Perhaps I’m being influenced by the ubiquitous coverage and postings on Facebook that discuss the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York and is trickling throughout various cities. But, In Time might actually be trying to disguise itself as an allegory aimed at the class differences in this country. Or not.

Admittedly, there are some things going against the critical success of this movie. First of all: Amanda Seyfried. I hate writing that because she showed promise in Tina Fey’s Mean Girls and 2009’s Mama Mia. Plus, she’s the only one in the laughable Jennifer’s Body who saw it as a take on a B-movie and not a sincere look at high school cliques when they encounter the dark forces of evil. At the same time, she was in  Jennifer’s Body, and she topped that with turns in Chloe, Dear John, and  Red Riding Hood, three films replete with issues and very few – if any – saving graces. To be honest, strictly from the trailer, one of the two lines she delivers prophecies this film to be cheesily laden with spear-in-the-gullet allegories: when asked how she can go on living while watching others die, she laments, “We don’t watch; we close our eyes.” Dialog this transparent might as well just exist without the air of pseudo-poignancy. How about: “Nah. I’d prefer to be ignorant to the whole thing.”

Then, there’s Justin Timberlake. On one hand, he’s rather funny during his guest appearances on Saturday Night Live; on the other hand, his most talked about role in The Social Network is well-performed but lacks range – not that In Time appears to require a wealth of range, but I think the main thing that detracts him from a leading role in an action thriller is that Timberlake doesn’t fit the mold of leading role in an action thriller. At most, he’s the built but diminutive little brother of Vin Diesel – with a soprano voice.

The one surefire bet might be Cillian Murphy whose subtleties evoke more believable performances than counterparts that who rely on exaggerated emoting. And, casting Murphy as the bad guy who searches for Raymond Leon (Timberlake) might not be a terrible idea to sell a villain.

Initially, In Time is eerily reminiscent of 1976’s Logan’s Run that depicts an idyllic future with one major drawback: everyone must be terminated at 30. But, the one difference with In Time seems to be that people stop aging at 25, but then they must work to buy more time, or risk dying in one year. So, in the update, everyone gets an option, providing they can earn enough to stay alive. Enter the class conflict, something is exemplified by the line: “His crime wasn’t taking time; he was giving it away.”

In a “near future” world where the “rich can live forever” and the “poor die young,” “time” becomes a currency allegorical to money: the more money, the better services and the newest technological advances in medicine. The less money, the more populated HMO office and sniffling, sneezing, queue at the pharmacy. Similarly, the more “time” one has, the longer life.

However, the most damning part of the above quote is the second half that condemns a man for “giving [time] away,” which, in a sense, decries the notion of philanthropy, altruism, and to be baser, sharing: something that is rather resonant of the pavement-filling combat between the 99% and the 1%.

Overall, I’m not quite sure whether In Time is intentionally allegorical or if the story is shaped and augmented by the barrage of news covering the “Occupy” movements, but one will be out of sight sooner than the other.

About six months ago, my block in Astoria was papered with pink NO PARKING signs vowing to tow anything that disrupted the filming of  a movie. Within the massive trailers, reclusive celebrities hid until it was time for their close-ups, and along the sidewalk, non-celebrities grazed on coffee and donuts, spoke into walkie talkies, and removed wandering residents from the sidewalk when someone farther down the street held up a hand. I never managed to catch a glimpse of anyone in the movie, and knew very little about the film aside from its title: Tower Heist.

There were thirty one movies filmed in New York City in 2010 and twenty-currently being filmed – neither of these totals includes the various television series and dramas also filmed. And, because there are so many, I hardly remember the titles I glimpse from the signs; however, it just so happens that the same block was shut down last weekend for touch-ups on the very same movie. Coincidentally, this happened the same week that I slogged through The Change-Up and caught a glimpse of Tower Heist during the coming attractions.

Admittedly, I was initially intrigued given the recentness with which I was reminded of the film, but the preview itself exemplifies the degeneration of a narrative arc from promising to ludicrously contrived. In another context, this preview would demonstrate the transition from sapiens to simians.

Should a film that stars Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, Eddie Murphy, Michael Pena, Tea Leoni, and Gabourey Sidibe be categorized as high art and set the bar above all other films in its genre? Certainly not. and I wouldn’t fault it for falling short. However, the preview starts out promisingly enough by playing on a contemporary scandal reminiscent of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scam.

Here, Alan Alda plays Arthur Shaw, a multimillionaire with his “own private island,” but whose congenial demeanor is torn asunder amidst the revelation that he defrauded all of his investors, and those that we are privy to happen to work in the luxury building where Shaw lives. In this co-existence of blue collar workers and Shaw, a discourse on the class-gap is established, primarily between JoshKovacs (Ben Stiller) and Shaw, where Shaw insists that “deepdown, I’m just an old Astoria boy,” much like Kovacs who responds with “That’s right. PS 104. Go lions.” But this is rendered fallacious once Shaw’s crimes are uncovered and he reminds Kovacs that he and his fellow employees are just “working stiffs, clock punchers, easily replaced.”

Therefore, despite their childhood’s geographical proximity, they couldn’t be further apart. This topic is not one that is often tackled in comedy – dark or otherwise – so its introduction here suggested that various gaps between class, education, and maybe even race would be tackled.

