Demolition Man

I love science fiction movies that can teach me about my nation's past.  Remember the epidemic-level gang wars in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s that resulted in the notorious Simon Phoenix annexing a large portion of the city as his own fiefdom?  Good times, man.  What about the time we cryogenically froze Jeffrey Dahmer instead of sticking him in prison to get beaten to death by a broom handle?  Or the massive earthquake of 2010 that devastated Los Angeles and somehow lead to the remains of the city melding with San Diego to create San Angeles?  You don't remember that?  Me neither.  You would think the merging of two cities that are 120 miles apart would have been newsworthy, but it must have flown under the radar; I definitely recall the awful attempt to merge Chicago and cheese heads into Chicaukee.  Lake Michigan was green, yellow, and red that summer.

Of course, I have all this knowledge of our past thanks to the historical document Demolition Man.  Back in 1996, LA police bad-ass John "This Is" Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) performs a one-man raid on the headquarters of Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), a homicidal sociopath that was holding a busload of civilians hostage.  Because sending in a one-man SWAT team is standard protocol for the LAPD.  Well, Spartan manages to kill off Phoenix's evil henchmen and capture Phoenix, but he blew up the entire building complex in the process.  Spartan performed a body heat scan on the complex before entering and found only a handful of people; the handful accounted for Phoenix and his men, so the hostages must have been kept somewhere else.  Or were they?  In the wreckage of the building, dozens of bodies were recovered; Phoenix attested that Spartan blew up the building knowing that the innocents would die.  And because the 1996 LAPD put their trust in known terrorists, Spartan was arrested, tried and convicted of a few dozen counts of manslaughter.  His sentence is to be cryogenically frozen for seventy years (that sounds like an inexpensive solution); Phoenix is to be frozen forever, which seems rather silly to me.

..and the award for "Least Amount of Effort in an Album Cover" goes to...Sting!!!

Fast-forward to 2032.  The city of San Angeles has been devoid of crime and violence for so long that nobody can even remember such things.  Except for the people who are old enough to remember.  Because, seriously, it was less than 36 years ago, at the absolute longest.  This utopia is run by Dr. Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne), who has decided what is good for society (unthinking, unquestioning compliance) and what is bad (spicy and other unhealthy foods, curse words, sexual intercourse, etc.).  However, Cocteau's San Angeles has its disgruntled citizens, too.  Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary) is the leader of a literally underground society that lives in the sewers and cherishes personal freedom, although at the risk of starving to death.  For some reason, Simon Phoenix was thawed out for a parole hearing, despite his eternal sentence; even stranger is the fact that he knew voice commands to free himself from his restraints.  Phoenix proceeds on a murder spree, something that the SAPD are not equipped to handle.  So, how do they catch Phoenix?  By thawing out the man who did it last time, John Spartan.  Explosions and fish-out-of-water jokes ensue.

I make fun of Demolition Man, but it's because I care.  Most movies like this are shallow, boring, and predictable.  At the very least, this film is not boring.  As far as action movies go, there is a lot to like here.  Things go boom, there are some pretty sweet fires, and they even manage to incorporate freezing as an action device --- and not in a way that directly rips off Terminator 2.

In this dystopian future, the "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" dog never went away.

The movie is actually kind of cute, too.  I won't say that it's terribly funny, but there are a lot of clever ideas in the script --- Taco Bell being the only restaurant in the future, high fives not requiring physical contact, and toilet paper giving way to three seashells, for starters --- and you rarely hear "clever" being used to describe a Stallone movie.  I also liked that Sandra Bullcock's character takes her name from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.  The film is by no means perfect, but it's funnier and smarter than most action movies, even if the ultimate point of the story is simple enough to insult a child.

Now, as far as the acting goes...well, it goes.  Sylvester Stallone does his typical thing; he's barely monosyllabic, but he looks pretty good when he's shooting and punching stuff, so I'm not going to judge the man too harshly.  I thought he handled the humor in the script pretty well, even if he never spat out the marbles in his mouth.  Wesley Snipes was extremely entertaining as the supervillain of the film; he out-overacted most comic book villains, but I'll be damned if he didn't do it just right.  If absolutely nothing else, his fashion sense should be applauded.  Not just anyone can pull off pirate pants, you know.

"Eyes to see you." - not actually a quote from this film.

