Ed O'Neill - a national treasure

If there is any justice in the world, I will see a high school named after Ed O'Neill in my lifetime. In the center of that campus - which I would prefer be in Ohio, while we're at it - will be his statue. Nothing too fancy - granite rather than marble, for instance, and not especially polished or smooth; but solid, weathered, and somehow gruffly charming. This image is running away from me a bit, but my point is that if you're not already watching Modern Family, you need to start.

The premise doesn't exactly send people hustling to Tivo (or whatever) it; after all, how many times has the 'quirky' extended family been done, let alone done right? And the promos weren't the most inspired material either, choosing to showcase a typical lame-dad-who-tries-to-use-hip-slang-and-just-embarrasses-himself-and-everyone-who-loves-him. Still, I gave it a chance, and was rewarded with a delightful little show that manages to be sharply funny and unexpectedly heart-warming, with very few wasted moments or flat jokes.

Unfortunately, one of the three families - a husband and wife with three children; the wife's father and his hot new wife + young, emotional son; and the (first) wife's brother and his boyfriend who have just adopted a Vietnamese baby - has to be less interesting and hilarious than the other two. Unsurprisingly, it's the husband and wife team, Phil and Claire Dunphy. Phil is the aforementioned lame dad, and is saddled with the most predictable and slap-sticky elements of the show. Still, his general clumsiness, in speech and physicality, generate from his eager desire to make his love for his family known, and that's gotta count for something.

The gay couple, Cam and Mitchell, tend to steal the show whenever on screen. We get to see them negotiating their stances on stereotypes in a very real but very funny way, and so far they seem to be the most well-developed characters on the show. I may even recommend Modern Family based on Cam's Lion King scene alone (you'll know it when you see it, as you piss your pants with laughter).

Meanwhile, Ed O'Neill anchors the whole family (and show, really) as the super patriarch with a super-hot Colombian wife. Jay and Gloria have an unexpected and flinty chemistry that elevates their sub-plot from the typical; plus, Ed O'Neill is involved. I would watch Ed O'Neill do anything. I have watched Little Giants multiple times all the way through, just to watch Ed O'Neill wear aviators and chew gum like a champion. Obviously, there are shades of Al Bundy in most everything he does, but Modern Family sees Ed O'Neill gruffly accept his gay son's adopted Vietnamese daughter (after being put through the Lion King scene, which you just need to Hulu right now) AND give up a hot-tub-in-wine-country-weekend to take his stepson to Disney World, all the while pretending that it was his stepson's father's idea. These things are far beyond Al Bundy's abilities, but fit comfortably within Ed O'Neill's. Give that man a Klondike bar.

M

To Be Honest about The Invention of Lying...

When Ricky Gervais' screenwriter-wannabe character on Extras finally gets to have his own TV show, it bears little resemblance to what he had originally intended. The studio turns it into a slapstick, lowest-rung sitcom, complete with costumes, catchphrases, and twice-per-minute laugh tracks. Gervais has said that he based his character's fictional television show, which revolved around a British workplace with an idiot boss, off of what The Office would have looked like had he let the studio have their way. It's kind of terrifying to think that The Office (and I'm talking about the British version here), with all of its subtleties and innuendoes, might have been turned into a moronic dime-a-dozen sitcom if Gervais had let it out of his sight for one moment.

In many ways, I'm kind of wondering if that's what happened with The Invention of Lying. Written and directed by Gervais and Matthew Robinson, the film seems like it should have been excellent. Gervais' bemused monologues, to which we're seldom treated outside of his standup act, are there. Approximately nineteen-thousand celebrity cameos (Tina Fey! Philip Seymour Hoffman! Edward Norton!) are there. And the premise of the film is, well, a really good one: in a world in which people are only able to tell the truth, one man has evolved the ability to lie, and his good-natured deceptions begin to resemble --surprise, surprise-- the tenets of Western religion. It seems a little proselytizing (Gervais is an outspoken atheist), but I don't really mind being proselytized to if what's being said makes sense, and I certainly don't mind if I'm also being entertained. And at first The Invention of Lying is really pretty entertaining, particularly in that it points out some of the things that aren't possible without lying: seeing as there's no fiction, movies are readings of famous historical events, and advertisements consist of slogans like, "Coke: It's Very Famous."