Furthermore, the film aims at the proper demographic: the middle class workers, maybe those who were defrauded by Madoff, or, more broadly relevant, those who hold similar middle-class jobs, only knowing the wealthy from afar. The aim is taken further when the collective modus operandi of the scorned employees turns to revenge, but not in a Hard Candy sort of way. Here, Shaw won’t physically suffer, but his “twenty-million dollar safety net” will be found and distributed between this modern Robin Hood and his merry men.

But alas, there is one snag in their scheme: they’re “not criminals” and “don’t know how to steal.” But rest assured, Kovacs “knows someone”: Slide (Eddie Murphy). Cue the move from Homo Sapiens to Homo Erectus, our knuckles touching the ground, and our knowledge of the word ripe with confusion.

I have nothing against Eddie Murphy. In a way, I even admire his transition from wise-cracking Axl Foley to lead whip in deplorably written children’s films. Most of them evoke laughter through gross-out humor, are terrible, and treat kids like morons, but they are financially viable: “since 1995, “kids’ fiction” movies have been the highest average grossing of any genre, excepting the usually bigger-budget superhero films” (source). Who can fault him – or Adam Sandler for that matter?

The downside of the introduction of Slide is not just Murphy, who treats one of his first dialogs with Kovacs as if he were conjuring Donkey from Dreamwork’s animation heap. Using the same nasal, undulating inflection Murphy rattles in one extenuated breath, “You’re the little seizure boy whose been having seizures all the time, you’d be having seizures on a regular basis, you’re the little seizure boy, your eyes would be rolling back and a kids’d be crying, foam was coming out…it was very scary” that’s a nice boulder.

Instead, the downside is the progression of narrative. Here, we’re led to believe that Kovacs, who works in a building in which the average tenant earns “5.6 million dollars” and who has to refer all the way back to their time with “Ms. Satlzburg” at “daycare” to jog Slide’s memory, has kept close enough tabs on this random playmate-turned-criminal to be able to use him at the most convenient disposal. Granted, in the age of Facebook, Peoplefinder, Classmates, Google Plus, and other .coms, it is a touch easier to find those who cut themselves loose from the tether of social networks, but how probable is this? And, on the chance that this is a writer’s scheme to introduce a twist wherein Kovacs — or someone else — is revealed to be in league with Shaw, then, boo.

Perhaps I should just suspend my disbelief – more so that could be warranted – and just go with it. Fine. I’ll do that for a moment, but I can’t overlook the comedic tone of the film that moves from clever to idiotic.

One example derives from Rick Malloy’s (Michael Pena) purchasing of ski hats as opposed to ski masks because “the guy said these would keep us the warmest.” Seriously? There’s always a wealth of comic relief in misunderstanding, but this is a heist film that mirrors decades of heist films, so his obliviousness, much like the connection forged between Kovacs and Slide is precarious at best.

Likewise, moments within the trailer point to Odessa Montero (Gabourey Sidibe), the maid who’s “gone rogue” and has an obvious attraction to Slide, something most notably shown through innuendo as they hunch near a safe: “You gotta find the entry point. gotta use the fingers when you find the entry point. You married?” To which Slide reposts, “No, I ain’t marries whas up?”

There is nothing wrong with innuendo, crudeness, or transgression for that matter; however, the lines pave such a predictable course that they lose their humor. It’s forced, and it’s as if the film panders to an audience looking for the grotesque – in the most literal sense of the word: creating an unnatural or bizarre connection during a situation that calls for the opposite. Inherently, there’s nothing wrong with the grotesque or the absurd, but its deviation from the original tone transports this film to the age of Homo habilis.

In the end, a film that looks to be another rendition of Ocean’s Eleven confuses its audience with a cornucopia of clichés and snippets of various genres. Oh, and it’s directed by Brett Ratner: the turd placed atop asbestos whipped cream dolloped on a delicious looking sundae.

Cheers to those who got their smurf on over the weekend at South Street Seaport in New York City, where hundreds of blue-faced, Phrygian cap-wearing participants in Global Smurfs Day “joined dedicated fans in ten other cities to smash the world record for the biggest gathering of Smurfs in 24 hours.” And, for those of you paying attention, smashing a record implies that one existed before. Smurf me.

While the global gathering only amounted to about 4,000 participants, the event fueled nostalgic love for the 80s cartoon characters that were first created in 1956 by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (Pierre Culliford), and this nostalgic gathering is appropriately timed given Sony’s July live-action/animated release of The Smurfs, a film that is destined to enter the canon of Alvin and the Chipmunks and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel as terrible bastardizations of 80’s cartoons that once held a warm place in my heart, only now holding a queasy, visceral, bile-coated section of my esophagus just waiting to be expelled.

I’m not necessarily against the idea of translating the lovable, three-crabapple-high creatures into big screen characters; however, I’m a bit thrown off by the studio’s confusion over their targeted demographic in that it’s rather unclear whether Sony is aiming this debacle at the adults who watched the cartoon as children or contemporary children who may not have experienced the Smurfs. Admittedly, the cartoon was not necessarily innocent. There is a supposed Communist subtext in the original 80s cartoon exhibited through their cooperative lifestyle, in which every Smurf contributes what he or she is best at – not to mention Papa Smurf’s wearing of red trousers. It should be noted, however, that Thierry Culliford, Peyo’s son, has stated in an interview that his father “wasn’t interested in politics at all.” Perhaps Thierry was looking to keep himself from being blacklisted. We’ll never know, but the ideals of cooperation, sharing, and acceptance are valuable tenets to children and reminders to adults.