Sandra Bullock is surprisingly likable as the clueless but friendly sidekick to Stallone.  It wasn't a hard part to play, granted, and she doesn't really bring anything special to the part, but this is a nice, simple, and uncomplicated performance of low-key comedy.  Pre-nose job Benjamin Bratt has a small supporting role as a typically wimpy SAPD officer; he's kind of wooden, but being the straight man is a thankless role, so I'll let him off the hook.  If you're familiar with Denis Leary from his work on Rescue Me or his frequent interviews on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, his performance here might be a little on the raw side; on the other hand, if you remember his work circa-No Cure For Cancer, then you should know what's in store for you --- rants, namely.  I actually don't mind him here, but his rants are only "edgy" if you're still stuck back in 1993.  Despite having a few lines and a pretty visible character, Rob Schneider is not credited in this film at all, which is especially strange since he was on Saturday Night Live at the time and this is probably my favorite film role for the guy.  You might recognize a number of other minor characters in the movie, as well.  Jesse Ventura, Toshiro Obata (Shredder's sidekick in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies), and Billy D. Lucas (famous for being Schwarzenegger's stunt double) all play Cryo-convicts, like Simon Phoenix.  Jack Black has about two seconds of screen time as one of Leary's henchmen.  MTV alum Dan Cortese and Lara Harris (not the one from Mulholland Drive) are both background characters in the Taco Bell scene.  Bill Cobbs (the guy who takes all the "wise black man" roles that Morgan Freeman turns down) and Grand L. Bush (one of the Agent Johnsons from Die Hard) play the same character, thirty-six years apart.  You will definitely recognize Glenn "Otho" Sadix as an effeminate assistant.  And last, but not least, Bob Gunton does his typical thing as a jerk authority figure.  Are any of these supporting performances particularly revelatory?  Not at all.  Everyone plays their part (sometimes, they even over-play it) pretty well, making this a surprisingly well-rounded movie, acting-wise.

I never played it, but I assume that the lack of physical contact made this a waste of quarters.

One of the mysteries of Demolition Man (and there are several) is exactly what happened to director Marco Brambilla after making this film.  He has only three more credits on IMDb, and none of them are what I would call career-killers, even with an Alicia Silverstone movie under his belt.  Whatever the reason for his retirement (forceful or otherwise), I think Brambilla made a perfectly acceptable action flick, designed to entertain and make you crave popcorn.  Was his direction subtle?  Hell, no.  But who is looking for subtle in a Stallone action movie?  The action looked good, the plot made a decent amount of sense, and none of the jokes were wasted (even the lame ones).  That's not a bad job for a big budget action movie.

Do tough guys wear berets just so they can punch anyone who smirks?

All in all, Demolition Man is darn near perfect for what it is meant to be.  It could be more intentionally funny, sure, and it could certainly be more unintentionally funny, but those are two flaws I think most eighteen-year old action movies would be willing to live with.  As a legitimate movie, I think the balance of solid action with remedial satire deserves

 ...and yet, I enjoy this movie on so much more than a legitimate level.  I encourage you to watch this movie again (perhaps with some booze?  Side note --- don't do drugs, kids!) and laugh at the more ridiculous moments.  Demolition Man more than earns the Lefty Gold rating of

For some reason, when I did a Google Image Search for "Demolition Man," I came across this screenshot from Pulp's "Common People" music video.  I have no idea why, but I love Pulp and felt obligated to include it here.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Check it out...it's a computer-animated movie that is not from Disney-Pixar or Dreamworks Animation!  How novel!  Personally, I love me some Pixar films, but tend to have lukewarm reactions to the more jokey and shallow Dreamworks pictures; I have never seen anything from Sony Pictures Animation, though.  How will it stack up? 

Like the children's book of the same name that the movie is based on, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is set in the island city of Swallow Falls, which is located in under the "A" in "Atlantic Ocean" on maps.  That seems like an awfully flexible location to me, but whatever; the important thing to point out is that this story takes place in a foreign land, but everyone speaks like normal Americans!

"...and finally, we will subvert the youth of America by showing how rad Not-America is, what with all the raining spaghetti and whatnot."