But, by a definition of lying that holds that neither religion nor fiction are possible without it, a lot of other things depend on lying -- such as, for instance, most human artifice, progress, and culture. All of these things require the ability to conceive of an iteration of the world that is different from the current one -- i.e., imagination.* And all of these things (which is to say, all of the elements, besides religion and art, that are present in a developed society) are present in this movie. Also, in Gervais' godless, lying-less world, people for some reason need to walk around repeatedly saying things like, "I am marrying you to secure good genetic material for our future children" -- I was not aware that being unable to lie also meant being unable to restrain oneself from spouting oversimplified ideas about evolution that vaguely resemble eugenics. Nor was I aware that tact was impossible without lying, as everyone in this film seems to need to say literally anything they're thinking all of the time, without being prompted (e.g., a waiter telling customers, "I sipped your drink," or a woman sitting down and saying, "I just took a poop.") In that sense, the truth-tellers in the movie all start to look like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar -- which, considering how many of them there are, is kind of terrifying.

In any event, the fact that all of these holes in the idea are pretty easy to spot betrays the laziness of the film's execution. But the love subplot with Jennifer Garner was just incomprehensible, and its resolution (spoiler alert: he gets the girl) is basically the final tip-off to me that this movie was not at all what Gervais wanted. Why, you ask? Well, Garner's character is shallow, petty, and, even once she's nicer, still pretty stupid. Gervais' character profited hugely off of giving the world its first, massive betrayal. They do deserve one another -- but you get the sense that, if Gervais had his way, the characters' fate would have been a lot darker and more depressing, like an eternity of his deception and her obtuse misunderstanding, as befits them. Instead, though, their story ends like a romantic comedy would -- they wind up happy, plus one adorable kid and another on the way. It wound up ending like a feel-good movie, but I'm not sure Gervais really would have wanted us to feel good. It was supposed to be a satire, for crying out loud.

In any event, Ricky Gervais obviously has some ideas, which are probably pretty coherent, about the development of religion, which he may be trying to give a voice through this film. And I can imagine a version of the film in which that works. In it, nobody besides Gervais himself is allowed to do anything. It's obvious what happens when anyone else is allowed to have their way with his ideas.

V

* Ok, well, not necessarily. But in any event, it's debatable -- and it is debated, often and contentiously -- how linguistic abilities and culture evolve in tandem. And this movie just totally disregards that debate entirely, and it didn't have to.**
**Am I being too harsh? Ok, well, kind of. I can't really offer a much neater explanation, and why am I engaging in this sort of discussion with a mediocre movie anyway? To distract both you and me from this question: Marion makes a good point, which is that this movie began and ended with a voiceover, which is just kind of lazy, and never a good sign. So, as you were.

trailers: movies in 2.5 minutes!

I had the misfortune of stumbling upon the trailer for the upcoming movie The Stepfather on Facebook. In a fit of curiosity, I clicked on the sponsored link and settled back to see what joys Hollywood had prepared for me this time. After watching said trailer, I can conclude that I don't really have anything against the movie itself - it looks like a pretty typical "nobody knows the truth except me!!!" pot boiler, involving creepy stepparents and ruthlessly gullible friends and family. What I do have something against is the trailer itself.

A rather cumbersome (and unoriginal) pet peeve of mine is the trailer that gives away the entire plot, "twists" and all, without any hesitation whatsoever. Let's review the plot of this The Stepfather movie: baritone-voiced boy comes home from military school to find his lovely mother in the arms of some new square, whose cheeriness and normalcy is a little much. Nobody suspects anything is amiss except the boy, whose qualms are chalked up to typical "child mistrusts anyone who isn't his dad but is banging his mom" sentiments. Turns out, this guy is a total psycho or whatever who killed people or something and is assuming another identity and blahblah. (Also, the boy's girlfriend seems to only wear bikinis. This isn't a plot point per se, but is absolutely worth mentioning, since the girl is Amber Heard.) Like I said, nothing really offensive there.

Anyway, the trailer chugs along, and includes a nice little creepy moment - in response to the story about a woman driving off a bridge with her three kids, the stepfather says, "Well, maybe they disappointed her," which apparently only Young Master Gravel-Voice notices as weird and off-putting. More moments like that, and like the Sweet Old Lady From Across The Street Who Has A Cat And Whose Husband Probably Died Like 10 Years Ago saying that a criminal on America's Most Wanted looks like this new stepfather, would have made for a really good trailer. After all, wouldn't it be more interesting to go into a movie wondering whether Teenage Batman is actually on to something or not? That would've been kind of cool.

Unfortunately, we are then subjected to seeing the stepfather assault a child for playing a video game too loud, appear suddenly behind Amber Heard (presumably to tell her that her sweatshirt has too much fabric in it), shaving the beard and removing the glasses that make him look like the police sketch of a deranged murderer, and I think drop a buzzsaw on someone's face. So, great. Now we know the whole movie. What on earth is the point of paying to see it, then? What does this movie have to offer us anymore that I can't find elsewhere, and for free?

Cost: absolutely nothing. Ba-zing!

M