At the same time, these tenets  might appear in the upcoming movie, though the preview plays more on the “smurf patois,” a vernacular that creates a glossolalia of verbs, nouns, and adjectives by substituting them randomly with the word “Smurf.” This is certainly cartoonishly clever when Papa Smurf suggests that they kick back by smurfing down the smurf river on the yellow smurf.

However, the big-screen translation of the cartoon gives us perfunctory, pedestrian, intro-to-screenwriting gems like “I think I just smurfed in my mouth” or “where the smurf are we?” – not to mention the official movie website www.smurfhappens.com. The former euphemizes vomit and the latter “fuck” or “hell.” The final is tackiness masked as clever. Puke and curse words clearly don’t damn a movie to failure, but the studio’s transformation from the cartoonish “smurf patios” into thinly veiled vulgarity to draw a chuckle from younger viewers is rather classless and cheap. Perhaps this is too strong of an indictment, and perhaps Sony was really targeting this film at adults who want to feel nostalgic and watch their childhood Saturday morning companions on the big screen, but this seems rather unlikely given that most adults avoid PG movies, preferring R, and occasionally PG-13 because of the paucity of children – and at times (and I say this loosely) better content. Moreover, the notion that this film could be marketed to both adults and children is paradoxical because – while adults may bring their children to this film – the comedy therein isn’t enough to hook their interest, only their wallet.

What’s more, the film takes liberties with the inclusion of Smurfette, the lone female Smurf who has often been stigmatized as the sole breeder in the community, making her rather, well, sluttish. This was a manufactured subtext of the cartoon —and isn’t really relevant inasmuch as Gargamel is the one who created Smurfette in an attempt to inject chaos in their commune, but it doesn’t work. More importantly, this theory doesn’t really get brought up in conversation until puberty when children of the 80s reflected on their cartoon-watching habits.

However, the film seems to flaunt this sexuality. First by casting Katy Perry as the voice, which isn’t a terrible idea, but her visage automatically cultivates a sexual stigma around Smurfette that would not have been there for the virgin viewer. Second is the parallel drawn between Smurfette and Marylin Monroe, and while younger viewers may not make the initial connection, the sexuality is overt when Smurfette stands over a heating duct, allowing her white skirt to be sensually blown about her torso as her eyes roll back in her head and she releases a giggle while futilely trying to push the fabric down by v-ing her hands over her crotch to avert the eyes of the mutton-chopped Smurf — all with a smile on her face.

Will children make this iconic film connection? Probably not; but, Smurfette will become the sex symbol of the film, opening the door for other sex jokes and fodder like when the same mutton-chopped Smurf experiences the same gust of air only to remark there’s “nothing like a cool breeze in my enchanted forest.” For those of you under the age of 12, his enchanted forest is his ass – his magical (?) hairy ass.

Are sex jokes terrible? Not at all, but when they are used in children’s movies, they represent a lack of creativity and, well, intelligence. The production of this movie feels as if its impetus was caused by a mountain of unsold Smurf dolls, all stuffed with voice chips that originally said “have a smuftastic day!,” only to be replaced with “You smurfed with the wrong person.” (By the by, this is an actual line delivered by Smurfette in the movie. Ah, Hollywood. Why am I not a millionaire yet?)

Well, if Warner Bros. is going to scrape the bottom of the barrel for superheroes, it makes sense that they would choose a superhero who was essentially scraped from the bottom of the barrel. For the sake of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I had a Green Lantern action figure when I was a kid, and he was one of my favorites. Not sure why, but the costume always looked pretty ominous and mysterious, which, in hindsight, is important because his superpower comes from a little piece of emerald jewelry that can conjure anything that his mind imagines, from a giant fist or hammer to a set of swords – and as per the movie trailer, a Gatlin gun.

As opposed to a character like Batman, Superman, Iron Man and the like, Green Lantern has been rebooted a number of times beginning with his initial stint from 1941 – 1949 and then in the early sixties when the current incarnation, Hal Jordan, was launched. However, he too was killed off and brought back a handful of times over the next few decades, so the success record of Green Lantern isn’t stellar to begin with, but his transition to summer blockbuster is representative of the film industry’s need to capitalize on everything until it is a stone cold corpse waiting to be revived as an amalgamated monster a la Frankenstein without the social critique on science and narcissism.

Using Green Lantern is also symptomatic to the epidemic of unoriginality. Much like his initial appearance toward the end of the Golden Age of comics, his origin story is rather, well, uninteresting. Sorry to offend, but our brave test pilot – who is also rendered irresponsible and reckless through his flying maneuvers and his lascivious ways – is given a ring by the dying alien Abin Sur and is told “it chose you.” First off, if the ring, which contains the “most powerful force in existence,” were the CEO of all intergalactic peace keepers, how shallow is the recruiting pool if they’re choosing this guy? Sure, he’s brave and has the “power to overcome ‘fear’,” but what about his liabilities? To be frank, it’s almost as if Jordan is being conscripted, and instead of being sent through a set of a gatekeeping, safeguarding, filtering processes, he is caught in the ring’s haphazard and desperate fight to protect the universe from the Paralax, “an entity that fed on the yellow power of ‘fear.’” Moreover, what does this desperation say about the state of the myriad galaxies in the universe? Have their just been a number of attacks without exit strategies? In other words, who’s been running the show, and for what reasons?