Swallow Falls (which sounds vaguely pornographic) was once the sardine capital of the world, but suffered a huge economic depression when the rest of the world figured out that sardines were "super gross."  For years now, the island has been forced to eat almost nothing but sardines and reminisce about the days when they used to be a special place.  Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) has always wanted to do something special and spectacular through science, but he has, almost without exception, only met with failure when it comes to his inventions.  Flint's newest invention, the FLDSMDFR (Flint Lockwood's Diatomic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator) has the theoretic ability to turn water into whatever food you want.  Unfortunately, it requires a lot of power, more than his home can provide.  What does he do?  Naturally, he tries to connect it to the town's power source.  With his history of disastrous inventions, though, he has to do this on the sly, while everyone in town is attending the grand unveiling of Sardine Land, the mayor's newest attempt to revive the island economy.  Flint manages to hook the FLDSMDFR up, but it absorbs too much energy and goes wild, destroying Sardine Land and rocketing into the stratosphere.  The town is mightily angry at Flint, except for his technophobic father (James Caan), who is just disappointed with his weird kid.  But then, the oddest thing happens...it starts to rain cheeseburgers.  Will this finally make Flint a hero, or is something worse on the horizon?  Should Flint be true to his inventing self, or should he travel the well-worn path?  Will being famous finally win Flint his father's admiration and respect?  It's important to ask these questions, because some kid's movies skimp out on their morals.

Since I'm unfamiliar with Sony Pictures Animation, I'll start by commenting on how the movie looks.  Um, it looks fine.  That was easy.  I like that they went with more cartoony character designs than we've been seeing in most animated movies lately; there's a lot of extremely tall/short and thin/thick combinations going on here, so it's fun seeing a company that is willing to have fun with the designs of its human characters for a change.  Aside from that, this has all the polish that you would expect from a computer animated film that cost about $100 million to make.

Oh, sure.  When it rains cheeseburgers in this movie, they look like the Whoppers from commercials.  If I made it rain burgers, they would look like the crap I get in the drive-thru.

As is the style of the time, Cloudy... boasts an impressive cast of voice actors.  The two stars are Bill Hader and Anna Faris (who plays his love interest and learns that women can be smart, too!  Tee-hee!), and they're certainly likable enough.  James Caan does a good job as Flint's gruff, Oasis-eyebrowed father.

"Cuz after allllll...you're my wunderwaaaaaallll..."

I thought casting Bruce Campbell (who is one of the criminally underused voice talents in the industry) as the mayor of Swallow Falls was a great choice.  He's not a huge character, but Campbell does great work with supporting characters that are full of themselves.  Mr. T had a small role as a local police officer, and --- aside from his typical vocal stylings --- I was surprised at how well he delivered some of the more tender lines in the film.  It was bizarre, though, at how underused some of the celebrity talent was in this movie.  Benjamin Bratt had only a couple lines as a cameraman/doctor/pilot, Neil Patrick Harris was cast as a monkey that talks through a Speak and Spell (brilliant idea) but his lines are dull, and I can barely remember Will Forte's contribution to the movie.  For the record, Andy Samberg still isn't funny, even animated.

So, how does the movie hold up?  I have to admit, the first half is pretty cute.  The pace is quick, the humor is story- and character-based, and it sets up the protagonists to win audiences over.  Who doesn't want the girl who is ashamed of her brains to build up some confidence, or the nerd who always fails to finally do something right?  And if the second half of the film built upon that base, this could have been a great movie.  It doesn't.  Once the food starts raining, things just get random.  I understand that, in this post-Family Guy world, random humor is fairly popular now, but the second half of the movie feels cheap in comparison to the rest.  The gags are mostly visual or based on annoying characters.  The one saving grace the second half contains is a surprisingly touching speech from Flint's dad.  I guess it all boils down to this: do you actually care about these characters as the film ends?  For me, the answer is "no."  While I support the Danica McKellar model for intelligence in pretty girls, I found Anna Faris' character to be kind of weenie-ish, and her transformation to girl-empowered was nothing special.  Flint is flawed, which I like, but either through the writing or Bill Hader's voice acting, his troubles all seemed superficial to me.  None of the supporting cast stuck out enough to salvage this movie as comic relief, which makes the misuse of a talking monkey all the more tragic.

How do you misuse this?!?

If you're wondering if children will enjoy watching this movie, the answer is yes.  Kids will watch almost anything, and this is a movie that aims for the ADD crowd.  It is definitely random, but occasionally funny.  If you're looking for something light and inconsequential, there are worse choices than this effort by co-writers/co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.  I just wasn't impressed.  The characters were shallow or painfully obvious, the film's talent was assigned to seemingly random roles, and the story gives way to repetitious silliness for the last 40 minutes or so.  On the other hand, if you want to see a movie with people eating food off the ground, I can't think of a better choice, because the others are probably fetish videos.