hits well. The acting, the views and the writing/pacing all come together to create a film that doesn’t rely on action, overt comedy, and very little drama. It feels real. It feels normal. And there really isn’t anything more you could ask for. Movie: #3

Jeff, Who Lives at Home

The other night I went to the St. Louis International Film Festival to watch Jeff, Who Lives at Home. Unfortunately, this was not a free pass movie, but I figured I could use another prompt for writing. 

Jeff starts off with the main character Jeff, played by Jason Segel, expressing his deep love for the movie Signs by Mel Gibson. He is particularly enthralled by it’s message that everything happens for a reason. Also, the little girl who everyone thinks is weird but who in the end, turns out to be a hero. The central themes of destiny and signs Jeff rambles on about play an important role in the rest of the film. But the scenes quasi-serious nature is instantly shot as the camera zooms out from Jeff’s face to reveal him tape-recording himself while on the toilet. From this starting point, the film goes on to tell a well-crafted story of destiny and family.

This movie brought me to my own memory of family and the movie Signs. Years ago, my older brother Michael (if you want some real reviews of movies, you should check out his website tangledupinwires.com) and I went to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, TN. We were accompanied by my friend Ben and spent four days camping out and going to none-stop music. For those who don’t know what Bonnaroo is like, when I went it was a strange combination of a hippie and hipster characters (I’ll let you sort out which category I belong to for yourself). You camp out for four days in this giant lot of people and cars. There are no real showers and you spend all day sweating and getting dirt everywhere.

Now, I’m a person who likes showering. It’s more a combination of the joy of water and the habitual nature of it then a compulsion to be clean. This meant though, that by the end of the festival I was ready to feel water rush over me. On our drive home, a large thunderstorm roamed through. So instead of having to wait for the 13 hours or so the drive home would take, we opted to instead find a hotel and camp out there for the night.

This lead to what I believe to be the second happiest viewing of Signs ever, right behind Jeff’s obviously more joyful experience. Upon reaching our room, we immediately rejoiced at the simple fact of being somewhere quiet and devoid of thousands of other people. Our next course of action was to take-turns showering while a pizza was being baked and delivered to our room. The T.V. was flipped on, as they tend to be in hotel rooms. After some light channel flipping we settled on Signs. 

The feeling I had of sitting there, reveling in silence is I think how Jeff lives his life. Jeff is a very spacious movie. There’s plenty of room, which likely arises from the Duplass brothers preference to let actors improve scens. In order to capture the true spirit of their performance, they literally give actors space and opt to use zoom to capture tighter shots. This technique does give the movie a little bit more of a real feel, but because it lacks an accompanying auditorial spaciousness, it comes off feeling strange. However by mid-movie, there’s enough movement and dialogue that this isn’t really a problem. All in all, Jeff is a good movie. Solidly shot and acted. Ultimately though it lacks that little bit of extra push that makes it a great movie. It’s worth watching though. 

In my next review, I’ll be covering The Descendants which I thought was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. Until then: Movie #2

In Time (Or 1st #yearofmovies)

Hello! What’s that? I haven’t posted in forever? Yeah well you know, life catches up with you. Anyways, I might update you about that some other time. Right now though, I want to talk about a new blog feature here (it will be regular!) called #yearofmovies. Long story short, I won a year pass to AMC Theaters. This means I will be seeing a lot of movies, good and bad, this year. So the plan is to blog about them, no matter how bad they are. I’ll probably talk more about it later, but in the meantime, I present movie #1: In Time.

So In Time is one of those late year action movies that are supposed to give you a little jolt right before Thanksgiving. The premise, as you might already know, is that we as a civilization have been able to stop aging (yay), so we stop people at 25. The catch is that you have a clock implanted in your arm that counts down the rest of your life. When it hits zero, you die (boo). Now of course because our life is the most important thing, time becomes currency. I’m sure our friends in the Euro zone are right now a bit puzzled how this global currency union could last. But I digress into the complicated territory of things like global trade and bond markets.

Anyways, ignoring the fact that we can stop aging and implant extremely advanced clocks that control our hearts (and know exactly when we turn 25), the world still has problems. Most people live in slums. Drinking and fighting are rampant. The most unrealistic thing though: humanity couldn’t develop a decent security system for the arm clocks and transfer of time. I mean come on, people barely trust anyone with the transfer of money online, how do you expect people to trust other people with their literal life. Congress would surely have something to say about this.

Despite inherent flaws with the plot (willing suspension of disbelief!), the movie starts off strong. Early on the movie makes use of some of the low-hanging fruit in a world where everyone is 25. One character states “You’re probably wondering, is she my mother, daughter, sister or wife?” Despite being a success, the movie forgets the whole gag pretty quick. It then movies into the action part of the movie with characters on the run from an assortment of enemies who were never really thought out, and who lack appropriate follow-through. I frankly would have preferred a calm, chase-less exploration of the world, but alas, I am not a typical consumer. Elements of the story are brought up (daddy issues) and quickly forgotten and never explained. It ultimately ends on an unsatisfying note plot-wise, but we knew that was going to happen from about half way through.

     Ideal movie:  

The movie tries to cover some of its’ economic bases by mentioning things like inflation (a tool used by the rich to keep the poor man down!), but ultimately I feel like it tries too hard to beat the viewer over the head with the simple message that a 1% controls all the time while a 99% languishes. “Many will die so a few can be immortal” is mentioned a couple of times. An appealing idea to discuss in this day and age, but one that falls truly short in this movie where everyone is Hollywood beautiful.

The atmosphere of the movie certainly had a positive impact on my experience. I was the only one in the theater which allowed me to laugh at moments that were surely not meant to be funny. The sound leak from the theater next-door, showing Paranormal Activity 3, with shrieks and shouts made it easier not to take this movie too seriously.

The movie was about as well-done as this blog post (read: not well). But when it comes down to it, In Time is a decent turn-off-your-brain movie with pretty people. If you’re looking for a movie that takes a serious look at a time economy based on sound economic theory, this is not what you’ve been looking for. Overall, even though I got in for free, the movie provided me enough entertainment for my time. Movie: #1

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