Analagously, what does Warner Bros’ investment in such a character say about their exit strategy? In a sense, Jordan is their Operation Enduring Freedom, an idea that sounds ideologically sound given that all other studios are cashing in on the superhero genre, but where do they go from here? Once the personified “fear” is beaten, Jordan’s job will be to defeat “fear” again. Where does this vicious samsara end?

Something else of note is that the “most powerful force in existence” is credited as being the “power of will,” or for anyone who’s quit smoking, “will power.” So, all of his abilities come from the belief that he can do them, but I have will power, so why can’t I imagine a Gatlin gun and have it magically appear? And, what kind of will power does he have if he’s fashioned as a playboy who wakes up every morning next to strange women? Wouldn’t the more appropriate object of recruitment be a priest or zealot?

The final issue that arises with Green Lantern is his catchy oath. At first, it didn’t bother me, but I couldn’t get it out of my head, which I suppose is a great marketing strategy and something to give the kids to cling to when the new line of Lantern action figures hit the store shelves. At the same time, it’s a symbol of laziness, and, well, theft.

The oath:

In brighest day and blackest night
no evil shall escape my sight
let those that worship evil’s might
beware my power…
green lantern light!

Catchy, yes? Also might sound familiar:

Star light, star bright
First star I see tonight
I wish I may I wish I might
Have the wish …
I wish tonight!

While the number of syllables differs by 7, the rhyme scheme and tone are rather similar. Take this in combination with “will power” being the color green and “fear” the color yellow, one thing is clear: the original creators of Green Lantern were tripping on acid and listening to children’s poetry while thinking about the cosmos and pondering their position in this little corner of the universe.

As if they were recovering from a bad breakup by trying to mimic and outdo the other, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis have both charted their trajectory from Black Swan toward movies where each female protagonist is just looking for a little symbiotic carnal catharsis. Natalie Portman, fresh off her Academy Award win for Best Actress, began the new year by starring with Ashton Kutcher in No Strings Attached, a movie that pits their long friendship in the oft-pondered sex without relationship conundrum, where Adam (Kutcher) gets to request that Emma (Portman) not “ask [him] what [he] thinks of her body,” absolving him of any responsibility to be emotionally supportive before, during, and after he’s present for sex.

At the same time, Emma is a doctor who works “eighty hours a week” and needs “someone who’s going to be in [her] bed at 2 am and not need [her] to eat breakfast with them.” There’s an interesting dynamic here in that Emma has been given the dominant role in the relationship in a career-oriented and fiscal sense, which makes her the more stereotypically “masculine” of the two characters. This is also suggested when it appears that Emma is the character who is emotionally detached from relationships and really just seeks physical pleasure given that “monogamy goes against our basic biology.” While this sentiment certainly has credence – not hindered by the fact that her intelligence is exposited through her career as a doctor — the primary issue with this dynamic is that it is fraudulent, and like any movie in which a male character says, “I’m not really looking for a relationship,” there is clear foreshadowing that the “desired” end result is not what’s going to come to fruition.

In other words, the intrigue of Emma’s character is that the stereotypical gender roles are reversed; however, the outcome still rides the cliché, so the intrigue fades. Does this make a potentially terrible film? Not necessarily, but it begs the questions as to why the premise was regurgitated for Friends With Benefits, a less mellifluous euphemism for Fuckbuddies.

Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake star in the re-release of Portman’s film, and while there is a more slapstick, comedic feel to Friends With Benefits – as opposed to the more sardonic No Strings Attached — there appears to be little variation from the overall arc of the story. One main difference might be that Jamie (Kunis) isn’t seeking relationship-less sex as a physical necessity, but rather as a catharsis to prove that she could be like the men she’s been dating, one of whom forgets that she is his “soul mate,” noting that it “doesn’t count” because they were in throes of passion for this sentiment. There’s certainly something to be said for an oral and aural filter during sex, but this – and similar – actions seem to be what have driven Jamie to inform Dylan (Timberlake) that she’s “emotionally damaged,” a situation that seemingly fits well with Dylan being “emotionally unavailable.”

Despite the slight differences in Emma and Jamie, the same conflict arises in both films: the female lead that denounces relationships and seeks social promiscuity without emotional repercussions must see the error of her ways and find solace in the one person that she chose as a safe partner to help her “avoid the Hollywood cliché of true love,” which in itself is a transparent line that only serves to set us up for the opposite result.

On the outside, both of these films have merit in that they empower the female characters, that, for the most part, have been imagined as the more emotional of the sexes, a trope that has provided a number of great stories of love, loss, etc. However, I think this clothing is rather illusory in that the events in both films reaffirm the constructed puritan values of past films that ultimately drives the female leads to contradict themselves and renege on their declarations to their friends, their audience, and themselves.

Perhaps these films are a testament to the “power of love,” and our inability to avoid it when it sneaks up behind us.  At the same time, there also seems to be an assertion that a woman’s attempt to break free of patriarchal social norms is futile; for despite their aversion toward relationships, this is the final ingredient to happiness, an ingredient that condescendingly undermines each character’s convictions.

