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COOL CAT
One of those flicks a lot of people hoped would flop. A potentially cheesy combination of a cartoon property and CGI, initial glimpses didn’t make it look promising. It seemed like one of those flicks that would either really strike gold or totally flop. In reality, Garfield fell somewhere between those extremes. With a gross of $75 million, it didn’t set the world on fire, but it avoided the abject failure of something like Thunderbirds and its humiliating $6 million take. Critics didn’t have many nice things to say about Garfield, but they also didn’t savage it to the degree they went after a flick such as Catwoman. What reaction did Garfield deserve? A very negative one, as this witless and inane drivel never turns into anything even remotely entertaining. Don’t expect much plot here. Fat, lazy, self-involved cat Garfield (voiced by Bill Murray) lives with his nebbish of an owner Jon (Breckin Meyer). Jon pines for pretty veterinarian Liz Wilson (Jennifer Love Hewitt), which means he brings Garfield for office visits more often than necessary. One day she asks him to help rescue a dog named Odie. Since he sees this as a way to score points with Liz, Jon agrees, and he soon finds himself smitten by the cute and charming pup. Unfortunately, Garfield fails to see Odie’s appeal, and he freaks when he sees Jon start to favor the dog. This intensifies when Odie steals the stage at a dog show and attracts the attention of TV performer Happy Chapman (Stephen Tobolowsky), a guy with an animal act who needs a dog. Jon declines the offer, though. After Garfield accidentally trashes part of Jon’s house, he gets the boot, but he manages to trick Odie into coming outside instead. This happens at night, and Odie wanders away from home. An old lady finds him and puts up “Found Dog” signs, while Jon posts his own “Lost Dog” notes. Shakdsad sees his opportunity to get a hold of Odie for his act when he sees the woman’s sign, so he claims the pooch as his own. Initially pleased to be rid of his rival, Garfield soon realizes the error of his ways, mainly because all his animal friends now forsake him. Garfield sees Odie on TV with Happy and tries to notify Jon, but this doesn’t work. The rest of the movie follows Garfield’s efforts to bring Odie back home. Garfield presents the sight - or at least the sound - of Bill Murray cashing a paycheck. Other than money, I can’t fathom why he’d allow himself to be associated with such a terrible film. He certainly never sounds inspired. His readings of Garfield’s weak attempts at humor always seem tired and without enthusiasm. I thought Murray might help make something passable out of the project, but he does nothing to elevate the material. Granted, with material this insipid, I can’t imagine how he could have done much with it. Garfield presents one tepid gag after another, all of which seem to have been created by some random joke generator. Or maybe that’s not fair - a computer program could definitely produce funnier bits than what we see here. The movie’s relentless product placement doesn’t help. If you swig a beer with every reference to Wendy’s, you’ll be blitzed by the end of the flick. As for the lead character himself, the computer-animated Garfield presents an odd choice of style. Too photorealistic to succeed as a cartoon but too cartoony to look believable, he never fits with the rest of the action. The animated cat blends poorly with the real-life backgrounds, and the choice to use actual critters in all the other animal roles makes the decision to use a moderately cartoonish Garfield even less sensible. The production straddles the worlds of comics and reality in a tenuous manner that makes it even more difficult for us to get involved in the action.
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 Secret creation of a picture
They say The Da Vinci Code has sold more copies than any book since the Bible. Good thing it has a different ending. Dan Brown's novel is utterly preposterous; Ron Howard's movie is preposterously entertaining. Both contain accusations against the Catholic Church and its order of Opus Dei that would be scandalous if anyone of sound mind could possibly entertain them. I know there are people who believe Brown's fantasies about the Holy Grail, the descendants of Jesus, the Knights Templar, Opus Dei and the true story of Mary Magdalene. This has the advantage of distracting them from the theory that the Pentagon was not hit by an airplane.