When a martini has that perfect balance of vodka and vermouth, enhanced by chips of shaken ice and the salty touch of an olive, you record your measurements for repeated imbibing pleasure. When filet mignon is seared the appropriate length of time so that it melts in your mouth, you do your best to duplicate that touch and taste.

I’m not sure if the same advice should be given when making a movie.

As the summer months begin, so do the horde of summer movies: blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean: Yes, we Made Another One, Thor, Green Lantern, and Super 8, buddy comedies like Hangover 2, and cartoons like Cars 2 will soon be the respite from muggy city streets. One such summer movie that opens July 8^th is Zookeeper, and while I’m not sure which category to lump this one in, I will assert that Columbia Pictures needs a touch of help in their creative department, primarily because the current Kevin James vehicle about a clumsy, nervous fellow who is in need of dating advice strikes me as rather similar to the last James film about a clumsy, nervous fellow who needs dating advice, Hitch.

However, this time, Will Smith does not appear as the Christian de Neuvillette to James’ Cyrano; instead, Griffin Keyes’ (James) advisors are a bevy of bipeds and quadrupeds, all of who speak and give pearls of advice like “unlock your inner bear” and “never let a rider dictate the outcome of a situation.” Interpretations of this advice could certainly be seen in the world of dating, though exposing one’s “inner bear” in public might result in some sort of fine.

It is clear from the trailer that these lessons are not be taken symbolically, but rather, literally as demonstrated by Keyes’ mimicking of a giant grizzly protecting his cave, replete with opened-mouthed “arrrarrharr” while trying to intimidate a fellow car salesman — a profession that is suggested to be a step up from zookeeping, which might be ironic since both occupations require the employee to sling crap all day. These scenes may elicit a few laughs, as might James’ control over his not usual-Hollywood physique, something that’s made him a rather good physical comic and carried overall disappointing films like Paul Blart: Mall Cop and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, though it’s difficult to suggest that these laughs will overshadow the overall silliness of the film.

Regardless of the laughs evoked and the ridiculous predicaments that Keyes works his way into and out of, the trailer portends that the end result of Zookeeper will be similar to the subtext of Hitch: be yourself or beware of disaster. In Hitch, Albert (James) can’t be himself because he believes that his self could never attract or kindle interest of Allegra Cole (Amber Valleta), thus he needs the assistance of Hitch (Smith). Eventually, the uncovering of Albert’s association with Hitch threatens to sink his relationship as Cole believes that everything up to that point has been fraudulent. While this isn’t entirely untrue, Albert’s true self emerges and saves the day.

A similar story has been fashioned here. Keyes has been shot down by a former girlfriend who comes one “no” shy of becoming a fiancé, but declines the proposal because she doesn’t want to be with a zookeeper. Although the occupations and financial earnings of Albert and Keyes are different, the lack of self-esteem and feeling of self-worth are the same, thus the need for an outside party to interject, and I would assume that the denouement of Zookeeper includes Keyes returning to the zoo, giving up a life as a car salesman and still winning the girl, or at least a girl who will love him for who he is. Perhaps the twist will be a violent surfacing of his previously-latent love for llamas. I might pay to see that.

I’m not sure how many more movies can be carried on the trope of infantile adults, though Bad Teacher is going to try its damnedest, primarily by having its main character Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) respond to criticism with a pubescent teenager’s “Oooooh,” perhaps leaving out the “I’m so scared,” but this is a bet I would advise against taking. So, for the sake of positivity, let’s also overlook the obnoxiously punny tagline that “She doesn’t give an ‘F’,” though it’s also contradictory in its attempt at humor in that Halsey is shown grading papers with obloquy rather than feedback.

While we’re at it, we can also overlook the fact that writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, despite having a hand in a few episodes of The Office, also penned Year One, which utilized Michael Cera’s frantic personality, but was a lesser version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

In cookie cutter fashion, Bad Teacher offers Halsey’s yang in the form of Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch), whose chittering name bespeaks her role as a well-loved, favorite teacher of the students. It also bespeaks the nature of balance, in part , encouraging Halsey to reform – not herself – but her teaching style in order to win the obligatory carrot given to “whichever teacher has the highest score” on the Illinois state exam and denounce Punch’s opinion that “I can’t think of anyone less suited to be a teacher.”

Despite the obvious hangups that this film exposes through both the trailer and the primary movie poster, there is still positivity, and it can be found in an examination of the subtext surrounding teachers and teacher unions, of which Halsey must be part of if she is able to verbally berate and criticize her students in a less than constructive manner with impunity. If, perchance, there is no commentary being made on the inherent dangers of unions, then perhaps Bad Teacher is commenting on the inefficiency of educational administration as it lets students slip through cracks and employs teachers who are more focused on weekends and summer vacations than teaching, which is aptly suggested when Hasley suggests she’s “not going to go to [the first day of school],” despite the mandate that she be present, to which she delivers the “ooooh,” alluding to the fact that her job is secure and administration would have a bureaucratic nightmare filled with miles of red tape if they wanted to fire her.

At the same time, Hasley’s prime motivator – money – should also be considered here in that it reflects the grievances that teachers have for their lack of compensation and thus, whether through malice or by default, a rising lack of indifference toward a curriculum that houses teachers, who “are themselves products of the same compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and  as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed up on the children,” as suggested by John Taylor Gatto in his essay “Against School” that appeared in Harper’s magazine in 2003.

So, perhaps Bad Teacher is tackling the ubiquitous ennui felt by both the teachers and the students. The question is whether or not they will offer a solution to this epidemic, or if the film will devolve to predictable innuendo like when Russell Gettis (Jason Segel), proffering a bag of soccer balls asks Hasley to “hold [his] ball sack.”

Whether Bad Teacher delivers actually seems negligible in that the safe bet is that it won’t. Besides, sometimes the beauty of conjecture is offering insight on what could and should be said, not necessarily what is.

It seems a bit futile to discuss a Martin Lawrence film in the Gladiators forum because logically, it will just be relegated to a worm working its way from a feline bowel to a desert of clumping crystals, but there’s something to be said for the third incarnation of a character who was hardly funny the first two times she waddled across the silver screen. Big Momma has found her way into a sequel’s sequel: Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, and to inject a modicum of cleverness into the franchise, they’ve done away with “House” and made the initially possessive “Momma’s” into “Mommas,” thus indicating that there will be twice as much tonnage-filled fun.

Addressing the issue of something once striking devolving to cliché, Salvador Dali once said, “The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot,” suggesting that an original idea can be thought-provoking – whether it be serious, playful, or comical – but imitations of the same idea without expansion or re-imagination become useless and perpetuate silliness and unoriginality.

There have been a number of films that have dealt with the issue of males cross-dressing and have made it rather integral to their respective plots; however, only four come to mind that resemble the “poet” that Dali references: Some Like it Hot, the 1959 crime/comedy that puts Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis is drag to avoid being captured by the mob, Psycho, Hitchcock’s 1960 macabre film that proved we “all go a little mad sometimes,” The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975’s cult/musical that will forever make us do the Time Warp at weddings while garbling all words except the chorus, and Tootsie, the 1982 film that nabbed Dustin Hoffman his first Oscar. (Victor Victoria and Les Cages aux Follies get an honorable mention.)

Granted, these four films all played off the plot point of transvestitism, but they were also four different genres, included satirical points, solid actors / actresses, and wove gender-bending into a more prominent storyline that developed characters and an arch that the audience wanted to follow, mostly keeping the actual act of cross-dressing as an additional element in a well-woven tale, as opposed to making it the predominant gimmick.

So, with the wealth of imitators – and according to Wikipedia, Rottentomatoes, and IMDB, there are about two hundred – Big Mommas gets the scorn of the day because it has twice imitated its own ridiculousness that masquerades as comedy. In other words, the original wasn’t funny either. Steeped in sexual innuendo that includes at least two variations of “Is that a flashlight in your pocket?” plus pop culture references that insist Big Momma’s “got game” before she proceeds to school and then dunk on a school yard basketball player as well as her insistence that someone “looks good. Won’t you back that thing up?” Aside from the persistently unfunny fatsuit, posing pop-culture references as dialogue is one step ahead of writing a screenplay by pulling lines out of a hat.

What makes Big Mommas worse is that it’s not even a copy of the original; rather, it’s a copy, again offering a trailer filled with sexual innuendos and slips of the tongue when the cross-dressing duo of Martin Lawrence and Brandon Jackson repeatedly forget they are supposed to be women by noting the “sweet, delicious young women” on a college campus — much like Lawrence lets fly in the original that he could never forget her granddaughter’s “ass…thma.” In all honestly, you’d figure a top FBI agent would not slip in and out of character so easily, and frankly, Lawrence’s verbal dysentary that validates his harrassing of a young woman the first time he meets her makes the character more crude, less funny. I’d love to believe that these Freudian slips offer a social commentary on how men are dogs and are instinctively animals that must hunt the fairer sex, but that provides Lawrence and any of the dozen writers involved in these projects undue credit.

Likewise, Big Mommas kills time with sarcastic pop-culture references like referring to Momma as “Mary J. Bulge.” Zing! But, is this retort even relevant any longer? Couldn’t they have come up with something a bit cleverer? Playing on Mary J. Blige’s name is nearly as anachronistic as calling her the Hindenburg, but not nearly as anachronistic as having Jackson sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in a baritone voice that impels Momma to grab his testicles to find that proper soprano tone. Let’s forget about the slave narrative mythology of that song for the moment and move forward to Jackson in a fat suit as he plays a ballerina, which seems only necessary so that he will fly off the stage, crash into the other fat-suit wearing character, and prompt the line: “Now I know why they call it The Nutcracker,” which, if you’re counting, are two nut references in one two-minute trailer.