Let us begin, then, by agreeing that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. And that since everyone has read the novel, I need only give away one secret -- that the movie follows the book religiously. While the book is a potboiler written with little grace and style, it does supply an intriguing plot. Luckily, Ron Howard is a better filmmaker than Dan Brown is a novelist; he follows Brown's formula (exotic location, startling revelation, desperate chase scene, repeat as needed) and elevates it into a superior entertainment, with Tom Hanks as a theo-intellectual Indiana Jones.
Hanks stars as Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist in Paris for a lecture when Inspector Fache (Jean Reno) informs him of the murder of museum curator Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle). This poor man has been shot and will die late at night inside the Louvre; his wounds, although mortal, fortunately leave him time enough to conceal a safe deposit key, strip himself, cover his body with symbols written in his own blood, arrange his body in a pose and within a design by Da Vinci, and write out, also in blood, an encrypted message, a scrambled numerical sequence and a footnote to Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), the pretty French policewoman whom he raised after the death of her parents. Most people are content with a dying word or two; Jacques leaves us with a film treatment.
Having read the novel, we know what happens then. Sophie warns Robert he is in danger from Fache, and they elude capture in the Louvre and set off on a quest that leads them to the vault of a private bank, to the French villa of Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), to the Temple Church in London, to an isolated Templar church in the British countryside, to a hidden crypt and then back to the Louvre again. The police, both French and British, are one step behind them all of this time, but Sophie and Robert are facile, inventive and daring. Also, perhaps, they have God on their side.
This series of chases, discoveries and escapes is intercut with another story, involving an albino named Silas (Paul Bettany), who works under the command of the Teacher, a mysterious figure at the center of a conspiracy to conceal the location of the Holy Grail, what it really is, and what that implies. The conspiracy involves members of Opus Dei, a society of Catholics who in real life (I learn from a recent issue of the Spectator) are rather conventionally devout and prayerful. Although the movie describes their practices as "maso-chastity," not all of them are chaste and hardly any practice self-flagellation. In the months ahead, I would advise Opus Dei to carefully scrutinize membership applications.
 Modern life "American Pie" is a film that, for use of a better phrase, wants to have it's pie and eat it, too. It transitions from raunchy teen comedy to a rather moralistic last act, but even in trying to have these characters learn lessons, they still continue on the hunt for that piece of the pie. It's another teen film, only this one sets its sights on being "different" from the pack of teen films by pushing the R-rating to the limits. Buzz on the film has been promoting the film's "Something About Mary" humor, but strangely, I felt the film was oddly tame. The plot revolves around four high school seniors who make a pact that they must lose their virginity by the final hours before they graduate. I don't have a problem with a teen comedy trying to have a little fun, but that's the problem: a lot of "Pie" begins to feel a little long; there are moments of pure hilarity that had me laughing incredibly hard, such as an internet-based incident, but between scenes like that, the film feels like it's searching for a way to take the story, while I was left searching for a reason to care about these characters. The females seem smart, worldly, and still awkward about adolesence, but sweetly so. The men in this film, for the most part, are simply macho jerks. Towards the end, we are lead to believe that they've learned about love, but it seems rather false that they've actually learned a thing. There are some funny moments in "Pie", especially that scene I mentioned earlier involving the internet, but these scenes simply seem like they are few and far between. I would have seriously liked to have seen the filmmakers push the energy level higher because even though it's only 96 minutes, it still feels a little slow. The other "sexy" teen film this year, "Cruel Intentions" worked better than this film. It had a stronger edge, a wit, characters who were more memorable and even had moments of humor. This film tries to be shocking, but really, what's shocking anymore? It's interesting to see the limits consistently being raised during the past few years, from "Clerks" to "Something About Mary" to "Austin Powers 2" to "South Park". "South Park" made me laugh not only because there were elements of smart satire in the layers underneath, but because it genuinely took a fun, demented glee to being so "naughty". "American Pie" tries to shock laughs from the audience and it feels too predictable and I think the ad campaign is at serious fault for that. Most of the "shocking" moments in "Pie" have been ruined by the film's trailer.
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