Maybe I’m a pretentious bastard and unable to appreciate the baser forms of comedy steeped in sexual innuendo and erection-based setups and punchlines, but I’d prefer to think that culture has come further than predictable clichés, and what Big Mommas suggests is that our cumulative intelligence lessens our ability to follow a cohesive story line that interweaves comedy, story, and theme. Too extreme? Maybe, but people will put a few million dollars into this movie through ticket sales, and while I’m sure that the majority of the movie-loving public won’t see this movie, those who do prove there is a market for vapid, banal entertainment. What’s more, the third section of this triptych that proves tragedies come in threes is just one of twenty seven sequels being released this year, five of which are third installments: Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Madea’s Big Happy Family, Paranormal Activity 3, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

While my first instinct is to avoid analyzing a trailer to uncover the potential validity of the new Amanda Seyfried reincarnation of Red Riding Hood, something holds me back from my charge toward complete obloquy, though it’s tricky given that the film is being marketed to audiences by noting it is “From the director of Twilight,” and while Catherine Hardwicke did a decent job writing and directing Thirteen, Twilight is a harbinger of terrible mishmashes of mythology and silliness that barely obscures the pedestrian love triangle in the middle by throwing in gimmicky elements like vegetarian vampires and sparkly epidermises.  However, the something that stymies the visceral reaction I have to Meyer’s brainchild is Gary Oldman, and his ability to create a believable character that carries a film – even if it should by all means move at a slug’s pace. Similarly, Seyfried is a conundrum. She was funnily endearing as an uber-ditzy blonde in Mean Girls, entertaining in Mama Mia, but seemingly lost in Chloe and Jennifer’s Body. However, she’s shown a lot of range, so we’re at least working with two believable, perhaps even suitable, characters here.

Then, we have the plot point driving the film: Valerie’s (Seyfried) arranged marriage to Henry (Max Irons), a wealthy, blondish looking fellow, which impedes her love for Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), an orphaned woodcutter who is clearly not at affluent as Henry. This trope is overdone, but let’s ponder for a moment the possibility that Red Riding Hood is actually an intelligent allegory about xenophobia, which could be gleaned given the exotic aesthetic of Peter, a brown hair, brown eyed, brooding individual who has entered the village and disrupted tradition. In addition, Valerie’s plan to run away with Peter coincides with her older sister being murdered by a werewolf who has reneged on his end of a bargain to avoid killing village members in exchange for a monthly sacrifice.

We could jump the gun here and prophecy that the murderer is probably Valerie’s father or maybe even someone related to Henry with the intention of placing the blame on anyone associated with Peter – and we’d probably be accurate – but when Father Solomon (Oldman) arrives in the village, the presence of the werewolf offers a potential social commentary on paranoia and the pejorative “outsider.” Strolling through the assembled villagers, Solomon exposits, “in the daytime, the werewolf returns to his human form. The real killer lives here in this village; it could be your neighbor; your homes will be searched; your secrets brought to light,” which recalls various facets and addendums to the Patriot Act enacted by the United States Government after 2001. In other words, a violent, inexplicable act – like a werewolf breaking a tenuous truce – begs for a resolution, particularly when the identity of the werewolf is unknown.

Unlike a number of bogeymen and other creatures and things that go bump in the night, the werewolf is a shapeshifter, an animal form covering a true identity. Regardless of the horrors committed by the beast, the man underneath is protected by his violent alter ego. That said, the inability to point a finger at the absolute cause of violence begets paranoia, encouraging distrust amongst fellow villagers, and making them hyperaware of any incident that could illuminate the wolf’s identity. In the same vein, the unknown also casts a pall of suspicion over everyone, thus the illegal search and seizure of property is justified for “the good of the village,” disregarding any notions of privacy. While everyone is treated as equal suspects, evidence brought to light not pertaining to the discovery of the werewolf could damage families for generations by exhibiting the skeletons in everyone’s closets.

Thus, Solomon’s quest for the wolf also fashions Red Riding Hood into a narrative about the quest for purity – the elimination of the tainted “outsider” and the preservation of the well-bred, loyal members of the village – those who are arranged to marry and be married, those with snow white skin and blonde hair like Valerie and Henry. Peter, the brooding outsider, and his brethren will be the first suspected and the hardest pushed, creating arteries and causeways to condemn and snuff out other outsiders.

And while it’s hard to overlook the shaky, yet speedy, hand-cam quest through the woods that supposedly mimics the hunting werewolf like the Nothing in The Neverending Story, it’s important to note how Nine Inch Nail’s “The Hand that Feeds” plays over all released versions of this trailer, and how it’s a song that speaks about betrayal and a “crusade […] justified in the name of the holy and divine,” illustrating yet another form of “outsider” – the religious “other,” a pagan, a blood-drinker, a cult-member, a heretic, a Protestant.

It seems less coincidental than intentional that Father Solomon is Catholic and beset by numerous gold crucifixes, including the carriage from which he exits, adorned with crosses and religious symbols, including the crucifix-shaped window in his door.

Red Riding Hood has the potential to run the gamut of social issues, poking holes in the contradictions of government benevolence, privacy during wartime, xenophobia, and prejudice, but it could very well be restricted by its connection to Twilight, which will more than likely pull in droves of Twi-hards and slightly-post pubescent teen girls, and if this is the producers’ intentions – considering the marketing and tag lines – then they have wasted a fine allegory and have rejected the courage to employ the timeless teaching tools of fairy tales.

I am less boggled by whether or not the Raelean’s have figured out the true origins of life on Earth as I am by the enigma that is Adam Sandler, a comic who had moments of cult-comedy brilliance in Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and the occasional holiday-song parody that sympathetically tugs at our turkey-loving heartstrings or gives us a glimpse at how many “Jews are in showbiz – Tom Cruise isn’t, but I heard his agent is.”

At the same time, there are moments when Sandler has attempted to deviate from his comedic path and delve into roles that establish him as a real actor; however, few of these have worked, and it’s not to say that his roles aren’t well performed. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love was Sandler’s first legitimately dramatic role that didn’t dictate a potty joke or a squeaky voice delivering lines about “hynies” [sic?]. But, it’s worth pointing out that Anderson’s film is a rather dark and mordant comedy and Sandler had the benefit of playing along certain other actors like Luis Guzman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Emily Watson – not that Sandler wasn’t adequate as Barry Egan; he just wasn’t the star of the film.

After Punch Drunk Love, it seems that Sandler danced on the line between goofball comedy and dramedy, which is a fine venture for any actor, but these films often flopped because there were moments that led the audience up the familiar Sandler trail, setting us up for a raunchy or crude joke, only to throw us off the summit into a pit of pseudo-seriousness. In other words, if the film is going for raunchy, embrace the raunch; if not, avoid the raunch and rely on timing and humor. And, it’s the timing that seemed to have slipped from Sandler’s films after Punch Drunk Love – or perhaps the glaring lack of timing has become evident.

Take for example Mr. Deeds, a film that tries to be genuine in the relationship between Longfellow (Sandler) and Babe (Winona Ryder); nevertheless, any romance and comedy intertwined with the romance is often elided by certain scenes like Longfellow’s foot being beaten and then skewered by a steel-poker wielding John Turturro. While the remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is supposed to be a more comedic take, the stabs at comedy are often overshadowed by sight gags rooted in discomfort, like America’s Funniest Home Videos of People Being Hit in the Crotch.

There is nothing inherently wrong with body fluid jokes or crude humor; Billy Madison an eighty five minute puberty joke, but if the story itself is interrupted by juvenile jokes with no bearing on the plot, then the lack of cohesion tanks the film. Another example might be the remake of The Longest Yard, and while this comedy isn’t terrible, it still falls victim to silliness, particularly the addition of Tracy Morgan’s pre-op transgender prisoner. While it’s amusing to see Tracy wear a skirt once, the shtick rots quickly, continuing to linger; the same goes for the slightly mentally retarded gentle giant who gets physically and emotionally injured easily. While these characters conjure chuckles, they take away from the “redemption” angle of the film, and transform The Longest Yard into something you might watch for five minutes but forget about it during a commercial or when something better comes on.

Sandler’s new film Just Go With It strikes me as one with the same issues in that one of the scenes from the preview gives us Sandler arguing with his fake son, who cries “that man put his peepee on my face,” to which Sandler rejoins “He put his face on my peepee!” While pederasty jokes are sidesplittingly inspiring, a movie marketed on them will soon hope to sell enough DVD copies to break even. That said, the premise that leads to this situation look doubly dubious:

Danny (Sandler) is a man with a plan, someone searching for as many flings as there are nights to fill them with, and he has settled on foolproof plan to wear a wedding ring to make himself appear off the market; thus, there are “no strings attached and no one gets hurt.” Ah, those magical words that lead us down the path to clichéd conflict, pitting Sandler at one end, and Palmer (Brooklyn Decker) the girl he has miraculously fallen in love and with whom he “could see [himself] ending up with” after one night of sex at the other, but she discovers the wedding ring and poses the question: “What is this?” to which Danny replies, “a circle.” (Gold I tell you! It’s gold!)

What’s a man to do? Insert devious scheme to prove that he’s not a devious schemer (?): Telling Palmer that he is in the midst of a divorce, Danny’s genius excuse is foiled because Palmer wants to meet the soon-to-be ex-wife, which just seems beyond logic considering that putting a wife and a girlfriend in one room would often equal either a bloody mess or terribly fractured emotions that would most likely be devastating for Danny.  But, whatever, so enter Katherine (Jennifer Aniston; Box office gold baby!) , Danny’s assistant who agrees to play the wife-in-transition.

However, Katherine has children, which means Danny has children, so his scheme to convince Palmer that he is an honest, faithful guy who she will spend the rest of her life with is already out of gas by the time the film slogs to the word “peepee.” Therefore, the audience is expected to watch a man who has seemingly decided to ditch his philandering ways implode on screen. Movies aren’t required to have happy endings, but they should at least offer a touch of logic, and the mere premise of Just Go With It will ultimately deny this theory when Katherine and Danny ultimately fall for each other and Palmer is left strutting her beautiful blonde self on a hot sandy beach. And, herein lies an additional bit of silliness: when Danny and Katherine fall for each other, their relationship will have been based both on a interaction at work and the propagation of an overly elaborate ruse that exposes the propensity of dishonesty for both characters, thus this relationship is also destined to crash and burn.

The overall issue with Just Go With It is that it seems to be trying to build off of premises explored in earlier Judd Apatow films like Knocked Up and 40-Year Old Virgin, where a number of male characters are holding on to their youth so tightly that their adulthood is sprinting by, limiting their chances of having a family and finding the one with each passing day. And as years go by, this fear becomes daunting, so the males find comfort in what they are familiar with: pubescent jokes and juvenile humor. And for Apatow, this premise works because the rebellion often comes when the male characters are faced with responsibilities and these responsibilities are the catalysts for their acting out. When it doesn’t work out, he makes light of it and gives us David (Paul Rudd), a hopeless soul who is a minor character that provides comic relief. However, Just Go With It gives us a forty-year –old Adam Sandler, whose character is propelled by the chase and deceit, so what redemption is he allotted? And while he most probably grows up at the end, who cares?